Read on Twitter
SkyNews reporting "a major leak containing a register w/the personal identifying details of 1.95 mil Communist Party members [in #China], mostly from Shanghai, there are also the details of 79,000 Communist Party branches, many of them inside companies”. https://www.skynews.com.au/details/_6215946537001
What appears to be so newsworthy about this particular leaked list is the presence of CCP branches in not only foreign-invested firms in #China, but also in firms entirely located overseas.
This is by no means new-- I wrote several years ago about #China's massive Party-building drive to construct new CCP branches in Shanghai's NGOs in @chinaquarterly (The Advance of the Party: Transformation or Takeover of Urban Grassroots Society?* https://cup.org/3qUDN84 )...
As well as the CCP's attempts to "comprehensively cover" 全覆盖 Shanghai's private sector in "The New Life of the Party: Party-Building & Social Engineering in Greater Shanghai" in the #China Journal, but what's apparently of concern in the leaked list.. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/666580
...is the number of new Communist Party branches & committees now in Chinese-invested companies abroad. This is unsurprisingly going on on a massive scale in countries housing #China's Belt and Road projects as part of the CCP's "going out" 走出去efforts... #OBOR #BRI #一带一路
...where Chinese firms in countries w/large #OBOR #BRI loans are now home to branch operations of some of #China's largest SOEs. CCP Party-building takes place openly in across Asia & Africa in which "20% of company labour forces are Chinese & foreign employees account for 80%".
CNPC Int'l Pipeline 中油国际管道公司, handles 75% of #China's existing land-based import capacity across Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar & insists that "building a first-class international pipeline company requires first-class party building..."
And have practiced it along a "three concentric circle" model, ensuring a "'key minority' 关键少数 of CCP members serve on the board of directors, and in top mgmt positions of joint venture firms to ensure that the Chinese side has the dominant power of the joint venture firm"...
But what about the Party's activities in other Chinese-invested firms? The CCP insists that foreign-invested firms in #China house internal party branches. In 2017, Reuters reported that many of these were being pressured to rewrite their articles of association...
...for foreign joint venture partners “specify the requirement for party-building work.” #HongKong stock exchange listed Chinese SOEs complied, but some European partners reported escalating demands from their internal CCP branches... https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-congress-companies-idUSKCN1B40JU
We also know that, in 2017 German ambassador Michael Clauss complained that German companies in #China were forced to modify the terms of their joint ventures to allow the CCP Party branches to have greater influence in business operations https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/2120423/german-firms-warn-chinese-communist-partys-drive-gain?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=share_widget&utm_campaign=2120423 via @scmpnews
But what of Chinese-invested firms in the UK, US, or EU? Do these also have internal CCP Party branches? This is less clear, but Harvard's Daniel Koss found at least one towel manufacturer from #China's Shandong did set up a CPC cell in its US subsidiary on 5th Avenue in NYC...
... #China Shenhua Energy Group Overseas maintains two overseas CCP branches, one in #Russia and the other in #Australia (Shenhua Watermark), which piloted a club to serve as a "cultural integration home" attracting participation from Chinese & foreign employees...
As of 2016, Shenhua Watermark's CCP branch-sponsored employee club purportedly was sponsoring afternoon teas and organising charity efforts, in addition to keeping a careful eye on the firm's corporate social responsibility outreach.
So, it's entirely possible that we will see more disclosures in the coming days about the activities of overseas CCP party branches in Chinese-owned or Chinese-invested firms; another news story points to CCP branch members working for UK govt offices
