The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), officially the Communist Party of China (CPC), is the founding and sole governing party of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The CCP leads eight other legally permitted subordinate minor parties together as the United Front. The CCP was founded in 1921, mainly by Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao, with the help of the Far Eastern Bureau of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and Far Eastern Secretariat of the Communist International. The party grew quickly, and by 1949 the Kuomintang (KMT)'s Nationalist Government had been driven from mainland China to Taiwan after the Chinese Civil War, leading to the establishment of the People's Republic of China on 1 October 1949.
The CCP controls the country's armed forces, the People's Liberation Army (PLA). It is also one of the two major historical contemporary parties in Chinese history, the other being the Kuomintang.
The CCP leads an authoritarian Marxist–Leninist one-party state in China. The party is officially organized on the basis of democratic centralism, a principle conceived by Vladimir Lenin which entails open discussion of policy on the condition of unity among party members in upholding the agreed-upon decision. Theoretically, the highest body of the CCP is the National Congress, convened every fifth year. When the National Congress is not in session, the Central Committee is the highest body, but since the body meets normally only once a year most duties and responsibilities are vested in the Politburo and its Standing Committee, members of the latter seen as the top leadership of the Party and the State. The party's leader recently holds the offices of general secretary (responsible for civilian party duties), Chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC) (responsible for military affairs) and State President (a largely ceremonial position). Through these posts, the party leader is the country's paramount leader. The current leader is Xi Jinping, elected at the 18th Central Committee held on 15 November 2012.
Officially, the CCP is committed to communism and continues to participate in the International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties each year. According to the party constitution, the CCP adheres to Marxism–Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, socialism with Chinese characteristics, Deng Xiaoping Theory, the Three Represents, the Scientific Outlook on Development, and Xi Jinping Thought. The official explanation for China's economic reforms is that the country is in the primary stage of socialism, a developmental stage similar to the capitalist mode of production. The command economy established under Mao Zedong was replaced by the socialist market economy under Deng Xiaoping, the current economic system, on the basis that "Practice is the Sole Criterion for the Truth" - a principle reinforced through a 1978 article that aimed to combat dogmatism and criticised the Two Whatevers policy.
Since the collapse of Eastern European communist governments in 1989–1990 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the CCP has emphasized its party-to-party relations with the ruling parties of the remaining socialist states. While the CCP still maintains party-to-party relations with non-ruling communist parties around the world, since the 1980s it has established relations with several non-communist parties, most notably with ruling parties of one-party states (whatever their ideology), dominant parties in democracies (whatever their ideology) and social democratic parties. As of 2021, the CCP has more than 95 million members, making it the second largest political party in the world after India's Bharatiya Janata Party.
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