Chinese State Media: Foreign Companies ‘Bound to Have Communist Party Members’ on Staff

China’s state-run Global Times on Tuesday continued spinning the revelation that almost 2 million members of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP, frequently abbreviated as CPC by Chinese media) have infiltrated companies and organizations around the world.

The Global Times admitted foreign companies operating in China will probably end up with plenty of sworn CCP members on its payroll, but insisted there is no reason for employers to be concerned.

The Times took a halfhearted stab at questioning the authenticity of the CCP membership list leaked by dissidents in Shanghai and reported by the Australian on Sunday, then chided Australia, the United States, and other members of the “Five Eyes” alliance for being paranoid about Communist infiltration.

It huffed that foreigners should be happy to have members in good standing of the CCP as employees because they are intellectually and morally superior:

Is this list real? We have no idea. But if foreign embassies and consulates in China do not especially exclude CPC members, it is highly likely that their employees include CPC members. For one reason, CPC members constitute a high proportion in the Chinese population. For another, CPC members are more likely to be talents. If a foreign embassy employs dozens of Chinese, none of whom are CPC members, then the average level of those people may be below the medium level of Chinese society.

The US-launched smear campaign against the CPC has become more and more pointless. What is even more absurd is that it appears poker-faced and turns an upright thing into Five Eyes-style fiction.

The CPC has more than 90 million members. Besides meeting the political requirements, one has to be morally integrated and motivated and have a collective sense to become a CPC member. They are ordinary people in society. They also play a positive role at the grass-roots level. They are everywhere to contribute to society.

The Global Times made much of how companies increasing their staff in China are “bound” to hire plenty of CCP members, sarcastically asking if Chinese companies in the United States should be worried about hiring members of the Republican Party as employees. 

This sidesteps the fact that many of the CCP members identified in the leaked database are working outside China’s borders, holding sensitive positions with corporations, influential organizations, and even government agencies.

Also, unlike Republicans, Democrats, or other political parties in free nations, CCP members are required to swear undying loyalty to communism and perpetual obedience to the commands of Communist Party leadership, including China’s dictator Xi Jinping.

Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported alarm in the British government on Monday following the publication of the CCP membership database:

In the U.K., 30 MPs said they would be tabling an urgent question about the issue in the House of Commons, while former ruling Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith said CCP members must not be allowed to work in British consulates.

“The Government must now move to expel and remove any members of the Communist Party from our Consuls throughout China,” Duncan Smith wrote in a commentary in the Mail on Sunday. “They can either serve the U.K. or the Chinese Communist Party. They cannot do both.”

A senior Whitehall intelligence source told the paper that CCP members could have identified intelligence officers if they were in the same building.

“Belonging to the Party is no mere formality. The CCP demands secrecy, cunning and utterly ruthless discipline from its millions of members. Notoriously secretive, its authority is absolute,” Smith warned in his op-ed about the dangers of employing Chinese Communist Party members in sensitive corporate, academic, or government positions.

Smith said it was “not just wrong, but immoral” for major financial institutions like Britain’s HSBC Holdings to employ hundreds of CCP members. He warned about Chinese Communist infiltration of sensitive research projects and the British Foreign Office.

“We have failed to recognize that at the core of China’s system is a system of ideas and values that not only runs contrary to ours but seeks to overcome it. The interests of the Communist Party come first,” Smith wrote, directly challenging the assertion by Chinese state media that hiring sworn members of the CCP is no different than hiring adherents of any Western political party.