Despite the Chinese Communist Party touting itself as the savior of the people, hundreds of millions of Chinese in the country and around the world have already quit the Party and its affiliated groups, records from an overseas human rights group show.
On July 1, in a speech celebrating the CCP’s 100th birthday, Chinese leader Xi Jinping claimed the Party “was chosen by history and the people” and declared the two inseparable.
Xi spoke to an orchestrated crowd of 70,000 at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square handpicked for the occasion, who raised red flags and clapped to cheer him in a display of Party loyalty.
Under the Party’s tight censorship system, there are limited means to gauge the broader sentiment of the Chinese public, who risk jail time for posting a wrong comment online that runs afoul of the ruling regime. But data from Global Service for Quitting the CCP, a New York-based advocacy group known colloquially as the “Tuidang Center”, suggests that faith in the Party seems to be receding.
The website of the organization, which began coordinating the grassroots efforts in 2004 for people to cut ties with the three main CCP affiliated organizations—the Communist Party, Communist Youth League, and Young Pioneers organizations—shows that nearly 380 million Chinese have done so and renounced the oaths they once made to devote themselves to communism.
The number currently stands at 380,033,002 as of July 6, marking an increase of roughly 25 million compared to October last year. Fearing the regime’s reprisal, many people adopt a pseudonym when publishing their withdrawal statements.
China has 95.1 million CCP members as of June, according to official data. This figure does not include those who have the Communist Youth League and Young Pioneers.
In 2004, The Epoch Times published the editorial series, Nine Commentaries on the Chinese Communist Party, detailing the Party’s history and inner workings since its inception. From there, the “Tuidang” movement was born, with people in China printing copies of the series and passing them among each other.
BY EVA FU AND JESSICA MAO
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