I'm Robert Lawrence Kuhn and here's what I'm watching: The Communist Party of China, the CPC, the Party, on its 102nd anniversary. The first thing to understand about the CPC is that it is not a political party in the Western sense. Rather, the CPC is the perpetually ruling party or governing organization, established by the Constitution of the People's Republic of China; it is a dedicated elite from all sectors of society, consisting of less than seven percent of the population, tasked to represent the interests of the entire population. Moreover, the CPC actually implements policy; it runs things, which is very different from Western political parties which do not run anything, but rather exercise power via appointing party members to government positions. The leadership of the CPC is said to be the essence of the socialist system.

It is also said that because the CPC does not have the recurring burden of elections and requisite campaigning, it can maintain long-term strategy and actually implement policy, which it does via its hierarchical structure, much like a corporation or the military.

The CPC organization consists of three levels.

Party Central Organizations, including the Party's National Congress, the Central Committee, the Political Bureau of the Central Committee, the Political Bureau Standing Committee, and its offices and functional departments, such as the Party Organization Department and Publicity Department.

Party Local Organizations, which is set by administrative division, including three levels of province, city and county. At present, 31 province-level entities (including autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the central government) have provincial Party committees; 397 provincial cities (prefectures) have municipal Party committees; and 2,770 counties (smaller cities, districts) have county-level Party committees.

Party Primary Organizations. The party's grassroots organizations are in enterprises, rural areas, government agencies, schools, research institutes, street communities, social organizations, social intermediary organizations, PLA companies, and other grassroots units.

An example I witnessed personally was China's historic poverty alleviation campaign, in which five levels of CPC organization, each led by a Party committee and a Party secretary, coordinated their activities to achieve the alleviation of all extreme poverty. Given the overarching directives by Party Central, each Party committee — each Party secretary — provincial, municipal, county, township and village — played a specific part. To simplify, the provincial secretary set overall goals and tasks and monitored results; the municipal secretary set and monitored annual plans, guided county-level implementation, and supervised the results; the county secretary was "the front-line commander," including the allocation of funds (counties in China average about half a million people); the township secretary implemented key tasks on the ground, systematically entering villages and households for assessment; and the village secretary worked directly with each poor family on a regular basis. Each of the five levels of Party secretaries signed a letter of responsibility for poverty alleviation.

This five-level Party organization worked for eradicating extreme poverty; it is now focused on common prosperity, China's multi-decade vision to bring standards of living in rural areas roughly the equivalent of those in urban areas.

Considering the Party's central responsibility, "Party construction" is a primary task of Chinese leadership.

I'm keeping watch. I'm Robert Lawrence Kuhn.

Script: Robert Lawrence Kuhn

Editors: Qi Haiming, Duan Jiaxin

Designer: Qi Haiming

Producer: Wang Ying

Supervisors: Xiao Jian, Adam Zhu

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