By Robert Lawrence Kuhn 

Like many entrepreneurs' startup stories, such as those of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Jack Ma and so on, the CPC's story can be said to be one of the most successful for "creating business". 

In 1921, when the Party was first established, there were only dozens of Party members. If it were to be taken as a kind of a company or enterprise, they didn't have enough money or funds at the beginning. There was a saying during the War of Resistance Against Japan, "millet plus rifles" (小米加步枪 "xiao mi jia bu qiang" in Chinese), which means extremely hard fighting conditions for the war led by the CPC.

At its initial stage, every company, small or large, puts forth its mission and goals, achievable or unrealistic. Similarly, in its initial stage, the CPC also had a mission and goals, that is, as the CPC tells it, seeking happiness for the Chinese people and striving for the cause of human progress. 

But no one would believe it, because seemed so unimaginable — how so few people could change China and the world. But how is it now? The CPC is a huge enterprise, 90 million members leading almost 1.4 billion people.

Founded in 1921, the Communist Party of China has been engaged in China's political arena for almost a century, and it has been leading the country for just about 70 years. 

China is now at a multidimensional crossroads, rightly described as a "new era" — outcomes affect the entire world as well as China, and the only way to grasp China's current conditions and to anticipate China's future prospects is to understand what the CPC is and how it works. To understand China today, one must understand the CPC today.

If the world does not understand the CPC, then the CPC should reach out to the world. Why has China opted for one-party leadership? Why should the CPC be, and continue to be, the ruling party? How to build Party institutions that are self-correcting and can endure?

Perhaps remembrances of the collapsed Soviet Communist Party, hidden and sclerotic; or imprints of China during the Cultural Revolution, fanatical and chaotic — both of which could cloud comprehension of the contemporary CPC. Whatever the reasons, the veil of mystery is now being lifted.

One orienting principle to really "get" what the CPC is all about is to decouple the CPC from Western ideas of a "political party". 

In order to represent all the people, and to maintain leadership, the CPC must embed and express within itself all aspects of society, which is no mean task given the complexity of contemporary life. The CPC ideal, then, is national representation and ultimate meritocracy, both in the broadest sense.