The Communist Party is highly secretive, intensively bureaucratic and concerned first and foremost with self-reservation. Paul Theroux wrote in teh late 1980s: "The Communist Party was like a Masonic order, just as mysterious as a brotherhood, possibly sinister, and just about as unenjoyable—you had to be chosen, and the most supine and robotlike yes-men were the likeliest candidates." Staunch Communists pepper their speech with expressions like "class enemy" (jeiji diren) and "running dog" (zou gou).
Jonathan Watts wrote in The Guardian, “The Chinese Communist party, which started in 1921 as a revolutionary organisation with a dozen founders, is now a technocracy with 80 million members and distinctly aristocratic tendencies. Many senior cadres - large numbers of whom are now the "princeling" sons and daughters of former leaders - use party connections for self-enrichment in an increasingly divided society. Lacking an electoral mandate, the party has built its legitimacy on managerial competence and national strength, particularly with economic growth and engineering prowess