The Party

Some choice snippets taken from 'The Party. The Secret World of China's
Communist Rulers' by Richard McGregor

On the Party and the Vatican (p.11)

It is no coincidence that the Vatican is one of the few states with
which China has been unable to establish diplomatic ties since the
founding of the People's Republic in 1949. The city-state, which is
the administrative centre of the Catholic Church and the home of the
Pope, is the only other organisation of comparable dimensions to the
Chinese Communist Party, albeit on a global scale, and with a similar
addiction to ritual and secrecy. ... The on-and-off-again talks between
Rome and Beijing have been punctuated, in private, by a self-aware black
humour. One of the unofficial intermediaries with Rome joked about the
uncanny similarities between the Party and the Catholic Church when he
visited the Vatican in 2008. 'We have the propaganda department and you
have the evangelicals. We have the organization department and you have
the College of Cardinals,' he told a Vatican official. 'What's the
difference then?' the official asked. The Chinese interlocutor replied,
to hearty laughter all round: 'You are God. And we are the devil!'

On the Central Organization Department (p.71):

The national headquarters of the Central Organization Department occupy
an unmarked building in Beijing, about a kilometre west of Tiananmen Square
along the broad sweep of Chang'an Avenue. No sign hangs outside indicating
the business of the building's tenant. The department's general switchboard
number is unlisted. Calls from landlines in the building to mobile phones
do not display an incoming number, as is customary for ordinary phones,
just a string of zeros.

From one of the many stories about corruption (p.138):

When the former vice-mayor of Beijing, Liu Zhihua, was convicted in
September 2008 of taking bribes worth about $1 million, local netizens
lampooned him on internet postings as an under-performer. 'That's not
much money!' one blogger said of Liu, who had been in charge of
construction at the Olympics. 'He should count as a clean official.
No need for a trial. Release him now!'

And regarding the great famine caused by Mao's Great Leap Forward
(p.229 and p.257):

It had taken the author, Yang Jisheng, nearly two decades of painstaking
research to compile a minutely chronicled, incontrovertible account of
the death by starvation of 35 to 40 million Chinese over three years
from 1958, a tragedy the Party has long sought to cover up. ... Mao
Zedong's utopian plans to accelerate the establishment of what he called
'true communism' had produced the worst man-made famine in recorded history,
a disaster of Holocaust-like dimensions.
...
By his count, Yu wrote sixteen reports to his superiors over that winter,
warning them of the impending catastrophe. ... One of the officials who
criticized him for speaking out was a man named Li Wenyao. Li's own father
had died of starvation. His wife had taken boiled human flesh home to feed
their children, although she was unable to bring herself to eat it. Yu could
scarcely believe that the same person was chastising him for trying to alert
Chinese leaders to the famine. 'Your wife took home human flesh. Your father
died of hunger, and you still lash out at me!' Yu said he told Li.