From The Standard (link):
On the north side of the Summer Palace, in a northwestern suburb of Beijing, stands the Central Party School which trains communist cadres – at or above minister-level and those who are tipped for promotion to the senior ranks – in party policy and ideology.
But this top training school for cadres also opens its door to private entrepreneurs, or “red capitalists.” Multimillionaires and billionaires can now take training courses at the school just like senior communist officials.
This, however, should not come as much of a surprise.
The Chinese Communist Party’s 15th Congress in 1997 revised the party charter to allow red capitalists to join. Since then quite a number of newly rich entrepreneurs have become communists.
Almost one in five party members were entrepreneurs – the party now claims to have 68 million members – by the end of 2000, according to research by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in 2001.
