Kjeld Erik Brødsgaard

This re­search is a Ho­ri­zon Europe pro­ject fun­ded by the EU Com­mi­s­ion Re­search Agency. This pro­ject re­cog­nises that the re­sur­gence of China as a top tier great power is chan­ging the world, and that the EU needs to de­vel­op a long-term ap­proach based on know­ledge to en­gage stra­tegic­ally with an re­sur­gent and in­creas­ingly as­sert­ive China as well as the glob­al changes un­leashed thereby, in­clud­ing the pro­cess of se­lect­ive ‘de-coup­ling’ and per­sist­ent US-China ten­sion. The pro­ject con­sor­ti­um brings to­geth­er eight think tanks and uni­ver­sit­ies in sev­en European coun­tries. Key areas of re­search in­clude so­ci­ety and cul­ture, polit­ics, eco­nomy and for­eign policy. Key de­liv­er­ables are policy briefs, pod­casts, sem­inars, con­fer­ences and peer-re­viewed art­icles. Fur­ther­more, this con­sor­ti­um will pri­or­it­ise im­pact and dis­sem­in­a­tion for the EU, the cor­por­ate world, the me­dia and the wider pub­lic across Europe. The build­ing up of in­de­pend­ent know­ledge on a re­sur­gent China will en­able the EU to bet­ter deal with it.

This re­search in­vest­ig­ates the pres­ence and role of the Chinese Com­mun­ist Party (CCP) in private busi­ness in China. The CCP plays a key role in cor­por­ate gov­ernance in Chinese state-owned com­pan­ies, where­as the es­tab­lish­ment of Party cells in the private sec­tor has been sporad­ic. This is now be­ing ad­dressed through a massive cam­paign of Party build­ing.