China’s Fiscal Problem: Paying Billions of Dollars for Party Officials’ Salaries

Paramilitary policemen patrol Tiananmen Square outside the Forbidden City in Beijing, on May 18, 2011. Feng Li/Getty Images

An article has recently made the rounds on the Chinese internet, whereby it estimates that there are 48.9 million Chinese Communist Party secretaries—a position equivalent to a Party boss—in the entire country.

According to a June 2018 article by state-run media Xinhua, there are a total of 89.56 Party members in total. That means over half of the cadres are Party bosses.