In the same way that government officials all learn by heart the speeches of their leaders, even if they ignore them in practice, so too have entrepreneurs memorized the script justifying the Party’s presence in their companies. The party committee was there to mediate the grievances of employees, much like a trade union, they said, and provide ‘ethical’ and ‘spiritual’ guidance. ‘It’s quite important in terms of company morality,’ said Li Rucheng, who headed Youngor, one of the country’s biggest private clothing manufacturers housed on a sprawling site in Ningbo. ‘You have to have a spiritual
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