China’s one party rule: 100 years and counting… The Punch Published 6 July 2021 Before the 2015 general election in Nigeria, senior leaders in the Peoples Democratic Party had boasted of their desire to rule for “65 years”. That dream, aspiration, plan, scheme, whatever, was cut short by the electorate, who handed over power to the All Progressives Congress, after ‘only’ 16 years. Many people breathed a sigh of relief at the extraordinary exercise in peaceful transfer of power. The PDP had been in power for 16 uninterrupted years prior to their defeat at the polls. As if that was not already long enough, the thought of the party staying in power for another 54 years? That was too much for many. That, alone, spurred on a lot of people, and galvanised them towards the ballot box to vote for ‘change’. Well, if you are one of those aghast at the faint possibility of a PDP rule for 60 years in Nigeria, then, spare a thought for China, and the Chinese Communist Party, in existence for the last 100 years. The country is, at the moment, celebrating its centenary as well as its iron-grip on power since 1949. If the spectre of a single party staying in power for so long fills some with horror in this moment, in Nigeria, and elsewhere in Africa, it is only because people have a short memory. Africa used to be home to one-party dictatorship of all stripes, second only to that of China for a long period of time since independence in the 1960s. The question now is, why has one one-party rule survived (indeed thrived) in China, and failed in Africa? And, is the Chinese model a viable path going forward?