>>46353
>roughly comparable to a national body politic
As it was under Mao, and as the CPSU was in the Soviet Union.
>It has about 1 member for every 15 citizens
The CPSU achieved similar numbers.
>It has its own "liberal", "conservative", etc. wings either in politics or economy
Not something Leninist parties can't have.
>There are also other parties in the mainland (e.g. KMT still has a presence)
It's the exact same framework used in East Germany.
>Membership has become a mark of prestige: people are attracted to it because that's where the best are (e.g. the highest performing university students, with a focus on technical fields like engineering). It is a meritocratic system based on very demanding exams that remind one of the ancient imperial examinations used to select the civil servants.
Lenin would probably be impressed. A Leninist party is meant to have "workers and peasants" but it's not how the CPSU ended up in the long run.
>This suggestion that it is a kind of dictatorship exacting mass obedience is a distortion. Polling by US media indicate they have vast popular support
So Maoist China was no dictatorship. Neither was Brazil in 1970, a regime with infinitely less expansive and sophisticated methods of control than what China has today.
>But can I really blame them when they fucking call themselves the *C*PC? Well, in fact they don't say "communist", they say "共産" and if you look up those ideograms in a dictionary you will arrive to a meaning along the lines of "together productivity" or maybe "joint prosperity". Nonetheless, since it is their own choice to continue to stick to an idea so discredited among westerners and others under the west's ideological influence, no, I cannot blame them. Which is why I didn't belabor the point, I just "loled". In any case, after so much water under the bridge, I guess they will probably never be able (or even try) to disassociate themselves from that category: first, trying to do so could become a dangerous destabilizing spark (conservative politicians may seize the opportunity to advance their careers)
Maybe they believe Marx and Lenin are completely irrelevant for the present and just pretend to respect them to keep the conservatives in line - which still means said conservatives are a powerful faction. Or the mainstream faction still takes communist thought seriously and believes they're just doing some sort of NEP.

In any case, on the long term the CCP has no reason not to bulldoze Taiwan until it's indistinguishable from some unremarkable province in Manchuria.