The Party , examines the intricate relationship between the Communist Party and the Chinese government, exposing how a political machine subverts the will to properly govern a billion people. It's also filled with all kinds of fascinating details about China. Here are some of them.

1. In China, senior politicians are "addicted" to dyeing their hair black. Their hair turns white only when they're shipped to jail or they retire. (Page 1)

2. A red phone, called "the red machine," sits on the desk of the people who run China's largest fifty companies. These encrypted phones only have four digits and only connect to other red phones, allowing the all-powerful men who run China unfettered access to each other. (Pages 8-9)

3. China and the Vatican do not have an official diplomatic relationship, but in intermittent talks, both sides will privately make jokes about their similarities, prompting a member of China's to remark, "[except] you are God, and we are the devil." (Page 11)

4. The Communists believe they are democratic, believing that "Democratic government is the Chinese Communist Party governing on behalf of the people." (Page 20)

5. The Communist Party does not have a Web site. (Page 20)

6. Since 1978, "the [Chinese] economy has doubled in size every eight years." (Page 28)

7. "There are now more billionaires in China than in any country other than the U.S." (Page 30)

8. "Forty-five percent of loans made before 2000 [went] bad." (Page 45)

9. As befitting a Communist nation, China has a central office that handles staffing for most of the major political appointments. "A similar department in the U.S. would oversee the appointment of the entire U.S. cabinet, state governors and their deputies, the mayors of major cities, the heads of all federal regulatory commissions, the chief executives of GE, Exxon-Mobil, Wal-Mart and about fifty of the remaining largest U.S. companies, the justices of the Supreme Court, the editors of the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, the bosses of the TV networks and cable stations, the presidents of Yale and Harvard and other big universities, and the heads of think-tanks like the Brookings Institute and the Heritage Foundation. Not only that, the vetting process would take place behind closed doors, and the appointments announced without any accompanying explanations why they had been made." (Page 72)

10. When a politician wants to smear an opponent, they will write a crime novel that implicitly fingers their rival of wrong-doing. (Page 144)

11. When Hu Jintao replaced Jiang Zemin in 2003, it was the first peaceful transition of power any major communist country had ever had. (Page 153)

12. "In May 2009, Gongan county in Hubei province ordered state employees collectively to smoke at least 23,000 cigarettes a year, to protect, it said, 'tax revenues and consumers' rights'. The more officials smoked, the plan envisaged, the more money the local authority would collect in taxes." (Page 179)

13. "In March 2008... one Wal-Mart store in the north-east of China quietly established a Communist Party committee." (Page 214)

14. Until the mid-1980s, the rest of the world had no idea that thirty-million Chinese died in a famine between 1958 and 1961. (Page 232)

15. During anti-Japanese demonstrations in 2005, the police flooded cellular networks with text messages saying: "The Beijing Public Bureau would like to remind you of the following: don't believe rumours [sic], don't spread rumours, express your patriotic fervour [sic] in rational ways. Don't participate in illegal demonstrations. — Wangtong Communications wishes you a happy Labour Day!" (Page 271)

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