Wal-Mart welcomes Chinese communists

No. 1 retailer allows Communist Party to set up branch in China store.
August 24 2006: 7:25 AM EDT



BEIJING (Reuters) -- The world's largest retailer, Wal-Mart, is now host to the world's largest communist party, state media said on Thursday, after establishing the first party branch in one of the U.S. company's China stores.

A Chinese Communist Party official in the northeast city Shenyang said a Wal-Mart store there had set up a party branch on Aug. 12 - the first branch of the ruling Communist Party in the U.S. icon of global capitalism, Xinhua news agency reported.

"Employees at the Wal-Mart store will now have access to CPC membership," Xinhua said, referring to the Communist Party of China.

It did not say how many of the 700 Wal-Mart employees at the Shenyang store had applied to join the 70-million strong party.

A Wal-Mart spokesman was not immediately available for comment on the report.

The announcement comes soon after Wal-Mart bowed to a Chinese government campaign to establish state-controlled trade unions in its outlets across the country.

Those unions also fall under party control and rarely advocate strikes.

The retailer has 32,000 employees in China, with 60 stores in 30 cities, with plans to open 18 to 20 more by the end of 2006.

The Chinese Communist Party officially describes itself as "the vanguard of the Chinese working class," but since the 1980s it has embraced market reforms and in 2002 officially opened itself to capitalist members.

China says all sizeable businesses and organizations - including foreign ones - should have outposts of the ruling party.

But in practice, many foreign companies do not have branches - or if they do, they are merely ceremonial.