At least twice the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has achieved the seemingly impossible: Wining the civil war and seizing power in 1949, and staying in power for about seven decades, while successfully surviving significant crises such as the collapse of the USSR, global economic crises, mass protests and more. What has enabled the CCP to seize power and to introduce significant changes in the Chinese state and society? How does the CCP rule today? How does the Chinese political system operate? What are the CCP’s sources of legitimacy today, in an era of fast economic development, privatization, and globalization? And how different is the CCP today, in its most central characteristics, from Mao’s era? Debating these issues will impart tools for critical analysis and better understanding of the Chinese political-economic-social reality since the 1950s until today.