Author: Zhao Yantao Editor: Lu Cong
What is NPD?
NPD usually refers to narcissistic personality disorder. From a psychological perspective, it is often characterized by an excessive need for admiration, an inability to accept criticism, a strong sense of superiority and desire for control, the devaluation and exploitation of others, and a lack of empathy.
If we do not treat NPD as a clinical diagnosis of a political organization, but instead use it as a metaphor and analytical framework for observing the behavior of power, then some of the CCP's long-standing political practices display a similar logic that is worth examining.
First, an inability to accept criticism.
In the logic of NPD, suggestions are easily taken as attacks, and criticism is regarded as a challenge to authority.
The CCP has long maintained a strict system of speech censorship and information control, restricting political dissent, critical voices, and independent expression. When criticism itself is treated as a "threat," it becomes difficult for power to truly hear different voices.
Second, a constant need for praise and worship.
NPD requires constant external affirmation to sustain its sense of self-worth.
CCP political propaganda has long emphasized the authority of the leader, political correctness, and narratives of being "great, glorious, and correct." Power demands not only obedience, but also identification, praise, and even worship.
Third, maintaining a sense of superiority by suppressing others.
NPD may reinforce its own sense of superiority by devaluing others.
In the CCP's political narrative, dissidents, critics, and political opponents are frequently defined as "hostile forces," "destabilizing factors," or people with "ulterior motives." By continually manufacturing an opposition between "us" and "them," it further strengthens its own legitimacy and authority.
Fourth, treating others as tools for achieving one's own goals.
NPD-style behavior may treat people and relationships as tools for achieving its own goals.
Similarly, critics often argue that the CCP's economic investment, aid, and cooperation in international relations serve not only economic purposes, but also its political, diplomatic, and geostrategic interests.
Fifth, controlling information and manufacturing a single "correct reality."
Truly powerful control is not merely about forbidding people from saying certain things; it is about deciding what people are able to see and believe.
When a political system continually prescribes what is truth, who is the enemy, what may be discussed and what may not, it is in fact shaping a reality defined by power.
Therefore, the so-called "CCP-style NPD" does not mean that the CCP literally suffers from some mental illness; it is a metaphor for a mode of how power operates:
Inflating authority → demanding worship → rejecting criticism → suppressing dissent → controlling information → exploiting others → preserving superiority → further consolidating power.
What truly deserves our reflection is perhaps not whether any particular leader has NPD, but rather:
Once this logic of power becomes institutionalized, how much capacity for self-correction does a political system have left?
A power that cannot accept criticism may in the end become a power that cannot recognize reality.
