Vanguard to Periphery: The CPC’s Changing Narrative on the Labour Question Anand Parappadi Krishnan Institute of Chinese Studies, Delhi, India anand.p.krishnan@gmail.com With the ideological undergirding of Marxism–Leninism, the Communist Party of China (CPC) has claimed representation of peasants and workers in its vanguard role in actualising the socialist revolution. However, as China has developed economically over the past four decades, there has been an erosion in the status of workers and peasants as legitimate stakeholders in governance and ruling practices. This article attempts to map how labour, once a critical component of the CPC’s political–ideological invocation, has become peripheral as China transitioned to a market economy with an emphasis on economic rationale for growth and reforms. It examines the changing contours of the CPC’s discourse and practice over the past 100 years on the labour question, sandwiched as it is between the need for continued economic growth as a legitimating tool and the continued reiteration of being representative of the working class. Keywords: Labour, workers, workplace relations, Party-state, trade unions, All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) Even as the constitution of the Communist Party of China (CPC) has been fre- quently updated so as to make the Party stay relevant to the times, what has remained more or less unchanged is the unfailing reiteration of being the vanguard of the work- ing class. Without doubt, there have been changes in terms of semantics to describe the working class, but representing the working class has continued to be a promi- nent feature, as evidenced in the opening lines of the constitution. 1 Marxism– Leninism, the ideological anchor of any communist party, characterises the working class as the central force in actualising a socialist transformation, and therefore, the CPC’s continued pronouncements through the years make perfect sense. 1 The constitution adopted at the 9th Congress of the CPC on 14 April 1969 begins by describing the CPC as the political party of the proletariat (Marxists.org 2008). CHINA REPORT 58 : 1 (2022): 60–74 SAGE Publications Los Angeles/London/New Delhi/Singapore/Washington DC/ Melbourne DOI: 10.1177/00094455221074247