But today, Yuan, founder of a successful market research firm, is one of a growing number of capitalists embraced by Chinese politicians as they seek to bring the country's economic movers and shakers under its wing.

"It's all about success. Once you have that, everyone will come to your office, including the party," said Yuan, head of Horizon Research, one of China's oldest and biggest market researchers.

"That's the big change. Before, you had to first become a party member to get access to opportunity."

Once viewed as a necessary evil to be kept at arms-length, private business owners are gaining growing prominence in the party and influence over policy, experts say.

Yuan, who runs his company from a gleaming Beijing commercial tower in an office decorated with stuffed animals, is one of the most visible.

With a quick smile and a market-researcher's reputation for having his finger on the pulse, the bald-headed, media-savvy Yuan regularly writes trend columns for Chinese media and hosts a Shanghai talk show about business.

A lawyer by training who previously worked at the justice ministry, he sees no contradiction between his twin identities.

"I still believe the party is a good organisation that wants to do good things," Yuan said.

He first joined in 1985 at 17 and stayed even after the crushing of the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations, a movement he says he supported.

Information on member backgrounds is tightly controlled but experts say the number of private entrepreneurs in the party has jumped since they were formally allowed to join in 2003.

"It's an important development and rapidly growing trend," said Jean Francois Huchet, director of Hong Kong's French Centre for Research on Contemporary China, who says there could be as many as three million such members.

Although still a small part of the total 73 million cadres, business owners are flexing their muscles, with nearly 75,000 entrepreneurs officially on local and national committees and assemblies, including the national legislature.

Their influence helped kick-start approval this year of a law guaranteeing private property rights that had been 13 torturous years in the making, experts say.

"They are having a definite impact and this will only continue and deepen," said Sun Yingshuai, a politics researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Membership helps entrepreneurs build the "guanxi", or "connections", necessary for business success.

The party, meanwhile, gets to increase its control over a rampant corporate sector while co-opting a growing social and political force.

"It's a recognition by the party that it is better to have this growing force within the party than outside it," said Huchet.

Yuan illustrates the value of this approach.

Although loyal to the party, he is vocal about its failures in addressing many of the nation's social ills, such as weak social spending and labour abuse that has accompanied an economic rise.

"I think we can move a little quicker on these. The political and social development has not been as quick as economic development," Yuan said.

With its pro-growth reincarnation, the party is as relevant today as ever and a continued infusion of professionals like businessmen will keep it so, Yuan said.

But Huchet is not so sure.

"The state needs to enforce some idea of the public interest, but with profit-minded people influencing decisions, they can hijack these priorities," he said.

"This is a huge contradiction for the Communist Party."

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