At the age of 100, the Chinese Communist Party is looking forward to cementing its future

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BEIJING (AFP) – For the Chinese Communist Party, celebrating its 100th birthday on Thursday is not just about glorifying its past. It is also about cementing its own future and that of its leader, Chinese President Xi Jinping.

In preparation for the July 1 anniversary, Xi and the Party urged its members and the nation to remember the early days of the struggle in the hills of the inner city of Yan’an, where Mao Zedong established himself as the party’s leader in the 1930s.

The primitive homes in which Mao and his followers lived were dug up into the dirt cliffs, now tourist sites for party believers and teachers were encouraged to spread the word. The cavernous rooms feel far removed from Beijing, the modern capital where national celebrations are held, and the skyscrapers of Shenzhen and other high-tech hubs on the coast are more easily associated with China today.

However, in celebration of its centenary, the Communist Party is using this past – selectively – to try to secure its own future and that of Xi, who may, as Mao did, aspire to rule for life.

“By linking the party to all of China’s achievements in the past century, rather than any of its failures, Xi is trying to bolster support for his vision, his right to lead the party, and the party’s right to rule the country,” Elizabeth Economics said. , a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

This week’s festivities focus on two distinct eras – the early struggles and recent achievements – unraveling over the nearly three decades of Mao’s era from the 1950s to the 1970s, when often disastrous social and economic policies left millions dead and impoverished the country.

To that end, a gorgeous open-air party that Xi attended was held in Beijing on Monday night to commemorate the 1930s Long March — a retreat to Yan’an that has become a party tradition — before moving on to singing men with giant keys and women with sacks. of wheat. But it also focused on the present, with representations of special forces climbing a mountain and medical workers battling COVID-19 in protective gear.

Joseph Fewsmith, professor of Chinese politics at Boston University, said the party has long invoked its history to justify its right to rule.

Enhancing its legitimacy is crucial given that the party has run China alone for more than 70 years—through the chaotic years under Mao, through the collapse of the Soviet Union and through the unexpected adoption of market-style reforms that built over time as an economic power, although Millions are still poor.

Many Western policymakers and analysts believe that capitalism will transform China into a democracy with its people prospering, similar to previous dictatorships such as South Korea and Taiwan.

Confused by this thinking, the Communist Party took a decisive turn against democracy when it quelled large-scale protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989 and crushed any challenges to one-party rule in the following decades – most recently eliminating dissent in Hong Kong after anti-government protests rocked the city in year 2019.

Zhang Shiyi of the Institute of Party History and Literature said its leaders learned their lesson from the Soviet Union, where the Communists lost power after opening the door to pluralism.

Instead, China’s newfound wealth gave the party the means to build a high-speed rail network and other infrastructure to modernize at home and project power abroad through a robust military and space program that landed on the Moon and Mars. China is still a middle-income country, but its size makes it the second largest economy in the world and puts it on a path to rival the United States as a great power.

Meanwhile, it has doubled down on its repressive tactics, eliminating dissent from critics of its policies and pushing the assimilation of ethnic minorities seeking to preserve their customs and language in regions such as Tibet and the Muslim-majority region of Xinjiang. While it is difficult to gauge popular support for the party, it is likely that it has been boosted at least in some quarters by China’s relative success in controlling the COVID-19 pandemic and facing criticism from the United States and others.

“We have never been so confident in our future,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters on a recent trip to the Party’s historical sites in Yan’an.

Tiananmen Square, where Mao proclaimed the founding of communist China in 1949, is no longer the home of student protestors with democratic dreams. On Thursday, the plaza in the center of Beijing will host the nation’s grand celebration of party rule. While most details remain confidential, authorities said Xi will deliver an important speech.

The anniversary marks a meeting of about 12 people in Shanghai in 1921 that is considered the first congress of the Chinese Communist Party – although it actually began in late July. The festivities are likely to convey the message that the party has brought China so far, and that it alone can raise the nation to greatness – arguing that it must remain in power.

Xi also appears to be considering a third five-year term starting in 2022, after the party abolished term limits.

At the same time, the centenary is a benchmark for measuring how far the country has come, said Alexander Huang, a professor at Tamkang University, a moment for Xi and the party to move toward their goals of 2049, which will mark 100 years of communist rule. in Taiwan. By then, Xi said, the goal is the fundamental prosperity of the entire population and China becoming a world leader with national strength and international influence.

“Whether they can achieve this goal is the biggest challenge for the Chinese leadership today,” he said, referring to the rising tensions with other countries, an aging population and a younger generation that, as elsewhere, is rejecting the grueling rat race of traditional labels. of success.

However, the party’s ability to develop and rule for so long, albeit in part by suppressing dissent, suggested that it might well remain in control well into its second century. The party insists it has no intention of exporting its model to other countries, but if China continues to rise, it could challenge the Western democratic model that triumphed in the Cold War and dominated the post-World War II era.

“In the United States, you talk, you talk, you only talk,” said Hua of the State Department. “You are trying to win votes. But after four years, others can overturn your policies. How do you guarantee people’s living standards and satisfy their demands?”

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Associated Press video reporters Sam McNeil in Beijing and Johnson Lai in Taipei, Taiwan contributed video.

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