On July 1, China will mark the centenary of the founding of its ruling Communist Party. much pomp and show is expected and President Xi Jinping will be giving an important speech in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, Reuters reported.
A flyby of fighter jets and helicopters is expected. The party, Over the past 100 years, has "written a magnificent chapter in the history of the development of the Chinese nation and the progress of mankind," Xi said at a ceremony honouring exemplary party members on Tuesday.
The party initially recruited peasants and labourers but has evolved to embrace markets and entrepreneurship under "socialism with Chinese characteristics", while retaining a Leninist model of authoritarianism.
As the party grew stronger under Xi and the space for public dissent narrowed and Chinese people expressed pride in the country's achievements. There are challenges, like the reaction of the West to Beijing's actions in Hong Kong, Xinjiang and China's aggressive moves to seek domination in the South China Sea and its pressure on Taiwan along with a threatening deterioration in national demographic prospects.
No celebrations in Hong Kong
In Hong Kong, the city's No. 2 official, John Lee, will attend a flag-raising ceremony on July 1 to commemorate 24 years of the former British colony's return to Chinese rule.
Beijing imposed the draconian National Security Law, to muzzle dissent in Hong Kong, exactly a year ago (June 30).
July 1 traditionally sees Hong Kongers protesting against Beijing authorities and issues like unaffordable housing. But this year, chances of a protest getting any traction seems very unlikely. Hong Kong authorities have cancelled fireworks in the city to discourage gatherings.
As the ruling party gears up to celebrate its centenary, President Xi Jinping has urged members of the party and the nation to remember the party’s founding members and its early days of struggle in the inland city of Yan’an. It was in Yan’an that former president Mao Zedong established himself as the party’s leader in the 1930s.
China was under the dynastic rule for over 2,000 years. In 1921, about a decade after the dynastic rule was cast off, the Communist Party of China was founded and held its first Congress in Shanghai with the help of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
Mao Zedong, who was representative of the Hunan province, became commander of the Red Army in 1935 and became the founding leader of the People's Republic of China in 1949.
In 1924, however, the Communists joined the Nationalist Party, but their leader Chiang Kai-shek expels them and fighting erupts between the Communists and members of the Nationalist Party.
The Nationalists and the Communists allied briefly to fight Japanese aggression from 1936-1945. But soon after a war breaks out between the Communists and the Nationalists, which lasts till 1949.
As President of China, Mao Zedong tried to give a boost to the industrial development of the country with a policy called the Great Leap Forward in 1958. However, this campaign to collectivise agriculture ended in approximately 30 million people starving to death.
In another disastrous move, in 1966, Zedong unleashed the Red Guards to destroy all vestiges of China’s “feudal culture” and called it the cultural revolution, which resulted in the death of 2 million people.
Currently, the party has a total of 95.2 million members, which is 6.7 per cent of China’s population. About 7.5 per cent of the party members belong to ethnic minorities. Members are required to be atheists and renounce all religions including Buddhism and Taoism.
After Mao Zedong died in 1976, the CPC’s new leaders, launched several political and economic reforms, including opening the country to foreign trade and investment. This set the course for the next five decades, which helped the nation to overcome poverty.
Major events after Mao Zedong's death
CPC was revived by moderate “paramount leader” Deng Xiaoping.
Xiaoping, who won the bitter power struggle against the 'Gang of Four' headed by Mao's widow Jiang Qing. Xiaoping overturned Mao Zedong’s hardline Marxism and replaced it with a pragmatic ideology of “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics” which helped China to emerge as the second-largest economy in the world.
Here are the CPC leaders who came after Mao Zedong-- Hua Juofeng (October 1976- June 1981), Hu Yaobana (June 1981-January 1987), Zhao Ziyang (January 1987 to November 2002), Jiang Zenin (June 19181- November 2002), Hu Jintao (November 2002- November 2012) and Xi Jinping (November 2012- present)
In 1989, protests that demanded freedom of speech, freedom of press and much more, snowballed into a large gathering led by students against the government. China’s handling of these protests gained global attention-- the government violently cracked down on the protesters-- images of tanks rolling into students inspired universal condemnation. At least 300 died in the protests.
In 1993 the construction of the world’s largest hydroelectric dam—the Three Gorges Project began. The construction of the dam required the flooding of 1,500 villages. It ended up displacing close1.9 million people.
On July 1, 1997, Britain handed over Hong Kong to Chinese rule. However, part of the agreement was to retain the island city’s capitalist economy and allow Hong Kong citizens freedom and liberties not enjoyed by those living in the mainland.
In 2010, China and Taiwan began officially speaking to each other for the first time, but following the 2016 election, in which Tsai Ing-wen won, China rescinded the new ties.
In 2012, after Xi Jinping became president of China, he cracks down on corruption and civil society, narrowing the space for dissent. In 2017, China enters a trade stand-off with the US. In 2019, the UN accuses China of forcibly detaining Uighur Muslims in concentration camps and violating human rights. In 2019, Hong Kong goes into a state of turmoil after protests against an extradition bill snowballs into a pro-democracy movement. Over a year into the movement, the CPC-led government imposes the draconian National Security Law, which lets authorities charge pro-democracy activists with dissent for taking part in the 2019 protests or arrest them for colluding with foreign media, that is, speaking to foreign media.
In December 2019, the first case of the coronavirus was detected in Wuhan. The virus spread quickly, turning it into a worldwide pandemic. The Chinese government has remained elusive about the origins of the virus. Even after a WHO team went to investigate the origins of the virus, the actual sequence of events that led to the virus outbreak remains unclear.
China even now maintains an aggressive stance as it denies mistreatment of Uighurs and says the detention centres are in fact, providing vocational training; Beijing has time and again maintained that its dealing of the Hong Kong issue is an internal matter.
By invading Taiwanese airspace time and again, China hopes to take Taiwan back into control; Beijing also has been aggressive in its operations on the South China Sea, seeking dominance over its natural resources and a crucial trade route.
