The Communist Party of China (CPC) announced this week that its membership had topped 95 million as of June 5.
In 1921 the CPC had about 50 members. Only 13, including Mao Zedong and two non-Chinese from the Russia-sponsored Comintern, turned up that year for a ‘national’ Party congress that marked its founding (see WiC380).
Fifteen years later Mao told American journalist Edgar Snow that he went to Shanghai in ‘May 1921’ to attend the inaugural congress. He was in fact talking in terms of the lunar calendar, later CPC historians have suggested. It was only more recently these historians confirmed the actual date of the meeting as July 23 – although Mao himself had later decided his Party should celebrate its founding on July 1.
So this Thursday the CPC celebrated its 100th anniversary (based on Mao’s preferred chronology).
What were the key messages that the world’s biggest political Party wanted to deliver on its big day?
First, China has achieved the Party’s centenary goal of building “a moderately prosperous society”, Chinese leader Xi Jinping said yesterday in a keynote speech delivered in Tiananmen Square above a portrait of Mao. China will now work on the second centenary goal (set for 2049) of building “a great modern socialist country”, when the People’s Republic of China celebrates the 100th anniversary of the Party taking power in 1949, Xi added.
The fight against poverty has been the main theme used by Xi’s administration to measure its success in terms of the ‘moderately prosperous’ goal. Hence the propaganda push last year claiming that the Party had eliminated ‘extreme poverty’ in the country (see WiC521).
Unity has long been a traditional value for the Chinese. That’s why family reunions are such a focus in important local festivals. As such, national unity, aka the reunification with Taiwan into ‘one China’, will be a key parameter in deciding if China is indeed a ‘great modern socialist country’ when the 2049 centenary comes up.
No wonder then that Xi’s remarks about Taiwan yesterday are being viewed as a declaration of intent. “Resolving the Taiwan question and the complete reunification of the motherland is an unswerving historical mission and commitment of the CPC,” he proclaimed. “We must take resolute action to utterly defeat any attempt toward Taiwan independence.”
Read More at https://www.weekinchina.com/2021/07/partying-on/
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