Grandeur and solemnity to mark Communist Party Centenary in China

                                                China’s President and CPC Supremo Xi Jinping (Photo for Xinhua by Yao Dawei)

The Communist Party of China (CPC) will observe its centenary on July 1, 2021, even as Beijing tries to navigate some tough times internally and seeks to establish itself externally.

A grand ceremony will be held to mark the 100th anniversary of the founding of the CPC at which outstanding Party members will be awarded with ‘July 1 Medals’ for the first time.

As a part of Centenary celebrations, Party history education will be conducted among its members. The CPC Central Committee will visit Party members who have made outstanding contributions or live in difficult conditions. Families of martyrs and the family members of Party officials who died in the line of duty will also be visited.

History through Exhibitions

Large-scale exhibitions will be held to display the glorious course, great achievements and valuable experience of the CPC over the past 100 years.

The ceremony will highlight a deep reflection of history, allowing CPC members and the public to understand why Chinese people and history chose the CPC, a socialist path and the reforms. Dialogues and discussions will be held with political parties around the world to exchange experience in governance. Grass-roots Party activities and promotion of ‘Red Tourism’ will be among the highlights.

The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) will also hold activities to mark the Centenary, focusing on keeping the red line of the Party’s absolute leadership over the army, stressing the PLA’s centenary goal, and teaching the military to be heroic and promoting CPC as the Party that the people can trust.

Party education will be conducted to reinforce the PLA’s absolute loyalty to the Party. Seminars on building a strong military will be held, and CPC members, organisations in the military as well the “most beautiful” soldiers will be awarded. There are no plans for a military parade but officers and soldiers will safeguard the country’s peace and stability as usual, as mentioned at a media conference in Beijing on May 25, 2021.  

The PLA will establish and open to the public key military venues such as the Naval Museum and the PLA Hong Kong Garrison Exhibition Centre.

 
China’s President Xi Jinping speaking to children at a school (Xinhua Photo)

 The Party and Leader Thrust

The purpose of this thrust towards the Leader and the Party to the exclusion of the many figures in the CPC’s own history seems two-fold, with origins in ancient and mediaeval empires: To quell restive provinces demanding more freedom and to establish that history begins and ends with the divinely-sanctioned Emperor (in this case, his thoughts on socialism are the gospel).

And the PLA needs to remember who it serves. But before people outside the Middle Kingdom smirk with superiority at the excessive homage to Party and Leader, it would be good ensure that those in power in their own countries are not taking notes.

Usually, things work like this: A need or deficit is identified, and then governments make good or bad plans to address the gap. Not so with the governmentality of the Party-State in China. The CPC has chosen, in the run-up to the celebrations, to begin a gargantuan Loyalty Campaign in the PLA. The question is: Did the PLA suffer from a loyalty deficit?

Like most regimes, both authoritarian and partly democratic, the CPC-controlled government is big on anniversaries, parades and other public spectacles that underline its role in the country’s history, inviting people to be grateful for the many favours that the Party has bestowed on them.

PLA gift to CPC

The highlight of the Centenary Celebrations will be “a gift” by the PLA to the CPC, a Naval Museum And Exhibition Centre at the Hong Kong garrison, where pro-democracy protests have led to much turbulence over the last year. In addition, soldiers will be educated to “appreciate the glorious truth about Xi Jinping’s Thought on Socialism,” and “establish his concept of strengthening the Military as the guiding force.”

In the year of the CCP’s centennial, the party’s leadership (with President Xi Jinping as the helm) believes that it has finally developed a ‘Comprehensive System,’ after some trial and error, to effectively govern their vast country and population, combining an overall Leninist State structure with selected mechanisms adopted from the capitalist mode of production and, crucially, deploying advanced digital technologies.

This Comprehensive System of governance is a hierarchical, top-down regime with the Communist Party as its Leviathan with full and incontestable sovereignty.

In practice, the monopoly on power is exercised by the Party’s top echelon, the ‘Top Leader.’

A big display of CPC at a Beijing Book Fair in March 2021 (VCG Photo)

No place for dissent

There is no place for dissent that would disrupt the harmony between the wise rulers and the devoted masses. The market economy and private ownership are only tolerated insofar as they help the Party achieve its goals.

The country is ruled by law, but it is the Party that decides what the law is and interprets it as needed. As Xi Jinping declares, the main feature of the New Era is the unquestionable leadership of the Party in all aspects of life. He is fond of quoting Chairman Mao’s adage: “The Party, the Government, the Army, the People, the Education; East West South North and the Centre—the Party leads it all.”

While the West was busy in the first two decades of the 21st century daydreaming about “convergence”, the CCP managed to reinvent itself and build up from the ashes of 1989 a powerful Leninist system of technology-enabled one-party dictatorship. Thirty years after the collapse of Communism in the Soviet bloc, the new Chinese techno-Leninism emerges as a credible rival to liberal democracy that we had taken for granted too long.

The  grand ceremony to be held in celebration of the centennial is a powerful response to some Western countries’ long-term slander and smears against the CPC and shows the confidence and faith that the CPC and Chinese people have in facing these attacks.

Aerial view of Houhai area in Shenzhen (Photo for Xinhua by Chen Yehua)

Anti-Corruption Drive 

The biggest shakeup of the military in the last five years through his anti-corruption drive in which over 50 top Generals of the PLA including two Vice-Chairmen of the Central Military Commission (CMC) were taken down, has enabled Xi Jinping to reinforce his leadership firmly over the military and the Party.

At 67, he heads the CMC, the overall high command of the PLA and he is the only Party leader and the civilian in its ranks. He has the prospect of a life-long tenure in power as two five-year term rule for the President was removed by the National Legislature in 2018.

Meanwhile, a celebratory mood is growing in China ahead of the July 1 Anniversary of the CPC’s foundation.

The Party’s official records show that it opened its first Congress in Shanghai on July 23, 1921. But the Anniversary of foundation was set on July 1 because, according to a record, Mao merely remembered that the first Party Congress had been convened “in July” when the CPC decided on the date of the Anniversary in the 1930s.

Coincidently, the postponed Tokyo Olympics is scheduled to open on July 23, 2021. On that day, what will be the state of relations between China and the rest of the world?

If Xi Jinping pursues his policies with no fear of isolation, a further rise in tensions seems inevitable.

It is expected that the CPC, celebrating its Centenary, will work its way to achieve more in tandem with the PLA as China wishes to expand its presence from near periphery and beyond.

Balaji Chandramohan is Indian Newslink Correspondent based in New Delhi.