A 100-Year March

On July 1, the birth of the Chinese Communist Party will be celebrated with great fanfare. It is a date of convenience, because Party cells certain already existed before that July of 1921, while historically the first Congress was held only on July 23. But Mao Zedong did not remember the exact date, so he decided otherwise in 1941. A hundred years later, the skyline of the main cities will be lit with the Party colors, the army will parade, and there will be demonstrations and celebrations everywhere, because as recently stressed by current president Xi Jinping, it will be an occasion to "educate and guide the entire Party to vigorously carry out the red tradition."[1]

In that first Congress of 1921, twelve men fascinated by Marxist ideology decided that was the path to revive a country devastated by floods, famine, civil war, and corruption. But it was the clash with the nationalist army of Chiang Kai-shek that produced the People's Republic as we know it today. After the retreat that went down in history as the "Long March," the red army led by a very young Mao Zedong settled in the north of the country, in Yan’an, where it had established a relationship of mutual trust with the local population, principally dedicated to agriculture: the party reduced costs for peasants and helped the villages resist against the Japanese advance. When at the end of World War II the Japanese withdrew, Mao's troops got the better of those of Chang Kai-shek. The "new China" would be born shortly afterwards, on October 1, 1949, and the Communist Party would assert itself as the only group with the right to hold power, obviously under the leadership of the Great Helmsman Mao Zedong.

The challenge was to reconstruct the country, and with it the Chinese people, 80 percent of whom were illiterate at the time.[2] Mao believed that the new ideology would allow China to regain its ancient splendor, economic wellbeing, and peace. Ten years later the illiteracy rate had been cut in half, and Mao, who at the same time had to manage internal power struggles in the party, launched a series of campaigns that cost the lives of tens of millions of Chinese: above all, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. When Mao died, the Party had to rethink its role if it wanted to survive.

Then came the trial of the Gang of Four, that shifted the responsibility for those hated policies to them. The image of the founding father of the nation was safe, but in thirty years, the quality of life of the Chinese people had not improved; while everyone wanted the "three big things" (a wristwatch, a bicycle, and a radio) very few could afford them. It was Deng Xiaoping who in 1978 took the reins of the Party and the Republic, and understood that to save it the narrative had to be changed: no longer class struggle but modernization. But to protect the political path undertaken it was necessary to honor the "Four Cardinal Principles": nobody could criticize socialism, Maoism, the dictatorship of the people, or the leadership of the Communist Party.

Thus, in 1978 a so-called period of reform and opening was inaugurated, with the slogan "To get rich is glorious," that led to ten years of growth above 8 percent but also galloping inflation and increasingly evident corruption. Opening to the West also meant learning about its values, and thus, in the spring of 1989, the Party was again on the point of collapse.

Tens of millions of Chinese took to the streets in over 300 cities to protest against a political class that it considered insufficient, and the tension grew until June 4 when the People's Liberation Army burst into Tiananmen Square massacring hundreds (some say thousands) of students. What followed were years of double-digit growth, China as the factory and economic engine of the world: 600 million Chinese were pulled from poverty and the blood and memories of Tiananmen Square were cancelled by the promise of economic wealth.

For a while it worked. In 2001 China joined the WTO and in 2007 its economy emerged unscathed from the global financial crisis thanks to a massive policy of stimulus and investment in infrastructure. The 2008 Olympics were the occasion to show the world the progress made, and in 2010 the former Middle Kingdom overtook Japan, officially becoming the second-largest economy in the world. It was that same year that the number of people living in cities exceeded those in the countryside; salaries rose, growth rates fell, society aged, and businesses had to become more efficient and innovative to survive.

Thus, when Xi Jinping rose to the top in 2012, growth was slowing, corruption was rampant, and the Party again faced a crisis of legitimacy. Xi immediately swept away the concept of primus inter pares: it is no longer economic growth that legitimizes the Party, but his personal leadership. He wanted the army and the cadres at all levels to demonstrate absolute loyalty to the Party, which in turn had to strengthen its control over society. The Chinese dream, theorized in the five-year plans, meant completely eliminating poverty and bringing China to its rightful place in the world: a feared and respected power, second to none. In the meantime, Xi Jinping eliminated the limit of two terms for governing the country, and the celebrations for the centennial of the Chinese Communist Party will open the road to the next, very important appointment: in 2049 the People's Republic will celebrate the centennial of its founding, and if everything goes as the Party has decided, China will be "a strong, modern, harmonious and democratic socialist country"; with Xi Jinping still at the top.