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China leadership
OpinionComment
Frank Ching
Frank Ching

Opinion | From Mao to Xi and beyond: what kind of leader will China’s Communist Party need for the next 100 years?

  • Regardless of how great a thinker Mao was, his position in history has already been set by the party
  • Today, China is an emerging superpower under Xi. As the party ushers in its second centenary amid China’s continuing rise, leadership will be key

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Chinese President Xi Jinping leads other top officials in pledging their vows to the party during a gala show in Beijing on June 28, ahead of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party. Photo: AP
Frank Ching
It is highly likely that the founding meeting of the Chinese Communist Party was held in Shanghai not on July 1, 1921 but later that month. But if Queen Elizabeth’s “official” birthday can be celebrated in June despite her having been born in April, few would object to the party marking its establishment several weeks early.
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In any event, about a dozen Chinese communists, with assistance from their Soviet comrades, held the first congress of the Communist Party of China in July 1921.

This was a decade after the downfall of the last dynasty and two years following the tumultuous May Fourth disturbances in Beijing, as university students staged the first Tiananmen Square protest against a weak government unable to safeguard China’s rights against foreign predators at the Versailles peace conference following World War I.

Through the years, the Communist Party had claimed the spiritual mantle of the May Fourth Movement, praising “patriotic students” for their protest. But, after gaining power in 1949, no protests were ever labelled “patriotic” and students were told to support the party.

The nascent party, mentored by the Soviets, quickly realised that the conventional Marxist concept of relying on an industrial proletariat to lead the revolution wouldn’t work in a predominantly agricultural society.

05:27

‘Socialism with Chinese characteristics’ explained

‘Socialism with Chinese characteristics’ explained

Mao Zedong, who gained leadership of the party in 1935, preached his own thoughts of encircling cities from the countryside, a development of Marxist theory that has led to the “socialism with Chinese characteristics” of today.

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