If the CCP forgets its past and fails to reform once again, the “third revolution” of Xi Jinping could be the Party’s swansong, Writes Professor Sreeram Chaulia of JSIA
Authors:
Sreeram Chaulia,Jindal School of International Affairs (JSIA), O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat, Haryana.
Summary:
When Mao’s PRC was established in 1949, it was through such a bloody process against all odds that the new State’s outlook was militaristic and hostile
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is celebrating its grand centenary on July 1. Founded by Bolshevik Russia-inspired Chinese Marxists in Shanghai in 1921 amid the chaos of China’s post-imperial fragmentation, the CCP survived, seized power, restored order, outlasted its mentor, the Soviet Communist Party, and became the arbiter of the destiny of not just China, but in some ways, of the world.
So daunting were the early challenges to the Party from a plethora of opposing armed political factions that only two out of the thirteen delegates who attended the first CCP Congress in 1921 lived to see the proclamation of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949. One of them was Mao Zedong, whose ruthless beliefs that “a revolution is not a dinner party” and that “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun” gave the CCP an edge over its competitors.
When Mao’s PRC was established in 1949, it was through such a bloody process against all odds that the new State’s outlook was militaristic and hostile. Following in the footsteps of Vladimir Lenin’s “revolutionary terror”, Mao never hesitated to brutally safeguard his revolution and forcibly transform “backward” China through the catastrophic Great Leap Forward (1958-1962) and Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Tens of millions of Chinese perished in these social re-engineering experiments, laying bare contradictions between the CCP’s motto — “serve the people” — and the people’s unwillingness to be railroaded and sacrificed at the altar of the Party’s ambitions.
Published in: Hindustan Times
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