The Chinese Communist Party at 100: Hopes and Disappointments

WASHINGTON - On July 1, the Chinese Communist Party celebrates its centennial, marking its dramatic rise from a small group of idealists to a party of 92 million members that now oversees the world’s second largest economy and the world’s biggest surveillance state. Li Rui (1917—2019) held senior positions in China’s government and was once the personal secretary of former Chairman Mao Zedong. An early and enthusiastic member of the CCP, he joined the party in 1937 but soon endured his first revolutionary reeducation during the Yan'an Rectification Movement. He became one of Mao Zedong’s personal secretaries in 1958 due to his insights on the Yangtze Three Gorges Dam Project but he was purged again because of his criticism of the Great Leap Forward a five-year plan to collectivize farms and spur rural industrialization that began in 1958 and abandoned in 1961. During the decade-long Cultural Revolution that ended in 1976, he was purged again for voicing opinions contrary to the movement. He was denounced as an “anti-party element” and spent seven years in prison before he returned in 1979 to hold senior positions in government. After retiring from his political career, Li became an advocate for democratic reform in China.   

Internally, its policies color every sector of a nation with the world’s largest population, or 1.4 billion people. Externally, its model is having an impact and influence on distant economies and leaders worldwide not to mention the everyday shopper looking for a new pair of shoes. One hundred years ago, the party began with meetings in Shanghai of a dozen or so people, who represented, at most, five times their number. At the time, Shanghai was known for its cosmopolitan drive in an impoverished, divided country struggling to emerge from a string of humiliations by foreign powers that had controlled chunks of its territory for nearly a century.