As China’s Communist Party marks its centenary, how will it portray its history?

A history of the Chinese Communist Party should include the contributions of non-Chinese and acknowledge party critics, as well as celebrating the heroes through uplifting stories

Philip Bowring

Published: 5:15am, 30 May 2021

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As the Chinese Communist Party celebrates its centenary, now is a good time to look at the uses and abuses of history.

On an immediately topical note, this month 100 years ago saw the first serious outbreak of communal violence between Arabs and Jews in Palestine. Arabs were incensed at Britain being given a League of Nations mandate to rule this former piece of the Ottoman Empire and at Britain’s promise in 1917 to make Palestine a “national home” for the Jewish people.

Then, only about 10 per cent of the population was Jewish. One hundred years of conflict now sees Israel, home to about 7.5 million Jews, controlling with a mix of laws, barricades and bombs about six million Arabs in Israel itself, the West Bank and Gaza.

The prospect of a two-state solution is almost dead, the prospects for peace and equality worse than ever. Israel’s strength is obvious but unconditional support from the United States is likely to wither as American priorities shift.

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There are some parallels between Palestine and another trouble spot, Xinjiang. At the time of the 1949 revolution, the Han population of the province was about 10 per cent. Memories of attempts to establish a separate state, the Republic of East Turkestan, were still fresh.

In the late 19th century, Kashgaria had been briefly independent. But the demographic change since 1949 has not been sufficient to quell a Turkic desire for cultural and religious autonomy. Being Manchu itself, the Qing empire found acceptance of non-Han provinces no problem.

Today, President Xi Jinping has recently spoken of the need to make good use of red resources, inherit red genes and pass on the red country from generation to generation. In this anniversary year, Beijing wants more museums about party history, more memorials to the martyrs and heroes of revolution, the sufferings during the Long March, the heroism of the West Road Army and other uplifting stories of the party’s 100 years.

Memorials are one thing; they focus on one event or person. Museums are a more complicated issue as they must tell a story over time. Are they supposed to be historical records, or propaganda, showing selective history to try to instil faith in younger generations? As with the Catholic Church, the institutional story is of saints not sinners.

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A museum of Chinese Communist Party history should in principle address the roles in the earliest days of Henricus Sneevliet, for example, a Dutch man sent by Lenin himself to China in 1921. He tried to guide the new comrades in China on two principles – the importance of a tight-knit, disciplined Leninist party, and the need for allies, in this case the Kuomintang.

Sneevliet and a Russian joined 13 Chinese for the first party Congress in Shanghai in July that year. Two years later, the Comintern in Moscow replaced Sneevliet with a Russian, Mikhail Borodin (the alias of Mikhail Grozenberg) who directed the policy of alliance with the KMT until the communists were purged from it. Borodin died in a Soviet prison in 1951 before being posthumously rehabilitated.

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Party membership could often be hazardous, whether because of enemies or supposed friends. Journalist and writer Wang Shiwei was one such – an active party member, he was critical of some aspects of policy. Denounced as a Trotskyite, a member of an “anti-party gang of five”, Wang was “tried”, imprisoned and finally executed in 1947.

Another early party notable, Wang Ming, was luckier. Moscow-trained Wang Ming played a key role in the popular front against the Japanese invaders. However, he fell out with Mao and, embittered, left for Moscow where in 1971 he wrote Fifty Years of the Communist Party of China.

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Party history museums may also have some problems dealing with the careers of Jiang Jing and other members of the Gang of Four, denounced by the party under Deng Xiaoping with all but one imprisoned for the rest of their lives.

Party museums may also struggle to deal with Zhao Ziyang, an initiator of economic liberalisation, but less radical a reformer than his predecessor as general secretary, Hu Yaobang, whose death in April 1989 sparked the demonstrations which culminated in the Tiananmen crisis in June 1989. Zhao’s break with Deng consigned him to house arrest for the remainder of his life.

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While on the subject of tightly-knit parties, Singapore’s People’s Action Party (PAP), in power since 1959, also comes to mind.

It was interesting to see a Post column suggesting that Hong Kong democrats should remember the example of their 1960s counterparts in Singapore, who staged a walkout of their legislature and boycotted elections.

It should be remembered that the opposition Barisan Sosialis party, created after Lee Kuan Yew ejected leftists from the PAP, was crippled two years later when, with Operation Coldstore, the authorities detained without trial more than 100 people, including the Barisan leaders.

When those who remained quit parliament in 1966, they were arrested; one, Chia Thye Poh, spent years in solitary confinement and was only fully freed in 1998. Since then, critics and would-be opponents continue to be subject to litigation and general harassment even as the Lee family has engaged in a public shouting match.

Philip Bowring is a Hong Kong-based journalist and commentator