How the Chinese Communist Party controls history: Express Research

Express Research

EXPRESS RESEARCH

Dear reader,   The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) completed a hundred years of its existence this week. In its present form the CCP is both invincible in China and is determined to refashion the existing global order by placing China as a superpower. In its efforts to obtain this objective, the party has been controlling and rewriting the history of the country and its own in interesting ways.    Our story this week analyses how the CCP has been making an effective use of history writing for its political needs since the time Mao Zhedong consolidated his leadership over the party in the 1940s. The CCP is not an isolated case in its control over historical narratives. But what marks it out is how it expects artists and intelligentsia in China to serve the party’s interests. Equally important to note is that the same party, over the course of a 100 years of its existence, has approached the history of China and that of its own differently at different moments in time. What was marginalised under Mao is now glorified by Xi, discussing episodes such as the Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmen Square protests is public taboo, and important leaders of the party who later fell out with it have been erased from history textbooks. The story also looks at how certain historical events, like the Second World War, are being made use of by the party to proclaim China as a global superpower.    Read the story: Chinese Communist Party at 100: How the party uses history to build its future   Sincerely, Adrija Roychowdhury

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