Vol. 12 No. 1 (2021): The 100 years of the Chinese Communist Party

Founded in 1921 in a phase of structural weakness and radical transformation of China, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is now leading the second world economy and is preparing to project the “Chinese approach” as an effective governance formula also beyond Chinese borders. These borders remain contested on various levels. On the internal institutional level, the structure of the “two systems in one country” has changed following the implementation of the National Security Law for Hong Kong. On the political-international level, the dialectic between Beijing and the West has brought the ideological component back to the fore, with repercussions on stability in the Taiwan Strait. As for identity-related aspects, the exertion of a more pervasive influence on the definition of the perimeter and of the characteristics that qualify “Chineseness”, especially with respect to national minorities and communities of the Chinese diaspora, places the CCP in a central position with respect to sense-construction and self-representation strategies, also of individuals and communities who do not necessarily own a passport from the People’s Republic of China.

At the same time, the strong growth of China’s “socialist market” economy and the response to the COVID-19 pandemic corroborate the political credibility of the CCP as an agent of modernization, both in the face of domestic public opinion and in countries aiming to the diversification of development strategies in addition to those envisaged by international institutions dominated by Western countries. The legitimacy based on the performance of the Chinese Leninist governance system in increasing the availability of material resources among the population is integrated by the repressive component, which determines the compression of the spaces of individual emancipation, free enterprise, social representation, and collective action not supervised by the CCP.