“Resolving the Taiwan question and realising China’s complete reunification is a historic mission and an unshakeable commitment of the Communist Party of China,” Xi said.
“No one should underestimate the great resolve,the strong will and the extraordinary ability of the Chinese people to defend their national sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
Having conquered democratic Hong Kong without force and stamped out ethnic diversity in Xinjiang,Xi’s China has its sights set on what it sees as the mainland’s last remaining breakaway province - Taiwan. The great rejuvenation of the nation,after a century of foreign humiliation prior to party rule,will not be complete until all the provinces claimed by China are returned to it.
“China’s national rejuvenation has become a historical inevitability,” Xi told the Tiananmen crowd.
The square had earlier been filled with booms of a 100-cannon salute,flyovers from J-20 supersonic stealth fighters and a chorus of thousands singing in unisonWithout the Communist Party,there would be no new China.
China’s military capability does not yet match its rhetoric but the threat is serious enough that the US and Japan have been secretly conducting war games and joint military exercises in the event of a conflict over Taiwan.The Financial Times reported on Thursday that the exercises have been ongoing since the final year of the Trump administration.
At the same time,China has begun construction of more than 100 new silos for intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of launching nuclear weapons,according to commercial satellite images obtained by researchers at the James Martin Centre for Nonproliferation Studies and reported byThe Washington Post.
“We have never bullied,oppressed,or subjugated the people of any other country,and we never will,” Xi said.
It would be hard to get past the chutzpah for a protester in Hong Kong,a Uighur in a re-education camp or a Taiwanese farmer listening to the zoom of 28 fighter jets,but of course,they fail to understand the big picture.
In Xi’s China,these are all inalienable parts of the Middle Kingdom.
Australia too could feasibly claim that it had been bullied through $20 billion in trade strikes.
But to those gathered inTiananmen Square,a site whose past has been scrubbed clean,there would be no contradiction here. China has its red lines and Australia repeatedly crossed them when it called for a coronavirus inquiry,banned Huawei and spoke out about Xinjiang and Hong Kong.
The belligerent rhetoric,clearly targeted at stirring nationalist sentiment on this mighty anniversary threatens to overshadow what is a remarkable economic and political story.
In the space of 100 years,the CCP has grown from 53 members to 95 million. It is the world’s most successful political party,turning guerilla revolutionaries into statesmen over more than 70 years of uninterrupted power.
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It has doubled its GDP every eight years since liberalisation in 1980 and lifted 800 million people out of poverty. In 1980,China’s GDP was $408 billion. Today it is more than $18 trillion and it will overtake the US’ - the world’s dominant superpower of the 20th century - by the end of this decade.
But as living standards rise,so does the temptation of freedom of thought,fuelling ambition,innovation and creation. The party has been so successful in binding wealth to the collective goal that it needs a new national struggle to rally the cadres.
The hundreds of Communist Youth League delegates said they were ready for service.
“We are ready to realise the great dream of national rejuvenation,” the mini cadres sang. “One hundred years and still young. We are the ones to make our country strong.”
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