With a great deal of razzle-dazzle, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is celebrating its centenary this month. Looking back on a century of party history, Chinese and foreigners alike emphasize themes of success, competence, ideological agility (or adaptability), and ruthlessness—or resolve. A hundred years ago, meeting in a small house in Shanghai in July 1921, a tiny handful of men intrigued by the little bit of Marxism that they knew and impressed by the success of the Russian Revolution agreed that China needed a proletarian revolution. They faced long odds and several near-extinction events, but their heirs rode China’s revolutionary tides to power in 1949.
But a century later, one of the striking accomplishments of the CCP is the degree to which it has fulfilled not Karl Marx’s dreams but those of Sun Yat-sen. Sun, a leader of the Revolution of 1911 who briefly became first president of the Republic of China in 1912, was no communist. But over his long career as a professional revolutionary, he sketched out many plans for how a strong government would develop China’s economy, achieve independence from the imperialist powers, and lead society toward democracy.
