DNA Exclusive: China celebrates centenary of Communist Party amid economic crisis, aggressive nationalism

New Delhi: The Communist Party of China completed its 100 years today. China’a aggressive nationalism was on full display as a grand ceremony was organized at Tiananmen Square, in which Chinese President Xi Jinping addressed the representatives of his government, Communist leaders and citizens of the country.

Zee News Editor-in-Chief Sudhir Chaudhary on Thursday (July 1) explained how the Communist Party of China is resorting to a policy of hyper-nationalism to hide the economic crisis it is going through.

While celebrating the centenary, Jinping wore a coat just like China's first Communist President Mao Zedong. By doing this, Jinping tried to convey that he is the next greatest communist leader of China.

Notably, none of these 70 thousand people who came to take part in the ceremony were wearing a mask. By this, China showed that even as the world is struggling with the second and third wave of coronavirus pandemic, it has defeated it.

Jinping showcased China's communism as a big ideology in front of the whole world and also tried to tell that it has become the new center of global power.

The strength of the Communist Party of China rests on two pillars: its economy and its nationalism.

When Jinping became the President of China in 2013, the GDP growth rate there was 7.7 percent, but in 2020 it came down to just 2.27 percent. It is not that this decline came suddenly in a year. This declining trend has been seen for the last 7 years.

Another challenge before China is that its economy is not based on new inventions. Rather, China's production power is based on making cheap copies of others’ products.

Apart from this, China's economy is under a lot of debt and is based on exports. This is a strength for China as well as a big weakness because as soon as there is an economic recession in Europe and America, China's exports decrease and its economy starts to dwindle.

The declining number of its working population and the increasing population of the elderly has also posed serious challenges to China’s economy.

The gist of all these points is that one of the pillars of the Communist Party, that is its economy, is completely shaken. And this is the reason why China is now turning to aggressive nationalism.

About 70 years ago, Mao Zedong said that ‘Power grows from barrel of a gun’. And after all these years, the Communist Party of China is working on this very idea.

In 2017, there was a conflict between China and India in Doklam. Then in 2020, China turned the tension into a violent conflict in the Galwan valley. All of this was done to nourish its aggressive nationalism.

It is clear that as China’s economy is struggling, it is resorting to hyper-nationalism to keep control of its power.

India should be ready for this challenge. And unlike China, where the army does not belong to the country but to the Communist government, the Indian army fights for the country and is filled with the spirit of nationalism.