China faces its worst power shortage in a decade 1:05
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Since the victory of the troops under Mao Zedong in the cruel Chinese civil war in 1949, the Asian giant, with the exception of Taiwan, has been governed by the Communist Party of China (CCP), which complies this Thursday a century of history as an institution and 72 years dictating the direction of China.
The People's Republic of China is a one-party regime, for which the CCP, founded on July 1, 1921, is the only legal one.
Through its seven-member Politburo Standing Committee, it sets policies and appoints government officials.
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The chairman of this Committee is also the chairman of the CCP and China, currently held by Xi Jinping.
The Communist Party, forged in civil war
After its founding, the CCP, led by Mao, entered an armed conflict in 1927 with the forces of the National Party (Kuomintang) of Chiang Kai-Shek, then at the head of the ROC after the collapse of the imperial dynasty. Qinq, the last of China.
Mao Zedong (left) delivers a speech at the founding ceremony of the People's Republic of China at Tiananmen Square in Beijing on October 1, 1949. (Credit: Sovfoto / Universal Images Group / Getty Images)
The war with the Empire of Japan that began in the 1930s put this internal clash on hold, but after the Japanese defeat in 1945, the civil conflict between the Kuomintang and the CCP resumed, culminating in the communist victory of 1949 and the foundation of the People's Republic.
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In its early years, the People's Republic was a close ally of the USSR, its model state, but the countries ended up confronted in the 1960s by a series of border conflicts and regional competitions.
"Socialism with Chinese characteristics"
The following years were characterized by the economic policies of the "Great Leap Forward" and the change proposed by the "Cultural Revolution," Mao's controversial projects that led to internal turmoil and the death of millions of Chinese from starvation.
In the early 1970s, China began a rapprochement with the United States that culminated in the visit of President Richard Nixon in 1972 and the subsequent resumption of diplomatic relations.
Mao died in 1976, and since then China has faced a process of modernization, market reforms and trade opening to the world - the so-called "socialism with Chinese characteristics" - promoted in its beginnings by the figure of Deng Xiaoping.
Consequently, the Chinese economy finally seemed to take that great leap forward: by 2010 it was already the second, only surpassed by the United States.
Part of the Communist Party of China Centennial Ceremony in Tiananmen Square on July 1, 2021, in Beijing.
(Credit: Kevin Frayer / Getty Images)
In the same period, China also managed to stop nearly 800 million of its inhabitants from being poor, as the government regularly highlights based on poverty thresholds established by the World Bank (less than US $ 1.9 a day).
In 2020 Beijing even announced that it had eradicated extreme poverty.
Xi Jinping, for his part, took office in 2013 and has led the country since then in a different process of growing global confrontation with the United States, high tensions with Taiwan and repression in Hong Kong, and slowing economic growth.
And the CCP, with more than 91 million members, is still behind it.
Xi has become the most powerful leader since the time of Mao Zedong.
Their relationship with the CCP is symbiotic, the two need each other and the two are reinforced as the same organism, "Patricio Giusto, director of the Sino-Argentine Observatory and Master of China Studies at Zhejiang University, told CNN.
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"The CCP has never given in to political pressure abroad, it did not do so when it was a small party, and it definitely will not after the CCP has become the largest ruling party in the world," the CCP said on Tuesday. Chinese state newspaper Global Times.
"With a spirit forged on the difficulties and achievements of the past century, the CCP will lead the Chinese people in creating more glory in the next 100 years despite growing hostility from the West," he noted.
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For Giusto, the main external challenge facing the CCP is the conflict with the United States, which he describes as "structural" and independent of who governs in each country.
“At the epicenter is the bidding on strategic issues such as the main telecommunications technologies, biotechnology, space technology and weapons.
China is already surpassing or on the way to surpassing the United States in those plans, that is the challenge, to deal with this dispute with the main military and economic power in the world.
Xi Jinping sends harsh warning to other countries 0:59
Indermit Gill, of the Brookings Institute, warns for his part that although the reduction of poverty carried out by China is remarkable, the use of the lower threshold of those made by the World Bank - reserved for low-income countries - is no longer relevant for an economy like that of China.
“An extreme poverty line of about two dollars a day is no longer interesting or relevant, and repeated references to it could be counterproductive.
It is not a relevant threshold for an upper-middle-income country that is about to become an advanced economy, "he says.
In this regard, Giusto highlights the impact of the covid-19 pandemic, whose economic consequences, still completely unknown, will be of "unprecedented severity and depth", especially in the context of a rapidly aging Chinese population.
"For China it is important because in addition to being the main engine of growth in the world, constituting 30% of global investments, the impact of an economy that is shrinking and entering a more volatile stage is enormous," he says.
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