Communist Party of China

In his speech to mark the centenary of the founding of the Communist Party of China, Chinese President Xi Jinping repeated the term “national rejuvenation” twenty times. The speech reminded the party’s 95 million card-carrying members that “since the very day of its founding, the party has made seeking rejuvenation for the Chinese nation its aspiration and mission.” However, just as “national rejuvenation” betrays the revolutionary conceptions at the founding of the party, the whole official narrative during the nationwide celebration is premised more on hype than reality, raising questions about the party’s commitment to its founding principles.

Hu Jintao, the new general secretary of the Communist Party of China, and his colleagues, who constitute the party's fourth generation leadership, have been armed by Jiang Zemin with a new ideological tool called Sange Daibiao (the Three Represents) which, like Deng Xiaoping�s Gaige Kaifang (Reform and Open Door), seems to be slowly capturing the imagination of the Chinese people. This formulation is seen by the left as an outrageous departure from Marxism. The right is equally disappointed by the refusal to grant full freedom to the propertied classes. Yet the Three Represents are carefully crafted guidelines for the party to face the challenges of the emerging world and to take the country forward in the new century.

In today's Taiwan one comes across a confident economic society. What is at stake is the Taiwanese polity, not because of any internal weaknesses but because the international situation has put a big question mark over its survival. There is a political discourse in Taiwan which is very close to cold war rhetoric. The counterpoint is still 'Communist China'. The logic of this situation is that the US will have an interventionist presence in the Taiwan Straits, which makes the future of the area, not just of Taiwan, far from easy to predict.