China’s current leader, Xi Jinping, wants to be seen as a champion of ancient Chinese values. Reformers of 1919 would be horrified
from Tiananmen Square, young carworkers wearing company tracksuits stand with their fists in the air. They are renewing their vows to the Communist Youth League by chanting promises to “resolutely support” the Communist Party and “strictly follow” the league’s regulations. When they step aside for a group photo, 40 students from a technical college take their place to make their own pledges of loyalty. A growing queue of youngsters waits nearby to do the same.
Both the party and dissidents agree that in 1919 the country was at its nadir. The last imperial dynasty, the Qing, weakened by decades of internal strife and foreign encroachment on Chinese territory, had collapsed in 1911. A military strongman, Yuan Shikai, had tried to reinstate the monarchy with himself as the new emperor. His death in 1916 had unleashed struggles between rival warlords.
There is only one aspect of the movement that officials want to dwell on, namely its links with the party’s founding, says Rana Mitter of Oxford University. But public discussion even of the party’s early ideals is curtailed. The party does not want to be reminded that its supporters were once attracted by its promise of liberation from autocracy, not by the dictatorship it came to represent.
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