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The Chinese Communist Party celebrated its 100th birthday Thursday, with the kind of grand pomp we’ve come to expect from Beijing for such occasions. The anniversary was an opportunity for Chinese leader Xi Jinping to vaunt the party’s accomplishments, particularly in lifting hundreds of millions of people out of extreme poverty and setting the country on the path to prosperity, while also amplifying his message about China’s ambitions on the global stage.
“The Chinese people will never allow foreign forces to bully, oppress or enslave us,” Xi told a crowd of 70,000 people gathered in Tiananmen Square. “Whoever nurses delusions of doing that will crack their heads and spill blood on the Great Wall of steel built from the flesh and blood of 1.4 billion Chinese people.”