The 105-Year History of the Chinese Communist Party and Its Legacy for Humanity By: Ximena Madrigal Amador

We mark the 105th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party, which took place on July 1 in Shanghai. By that time, both Shanghai and the rest of China had already suffered—and would continue to suffer for several more decades—the British, French, and Japanese foreign invasions that condemned an entire people to constant humiliation and prevented them from consolidating themselves as a prosperous and strong nation.

Seventy-seven years after the proclamation of the People's Republic of China, the Asian giant continues, at its own pace, to build that path. It is noteworthy that while much of the world already speaks of China as a superpower, its own communist leadership resists accepting that label, still recognizing the country as a developing nation that has not yet achieved its highest objectives.

​As an observer from a small Central American nation who has been fortunate enough to visit this ancient civilization, I would argue that the label "superpower" is inadequate—not when measured by the bourgeois, liberal, or imperial standards from which China consciously distances itself, but because China represents something greater: a beacon of hope and a model for the Global South. It demonstrates that inequality can be reduced and economic growth and advanced technological development can be achieved without exploiting weaker nations, subordinating allies, or intervening in the internal affairs of others.

Seen in this light, the founding of the Party and, later, of the People's Republic were not merely national milestones; they were, in many respects, a gift to humanity.

It is worth recalling that China has lifted over 800 million people out of extreme poverty, maintained economic stability through a series of global crises, and secured widespread access to essential services, education, housing, and healthcare for a population that, a century ago, was associated with famine and semi-colonial subjugation.

At the same time, China has emerged as a leader in green technology development, benefiting much of the world—especially countries that are reducing their carbon emissions through the use of Chinese-made solar panels, batteries, and electric vehicles.

Most significant of all, these accomplishments are not isolated successes. They stem from a consistent set of principles that have guided China since 1921 and continue to shape its relationship with the world today.

This continuity begins with Mao Zedong, whose view of international relations was profoundly shaped by China's experience of foreign intervention and national humiliation. For Mao, imperialism represented the greatest obstacle to the independence of oppressed nations. From that understanding emerged the principle of zili gengsheng—self-reliance—as the foundation of true sovereignty.

While Xi Jinping no longer speaks in the revolutionary vocabulary of the Maoist period, his repeated denunciations of hegemonism, unilateral sanctions, and bloc-based politics stem from the same fundamental concern: ensuring that powerful states cannot impose their political and economic will on weaker nations.

It was Zhou Enlai who transformed anti-imperialist ideals into a practical framework for diplomacy. At the Bandung Conference in 1955, the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence were established: mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, non-aggression, non-interference in internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence. These principles would become the bedrock of China's foreign policy.

During his 1963–1964 tour of Africa and Asia, Zhou emphasized that all nations—large or small, powerful or weak—are equal. Out of that same diplomatic effort came the Eight Principles governing Chinese foreign aid: cooperation on an equal footing, free of political conditions, and designed to promote the recipient nation's self-reliance rather than dependence.

The TAZARA Railway, constructed by China between Tanzania and Zambia at the height of the Cold War without requiring ideological conformity or domestic policy changes, remains the classic example of these principles put into practice.

Deng Xiaoping inherited this tradition and reshaped it for a new era. While remaining committed to sovereignty and non-interference, he came to view economic modernization as the country's foremost mission, arguing that development itself constituted a form of national liberation.

From this perspective, China's opening to foreign investment, trade, and technology did not represent a departure from the legacy of Mao and Zhou. Rather, it was an effort to achieve the same fundamental objectives—sovereignty, national dignity, and self-determination—by different means.

Viewed through this lens, Xi Jinping is not an innovator so much as a continuator. He extends and deepens an existing tradition. The idea of a Community with a Shared Future for Humanity broadens Zhou Enlai's doctrine of peaceful coexistence into a comprehensive vision of global governance. China's advocacy of multipolarity echoes Zhou's belief that international affairs should not be dominated by a small number of powerful states. Likewise, the Belt and Road Initiative, launched in 2013, can be seen as the globalization of the development-oriented diplomacy that Zhou pursued in the 1960s.

Xi has repeatedly described the initiative in language that closely mirrors Zhou's Eight Principles. He has characterized the Belt and Road as "a public road open to all, not a private path belonging to any one party," emphasizing that participation is open to all interested countries and that its benefits are meant to be shared. Cooperation, he argues, should be guided by development and mutual benefit, offering hope to the developing world.

In tracing the roots of this approach, Xi has explicitly linked contemporary Chinese policy to earlier diplomatic traditions. Referring to the progression "from the TAZARA Railway to the Belt and Road Initiative," he argued that China has consistently sought to support other developing nations while creating new opportunities for the world through its own development. In doing so, he drew a direct line of continuity from the principles articulated by Zhou Enlai to China's present-day international engagement.

The Forum on China–Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), established in 2000, preferential trade arrangements with African nations such as Mauritius, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (founded in 2016), and the China–CELAC Forum for Latin America and the Caribbean all represent modern institutional expressions of Zhou Enlai's Eight Principles.

Their influence can be seen in China's financing of ports, railways, dams, power grids, and other infrastructure projects, typically without imposing domestic political conditions. This approach contrasts with the structural adjustment programs historically associated with the IMF and the World Bank, which often tied financial assistance to privatization measures and austerity policies.

China's vaccine diplomacy during the COVID-19 pandemic can be interpreted through the same lens. Donations of Sinopharm and Sinovac vaccines reached dozens of countries across the Global South at a time when many wealthy Western nations had secured the bulk of the earliest vaccine supplies, reinforcing China's presentation of its international engagement as a form of South-South cooperation.

The continuity is acknowledged even in China's official discourse. When Zhou Enlai declared during his African tour that all nations, large and small alike, are equal, and when Xi Jinping, decades later, maintains that the future of the world should be determined collectively by all countries, the two statements convey the same fundamental principle. Though separated by more than fifty years, both express a commitment to sovereign equality and resistance to the domination of weaker states by great powers.

Xi reaffirmed this principle in April 2022 when he introduced the Global Security Initiative. There he called for a vision of security that is common, comprehensive, cooperative, and sustainable, placing at its center the requirement to respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all nations, reject interference in their internal affairs, and uphold each people's right to choose its own development path and social system.

In essence, this is a modern restatement of the principles Zhou Enlai articulated at Bandung nearly seven decades earlier. The language has evolved, but the core idea remains the same: international order should be founded on sovereign equality rather than great-power domination.

For those of us observing this historical continuity from the Global South, what is at issue is something fundamentally different from the experience our predecessors had with the dominant powers of their age. What is being offered is not the threat of bombs or coercion, but the sustained promise of a diplomacy grounded in mutual benefit—one that allows the nations of the South to participate in shaping their own futures.

This does not mean replicating China's model wholesale. Doing so would run contrary to the very principle of self-determination that the Party espouses. Rather, it means acknowledging China's achievements and considering which underlying principles—socially oriented planning, deep roots in local traditions, and the conviction that the strong bear responsibilities toward the vulnerable—might serve as inspiration for building our own institutions and development paths, adapted to our own histories and conditions.

The goal, in this view, is not imitation but inspiration: drawing lessons that can help create distinct and sovereign solutions within our own societies.

This great giant does not come bearing bombs or wielding a big stick. It offers cooperation, mutual benefit, and the prospect of a more equitable diplomacy—one in which the nations of the Global South can develop their own political paths and economic alternatives without being subordinated to larger powers.

China is a country whose recent history bears the wounds of imperialism and war. Precisely because of that experience, the author argues, it seeks not to imitate those practices but to advance a form of governance that many in the West once assumed had vanished, yet which remains vibrant—and, in some respects, renewed—in Asia.

For those born in the late 1990s and afterward, a generation that has known China only as a major global power, and that has simultaneously witnessed what it sees as social decline in parts of the West, it has become increasingly easy to look across the Pacific, where, in the author's metaphor, a great sun is rising.

Why China Is Not Imperialist: An Empirical Perspective

This continuity in Chinese diplomacy, the author argues, is also rooted in deeper structural realities that have been explored by recent economic scholarship. In a 2021 article published in the Review of Radical Political Economics, economists Zhongjin Li and David M. Kotz examine whether China should be understood as an imperialist power from a Marxist theoretical standpoint. Their conclusion is that it should not.

Starting from Lenin's classic conception of imperialism—as a system in which the ruling class of one country uses state power to exercise economic and political domination over another in pursuit of extraordinary profits—they argue that imperialism requires a state fundamentally controlled by a capitalist class with a material interest in such domination.

According to Li and Kotz, contemporary China presents a different configuration. Although its economy contains a large and growing capitalist sector—by 2018, private firms accounted for more than four-fifths of industrial employment—the state remains under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party. In their analysis, the Party is not directly governed by the interests of the capitalist class but instead pursues broader strategic goals, including economic development, technological modernization, international influence, and environmental sustainability.

As a result, they argue, China lacks the structural incentive that historically drove capitalist powers toward imperial expansion. Rather than converting economic growth into systems of political domination abroad, the Chinese state has stronger incentives to pursue cooperative arrangements that generate mutual benefits while avoiding the substantial military, political, and financial burdens associated with maintaining an empire.

The empirical evidence assembled by the authors supports this conclusion. A large share of Chinese loans and overseas investments does not originate from private capitalists seeking profits, but from two state-owned development banks—the China Development Bank and the Export-Import Bank of China—which operate according to the objectives of the Party rather than the logic of private profitability (Horn, Reinhart, and Trebesch, 2019, cited in Li and Kotz, 2021).

Many of these loans are extended at interest rates close to zero; some are repaid through natural resources, and others are eventually forgiven altogether (Brautigam, 2009, cited in Li and Kotz, 2021). By 2019, China had provided approximately $56.48 billion in development assistance to more than 160 countries and had deployed over 600,000 development personnel (Xinhua, 2019, cited in Li and Kotz, 2021), representing a scale of South-South cooperation that contrasts with the structural-adjustment conditionalities historically associated with the so-called Washington Consensus.

Independent field studies have confirmed this pattern on the ground. Researchers from the School of Oriental and African Studies, after years of comparative work in Angola and Ethiopia, found that Chinese state-owned enterprises were more responsive than other foreign investors to requests from host governments concerning job creation and labor conditions (Oya and Schaefer, 2019, cited in Li and Kotz, 2021). Cases such as the evolution of Chinese agricultural cooperation in Zambia—which moved from aid projects to commercial relationships without becoming a form of territorial or political control (Yan and Sautman, 2010, cited in Li and Kotz, 2021)—point in the same direction.

From this economic perspective, the same conclusion that emerges from the diplomatic history of the Party, from Zhou Enlai to Xi Jinping, finds support in a structural analysis of China's economy: China is growing and expanding its global presence without, thus far, generating a dynamic of imperial domination over other peoples.

Chinese official discourse repeatedly addresses this same question. At the ceremony marking the centenary of the Chinese Communist Party in July 2021, Xi Jinping reviewed China's history of national humiliation since the Opium War and, speaking about the future, stated explicitly that "the Chinese nation does not carry within its genes the traits of aggression or hegemony." He added that the Party is concerned with the future of all humanity and seeks to advance together with progressive forces around the world, committing itself to safeguarding world peace, contributing to global development, and preserving the international order (Xi Jinping, Speech at the Ceremony Commemorating the Centenary of the Communist Party of China, July 1, 2021).

A few months later, before the United Nations General Assembly in September 2021, he made a similar argument, declaring that "China has never invaded or abused others, nor has it sought hegemony," presenting China as a builder of world peace, a contributor to global development, a defender of the international order, and a provider of public goods for the international community (Xi Jinping, Speech at the 76th Session of the United Nations General Assembly, September 2021).

Addressing the nations of Southeast Asia in November 2021, on the thirtieth anniversary of dialogue relations between China and ASEAN, Xi was even more explicit, promising that "China will never seek hegemony, much less bully smaller countries," while advocating a regional order built on dialogue rather than military alliances and bloc confrontation (Xi Jinping, Building a Bright Future for China–ASEAN Relations, November 22, 2021).

Taken together with the empirical evidence presented by Li and Kotz regarding the structure of Chinese investment and lending, these statements suggest that China's self-description as a non-imperialist power is not merely rhetorical but is, according to the author, reasonably consistent with the observable behavior of the Chinese state in international affairs.

For all these reasons, on this 105th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party, a sincere congratulation is due—not only to the Chinese people, but to the very idea the Party represents: that the development and dignity of one people need not be built upon the subordination of another.

One hundred and five years after that July 1st in Shanghai, the consistency between what the Party promised and what it has sought to build—from Mao to Zhou, from Deng to Xi—is, in itself, a cause for celebration and an open invitation for the Global South to find, within its own histories and traditions, not a model to copy, but a path to follow.

References

• Li, Zhongjin & Kotz, David M. (2021). "Is China Imperialist?" Review of Radical Political Economics, 53(3), 419–444. DOI: 10.1177/04866134211018868.
• Xi Jinping. (2023). The Governance of China, Volume IV. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press.
• Xi Jinping. Speech at the Ceremony Commemorating the Centenary of the Communist Party of China. July 1, 2021.

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Originally published on LaRepublica.

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Author

Ximena Madrigal Amador — Historian (University of Costa Rica), social communicator, and international affairs analyst. @rabot_rants

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