Image Credit: cnbc.com
Speaking on the occasion of the 100th-anniversary celebration of the Chinese Communist Party, China’s President Xi Jinping proclaimed that the days when China could be bullied had gone away. He praised the Communist Party, founded by Mao Zedong in 1921, for restoring China’s national pride by bringing in a “national rejuvenation.” He credited the party for removing millions of people from poverty and thus changing the landscape of world development.
President Xi was on Thursday speaking at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, the same place where Mao Zedong stood when he declared the creation of the modern Chinese nation – the People’s Republic of China in 1949. After highlighting the country’s achievements, Xi went on to add that the rejuvenation of China had “entered an irreversible historical course.”
Xi Jinping called on the citizens of China to crush plots calling for the independence of Taiwan and asserted that the island of Taiwan was part of China. He repeated the call for the reunification of Taiwan with the Chinese ‘motherland’.
Speaking in the context of the ‘humiliation’ faced by the country from western colonial powers, Xi told the audience that they would never allow any foreign forces to bully and subjugate them adding that anyone wanting to do so would have to face “a great wall of steel built by 1.4 billion Chinese people.”
Xi Jinping became the Chinese President in 2013 and has since consolidated his hold on power. He has purged his rivals within the party and abolished the term limit for the President’s post, effectively making himself the head of China for a lifetime.