Xi Is Defining History on His Own Terms

That China’s era of reform ended under Xi Jinping is hardly surprising. What may surprise many people is that Xi himself keeps saying it.

On July 1, at the celebration marking the 105th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Xi said that through the “great practice of revolution, construction, reform, and the New Era,” the party led the people through untold hardships and successfully opened up and upheld the path of socialism with Chinese characteristics. That sentence amounts to a declaration: China’s reform era has ended.

That China’s era of reform ended under Xi Jinping is hardly surprising. What may surprise many people is that Xi himself keeps saying it.

On July 1, at the celebration marking the 105th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Xi said that through the “great practice of revolution, construction, reform, and the New Era,” the party led the people through untold hardships and successfully opened up and upheld the path of socialism with Chinese characteristics. That sentence amounts to a declaration: China’s reform era has ended.

Of course, this is not the first time Xi has used such a formulation, one designed to put himself into the grand narrative of CCP history. As early as his 2021 speech marking the party’s centenary and in the CCP’s third historical resolution, Xi had already divided the party’s history into four stages: revolution, construction, reform, and the New Era. This time, he simply restated that narrative in more compressed language and further gave it the stamp of official approval.