A gathering in celebration of the 105th founding anniversary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) is held at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, July 1, 2026.
Every nation carries within it a story of struggle—a memory of ordinary people who dared to imagine a different future. South Africans know this story well. It is written into the memory of the liberation movement, into the long walk toward freedom, and into the everyday resolve to build a fairer society for all who call this land home. Perhaps it is this shared experience of struggle and hope that makes China’s story worth reflecting on today.
On July 1, a grand gathering was held in Beijing to mark the 105th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China. Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and Chinese President, addressing the occasion, remarked that through 105 years of unremitting struggle, the Party has written what he called the most magnificent chapter in the Chinese nation’s thousands of years of history.
In the long course of human history, 105 years may seem like only a brief moment. But for a political party, however, it has been a epic journey—one that has transformed the destiny of a nation. A century and five years ago, when China was torn by internal turmoil and battered by foreign aggression, a small party of just over fifty members held its founding meeting aboard a modest red boat. Since then, the Communist Party of China has united and led the Chinese people in achieving national independence and the people’s liberation, completing the socialist revolution and advancing socialist development, carrying out reform and opening up and socialist modernisation, and creating the great achievements of socialism with Chinese characteristics in the new era.
