NEWS//China hits the history books

China's Communist Party (CCP) is 100-years-old in 2021. To mark the centennial, President Xi Jinping has instituted a nationwide effort to increase awareness of the benefits the CCP has brought to China.

Party History Study has flooded Chinese media. It is required homework for all Chinese students. History proficiency exams will be administered in offices, factories, and throughout China's organizations.

Xinhuanet, a government-approved media, explained the importance of learning CCP history. "Over the past century, the CPC has been constantly maintaining its advanced nature and purity against being corrupted or disintegrated. Party history study will make this even more clear to CPC members, and help maintain the strict self-governance of the Party, observers said."

“Party history is the most vivid, the most persuasive textbook,” Xi said on February 20, 2021. “During its 100-year struggle, our Party has always analyzed and grasped the general historical trend with the basic principles of Marxism.” Xi insisted the CCP must continue its commitment to Marxism.

Marxist history, however, should not be confused with bourgeois history Xi explained. “We must persist in using historical materialism” when presenting history.

What is historical materialism? According to Karl Marx’s grand theory of history, historical materialism is interpreting everything through the lenses of relations of production and class struggle. China expert Massimo Introvigne explains, "It is ideological history, in the sense that first, the ideology is presented as absolutely true, then facts are ordered and made to fit the Procrustean bed of the ideological scheme. It is also teleological history, since there is no uncertainty, and we know exactly what the denouement will be. Communism will win, and capitalism will lose."

Sources: Xinhuanet, Bitter Winter, China Daily