China’s Communist Party celebrated its 95th anniversary on Friday as Hong Kong marked the 19th anniversary of the transfer of sovereignty from British rule.
The day was marked with a gathering in the morning at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, with a speech from President Xi Jinping, which was live-streamed by many Chinese media outlets.
#XiJinping: Whether our Party is strong or not depends on whether our members’ faith is strong or not #CPC95years pic.twitter.com/h7bwD4KT03
— CGTN (@CGTNOfficial) July 1, 2016
“All Party members must maintain the original intention and continue to go forward to achieve [it] for our people,” CCTV quoted Xi as saying.
Many braved the crowds to attend the flag-raising ceremony at Tiananmen Square in Beijing early Friday morning.
One Weibo user said: “The singing of ‘Ode to the Motherland’ on the square led to a surge of emotion….Happy Founding Festival.”
The government also announced a fine art exhibition at the National Museum of China in commemoration of the founding of the party, with paintings, lithographs, sculptures, caricatures and other mixed-media works marking historic moments such as “showing Chinese Communist Party members striving for independence during wartime, and achieving new goals afterwards.”
The Xinhua news agency released a short film on Monday in honour of the anniversary, depicting Party heros like Lei Feng, a soldier who, after his death, is often upheld as an ideal member of Chinese society in party propaganda.
“For a person, 95 years is a very long time, but to a Party, which is ahead of the times, it is its prime. Our dreams, and those of our fathers, are in the distance,” Xinhua quoted the narrator as saying at the end of the film.
