The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) has recently published the Regulations on the Study of the Party’s History (hereinafter referred to as “the Regulations”) and issued a notice requesting all regional departments to comply. The Regulations consist of six chapters and 34 articles, namely: General Principles, Leadership Structure and Responsibilities, Contents and Methods to Study the Party’s History, Monitoring, and Supplementary Provisions.
In recent years, the CPC has continued to strengthen patriotic education and the study of the Party’s history, and has provided the basis for institutional support for the normalization and long-term effectiveness of the relevant work through legalization. The Patriotic Education Law came into effect in January 2024, and for the study of the Party’s history, the report of the 20th CPC National Congress proposed to “combine theoretical study with regular, long-term study of the Party’s history and see that Party members and officials strengthen their understanding, conviction, integrity, and diligence through continued study of Party history and carry forward our revolutionary traditions and heritage.” Subsequent amendments to the Party Constitution also added the study of the Party’s history to the obligations of its members, as well as its promotion to the basic tasks of CPC grassroots organizations. The Outline of the Central Party Regulations Formulation Work Plan (2023-2027) even lists the Regulations as a key project.
On the eve of the 102nd founding anniversary of the CPC in 2023, the CPC’s party magazine Qiushi disclosed Xi Jinping’s remarks at the start of a training class for young cadres at the Party School of the CPC Central Committee: “If the people trained by the CPC don’t believe in Marxism and communism, and uphold the flag of ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics,’ then the tragedies like that of the Eastern Europe, the collapse of the Soviet Communist Party, and the disintegration of the Soviet Union, will occur in China.” Upon reading the Regulations, there is not much that is new, but it fully echoes Xi’s aforementioned anxiety about party members’ lack of faith in communism. For example, Article 6 stipulates that “the Party shall have a firm grasp of educating young people about the history of the Party, and promote its study in agencies, enterprises and institutions, urban and rural communities, campuses, military camps, new economic organizations and social organizations, and websites.” A total of 10 articles in Chapter 4 (accounting for about 1/3 of the entire Regulations) regulate how party members, party committees, schools at all levels, and party organizations should learn the Party’s history, and require the use of “red resources” such as revolution museums, memorial halls, party history museums, martyrs’ memorial facilities, and past revolution sites, as well as the use of media such as books, newspapers and magazines, radio, movies, and television, in tandem with online platforms like weibo, WeChat, short video clips, and mobile clients, to create integrated media works on the Party’s history to enhance the attractiveness of its learning.
For Taiwan, it is expected that in the future, there will be a greater chance that schools for the children of Taiwanese businessmen will be required to include classes on “The Party’s History,” “Patriotic Education,” “Xi Jinping Thought,” and “Reunification of the Motherland”. In addition, during future cross-strait exchanges, especially youth exchanges, the proportion of visits to “Red Scenic Spots” and relevant activities will increase, and some Taiwan youth, Taiwan businessmen, and civil societies will also become models for the promotion of Party history education in China.
As the Regulations monitors on the implementation of the study of the Party’s history, and incorporates it as a responsibility of Party building work, it will become a standard for target management and assessment of leaders and cadres at all levels. Article 29 of the Regulations stipulates that the study of the Party’s history “should adhere to frugality, make full use of local resources to organize and launch relevant activities, and it is strictly prohibited to use education as a disguised form of publicly-funded travel. It is also strictly prohibited to be used as a means to engage in improper business activities, and to solicit learning materials such as supplementary reading materials and audio-visual products.” It is likely that the abundance of window dressing will be inevitable, and impossible to prohibit. The Regulations also stipulates that “in principle, a comprehensive evaluation of the Party history education should be conducted once every five years”, which is too long a period of time, making it difficult to achieve the effect of reviewing and advancing the Party’s history education.
A last point of interest in the Regulations is that Xi Jinping anticipates to use Party history education and the shaping of memories to strengthen party members’ and people’s understanding of the CPC, and even Xi Jinping’s personal authority. The first paragraph of Article 10 of the Regulations requires the serious study of Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, Deng Xiaoping Theory, the Three Represents, the Scientific Outlook on Development, and Xi Jinping’s Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era. However, paragraph 2 of the same article independently requires the “comprehensive study and understanding of Xi Jinping’s Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era.” This is a very obvious attempt to strengthen and elevate Xi Jinping’s status in the Party’s history.
Scholars Marouf Hasian and Adina Carlson have pointed out that memory is not just a recapitulation of the past, but also shapes the current situation and future development. Memory is not an individual product stored in the mind of a single person, but rather a collective memory phenomenon that is formed among people who have experienced or heard of certain events together, or even share the same philosophical values. Since collective memory is selective memory, certain authoritative groups control the writing of memories and the power to interpret past history, thus forming a hegemonic mechanism. Scholar Eric Hobsbawm once remarked that many so-called ancient traditions are often recent inventions, and that the constructs of ethnicity and nationhood are good for this purpose because they involve complex subjective cognition. The construction of groups is a series of “remembering, forgetting, interpreting and making up”. Benedict Anderson points out that these processes of remembering and forgetting actually serve the purpose of the narrator. The most critical narrator in the construction of collective memory is often the government, as the elite defines, creates and manipulates grievances and contradictions.
Xi Jinping’s ultimate goal of strengthening the study of the Party’s and patriotism is to shape the memory in favor of the CPC by manipulating the hegemonic mechanism of interpreting history, so as to brainwash the people into supporters of “listening to the party, following the party,” “following Xi Dada,” “never forgetting General Secretary Xi’s kindness,” and “following you is following the sun,” thus lowering the cost of maintaining stability which has been on the rise in recent years, and reinforcing the CPC’s perpetual rule. However, in a world of rapid information flow, where “climbing over the wall” has become a daily routine for mainlanders, it is questionable to what extent the “ideological cage” constructed by the CPC can achieve its purpose.
（Huang Yi-wei, Research Fellow, Association of Strategic Foresight）
（Translated to English by Chen Cheng-Yi）
