100 years of memory loss: a history of the Chinese Communist Party

At least 10 million and perhaps 40 million died in China's disastrous 1950s Great Leap Forward. (Image: Getty)

Fri, 23 Jul 2021

I have been somewhat bemused by the recent celebrations in Beijing of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party and of the way the western media have reported this.This anniversary has not been that big an event in the past. The party was not actually established on July 1 1921. The real date most likely was July 23. But even that date is subject to some uncertainty. In Red Star Over China, written in 1936, Mao Zedong (who the author, Edgar Snow, notes was a stickler for accuracy an...

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