Re-writing Party History and Why It Matters

Professor Patricia M. Thornton (Associate Professor in the University of Oxford’s Department of Politics and International Relations, and a Fellow of Merton College)

Topic

Although a great deal of media attention was paid to Xi Jinping’s defiant warning, issued at the CCP’s centenary celebrations, that any would-be foreign challengers would have “their heads dashed against a great wall of steel forged by over 1.4 billion Chinese people,” his repeated references to the history of the Party itself went largely unnoticed (the term “history” appeared nearly two dozen times in his address). The notice last month that the Party’s delayed Sixth Plenum will be held in November has led to a new round of speculation that the Central Committee may be preparing to vote on a new resolution on Party history (following the first and second history resolutions, in 1945 and 1981, respectively). Whether or not the Sixth Plenum decides to issue a formal resolution, it is clear that as early as 2017, Xi had already set in motion a process of redefining the Party’s past in order to chart a shift in course for the Party’s future. A consideration of some of the new initiatives concerning Party history now underway thus offers strong indications of where the CCP’s ‘core’ is heading in the next few years.

Biography

Patricia M. Thornton is an Associate Professor in the University of Oxford’s Department of Politics and International Relations, and a Fellow of Merton College. She is the author of numerous articles in scholarly journals, and recently edited a special issue of The China Quarterly forthcoming in early October to mark the CCP’s centenary. Her recent publications include (with Vivienne Shue), To Govern China: Evolving Practices of Power (Cambridge, 2017); (with Chris Berry and Sun Peidong) Red Shadows: Memories and Legacies of the Chinese Cultural Revolution (Cambridge, 2017); and Disciplining the State: Virtue, Violence and State-Making in Modern China (Harvard, 2007).

Organiser: SOAS China Insitute

Contact email: sci@soas.ac.uk