Xi urges Communist Party to adapt as China faces new pressures

Xi Jinping used the Communist Party’s 105th anniversary observances in Beijing to tell cadres the organization must keep pace with changing circumstances while protecting the gains it says it has made. In a roughly 40-minute speech at the Great Hall of the People, Xi said China was entering a period where “strategic opportunities” and “risks and challenges” coexist, and he urged officials to recognize change, adapt to it and better coordinate domestic and international work.

The speech pointed to a party trying to present flexibility without conceding weakness. Xi did not spell out specific threats, but the backdrop was plain enough: slower economic growth, demographic decline, Western-led curbs on technology, strained trade ties with the United States and continued tension over Taiwan. He also described the world as a “new period of turbulence and transformation” and warned that China should prepare for “high winds, rough seas and even perilous storms.” In that context, adaptability means policy adjustment without loosening the party’s grip on industry, society and the information environment.

That grip also showed up in Xi’s language on internal discipline. He called on cadres to stamp out anything harmful to the party’s advancement and its “purity,” a word that signals ideological conformity as much as honesty in office. Xi has already made anti-corruption central to his rule, launching one of the most sweeping campaigns since Mao Zedong’s era, investigating millions of officials and purging hundreds, including top generals. After a corruption purge of nearly all top military ranks, senior officers were sent on a 10-week political reeducation course, a reminder that discipline in Xi’s system is political control as well as administrative cleanup.

Xi also used the anniversary to restate the party’s core external positions. He reaffirmed Beijing’s goal of reunification with Taiwan, pledged to uphold “one country, two systems” in Hong Kong and Macau, and called for military modernisation to continue. None of that was presented as a new departure. It was a restatement of the boundaries within which any adaptation must occur.

The anniversary itself underscored the scale of the organization Xi leads. The Communist Party was founded in Shanghai in July 1921, with official history saying only 13 people attended the first congress. By later party accounts, about 50 members were present at the first meeting that same month, and the party later settled on July 1 as its anniversary date. From those beginnings, it now claims more than 100 million members, about 7.2% of China’s population, and Xi’s message was that such a machine must stay adaptable while remaining politically disciplined.