Chinese state media announced Tuesday that China will hold a “grand ceremony” to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP/CPC) in July.

Unlike previous anniversary celebrations, the centennial will not include a military parade.

Nikkei Asian Review (NAR) postulated the military parade will be skipped so as not to “further inflame already smoldering international tensions” with China’s neighbors and the Western world:

This year’s commemorative activities include an educational campaign on party history. A military parade on the big day had been all but a foregone conclusion until now.

In ruling out such pageantry months in advance, the Communist Party appears mindful of growing pressure from the West. The U.S., the U.K. and Canada announced sanctions Monday on Chinese officials accused of involvement in human rights abuses against the Uyghur minority. The European Union imposed sanctions the same day.

In practice, the People’s Liberation Army is an organ of the party rather than the state. China has officially kept the distinction ambiguous.

The 100th anniversary celebration has long been seen as the most important event on Beijing’s political calendar for 2021, as it presents an opportunity to hammer dictator Xi Jinping’s themes of rising Chinese power, the virtues of authoritarian central planning, strident nationalism, and the defeat of poverty.

Given current trends in CCP propaganda, the event will probably include a celebration of China’s “victory” over the coronavirus and plenty of assertions that the CCP is more stable and popular with its own people than any of the Western nations that criticize Chinese human rights abuses. Beijing will make the case that its repressive one-party state is no less legitimate than any democratically-elected government.

China’s state-run Global Times offered a preview Tuesday of the nationalist content and political indoctrination expected during the 100th anniversary celebration:

Party history education will be conducted among its members. The CPC Central Committee will visit Party members who have made outstanding contributions or live in difficult conditions. Families of martyrs and the family members of Party officials who died in the line of duty will be visited. 

Large-scale exhibitions will be held to display the glorious course, great achievements, and valuable experience of the CPC over the past 100 years. 

CPC-related works, publications will be released, seminars will be held, and commemorative stamps and coins will be issued. 

Much of the centennial messaging is clearly directed at the outside world, although it is all pitched as education and enlightenment for the Chinese population. For example, the Global Times promised a “deep reflection of history” that will illustrate “why Chinese people and history chose the CCP, a socialist path, and the reform and opening-up path.”

The Global Times alluded to the messaging detected by Nikkei Asian Review, noting that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) will hold activities that “focus on keeping the red line of the Party’s absolute leadership over the army, stressing the PLA’s centenary goal, and teaching the military to always be a heroic army that the Party and the people can trust.” 

In other words, the events will stress that the PLA obeys the CCP and not the other way around – a message that might have been complicated by a massive military parade at a moment when China is increasingly using the threat of military force as an element of its diplomacy.

NAR predicted in January that the rest of the world would find little to celebrate in the 100th anniversary of the CCP, which is one reason China is pushing the notion of the anniversary celebration as a private and introspective event for the Chinese people, even as the event is clearly packed with messaging for the outside world.

NAR anticipated Xi Jinping will use the 100th anniversary to buttress his cult of personality as the greatest Chinese leader since Mao Zedong – and Mao should be worried about Xi pulling ahead in the homestretch of history. Recent efforts by Chinese regulators to break up big tech companies and humiliate outspoken billionaires are a means of underscoring that Xi is the boss of all bosses going into the big anniversary celebration.

“We should increase the dependence of international supply chains on China and establish powerful retaliatory and menacing capabilities against foreign powers that would try to cut supplies,” Xi said in October, summarizing his “dual circulation” strategy for CCP dominance over the world economy.