THE Museum of the Communist Party of China (CPC) opened its doors in central Beijing in July 2021, just three years after the CPC central committee commissioned it.

The magnificent displays of paintings, photographs, artefacts, moving images and the life-size reconstruction of a battle between anti-fascist soldiers and Japanese occupation forces cover almost 100,000 square metres.

When the international delegation visited the museum on July 1, the vast halls and corridors were already thronged with visitors from China and abroad, including beautifully dressed parties of schoolchildren.

I was puzzled, however, by one omission. I asked the museum’s research professor Cao Yi why no mention in the Korean war exhibition of the germ warfare allegations against the US forces occupying the north until driven out by the People’s Liberation Army.

“The veracity of those charges is under investigation and no firm conclusion has yet been reached,” she frankly replied.

A visit to Shougang Industrial Park on the outskirts of Beijing revealed how human ingenuity can preserve and utilise the relics of an industrial past.

Ultra-modern offices and exhibition spaces blend together — inside and outside — with the iron shell of enormous blast furnace number two (of five), in an attractive complex which once employed 100,000 workers but more recently hosted some events of the 2022 Winter Olympics.  

Over the weekend, our delegation also had the opportunity to witness some of the wonders of ancient China, including Beijing’s Imperial Palace and the Great Wall to the city’s north-west. Trekking to the hilltop battlements proved to be thirsty work for the Canadian, Irish and British and Scandinavian contingents.

The last full day of the visit began with a full, frank and hugely informative talk on the application of scientific socialism to China’s path of development.

At the CPC central committee party school, Professor Guo Qiang explained that Chinese modernisation in this new era does not contradict the country’s history and traditions: “The CPC has confidence in China’s history and culture, but this is based on Marxism not emotion.

“There are shadows on our nation’s past, negative aspects and the like, but our path of modernisation carries forward the positive aspects.”

He highlighted the most significant aspects of China’s modernisation: that “common prosperity” means sharing the material, cultural and ethical benefits of modernisation with all the people of China and internationally — not only prosperity for the few; that young people in China face the future with hope (how very different from so many of our youth in modern Britain!); green modernisation does not mean “pollute first and clean up later,” unlike so much Western capitalist industrialisation; and that China’s development is peaceful, without a history of wars, colonisation and plunder.

Guo emphasised the significance of modernisation for women. Equality has been enshrined in law since 1949, bringing the promise of emancipation after thousands of years of medieval subordination, but it was modernisation and prosperity that would enable women to participate fully in China’s economic, political and cultural life.

He outlined the next stage in the country’s socialist modernisation, which is to prioritise meeting people’s material needs through consumption-led growth, assisted by greater self-reliance and breakthroughs in science and technology.

The emphasis from 2035 will shift to realising political, democratic, social, cultural and ecological as well as economic goals by 2049 — the centenary of the People’s Republic (New China).  

Following his presentation, the professor then spent almost two hours responding to questions from his audience.

The foreign guests heard about the devolution of powers and resources to local communities; how the CPC-led trade unions protect the economic rights of workers while the CPC is the political representative of the working class; the big improvements in air quality — notably in Beijing — and the rapid development of wind and solar power ahead of schedule; and about private capital’s major role in production, employment and tax generation, but under strict regulation and monitored by CPC, trade union and mass organisations.

Land and most energy, transport, banking, armaments and mass media corporations are in full or majority state ownership.

My question about the absence of women in the top leadership of the CPC appeared to strike a chord with women academics and party officials in the room.

Only 10 of 205 central committee members elected at the 20th party congress last October are women, although they comprise almost one-third of the CPC membership. All 24 members of the Politburo and its standing committee are men.

Guo said this deficit is a topic of discussion inside the party. Many in the CPC leadership are over 60 and attended university 40 years ago when there were very few female students — itself the result of bad and reactionary elements in traditional Chinese culture, he explained.

Huge changes are under way in education, with women filling more than half of all university and college places.

“Today, the younger generation has a strong sense of gender equality,” Guo declared, “although it might still take a few decades for half of China’s political leaders to be women, as we now see in the Nordic countries.”

Would quotas help? They could be to the disadvantage of women in education, he suggested.

The international’s final engagement took place at the National Archives of Publications and Culture, a modern and impressive complex on an old quarry site at the foot of the Yan mountains, north of Beijing.

There we joined the opening ceremony for two world conferences about to take place: one for friendship societies and associated academics; the other for Sinologists, those who specialise in the study of China past and present.

Australian professor Colin Mackerras delivered an impassioned speech in English and fluent Mandarin, without notes, deploring the grotesquely distorted picture of China presented by Western politicians and the mass media.

His call for friendship and understanding in place of confrontation and ignorance found a loud echo in the applause of hundreds of guests.

The keynote address by China’s vice-president Han Zheng commended his country’s Global Civilisation, Security and Development Initiatives, the last of which has now been adopted by the UN.

He added: “Chinese modernisation has enriched and developed a new form of human civilisation, opened up a new road for the development of civilisations, and brought new opportunities for closer mutual learning among civilisations.”

That seemed an appropriate note on which to end the formal proceedings of such a memorable visit to China by the Communist parties of Britain, Ireland, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Australia, Canada and the US and the Friends of Socialist China.

Robert Griffiths is general secretary of the Communist Party of Britain and led the international delegation to China.