The People’s Republic of China celebrated its 75th anniversary on Tuesday, October 1. The anniversary is both political spectacle and the advent of a week-long holiday marked by decidedly apolitical leisure travel. On the eve of the anniversary, Xi Jinping delivered a speech in front of 3,000 guests, both foreign and domestic, in the Great Hall of the People. At The Guardian, Helen Davidson wrote about the relatively muted political celebrations in Beijing: 

“The road ahead will not be smooth, there will definitely be difficulties and obstacles, and we may encounter major tests such as high winds and rough seas, or even stormy waves,” said Xi, who has tightened control over the CCP and Chinese people during his rule.

[…] “Taiwan is China’s sacred territory, and the people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait are connected by blood, and blood is thicker than water,” Xi said during the speech, according to China’s state media. “No one can stop the wheel of history.”

[…] The banquet where Xi spoke was one of few events marking the 75th anniversary. Tuesday was a surprisingly muted affair marked in Beijing only by a flag raising ceremony in Tiananmen Square. Past milestone years have seen opulent ceremonies and big military parades. [Source]

The holiday was decidedly less muted in Hong Kong—now governed by “patriots” and under the control of Beijing after the passage of Article 23. Public dissent about Chinese rule in Hong Kong has been criminalized. In September, a man was sentenced to 14 months in prison for wearing a “seditious t-shirt.” Despite the risk of imprisonment, there were still subtle signs of dissent. One 51-year-old man was arrested for vandalizing light fixtures placed near subway stations to celebrate the holiday.

 Chinese state media also highlighted National Day celebrations in the United States, Japan, and the U.K. Senior officials and leaders from across the world congratulated China on the anniversary—with the notable exception of the United States State Department, which has traditionally done so. [Editor’s note: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken released a terse statement of well wishes on October 2, the day after National Day.] Senior U.S. officials did attend a reception hosted by the Chinese embassy in Washington, D.C., where they offered congratulations. 

On the mainland, national week is also a major consumer holiday. State media headlines tout record travel and box office receipts. Patriotic blockbusters are the standard holiday fare, but audience enthusiasm for them may be waning. The expected splurging comes amidst deep economic woes, slightly tempered by a resurgent stock market, courtesy of historic stimulus measures taken last week in Beijing. At Reuters, Sophie Yu and Casey Hall reported that there will be a surge in travel but that tourists will be more cost-conscious than in years past: 

“It would be a good result if tourism spending remains flat with last year,” said Liu Simin, an official with the tourism arm of Beijing-based research institute China Society for Futures Studies. “People are more willing to travel when the economy is good, but when there is no economic growth, there is no tourism growth.”

[…] “There is no toll fee during holiday so we’ll drive instead of taking the train,” [Wang Xin, a 45-year-old office worker in Beijing] said. “Better not to spend unnecessary money when the economy is like this. Many people are losing jobs and at my age if it happened to me, I wouldn’t be able to find another one.”

[…] Data from travel platform Flight Master shows domestic air ticket prices are expected to be 21% cheaper than the same period last year, while international economy class airfares will be 25% lower than 2023 and 7% lower than 2019.

It predicts international destinations of choice for outbound travelers will continue to be short-haul Asian hubs, such as Japan, South Korea, Thailand and Singapore. [Source]

Unmentioned in the hoopla was the demise of the former Soviet Union, a long-time preoccupation of Chinese leaders and scholars. The P.R.C.’s former benefactor, later rival, and finally ally, the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, 74 years after its founding. The P.R.C. has now outlasted it. Chinese scholars and politicians have closely studied the lessons of the U.S.S.R.’s collapse, seeking to stave off a similar fate. The Economist argued that Xi attributes the failure of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to a lack of ideological and organizational discipline, a conclusion which has shaped his leadership of the Chinese Communist Party: 

Mr Xi has also kept on using the special-challenges term. It was the subject of a classified speech he gave in January 2023 to the party’s Central Committee. Part of it was published in March this year. “As the party grows larger, some may form small cliques or factions or engage in behavior that undermines party unity and fighting strength,” he said. “A fortress is most easily breached from within. The only ones who can defeat us are ourselves.” Most analysts agree that there are no obvious splits in the party today, but their possible re-emergence clearly worries him.

In August Mr Xi mentioned Soviet history again. The occasion was the 120th anniversary of the birth of Deng Xiaoping, who launched China’s “reform and opening” policy in the late 1970s. He praised Deng for “resolutely opposing the turmoil” in China in 1989 “against the background of the disintegration of the Soviet Union and dramatic changes in Eastern Europe”. He quoted Deng as saying: “No one can crush us.”

[…] Mr Xi appears more fixated on the Soviet party’s loss of ideological and organizational discipline. This is evident in the huge effort he has made to rebuild the party at the grassroots, to beef up its presence in private firms and to enforce total obedience to his commands among party members. After the Soviet collapse Deng and his immediate successors abandoned talk of political reform but still tolerated limited experiments, such as allowing small ngos to help victims of injustices. Mr Xi has crushed civil society. Chinese academics make clear why, arguing that Western-backed NGOs played a role in pushing the Soviet party over the edge. [Source]

Updated: An earlier version of this article stated that the United States did not send China well wishes on its 75th anniversary. After the original publication of this article, Secretary of State Blinken issued a short statement. The article has been updated to reflect this.