In 2021 the CCP did something its Soviet counterpart never got to do: it celebrated its centenary. Beijing made no secret of its adherence to an ideological heritage that ran by way of Marx and Engels to Lenin, Stalin, and Mao. Xi Jinping could hardly have been more emphatic about the need to cleave to this tradition and no clearer in his condemnation of Mikhail Gorbachev for losing hold of the Soviet Union’s ideological compass.
