China’s Xi Jinping warns Beijing will not be ‘bullied'

Marking 100 years since the founding of the China’s Communist Party, Xi Jinping told an audience on Tiananmen Square that the party was the only force capable of ensuring the country’s rise, and issued a rousing warning against any foe that stood in the way.

In a speech that cast the Communist Party as a saviour, fighting off foreign and domestic oppression, Xi said the party’s continued rule was essential to ensuring that China stayed on course to becoming a wealthy and advanced world power.

“The Chinese people have never bullied, oppressed or enslaved the peoples of other countries, not in the past, not now, and not in the future,” he said.

“At the same time, the Chinese people will never allow foreign forces to bully, oppress or enslave us,” he added. “Whoever nurses delusions of doing that will crack their heads and spill blood on the Great Wall of steel built from the flesh and blood of 1.4 billion Chinese people.”

Xi’s warning brought rousing shouts and applause from tens of thousands of people on Tiananmen Square handpicked to hear his keynote speech for the party’s centenary. Xi paid tribute to the party’s revolutionary founders, but his focus was on the Communist Party’s future role as a vehicle for “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.”

China, he said, was a force for peace in the world and wanted peaceful unification with Taiwan, the self-governed, democratically run island that Beijing claims as its territory. But in words that brought loud applause, Xi warned against what he called “schemes” to achieve full independence for Taiwan.

“Nobody should underestimate the staunch determination, firm will and powerful capacity of the Chinese people to defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity.