Hello and welcome to the intelligence from The Economist.

Today, we'll be taking a hard look at the Chinese Communist Party as it marks its 100th anniversary,

how it came to be and how it came to power, how Xi Jinping has

made the party and the state indistinguishable, and how the party's ubiquity ensures that

even China's hip-hop scene has been co-opted for propaganda.

It's no surprise that Beijing was the site of massive, well-orchestrated celebrations today.

Our Beijing bureau chief David Rennie was there, herded by the foreign ministry hours before it all began.

China's Communist Party threw itself a hundredth birthday party, and they did that in Tiananmen Square, which is the ceremonial

heart of China. The crowd was handpicked. They were almost all party members. I was sitting next

some members of the People's Congress for the city of Beijing. There was a lot of singing

of Communist Party songs and everyone around me knew all of the words of those, you know,

greatest hits like, you know, without the Communist Party, there would be no China.

So it was this mix of the very grand and formal and the kind of national, but also this strange feeling of a kind of private family gathering of a party celebrating in the open its absolute control of this giant country.

And presumably this gathering was also very carefully controlled.

Very interesting that this is a very confident party,

but it's the Chinese Communist Party,

and so there's always an element of paranoia and extreme control.

Not only we were all security checked multiple times,

but this is also a China that is determined to have zero cases of COVID.

So although there haven't been cases for months

in Beijing, we were all made to quarantine for 24 hours before we set foot on the square.

We all had to wear face masks. We were all COVID tested multiple times. And in fact,

...