Founding of the Communist Party of China

After the May Fourth Movement, Marxism spread widely in China, early communist groups were set up in many places, and conditions were ripe to found a unified national Communist Party. On 23 July 1921 the First National Congress of the Communist Party of China opened at 106 Wangzhi Road (now 76 Xingye Road) in the Shanghai French Concession. Thirteen delegates attended, representing more than 50 Party members nationwide: Mao Zedong, Dong Biwu, Chen Tanqiu, He Shuheng, Wang Jinmei, Deng Enming, Li Da, Li Hanjun, Zhang Guotao, Liu Renjing, Chen Gongbo, Zhou Fohai and Bao Huiseng. The Comintern representatives Maring and Nikolsky also attended. Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao did not attend for various reasons. On the evening of 30 July the meeting place was searched by French Concession police and the congress was interrupted; its last session moved to a pleasure boat on South Lake in Jiaxing, Zhejiang. The congress adopted the Party's first program, named it the “Communist Party of China”, and set its goals as overthrowing bourgeois rule, establishing a dictatorship of the proletariat, abolishing class distinctions and realizing communism, with organizing and leading the labor movement as its central task. It elected the Central Bureau, with Chen Duxiu as secretary. The founding of the Party was an epoch-making event in Chinese history: the Chinese revolution now had a strong leading core and a completely new look. 1 July was later designated the Party's founding anniversary. The site of the First Congress in Shanghai and the Red Boat on South Lake in Jiaxing are important revolutionary memorials.