The CCP’s Big Trick: Reshaping Historical Narratives to Justify Power

By Carl J Chan

In the grand theatre of authoritarian power, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has mastered a particular art: rewriting history to preserve its rule. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the mythologized story of China’s “reform and opening up.” What is globally hailed as one of the most consequential economic transformations in modern history is, domestically, a political illusion—an act of historical erasure and narrative capture.

The true origin of reform was not ideological enlightenment from above, but desperation from below. The Party tells a different story, of course—a tale of wise leaders with visionary plans. But peel back the curtain, and another truth emerges: one shaped by famine, fear, and the silent resistance of ordinary people forced into dangerous creativity for the sake of survival.

I. From Catastrophe to Resistance

To understand the fraudulence of the CCP’s official narrative, we must begin with the wreckage left by Mao Zedong’s campaigns. After the devastation of the Great Leap Forward, which starved tens of millions to death, and the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, which dismantled institutions and destroyed trust in governance, China was a broken nation. Fields lay fallow, factories rusted, and families feared the knock of ideological purges more than they feared hunger.

It was in this post-apocalyptic political landscape that something remarkable happened. In 1978, in the impoverished village of Xiaogang, Anhui Province, eighteen desperate farmers secretly signed a “survival or death contract.” In it, they divided their collective land into private plots—illegally—and vowed to farm for their own families while still delivering quotas to the state. If one was arrested or executed, the others would raise his children.

This act was neither sanctioned nor inspired by the Party. It was a rebellion against the system, born from starvation and the instinct to live. But it worked. Harvests improved. Word spread. Similar private initiatives began to sprout across the country—even as authorities continued to arrest and harass those who violated the collective economy.

And then, once the results became undeniable, the Party pivoted. What was once illegal and “capitalist deviation” became, overnight, policy. What had been punished was now praised—on one condition: the credit must go to the Party, not the people.

II. Turning Rebellion into a Gift: The Party’s Narrative Coup

The CCP did not invent “reform and opening up.” It appropriated it. What began as grassroots resistance was rebranded as top-down wisdom. In official textbooks, speeches, and propaganda, the reforms were not the result of desperation or people’s ingenuity under oppression. They were presented as the strategic foresight of Deng Xiaoping and the Party’s “self-correcting ability.”

Thus, a moment of institutional failure was reimagined as evidence of institutional strength. The dictatorship that nearly destroyed the country became the savior that rescued it. Historical memory was not just manipulated—it was reversed.

This is the CCP’s greatest trick: it creates crises, punishes those who resist, and then retroactively blesses the survivors—claiming the reform was its plan all along.

Today, young Chinese are often unaware of the Xiaogang villagers. They are not taught about the arrests of private traders in the 1970s or the underground economic networks that kept cities alive before markets were legal. Instead, they grow up with sanitized slogans: “Without the Communist Party, there would be no new China.” The state’s control over education, media, and digital space ensures that alternative histories fade into silence.

III. The Political Utility of Memory Manipulation

Why does the Party need to control the past so tightly? Because legitimacy without democracy must be manufactured, not earned.

In free societies, governments derive their authority from consent and competition. In China, the CCP derives it from historical inevitability—the idea that it alone can guide China’s destiny, that it alone has the wisdom to adapt and lead. This is why even its errors—like the Cultural Revolution—must be repackaged as “necessary lessons” in the Party’s heroic journey.

Acknowledging that reform was forced upon the Party by desperate citizens would destroy that myth. It would reveal that real change in China came not from “great leadership,” but from bottom-up resistance—often against the Party’s will.

This is why the Party fears memory. This is why it censors archives, jails historians, and criminalizes discussion of events like June Fourth (Tiananmen Square), the Great Famine, and even the private agricultural reforms of Xiaogang. A single honest narrative could unravel the tapestry of lies upon which its power rests.

IV. A Warning to the World

The CCP’s historical trickery should serve as a warning, not just to Chinese citizens, but to the world. As Beijing exports its authoritarian model—of surveillance capitalism, digital censorship, and nationalism cloaked in economic success—it also exports a philosophy: that truth is negotiable, that the past is a tool, and that power can be made permanent if you rewrite the story often enough.

In a world of rising autocracies and democratic backsliding, the Chinese example stands as a chilling reminder: the greatest threat to freedom is not brute force, but the erasure of memory. A society that cannot remember how it was betrayed will not know when it is betrayed again.

V. Conclusion: Recovering History, Reclaiming Agency

History is not a weapon to be wielded by the powerful—it is a lifeline for the powerless. To recover the real story of China’s reform is not merely to correct the record; it is to restore dignity to the farmers, workers, and dissidents who risked their lives to plant the seeds of freedom.

The CCP may have won the battle of the narrative for now, but the truth is never completely buried. It waits, patient and stubborn, in dusty archives, whispered stories, and the memories of those who survived.

The day will come when that truth rises again—and when it does, it will not be the Party’s name that history remembers, but the names of those who refused to lie.