The First National Congress of the Communist Party of China

The Founding Congress of the Communist Party of China was held from July 23 to 31, 1921, at 106 Wangzhi Road (now 76 Xingye Road) in the French Concession district of Shanghai. Due to the information that secret police was keenly searching to find the meeting hall which was the French Concession district and that they came precariously near, the meeting was quickly relocated.

The party organizations in China and in Japan sent a total of 13 delegates to the congress: Li Da and Li Hanjun from Shanghai, Dong Biwu and Chen Tanqiu from Wuhan, Mao Zedong and He Shuheng from Changsha, Wang Jinmei and Deng Enming from Jinan, Zhang Guotao and Liu Renjing from Beijing, Chen Gongbo from Guangzhou, Zhou Fohai from Japan, and Bao Huiseng, a delegate appointed by Chen Duxiu. Maring and Nikolsky, the delegates of the Communist International, also attended the Congress. Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao, the principal founders of the Party, were not present due to their busy schedules.

The Congress discussed the Party’s program and resolutions in some detail. It decided the name of the Party as the "Communist Party of China". The Congress stipulated that the party program was: “With the revolutionary army of the proletariat, to overthrow the capitalistic classes and to reconstruct the nation from the labor class, until class distinctions are eliminated; to adopt the dictatorship of the proletariat in order to complete the end of class struggle—abolishing classes; to overthrow the private ownership of capital, to confiscate all the productive means, such as machines, land, buildings, semi-manufactured products, and so on, and to entrust them to social ownership; to unite with the Third International.”

The Party program adopted by the Congress set the conditions of Party membership, the cultivation of Party members, the organization and discipline of the Party. Regarding the conditions of Party membership, it was stipulated that anyone who recognized the program and policies of the Party and was willing to become a devoted member could be accepted as a member upon introduction by a member of the Party, but before joining the Party, he or she must had broken all ties with parties and groups that attempted to oppose the Party program. After joining the Party, a new member became an alternate member and was subject to the inspection of the Party organization. After the inspection period was completed, the member was discussed and approved by the Party organization before he or she could be turned into a full member. The Party program stipulated that a unified organization and strict discipline be established throughout the Party, and that local organizations must have been supervised and guided by the Central Committee.

The Congress adopted the "Resolution on the Present Tasks", which determined that the central tasks of the Party after its founding were to organize trade unions and educate workers, to strengthen the study and leadership of trade unions and the workers' movement, and to lead the workers' movement, and set forth regulations or requirements for the tasks, guidelines, policies and methods of the Party's leadership of the workers' movement.

Considering the actual situation that the number of Party members was few and the local organization was not yet strong, the Congress decided not to set up the Central Executive Committee for the time being, but only to establish the Central Bureau as the temporary leading body of the Central Committee. The Congress elected the Central Bureau, the leading body of the Party, composed of Chen Duxiu, Zhang Guotao and Li Da. Chen Duxiu was elected as the Secretary of the Central Bureau, Zhang Guotao was in charge of organizational work and Li Da was in charge of publicity work.

The Congress formally proclaimed the foundation of the Communist Party of China, which was a groundbreaking event in the history of China and the development of the Chinese nation. From then on, a completely new and unified proletarian Party with Marxism-Leninism as its guiding principle and the realization of socialism and communism as its goal emerged in China, and the Chinese revolution gained a strong leading force and a new face.