The Art of the Party: 1st National Congress of the CPC

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"The Art of the Party" series shows you the historic moments of the Party in the run-up to the 100th anniversary of the Party's founding.

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This oil painting entitled "Setting Sail - the First National Congress of the Communist Party of China" was created by Chinese artists He Hongzhou and Huang Faxiang in 2009.

It shows delegates of the Communist Party of China (CPC) boarding a boat on Nanhu Lake in China's Jiaxing city in 1921 to hold a meeting.

Mao Zedong, who later became the top CPC leader, was among them.

That meeting marked the establishment of the CPC.

As Marxism spread across China after the May Fourth Movement of 1919, local Chinese Communist groups took shape in China's major cities and even in Japan and France.

Conditions for founding a unified national party were ripe by 1921.

On July 23, 1921, 13 delegates from across the country gathered in Shanghai to hold the first National Congress of the CPC.

The Congress was convened in secret at a delegate's home in the French concession.

But on the last day of the meeting, with police closing in on their clandestine assembly, delegates were forced to act quickly.

They suspended the meeting and regrouped in Zhejiang Province several days later.

To avoid police search this time, the delegates rented a pleasure boat, which came to be known as the "Red Boat", and sailed it to the center of Nanhu Lake.

That's where they concluded the Congress, on the boat depicted in the oil painting.

At the Congress, delegates elected the Central Bureau of the Party and passed the Party's first constitution and a resolution on the Current Work. The CPC's journey to shape China's future had begun.

The CPC had only about 50 members in mid-1921. By 2019, the number had grown to 91.914 million.

In 1938, the first day of July was officially designated as the birth of the CPC.

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