Last week, Xi Jinping gave himself full Marx. The Chinese Communist party’s sixth plenum, a gathering of top political cadres, passed a resolution on “Certain Questions in the Party’s History”, in which Xi’s system of thought was defined as “Marxism for the 21st century”. Not only that, but that it also served as “the essence of the Chinese culture and China’s spirit”.

These are not terms that sound natural in English, but their significance is immense, because only two previous resolutions of this sort have ever been passed – in 1945 and 1981. The resolutions on party history are meant to provide a definitive statement on the CCP’s record in governing China. The 1945 resolution sealed Mao Zedong’s status as the definitive party leader, ahead of his victory in the civil war against Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists four years later. The 1981 resolution was more intriguing, because it was a very rare admission of fault by the party itself; its language was tortuous but it consisted of a grudging apology to the nation for the horrors of the Cultural Revolution.