The fact that the Chinese Communist Party, with its appalling record of contempt for freedom and the sanctity of human life, has attained a century of existence is, by any objective moral criteria, a cause for deep regret and sombre reflection. But, of course, they don’t take that view in Beijing, where the world has been treated to the spectacle of the Communist Party of China, led by general secretary Xi Jinping, celebrating its rise to power between 1921 and 1949, followed by its ruthless retention of monopolist control during the intervening 72 years.