The Communist Party of China (CCP), better known as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is the ruling party of the People's Republic of China. It was founded in 1921 by Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao, but its most famous leader was Chairman Mao Zedong, who led the communists to victory against Japan during World War II and in 1949 against the Kuomintang during the Chinese Civil War. The CCP became the ruling party of the single-party state after struggling against the Japanese occupation and the rival Kuomintang party, whose leader Chiang Kai-shek had organized the persecution of his sometimes allies/enemies in the CCP. During the 1950s, the "Great Leap Forward" industrialization program resulted in millions of deaths through famine and exhaustion, and the Communist Party cracked down on Chinese traditions during the "Cultural Revolution" of the 1960s and 1970s. In 1989, the party was criticized for its suppression of democracy with the violent quelling of the Tiananmen Square protests. The CCP's programme evolved from communism to socialism under Deng Xiaoping, using a capitalist mode of production and socialist economic policies to build one of the world's strongest economies; the socialist reformists claimed that "socialism with Chinese characteristics" just meant that China was in its "primary stage of socialism" and on its way to full communism. The Chinese Communist Party abandoned Maoism in favor of "Socialism with Chinese characteristics", allowing for widespread economic growth that made China a major economic rival of the United States. The CCP also amplified Chinese nationalism during the 21st century as a means of rallying popular support amid declining economic prosperity in China and rising tensions with the United States.
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