What is the current state of Communist China in the 21st century?

China’s Communist Party turns a century old this July, a milestone that Beijing is celebrating with a crescendo of fireworks, theatrics and a fervent campaign to honor its revolutionary past.

The party has often lurched between tragedy and triumph between its birth as an underground movement and its current dominance over the world’s most populous nation. It seized power in 1949, and its early decades in government were tumultuous, with Mao Zedong launching radical purges and a disastrous industrial program that led to one of the deadliest famines in history.

Mao’s death in 1976 precipitated political and economic changes under Deng Xiaoping that would transform an impoverished nation into a global economic powerhouse.