As China’s Communist party celebrates its hundred years anniversary, President Xi Jinping says that the era of China being bullied was over and that anyone who tried to separate the party and the Chinese people was doomed to failure.

The Chinese Leader told crowds gathered in Beijing, Thursday.

Speaking at Tiananmen Square, home of the portrait of Mao Zedong, Xi for more than an hour, spoke of the party’s successes since its creation in Shanghai in 1921.

Accompanied by the party’s senior leaders both past and present, President Xi Jinping enumerated measures the party had adopted to free China from an “exploitative” feudal system, to creating a socialist market economy brimming with vitality and eliminated absolute poverty.

“Only socialism can save China, and only socialism with Chinese characteristics can develop China,” said Xi.

The celebrations come at a time when Beijing is under pressure over trade – and tensions have risen with countries including the United States and Australia – and its policies in the far western region of Xinjiang, as well as Hong Kong and Tibet.

China, now the world’s second-largest economy and Xi considered the country’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong, has warned that any attempt to separate the party and the people was bound to fail.

While China welcome friendly suggestions from all around the world”, the Chinese leader said the country would not accept arrogant lectures.

The loudest rounds of applause and cheering came when Xi said that Chinese people would no longer allow any alien powers to bully and oppress us.