President Xi Jinping struck a defiant tone in a speech marking the Communist Party’s 100-year anniversary, calling China’s quest to gain control of Taiwan a “historic mission” and warning the country’s adversaries to avoid standing in the way of his government.

In an address Thursday from Tiananmen Square before thousands of party officials, Xi hailed the party’s successes over the past century and said China wanted to promote peace in the world. Yet he quickly added that Beijing wouldn’t be lectured by anyone even while it’s open to “constructive criticism.”

He called the move to unify China and Taiwan “an unshakable commitment” and vowed “resolute action to utterly defeat any attempt toward ‘Taiwan independence.’” Although the language is similar to what party leaders have said in the past, the comments come as Beijing steps up military drills around Taiwan at the same time as calls grow in the U.S. for more actions to help defend the democratic government in Taipei.

“The Chinese people will never allow any foreign forces to bully, coerce and enslave us,” Xi said to rousing applause in the nationally televised address. “Whoever attempts to do that, will surely break their heads on the steel Great Wall built with the blood and flesh of 1.4 billion of Chinese people.”

While Xi’s remarks were aimed at building nationalist sentiment among the nation’s citizens, the tone is likely to further alarm other countries that have clashed with China both in Asia and the West. A Pew Research Center poll released this week found that negative views of China remain near record highs across the developed world, as higher marks for Beijing’s handling of the coronavirus were offset by concerns about its human rights record.

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Most of Xi’s speech focused on the accomplishments of the Communist Party in the past 100 years, including paying respect to former leaders Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. He declared that China had built a “moderately prosperous society,” officially marking the completion of a long-held party goal after China’s economy expanded about 50 times since the mid-1970s to become the world’s second-largest behind the U.S.

Wearing a gray Mao-style suit, Xi cast his party of more than 95 million people as indispensable to restoring the Asian nation to a position of global strength after a “century of humiliation” due to imperial invasions and internal strife. “Through tenacious struggle, the party and the Chinese people showed the world that the Chinese people have stood up, and that the time when the Chinese nation could be bullied and abused by others was gone forever,” he said.

The ceremony was one of several choreographed events in recent weeks to mark the party’s founding in 1921 by Mao and a handful of other revolutionaries. Xi spoke to a large, enthusiastic crowd in Tiananmen Square -- where soldiers used deadly force against student-led demonstrators in 1989 -- in a ceremony peppered with military references.

Minutes before Xi started speaking, fighter jets streaked through the sky above the square, and Xi reviewed members of the armed forces in dress uniform as they marched past. During his remarks, Xi pledged to speed up modernization of the armed forces, though he said the party intends promote peace.

“We have never bullied the people of any other country and we never will,” Xi said.

Xi, 68, also said the party worked to serve the people, not any privileged groups or special interests. The comments come after his government has maneuvered to rein in large tech companies like Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.

“As we fought to consolidate our leadership over the country, we have in fact been fighting to earn the people’s support,” Xi said.

Xi is expected to seek a third term as leader at a twice-a-decade party congress next year after it scrapped presidential term limits in 2018. Staying on would allow him to continue working toward his pledge to build a “modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced and harmonious” by 2049.

The goal of building a moderately prosperous society, or “xiaokang shehui,” has been held up by every leader since Deng, whose embrace of markets and foreign investment in the late 1970s has been cited as evidence of the party’s pragmatism following the famines and purges of Mao’s mass political campaigns.

Although Xi’s grip over domestic politics is stronger than ever, China’s rise is facing increasing resistance from the U.S. and its allies who accuse the president of leading it down a more confrontational and authoritarian path.

— With assistance by Colum Murphy, Lucille Liu, and Jing Li