A grand gathering to commemorate the 200th birth anniversary of Karl Marx was held in Beijing on Friday.

Marx, one of the most influential revolutionaries, philosophers, economists and political theorists in human history, is best known for his works "The Communist Manifesto" and "Das Kapital." 

His political and philosophical thought has formed the theoretical base for modern international communism. “The Communist Manifesto," originally known as the "Manifesto of the Communist Party," has served as a guiding principle for the Communist movement.

Marx and Friedrich Engels's theories about society, economics and politics are collectively understood as Marxism. 

Marxism is the culmination of Marx and Engels's great, complete and strict revolutionary theories, formed after they critically studied and extracted the core of German classical philosophy; classic English political economics; French socialism, especially the three utopian socialists doctrines; analyzed the rise of capitalism and the fundamental contradiction movements in capitalist society; and summed up the experience and lessons of workers' movements during the rise of capitalism.

Marxism and The Communist Manifesto retain vitality in China. 

The Communist Party of China has combined the basic principles of Marxism with the realities of new China (the People's Republic of China founded in 1949) to bring historical achievements as well as deep and fundamental historical changes to the country, Chinese President Xi Jinping said at the gathering on Friday. Xi reviewed the great revolutionary and philosopher's life in his speech.

Marx was born on May 5, 1818 to a lawyer family in the German city of Trier (then in Rhenish Prussia). 

After he received a doctorate degree from the University of Jena, he moved to Cologne in 1842 where he wrote for Rheinische Zeitung (Rhineland News), attacking the authoritarian rule of the Prussian government and advocating the rights of the people.

After Marx moved to Paris with his wife Jenny Von Westphalen in 1843, he joined the mass movement of the working class and refined his theories.

The first edition of The Communist Manifesto, written jointly by Marx and Engels, was published in German in 1848. In 1867, the first volume of Das Kapital, known as the “bible of the working class,” was published.