The decision to build the museum came after the 19th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, when the Central Committee determined that the party's history needed a dedicated institution capable of presenting it comprehensively. Seven design firms competed. Three were shortlisted. The winning proposal, from Beijing Institute of Architectural Design Co., Ltd., broke ground on September 10, 2018, and was completed on May 5, 2021, involving more than 200 work units and nearly 50,000 people. The building's footprint, viewed from above, traces a Chinese character that signifies the party as the vanguard of the Chinese working class. The exterior uses a traditional colonnade structure, an intentional reference to classical Chinese architectural principles. Chang Shana, who had participated in the design of the Great Hall of the People decades earlier, led the team responsible for the building's decorative elements: the capitals, pedestals, architraves, lattice walls, copper doors, and emblem.

Among the museum's most significant holdings is the first Five-Star Red Flag raised at the founding ceremony of the People's Republic, activated by a button press on October 1, 1949. Nearby, visitors encounter Mao Zedong's original drafting and Zhou Enlai's handwritten inscription for the Monument to the People's Heroes, documents that connect this museum to the obelisk standing several kilometers south in Tiananmen Square. Li Dazhao's autobiography, written after his arrest, sits alongside the gallows used for his execution. Chen Wangdao's translation of The Communist Manifesto, the text that introduced Marxist thought to Chinese readers, occupies its own case. The collection also includes the Old Summer Palace bronze heads, artifacts looted during the Anglo-French destruction of the palace in 1860 and returned to China over the following century and a half. Each object is presented not merely as a relic but as evidence in an ongoing argument about the party's role in Chinese history.

In the museum's lobby, a 600-square-meter lacquer painting called Ode to the Great Wall stretches across the entrance space, assembled from 100 individual lacquer boards. Created by Cheng Xiangjun, a professor at Tsinghua University's School of Arts, the painting sets the tone for what follows: nearly two-thirds of the museum's floor space is devoted to exhibition halls. The scale is deliberate. This is one of the largest museum buildings in China, designed to match the ambition of its subject. The remaining third of the building houses administrative offices, storage, and support facilities. The museum is managed by the Central Propaganda Department, placing it firmly within the party's communication apparatus rather than under the Ministry of Culture, a distinction that shapes how the collection is curated and presented.

Architecture communicates, and the Museum of the Communist Party of China communicates intentionally. Its position near the Olympic Green links it to Beijing's international ambitions, the 2008 and 2022 Olympic venues visible from its grounds. Its classical colonnade references Chinese building traditions while its scale and materials announce modernity. The 28 pillars on each long facade encode a specific historical claim: that the years between 1921 and 1949 constitute a coherent narrative of struggle leading to triumph. Six pillars on the north and south sides provide structural and visual balance. From the air, the building reads as one of the larger structures in Beijing's northern development zone, its symmetrical form and regular colonnade distinguishing it from the commercial and residential towers that surround it. Whether one reads the building as a museum, a monument, or a political instrument depends on the visitor, but the architects clearly intended it to function as all three.