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A Concise History of the Communist Party of China
Author	Hu Sheng
Written in	1994
Publisher	Foreign Languages Press
Type	Book
Source	Internet Archive

Seventy years have passed since the Communist Party of China came into being. Over these seventy years, the Party has rallied the Chinese people around it and waged an unremitting and heroic struggle for national liberation, social progress and the people’s well-being. The struggle has never been easy. To make a victorious revolution and build a new society in a poor and backward country comprising a quarter of the earth’s population, the Communist Party of China performed feats that astonished the world, encountering seemingly overwhelming difficulties and at times suffering major setbacks. But difficulties or setbacks of any kind could never hold back its advance; they only made the Party more steadfast and more mature. The Chinese people have gained historic victories in revolution and socialist construction under the leadership of the Communist Parly, and today they are forging confidently ahead towards the great goal of socialist modernization. The record of the past shows that the Party serves the people heart and soul and that it can provide the leadership that will enable them to master their own destiny and to make the country strong and prosperous. Looking back over the past seventy years, the Chinese people are more convinced than ever that their choice of socialism as their goal and of the Communist Party to lead them there has been correct. Indeed, it is the inevitable product of China’s modern historical development. The rich store of experience embodied in these last seventy years of history was accumulated by pioneers who sought the truth under the most difficult circumstances with no precedent to guide them, and it was paid for in the blood of innumerable martyers. They deserve our ever enduring remembrance.

The Founding of the Communist Party of China

The Success and Failure of the Revolution of 1911

In the middle of the 19th century, China was plunged in untold suffering and humiliation under the oppression of foreign capitalist and imperialist powers and of domestic feudal forces. The country was deprived of its sovereignty, and its economic lifelines were in the hands of foreigners. Faced with aggression by the Western powers, the feudal and autocratic Qing Dynasty, which had reigned over China for two hundred years, took no effective measures to defend the country. On the contrary, it suppressed all trends towards political and social' progress and let the imperialist powers carve the country up at will. The Qing regime at its final stage, traitorous and corrupt, was detested by the people, because it strangled the country’s vitality and kept them in misery. The Chinese entered the 20th century with the national humiliation of seeing their capital city, Beijing, occupied by the Eight-Power Allied Forces sent by Britain, the United States, Germany, France, Russia, Japan, Italy and Austria. The Chinese nation seemed to be on the verge of extinction. The Chinese people, who had created a glorious and ancient civilization, could not endure such humiliation for long. In 1902, when the great writer Lu Xun was studying in Japan, he wrote these lines expressing the grief and indignation that filled the hearts of a great many Chinese patriots: “My heart cannot evade the arrow of the god of love. “A great storm is sweeping over my homeland in the darkness standmeCe ^ ^ ^ ^ stars’ but d° not nnder I offer my heart’s blood to my dear homeland ” It was the double oppression of imperialism and feudalism that misery ofThern SUffT"8 of lhe Cllinese nation and The mtsery of the Chinese people. That is what hindered all social development and political progress. How could the country commnld fhg" aggressi011 and wi" "“(“"a! independence’ How ed bv ; efe’ Td f0m *he darkness and France perpetuated by the feudal, autocratic regime? How could it be lifted out of poverty and backwardness and made prosperous and strong’ These were the principal questions that confronted semi-colonial semi-feudal China, the principal questions that the Chinese progressives kept turning over in their minds. Many brave men and women devoted themselves to the cause of b °rC thC foUnding of the Communist Party 1118 fhlnese bad ^ver ceased trying to change the destiny of then motherland. However, their repeated struggles the wars of resistance against foreign aggression the peasants’ Klngdom in middle of the TV . century the Reform Movement of 18981 and the Boxer Upnsmg (the Yi He Juan Movement) at the turn of the century which started from the lower strata of society and grew into a large-scale anti-imperialist patriotic movement — had all ended Sufd not bfattaiPnedn0tS that ,he" ideats Nevertheless, the wheel of history rolled on, constantly bringing new developments. As the national crisis deepened and new social forces, especially modern capitalist industry, began to grow in Chinese society, a new revolutionary movement was started Chfn^ eadership ot Sun Yat-sen, the forerunner of the Chinese democratic revolution. wn™uYat:S“,WaS .f great Patriot as well as a great democrat When he established the small revolutionary group Society for he Revival of China (Xing Zhong Hui) in Honolulu in 1894 he issued a clarion call for “the revival of China.” In 1905’ he sponsored the founding of the Chinese Revolutionary League (Zhongguo Tong Men Hui). The League put forward a comprehensive political programme for the establishment of a bourgeois democratic republic and worked hard to carry it out by revolutionary means. It pledged to “drive out the Tartars, revive the Chinese nation, establish a republic and equalize ownership of land.” The immediate objective of the revolution was to overthrow the government of the Qing Dynasty, which had already become a tool of the imperialist powers for the domination of China. Thus, the revolution was essentially anti-imperialist It called for the overthrow of the feudal monarchy that had reigned in China for two thousand years. Before this time, some people had been so influenced by European and American ideas that they questioned the monarchy, but they had never dared envisage its overthrow and the dismantling of the social system it represented. Sun Yat-sen, however, held up the ideal of a democratic republic and set a new objective for the Chinese people. From then on, they began to struggle consciously for the establishment ol an independent, democratic state. In Mao Zedong’s words Strictly speaking, China’s bourgeois-democratic revolution against imperialism and feudalism was begun by Dr. Sun YatRecalling it in 1924, the Manifesto of the 1st National Congress ot the Kuomintang of China stated: “The objective of the revoluuon was not merely to overthrow the Manchus, but to carry out the transformation of China after their overthrow,” that is, “to achieve in the political domain the transition from an autocractic system to a democratic system and in the economic domain the transition from handicraft production to capitalist production.”3 t is important to note that while many Chinese were eager to learn from the West, Sun Yat-sen had become aware of certain drawbacks in the capitalist system of the Western countries. His conclusion was that “Europe and America are strong, but their people are impoverished” and that “a social revolution will take place before long.” Influenced by the socialist movement rising in the West, Sun Yat-sen tried to add some colour of socialism to his programme, but whatever his intent, his proposal to “equalize "He"” ^ “ the dCTCl°pme"1 «PiFor several years following its establishment, the Chinese Revoluuonary League, together with other organizations under its influence, earned out revolutionary propaganda and agitation. Wi ifa8u? alhe]d Itself Wlth secret societies (especially the Triad Society and similar organizations in southern China ) and with the New Army (a modernized force organized by the government of 894095?and'!aSty IT ^ ddeat *" the Sin°-JaPancse War of 4 95) and launched a series of armed uprisings. The failure of each uprising expanded the influence of revolutionary ideas hatred ,hr0ughout the »nd deepened their hatred of the Qmg government. A revolutionary situation was taking shape across the country. The outbreak of the Revolution of 1911 and the success it attamed proved that the imperialist powers could not arb Si* control the destiny of China after all. The revolution was signifT cant not only because it overthrew the Qing Dynasty, but because t put an end to the autocracy that had reigned in China for “dtS of years and awakened the people to the concept of a democratic repubhe. One should never underestimate the role Chimf byithe ^V0lutI0n of 191 1 in Promoting social progress in China and in liberating the thinking of the Chinese people The Qing Dynasty had been not only the chief representative of the domestic feudal forces but also a tool employed by the foreign imperiahsts to dominate China. The people’s triumph over this teudal monarchy that had betrayed them destroyed the old reactionary order and paved the way for revolutionary struggles in the days to come. In this sense, the victory achieved in the Revolution of 1911 was tremendous. However, the Revolution of 191 1 also had obvious weaknesses, it 1 ailed to set forth an explicit and comprehensive political programme to combat foreign imperialist aggression and the weUreaihe0Cr! ? arouse lhe lab°uring masses who h t r ^ maJ°nty °f the Chinese Population; and it failed to form a strong revolutionary party that could success fully lead it to its logical conclusion. This was because the bourgeoisie in China was too feeble. It had ties with the imperialist and feudal forces that could not be completely severed, and it was almost totally divorced from the labouring masses. The bourgeois revolutionaries therefore had neither the courage nor the strength to carry the struggle against imperialism and feudalism to the end. The Revolution of 1911 ended in a compromise with the old forces. The imperialist forces in China were as strong as ever, and there was no great social upheaval in the countryside. The Republic of China was founded, but the fruit of revolution fell into the hands of the Northern warlords headed by Yuan Shikai, who was favoured by the imperialists. China was still a semi-colonial, semi-feudal society, still a country of dire poverty and backwardness. Sun Yat-sen said bitterly, “The political and social darkness and the corruption of every description are even worse than in the Qing Dynasty, and the people are becoming increasingly impoverished.”4 The revolution had not attained its desired goal, so in that sense it was a failure. Nevertheless, the Revolution of 1911 holds an honoured place in modern Chinese history. As historical materialists who uphold Marxism, members of the Communist Party of China will never torget the contributions made by all the revolutionary pioneers before the founding of the Party and as a matter of fact, the Revolution of 1911 was the most important revolution preceding the people’s revolution led by the CPC. Looking back over the entire course of China’s modern revolutionary history, we can see that the Revolution of 1911 did bear fruit after all. The success of that revolution encouraged the Chinese people to keep up their struggle. On the other hand, its failure taught the progressives among them that it was impossible to build a bourgeois republic under the historical conditions of the time. They came to realize that to win the independence and prosperity of the country and the freedom and happiness of the people, they had to explore a new path. Mao Zedong made clear the importance of the Revolution of 191 1 when he said, “While studying the history of the Communist Party of China, wc should study materials concerning the Revolution of 1911 and the May 4lh Movement before the founding of history1”^ °thcrwise’ we cannot understand the development It was only ten years between the outbreak of the Revolution ot 1911 and the founding of the Communist Party of China A most all of the first generation of CPC revolutionaries had taken part in the Revolution of 1911 or been deeply influenced y it. These veteran Communists and many democrats who later cooperated with the Communist Party took that revolution as their point of departure. Recalling his own ideological evolution the Communist Lin Boqu wrote: Before the Revolution of 1911, 1 believed that there would be peace and tranquillity across the land if only we overthrew the monarchy. But after I took part in the revolution and experienced setbacks over and over again, the goal of democracy I had been trying to attain was still far away. It was through bitter experience that I gradually came to realize I was in a blind alley and that I finally chose communism. This is not the experience of only one PerSL°n4?uany Pte0pie like me can be fouild in the revolutionary ranks. Thus, the victories of the new-democratic revolution and , socialism in China can be regarded as the continuation and development of the Revolution of 1911

The Early Stage of the New Cultural Movement and the Initial Dissemination of Marxism

After the failure of the Revolution of 1911, Chinese progressives were in despair, at a loss what to do. Their dreams were shattered, because the founding of the Republic of China did not ring about the desired national independence, democracy and social progress. In 1915, when World War I was at its height Japan seized the opportunity to put forward “Twenty-One Demands” in a bid to obtain exclusive control of China. Yuan Shikai, the chief of the Northern warlords, restored the monarchy and proclaimed himself emperor. Zhang Xun, a former senior official of the Qing Dynasty, supported an attempt by the dethroned Emperor Xuantong to stage a comeback. While the imperialist powers were in bitter rivalry in China, the domestic warlords were intensifying their internecine warfare to set up separatist regimes. Going against the trend of the times, certain intellectuals advocated the worship of Confucius and the study of the Confucian canon. One after another, dramatic events succeeded each other on the Chinese stage. Describing the circumstances of the time in broad outline, Mao Zedong wrote: “Their repeated struggles, including such a country-wide movement as the Revolution of 191 1, all ended in failure. Day by day, conditions in the country got worse, and life was made impossible. Doubts arose, increased and deepened.”7 The reality was grim. The people carried out hard struggles and made great sacrifices, but they did not obtain what they had anticipated. A bourgeois democratic republic was not a panacea for all the ills of China. Multiple political parties, the parliamentary system and other institutions copied from the West were tried out in the early years of the Republic of China, but they failed to solve any practical problems and only became instruments employed by different factions of warlords, bureaucrats and politicians in their scramble for power and profit. Utter despair replaced the previous hopes. Yet this bitter experience had its positive side for the progressives. Since they found the old road impassable, they began to look for a new way out. A greater revolutionary storm was brewing and would soon descend upon the land. The early stage of the new cultural movement — the period before the May 4th Movement of 1919 — presaged the coming storm. In September 1915 Chen Duxiu, who had participated in the Revolution of 1911, founded the magazine Youth (later renamed New Youth ) in Shanghai, touching off a new cultural movement. In January 1917 Cai Yuanpei became the President of Beijing University. He advocated the assimilation of all schools of thought, engaged Chen Duxiu as the Dean of Liberal Arts and invited many scholars with new ideas to join the faculty. The editorial board of New Youth moved to Beijing, and Li Dazhao, Lu Xun, Hu Shi, Qian Xuantong and Liu Bannong became members of the board and principal contributors. Thus Beijing University and New Youth became the main bastions of the new cultural movement. The ideologists active at the beginning of the movement summed up the experience of the Revolution of 191 1 and reflected on its failure. They came to the conclusion that the struggles tor national salvation waged by earlier revolutionaries had all ended in failure simply because the Chinese people, as the saying goes, had looked on indifferently as the house across the river went up in flames. Accordingly, they believed that to establish a republic worthy of the name, it was necessary to thoroughly remould the national character, and that if problems of ethics were not solved, politics and academic learning would be of no avail hey put forward the slogan, “Do away with superstitions!”, calling on the people to “break through the net of history,” “cast off the yoke of outworn doctrines” and “emancipate their thinking.” The ideologists of those days directed their main attack against the doctrines of Confucius, which had been the orthodox beliefs of feudalism. Rallying around New Youth and using the theories of evolution and individual emancipation as their major weapons, they mounted an assault on the “sages of the past,” represented by Confucius, and vigorously advocated a new ethics and a new literature. Since the leaders of the Reform Movement of 1898 had departed from the classics and ’rebelled against orthodoxy under the cloak of Confucianism, and the revolutionaries of 1911 had never struck a direct blow against it, the ideologists of the new cultural movement were the first to consciously challenge feudal ethics. They had their own weaknesses. For instance, they believed that it was possible to thoroughly remould the national character through struggle in the ideological and cultural fields alone, without transforming the social environment that engendered feudal ideas. They failed to reveal the social roots of Confucianism and the necessity of transforming China’s basic social system. They did not express genuine sympathy for the misery of the workers and peasants who were the overwhelming majority of the population or wait patiently until they had been aroused to revolutionary action. And they followed a formalistic methodology that led them to affirm or negate everything absolutely. Nevertheless, their criticism of Confucianism shook the dominant position of the orthodox feudal ideas. It lifted the sluice gate that had checked the current of new ideas, releasing a tide of mental emancipation in Chinese society. This tide was vigorous, progressive and revolutionary. The cardinal slogan of the new cultural movement was, “Democracy and science.” At a time when feudalism was dominant in society, it was historically progressive to advocate democracy as opposed to dictatorship and science as opposed to blind faith. However, according to Chen Duxiu, the proponent of the slogan, democracy referred to the bourgeois democratic system and bourgeois democratic ideas, and science referred to “natural sciences in a narrow sense and social sciences in a broad sense.”8 He emphasized the need to study society with the same scientific spirit and methodology applied to the study of the natural sciences. However, he also regarded as science the ideological system of idealism (with certain borrowings from the natural sciences), including William James’s pragmatism, Henri Bergson’s theory of creative evolution and Bertrand Russell’s new realism.9 He advocated democracy and science because he believed that “in order to survive in the present world,” China had to “build a new state of the Western type and organize a new society of the Western type” — that is, to build a bourgeois republic and develop capitalism.10 This showed that during its first stage the new cultural movement was essentially a struggle of the new culture of the bourgeoisie against the old culture of the feudal class. The proponents of the movement emphasized the “independent personality” and “equal human rights,” striving only for the liberation of the individual instead of for the liberation of the working people as a whole. They were therefore unable 12 A CONCISE HISTORY OF THE CPC to show the Chinese people the real way out of their misery. In fact, the defects of capitalist civilization were becoming increasingly apparent. Shortly after the outbreak of World War I, Chen Duxiu wrote that when capitalism had replaced feudalism, “political inequality turned into social inequality, and monarchical and aristocratic repression turned into capitalist repression.” There was no denying these defects of modern Western civilization.11 World War I disclosed the inherent contradictions of capitalism in an incisive way. The unprecedented brutality of the war and the social chaos that followed shocked the world and cast doubts on the value of Western civilization. It was the first time that the general public felt that the capitalist system no longer had bright prospects and had lost its original attraction. Towards the end of the war, Li Dazhao said, “The war threw much doubt on the authority of European civilization, and the Europeans themselves have to reflect on its true value.”12 In May 1916 he said: “Representative government is still the subject of experiments. It is difficult to ascertain whether it is good or not and to predict whether it will survive or change.”13 In August 1917 Mao Zedong also said it was true that Oriental ideas did not conform to reality, but that Western ideas did not necessarily do so either. He concluded that most Western ideas should be remoulded along with Oriental ideas.14 These doubts on the part of Left-wingers in the new cultural movement led them to seek a new means of national salvation and prepared the ground for their acceptance of Marxism. Why did the October Revolution that broke out in Russia in 1917 call forth such vigorous response in China? Basically, it was because of the changes taking place in Chinese society. At a time when the Chinese people were groping desperately in the dark, the Russian revolution illuminated a path for them, furnishing new and reasonable replies to the questions they were so anxiously studying. Earlier, even before the Revolution of 1911, certain Chinese intellectuals had begun to talk about socialism. However, some of them only indulged in empty talk about anarchism, talk that even CHAPTER ONE THE FOUNDING OF THE CPC 13 they themselves did not believe had any connection with reality. Others held that the theory of socialism was of no practical significance outside the developed capitalist countries. They were of the view that certain “socialist” measures could be adopted in the course of developing capitalism in China so as to “prevent” a socialist revolution. At the same time, there were also people who introduced Marxism into China as a school of socialist thought. After a British missionary made the first mention of Marx and his theories in the Globe Magazine in Shanghai in 1899, both bourgeois reformists like Liang Qichao and revolutionaries like Zhu Zhixin wrote about them. However, until the October Revolution, Marxism was not correctly interpreted in China, and it was not considered important. Conditions were not yet ripe for Chinese society to embrace Marxism, and its influence was negligible. It was the October Revolution that for the first time turned the theories of socialism in books into a living reality. The Russian revolution held particular interest for the Chinese people because it had taken place in a country where conditions were very similar to those in China: severe feudal oppression combined with economic and cultural backwardness. This demonstrated that “a low level of material civilization could in no way hold back the progress of socialism,”15 and that when capitalism offered no solution, one could turn to socialism. The October Revolution was also a call to resist imperialism, a call that sounded “especially penetrating and especially significant”16 to the Chinese people, who had been so bullied and humiliated by the imperialist powers. This gave a powerful impetus to those Chinese progressives who were inclined towards socialism, encouraging them to make a serious study of the theories of Marxism that had guided the revolution. Furthermore, the mobilization of the Russian worker and peasant masses under the banner of socialism and the historic victory they had gained inspired the Chinese progressives to try new methods of revolution. In short, the October Revolution aroused a new hope of national liberation in China. Under these circumstances, a group of intellectuals who supported the Russian revolution and embraced the rudiments of communist ideas came14 A CONCISE HISTORY OF THE CPC into prominence in China. ,hf.Lo^ahha°DWaS,the firSt *° hold aloft in China 'he banner of he October Revolutjon. In 1918 he became professor and chief librarian at Beijing University and emerged as a prominent be! lTlTaftlr .t* T h"'"1™1 m0vement' In July and Novem1 18, after shrewd observation of the October Revolution and careful reflection upon it, he published a series of articles whh such titles as A Comparative Study of the French and Rushan Revolutions, The Victory of the Common People” and “The ODments°h ^ W"h keen insight int0 historical develpments he declared that the victory of the October Revolution a revolution based on socialism, a social revolution known to the world tor its revolutionary colours, was a triumph for the labour movement a harbinger of world revolution in the 20th century and a new dawn for all mankind. He predicted that the tide set in motion by the October Revolution was irresistible and that the future would surely see “a world of red flags ” In an article entitled “The New Era,” published on New Year’s Day 1919 he wrote that the October Revolution had opened a new era in uman history, that it would bring forth a new life a new take TheT ^ the Chinese should take the same road as the Russians. While radica1 changes were taking place in the thinking of the hinese ideologists, profound changes were also quietly taking place in China s social structure. During World War I the country s national capitalist economy developed rapidly, because the estern imperialist countries, busy fighting at close quarters on e European battlefield, had temporarily slackened their economic aggression against China. (Japan and the United States were exceptions, continuing to expand their economic influence 1919 antao*°l In the six years froi" 1914 through 1919 a total of 379 factories and mines were built, or an average of 63 a year. In connection with this development, the Chinese working dass and national bourgeoisie grew in strength On the nib 7 £y 4th M°Vement °f ,919' the Industrial workers numbered about two million and were becoming an increasingly important social force. All sorts of social problems incTudh'g CHAPTER ONE THE FOUNDING OF THE CPC 15 contradictions between labour and capital, caused ever greater popular concern, providing an objective basis for the acceptance of Marxism. The rapid increase in the number of students enrolled in various new types of schools and the emergence of many teachers in such schools and of journalists helped to form a larger contingent of intellectuals than there had been in the period of the Revolution of 1911. The anti-imperialist and anti-feudal democratic revolution of the bourgeoisie had a new and much stronger body of supporters. The rise of a great new people’s revolution was inevitable.

The May 4th Movement and the Rise of Socialist Ideas

It was China’s diplomatic failure at the “peace conference” in Paris that touched off the May 4th Movement. In the first half of 1919, the Allied countries held a “peace conference in Paris. Actually, the conference was manipulated by a few powers that had emerged victorious from World War I. Since China had joined the Allies during the war, it too sent delegates. However, the conference rejected its seven demands (including the liquidation of the foreign spheres of influence in China and the withdrawal of foreign troops) and its call for the annulment of Japan’s “Twenty-One Demands” and of the related notes exchanged between the two countries. Moreover, the conference ruled that Germany should transfer to Japan all the privileges it had obtained in Shandong Province. The “peace conference gave China nothing but some astronomical instruments that had been seized by Germany when the Eight-Power Allied Forces had stormed into Beijing in 1900. Nevertheless, the delegates from China’s Northern warlord government were prepared to sign the “peace treaty.” When the news reached home, it aroused the indignation of people of all social strata. The patriotic May 4th Movement, pioneered by the students, erupted like a volcano. On May 3 students from Beijing University, together with16 A CONCISE HISTORY OF THE CPC representatives of students from other universities and secondary schools in Beijing, held a rally and decided to send a telegram to the special envoys in Paris, demanding that they refuse to sign the “peace treaty.” One of the students cut his finger and wrote in blood the four Chinese characters Huan Wo Qing Dao (Return Qingdao to China).17 On May 4 more than 3,000 students from a dozen universities and schools assembled in front of the Tian’anmen gate-tower and held a demonstration. They shouted such slogans as “Annul the Twenty-One Demands!”, “Return Qingdao to China!” and “Punish the traitors Cao Rulin, Zhang Zongxiang and Lu Zongyu!” (three pro- Japanese bureaucrats in the Northern warlord government). They wrote in a declaration: “The land of China may be conquered, but it must not be forfeited! The people of China may be killed, but they must not bow their heads! The country has been subjugated! Compatriots, arise!” When the demonstrators reached the west entrance of the foreign embassy quarter their way was blocked, so they changed course, marching towards the residence of Cao Rulin. There they found Zhang Zongxiang and beat him black and blue. Unable to find Cao Rulin, they set his house on fire. The government called out troops and police to suppress the students, thirty-two of whom were arrested. Closing ranks in the struggle, the university and middle-school students established a federation. Twenty-five thousand of them staged a general strike. They also made patriotic speeches in the streets, calling on the public to boycott Japanese merchandise and buy Chinese-made goods. Under the brutal repression of the reactionary authorities, the students’ struggle ebbed for a time. Then on June 3, as the government openly commended Cao Rulin and once again strictly banned any patriotic movement, they resumed their campaign in the streets. The students spoke tearfully, while the audiences sobbed, their hands covering their faces. Some 170 students were arrested on the first day, and some 700 on the second. On the third day, when more than 2,000 students turned out into the streets, they were attacked by mounted troops and police. It was at this juncture that an important event took place: the CHAPTER ONE THE FOUNDING OF THE CPC 17 Chinese working class entered the political arena as an independent force. On June 5 in Shanghai, while students were kneeling down along the streets to appeal to the shopkeepers to go on strike, about 70,000 workers spontaneously began a sympathy strike. They were followed by workers in Beijing, l'angshan, Hankou, Nanjing, Changsha and other places. Shopkeepers in many large and medium-sized cities joined the strikers. Like a prairie fire, the struggle spread to more than twenty provinces and over a hundred cities across the country. Ihe May 4th Movement was no longer restricted within the narrow limits of the intelligentsia: it had turned into a nationwide revolutionary movement with the participation of the working class, the petty bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie. The focus of the struggle shifted from Beijing to Shanghai, and the workers gradually replaced the students as the main force. On June 10, under the pressure from the people, the Northern warlords were compelled to release the arrested students and to announce the dismissal of Cao, Zhang and Lu. On June 27 in Paris hundreds of Chinese — workers, students and other residents — went to the hospital where Lu Zhengxiang, the chief Chinese delegate, was staying for medical treatment and demanded that he refuse to sign the “peace treaty.” The following day, the Chinese delegation did not attend the ceremony for the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. The May 4th Movement was an epoch-making event in the history of the Chinese revolution, marking the great beginning of the new-democratic revolution. Looking back on it, Mao Zedong wrote, “Its outstanding historical significance is to be seen in a feature which was absent from the Revolution of 1911, namely, its thorough and uncompromising opposition to imperialism as well as to feudalism.”18 And according to Zhang Wentian, another prominent leader of the CPC, “The greatest merit of the May 4th Movement lay in arousing the political consciousness of the masses and achieving the unity of the revolutionary forces.”19 In the beginning of the movement, the students emerged in the vanguard of the struggle, while at a later stage the working class18 A CONCISE HISTORY OF THE CPC became the main force, displaying its special sense of organization and discipline and its staunch revolutionary spirit. In the words of Deng Zhongxia, an outstanding leader of the workers’ movement, “Thus the Chinese working class began a political strike. Later, it managed to develop independent strength and an independent struggle of its own, on which this strike obviously exercised a great influence.”20 As they witnessed the great strength displayed by the working class in the struggle, “some of the student leaders in the May 4th Movement set out to ‘join the public ,’ running schools for workers and organizing trade unions. Later they became the backbone of the newly founded Communist Party of China. Around the time of the May 4th Movement, the Chinese progressives came to realize from the experience of the Paris “peace conference” that the imperialist forces had joined together to oppress the Chinese people. This was the main cause of the further dissemination of socialist ideas in China. Qu Qiubai a prominent Communist and writer, wrote, “The cutting pain of imperialist oppression awakened the public from the nightmare of vague democracy.... Therefore, the students’ movement swiftly turned to socialism.”22 The study and propagation of socialism gradually became the main concern of the progressives. This was a salient feature ol the new cultural movement after the May 4th Movement. It took time for people to understand socialism. At first they felt an obscure yearning for it, as if, Qu Qiubai continued, “they viewed the morning mist through a screened window. The different schools of socialism were confusing and its meaning was not clear.”23 For the time being, people could hardly distinguish between scientific socialism and other schools of socialism. Magazine articles reflected every variety of socialist thinking — anarchism, utopian socialism, cooperativism, pan-labourism, guild socialism, social democracy and so on. It was only after repeated comparison and judgement that the Chinese progressives chose Marxist scientific socialism. Li Dazhao played a major role in the early stage of the Marxist movement in China. He was the chief editor of a special issue of CHAPTER ONE THE FOUNDING OF THE CPC 19 New Youth devoted to Marxism in May 1919. In his own article, “My Marxist Outlook,” he gave a comprehensive and systematic introduction to Marxism. Marxism, he wrote, was the integration of the study of history, economics and politics; that is, historical materialism, economic theory and socialist doctrine, and “class struggle [ran] through all three, like a gold thread.” Unlike the vague and fragmentary explanations of Marxist theories that had appeared earlier, Li Dazhao’s introduction to Marxism was relatively precise and complete. Certain young people who had come into contact with Marxist theories while they had been studying in Japan also played an important role in the early propagation of Marxism in China. For example, in November and December 1919, Yang Pao’an published in New China Daily in Guangdong Province a series of articles entitled “Marxism (Also Known as Scientific Socialism)” in which he gave a systematic account of Marxist historical materialism, economic theory and scientific socialism. Li Da, another student back from Japan, published his translations of such books as Explanations of Historical Materialism, A General Survey of Social Problems, and Marxist Economic Theory. He also wrote articles for the press, including “What is Socialism?” and “The Objectives of Socialism.” Before the May 4th Movement, many intellectuals of different ideological persuasions had participated in the new cultural movement, but since they concentrated their criticism on Confucianism and promoted science and democracy, their differences of opinion were not very evident. Now that Marxism was being widely disseminated, however, distinct splits began to appear in the movement. Hu Shi, for example, had a passion for the bourgeois civilization of the West, believed in pragmatism and advocated reformism. He had declared his determination “not to talk about politics for twenty years.” At this juncture, however, he felt he “could no longer keep his eyes closed and hold his tongue.” In an article entitled “More Discussions on Questions, Less Talk about ‘Doctrines’!” published in July 1919, he stated that “every doctrine is a remedy applied by men of high ideals at a given time and place for a society at that time and place,”20 A CONCISE HISTORY OF THE CPC ^!Zin! tkf !*ai?iSm WaS applicable t0 China. Instead, he advod gradual reform and maintained that the search for “a ^ anient3! solution” was “absolute proof of the bankruptcy of logical circles in China.” He asserted that he had “tried to -how people the correct path so that they would not be misled” nd to prevent them from being “led by the nose” by Marx and Lenin.24 In other words, he did his utmost to discourage the Chinese from embracing Marxism-Leninism and from trying to make a revolution. y s Jo meet the challenge from Hu Shi, the following month Li Doctrine, He ied an article entitled “More on Questions and Doctrines. He pointed out that socialism was a banner of the hmes and that the propagation of doctrines and the study of prac ical questions were not conflicting endeavours but rather upplemented each other. On the one hand, he said, the study of practical questions must be guided by a doctrine. On the other hand a socialist, if his doctrine is to have some influence in the world must study how to apply his ideal, insofar as possible to hi real surroundings.*’ “As long as we apply a doctrine as a toS or an actual movement, ’ he continued, “it will bring about changes that will be suited to the surroundings in accordance with the time, the place and the nature of the matter.” In this wav Li 3 prellminary “Position of the idea that the general tenets of Marxism must be integrated with the actual conditions of the country and developed in the course of this integration He also rebutted Hu Shi’s arguments for reformism. In view of the would65 °! Ch T 3t the tlme’ hC declared’ Piecemeal reform ° d work and fundamental social problems had to be solved before specific issues could be addressed. The debate on “questions and doctrines” had tremendous retrCUv.SSi°uS' Many y°Ung people in different parts of the country who had begun to embrace Marxist ideas wrote magazine articles expressing their support for Li Dazhao’s views. m„ThM f°vlctR.f 1 sian Government issued a declaration renouncng al! the privileges formerly enjoyed by Czarist Russia within the borders of China. During March and April of 1920, The East and other journals made this declaration known to the Chinese CHAPTER ONE THE FOUNDING OF THE CPC 21 public, breaking the news blockade imposed by the reactionaries. When the Chinese people, who had been bullied by the capitalist powers for so long, learned the content of the declaration, they were overjoyed. New Youth carried comments from its readers and stated that the declaration embodied the spirit of the Constitution of Russia, that it demonstrated the will to eradicate capitalist aggressiveness and that the Chinese should study and uphold the doctrines of the worker-peasant government in Russia. The Soviet declaration gave a fresh and powerful impetus to the further dissemination of Marxism in China. Under these circumstances, many progressive intellectuals of different backgrounds came to Marxism by different routes, after careful consideration of the alternatives. As an ideological leader during the initial stage of the new cultural movement, Chen Duxiu declared after the May 4th Movement that since militarism and money-worship had caused endless crimes, it was high time to discard them. He said he had come to realize that republican politics was manipulated by the bourgeoisie, which was in the minority, and that it was an illusion to think it could be used to achieve happiness for the majority. He warned that China should not take the path followed by Europe, the United Sates and Japan. In his article “On Politics” published in September 1920, Chen stated explicitly that it was the prime necessity for a modern society to establish a stale of the labouring classes (the productive classes), by means of revolution, and to institute politics and laws that would prohibit plundering at home and abroad. At this juncture, a group of prominent young Left-wingers who had emerged from the May 4th Movement also began to turn towards Marxism. In the Xiangjiang Review, of which he was the editor-in-chief, Mao Zedong, then a well-known leader of the student movement in Hunan Province, enthusiastically praised the victory of the October Revolution, declaring that it would spread worldwide and that the Chinese should follow its example. After he came to Beijing for the second time, he eagerly sought out books about communism and about conditions in Russia and these helped to establish his faith in Marxism. Many years ’later22 A CONCISE HISTORY OF THE CPC he recalled, “By the summer of 1920 I had become, in theory and to some extent in action, a Marxist.”25 Other noted student leaders, such as Deng Zhongxia, Cai Hesen and Zhou Enlai, one after another, set out on the same road. As has been said above, some veteran members of the Chinese Revolutionary League also began to turn to proletarian socialism. Many years later, Dong Biwu recalled how he and others had joined Sun Yat-sen in the revolution. “The revolution forged ahead, but Sun Yat-sen failed to get hold of it and, as a result, it was snatched by others. We therefore began to study the Russian pattern” and to read Marxism.26 Wu Yuzhang, another veteran revolutionary, said that at that time, from what he had experienced since the Revolution of 1911, he had come to realize that “the old methods of revolution used in the past must be changed.” “In the light shed by the October Revolution and the May 4th Movement,” he added, “the idea that we must rely on the people of the lower social strata and take the path of the Russians became increasingly clear in my mind.”27 That these men with different experiences came to Marxism by different routes indicates that it was the historic choice of a considerable number of Chinese progressives to abandon the capitalist programme for national construction and to take the road illuminated by Marxist scientific socialism. This was the most essential feature of the new cultural movement after the May 4th Movement. It is important to note that the first group of Marxists in China had been fervent fighters for bourgeois democracy. They forsook their faith in bourgeois democracy and turned to Marxism. They made this choice of their own accord, in light of their own experiences and after careful consideration. This was because Marxism, as a well-knit scientific theory, was more convincing to them than any other doctrine and because, as Shi Cuntong put it, “it can solve our problems and bring us benefits.”28 After they accepted Marxism, the Chinese progressives did not discard the respect for science and democracy fostered by the May 4th Movement. On the contrary, under the guidance of Marxism they infused those concepts with fresh and more proCHAPTER ONE THE FOUNDING OF THE CPC 23 found content. Democracy no longer meant narrow bourgeois democracy but democracy for the majority; that is, for the labouring classes. For this reason they stressed the need to root out the class privileges of the minority and, in the words of Chen Duxiu, to change the state of “the majority of proletarian labourers, who live in hardship, without freedom,” which did not conform to democracy.29 Science includes both natural and social sciences, but the Chinese Marxists believed that the study of society could become a true science only when it was based on historical materialism. As far as science was concerned, therefore, prime importance should be given to the Marxist scientific world outlook, methodology and theory of social revolution. The dissemination of Marxism did not negate the ideological struggle against feudalism. On the contrary, it provided an even sharper weapon for that struggle. Applying historical materialism, the first group of Marxists in China revealed the social causes of feudal ideology and culture. They set a higher goal for their struggle against feudalism, elevating the struggle for liberation of the individual to a struggle for liberation of the masses. As for the form of the struggle, propagation of the new ideas by a small number of people changed into revolutionary practice by the masses, thus deepening their ideological liberation. From the very beginning, the Chinese progressives looked upon Marxism not simply as a doctrine but as an instrument for studying the destiny of the country. Although they were not adequately prepared theoretically, they took the basic principles of Marxism as their guide and participated enthusiastically in the mass struggle. At the beginning of 1920, a number of revolutionary intellectuals in Beijing, at the urging of Li Dazhao, went to the living quarters of rickshaw men to investigate their miserable conditions. Deng Zhongxia and others went to Changxindian, a locomotive repair centre in the suburbs of Beijing, to conduct revolutionary propaganda among the workers and begin to forge links with them. From the very beginning, the participants in the Marxist ideological movement saw to it that they integrated their revolutionary ideas with practice and joined the masses in their struggle. This was one of the characteristics and strong points of24 A CONCISE HISTORY OF THE CPC the Marxist ideological movement. At first, however, the dissemination of Marxism was confined mainly to a small number of intellectuals. Communist groups in various parts of the country, embryonic organizations of the Communist Party of China, made it their principal task to disseminate Marxism and to integrate it with the workers’ movement.

The Founding of the Communist Party of China

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helped the socialists in Tianjin, Tangshan, Taiyuan, Jinan and other cities in northern China to establish Party and Youth League organizations. Between the autumn of 1920 and the spring of 1921, Dong Biwu, Chen Tanqiu, Bao Huiseng and others in Wuhan; Mao Zedong, He Shuheng and others in Changsha; Wang Jinmei, Deng Enming and others in Jinan; and Tan Pingshan, Tan Zhitang and others in Guangzhou also established Communist groups, propagating communist ideas and carrying out organizational activities. Most such groups were established in key cities, where the new cultural movement and the patriotic May 4th Movement had had a profound influence, where large communities of industrial workers were located and where there were the first groups of intellectuals who believed in Marxism. Communist organizations were also formed by progressives among the Chinese students in Japan and France. These early organizations had different names. The Shanghai group, for example, was known as the Communist Party of China from the very beginning. The Beijing group called itself the Beijing Branch of the Communist Party of China. In later years all these local organizations, which were soon to form the Communist Party of China, were commonly known as Communist groups. Work of the Communist Groups Once established, the Communist groups in various parts of China disseminated Marxism in a planned way, doing propaganda and organizational work among the workers and promoting the integration of Marxism with the workers’ movement. This was ideological and organizational preparation for the founding of the Communist Party of China. Their main activities were as follows. 1. Studying and propagating Marxism. In September 1920 New Youth became the organ of the Shanghai Communist group and began to propagate Marxism openly. The new column “Study of Russia” in the magazine dealt with the experience of the October Revolution and of Soviet Russia. In November of the same year, the group launched The Communist Party , a semi-clandestine monthly, to spread elementary knowledge about a potential Communist Party and to give news of the Communist International and of Communist parties in other countries, thus preparing the ground for the founding of such a party in China. The Communist groups in various parts of the country propagated Marxism through newspapers and periodicals, including those published by themselves, such as Awakening , a supplement to the Republican Daily in Shanghai, the Wuhan Weekly Review in Hubei, the fortnightly Encourage the New in Jinan and the Mass Journal in Guangdong. Thanks to these journals, scientific socialism became a strong trend of thought in China. The Communist groups in Shanghai and Beijing also published many translations of Marxist works. The Chinese translation, by Chen Wangdao, of The Communist Manifesto was published in August 1920. About one thousand copies were printed for the first edition, and the work was reprinted in many other cities. The same month saw the publication of the Chinese translation of Socialism: Utopian and Scientific by Engels. Also translated and published were writings on Marxism such as The ABC of “ Capi taC by Marx , An Explanation of Historical Materialism, Class Struggle and The History of Socialism. The publication of these books made it possible for the progressives in China to have a systematic understanding of Marxism. In their initial propagation of Marxism, the Communist groups gave paramount importance to the theories of scientific socialism and class struggle, and these theories had widespread influence in ideological circles. In the original or newly established Marxist societies and other organizations, some of the Communist groups organized progressive young people to learn the basic theories of Marxism and study the practical problems of China. In this way they created the earliest backbone force of the future Party. In particular, the Society for the Study of Marxist Theories in Beijing University, under the guidance of Li Dazhao, served this function: many of its members and corresponding members were revolutionary young people who later became Communists. 2. Conducting polemics against anti-Marxist trends of thought.

While the influence of Marxist ideology was spreading, some factions that supported bourgeois and petty bourgeois ideology were also propagating their political views under the name of socialism. At this time, not all progressives who were seeking the truth were able to see the essential distinction between Marxism and these other forms of socialism. The Communist groups had to struggle to make a clear distinction between scientific socialism and other forms of socialism and to win over persons who were patriotic and inclined towards progress but who had been influenced by other schools of thought. At the end of 1920, Zhang Dongsun and Liang Qichao launched a debate about socialism. Although they stated that capitalism was bound to fall and socialism was sure to rise, they emphasized that since China was industrially backward, there was no ground for the founding of a political party representing the labouring classes and that a real worker-peasant revolution would never take place. They believed that poverty was the major problem in China and that the solution was for the gentry and mercantile class to vitalize industry and commerce and develop capitalism. They called for “a rectified attitude toward capitalists” in order to “bring about sound, gradual development under the present economic system.” They expressed their faith in the guild socialism advocated by Bertrand Russell, a British scholar, — bourgeois reformism under the guise of socialism. These views were firmly rejected by the first group of Marxists in China. The Marxists declared that one could not think about ways to solve China’s problems without taking into account the conditions of the times, and that judging from international conditions and the state of society at home, it was impossible for the country to develop capitalism independently. “The Chinese people’s position in the world economy,” they pointed out, “has been secured in the mounting tide of the labour movement, and it is theoretically impermissible and practically impossible to institute a system that protects capitalists.” It was necessary, they felt, for China to develop education and industry, but it should do so by means of socialism so as to “uproot the plundering classes at home and resist international capitalism,” instead of “following the wrong path taken by Europe, the United States and Japan.” They added that the existence of the proletariat in China was an undeniable fact and that “the Chinese proletariat is suffering even greater misery than the proletariat in Europe, the United States and Japan.” “This state of affairs,” they concluded, “cannot be remedied unless the Chinese labourers unite and form revolutionary organizations to transform the system of production.” The first group of Marxists were not aware that, for the revolution in semi-colonial, semi-feudal China, the first step had to be democracy, with socialism only as the second step. But from the very beginning they stressed that capitalism was an impasse in China, that socialism was the only solution and that it was necessary to found a party of the working class to lead the Chinese people in revolution. This understanding was absolutely correct and of far-reaching significance. They expounded their views on a theoretical plane and tested them against the actual circumstances of Chinese society. This showed that scientific socialism could take root in China. Among the various trends of socialist thought, anarchism was dominant for a period of time. Proceeding from ultraindividualism, the anarchists preached absolute freedom of the individual in his opposition to power, to any form of organization and discipline, to any authority and to any type of government, including the dictatorship of the proletariat. They also attacked private ownership and advocated absolute egalitarianism. China was a country with a large petty bourgeoisie. In essence, the proposals of the anarchists, which centred around the interests of the individual and seemed to be immensely radical and thoroughgoing, echoed the sentiments of the small producers, who were dissatisfied with the status quo because they had been reduced to bankruptcy, and of the petty-bourgeois intellectuals, who had been reduced to despair politically. A number of young people who were discontent with the old society and looking for a way out, were also influenced by this ideology because they knew little about socialism. Before the May 4th Movement, Shi Fu and others had preached anarchism in China. During the period of the movement, anarchism had found many adherents, especially in Guangdong Province, and more than 70 periodicals and books were published to propagate their ideas. As anarchism was essentially antagonistic to Marxism, they increasingly directed their attacks at Marxism, which was being disseminated on an everwider scale. Huang Lingshuang and others wrote articles with such titles as “Criticism of Marxist Theories” and “We Are Against ‘Bolshevism,’ ” posing an open challenge to Marxism. It became an important task for the Marxists to expose the true nature of this school of petty-bourgeois socialist ideology. During the polemics against the anarchists, the Marxists argued that while the power of the bourgeoisie should undoubtedly be opposed, the power of the proletariat should not. Revolutionary means must be adopted to seize political power and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat. That was the only way to protect the interests of the labourers and ultimately to eliminate classes and make the state wither away. Advocating absolute freedom of the individual, the Marxists said, would only make it impossible for the working class to close ranks and become a powerful combat force, and it would therefore make it easier for the bourgeoisie to destroy the workers’ movement. Social and economic chaos would result if the principle of distribution “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” were put into effect before the productive forces were highly developed. In reality, the social contradictions in modern China were so acute that only great unity and unremitting struggle could overthrow the old forces. Yet while the anarchists expressed opposition to power, they called for absolute freedom of the individual and urged the elimination of all discipline and of any restraint by the collective. In the end, however, this was all empty talk. The anarchists could form only small, loosely organized groups with a tiny total membership, and they were unable to play an important role in political life. Accordingly, when they encountered scathing criticism from the Marxists, their influence quickly waned. The Marxists also rejected the revisionism of the Second International. Denouncing the assertion that “parliamentary tactics CHAPTER ONE THE FOUNDING OF THE CPC 31 should be employed for the elevation of the workers’ status and the shift of political power” in China, they pointed out that “social democrats try to make use of the parliament as a means of transformation, but in reality, parliamentary legislation invariably protects the propertied classes.” They also declared that as a result of the misrepresentations of the Second International, the “cream” of Marxist socialism had disappeared completely. The social democrats’ socialism, they said, had degenerated into liberalism, and their revolutionism had degenerated into reformism. This revisionist thinking, they continued, found little support in China, because the class contradictions were extremely acute and the Chinese parliament had long since become a toy in the hands of the warlords. The Marxists’ criticism of the position taken by the Second International indicated that from the very beginning the communist movement in China adhered to a revolutionary orientation. Actually, the polemics against the anti-Marxist trends of thought were a struggle to win over the masses. They helped progressives who were inclined to socialism to distinguish between scientific socialism and the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois schools of socialism and to embrace Marxism. Many progressive young people who had been influenced by anarchistic ideas became staunch Marxists later on. 3. Conducting propaganda and organizing the workers. Once formed, the Communist groups in various parts of the country took a direct and energetic part in the labour movement, organizing and educating the workers. This was something no other political party had ever done in China. The Chinese working class displayed great strength in the later stage of the May 4th Movement, but it was still young, and a great many of its members came from among the impoverished peasants and urban vagrants, devoid of class consciousness. Originally they had had guilds and secret societies; later they had had so-called trade unions, which were only organizations manipulated by hooligans or by employers. To propagate Marxism among the workers and awaken their class consciousness, the Communist groups launched publications addressed to them. These included Labour in Shanghai, The Voice of Labour and the Workers' Weekly in Beijing and the Jinan Labour Monthly in Jinan. At the same time, they established various types of workers’ schools, the most well-known of which were the school for continuing education in Changxindian in suburban Beijing, established by Deng Zhongxia and others of the Beijing group, and a similar one in western Shanghai established by Li Qihan and others of the Shanghai group. Running such schools was the Party’s way of “starting its work among the workers and of coming into contact with the masses to organize trade unions.”30 As a result of these efforts at propaganda and education, the politically awakened workers demanded organization. In November 1920 the Shanghai Machine-building Trade Union, the first trade union led by a Communist group, was founded with an initial membership of about 370. Soon after that, the Shanghai Printing Trade Union came into existence, with a membership of more than 1,300. On May 1, 1921, more than a thousand workers in Changxindian took part in a parade to mark International Labour Day, and to announce the establishment of a “workers’ club” (trade union). One after another, trade unions were organized by industrial workers and handicraftsmen in Wuhan, Changsha, Guangzhou and Jinan. These trade unions began to call upon the workers to strike. Most of the members of the Communist groups were intellectuals. In order to carry out effective propaganda and organizational work among the workers, they put on workers’ clothes, learned to speak their language and joined in their labour, doing everything possible to become one with them. Yu Xiusong, for example, wrote to a friend that he had “changed his name and changed his clothes” to take a job at the Housheng Iron Works, where he gave lectures to the workers.31 Li Zhong, a student from Hunan No. One Normal School and a member of the Socialist Youth League, worked as a blacksmith at the Jiangnan Shipyard and helped Chen Duxiu and others organize the Machinebuilding Trade Union.32 So it was that from the very outset the Marxist ideological movement in China was one in which the intellectuals were integrated with the workers. 4. Founding the Socialist Youth League. As a vigorous social force receptive to new ideas, young people were, of course, highly valued by the Marxists. On the other hand, they were generally inexperienced and needed good leadership. To meet this need, in August 1920 the Shanghai Communist group founded the Socialist Youth League. Yu Xiusong became the secretary. After that, Youth League organizations were established in Beijing, Tianjin, Wuchang, Hankou, Changsha and other cities, where they organized their members to study Marxism and take part in labour struggles, creating a reserve force for the future Party. These four activities of the Communist groups gave a powerful impetus to the dissemination of Marxism and to its integration with the workers’ movement. In the process, those intellectuals who had only recently come to believe in communism gradually underwent profound changes in their thinking and in their attitude toward workers. At the same time, a number of workers learned something about Marxism and raised their class consciousness, becoming advanced elements of the proletariat. All this helped prepare the ground for the founding of a communist party. The 1st National Congress of the Communist Party of China In March 1921, Li Dazhao wrote an article calling for the founding of a political party of the working class. “In China today,” he said, “there is no organization that can really represent the people. If friends of Faction C | the Communists] can establish a solid and well-knit organization and see to the collective training of its members, there will be support for a great, thoroughgoing reform in China.”33 In March of the same year, representatives of Communist organizations throughout the country held a meeting at which they issued a common statement of objectives and principles and worked out a provisional programme.34 On July 23, 1921, the 1st National Congress of the Communist Party of China was convened at No. 106 Wangzhi Road (now. No.76 Xingye Road), in the French concession in Shanghai. As the meeting place caught the eye of plainclothes detectives and was searched by foreign policemen, the delegates had to go to Jiaxing County in Zhejiang Province, where they held their final session on a pleasure boat on Lake Nanhu. Attending the 1st Party Congress were twelve delegates representing fifty-three Party members in seven localities. They were: Li Da and Li Hanjun (Shanghai), Zhang Guotao and Liu Renjing (Beijing), Mao Zedong and He Shuheng (Changsha), Dong Biwu and Chen Tanqiu (Wuhan), Wang Jinmei and Deng Enming (Jinan), Chen Gongbo (Guangzhou) and Zhou Fohai (residing in Japan). Bao Huiseng, designated by Chen Duxiu, who was then in Guangzhou, also attended the congress. Two representatives of the Communist International, G. Maring and Nicolsky, attended as observers. The congress decided that the name of the new party would be “the Communist Party of China” and that its programme would be “to overthrow the bourgeoisie by means of the revolutionary army of the proletariat ... to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat in order to attain the objective of class struggle, that is, the elimination of classes ... to abolish private ownership of capital” and to ally itself with the Third International. From the day of its founding, the Communist Party of China set itself the goal of socialism and, ultimately, communism, and advocated the attainment of that goal by revolutionary means. Thus it made a clear distinction of principle between itself and the social democrats of the Second International, who worshipped bourgeois democracy and parliamentarianism. The congress called for “cooperation with other political parties in the struggle against the common enemy” — that is, the warlords but it failed to work out an explicit programme for the stage of democratic revolution. The newborn Communist Party of China had set socialism and communism as its goal and was firmly determined to make a revolution, but it had little understanding of the specific conditions of the country and did not see the difference and connections between democratic revolution and socialist revolution. Under the social circumstances of semi-colonial and semi-feudal China, with poorly developed capCHAPTER ONE THE FOUNDING OF THE CPC 35 italism and ruthless oppression by foreign imperialists, the Communist Party of China could not clearly understand such questions as whether it was possible to make socialist revolution immediately and directly and what steps should be taken to realize socialism and then communism. When the congress discussed the plan for practical work, it became clear that because the Party’s membership was so small, it would be difficult to organize the peasants and armed forces. Accordingly, it decided to concentrate the Party’s energy on organizing factory workers. The Party’s first resolution adopted by the congress provided that the basic task of the Party at the time would be “the establishment of trade unions of industrial workers,” that “the Party should imbue the trade unions with the spirit of class struggle” and that it should send members to work in them. As the vanguard of the working class, the Communist Party of China did not simply concern itself with propagating Marxism but paid great attention to establishing close ties with the working class. This was one of its chief merits. To ensure that the CPC would be an advanced party, the congress sought to guarantee the quality of Party members. It decided to “admit new members only with particular caution and after strict examination,” and since the Party was then composed almost entirely of intellectuals, to “make special effort in organizing the workers and educating them in the spirit of communism.” The programme adopted by the congress also stipulated that persons who applied for Party membership must not have any inclination toward non-communist ideas. Before they were admitted, “they must sever relations with any other party or group which [was] opposed to the Communist Party programme.” Furthermore, it was stipulated that “the views of the Party and the identity of Party members should be kept secret until such time as conditions are ripe for them to be brought into the open.” At a time when the Party had just been born, however, its ranks could hardly be totally pure. The twelve delegates to the 1st Party Congress split up later on. Most of them adhered unswervingly to their faith in socialism and communism and upheld the cause of the Chinese revolution, for which some of them gave their lives.People like Chen Gongbo and Zhou Fohai, however, were not genuine Communists, and they were expelled from the Party soon after its founding. Others quit the Party, and some even betrayed the revolution. This was not surprising in a party that had only just come into being. Even when the CPC grew into a mass party composed for the most part of fine, staunch Communists, it was inevitable that waverers, dissidents and turncoats should appear in its ranks. The congress elected Chen Duxiu and two others to form the Central Bureau, the leading organ of the Party. Chen Duxiu was to serve as secretary, while Li Da and Zhang Guotao were to be in charge of propaganda and organizational work respectively. The 1st National Congress of the Party proclaimed the founding of the Communist Party of China. The birth of the CPC was an inevitable outcome of the development of the revolutionary movement in China. Almost at the same time a number of progressives who had no links with the Shanghai group, which initiated the founding of the CPC, were also preparing to found a party. In July 1920 a number of Chinese students who were on a work-study programme in France gathered at a meeting in College de Montargis. According to Li Weihan, one of those present, Cai Hesen “called for making a radical revolution, organizing a Communist party and enforcing the dictatorship of the proletariat, that is, following the path of the October Revolution in Russia.” He also consulted Li Weihan and others about how to prepare for the establishment of a Communist party. This was never accomplished, however, Li recalled, “because Cai was busy leading the Chinese students’ struggle to secure opportunities to study.”35 In the summer of 1921, members of the Liqun Study Society met in Huanggang, Hubei Province, expressing support for the formation of a party of the Bolshevik type and proposing that the organization be named “Bo She” (for Bolshevik). Upon hearing of the founding of the Communist Party of China, Yun Daiying, founder of the society, immediately called on its members to disband it and join the CPC.36 In the winter of 1923, more than twenty people in Sichuan Province, including Wu Yuzhang and Yang Angong, secretly organized the Chinese Youth Communist Party and began to publish Chixin Pinglun (Sincere Review) as its organ. Later this party abolished itself and urged its members to join the CPC as individuals.37 These facts show that the establishment of a political party of the working class to lead the Chinese people in their struggle had become the common demand of the most conscious revolutionaries in China and was an outcome of the development of the objective situation. That the Communist Party of China was founded in the early 1920s was by no means accidental. The CPC is a revolutionary Marxist party and the vanguard of the Chinese working class. It came into being under specific social and historical circumstances. On the one hand, it was founded after the October Revolution in Russia had been crowned with victory and after the social-democratic trend of thought espoused by the Second International had been discredited during World War I. It embraced Marxism, which was composed of a complete scientific world outlook and the theory of social revolution; Leninism, which was Marxism developed in the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution; and scientific socialism, which was clearly distinguished from bourgeois and petty-bourgeois schools of socialism in the course of struggle. On the other hand, it was founded on the basis of the workers’ movement in semicolonial and semi-feudal China. The social contradictions in modern China were extremely acute. The working class was relatively new, and many workers had been small producers in the past, but it cherished a fierce desire for revolution, because it was subject to ruthless oppression and exploitation by the foreign imperialists and by the domestic bourgeoisie and feudal forces. Within this class there was no stratum of labour aristocracy such as could be found in Europe, and no solid economic foundation for reformism. China had not passed through a stage of “peaceful” development of capitalism as Europe had done, so the Chinese working class could not carry out peaceful parliamentary struggles and could have no illusions about bourgeois democracy. Therefore, the Party was not influenced by the Second International. It was, from the outset, a party with Marxism-Leninism asits theoretical basis, a new type of revolutionary party of the working class. Being different from the political parties of the past, the Communist Party of China took a clear stand, analyzing problems in China from the Marxist point of view of class struggle and carrying out mass work among the workers. By so doing, the Party, despite its small size, threw all the decadent forces of the old society into a panic. When the communist movement in China was only just stirring, it was criticized as “extremist” and repressed jointly by the reactionaries at home and abroad. In April 1920 the Northern warlord government, basing itself on a reporter’s despatch in the American newspaper The Chicago Sun that spoke of the need to guard against extremist preaching, sent telegrams to the military inspectors, governors and superintendents of all provinces and regions, instructing them to keep a sharp lookout for “extremists.”38 In December, at the request of Wang Huaiqing, commander-in-chief of the infantry, the State Council of the Northern warlord government sent a letter to the Ministry of Internal Affairs instructing it to draft special provisions for punishing “extremists.” In his letter of request, Wang cried out in alarm that the “scourge” of the propagation of communism was “worse than fierce floods or savage beasts” and “should be strictly guarded against so as to nip the trouble in the bud.”39 Under these circumstances, which lasted many years, the CPC had to operate as an outlawed and clandestine party, whose members were always in danger of being tracked down, arrested and executed by the reactionary troops and police. Rarely had a political party in China had to function under such difficult conditions. As the political party of the working class, the most advanced class in the country, the CPC represented the interests not only of that class but of the vast masses of the people and the nation as a whole. Using Marxism to clarify its own understanding, the Party was able to illumine for the Chinese people the goal of their struggle and the path to victory. That is why it was able gradually to take root in Chinese soil and to grow into an invincible force. The founding of the Communist Party brought light and hope to the disaster-ridden Chinese people. A revolutionary party of CHAPTER ONE THE FOUNDING OF THE CPC 39 the working class was the first requirement for the victory of the Chinese revolution. With the birth of the CPC, the Chinese revolution took on an entirely new complexion. The Party had to operate in a semi-colonial, semi-feudal country with a vast territory, a huge population, complicated conditions and a backward economy and culture. It had to integrate the universal truth of Marxism-Leninism with the concrete practice of the Chinese revolution, a daunting undertaking for which its forerunners provided no experience to draw on. Inevitably, a period of time would be required for the Party to grope its way in the darkness and accumulate experience in the struggle. It would be a slow hard task for the Party to gain strength and to work out a Marxist line, guiding principles and policies that were suited to the conditions of China.

Formulating the Programme of Democratic Revolution

Before the founding of the Communist Party of China, the Chinese people had waged protracted struggles against foreign aggressors and domestic feudal rulers. Yet these struggles had two fundamental weaknesses. First, those who took part in them did not see clearly the targets of revolution, and they failed to unite with their real friends to attack their real enemies. The slogan “Support the Qing and exterminate the foreigners!” adopted by the Yi He Tuan movement (the Boxers) and the actions they took showed that the peasants did not understand the true nature of the foreign aggressors and the ties between them and the feudal rulers at home. When the Chinese Revolutionary League, the predecessor of the Kuomintang, had overthrown the monarchy of the Qing Dynasty, it believed that it had accomplished its task and as a result, “the revolutionary army prospered while the revolutionary party waned.” For more than ten years after the Revolution of 1911, the Kuomintang only sought to preserve the Provisional Constitution promulgated in the first year of the Republic of China (the so-called pro-Constitution campaign). It failed to take a firm stand against imperialism and allied itself with the local warlords to counter the Northern warlords, thus proving that the bourgeois democrats, too, were incapable of identifying the goal for which the Chinese people should struggle. This was the main reason why little had been achieved in the revolutionary struggles of the past. Second, the earlier revolutionaries did not arouse the people on a broad scale and, in particular, did not go deep among the workers and peasants to launch organized, sustained mass movements. The activities of the Chinese Revolutionary League were conducted mainly by a small number of revolutionaries in alliance with some secret societies or the New Army. They did not integrate themselves with the peasants in the rural areas, and their activities were divorced from the peasants’ spontaneous struggles. Neither did they integrate themselves with the workers in the cities. After the Revolution of 1911, although the Kuomintang waged a struggle against Yuan Shikai and opposed the Northern warlord government, it did little mass work. As Zhou Enlai remarked years later, the ordinary workers and intellectuals “were not deeply impressed” by the Kuomintang.40 This was another main reason why little had been achieved in the revolutionary struggles of the past. Shortly after the founding of the Communist Party of China, radical changes took place in these two respects. The CPC took an active part in revolutionary activities and learned, in the course of the struggle, to apply the Marxist method in observing and analyzing the problems China was faced with. In January 1922, the introduction to The Pioneers, a magazine, declared that the first task should be “to study assiduously the objective conditions of China so as to find the most appropriate solution to the country’s problems.” The Washington Conference convened by the imperialist powers towards the end of 1921 served as a practical lesson for the young Communist Party of China. At the conference a treaty was adopted by the nine nations — the United States, Great Britain, Japan, France, Italy, The Netherlands, Portugal, Belgium and China (i.e., the warlord government in Beijing). This treaty CHAPTER ONE THE FOUNDING OF THE CPC 41 approved the principle of “equal opportunity in China for the commerce and industry of all nations” and the principle of the “Open Door,” which had been proposed by the United States in a bid to curb Japan’s exclusive domination of China and to confirm the imperialist powers’ joint control of the country. Manipulated by the imperialists, the warlords of various factions in China intensified their rivalry and fought each other again and again in large-scale wars such as the Zhili-Anhui War and the Zbili-Fengtian War, throwing the political situation in China into utter chaos. These events made it clear to the CPC that what the Chinese people suffered from most was not ordinary capitalist exploitation but oppression by imperialists and rule by feudal warlords. In January 1922 the Party sent representatives to Moscow to attend the first congress of representatives from Communist parties and national revolutionary organizations of the Far Eastern countries, convened by the Communist International. The congress expounded Lenin’s theories on the national and colonial questions and stated that, so far as China was concerned, the first thing to do at the time was to “free the country from the shackles of foreign countries, overthrow the military governors” and establish a democratic republic. These ideas were of direct assistance to the CPC in working out a revolutionary programme for that period. The 2nd National Congress of the Communist Party of China The programme of anti-imperialist and anti-feudal democratic revolution in China was formulated at the 2nd National Congress of the CPC, held in Shanghai in July 1922. Twelve delegates attended the congress, representing 195 Party members (21 of whom were workers) from various parts of the country. The congress analyzed China’s economic and political conditions and brought to light the semi-colonial and semi-feudal nature of the society. On the one hand, the congress stated, China had been placed under the control of the imperialist powers both politically and economically and, indeed, had become “a semi ?independent country under the domination of international capitalist-imperialist forces.” On the other hand, it said, China remained under the political domination of the warlord and bureaucratic feudal system, which constituted an immense obstacle to the development of the rising Chinese bourgeoisie. It concluded that the democratic revolutionary movement against the imperialist and feudal forces was of paramount importance. While the Party’s maximum programme was to realize socialism and communism, the programme for the present stage should be to overthrow the warlords, to cast off oppression by world imperialism and to unify the country as a genuine democratic republic. Given present conditions, the congress believed, this was a stage that could not be skipped over. The congress went on to say that in order to attain the goal of the revolutionary struggle against the imperialists and warlords, it was imperative to form a democratic, united front. After making an elementary analysis of the conditions of all classes in Chinese society, it noted that the masses of Chinese peasants, with their tremendous revolutionary enthusiasm, were “the greatest essential factor in the revolutionary movement.” A large section of the petty bourgeoisie would also join the revolutionary ranks, because they were suffering untold misery. To free themselves from economic oppression, the emerging bourgeoisie would have to rise and struggle against world capitalist imperialism. As for the working class, it was a great force that would steadily grow into a revolutionary army that would overthrow imperialism in China. Thus, for the first time, the 2nd National Party Congress proposed for the Chinese people a clearly defined programme of anti-imperialist and anti-feudal democratic revolution. For a long time, the participants in that revolution, launched in the previous century, had had no clear idea of its targets and motive force and had never come out openly against the imperialist and feudal forces. But just a year after the Communist Party of China was founded, these questions had been clarified. Only the CPC, armed with Marxism, could point the way for the Chinese revolution. After the declaration of the 2nd Party Congress was made public, CHAPTER ONE THE FOUNDING OF THE CPC 43 Hu Shi published in the weekly Endeavour an article entitled “International China,” ridiculing the Party’s scientific thesis that the imperialists were sponsoring the feudal warlords as “a tall story told by country bumpkins.” He held that the major problem of the time was to form “a good government” composed of “good people,” and that it was not necessary to “involve any problem of world imperialism at this time.” However, it was impossible to establish any really good government or to achieve any economic and political progress unless imperialist oppression and the warlords’ regime were overthrown. What the Communist Party stated in scientific language was precisely what the Chinese people had dimly perceived from the realities of their own lives. For this reason, the Party’s programme quickly spread far and wide and was accepted by the public. “Down with the imperialist powers! Down with the warlords!” became the demand of the people. Nevertheless, the Communist Party also had some mistaken views regarding the Chinese revolution. It believed that the success of the democratic revolution would only bring the proletariat some freedoms and rights. In other words, the victory of the democratic revolution would be a victory for the bourgeoisie. The Chinese Communists reached this conclusion by judging from what had happened in Western countries, but the Western model was not applicable to the Chinese revolution. The Party had understood the difference between democratic revolution and socialist revolution, but not the difference between old democratic revolution and new democratic revolution. And it did not realize that under the new historical conditions, the democratic revolution should be a new democratic revolution led by the proletariat. Besides formulating an explicitly anti-imperialist and antifeudal revolutionary programme, the Communist Party adopted a brand-new method that had never been, and could never be, adopted by the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois political parties and groups — the method of arousing the masses and relying on them to carry out the revolution. As the vanguard of the working class, the Communist Party of China was different from other parties. All its activities were undertaken to serve the interests of the working class and the masses and to achieve their liberation. It dared therefore to trust the people and rely on them. In its declaration, the Second Party Congress stated: “Our Communist Party is neither a Marxist academic society organized by intellectuals nor a utopian revolutionary organization of a few Communists who are divorced from the masses .... Since ours is a party fighting for the proletariat, we should go among the masses and form a large mass party.” It went on to say that the Party should have the organization and training that would fit it for the revolution and that “all the Party’s activities should be conducted in the depths of the masses” and “must never be divorced from the masses.” The upsurge of the Chinese workers’ movement in the early stage of the Party’s existence was an initial manifestation of the might of the Party’s mass line. The Upsurge of the Labour Movement To promote the labour movement, the Communist Party established the Secretariat of the Chinese Labour Organization as a headquarters openly directing the movement. The head office was set up in Shanghai and later moved to Beijing. The director was Zhang Guotao, who was later replaced by Deng Zhongxia. Branches of the organization were established in Beijing, Wuhan, Hunan, Guangdong, Shanghai and other places. The Secretariat published the journal Labour Weekly, ran workers’ schools, formed industrial workers’ trade unions and organized strikes. These included strikes of workers at British and American cigarette factories in Shanghai, of workers on the Wuchang-Changsha section of the Guangzhou-Hankou Railway and of rickshaw men in the foreign concessions in Hankou. The political influence of the Party was growing among the workers and in society as a whole. In May 1 922 the Secretariat of the Chinese Labour Organization convened the First National Labour Conference in Guangzhou to discuss a number of questions, including ways of strengthening the unity of workers all over the country. Present at the conference were CHAPTER ONE THE FOUNDING OF THE CPC 45 162 representatives from trade unions in different parts of the country who belonged to different political parties and groups. “Because the Communist Party enjoyed extremely high prestige at the conference,” wrote Deng Zhongxia, “the different parties and groups expressed no objections” to the three slogans put up at the conference hall — “Down with imperialism!”, “Down with the warlords!” and “Long live the Communist Party of China!” “The conference adopted the proposal that until an all-China federation of trade unions was established, the Secretariat of the Chinese Labour Organization should serve as the general liaison office for the workers’ organizations throughout the country, and, actually, it was acknowledged as the only leader in this field.” This was a confirmation of the leading position of the Party in the labour movement. The success of the conference “led the working class onto the road to national unity.”41 Around the time of the 1st National Labour Conference, there came a first upsurge of the Chinese workers’ movement. It began with a strike by seamen in Hong Kong in January 1922 and culminated in a strike by the Beijing-Hankou Railway workers in February 1923. Within those thirteen months, more than a hundred strikes of different dimensions were staged in various parts of the country, with the participation of more than 300,000 workers. The seamen’s strike in Hong Kong was the first organized battle of the Chinese working class against the imperialist forces. It started in Hong Kong and spread to the Yangtze River Valley, lasting about four months. In January 1922 seamen in Hong Kong went on strike, demanding higher wages. Under the leadership of Su Zhaozheng, Lin Weimin and others, the strikers persisted in their struggle for 56 days, overcoming every sort of obstruction and sabotage by the Hong Kong British authorities. The strike paralyzed all shipping, urban traffic and production in Hong Kong, and the authorities were compelled to cancel the order declaring the seamen’s union illegal and to increase their wages by 15-30 percent. In the words of Deng Zhongxia, “The British imperialists, who had been self-assured and awe-inspiring for seventy years, yielded to the power of Chinese seamen at last.”42 The anti-imperialist strike won the support of Sun Yat-sen and the Kuomintang. The Secretariat of the Chinese Labour Organization also helped the striking sailors along the Yangtze. The victory of the strike strengthened the courage and confidence of the working class in their struggle and fostered the growth of the labour movement all over the country. Another of the major strikes staged in southern China in this upsurge of the labour movement was the strike of the workers of the Anyuan Coal Mines in Jiangxi Province and of the railway leading from the mines to Zhuzhou in neighbouring Hunan Province. There were more than 17,000 workers at the Anyuan mines and on the railway. Mao Zedong went to Anyuan on a fact-finding mission and then Li Lisan went there to organize the workers. On May 1, International Labour Day, 1922, the Anyuan Mine and Railway Workers’ Club (trade union) was established. Early in September, Mao Zedong returned to Anyuan to organize a strike; he was followed by Liu Shaoqi. On September 14, to press the authorities for recognition of the club and a wage increase, the workers went on strike. They put forward seventeen demands, including protection of their political rights and improvement of their material benefits. The mine and railway authorities tried to buy over the workers’ leaders and to assassinate Li Lisan, but their schemes ended in failure. Then they sent a telegram to the local warlords, asking them to set up a martial law enforcement headquarters in Anyuan. When Liu Shaoqi walked to the headquarters to negotiate with the authorities, thousands of workers encircled the building to ensure the safety of their representative. The Communist Party employed good tactics in this strike. Liu Shaoqi said, “We should tell the cadres and Party members beforehand that the aim of the revolution is to seize political power. The workers cannot be thoroughly liberated before we gain political power. Therefore we can only put forward limited demands in the strike. The results of negotiations will surely be limited, too. So long as wages are raised and the workers’ club is recognized, we should declare the strike victorious and end it.”43 Thanks to the valiant struggle of the workers and the sympathy and support they gained from people of all walks of life, the mine and railway authorities were compelled to CHAPTER ONE THE FOUNDING OF THE CPC 47 meet most of the workers’ demands, so the three-day strike at Anyuan came to a victorious conclusion. The membership of the workers’ club, which had been 700 before the strike, grew rapidly to more than 10,000. Shortly thereafter, a major strike took place in northern China. On October 23, the workers at the Kailuan Coal Mines near Tangshan in Hebei Province struck for higher wages and recognition of their workers’ club. Fifty thousand miners at Kailuan joined in the strike, placing pickets to keep order. The Secretariat of the Chinese Labour Organization appointed Peng Lihe and others to assume command of this struggle. Several miners were killed and fifty others were wounded in front of the office of the mine administration by troops and police who had been called out to suppress the strikers. This bloodshed did not dampen the morale of the strikers, and none of them returned to work. After more than twenty days, considering that the strike had been going on for quite a long time and that it was difficult to keep it up any longer, the strikers accepted mediation and, when the mine authorities increased their wages somewhat, reluctantly returned to work. The strike of the Bcijing-Hankou Railway workers was designed to win recognition of the General Beijing-Hankou Railway Trade Union. Zhang Guotao, Luo Zhanglong and other Communists were the principal leaders. The Beijing-Hankou Railway, a major north-south artery, was controlled by Wu Peifu, chief of the warlords of the Zhili faction, for whom it was an important source of revenue with which to finance his troops. The inaugural meeting of the General Beijing-Hankou Railway Trade Union was scheduled for February 1, 1923, in Zhengzhou, Henan Province. Wu Peifu, who in an open telegram had promised to “protect the workers,” suddenly turned hostile and ordered his troops to prevent the meeting from being held. On February 1 the troops and police took control of the entire city of Zhengzhou and cordoned off the union headquarters. Representatives of the workers broke through the lines and crowded into the hall, shouting “Long live the General Beijing-Hankou Railway Trade Union!” and other slogans. However, the meeting could not be held because the hall had been wrecked and the temporary residence of some of the representatives was under siege. The union called on workers all along the railway to go on strike “to fight for freedom and human rights.” On February 4, thirty thousand workers held an orderly general strike. Within three hours, the entire 1,000 kilometre-long Beijing-Hankou railway was shut down. On February 7, Wu Peifu, with the support of the imperialist forces, assembled troops and police to shoot down the striking workers in cold blood. In Hankou the reactionaries tied Lin Xiangqian, president of the Hankou Branch of the union (a Communist Party member), to an electricity pole and tried to force him to call the strikers back to work. Lin refused to surrender and died a hero’s death. Shi Yang, legal consultant to the General Beijing-Hankou Railway Trade Union (also a Communist Party member), who had gone to Zhengzhou to attend the inaugural meeting of the union and had now returned, was murdered in nearby Wuchang. Struck by three bullets, he shouted “Long live the workers!” three times before he died. During this massacre, 52 people were killed and more than 300 were wounded. Afterward, some 40 were thrown into prison, and more than 1,000 others were dismissed or went into exile. After the February 7th massacre, trade union organizations in all parts of the country, except those in Guangdong and Hunan provinces, were banned. The workers were demoralized, and for some time the labour movement across the country remained at a low ebb. During this period, the workers’ struggles were organized mainly under the leadership of the Communist Party. These struggles demonstrated the revolutionary steadfastness and combat capability of the Chinese working class and expanded the political influence of the Party as the vanguard of that class. This provided favourable conditions for cooperation between the Party and other revolutionary forces and for the launching of a great nationwide revolution. Through the struggles of this period, the Communist Party forged closer ties with the working class and increased its own strength. In June 1922 the Party’s Central Committee planned to CHAPTER ONE THE FOUNDING OF THE CPC 49 recruit more members from among the workers. With the growth of the labour movement, a number of outstanding figures emerging from the ranks — such as Su Zhaozheng, Shi Wenbin, Xiang Ying, Deng Pei and Wang Hebo — joined the Party one after another. Grassroots organizations of the Party were also established in industrial and mining enterprises. For example, a Party branch was set up in the area of the Anyuan mine and railway in February 1922, and by May 1924 it already had more than 60 members. The struggles of this period provided important lessons. First, the enemies of the Chinese revolution were extremely strong. To defeat such formidable enemies, it was not sufficient for the proletariat to fight alone, and every opportunity had to be used to win over all potential allies. Second, in semi-colonial and semi-feudal China, the workers were not permitted any democratic rights whatsoever, and almost all their large-scale struggles were suppressed by the reactionary troops and police. It was therefore impracticable to rely on strikes and legal battles to bring about victory, without waging revolutionary armed struggles. In a statement issued after the February 7th massacre, the Secretariat of the Chinese Labour Organization made this point when it asked, “Would the workers have let themselves be slaughtered like this if they had had weapons?”44 Bearing these lessons in mind, the young Communist Party of China entered a period of great revolution based on cooperation with the Kuomintang. NOTES 1. The leaders of the movement tried to use the Emperor’s authority to adopt reforms to save the nation from extinction and develop capitalism without basically changing the feudal system. 2. “The Orientation of the Youth Movement,” Selected Works of Mao Zedong, Eng. ed., Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, 1975, Vol. II, p. 243. 3. Complete Works of Sun Yat-sen, Chin, ed., Zhonghua Book Company, Beijing, 1981, Vol. I, pp. 288-89. 4. Complete Works of Sun Yat-sen, Chin, ed., Zhonghua Book Company, Beijing, 1986, Vol. IX, p. 99. 5. Mao Zedong, “How to Study the History of the Communist Party of China,”

In the Torrent of the Great Revolution

The Establishment of the First Period of Cooperation Between the KMT and the CPC

From 1924 to 1927, a great revolutionary movement swept across the country. This movement was unprecedented in modern Chinese history, because vast numbers of people were mobilized to participate in it. In China it is known as the “Great Revolution.” As expressed in the lyrics of a popular song of the lime, the aim of this revolution was to “overthrow the great powers and eliminate the warlords.” “The great powers” was a reference to the imperialist powers, and of course, even if the revolution were successful, that would not rid the world of them. But this slogan expressed the people’s determination to combat the invasion and oppression by the imperialist powers, to liberate the country from their rule and to gain independence. The imperialists governed China indirectly through the feudal warlords, of which the Northern warlords were the most powerful at this time. Accordingly, the objective of the Great Revolution was to overthrow the regime of the imperialists and the Northern warlords; thus, it was to be a national democratic revolution. The Great Revolution gave vent to the people’s pent-up hatred and rage against the imperialists and feudal warlords. That it took place in the mid-1920s can be attributed to the existence of the Communist Party of China. Although the CPC was still small and CHAPTER TWO IN THE TORRENT OF THE GREAT REVOLUTION 53 weak, it clearly articulated the goal of a national democratic revolution and, moreover, waged a courageous struggle for that goal. The initial victories in this revolution resulted from political cooperation between the Kuomintang and the CPC. The outbreak of the Revolution of 1911 and the founding ot the Republic of China had kindled hope in the hearts of many Chinese. However, their hope had been quickly extinguished, and now they were anxiously groping in the dark, seeking a way out of their intolerable situation. By the early 1920s, the people were confronted with two major problems. First, after the European powers and the United States had gone through the economic crisis following World War I, they had staged a comeback and were now redoubling their efforts to plunder China. They played out their conflicts and alliances on Chinese soil and controlled the country politically and economically. The conditions under which the national industries had expanded successfully during the war no longer existed, and most people were directly experiencing, great pressure from the imperialist powers, so that there was widespread resentment against them. Second, fighting between the warlords, each backed by a different imperialist power and each trying to control the whole country, had become a salient feature of the socio-political landscape. At this lime the Northern warlords, who controlled the central government in Beijing, were divided into three principal factions in three different provinces: the Zhili (present-day Hebei) clique, the Anhui clique and the Fengtian (present-day Liaoning) clique. These factions engaged in constant warfare. In 1920 war broke out between the Zhili and Anhui warlords. In 1922 and 1924 there were two wars between the Zhili and Fengtian warlords. Some of the warlords in southern China cooperated with or maintained ties with the Kuomintang, which was led by Sun Yat-sen. A constant state of war persisted between them and the Northern warlords. In 1917 the number of soldiers involved in this internecine fighting was about 55,000. By 1924 it had reached 450,000. Military expenditures rose sharply, placing an unbearable tax burden on the people. The nation was disintegrating. In provinces that had experienced several years of continuous civil war, the lives and property of the people could hardly be guaranteed. People of all social strata were hoping for a great revolution that would change these conditions. However, it would be extremely difficult to fulfil such hopes. The imperialist powers and the feudal warlords were deeply entrenched, and it would be impossible for an isolated minority or scattered individuals to overthrow them. From the failure of the Beijing-Hankou Railway workers’ strike, the Communists had learned that in semi-colonial, semi-feudal China, although the working class was resolutely revolutionary, it was too small to prevail alone. The only way for the Communist Party to ensure the victory of the revolution would be to form the broadest possible united front. The peasant masses were naturally the most reliable allies for the working class. The national bourgeoisie and the urban petty bourgeoisie were also potential participants in the united front, because they too had felt the bitterness of imperialist and feudal oppression. The alliance of all these classes would be an important characteristic of the Chinese national democratic revolution. Basing itself on this judgement, the Communist Party decided to form an alliance with the Kuomintang. On the whole, the Kuomintang led by Sun Yat-sen represented the interests of the bourgeoisie and the urban petty bourgeoisie. Having experienced setbacks over the years, it was quite weak. Moreover, its members came from different backgrounds and were divorced from the masses. Nevertheless, the Kuomintang had strengths that could not be overlooked. First, it still enjoyed widespread prestige, thanks to Sun Yat-sen, who had led the Revolution of 1911 that had overthrown the government of the Qing Dynasty and established the Republic. Afterwards, under extremely difficult circumstances, Sun had continued to fight relentlessly against foreign aggressors and domestic warlords. He had become a symbol of national democratic revolution. Second, the KMT had already established a valuable revolutionary base area in southern China. In February 1923 armed forces loyal to Sun Yat-sen drove general Chen Jiongming, who had betrayed Sun, out of Guangzhou [Canton]. Sun Yat-sen returned to Guangdong Province and established his headquarters there as CHAPTER TWO IN THE TORRENT OF THE GREAT REVOLUTION 55 generalissimo of the army and navy. He also gained control of the rich Pearl River Delta and central Guangdong and secured the loyaty of tens of thousands of soldiers. Although most of these soldiers were commanded by local warlords, they supported the national revolution in the areas controlled by Sun s government and permitted the revolutionary forces to be active openly. In no other place in China was this allowed. Third, having experienced setbacks over and over again. Sun Yat-sen had become keenly aware that many members of the Kuomintang were increasingly corrupt and that new tactics had to be adopted tor the Chinese revolution. So he began to establish contacts with the CPC with a view to cooperation between the two parties. He also welcomed the Soviet Union’s offer to support the national revolution in China. In June 1922, the CPC issued a statement on the current situation, in which it pointed out that “among the many political parties in China today, only the Kuomintang is comparatively revolutionary and democratic and is relatively sincere in its commitment to democracy, but there is a real need to change its vacillating policy.” Thus, when the CPC prepared to establish a united front, naturally it first considered reaching out to the KMT. The 3rd National Congress of the Communist Party of China In July 1922 the 2nd National Party Congress had tentatively raised the possibility of “extra-party” cooperation as one form of a united front. Another proposal they had discussed was for “intra-party” cooperation, under which Communist Party and Youth League members would join the KMT, turning it into an alliance of the revolutionary classes. This proposal had been made by G. Maring, the representative in China of the Communist International, and had its support. In August of the same year, several leaders of the Central Committee of the CPC had met in Hangzhou. When Maring made his proposal at this meeting, most of the participants had at first opposed it, but it was evenually accepted. In January 1923, the Executive Committee of the Communist International had adopted a “Resolution on the Re?lationship between the Communist Party of China and the Kuomintang” that was based on Maring’s proposal. During June 12-20, 1923, the CPC held its 3rd National Congress in Guangzhou and made a formal decision on policies and methods for cooperation between the CPC and the KMT. The participants at the congress correctly assessed Sun Yatsen’s revolutionary stance and the possibility of reorganization of the KMT. They decided that the best way to establish cooperation between the two parties was for CPC members to join the KMT in their individual capacity. This was the only form of cooperation acceptable to Sun Yat-sen and the Kuomintang at the time. When Sun Yat-sen’s wife Soong Ching Ling asked, “Why do we need to have Communist Party members join the Kuomintang?” her husband replied, “The Kuomintang is degenerating; to save it, we need an infusion of new blood.”' When Communists joined the Kuomintang, it helped both parties develop and advanced the Chinese revolution. In this way, the CPC was able to have more influence over the policies of the Kuomintang, promote its regeneration and encourage the bourgeois and petty bourgeois who were under its influence to join the revolutionary ranks. In addition, by taking advantage of the Kuomintang organizations, the CPC was able to mobilize the workers and peasants and secure mass support for the KMT, giving it a new lease on life. This also gave the Communist Party an opportunity to expand its previously limited operations, to be tempered in revolutionary struggles on a broader scale and to bring about an upsurge in the Great Revolution. The decision adopted at the 3rd National Congress of the CPC was therefore of major historical significance. The congress made it clear that while Party members were to join the Kuomintang as individuals, the Party itself should maintain its political, ideological and organizational independence. It emphasized that the interests of the workers and peasants could never be forgotten, that it was the special responsibility of the Party to organize them and carry out propaganda among them, and that encouraging the workers and peasants to participate in the national revolution was the Party’s central task. All this was chapter two in the torrent of the great revolution 57 quite right. However, the congress was wrong in some respects. For example, it failed to point out that the democratic revolution should be led by the working class. It stated that the Kuomintang should provide the main impetus for the national revolution, and should occupy the position of leadership in it. Furthermore, the congress underestimated the complexity of the Kuomintang’s internal situation, and it did not foresee that relations between the KMT and CPC would change in the years to come. To some degree, these oversights were later responsible for Chen Duxiu’s Right opportunist deviation. They also reflected the inexperience and immaturity of the Party at this early stage. The Establishment of Cooperation Between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party After the 3rd National Congress of the CPC, cooperation between the KMT and the CPC progressed rapidly. Communist Party organizations at all levels did much propaganda work, mobilized Party members and revolutionary youth to join the Kuomintang and actively promoted the national ^ revolution throughout China. In early October 1923, at the invitation of Sun Yat-sen, Soviet representative Mikhail Markovich Borodin arrived in Guangzhou. The Soviet government also provided military and material assistance to the Guangzhou government. As Borodin was a politically experienced and capable organizer, Sun asked him to serve as the Kuomintang’s organizational instructor (later as its political adviser). Not long after this, Sun Yat-sen wrote a letter to Chiang Kai-shek in which he categorically stated, “Our party’s revolution will never succeed without the guidance of Russia.” The Kuomintang soon began a reorganization. During January 20-30, 1924, in Guangzhou, Sun Yat-sen presided over the 1st National Congress of the Kuomintang. Of the 165 delegates who attended to opening ceremony, more than 20 were from the Communist Party. They included: Li Dazhao, Tan Pingshan, Lin Zuhan (Lin Boqu), Zhang Guotao, Qu Qiubai and Mao Zedong. Sun Yat-sen designated Li Dazhao as a member of the presidium of the congress, and Tan Pingshan delivered a work report on behalf of the Kuomintang Provisional Central Executive Committee. The congress approved a manifesto giving a new, updated interpretation of the Three People’s Principles that had been enunciated years before by Sun Yat-sen. “Nationalism” now meant anti-imperialism; “democracy” stressed the democratic rights shared by all the common people, and the “people’s livelihood” included the “equalization of land ownership” and the “regulation of capital.” Addressing the congress, Sun Yat-sen declared, “Now it is time for us to put forward an explicit revolutionary programme against imperialism and to arouse the masses of the people to fight for the freedom and independence of China! To do otherwise would mean staging an aimless, meaningless revolution, which would never succeed.”2 Not long after the congress, Sun Yat-sen also put forth the slogan: “Land to the tiller.” The political programme adopted at the 1st National Congress of the KMT was essentially compatible with some of the basic principles in the political programme of the Communist Party at the stage of democratic revolution, and it became the common programme for the first period of KuomintangCommunist cooperation. In fact, the 1st National Congress of the KMT adopted three great revolutionary policies — alliance with Russia, cooperation with the Communist Party and assistance to the peasants and workers. It also elected a Central Executive Committee. Ten Communists, including Li Dazhao, Tan Pingshan, Mao Zedong, Lin Zuhan and Qu Qiubai, were elected members or alternate members of the Committee, representing one-fourth of its total membership. After the congress, Communist Party members holding important posts in the headquarters of the Kuomintang included Tang Pingshan, director of the Department of Organization; Lin Zuhan, director of the Department of Peasants; and Mao Zedong, acting director of the Department of Propaganda. The success of the 1st National Congress of the KMT marked CHAPTER TWO IN THE TORRENT OF THE GREAT REVOLUTION 59 the beginning of cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party.

New Developments in the Revolution After the Establishment of Cooperation Between the KMT and the CPC

After cooperation between the two parties was established, the country’s revolutionary forces gathered at Guangzhou, quickly creating new prospects for the revolution against the imperialists and the feudal warlords. As soon as Communists began to join the Kuomintang, they worked to help form KMT organizations throughout the country. Until this time, Kuomintang branches had existed in only a few areas, such as Guangdong, Sichuan and Shandong provinces, Shanghai and overseas, and their work had been limited to the upper social strata. Although some progressives within the Kuomintang wanted to change this situation, they had no experience of mass work among the lower classes. The Communists, in contrast, placed great importance on such work and had acquired considerable experience in it. CPC members who joined the Kuomintang made a point of doing propaganda and organizational work among the masses in areas where warlords ruled, encouraging them to support the national revolution. Nineteen years later, looking back on the relations between the two parties, Zhou Enlai said: At that time, the Kuomintang relied on us not only ideologically, to revive and develop its Three People’s Principles, but also organizationally, to set up its headquarters and expand its membership in the provinces.... Most of the leading members of the Kuomintang in the provinces at the time were our comrades. ...It was our Party that drew the revolutionary youth into the Kuomintang and it was our Party that enabled it to establish ties with the workers and peasants. Members of the Kuomintang left wing predominated in all its local organizations. The places where the Kuomintang expanded most rapidly were precisely those where the left-wingers were in the dominant position and where there were the largest numbers of Communists.3 In January 1926, after two years of hard work the Kuomintang convened its 2nd National Congress. By this time, it had established twelve provincial headquarters, four special municipal headquarters and nine provisional provincial headquarters. The de facto leading members of many of these provincial or municipal headquarters were Communist Party members. These included Li Dazhao in Beijing, Lin Zuhan in Hankou, Dong Yongwei (Dong Biwu) and Chen Tanqiu in Hubei, He Shuheng and Xia Xi in Hunan, Xuan Zhonghua in Zhejiang, Yu Fangzhou and Li Yongsheng in Hebei and Hou Shaoqiu in Jiangsu. The labour movements led by the Communist Party, like the workers’ schools they organized, were all launched in the name of the Kuomintang. Therefore, although conditions in the Kuomintang were quite complicated, it had allied itself with the workers, peasants, urban petty bourgeoisie and national bourgeoisie to fight for democratic revolution. With the establishment of cooperation between the Kuomintang and the CPC, the workers’ movement, led by the Communists, revived and progressed. For example, the workers’ and peasants’ movements were legalized in Guangdong, which was under the jurisdiction of the revolutionary government, and thereafter developed even more rapidly. In July 1924, in the Shamian Concessions in Guangzhou which were inhabited by many foreigners, several thousand workers staged a political strike in protest against a new police regulation, issued by the British and French authorities, denying the Chinese free access to the concessions. Chinese police also participated in the strike, which lasted for more than a month and ended in victory. Deng Zhongxia, a respected early leader of the workers’ movement led by the Party, praised this strike, saying, “Ever since the failure of the great strike of February 7, 1923, the workers’ movement had been at a low ebb. In 1924 the great July strike in Shamian CHAPTER TWO IN THE TORRENT OF TIIE GREAT REVOLUTION 61 finally put an end to this. ...This strike caused a stir in Guangzhou and Hong Kong, and its influence spread to central and northern China.”4 The peasant movement also continued to grow. As early as 1922, Peng Pai had begun to organize peasant associations in Haifeng County, Guangdong Province, mobilizing the peasants to demand reductions in land rents. Now peasants all over Guangdong began organizing associations and self-defence corps to struggle against local tyrants, evil gentry and corrupt officials. To train personnel to form the core of the peasant movement, the KMT Central Executive Committee inaugurated the Peasant Movement Institute in July 1924, at the suggestion of the Communists. At various times Communist Party members, including Peng Pai, Ruan Xiaoxian and Mao Zedong, served as director of the institute. The cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party made it possible to establish a revolutionary military force. Sun Yat-sen had depended on the armies of the old regime to undertake revolutionary action and had suffered repeated defeats as a result. This had taught him a bitter lesson. At the suggestion of the Communists, at its 1st National Congress the Kuomintang decided to found an army academy. The Whampoa Military Academy — it was located on Whampoa Island near Guangzhou — opened in May 1924 with Sun Yat-sen as chairman. To serve as president of the academy, Sun appointed Chiang Kai-shek, chief of staff of the Guangdong Army, who had just returned from a tour of investigation in the Soviet Union. Liao Zhongkai, a well-known Kuomintang left-winger, was named the representative of the KMT. General Vasily Blucher (who assumed the name of Galen during his stay in China) and other generals of the Soviet Red Army were invited to serve as military advisers. In November the chairman of the Guangdong Regional Committee of the CPC, Zhou Enlai, who had just returned from Europe, was appointed director of the academy’s political department. The CPC also selected a large number of Communist Party and Youth League members and other revolutionary young people to study there. In the first group of students who registered at the academy were 56 Communist Party and Youth League members, representing one-tenth of the total enrollment. They included Xu Xiangqian, Chen Geng, Jiang Xianyun, Zuo Quan and Xu Jishen. What distinguished the Whampoa Military Academy from all military schools of the old type was that it attached equal importance to military training and political education. It emphasized the cultivation of patriotism and revolutionary spirit among the students. Zhou Enlai and other Communists were particularly instrumental in this. The system of military training combined with political work was later introduced to other military units under the Guangzhou Revolutionary Government. Not long after the War of Resistance Against Japan broke out in 1937, Mao Zedong said: “In 1924-27 the spirit of the Kuomintang troops was broadly similar to that of the Eighth Route Army today.... A fresh spirit prevailed among these forces; on the whole there was unity between officers and men and between the army and the people, and the army was filled with a revolutionary militancy. The system of Party representatives and of political departments, adopted for the first time in China, entirely changed the complexion of these armed forces.”5 Thanks to the joint efforts of the Communist Party and the Kuomintang, the idea of national revolution spread from south to north and throughout the country. In October 1924, during the second Zhili-Fengtian war, Feng Yuxiang of the Zhili clique staged a coup d’6tat and overthrew the Beijing government controlled by the chief Zhili warlords, Cao Kun and Wu Peifu. Feng Yuxiang thus gained control over the Beijing-Tianjin area. He then reorganized his troops into the National Army and sent a telegram to Sun Yat-sen inviting him to come north to discuss important matters of state. As Feng encountered many difficulties after the coup, he had to invite the veteran chief of the Northern warlords, Duan Qirui, to preside over the discussions. Duan Qirui and Zhang Zuolin, chief of the Fengtian clique, who was preparing to go to Beijing from the Northeast, also sent separate telegrams to Sun Yat-sen inviting him to go north. In November, Sun left Guangzhou for Beijing. Along the way, he CHAPTER TWO IN THE TORRENT OF THE GREAT REVOLUTION 63 called for the convocation of a national assembly and the abrogation of all unequal treaties with the imperialists. In Shanghai, Zhejiang, Guangdong, Hunan, Hubei and other provinces, associations for the convocation of the national assembly were established. Mass organizations everywhere sent him telegrams expressing their support for the assembly. This became a political propaganda movement. At the time, the political climate in China was good. The country seethed with activity and there was a great wave of anti-imperialist and anti-warlord sentiment, but contradictions were becoming apparent within the revolutionary camp. The Kuomintang was a complex organization, and its members included representatives of the big landlord and comprador classes. In June 1924 right-wingers in the KMT ranks, such as Deng Zeru, Zhang Ji and Xie Chi, began hostilities against the CPC by presenting to the Kuomintang Central Executive Committee a “Proposal to Impeach the Communist Party.” On the pretext that the Communist Party had its own organizations within the Kuomintang, they declared that the KMT absolutely could not permit “a party within the party” and called for a split with the Communists. To counter this attack, the Central Committee of the CPC issued an inner-Party circular on July 21, asking Party organizations at all levels to expose the reactionary activities of the right-wingers in the Kuomintang. Chen Duxiu, Yun Daiying, Qu Qiubai and Cai Hesen, among others, wrote a stream of articles defending the political programme adopted at the 1st National Congress of the KMT and blasting the Right-wingers for undermining unity in the revolutionary ranks. On August 20, before leaving for Beijing, Sun Yat-sen presided over a meeting of the Political Committee of the Kuomintang Central Executive Committee, which forcefully rejected the right-wingers’ position. It issued a directive stating: “Those who say that our party has been changed ideologically because the Communists have joined are mistaken and entirely unreasonable. There is no need to debate this point.... Those who say that our party will split because the Communists have joined it are similarly entertaining groundless fears.”6 Because of Sun Yat-sen’s high prestige in the Kuomintang, his firm support for cooperation between the two parties thwarted the Right-wingers’ anticommunist activities and their attempt to split the KMT. As the revolution progressed, the left and right wings of the Kuomintang grew further apart and relations between the KMT and the CPC became increasingly strained. There were many new problems in the revolutionary movement. From January 1 1 to 22, 1925, the Communist Party of China held its 4th National Congress in Shanghai. By this time the Party had 994 members. The historical significance of this congress can be summed up as follows. First, it raised the question of the leadership of the Chinese proletariat in the democratic revolution, declaring that unless the proletariat, which was the most revolutionary class, participated vigorously in the national revolutionary movement and exercised leadership over it, the movement would not succeed. Second, it raised the question of the alliance between workers and peasants, pointing out that the revolution needed the extensive participation of the workers, the peasants and the urban petty bourgeoisie. The peasants, it said, were important, since they were the natural allies of the working class. If the proletariat and its party did not mobilize the peasants to participate in the struggle, it would be unable to lead the revolution, and the revolution would fail. Third, the congress added to the content of the democratic revolution, stating that while opposing international imperialism, the Party should simultaneously oppose feudal warlord politics and feudal economic relations. This last statement demonstrated that the Party, having reviewed the events since its founding and particularly since the beginning of its cooperation with the KMT one year earlier, had made major progress in its understanding of the issues involved in the Chinese revolution. They also demonstrated that the Party had already elucidated the basic concept of the new-democratic revolution. Nevertheless, the 4th National Party Congress offered no concrete solution to the complex problem of how the proletariat was to win the struggle with the bourgeoisie for leadership of the revolution. Also, it did not fully understand the vital importance of political power and armed struggle. These weaknesses were to CHAPTER TWO IN THE TORRENT OF THE GREAT REVOLUTION 65 become more apparent as the revolutionary movement progressed. Less than two months after the congress, Sun Yat-sen died of liver cancer in Beijing. In his testament, he wrote: “For forty years I have devoted myself to the cause of the national revolution with the aim of winning freedom and equality for China. My experience during these forty years has convinced me that to achieve this aim we must arouse the masses and unite in a common struggle with those nations of the world which treat us as equals.” Naturally Sun believed that the Soviet Union would be the first nation to treat China as an equal and that to arouse the masses, the Kuomintang should cooperate with the CPC and assist the peasants and workers. These were the two basic conclusions reached by Sun Yat-sen, a great patriot and revolutionary, as he summed up the political experience of his lifetime. Sun’s death caused great sorrow throughout China. The KMT and CPC organized mourning ceremonies involving people from all walks of life, so as to disseminate throughout the country the message of Sun’s testament and his revolutionary spirit. The national revolutionary movement rose to a new height.

The May 30th Movement and the Unification of the Guangdong Revolutionary Base Area

The upsurge of the nationwide Great Revolution began in May 1925 with the anti-British and anti-Japanese strike of workers in Shanghai. At this time Shanghai, China’s largest industrial city, had 800,000 workers, almost one-third of the national total. The city was an important base for the imperialist powers’ aggression in China. There were the “International Settlement,” controlled by the British, and the “French Concession,” and many Japanese, British and other foreign-owned factories were located in Shanghai. The imperialists cruelly wrung every ounce of sweat and blood out of the Chinese labourers, arousing their hatred. Shanghai was also the seat of the Central Committee of the CPC, and the Party was active among the workers there. Using Shanghai University as their main base, Party members went out to do propaganda and organizing among the workers. They had established night schools for workers in seven districts. In the summer of 1924, under the leadership of Deng Zhongxia, Xiang Ying and others, they had founded the West Shanghai Workers’ Club, a mass organization with nearly 2,000 members that did much to advance the workers’ movement in Shanghai. In February 1925 the workers at the Japanese-owned Naigai No.8 Cotton Mill had gone on strike because a Japanese overseer had beaten a Chinese woman worker. The ranks of the strikers swelled to more than 35,000, as workers from 20 other Japanese-owned textile mills joined the strike. Victory in this struggle had greatly inspired workers throughout the country. On May 1, the 2nd National Labour Congress opened in Guangzhou, and the AllChina Federation of Trade Unions was formally established. Communist Party members Lin Weimin and Liu Shaoqi were elected president and vice-president of the federation. The Nationwide May 30th Movement On May 15, a Japanese capitalist of the Naigai No.7 Cotton Mill in Shanghai killed Gu Zhenghong, a worker who was a Communist. The Central Committee of the CPC met several times to discuss an appropriate response. Cai Hesen urged that the economic struggle of the workers be turned into a national struggle. On May 28 the Central Committee called an emergency meeting at which it decided to mobilize students and workers to launch a large-scale anti-imperialist demonstration in the International Settlement on May 30. On that day the Shanghai workers and students marched and spoke on street corners in support of the textile workers. Suddenly, the British police in the International Settlement opened fire on the crowd marching along Nanjing Road, killing 13 and wounding many others. The martyrs who sacrificed their lives at this demonstration included ShangCHAPTER TWO IN THE TORRENT OF THE GREAT REVOLUTION 67 hai University student and Communist Party member He Bingyi. For several days after this, there were instances of British and Japanese police killing Chinese civilians in Shanghai and other cities. These incidents enraged the people of Shanghai and throughout the country. All their pent-up fury against the imperialists suddenly poured out. Students, workers and shopkeepers all went on strike. On June 11 more than 200,000 people gathered at a mass rally in Shanghai. Approximately 17 million people participated in this movement nationwide. From the great commercial cities to the most remote areas of the countryside, people cried angrily “Down with imperialism!” and “Abolish the unequal treaties!” The wave of anti-imperialism swept the nation with astounding speed. While leading the May 30th Movement, the Communist Party greatly increased its membership. At the time of the Party’s 4th National Congress in January 1925, it had only 994 members. By October of the same year, it had 3,000. By December, the number was 10,000. In one year the Party had grown tenfold. As the movement spread across the country, new Party organizations were established in many provinces where there had been none before, such as Yunnan, Guangxi, Anhui and Fujian. The Parly was tempered well in the struggle. On June 3, after news of the May 30th massacre had reached Guangzhou, people from every section of the city’s population took to the streets in a mammoth demonstration. On June 19 members of the seamen’s, trolley workers’ and printers’ unions went on strike. Other unionized workers soon joined them, and the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions was established. One slogan of the strike was, “Fight the imperialists to the death!” Within a fortnight the number of strikers swelled to 250,000. Of these, more than 100,000 left Hong Kong and returned to Guangzhou. On June 23, the Hong Kong strikers joined 100,000 people from all walks of life in Guangzhou to hold a rally and a demonstration. Led by Zhou Enlai, 2,000 instructors, cadets and soldiers of the Whampoa Military Academy also participated in the demonstration. As the marchers passed through Shaji, a street on the opposite bank of the Pearl River, the British troops and police from the Shamian Concession suddenly opened fire, killing 52 people and seriously wounding some 170. After the Shaji massacre, the Guangzhou Revolutionary Government immediately severed all economic relations with Britain and blockaded the Guangzhou harbour. Workers from Hong Kong and Shamian convened in Guangzhou a conference of representatives of the Guangzhou and Hong Kong strikers and established a Strike Committee, with Communist Party member Su Zhaozheng as chairman. The committee had subcommittees in charge of armed self-defence, picketing, legal affairs and so on. The strikers managed to blockade the port of Hong Kong. The Guangzhou Revolutionary Government supported them and subsidized the Strike Committee with 10,000 yuan a month. Communist Party members Xu Chengzhang, Chen Geng and others served as chairman of the picketing committee, general instructor and instructors of the armed pickets. The simultaneous strikes in Guangzhou and Hong Kong lasted for 16 months. They were an important component of the May 30th Movement and an unprecedented feat in the history of China’s labour movement. They gave a powerful impetus to the Great Revolution, and the several hundred thousand strikers in Guangzhou became a pillar of the Guangzhou Revolutionary Government. The Unification of the Guangdong Revolutionary Base Area The vigorous development of the May 30th Movement created favourable conditions in which the KMT and CPC cooperated to create a revolutionary base area in Guangdong. Although the Guangzhou Revolutionary Government had been established two years earlier, it was internally unstable and had never been able to control all of Guangdong Province. The major threat to the government was Chen Jiongming’s hostile troops, who were entrenched along the Dongjiang River in eastern Guangdong. Furthermore, there were government troops who nominally supported national revolution, but who were in fact loyal to the local warlords Yang Ximin (the Yunnan Army) and Liu Zhenhuan (the Guangxi Army). These troops dominated Guangzhou, levying exorbitant taxes and committing outrages. Sun Yat-sen had once sorrowfully told them, “You operate in my name, but you ravage my hometown.” Early in 1925, when Sun Yat-sen was away in the north and seriously ill, Chen Jiongming took advantage of the opportunity to attack Guangzhou. The Guangzhou government organized the Eastern Expeditionary Army, which was divided into three columns taking three different routes, and sent it on a punitive expedition against Chen Jiongming. However, the forces that were to take the north and central routes were led by Yang Ximin and Liu Zhenhuan and refused to go into battle. Two recently established officers’ training regiments from the Whampoa Military Academy and the Guangdong army commanded by Xu Chongzhi took the south route and swiftly routed Chen Jiongming’s main force, gaining control of the Dongjiang area. By April, the first eastern expedition had proved victorious. In May, Yang Xiwen and Liu Zhenhuan’s troops staged a rebellion in Guangzhou in an attempt to overthrow the Guangzhou Revolutionary Government. Although Yang and Liu commanded a substantial number of troops, their plundering and corruption had turned the people against them and weakened their combat effectiveness. The Eastern Expeditionary Army quickly returned to Guangzhou and quelled their rebellion. The KMT and the CPC then began to reorganize the Guangzhou government and the armed forces. On July 1 the National Government was founded in Guangzhou to replace the former Revolutionary Government. Wang Jingwei, who was regarded as a member of the Kuomintang left, was elected president. M. M. Borodin was invited to serve as senior adviser to the government. However, because the CPC did not fully understand the importance of political power, it decided not to participate directly in the government and instead opted for a supervisory role. After the National Government was established, the army of the Whampoa Military Academy, along with the Guangdong, Hunan and Yunnan armies stationed in Guangdong, were reorganized into six armies of the National Revolutionary Army, with a total of 85,000 troops. The army of the Whampoa Military Academy was expanded to become the First Army. Many Communists were given responsibility for political work in the National Revolutionary Army. Zhou Enlai, Li Fuchun, Zhu Kejing and Luo Han served respectively as deputy Party representative and director of the political department of the First, Second, Third and Fourth Armies, and Lin Zuhan served as Party representative and director of the political department of the Sixth Army. Command over these armies, however, still rested with Chiang Kai-shek and the other members of the old military. A major mistake made by the Communists was to underestimate the importance of military command. It was only in the beginning of 1926 that Communist Party member Ye Ting became commander of the Independent Regiment of the Fourth Army of the National Revolutionary Army. The Independent Regiment was directly under the command of the Communist Party, but it represented only a small fraction of the National Revolutionary Army. On August 20, 1925, Liao Zhongkai, leader of the KMT’s Left wing, was assassinated in Guangzhou. This was a heavy blow to cooperation between the KMT and the CPC. Xu Chongzhi, Minister of Military Affairs of the National Government and commander-in-chief of the Guangdong Army, was forced out by Chiang Kai-shek. The forces under Xu’s command were then taken over and reorganized by Chiang, which further strengthened his power and influence in the military. In September 1925 the remaining troops of Chen Jiongming took advantage of the Eastern Expeditionary Army’s return to Guangzhou to reoccupy the Dongjiang area. The National Government decided to launch a second eastern expedition, with Chiang Kai-shek as commander of the expeditionary forces and Zhou Enlai as director of the General Political Department. By the end of November the expeditionary army, with the support of the peasant associations in the Dongjiang area, had wiped out Chen Jiongming’s forces, thus bringing to a successful conclusion the second eastern expedition. At the same time, another detachment of the National Revolutionary Army launched a southern expedition and wiped out all the forces commanded by the local CHAPTER TWO IN THE TORRENT OF THE GREAT REVOLUTION 71 warlord, Deng Benyin, that had been entrenched in southern Guangdong and on Hainan Island. In the end, the entire province of Guangdong was unified, which created a solid base for the coming Northern Expedition against the Northern warlords. The Emergence of the New KMT Right Wing and the CPC’s Countermove The revolution was progressing rapidly, but at the same time a reactionary faction was emerging within the Kuomintang. The Kuomintang had long been divided, and after the death of Sun Yat-sen, that resolute supporter of KMT-CPC cooperation, the divisions became increasingly apparent. Because the dilferent factions in the KMT represented the interests of different classes, their goals in the forthcoming Northern Expedition were also different. The Left-wingers, who represented the interests of the workers, the peasants and the petty bourgeoisie, wanted to eliminate the imperialist forces and the feudal warlords and establish a state governed by an alliance of all the revolutionary classes. The middle-of-the-roaders, who represented the interests of the national bourgeoisie, sought to overthrow the Northern warlords and then build a state governed by the national bourgeoisie. The Right-wingers, who represented the interests of the landlord and comprador classes, plotted to use the strength of the workers and peasants to overthrow the Northern warlords and then build a regime of the landlord and comprador classes. These three factions were at odds over the political programme laid out at the KMT’s 1st National Congress and Sun Yat-sen’s “Three Great Policies” — alliance with Russia, cooperation with the Communist Party and assistance to the peasants and workers. The conflicts within the KMT intensified day by day. In June and July 1925, Dai Jitao, a new Right-winger and a close friend of Chiang Kai-shek, wrote several pamphlets, including “Philosophical Foundations of Sun Yat-senism,” and “The National Revolution and the Chinese Kuomintang.” In these works he advocated compromise between opposing classes and criticized the Marxist theory of class struggle, while demanding that all Communists who had joined the Kuomintang “separate themselves from all other Party organizations in order to become true members of the Kuomintang.” In November of the same year, the old Rightwingers of the Kuomintang, including Zou Lu and Xie Chi, illegally convened the so-called 4th Plenary Session of the 1st Central Executive Committee of the KMT at the Biyun Temple in the Western Hills outside Beijing. They pronounced the expulsion of Communist Party members from the Kuomintang and announced that Borodin would no longer be an adviser. This group of old Right-wingers became known as the “Western Hills clique. Even more ominously, after the two eastern expeditions and the suppression of the rebellion by Yang Ximin and Liu Zhenhuan, Chiang Kai-shek expanded his forces and increased his power in the revolutionary ranks. He began to reveal his true anti-Communist character, using the Society for the Study of Sun Yat-sen’s Doctrines, controlled by the new KMT Right-wingers, to carry out anti-Communist activities. Chiang Kai-shek was a two-faced careerist. For a time, to strengthen his own position, outwardly he supported alliance with Russia and cooperation with the Communist Party. Inwardly however, he was rabidly anti-Communist, and his ultimate aim was to take the place of the Northern warlords himself. To attain this goal, he needed to use the Communist Party and the workers and peasants under its leadership to bolster his strength and expand his influence. At the same time, however, he was afraid that the workers and peasants might become strong enough to obstruct his climb to power. Therefore, while ostensibly cooperating with the Communist Party, he worked to restrain it, so that the people’s forces could not grow substantially and independently. In fact, he protected and organized the Rightist forces. That is, he simultaneously adhered to two policies, cooperating with the Communist Party and at the same time restraining it. After the May 30th Movement, the revolutionary mass movement reached a peak throughout the country. When Chiang Kai-shek saw that the people’s forces had grown stronger, he gradually intensified his anti-Communist activities. This situation posed a formidable new problem for the ComCHAPTER TWO IN THE TORRENT OF TIIE GREAT REVOLUTION 73 munist Party. Naturally it was of vital importance to maintain cooperation with the Kuomintang. However, in the face of growing tensions with the old and new Right-wingers in the Kuomintang, the Party needed to find an appropriate response. It was just as Mao Zedong wrote in an article on the united front in 1940: “If unity is sought through struggle, it will live; if unity is sought through yielding, it will perish.”7 At this time many Communist Party members believed that since the Kuomintang Right wing (especially the new Right) was openly trying to split the two parties, the Communist Party should fight back vigorously and appropriately so as to maintain KMT-CPC cooperation. In December 1925 Mao Zedong wrote an essay in which he emphasized the importance of distinguishing between friends and enemies of the revolutionary struggle, lo make this distinction, he proceeded to analyse the economic status of various classes in Chinese society and their respective political attitudes. He pointed out that the staunchest and numerically the largest ally of the proletariat was the peasantry, thus solving the major problem of finding allies in the revolution. Moreover, he reminded people that the national bourgeoisie held contradictory and vacillating attitudes: on the one hand, they felt the need for revolution; on the other hand, they were suspicious of it. He predicted that the Right wing of the national bourgeoisie might become the enemy of the revolutionary forces, while its Left wing might become their friend, but concluded that “we must be constantly on our guard and not let them create confusion within our ranks.”8 However, in the face of the combined attack of the imperialists and the warlords, Chen Duxiu, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, felt that the Party’s strength was inadequate. He was afraid that struggle against the new Right wing of the Kuomintang would impair the relations between the two parties and lead to the isolation and ultimate failure of the revolution in Guangdong. He hoped that unilateral concessions would help alleviate the contradictions within the camp of the national revolutionary forces. This course of action was supported by the Comintern representatives, and therefore carried the day within From January 1 to 19, 1926, the Kuomintang held its 2nd National Congress in Guangzhou. Among the representatives elected from different parts of the country, the majority were Communists and KMT Left-wingers. As a result, the Kuomintang officially continued to oppose the imperialists and warlord forces, adhering to the Three Great Policies of alliance with Russia, cooperation with the Communist Party and assistance to the peasants and workers. Furthermore, the congress decided to take disciplinary measures against the old Right-wingers who had attended the Western Hills meeting. In this sense, the congress was a success. When the congress opened, the leaders of the Communist Party organization in Guangdong were in favour of attacking the Right wing of the Kuomintang, isolating the middle-of-the-roaders and expanding the Left wing, while preparing to repel Chiang’s attack. However, under the influence of Chen Duxiu and Zhang Guotao, no action was taken against the new Right wing. The Communists and the KMT Left-wingers were definitely in the minority on the Kuomintang Central Executive Committee and its Central Supervisory Committee. As for Chiang Kai-shek, his standing in the Kuomintang was not particularly high to begin with. At the 1st National Congress, he had not been elected to the Central Executive Committee. But at the 2nd congress he became a member of it and soon after a member of its Standing Committee as well. Similarly, at the time of the 1st National Congress, he had been only the commander of one of the six armies in the National Revolutionary Army. At the second congress, he became chief inspector of the NRA. Thus, his status both in the KMT and in the army rose considerably. The concessions made by the Communist Party did absolutely nothing to moderate the conflicts within the revolutionary camp. On the contrary, they only helped encourage the new KMT Right-wingers. For every inch offered, the new Right-wingers seized an ell. On March 20, only two months after the 2nd National Congress of the KMT ended, Chiang Kai-shek suddenly took grave actions against the Communists. He concocted the CHAPTER TWO IN THE TORRENT OF THE GREAT REVOLUTION 75 story that the Communists were secretly moving the Zhongshan Warship to Whampoa near Guangzhou in an attempt to kidnap him and take him out of Guangdong. Using this as a pretext, he enforced martial law in Guangzhou. He put Communist Party members under surveillance or hou~°. arrest and disarmed the picket corps of the Guangzhou-Hong Kong Strike Committee. He had troops surround the Soviet consulate and put the Soviet advisers under surveillance. At a meeting on March 22, the Central Executive Committee of the KMT adopted a resolution proposed by Chiang to exclude CPC members from the Whampoa Military Academy and from the First Army of the National Revolutionary Army. Wang Jingwei, president of the National Government and chairman of its Military Commission, was forced to resign on account of “illness,” clearing the path for Chiang to advance to the highest and most powerful position in the Kuomintang. This series of events became known as the Zhongshan Warship Incident. The CPC Central Committee was not prepared for such a drastic turn of events, and had no experience as a guide in coping with it. In fact, Chiang Kai-shek still had only limited power and had taken these actions partly to see how the CPC would respond. No sooner had he completed the manoeuvre than he released all those he had arrested and returned the guns he had captured. He apologized for the incident, calling it a “misunderstanding” for which he asked to be “severely punished.” Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai and Chen Yannian, among others, called for a counterattack. Because only one of the six armies of the National Revolutionary Army was directly under Chiang’s command, and because even in that army there were many who were Communists or who sympathized with the revolution, Chiang’s position had not been completely consolidated and such a counter-attack was feasible. However, Chen Duxiu and the Soviet adviser N. V. Kuibishev were overwhelmed by Chiang’s display of strength, and they were afraid of a split between the KMT and the CPC. They believed that only further concessions would persuade Chiang to participate in the Northern Expedition. In the end, their yielding stance encouraged Chiang to proceed confidently with his activities to restrain the Communist Party. On May 15 the Kuomintang held the 2nd Plenary Session of its 2nd Central Executive Committee. On pretext of avoiding “disputes” within the KMT and of finding “a concrete method of removing misunderstandings,” Chiang Kai-shek proposed a “Resolution on Rectification of Party Affairs.” This resolution stipulated that members of the Communist Party must not exceed more than one-third of the members of executive committees of KMT organizations at or above the municipal or provincial level. It also provided that CPC members could not serve as directors of departments of the KMT Central Executive Committee and that the list of all CPC members who had joined the Kuomintang should be made public. The KMT Left-wingers, including Liu Yazi and He Xiangning, all voted against this draft resolution. Chen Duxiu and Zhang Guotao, however, still believed that the reason for the strained relations between the KMT and the CPC was that the “Communist Party had taken on too many responsibilities” and accordingly advocated further concessions. Thus Chiang’s resolution was adopted. At this point, all directors of departments of the KMT Central Executive Committee coming from the CPC had no choice but to resign, and the Communist Party had no further say in the affairs of the Kuomintang. Chiang, on the other hand, was appointed director of the Organization Department of the Central Executive Committee and minister of Military Affairs. He then became chairman of the Standing Committee of the KMT Central Executive Committee and commander-in-chief of the National Revolutionary Army. Thus, he became the most powerful figure in southern China. The 2nd National Congress of the Kuomintang, the Zhongshan Warship Incident and the adoption of the “Resolution on Rectification of Party Affairs” all took place less than six months before the Northern Expedition was to begin. At this critical moment, Chiang Kai-shek did not hesitate to launch one attack after another against the Communists, gaining positions of leadership as they made concessions. He gathered all available power into his own grip and prepared for an anti-Communist coup. After the Zhongshan Warship Incident, Chiang was already CHAPTER TWO IN THE TORRENT OF TIIE GREAT REVOLUTION 77 aligned with the big landlords and the big bourgeoisie. In analysing class relations, several leaders of the Communist Party turned a blind eye to this new development. They did not understand that the representatives of each class could change their political stance. While Chiang was openly taking steps to launch an anti-Communist attack, they still did not dare to mount a resolute counter-attack, for fear of a split between the two parties. Nevertheless, Chiang’s power was still limited. To achieve victory in the Northern Expedition he still needed the support of the Communist Party of China and the Soviet Union. As a result, he did not immediately split with the CPC publicly. As late as May 1926, he still stated, “Not only am I not opposed to Communism, but I very much approve of it.”9 For the time being, the KMT continued to cooperate with the CPC. But the fact that command over the Northern Expeditionary Army was largely in Chiang’s hands made it clear that while the revolution was progressing rapidly, it was already in a serious crisis.

The Triumphant Progress of the Northern Expedition and the Rise of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Movements

The immediate objective of the Northern Expedition was to topple the Northern warlords who were supported by the imperialists. The Northern warlords seemed a colossus far mightier than the Northern Expeditionary Army. For more than ten years they had controlled the internationally recognized central government and possessed vast financial and material resources. They directly commanded an army of 700,000 men, while the National Revolutionary Army had only about 100,000. At the beginning of the Northern Expedition, this total included both the original six armies in Guangdong and two new ones: the Seventh of Guangxi, commanded by Li Zongren, and the Eighth of Hunan, command?ed by Tang Shengzhi. However, the Northern warlords had two fatal weaknesses. First, the Chinese people had long felt a deep hatred for their rule and hoped for an early end to their internecine fighting that had lasted for more than ten years. They longed for the day when China would be independent and unified, and thus increasingly placed their hopes in the National Government in the South. The will of the people would surely play a decisive role in the coming struggle. Second, the Northern warlords were internally divided, principally into three factions. The chief of the already declining Zhili faction, Wu Peifu, still controlled Hunan, Hubei and Henan provinces and the area around the city of Baoding in Zhili (now Hebei Province). His forces totalled approximately 200,000 and were still concentrated in the Nankou area of north China, where they were attacking a part of the National Army commanded by Feng Yuxiang whose main forces had already retreated to the Northwest. Sun Chuanfang, whose forces occupied Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, Jiangxi and Fujian provinces, was known as the “commander-in-chief of five provinces.” He led 200,000 troops who operated as an independent force and whose combat effectiveness had surpassed that of Wu Peifu’s army. The most powerful of the warlords was Zhang Zuolin of the Fengtian clique, who with 300,000 troops at his command controlled the three provinces of the Northeast (present-day Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang), Rehe, Chahar, Beijing, Tianjin and Shandong. Deep contradictions persisted as these three forces intrigued against each other. They were unable to coordinate their military operations, and this made it easier for the Northern Expeditionary Army to destroy them one by one. The Northern Expedition Launched Jointly by the KMT and the CPC It was at the suggestion of the Soviet military advisers led by Galen that the National Revolutionary Army adopted a strategy of massing its forces and annihilating the enemy armies one at a time. First, it would send troops into Hunan and Hubei, quickly wiping out Wu Peifu’s main force, the weakest link in the CHAPTER TWO IN THE TORRENT OF THE GREAT REVOLUTION 79 Northern warlords. It would try to keep Zhang Zuolin and Sun Chuanfang neutral for a time; then, after the troops sent to Hunan and Hubei had achieved victory, they would turn east to wipe out Sun Chuanfang’s army. Finally, they would move north to attack the most powerful forces, those of Zhang Zuolin. In accordance with this plan, in May 1926, a part of the National Revolutionary Army’s Seventh Army and Ye Ting’s Independent Regiment of the Fourth Army moved as advance forces to Hunan Province to assist Tang Shengzhi’s Eighth Army, which had been defeated by Wu Peifu and was retreating to Hengyang in southern Hunan. On July 9, the National Revolutionary Army took a mass pledge in Guangzhou and formally launched the Northern Expedition. Two days later, after the main body of the Fourth and Seventh Armies joined forces with the Eighth Army, they succeeded in taking Changsha. On August 22, they occupied Yuezhou, and thereafter they entered Hubei Province. The Northern Expedition was enthusiastically supported by the people in both the battle areas and the rear. CPC organizations at all levels did effective work in mobilizing the workers and peasants. At this time, Hunan and Hubei were suffering from severe food shortages, and as construction of the WuhanGuangdong Railway was not yet completed, it was a major problem to keep the troops supplied. Under the leadership of the Guangdong Regional Party Committee, the Hong KongGuangzhou Strike Committee of Guangdong organized 3,000 men into transport, propaganda and medical teams to follow the troops north. The Hunan Regional Party Committee had always been a strong organization. According to statistics compiled in August 1926, the province had 2,699 Party members, a figure second only to Guangdong’s. The Party counted 400,000 peasants and 110,000 workers in Hunan under its leadership. When the Northern Expeditionary Army advanced toward Changsha, the Hunan Regional Party Committee mobilized these people to act as guides, deliver letters, serve as scouts, help with transport, sweep mines, carry stretchers, give first aid, bring gifts to servicemen and create disorder in the enemy’s rear. They also organized peasant self-defence militias to participate directly in the fighting. Such enthusiasm had rarely been seen in previous wars in China. Knowing that the Northern Expeditionary Army was advancing on Wuhan, Wu Peifu hurriedly recalled his troops from the North. He built defences at two strategic points along the railway, the Tingsi and Hesheng bridges near Wuhan. Wu personally commanded his guards and organized a special corps to force the soldiers at gunpoint to fight at the front. In late August, after an intense and bitter battle, the main force of the National Revolutionary Army’s Fourth and Seventh Armies and a part of the Eighth Army finally captured the two railway bridges, routed Wu Peifu’s main force and marched on Wuhan. Ye Ting’s Independent Regiment fought heroically in the fierce battle. Subsequently the main force of the Eighth Army crossed the Yangtze River and on September 6 and 7 occupied Hanyang and Hankou. On October 10 the main force of the Fourth Army and a part of the Eighth Army captured Wuchang, after laying siege to the city for more than a month. The men of Ye Ting’s Independent Regiment were the first to scale the walls. The rest of the armies then entered the city, where they annihilated Wu Peifu’s main force. After this, the Fourth Army, of which the Independent Regiment was a part, became known as the “Iron Army.” After the great victories of the Northern Expeditionary Army in Hunan and Hubei provinces, Sun Chuanfang abandoned his neutral stand. In late August, he dispatched massive forces from Jiangxi Province, launching a flank attack on Hunan and Hubei in an attempt to cut off the retreat of the Northern Expeditionary Army. During September the National Revolutionary Army’s Second, Third and Sixth Armies and the First Division of its First Army, which had been ordered to keep watch on the movements of Sun Chuanfang’s army, entered Jiangxi and captured Nanchang for a time. Sun Chuanfang threw his main force into a ferocious counter attack and recaptured Nanchang, inflicting heavy casualties on the First Division of the First Army, which was commanded by Chiang Kai-shek. At this juncture, the Fourth Army and then the Seventh Army entered Jiangxi, joining forces with the other troops there, and in early November CHAPTER TWO IN THE TORRENT OF THE GREAT REVOLUTION 81 launched a fierce offensive along the Nanchang-Jiujiang Railway. Finally, they wiped out Sun Chuanfang’s main force and captured Jiujiang and Nanchang. This brought about a complete change in the military situation in Jiangxi. Two divisions of the First Army that had been stationed in the Guangdong-Fujian border area took this opportunity to launch an attack on F ujian Province, and in mid-December they took the city of Fuzhou without a fight. , While the Northern Expeditionary Army was winning these great victories, Feng Yuxiang’s National Army troops had withdrawn from Nankou, a strategic point near Beijing, to defend Suiyuan Province (now part of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region). On September 17, in Wuyuan County, Suiyuan, these troops took a mass pledge to fight the Northern warlords and started to move south with the help of the Soviet Union and the CPC. Feng Yuxiang, who had just returned from the Soviet Union and joined the Kuom intang, became commander-in-chief of the combined forces of the National Army. Liu Bojian, a Communist Party member, served as deputy director ol the army’s political department. By November, the combined forces already controlled Shaanxi and Gansu provinces. Thus, in six months after launching the Northern Expedition, the National Revolutionary Army had made surprising progress. By late 1926 it had already wiped out the main forces of Wu Peifu and Sun Chuanfang and gained control of all the southern provinces except Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui. Feng Yuxiang’s forces controlled the Northwest and were preparing to move east through Tongguan, a county of strategic importance in eastern Shaanxi Province, in coordination with the Northern Expeditionary Army’s operation. As most people could clearly see, the victorious conclusion of the Northern Expedition was at hand and it was only a matter of time before the regime of the Northern warlords would finally collapse. Even in the provinces they still controlled, the people cherished new hope. Everywhere the people enthusiastically prepared to welcome the arrival of the Northern Expeditionary Army. In the early stage of the Northern Expedition there were contradictions between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party. Nevertheless, in the face of a powerful common enemy, the anti-Communist forces within the KMT temporarily ceased their active opposition and by and large, the two parties maintained their alliance. The Northern Expedition was launched under the anti-imperialist and anti-warlord slogans of the Communist Party. In the course of the expedition, Party members made enormous contributions, both by spreading political propaganda in the army and by mobilizing the peasants and workers. Soviet military advisers and material assistance also played an important role. Thanks to cooperation between the KMT and the CPC, the Northern Expeditionary Army was able to achieve major victories in a short space of time. The Mass Movements of Workers and Peasants in Hunan, Hubei and Jiangxi Provinces As the warlord regime collapsed before the advancing Northern Expeditionary Army, the mass movements of workers and peasants expanded at an unprecedented rate. This was particularly the case in Hunan, Hubei and Jiangxi provinces. In these provinces, the peasant movement was the first to gain momentum. On September 1, 1926, Mao Zedong published an article entitled “The National Revolution and the Peasant Movement,” in which he pointed out the overriding importance of that movement: “The peasant problem is the central issue of the national revolution.... A large part of the so-called national revolutionary movement is the peasant movement.... Unless the peasants in the rural areas rise to overthrow the privileges of the patriarchal feudal landlord class, the warlord and imperialist forces will never be brought down.” In November of the same year, Mao Zedong became the secretary of the CPC Central Committee’s Peasant Movement Committee, which decided to make Hunan, Hubei, Jiangxi and Henan provinces the centres of the movement. In Hunan, for example, from July 1926 when the Northern Expeditionary CHAPTER TWO IN THE TORRENT OF THE GREAT REVOLUTION 83 Army arrived there to January of the following year, the membership of peasant associations rose from 400,000 to two million. A total of ten million people were active under the leadership of the peasant associations; in other words, about half the peasants in Hunan were already organized. In many counties almost all the peasants were members of peasant associations. Once organized, they went into action and brought about an unprecedented revolution in the countryside. Their main targets were local tyrants, evil gentry and lawless landlords. They also attacked patriarchal ideas and institutions, corrupt officials in the cities and bad practices and customs in the countryside. As Mao Zedong put it at the time, “In force and momentum the attack is tempestuous.... [T]he popular slogan ‘All power to the peasant associations’ has become a reality.”'0 In Hubei, the total membership of the peasant associations swelled to 200,000 by November. In Jiangxi, it reached 50,000 by October. A great rural revolution, unparalleled in Chinese history, was beginning to develop in these two provinces as well. Mao Zedong underlined its significance: “[T]he national revolution requires a great change in the countryside. The Revolution of 1911 did not bring about this change, hence its failure. This change is now taking place, and it is an important factor for the completion of the revolution.”11 As the great rural revolution unfolded, the urban workers’ movement also surged forward. In the autumn of 1926 federations of trade unions were formed in Hunan and Hubei. By the following January they had a total of 700,000 members. In Wuhan, union membership had risen tenfold, from about 10,000 before the Northern Expedition to 100,000. Trade unions were also formed in many counties. Shortly after this, a federation of trade unions was established in Jiangxi Province. Following the example of the Guangzhou-Hong Kong Strike Committee, the trade unions in Hunan, Hubei and Jiangxi all formed armed workers’ picket corps. In Changsha, Wuhan, Jiujiang and other cities, the workers organized large-scale strikes, demanding higher wages, shorter working hours and better working conditions, and opposing feudal overseers and the indentured labour system under which the workers were exploited by both capitalists and contractors. Most of these struggles were successful. However, in certain cities, particularly Wuhan, there was some “Left” deviation in the labour movement. Some workers and shop assistants demanded wages that were too high and hours that were too short, leaving certain middle- and small-scale industrialists and merchants no profits. Furthermore, some workers took excessive actions against such employers. As the revolution swept over Hunan, Hubei and Jiangxi in the South, it also made headway in the North. Under the leadership of the Party, the people struggled to overthrow the Fcngtian warlords and topple Duan Qirui, chief of the Anhui warlords. Major victories were also achieved in the mass struggle against imperialism, in January 1927 British sailors killed or wounded several Chinese civilians in Hankou and Jiujiang. Under the leadership of Communist Party members, including Liu Shaoqi and Li Lisan, workers and other residents of Wuhan responded by entering and occupying the British concession in Hankou, while the National Revolutionary Army’s Second Independent Division took over the British concession in Jiujiang. On February 9 the Foreign Ministry of the National Government signed an agreement with the British government by which China recovered the two concessions. The CPC Central Committee Falls Behind the Events While the mass movements of the workers and peasants were gaining momentum in Hunan, Hubei and Jiangxi provinces, the leading bodies of the Central Committee of the CPC stayed in Shanghai, far from the centre of the revolutionary storm. They lagged far behind revolutionary developments in their understanding and action. At the time, it was important to launch mass movements to support the Northern Expedition, but basically it was the army that fought the war. The Party leadership made a major mistake. As Mao Zedong wrote a decade later, “During the Northern Expedition it neglected to win over the army but laid one-sided stress on the mass movement....”12 Before the Northern Expedition began, Soviet adviser Galen CHAPTER TWO IN THE TORRENT OF THE GREAT REVOLUTION 85 asked the CPC Central Committee, through Zhou Enlai, to resolve the political question of whether the Communists should support or weaken Chiang Kai-shek in the course of the expedition. Chen Duxiu had Zhang Guotao hold a meeting on the question, but there was no real discussion. At the meeting Zhang Guotao uttered only one sentence: “Our Party’s policy during the Northern Expedition is to both support and oppose Chiang Kaishek.” Accordingly, for a long time the Party’s policy remained unclear, and objectively this helped strengthen Chiang’s position. As the Northern Expedition progressed, Chiang tightened his grip on the military and on political power. The Communists should have, and could have, taken advantage of the favourable situation to control some military units and local organs of political power. This would have made it possible to cope with any eventualities. But with Chen Duxiu as general secretary, the Central Committee did not allow such a course of action. It sent a letter to the members of the Hubei Regional Party Committee instructing them that “From now on, we must use our manpower exclusively in mass work; we must never participate in government work.”13 Later, the Central Committee criticized the Hubei Regional Party Committee for allowing Dong Biwu to participate in the Hubei provincial government and asked those Party members who had participated in the Jiangxi provisional provincial government, including Li Fuchun and Lin Zuhan, to leave their posts. It ordered Party members who were magistrates in Jiujiang, Yongxiu and other counties in Jiangxi to resign or be expelled from the Party. It also sent a letter to Liu Bojian, deputy director of the political department of the Combined Forces of the National Army, asking him to see that all Party members and Youth League members serving as Party representatives in the Combined Forces devoted their attention to political propaganda and did not interfere in military and administrative matters.14 Chen Duxiu believed that adopting a concessionary policy would make it clear that the Communists were not scheming to seize power and would case Chiang Kai-shek’s concerns. This, in turn, would prevent a rupture between the KMT and the CPC. But Chiang did not slacken his attempt to split the two parties, and when he suddenly launched a full-scale assault on the CPC, the Central Committee was unprepared and unable to organize a forceful resistance. This was a bitter and tragic lesson.

Before and After the Coup of April 12, 1927

The split in the southern revolutionary camp became increasingly apparent after its decisive victory in Jiangxi in November 1926. In the autumn of 1926 the Northern Expeditionary Army had won victories in Hunan and Hubei, but Sun Chuanfang continued to menace its flanks. Sun’s forces were more powerful than Wu Peifu’s. If they entered Hunan from Jiangxi, the Northern Expeditionary Army might find itself in the dangerous position of being cut off from its rear areas. At the same time, however, actual control over the military forces in Hunan and Hubei was already in the hands of General Tang Shengzhi, and the worker and peasant movements were rapidly expanding there. If Chiang Kai-shek were defeated in Jiangxi, it would be hard for him to survive. Under these circumstances, Chiang had no choice but to proceed cautiously in dealing with the relations between the KMT and the CPC. After Sun Chuanfang’s main force was defeated in Jiangxi, however, the situation changed drastically. Chiang, who was stationed at Nanchang, was aware that this was not only a victory in Jiangxi but also the prelude to victory throughout the Southeast. The political and military situation in southern China had totally changed. Reactionary Forces at Home and Abroad Gather Around Chiang Kai-shek At this time, the attitude of the imperialist powers toward Chiang Kai-shek underwent a subtle change. They had not expected that the Northern warlords would collapse so quickly. Having weathered the crisis of post World War I and entered a CHAPTER TWO IN THE TORRENT OF THE GREAT REVOLUTION 87 period of relative stability, they were prepared to intervene in the Chinese revolution. The British, centred in the rich Yangtze valley, had the most special privileges. Not long after the Northern Expeditionary Army entered Hubei, British warships provoked a series of incidents, using them as a pretext to shell the county seat of Wanxian in Sichuan Province on the upper Yangtze. More than a thousand soldiers and civilians were killed or wounded in the Wanxian massacre. Sixty-three foreign warships were stationed on the Yangtze River, and more than twenty thousand foreign troops were mustered in Shanghai. Combined with the international business community and police force, the total number of foreigners in Shanghai was over 30,000. The foreign powers plotted to use violence and threats to prevent the continued advance of the Chinese revolution. At the same time, they saw that the fall of the Northern warlords was already inevitable and intensified their efforts to split the revolutionary camp by supporting new agents. The first to do this were the Japanese. At the end of 1926, the director of the Treaties Bureau of the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs went to Wuhan and then Nanchang, where he met with Chiang Kai-shek. He reported back to the Japanese government that there were sharp contradictions between Wuhan and Nanchang and that in the future the rifts would inevitably become more apparent. In January 1927 Chiang met with the Japanese consul in Jiujiang, where he stated clearly that far from planning to abolish the unequal treaties that China had been forced to sign with the imperialist powers after the Opium War of 1840, he would respect them to the greatest possible extent. He also promised to recognize foreign loans to China and to repay them within the specified time. In short, he assured the consul that the special privileges enjoyed by foreigners in China would be completely protected. Thus, the imperialist powers began to view Chiang Kai-shek as the leader of the “moderate” faction within the Kuomintang. They began to court him, maintaining that he and his group were the only forces that could prevent the Communists from controlling the vast area south of the Yangtze River. As the political and military situation was increasingly favourable to the South, many of the military forces formerly loyal to the Northern warlords or to local warlords were incorporated into Chiang’s. Thus his strength increased rapidly. Politicians and bureaucrats also came from the North to work for Chiang. One of them was Huang Fu, who had close personal ties to him. When Huang Fu came through Shanghai on his way south, he went to see the vice president of the Bank of China, Zhang Gongquan, who promised him that Chiang would be permitted to overdraw his account by one million yuan. When this incident became known, it gave rise to the popular saying, “In the military there is the Northern Expedition, while in politics there is the Southern Expedition.” Against this background, Chiang Kai-shek’s anti-Communist stand became more and more evident. Suddenly, he proposed moving the Kuomintang Central Executive Committee and the National Government from Guangzhou to Nanchang, where the headquarters of the Northern Expeditionary Army was located. This would place them under his direct control. On February 21, 1927, he publicly announced his anti-Communist position in a speech at the Nanchang headquarters. He proclaimed himself the “leader of the Chinese revolution” and stated that “when Communist Party members do something wrong or behave improperly, I have the responsibility and the power to intervene and punish them.” He began to openly suppress the revolutionary forces of the workers and peasants. On March 6 he ordered the New First Division of the National Revolutionary Army, stationed in Jiangxi, to trap and kill Chen Zanxian, a Communist Party member who was the chairman of the Ganzhou Federation of Trade Unions and vice-chairman of the Jiangxi Provincial Federation of Trade Unions. During March 10-17, the 2nd Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang held its 3rd Plenary Session in Wuhan. Because several KMT leaders in Wuhan did not want Chiang Kai-shek to exercise dictatorial rule, participants at this session rejected his proposal to move the capital to Nanchang. They adopted resolutions reaffirming Sun Yat-sen’s Three Great Policies, strengthening the party’s authority and opposing military dictatorship. CHAPTER TWO IN THE TORRENT OF THE GREAT REVOLUTION 89 Furthermore, by changing the system of leadership, they in effect dismissed Chiang Kai-shek from the chairmanship of the Standing Committee of the Kuomintang Central Executive Committee. However, because Chiang controlled most of the military power, the resolution strengthening the party’s authority had no effect. Chiang accelerated his anti-Communist activities. Having gone to Jiujiang from Nanchang on March 16, he instigated thugs from the Green Band and the Red Band — secret, Mafia-style organizations — to destroy the Jiujiang KMT headquarters and the offices of the city’s Federation of Trade Unions, in which Leftwingers constituted a majority. Three people were killed at the KMT headquarters, and at the federation one was killed and six were injured. Chiang then took a warship east to Anqing. On March 23, at his instigation, a gang of ruffians there destroyed the Anhui KMT headquarters, which was dominated by Leftwingers, and the offices of the Federation of Trade Unions and of the peasant association. Again, many people were wounded. The thugs proudly said: “We have made all the arrangements with our leader. We will attack Red elements everywhere we go.” On April 9 the deputy director of the National Revolutionary Army’s general political department, Guo Moruo, who had investigated the violence in Anqing and Jiujiang, published a long article entitled “Look at Today’s Chiang Kai-shek.” After reviewing the facts, he wrote, “Chiang Kai-shek is no longer the commander-in-chief of our National Revolutionary Army. He is the central force behind a broad spectrum of counterrevolutionaries, including thugs and ruffians, local tyrants and evil gentry, corrupt officials and traitorous warlords.... Inside the KMT he is more dangerous than enemies outside it.”15 It was only a matter of time before the Chiang clique would openly betray the revolution. Different Opinions Within the Communist Party of China There were two different opinions within the CPC as to how the Party should respond to the grave split that might occur in the revolutionary camp at any time. The members of the Guangdong Regional Party Committee had recognized the impending danger earlier. In November 1926 they had submitted a political report to the Central Committee of the CPC in which they pointed out that there could be no hope of long-term cooperation with the new warlords. Therefore, they advised: “We should prepare our forces, organize the masses and consolidate power of the people.... We should try to avoid pointless struggle and prevent the eruption of large-scale struggle (of course, that is not to say we should avoid struggle completely). At the same time, we should do everything possible to prepare all our forces for a great rebellion, and wc should have such great forces. In the event of a large-scale struggle, they said, they hoped to be victorious.”16 On December 11 Zhou Enlai published an article entitled “The Chinese Communist Party in the Present Political Struggle,” in which he stated explicitly: “For if there were conflicts, they would be conflicts between the masses of revolutionary workers and peasants and a bourgeoisie that was compromising with the imperialist enemies; if there were a split, it would be a split between an alliance of the revolutionary Left wing of the Kuomintang and the Communists on the one hand and the Right wing that was abandoning the revolution on the other.”17 He also warned that the CPC should prepare, mentally and in practical work, for the divisive activities of the new Right-wingers within the KMT. But the Central Committee of the CPC saw this view as “a major, dangerous, and essential error,” one that could “lead to terrible repercussions.”18 It demanded that this error be corrected. It was at this crucial juncture that, on December 13, 1926, the Central Committee convened a special meeting. In his political report, Chen Duxiu stated at the outset: “The important issue in the political report to be addressed at this meeting is still the Kuomintang. Since the military victory in Jiangxi, there have been many new changes in the relationship between the CPC and the KMT, and we need to discuss that question again.” The resolution adopted by the meeting, in line with Chen Duxiu’s report, said: CHAPTER TWO IN THE TORRENT OF THE GREAT REVOLUTION 91 “Of all the dangerous tendencies, the most serious is that as the mass movements gain momentum, the people tend toward the ‘Left’ while the military regime, terrified of the mass movements, ends towards the Right. If these ‘Left’ and Right tendencies continue to develop, the united front will ultimately rupture, and that will endanger the entire national revolutionary movement.” In other words, the Central Committee declared that both the Right tendencies of the military regime and the “Left” tendencies of the mass movements should be prevented. But the first half of the statement was merely empty talk. There was certainly no practical, effective method of countering the rightward swing of Chiang’s forces. In fact, the only course of action available was to prevent the “Left” tendencies in the mass movements, that is, to suppress the vigorously expanding workers’ and peasants’ movements. At a time when the Kuomintang new Right-wingers had already resolved to oppose the Communists and cause a rupture between the KMT and the CPC, and when almost all military and political power was concentrated in their hands, the major force that the Communist Party could rely on was the workers and peasants. If the CPC abandoned the policy of mobilizing and organizing the masses into an effective force, not only would it be unable to counter a coup staged by the new Right wing of the KMT, but it would be unable even to control the vacillations of the upper petty bourgeoisie. Thus, at this special meeting the CPC Central Committee failed to resolve the question of how the Party was to survive and persist in the struggle when faced with imminent danger. Worse, it adopted a mistaken policy toward the mass movements, which led to even more serious consequences. After the meeting, the capitulationist policy of stifling the workers’ and peasants’ movements in order to appease the Right wing of the KMT began to be carried out in the Party’s practical work. Chen Duxiu himself had a talk with the secretary of the Hunan Provincial Party Committee, ordering him to put a stop to the “extreme” actions of the peasants. Some Party members opposed this Right capitulationist error. From January 4 to February 5, 1927, Mao Zedong spent thirtytwo days investigating the peasant movement in Hunan. In the report he submitted to the Central Committee of the CPC, he wrote: “The masses are now shifting to the Left. Our Party has in many respects indicated that it is out of step with the revolutionary mood of the masses. The Kuomintang is even further out of step. This is something we should pay close attention to.” In March, an article entitled “Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan” began to be published in the weekly magazine Soldier. In this report, Mao sharply rejected the skepticism and criticisms heaped on the peasant movement from both inside and outside the Party. He explained the great significance of the revolution in rural areas and pointed out that all revolutionary comrades ought to march at the head of the peasants and lead them, not trail behind them, gesticulating and criticizing or worse, stand in their way and oppose them. He emphasized that the Party should rely on the poor peasants, who were the “vanguard of the revolution” and should unite also with the middle peasants and other forces that could be won over. The Party should work to establish peasant associations and peasant armed forces so that the associations could take all power in the countryside. Then they should reduce rent for land and interest on loans and redistribute the land, and so on. This report was the most important Marxist document of the Chinese Communist Party on leading the peasant movement. In February, Qu Qiubai wrote an article entitled “A Controversy over the Chinese Revolution,” in which he criticized the Right capitulationist mistakes that had emerged in the Party, and emphasized the need for the Chinese revolution to be led by the proletariat. At this time. Sun Chuanfang’s forces had already collapsed, and Chiang Kai-shek had already essentially taken possession of the rich regions of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai. On March 21, when the Northern Expeditionary Army was advancing from Zhejiang to the suburbs of Shanghai, the workers in Shanghai, led by a special committee that included Chen Duxiu, Luo Yinong, Zhou Enlai and Zhao Shiyan, organized a general strike and then staged an armed uprising. (The Shanghai workers had already launched two armed uprisings, both of which had ended in failure because of incomplete preparations and bad timing.) After more CHAPTER TWO IN THE TORRENT OF THE GREAT REVOLUTION 93 than thirty hours of fighting, they defeated the troops of the Northern warlords stationed in Shanghai and occupied all districts of the city except the foreign concessions. This was a heroic feat of the working class during the period of the Great Revolution. It was only after the victorious workers had occupied Shanghai that the Northern Expeditionary Army, which had been stationed in the southern suburbs of Shanghai, finally entered the city under the command of Bai Chongxi. Three days later, on March 24, the Sixth and Second Armies of the National Revolutionary Army moved east from Anhui Province and occupied the city of Nanjing. In the afternoon of the same day, British and American warships cruising on the Yangtze River, on pretext of protecting their nationals, suddenly bombarded Nanjing, killing and wounding many Chinese soldiers and civilians. The Nanjing Incident hastened Chiang Kai-shek’s decision to ally himself with the imperialist forces. The Anti-Communist Coup of April 12, 1927 Chiang Kai-shek had resolved to oppose the Communists. But if he was to make a major move against them, he would have to have the support of the imperialist powers and financial assistance from the Zhejiang and Jiangsu plutocrats. He would also need to rely on the gangs of Shanghai thugs. Having hurried from Anhui to Shanghai by warship on March 26, Chiang held a series of secret meetings with the imperialists, plutocrats and gang leaders. He sent representatives to the Shanghai consulates of the five countries involved in the Nanjing Incident (Britain, the United States, France, Japan and Italy), making an apology and telling them that the incident would be resolved immediately, that the workers’ armed forces in Shanghai would be disarmed and that action would be taken to foil any attempt to recover the foreign concessions in Shanghai by armed force and rebellion. The imperialists urged him to act quickly and decisively. The Jiangsu and Zhejiang tycoons gave him generous financial support totalling several million yuan. Huang Jinrong, Du Yuesheng and other Shanghai gang leaders promised to use the thugs of the Green Band and Red Band to disarm the worker’s armed picket corps on his behalf. Chiang also transferred all military units not completely under his control away from Shanghai and brought his own troops into the Shanghai-Nanjing area. In early April he held a secret meeting in Shanghai with Li Zongren, Bai Chongxi, Huang Shaohong, Li Jishen, Zhang Jingjiang, Wu Zhihui, Li Shizeng and other KMT right-wingers and pro-Chiang warlords, at which they decided to “purge the party” by force, thus completing Chiang’s preparations for a surprise attack on the Communists. The Central Committee of the CPC and the Shanghai Regional Party Committee were aware of some of Chiang Kai-shek’s plot, and tried to strengthen the workers’ picket corps to secure the gains of the revolution. But at that time the Comintern’s hopes still rested with Chiang Kai-shek, and it refused to support a split with him. In late March Chen Duxiu sent a letter to the Shanghai Regional Party Committee in which he declared that they should “stop opposing Chiang.”19 On April 1 Wang Jingwei returned to Shanghai from overseas and soon afterward had secret talks with Chiang Kai-shek. Chiang advocated the immediate separation of the Communist Party from the KMT. Concerned that such a separation would enable Chiang to arrogate too much power to himself, Wang proposed that a plenary session of the Central Executive Committee of the KMT be called to discuss his proposal. He also suggested that Chen Duxiu be notified of the session and asked to order Communist Party members nationwide to “temporarily suspend their activities and await the decision of the session.” On April 5 Chen Duxiu and Wang Jingwei released a joint declaration dismissing as rumours the assertions that the “KMT leaders would expel the CPC and crack down on the trade unions and the workers’ picket corps” and asking everyone to “forget their suspicions, ignore the rumours, respect each other and sincerely discuss all their concerns.” This declaration led some Communist Party members to relax their vigilance, thinking that the tension had been dissipated. After this, Chen Duxiu and Wang Jingwei left for Wuhan together. The Central CommitCHAPTER TWO IN THE TORRENT OF THE GREAT REVOLUTION 95 tee of the CPC also moved its headquarters from Shanghai to Wuhan. A few days later, Chiang Kai-shek suddenly staged a counterrevolutionary coup in Shanghai. At dawn on April 12, a large number of well-prepared, well-armed thugs of the Green Band and the Red Band rushed out of the foreign concessions and launched a surprise attack on the workers’ picket corps stationed at the Shanghai Federation of Trade Unions and elsewhere. The pickets immediately rose to resist them. At this time, the Twentysixth Army of the National Revolutionary Army (the former forces of the warlord Sun Chuanfang, which had been reorganized by Chiang) arrived, claiming that they were going to mediate and would first disarm the thugs. The workers’ pickets believed this lie and opened the gates. Caught completely unprepared, they were forced to hand over their arms. Some of the workers resisted, but because of the great disparity in numbers, they were defeated. Wang Shouhua, a Communist Party member who was chairman of the Shanghai Federation of Trade Unions, had been tricked and murdered by Du Yuesheng the day before. On the morning of April 13, over 100,000 Shanghai workers and other citizens held a mass rally and a protest march, demanding the release of those who had been arrested and the return of the weapons of the workers’ picket corps. When the marchers reached Baoshan Road, a unit of the Twenty-sixth Army, lying in ambush, suddenly opened fire on the crowd, killing more than one hundred people and wounding countless others. After the coup of April 12 in Shanghai, in the name of “purging the party” large numbers of Communists and other revolutionary people were killed in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, Fujian, Guangdong and Guangxi. In Guangdong alone, more than 2,000 people were arrested and executed, including outstanding Communist Party members such as Xiao Chunti and Xiong Xiong. On April 18, Chiang Kai-shek established in Nanjing a “National Government” representing the interests of the big landlord class and the big bourgeoisie, in opposition to the National Government in Wuhan. Yan Xishan, the warlord of Shanxi, and Liu Xiang, the warlord of Sichuan, also began to “purge the party” in their domains and expressed their support for the Nanjing government. At the same time, the Fengtian warlord, Zhang Zuolin, executed a large number of Communists and other revolutionary people in northern China. On April 28 Li Dazhao, one of the founders of the Communist Party of China, was hanged in Beijing. The Great Revolution suffered a major setback. The counter-revolutionary coup of April 12 was proof that Chiang Kai-shek had already become the rallying point for the anti-Communist forces dependent on the imperialists and consisting of big landlords and the big bourgeoisie. Outwardly, however, he continued to espouse bourgeois reformism in order to deceive the public. Chiang Kai-shek’s counter-revolutionary coup won the support of the big bourgeoisie and of certain individuals from the upper strata of the national bourgeoisie. The Shanghai Federation of Commerce sent a telegram expressing its “backing for the government authorities’ effort to purge the party.” Individual representatives of the bourgeoisie were drawn to Nanjing to participate in the government and became ornaments of the counterrevolutionary military dictatorship of the big landlord class and the big bourgeoisie. The angry people denounced the coup staged by the Chiang Kai-shek clique. On April 14 seven prominent persons in Shanghai, including Hu Yuzhi, Zheng Zhcnduo and Wu Juenong, signed a letter sharply criticizing the military brutality. In Wuhan, Changsha and other cities, rallies of several hundred thousand people were held to express opposition to the imperialists and denounce Chiang. On April 20 the Central Committee of the CPC issued a delcaration on Chiang’s massacre of the people, exposing him as the “public enemy of the national revolution” and calling on the revolutionary people to overthrow the new warlords and the military dictatorship. On April 22, thirty-nine members and alternate members of the KMT Central Executive Committee, and its Central Supervisory Committee, including Soong Ching Ling, Deng Yanda, He Xiangning, Tan Pingshan, Wu Yuzhang, Lin Zuhan and Mao Zedong, signed an open CHAPTER TWO IN THE TORRENT OF THE GREAT REVOLUTION 97 telegram denouncing Chiang. “If,” they wrote, “our people and comrades, especially those in the military, do not want the revolution to be destroyed by Chiang, they must act in accordance with the orders of the Central Executive Committee and overthrow this traitor to Sun Yat-sen, the party and the people. All forces of the National Revolutionary Army should erase this deep disgrace.”20 At this time, the KMT was still cooperating with the CPC m Wuhan. The KMT leadership there, including Wang Jingwei, did not wish to see all power in Chiang’s hands. On April 17, the Central Executive Committee of the KMT in Wuhan issued an order expelling Chiang from the party and stripping him of all posts.

The Failure of the Great Revolution

After the coup of April 12, the political situation in China underwent a fundamental change. There were now three centres of power: two counter-revolutionary governments — one in Beijing led by Zhang Zuolin and one in Nanjing led by Chiang Kai-shek — and one revolutionary government — the National Government in Wuhan, which still maintained cooperation between the KMT and the CPC. The Wuhan National Government had direct control over the provinces of Hubei, Hunan and Jiangxi. It faced threats from two directions: the new warlord Chiang Kai-shek to the east and the old warlord Zhang Zuolin to the north. After the armies of Wu Peifu and Sun Chuanfang were defeated, Zhang Zuolin had transferred his troops south. His main force was stationed along the Beijing-Hankou Railway and controlled Henan, thus posing a major threat to the Wuhan government. Also, the situation within the Wuhan government was extremely complex. Wang Jingwei, who had recently arrived in Wuhan and was acting under the pretence of opposing Chiang, quickly assumed leading positions in the Central Executive Committee of the KMT and in the National Government. At this time, he was posing as a leader of the Left wing. He called on those who wanted to participate in revolution to come to the Left and those who did not to go away at once. At heart, however, he was eager to expel the Communists; the time, he wrote, was not yet right, but “people must make the necessary preparations.”21 Wang Jingwei joined forces with Tang Shengzhi, who controlled the KMT troops in the area of Wuhan. Together they began to restrict the activities of the workers’ and peasants’ movements, manoeuvred to take control of the situation in Wuhan and waited for the right moment to betray the revolution. After moving to Wuhan, the CPC Central Committee continued to cooperate with Wang Jingwei’s faction of the Kuomintang. The tasks the Communists faced were even more complex than before. How should they deal with their enemies outside the Wuhan government? How should they deal with their unreliable allies within the government? Should they and could they prepare for the possibility of another sudden change? These were the problems the Party had to consider. The 5th National Congress of the Party Convened at a Critical Moment Two heated disputes arose within the Party at this time: one was about “deepening vs. broadening,” the other about “the eastern expedition vs. the northern expedition.” “Deepening” meant initiating an agrarian revolution in Hubei, Hunan and Jiangxi provinces in order to consolidate the existing revolutionary base areas and then expand them. “Broadening” meant expanding into other areas and taking Beijing before launching an agrarian revolution. Advocates of an eastern expedition supported a punitive expedition against Chiang, while advocates of a northern expedition supported a military campaign against the troops of the Fengtian warlords in Henan. These disputes were resolved in favour of a plan put forward by Borodin and Chen Duxiu, which called for a northern expediCH AFTER TWO IN THE TORRENT OF THE GREAT REVOLUTION 99 tion against the Fengtian warlords. This was in accord with the intentions of Wang Jingwei’s National Government in Wuhan. There were four reasons that Borodin and Chen Duxiu proposed this plan. First, the Comintern and the CPC Central Committee naively trusted the combined forces of the National Army commanded by Feng Yuxiang, who at the time was preparing to move his troops from Shaanxi east into Henan. They believed that he was a reliable ally and that by cooperating with him in a punitive expedition against the Fengtian warlords and joining forces at Zhengzhou, capital of Henan Province, they could build a solid base in the Northwest, open up an international route between China and the Soviet Union and then advance to the east. Second, they believed that the imperialist powers were too strong in the Southeast. They feared that if they launched an eastern expedition immediately, they would come into direct conflict with the imperialists and would surely be defeated. Third, since the area of Wuhan was surrounded on four sides by enemy forces, commerce and banking could not function normally and goods were in short supply. Borodin and Chen believed that if they did not fight their way out, they would be unable to surmount the economic difficulties. Outward expansion, they thought, was the key to survival. Fourth, they believed that since the leaders of the National Government in Wuhan represented the upper petty bourgeoisie, their support for the revolution tended to waver. If the Communists initiated an agrarian revolution, it would drive them to abandon the revolution and make a compromise with Chiang Kai-shek. This line of reasoning was known at the time as the “Northwest doctrine.” The advocates of the “Northwest doctrine” were afraid to launch a thoroughgoing agrarian revolution and arm the masses of workers and peasants. Instead, they tried to keep the revolution within the limits imposed by Wang Jingwei so as to stabilize the Kuomintang government in Wuhan. It was just as Zhou Enlai later analysed it: “The central idea of the ‘go north’ group was to steer clear of the peasant movement in Hunan and Hubei....”22 Those who supported this plan thus expressed their lack of faith in the people’s forces and their fear of the enemy. They placed their hopes primarily on an alliance with Feng Yuxiang and not on the mobilization of the workers and peasants. On April 19 the National Government in Wuhan held a meeting and pledged to continue the Northern Expedition. Its main army marched north into Henan. Thus, there would be no eastern expedition against Chiang and no thoroughgoing agrarian revolution. At this critical moment in the Chinese revolution, the Communist Party held its 5th National Congress in Wuhan. There were now many more Party members than before the Northern Expedition: nearly 58,000. The 5th National Party Congress was convened on April 27, 1927, just two weeks after the coup of April 12. The entire Party expected this congress to make a sober assessment of the situation and to answer the most pressing question: how to save the revolution. It did not do so. The congress declared that although the bourgeoisie had already betrayed the revolution, the revolution had entered the stage of a democratic dictatorship of the workers, peasants and petty bourgeoisie. The Party, it said, should use a programme ol agrarian revolution and democratic government to mobilize the peasants and the petty bourgeois; it should make the revolution skip over the capitalist stage of development. But statements like that were only empty talk, far removed from the actual situation of the time. The congress viewed Chiang’s betrayal of the revolution as a betrayal by the national bourgeoisie as a whole. This view was unrealistic and later led to ultra-Left actions against the bourgeoisie. It saw Wang Jingwei as a representative of the petty bourgeoisie and his Wuhan government as a reliable ally an alliance of the workers, peasants and petty bourgeois. This misconception led to the adoption of Right concessionary policies towards Wang and the Wuhan government. Furthermore, because of it, the Party did not anticipate their possible betrayal and consequently failed to prepare for it. The proposal for agrarian revolution was sound, but the emphasis on winning the support of the petty bourgeoisie — or, in effect, the support of Wang Jingwei and his clique — rendered it meaningless. At the congress there was no talk of expanding revolutionary CHAPTER TWO IN THE TORRENT OF THE GREAT REVOLUTION 101 troops directly under the leadership of the CPC. Under these dangerous circumstances, when the entire Party expected emergency measures to save the revolution, talk of “skipping over the capitalist stage of development” was simply irrelevant and unrealistic. The congress criticized the Right opportunist errors, but proposed no measures to correct them. Moreover, it reelected Chen Duxiu general secretary. As a result, while the CPC hovered on the brink of disaster, the congress failed to determine an appropriate course of action and provide powerful leadership for the Party. Furthermore, having let this opportunity slip, it watched passively as the overall situation continued to deteriorate. The Right Capitulationism of the CPC Central Committee After the 5th National Party Congress, the situation in the area under the jurisdiction of the National Government in Wuhan became increasingly critical. Because this area was surrounded and blockaded by reactionary forces, business stagnated, factories closed, everyday necessities became extremely scarce, prices skyrocketed and currency depreciated. The government ran up a huge deficit. Many workers and shop assistants lost their jobs. Local tyrants, evil gentry and reactionary officers fished in the troubled waters. Wang Jingwei and his government increasingly spoke and acted in ways destructive to the workers’ and peasants’ movements. On May 13, 1927, Xia Douyin, commander of the Fourteenth Independent Division of the National Revolutionary Army, stationed in Yichang, sent an open telegram denouncing the Wuhan government. On the 17th, he attacked Zhifang, near Wuchang. The attack was repulsed by Ye Ting, commander of the Wuchang garrison. On May 21 Xu Kexiang, commander of the 33rd Regiment of the National Revolutionary Army’s 35th Army, which had been reorganized from warlord troops, staged a counter-revolutionary coup in Changsha. His troops disarmed the workers’ pickets and arrested and killed more than one hundred Communists and other revolutionaries. The city of Changsha was overwhelmed by White terror. On June 6 Zhu Peide, the governor of Jiangxi Province and commander-in-chief of the National Revolutionary Army’s Fifth Front Army, expelled a large number of Communists and Kuomintang Leftwingers from the province. He began to close down revolutionary organizations and to arrest leaders of the workers’ and peasants’ movements. Under these circumstances, Borodin and Chen Duxiu, among others, still pinned their hopes on the junction of the National Revolutionary Army carrying on the Northern Expedition and Feng Yuxiang’s troops. The National Revolutionary Army’s troops marching north fought bloody battles, suffering 14,000 casualties. (The Fourth and Eleventh Armies, which had the most Communists, lost the most men, including the talented commander and Party member Jiang Xianyun.) The National Revolutionary Army routed the Fengtian warlords’ main force in Henan, enabling Feng Yuxiang’s troops, who had marched east through Tongguan, to capture Zhengzhou on May 31. From June 10 to 12, the leaders of the Wuhan National Government, including Wang Jingwei, Tan Yankai and Sun Ke, held talks with Feng Yuxiang in Zhengzhou. They decided to give Feng complete military and political control in Henan and the Northwest and to send the Northern Expeditionary Army back to Wuhan. Feng’s political attitude had changed substantially: he now proposed putting an end to the conflict between the Wuhan and Nanjing governments. On June 20 he went to Xuzhou to hold talks with Chiang Kai-shek and openly sided with him. After this he sent a telegram to the National Government in Wuhan demanding that Borodin be removed from his post and sent back to the Soviet Union. He further demanded that all Communist Party members and large numbers of political officers in the combined forces of the National Revolutionary Army be dismissed. Consequently, the “Northwest doctrine” advocated by Borodin and Chen Duxiu came to nothing, and the Wang Jingwei clique intensified its anti-Communist activities. The situation was growing more ominous. Chen Duxiu and the Soviet advisers, lacking confidence and afraid of provoking Wang Jingwei and Tang Shengzhi, were unable to offer any practical CHAPTER TWO IN THE TORRENT OF THE GREAT REVOLUTION 103 solutions. They continued to pursue a concessionary policy, believing that in this way they could avoid providing Wang and Tang with further pretexts for a split. They cancelled the plan to stage an armed uprising in Hunan and disbanded the workers’ picket corps in Wuhan. These actions did nothing to stabilize the National Government in Wuhan and only encouraged further displays of arrogance by the reactionary forces. A.B. Bakulin, a Soviet adviser, wrote in his diary: “Wuhan is becoming more and more like Nanjing.”23 A counter-revolutionary coup in Wuhan was becoming increasingly likely. At this critical juncture, the Executive Committee of the Communist International adopted a resolution on China, and issued a directive (known as the “May Directive”) to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. This directive urged the CPC to transform the Kuomintang by encouraging large numbers of workers and peasants to join it; to turn the peasant associations into organs of village government and confiscate the land held by the landlords; and to organize an army of 70,000 men, of which 20,000 should be Communist Party members. Although the Comintern had made a series of errors in its advice to the Chinese revolutionaries, this particular directive correctly addressed the crucial question of the time: how to save the revolution. Of course, this is not to say that the revolutionaries could have easily achieved victory, but if the CPC had resolutely followed these recommendations, it would have been well prepared to struggle effectively against the Wang Jingwei clique and in a stronger position to confront the reactionaries in all eventualities. Thus it could have prevented a crushing defeat. However, the Central Committee of the CPC believed that it would be too difficult to accomplish the tasks proposed in the Comintern’s “May Directive,” and it still hoped that at the last minute its capitulationist tactics would succeed in winning over the Wang Jingwei clique. Dissatisfaction with Chen Duxiu’s Right capitulationist errors was growing within the Party. Ren Bishi, the secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League, wrote a letter criticizing Chen Duxiu. Chen Duxiu ripped the letter to shreds in front of him. On July 4 the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee held an enlarged meeting at which Mao Zedong proposed that the peasant armed forces go to the mountains or join military units connected to the Party. “Unless we preserve our own armed forces,” he said, “we shall be helpless to cope with emergencies.” In mid-July, the Central Committee of the CPC was reorganized in accordance with an instruction of the Comintern Executive Committee. Its Provisional Standing Committee was now composed of Zhang Guotao, Li Weihan, Zhou Enlai, Li Lisan and Zhang Tailci. On July 13 the Central Committee issued a statement declaring that China had reached a critical moment when the revolution was at stake. It condemned the KMT Central Executive Committee and the National Government in Wuhan for “recently and publicly preparing for a coup,” for “acting against the interests of the vast majority of the Chinese people and against the basic principles and policies of Dr. Sun Yat-sen” and for “destroying the national revolution.” It therefore decided to recall all Communist Party members serving in the National Government. At the same time, it proclaimed that it would continue to support the revolutionary struggle against imperialism and feudalism and that it wished to continue to cooperate with revolutionary elements in the Kuomintang. Even though this announcement was released rather late, it helped heighten the revolutionary spirit within the Party. On July 14 Soong Ching Ling (Mme. Sun Yat-sen), a prominent representative of the left wing of the KMT, wrote a “Statement Issued in Protest Against the Violation of Sun Yat-sen’s Revolutionary Principles and Policies,” which was later published in Hankou. In this statement she said: “Sun Yat-sen’s policies are clear. If leaders of the party [the KMT] do not carry them out consistently, then they are no longer Sun’s true followers, and the Party is no longer a revolutionary party, but merely a tool in the hands of this or that militarist.” “Feeling thus,” she declared, “I must disassociate myself from active participation in the carrying out of these new policies of the party.”24 On July 15 in Wuhan, Wang Jingwei called an enlarged meeting of the Standing Committee of the KMT Central ExecuCHAPTER TWO IN THE TORRENT OF THE GREAT REVOLUTION 105 tive Committee at which a formal decision was made to break off relations with the CPC. This action definitively ended the first period of cooperation between the KMT and the CPC and marked the failure of the Great Revolution of 1924-1927. Launched during the first period of cooperation between the Communist Party and the Kuomintang, the Great Revolution was an unprecedented revolutionary movement in which workers and peasants played the major role. Essentially, it overthrew the rule of the hated Northern warlords and struck heavy blows against the imperialist and feudal forces. Through this movement people came to have their first understanding of the meaning of revolution. Even though it failed, it exerted an enduring influence. It marked a new starting point for subsequent advances in the Chinese revolution. There were two reasons for the failure of the Great Revolution. First, at that time the strength and political experience of the combined imperialist and feudal forces far surpassed those of the revolutionary camp. Furthermore, the Kuomintang suddenly betrayed the revolution and launched a surprise attack on the Communist Party and on the workers’ and peasants’ movements under its leadership. Second, the CPC Central Committee, represented by Chen Duxiu, committed Right capitulationist errors. During the early stages of the Great Revolution, the Party’s line was by and large correct. Party members, both cadres and rank and file, all played active roles and as a result achieved great successes. However, the Party was still immature and inexperienced and did not fully understand either Chinese history and society or the special characteristics and laws of the Chinese revolution. Moreover, it still lacked a deep understanding of Marxist-Leninist theory and of the concrete practice of the Chinese revolution. Therefore, its leading bodies vacillated on certain key questions, and at the later stage of the Great Revolution they failed to lead the Party in taking appropriate action. Instead, they were tricked by the counter-revolutionary forces, and this led to the failure of the Great Revolution. As a branch of the Communist International, the Communist Party of China received direct guidance from it. While actively contributing to the Great Revolution, the Comintern and its representatives in China ultimately failed to understand the actual conditions in China. Some of their ideas were correct, but others were wrong, and these were partly responsible for the Right capitulationist errors made by the leadership of the CPC. It was difficult for the immature Chinese Party to reject the mistaken guidance of the Comintern. Although the Great Revolution failed, it still had enormous significance. Through this revolution, the anti-imperialist, antifeudal programme put forward by the CPC came to be resoundingly supported by the masses. The Party rapidly spread its political influence among the people and greatly expanded its organizations. Millions upon millions of workers and peasants were organized under the leadership of the Party, and the Party began to control part of the troops. In addition, the ordeals the Party went through during this period served to temper it, and its victories and defeats provided it with valuable experience. All of this helped to prepare the ground for the next stage, when, with the leadership of the Party, the Chinese people would push their struggle to a higher plane.

The Agrarian Revolution

The Mainstay in the War of Resistance Against Japan

The Struggle for Nationwide Victory in the Democratic Revolution

The Founding of the People's Republic of China and Transition to Socialism

Socialist Construction Advances Tortuously Through Exploration

The “Cultural Revolution”: Ten Years of Nationwide Chaos

Dawn of a New Prospect in Socialist Construction