Concept

Chinese Communist Revolution

Overview

The Chinese Communist Revolution was a social and political revolution in mainland China that began in 1927 and culminated with the proclamation of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949. The revolution was led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which afterwards became the ruling party of China. The political revolution resulted in major social changes within China and has been looked at as a model by revolutionary communist movements in other countries.

During the preceding century, termed the century of humiliation, the decline of the Qing dynasty and the rise of foreign imperialism caused escalating social, economic, and political problems in China. The Qing collapsed in 1912 and were replaced with the Republic of China, which had itself fallen into warring factions by 1917. A small group of urban intellectuals, inspired by the October Revolution and European socialist ideas, founded the CCP in 1921. They created an alliance known as the First United Front with the much larger Kuomintang (KMT), having the shared goal of overthrowing the warlords governing China. During this period the CCP rapidly expanded its membership, organized a militant labor movement in several of China's major cities, and established rudimentary peasant associations in rural areas. Nonetheless, and despite the First United Front's military successes, KMT leader Chiang Kai-shek ended the alliance in 1927 by initiating the Shanghai massacre.

The Chinese Civil War between the CCP and Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists fundamentally changed the course of the Chinese Communist Revolution. Forced to flee into the remote countryside, semi-isolated CCP cadres began to experiment with land reform and other ways of appealing to the peasantry. One of the most successful local leaders was Mao Zedong, who turned the Jiangxi Soviet into a "state within a state". In 1935, the Communists were handed a major military defeat, and the survivors made the Long March to a new base in northwest China. During the Long March, Mao rose from a regional leader to undisputed leader of the entire CCP. After settling in their new base, the Communists undertook a campaign of ideological self-purification to solidify their allegiance to Mao and their new peasant-based strategy.

Meanwhile, Japan had taken advantage of China's disunity to seize Manchuria and other Chinese territories. Chiang Kai-shek, prioritizing "first internal pacification, then external resistance", avoided confronting Japan. The Communists argued that the CCP and KMT should cooperate to fight the Japanese, an appeal to patriotism that won them broad sympathy. In 1936, Nationalist troops who had become sympathetic to the Communists kidnapped Chiang Kai-shek and forced him to begin ceasefire negotiations. The Second United Front was finalized when the Japanese launched a full-scale invasion of China the following year. The renewed alliance allowed the CCP to once again expand their areas of influence by waging a guerrilla war behind Japanese lines.

Following the Japanese surrender in 1945, China became a battlefield in the Cold War. The Nationalists received military support from the United States and the CCP from the Soviet Union. Although the Nationalists at first held most of the country, sympathy for the Communists grew in urban areas suffering from high unemployment, runaway inflation, and rampant government corruption. The presence of United States Marines in Chinese cities further inflamed anti-imperialist sentiment, especially among students. When peace talks between the two Chinese sides floundered, the Civil War resumed. The Communists' newly-formed People's Liberation Army launched a successful series of campaigns that defeated the Nationalists and forced them to retreat to Taiwan in 1949.

The Communist victory had a major impact on the global balance of power: China became the largest socialist state by population, as well as a third force in the Cold War following the 1956 Sino-Soviet split. The People's Republic offered direct and indirect support to communist movements around the world, and inspired the growth of Maoist parties in a number of countries. Shock at the CCP's success, and the emerging geopolitical domino theory postulating communism's spread across East Asia, led the United States to stage successive military interventions against Chinese-backed forces in Korea and Southeast Asia. The CCP remains in government in mainland China and is the second-largest political party in the world.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Possible passages

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He made peace with the revolutionaries and acknowledged the Republic, on condition that he should be the first President instead of Sun Yat Sen. Yuan Shih-k'ai was, of course, supported by the Legations, being what is called a "strong man," _i.e._ a believer in blood and iron, not likely to be led astray by talk about democracy or freedom. In China, the North has always been more military and less liberal than the…
Bertrand Russell, The Problem of China
States what Chinese Communist Revolution is.
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The Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations; no wonder that its development involves the most radical rupture with traditional ideas. But let us have done with the bourgeois objections to Communism. We have seen above, that the first step in the revolution by the working class, is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling as to win the battle of democracy. The…
Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto
Close in meaning to Chinese Communist Revolution; the term itself is not named.
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Under the lead of some of the old members, the old parliament, called by its opponents the defunct parliament, has led an intermittent existence ever since. Claiming to be the sole authentic constitutional body of China, it finally elected Dr. Sun president of China and thus prepared the act of the fifth of May, already reported.
John Dewey, China, Japan and the U.S.A.
Close in meaning to Chinese Communist Revolution; the term itself is not named.
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Related ideas

Place in the tradition

Part of Chinese philosophy.

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