The Great Leap Forward

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1976/

The Great Leap Forward took place in 1958. The Great Leap Forward

was Mao’s attempt to moderniseChina’s economy so that by

1988, China would have an economy that rivalled America.

Card issued to celebrate the Great Leap Forward

Mao had toured China and concluded that the Chinese people were

capable of anything and the two primary tasks that he felt they should

target was industry and agriculture. Mao announced a second Five Year

Plan to last from 1958 to 1963. This plan was called the Great Leap

Forward.
The Great Leap Forward planned to develop agriculture and industry. Mao

believed that both had to grow to allow the other to grow. Industry could

only prosper if the work force was well fed, while the agricultural workers

needed industry to produce the modern tools needed for modernisation. To

allow for this, China was reformed into a series of communes.

The geographical size of a commune varied but most contained about 5000

families. People in a commune gave up their ownership of tools, animals

etc so that everything was owned by the commune. People now worked for

the commune and not for themselves. The life of an individual was

controlled by the commune. Schools and nurseries were provided by the

communes so that all adults could work. Health care was provided and the

elderly were moved into “houses of happiness” so that they could be

looked after and also so that families could work and not have to worry

about leaving their elderly relatives at home.

The commune provided all that was needed – including entertainment.

Soldiers worked alongside people. The population in a commune was sub-

divided. Twelve families formed a work team. Twelve work terms formed
a brigade. Each sub-division was given specific work to do. Party

members oversaw the work of a commune to ensure that decisions

followed the correct party line.

By the end of 1958, 700 million people had been placed into 26,578

communes. The speed with which this was achieved was astounding.
However, the government did all that it could to whip up enthusiasm for
the communes. Propaganda was everywhere – including in the fields

where the workers could listen to political speeches as they worked as the

communes provided public address systems. Everybody involved in

communes was urged not only to meet set targets but to beat them. If the

communes lacked machinery, the workers used their bare hands. Major

constructions were built in record time – though the quality of some was

dubious.

The Great Leap Forward also encouraged communes to set up “back-yard”

production plants. The most famous were 600,000backyard furnaces

which produced steel for the communes. When all of these furnaces were

working, they added a considerable amount of steel to China’s annual total

– 11 million tonnes.

The figures for steel, coal, chemicals, timber, cement etc all showed huge

rises though the figures started at in 1958 were low. Grain and cotton

production also showed major increases in production.

Mao had introduced the Great Leap Forward with the phrase “it is possible

to accomplish any task whatsoever.” By the end of 1958, it seemed as if

his claim was true.

The consequences of the Great Leap Forward

However, in 1959, things started to go wrong. Political decisions/beliefs

took precedence over commonsense and communes faced the task of

doing things which they were incapable of achieving. Party officials would
order the impossible and commune leaders, who knew what their
commune was capable of doing or not, could be charged with being a

“bourgeois reactionary” if he complained. Such a charge would lead to

prison.

Quickly produced farm machinery produced in factories fell to pieces

when used. Many thousands of workers were injured after working long

hours and falling asleep at their jobs. Steel produced by the backyard

furnaces was frequently too weak to be of any use and could not be used in

construction – it’s original purpose. Buildings constructed by this

substandard steel did not last long.

Also the backyard production method had taken many workers away from

their fields – so desperately needed food was not being harvested.

Ironically, one of the key factors in food production in China was the

weather and 1958 had particularly good weather for growing food. Party

leaders claimed that the harvest for 1958 was a record 260 million tons –

which was not true.

The excellent growing weather of 1958 was followed by a very poor

growing year in 1959. Some parts of China were hit by floods. In other
growing areas, drought was a major problem. The harvest for 1959 was

170 million tons of grain – well below what China needed at the most

basic level. In parts of China, starvation occurred.

1960 had even worse weather than 1959. The harvest of 1960 was 144

million tons. 9 million people are thought to have starved to death in 1960
alone; many millions were left desperately ill as a result of a lack of food.
The government had to introduce rationing. This put people on the most

minimal of food and between 1959 and 1962, it is thought that 20 million

people died of starvation or diseases related to starvation.

The backyard furnaces also used too much coal and China’s rail system,

which depended on coal driven trains, suffered accordingly.

By 1959, it was obvious that the Great Leap Forward had been a failure

and even Mao admitted this. He called on the Communist Party to take

him to task over his failures but also asked his own party members to look

at themselves and their performance.

“The chaos caused was on a grand scale, and I take responsibility. Comrades, you must
all analyse your own responsibility. If you have to fart, fart. You will feel much better for
it.”

Some party members put the blame of the failure of the Great Leap

Forward on Mao. He was popular with the people but he still had to resign

from his position as Head of State (though he remained in the powerful

Party Chairman position).

The day-to-day running of China was left to three moderates: Liu Shaoqi,

Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping. In late 1960, they abandoned the Great

Leap Forward. Private ownership of land was reinstated and communes

were cut down to a manageable size. Peasants also had the incentive to
produce as much spare food as was possible as they could sell any spare

that they had a market.

These three moderates had restricted Mao’s power but his standing among

the ordinary Chinese people was still high as he was seen as the leader of

the revolution. He was to use this popularity with the people to resurrect

his authority at the expense of the moderates. This was in the so-called

Cultural Revolution.

China’s Leadership
China in 1900 was ruled by the Qing family, better known as
Manchu. During this time, China suffered a great deal as they were
heavily controlled by foreign nations who dictated how things were
run.
The nineteenth century was marred by the so-called “Opium Wars”,
which involved Britain and France. China lost both of these wars,
which brought the Chinese empire into question. The defeat of the
Chinese by Britain was a great humiliation, as Britain’s army was
small in comparison to the Chinese army. The grudge against
foreigners was then accentuated by the Sino-Japanese conflict that
took the Korean Peninsula from Chinese control. China also
handed over the strategically important port of Hong Kong to
Britain. More misery was imposed on China in 1894-95 when Japan
attacked China, who then handed over China Korea, Formosa
(present-day Taiwan) and Port Arthur. By the end of the nineteenth
century, China had been occupied by most Western nations. There
were numerous territorial encroachments on Chinese soil, and
China was under the control of most European nations, Japan,
Russia and America.

A major consequence of these wars was that China lost total control
of her highly coveted seaports. Fifty of these ports were part of
treaties, which meant that they were openings to Chinese lands
being occupied and for foreign trade. China was divided into
spheres of influence, and they would effectively be governed by the
nation that occupied that sphere. The wishes of the Chinese people
fell on deaf ears.

The occupiers, disregarding local traditions, caused resentment that

grew daily. Kung-Fu schools were a place where the people who
resented the occupiers fueled their hatred. The kung-fu wrestlers
represented the people who were from humble regions. Most of
them were workers in the ports and feared losing their jobs because
of the steamships that were brought to China by Westerners. They
believed that the discipline offered by kung-fu made them powerful
and that the bullets of the enemy would have no effect on them.

The Rebellion
The imperial family took the blame for the current situation in China.
Their standing was not changed by the West’s invasion of China.
There were uprisings against the Manchus, too, the most profound
one being the Taiping Rebellion that lasted from 1850 to 1864. Six
hundred cities were destroyed, and as many as 20 million people
 were killed. Tracts of fertile land that China could not afford to lose
were destroyed. The Manchus managed to restore their power with
the help of the Europeans, but the hatred among the Chinese grew
even more when the Manchus were back in power.

In an attempt to curb the discontent in China, the Manchu family

introduced a batch of reforms in 1898 known as the Hundred Days
of Reform. These reforms were intended to help the country adapt
to Western civilisation. In this programme, new schools and
colleges would be set up to improve the educational system in
China. They would also help address the technological gap that had
caused the two defeats to France and Britain. Corrupt officials
present in the courts would be removed, and the financial structure
of the government would be modernised and reformed. The reforms
had to change virtually everything due to the general backwardness
of the previous systems. This same modernisation had happened in
Japan.

However, these reforms to modernise China were never introduced.

A rebellion led by Cixi, a former empress, prevented these reforms
being introduced. Therefore, China still had its status of being a
nation under the control of European nations and of being led by a
very conservative court, which sabotaged the reforms they believed
would weaken the Manchu dynasty’s power. Soon, a movement
was formed to fight against those who ruled China and was known
as the Yi-Ho Tuan movement, meaning “The Boxers”.

 Sun Yat

Yat was a nationalist revolutionary who believed China could only

move forward in the early 1900s if the country became a republic
and followed the western ways in industry and agriculture. Unless
they did this, he was convinced they would remain backward by
Western standards. He believed in three principles: nationalism,
democracy and socialism. These beliefs were the backbone of the
League of Common Alliance that Sun Yat founded in 1898, which
later became Guomindang.
 When the Chinese Revolution happened in 1911, Sun was in
America, and the Manchu dynasty was overthrown. He quickly
returned to China and was elected President of the United
Provinces of China in January 1913 by an assembly in Nanking. He
resigned in an attempt to make rival factions come together for the
sake of the nation but this failed as China was now being run by
warlords.

In 1922, Sun Yat accepted the beliefs of the Guomindang so that

they would be accepted by the Chinese Communist Party founded
in 1921. As a result, he got assistance from Russia and helped set
up an effective structure for the Guomindang in Canton. He created
a system of local Guomindang cells all over southern China so that
the party would be more disciplined.

 Chiang Kai
 A natural successor to Yat and politically central, he was a leader of
the Guomindang, and this helped him to be considered as Yat’s
successor. In 1926 he consolidated his place when he went in
search of the warlords of China.

In September 1928, a law was passed that gave Chiang dictatorial

powers over China. Chiang was appointed president but did not
have a hold over the whole nation because of its vast size and the
fact that his army could not be in all parts of the nation at all times.
In 1931 there was a Japanese invasion of Manchuria and the
eventual attack on China in 1937.

 Mao Zedong

Mao Zedong was born in 1893 and died in 1976. He is considered

to be the father of Communist China and alongside Sun Yat and
Chiang Ka, played a fundamental part in China.

The Long March

This was a march that occurred in the autumn of 1933 and ended
up saving Mao Zedong and the communist party Guomindang. The
Long March came about when the Chinese Communists had to flee
an attack ordered by Chiang Kai. The Red Army was an entity that
Mao created, and it turned out to be his lifeline during the Long
March. Without it, the Chinese Communist Party would have
collapsed in the late 1920s and 1930s.
The Japan-China War

This war started in July 1937 when Japan claimed that they were
attacked by Chinese troops at the Marco Polo Bridge near Beijing.
They launched a full-scale invasion of China and used the already-
conquered Manchuria as a launching base for their army. The
Chinese organised resistance but they were up against a
formidable enemy and China’s most important port, Shanghai and
Chiang Kai capital, Nanking, fell in December 1937.

Chapter 9.

The Chinese Revolution and Chinese Communism

to 1949. *

(Note: The new Pinyin (P) transliteration of Chinese names into English is used for
most key leaders and place names; in cases where the "P" system has not become
established usage in the West, the old Wade-Giles (W-G) transliteration is either
used, or given in brackets).
Introduction.

The People's Republic of China (PRC) was established on October 1, 1949.

However, an assessment of Chinese communism cannot begin there. It must begin
about 30 years earlier, because the preceding years shaped the PRC as a
communist state.

Chinese communism has had a remarkable continuity of leadership. Mao

Zedong (W-G: Mao tse-Tung, 1893-1976) and his colleagues were party members
in the 1920s. Mao was instrumental in establishing an early form of Chinese
communism in the years 1928-34. He helped to develop it and create the military
and political strategy in the Yenan years of 1935-45 that won the civil war in 1949.
He then went on to mold communist China and ruled it - in his last years at least in
name - until his death in September 1976.

However, we should also bear in mind that while most veteran communists
followed Mao from the late 1950s on, some came to oppose his more extreme
policies. Here we should mention the long-time Premier and Foreign
Minister Zhou Enlai (W-G: Chu En-lai, 1898-1976), and the leader of the PRC
after Mao's death, Deng Xiaoping (Teng Hsiao-p'ing, b. 1904), who was to set the
country on the path of economic reform in 1978. However, Deng was also
determined to preserve the party's monopoly of power, and crushed the massive
student democracy movement by force in June 1989.

To understand the rise of communism in China, we must see it within the context
of Chinese history.

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* I would like to thank Professor Dan Bays for his help in writing the original
version of this chapter, and Professor Terry Weidner for helping me revise it in fall
1996.

I. Conditions in China in 1917.

A. Fragmentation.

China has a 4,000 year history, and was a unified state under several imperial
dynasties. The last dynasty, the Qing, was founded by the Manchus in 1644, after
their conquest of China. It ruled for almost three hundred years, until it finally
collapsed in 1912. By that time the imperial system had fallen into decay and was
totally discredited.

Most historians attribute the decline of China at least in part to the inability of its
rulers to understand and adapt modern technology. While this is true, another key
factor was the quadrupling of the population under the Qing, which put enormous
pressure on government resources. In fact, by the early 20th century, Japan was the
only Asian country to achieve achieve modernisation and cope with a rapid
population increase. We should note, however, that in the late 19th and early 20th
centuries, there were some outstanding Chinese thinkers who wanted to modernize
China. Some hoped for a constitutional framework, i.e., parliamentary monarchy,
while others worked for a democratic republic. Most wanted the abolition of the
feudal-Confucian system; all wanted the abolition of foreign privilege and the
unification of their vast country.

The man who came to lead the strongest movement for reform and unity was Sun
Yat-sen (1866-1925). Sun was born near Canton; he was raised by his elder brother
in Hawaii and graduated as a medical doctor in Hongkong in 1892. Two years
later, however, he began to devote himself to political work for the overthrow of
the Qing dynasty His goal was to create a strong, unified, modern, Chinese
republic. Between 1905 and 1912, Sun developed a political movement called
the Revolutionary Alliance, which was funded by donations from Chinese
businessmen living outside of China.

Sun's main backer was Charlie Soong (d. 1927). He came to the United States
around 1880, converted to Christianity, and found generous Americans to pay for
his education in the U.S. Later, he became a successful businessman in Shanghai.
He began by printing and selling bibles, but made his fortune on noodle factories.
We should note that Soong's children went on to play important political roles. His
two daughters received an American education, after which Ch'ingling married Sun
Yat-sen, while May'ling married Chiang Kai-shek. Soong's son, Teseven (T.V.)
studied at Harvard and Columbia Universities and became Chiang's Finance
Minister.

In 1911, a military revolt led to revolution and the fall of the Qing
dynasty. Although the revolution aroused great hope for democracy, the Republic
established in 1912 proved a miserable failure. The Guomindang (Kuomintang,
KMT) or Nationalist Party developed by Sun Yat-sen after the revolution on the
base of the old Revolutionary Alliance, was still very weak, and the country was in
the grip of war lords, who created their own satrapies and had their own armies.
Meanwhile, the central government came under the rule of Gen. Yuan Shikai, who
died in June 1916 before he could consolidate his power as Emperor. He was
succeeded by Li Yuanghong, who had been Vice-President. There followed an
insurrection in spring 1917, led by Gen. Zhang Xun, who tried to restore the Qing
dynasty in the person of its last male heir, the boy emperor Puyi (1906-1967), but
the insurrection collapsed. In August 1918, a new Chinese parliament elected Hsu
Shih-ch'ang (W-G) as President, and he retained this post until 1922. However, the
central government was weak and faced a rival government
in Guangzhou (Canton).

In the meanwhile, China had lined up with the entente powers and Japan against
Germany and Austria-Hungary in World War I. Although the Chinese authorities
did not send soldiers, they did send some 100,000 laborers who were used by the
allied armies in France and Belgium, while others worked for the Allies in
Mesopotamia and Africa. However, in January 1917, Japan obtained special
rights in the former Chinese provinces of Manchuria and Inner
Mongolia, extending them in 1918. Finally, the Versailles Treaty of June 28,
1919 (peace treaty with Germany worked out by the victor powers) did not return
the former German concession at Shantung to China, but gave it to Japan. This
caused strong anti-Japanese and anti-western feelings in China.

B. The Semi-Colonial Status of China.

In the course of the 19th century, foreign powers had firmly established their
separate enclaves (concessions) in the major coastal cities. They had extensive
economic-political privileges, including extra-territorial status, the best example of
which was the foreign enclave in the great port city of Shanghai. These
concessions were won by force and spelled out in the unequal treaties.
Along with the power of local warlords, these foreign privileges were a major
obstacle to any Chinese political movement aiming to unify the country.

C. The Need for Social Reform and Change.

The social structure of China was obsolete. In particular, the gentry

class (landlords who sometimes were also local officials) was an obstacle to
modernization. They dominated the peasants, who made up the vast majority of
the population. Almost all of them lived in abject poverty, dying like flies in the
recurrent famines. At the same time, most of the merchants in the coastal cities
lacked capital and vision, while those who tried to develop more modern methods
were checked by foreign privilege. The urban workers - about 2 million out of an
estimated population of some 300 million in 1918 - were mostly unskilled and also
lived in dire poverty. Thus, social reform was a third priority, coming behind
national unity and independence, because reformers saw them as the basic
prerequisites for the modernization of China.

D. Intellectual Ferment.

Many members of China's small educated class were deeply worried by the
situation; they were desperate for change and looked for answers. The
constitutional monarchists were led by Kang Youwei (1858-1927), who hoped that
the Qing emperor Guangxu would achieve this aim. However, the Emperor died in
1908 and the reins of government were taken over by the old dowager
empress Cixi, who acted as regent for the boy-emperor, Puyi. Another reformist
thinker was Liang Qichao, a disciple of Kang. Liang rejected violent revolution,
but worked for an informed citizenry and political discipline. Like Kang, he also
argued for the liberation of women and their participation in political
life. Marxism began to gain adherents in China with the translation of
Marx's Communist Manifesto in 1906, but some thinkers were more attracted to
anarchism. Finally, there was Sun Yat-sen and his Revolutionary Alliance (see
above).

The yearning of educated Chinese for a reformed, united, China, free of foreign
privilege, was clearly expressed in the May 4th Movement of 1919. This student-
led movement protested against the unfair treatment of China in the peace treaties
following World War I, whereby Japan took over the German concession
in Shantung and expanded its control over Manchuria. The May 4th Movement also
attacked the privileges of the foreign powers, and made radical and democratic
demands for changing the social and political system. The students, encouraged by
radically inclined professors, especially at Beijing University (Beida), were soon
joined by businessmen and workers. Thus, there was considerable potential for
mobilizing a national movement.

------------------------------------------------

II. The Impact of the Russian Revolution and of Marxism-Leninism on China.

A. The Beginnings of Chinese Communism.

Many Chinese intellectuals were attracted by Marxism. Those active in the in May
4th Movement, as well as others outside it, saw socialism as a means of preventing
the conflicts caused by capitalism - particularly because at a time of great
ambivalence toward the West, Marxism could be seen as as a western "ism" that
could be used against the West. Finally, many

Chinese socialists were attracted to anarchism.

In June 1918, the head librarian at Beijing University, Li Dazhao, saluted Lenin. Li
saw the revolution in backward Russia as a model for China. He established a
Marxist study group at the university, which Mao Zedong joined in 1919. Mao had
moved to Beijing and worked as a clerk in the university library. Chen Duxiu, a
dean at Beijing University and editor of the progressive journal, New Youth,
decided to devote a special issue to Marxism; it was published on May 1, 1919,
under the editorship of Li Dazhao. Li's article analyzed Marxist concepts,
introducing them to the journal's readers all over China.

As with Russian Marxists, the main problem facing the Chinese Marxists was the
fact that the vast majority of the population was made up not of workers, but of
peasants. Li Dazhao circumvented this obstacle by claiming that foreign
exploitation of China made all its people an exploited proletariat. Moreover, he
claimed that China could not be liberated without the liberation of the peasants. He
urged young Marxists to go into the countryside, and they began to do so in 1920.

A member of Li's Marxist study group, Qu Qiubai, was one of the most successful
organizers of China's peasants. He even visited Moscow that same year - 1920 -
and wrote an enthusiastic report in the Beijing Morning News. He wrote that he
was happy he had seen "the lighthouse of the mind's sea." Two years later, he was
still in Moscow and became a member of the communist party.

B. Early Sino-Soviet Relations.

Chinese Communists benefited greatly from the fact that Sun Yat-sen obtained no
support from the Western powers who were, after all, attached to their special
privileges in China. (In fact, to begin with, he was seen as too close to the West
and had to take a harder line anyway). It is not surprising, therefore, that he turned
to Moscow. In January 1918, he congratulated Lenin on the successful Bolshevik
revolution (November 1917).

There was little reliable information about the Bolshevik revolution in China
before 1920. We know that study groups were organized to study Marxist thought
but it was not until spring 1920, that a Comintern agent, Grigorii
Voytinskii, arrived in China with information and political writings. Many of these
were translated into Chinese at this time. It was also Voytinskii who worked
successfully to transform the existing Marxist study groups into communist groups
and then into the Communist Party of China. Here we should note that Voytinskii
was assisted in this organizational work by the Soviet government's proclamation
that it would give up the old Russian privileges in China. In particular, the Soviet
government promised to return the Chinese Eastern Railway (CER, a branch of the
Trans-Siberian railway) to China. Though this promise was not implemented, it
made Chinese authorities more friendly to Moscow and allowed some travel
between China and Soviet Russia.

Thus, it was in the period between spring and winter 1920, and with the active help
of Voytinskii, that the Chinese Communist Party began to take shape. It was based
on the Marxist study groups previously organized in Beijing and Shanghai. The
party was secretly constituted in that city in July 1921, formalizing the
organization formed the previous year. The General Secretary was Chen Duxiu,
while Zhang Guotao was made head of the organization section, and Li
Dazhao was head of propaganda. Communist nuclei around the country were
transformed into party branches with local secretaries in Hunan (Mao Zedong),
Guangzhou, Wuhan, Beijing, and Jinan. Shanghai had its own branch. The party
program closely followed the Bolshevik program in Soviet Russia. However, some
radical Chinese intellectuals rejected the Bolshevik model; they were either
supporters of democratic socialism, or joined the Guomindang (Kuomingtang).
Voytinskii was succeeded by Maring (alias of Hendricus Sneevliet), who continued
to guide the fledgling communist movement in China.

Here it is appropriate to give a brief biographical sketch of Mao Zedong. He was

born into a prosperous farming family in Hunan Province in 1893. He rebelled
against his father and refused to accept an arranged marriage. He read much on his
own and majored in ethics at the First Normal School (Teachers' College)
in Changsha. He resented the superior airs of Chinese scholars, and it is then that
he probably acquired the anti-intellectual attitudes, strengthened later at Beijing
University, that he manifested as a leader. In his essay on physical education,
published in the progressive journal, New Youth, in April 1917, he attacked the
"passive" Confucian thinking and way of life; he called for physical education to
strengthen the body, for violence, and anger. Soon, he was advocating the equal
rights of women, and attacking the practice of arranged marriages. Above all, he
expressed a determination to fight for his beliefs. He was to implement all these
early thoughts when he became the leader of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
and then of China. (1)

III. The Comintern and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to 1927.

Lenin was convinced that the Russian Revolution could not survive unless
successful revolutions took place in other countries, which would then become
socialist allies of Soviet Russia. But he knew from his own experience that in
economically backward countries -- and Russia was a backward country in 1917 --
the revolutionary leaders were not workers or peasants, but bourgeois, i.e., middle
class intellectuals. Therefore, he developed the policy of supporting "bourgeois
nationalism" in Western-ruled colonial areas, seeing it as the primary instrument
of anti-imperialist revolution. This was, in turn, to lead to the fall of "imperialism"
which he saw as the highest stage of capitalism. This explains Lenin's primary
interest in the nationalist Guomindang (Kuomintang [KMT]) movement.

Thus, in the early 1920s, the Soviet Union supported Sun Yat-Sen's KMT. The
Soviets agreed to give Sun military, political, and organizational help. The latter
consisted of building a party cell structure in the country which strengthened it
greatly. Official diplomatic relations were established in 1924. In May of that year,
the Soviet government fulfilled some of its earlier promises by giving up formally
the old Russian concessions in Tianjin (Tientsin) and Hankow, as well as paying
the outstanding part of the indemnity for Chinese losses incurred by Russian action
in the great power intervention during the Boxer Rebellion (1900-1901). These
Soviet moves cost Moscow very little, while increasing Chinese goodwill toward
the USSR.

Sun Yat-Sen had his base in Guangzhou (Canton). His primary goal was the
reunification of the country. To do this, he had to accomplish two key objectives:
defeat the Chinese warlords and force out the foreign powers. But first, he had to
make the KMT an effective, political and military force, and to do this, he needed
outside help. Since he received no help from any of the foreign powers, he
welcomed that of the Comintern.

After Voytinskii and Maring, the foremost agent of the Comintern in China
was Michael Borodin (real name: Gruzenberg), whom Sun Yat-Sen invited to
China in 1923. He acted as Comintern adviser to the Central Committee of the
KMT until 1927. (He was later a victim of the Stalin purges). Borodin acted as
Comintern agent to the KMT Central Committee until 1927. He helped Sun
reorganize the KMT along Bolshevik lines, i.e., to give it a Bolshevik party
structure. At the same time, Soviet military advisers led by General Vasily K.
Blyukher, (known in China as Galen), helped establish a military force under KMT
control. (Blyukher was also to be a victim of the Stalin purges). The establishment
of this military force saw the rise of Chiang Kai-shek (P: Chieh-shih, 1887-1975).
After studying in Moscow, he began his career as the Commander of the Whampoa
Military Academy in May 1924, with the communist Zhou Enlai (Chou En-lai) as
his second in command.

We should note that Lenin, and later Stalin, ordered the CCP to join the KMT and
many leading communists did so, including Mao and Zhou Enlai. The goal was to
strengthen and, at the same time, infiltrate the KMT. Nevertheless, though Soviet
advisers gave the KMT ideology an anti-imperialist slant, the bulk of the
movement remained distinctly non-communist. Ironically, the CCP's major
contribution to the KMT was to organize worker support for it in the coastal cities.
The peak of CCP-KMT cooperation came in the years of the Nationalist
Revolution, in 1925-27. This was crowned by the great campaign launched against
the warlords of central China by Chiang Kai-shek in 1926. It was known as
the Northern Expedition because he started from the south.. Chiang won a series of
impressive victories and unified about half of the country by 1927.
Chiang's triumph signalled the end of cooperation between the KMT and the CCP.
The generally accepted view is that the split was precipitated by CCP radicalism.
This targeted not only foreign privileges and symbols, but also rich Chinese.
Wealthy Shangai industrialists were alarmed and offered to bankroll Chiang if he
freed himself from dependence on Moscow. This suited Chiang and in March
1925 he arrested the political commissars in his army and placed the Soviet
advisers under house arrest. In April 1927, when the Northern Expedition forces
approached Shanghai, the communist-led labor unions rose to take the city from
the inside. When Chiang entered the city, he ordered a massacre of the
communists. This became known as the "Shanghai massacre" or more commonly
"the White Terror." Also in April 1927, KMT leaders met in Nanjing (Nanking),
proclaimed the establishment of a National Government and outlawed the CCP.

Stalin did not want to admit the defeat of his China policy, so he ordered the CCP
to continue cooperation with the KMT. It is not clear whether he sanctioned an
unofficial test of strength, or whether the CCP -- perhaps encouraged by Borodin --
disobeyed his orders. In any case, it carried out an uprising in the city
of Nanchang in August 1927. Although the communists held the city for only a
few days, the rising is notable for the participation of future leaders of the Chinese
Red Army. The communist rising in Guangzhou in December 1927 also failed. We
should note that Leon Trotsky openly criticized Stalin for the failure of his policy
in China. This criticism, together with his opposition to Stalin in the debate on
industrialization (1926-27), led to his internal exile to Alma Ata, Kazkhastan, in
1928, and then his exile from Russia in 1929.

There was, in fact, no way that the CCP could have seized control of the KMT in
the 1920s or 1930s, because at that time the KMT embodied the dominant drive
toward unification and symbolized Chinese national goals. But we can at least
wonder whether a different Soviet policy toward the CCP might not have averted
its annihilation. For example, it is intriguing to speculate what would have
happened if Moscow had ordered the CCP to split off from the KMT in March
1926, and/or supported Mao's later policy of concentrating the party's efforts on the
peasants - as the CCP frantically requested (?) However, such a policy seems most
unlikely for while Trotsky opposed CCP cooperation with the KMT, neither he nor
Stalin ever sanctioned Mao's strategy to build Chinese communism with the
support of the teeming millions of Chinese peasants.

Still, though the Stalin-Comintern Chinese policy had exposed the CCP to brutal
repression, at the time it seemed to achieve the primary Soviet goal of aiding a
strong national movement to victory, thus loosening the hold of the imperialist
powers on China and thereby benefiting the Soviet Union. But this was a
theoretical benefit at best. In fact, Great Britain, which of all the imperialist powers
had the greatest investments in China, made its peace with the KMT.
Furthermore, Germany gained a foothold in China by extending help to Chiang --
including military advisers -- to fight the communists in Jiangxi (Kiangsi).
However, Chiang's chances of consolidating his power over China were ended by
the Japanese attack on the country in 1937. This was to drive him
to Chungking (Ch'ung-Ch'ing, southwest China), where he waged only limited
military action against Japan until the end of the war.

***********

IV. The Development of a Unique and Ultimately Successful CCP Revolutionary

Strategy, 1928-1945.

A. The Jiangxi (Kiangsi) Period, 1928-1935.

At this time, the KMT led by Chiang continued the struggle to unify China up to
the Yangtze River and beyond. However, the Japanese overran Manchuria in 1931,
made it a puppet state, and called it Manchukuo. Marshal Zhang Xueliang (Chang
Hsueh-liang, son of the Manuchrian warlord, Marshal Zhang Zuolin, assassinated
by the Japanese in 1928), moved his troops south of the Great Wall on Chiang's
orders. Meanwhile, the Japanese made the last Emperor of China, Puyi, their
puppet ruler in Manchuria. Still, in 1936, the KMT exerted at least a loose form of
control over two-thirds of the population of China.

However, the peasants soon found that nothing changed much except for the
national flag. Warlords loosely allied with Chiang still ruled large parts of China
and there was no land reform. Many intellectuals became alienated from Chiang by
the end of this period because he did not introduce democratic reforms. On the
contrary, he seemed to favor his own dictatorship, and to see fascism as a desirable
model of government.
At this time the communist movement was rebuilt by Mao and Zhu De (Chu Teh) -
- one of the leaders of the Nanchang rising -- in the southern part of the province
of Jiangxi. Meanwhile, the official party leaders, who remained loyal to Moscow,
went into hiding in Shanghai, where they stayed until 1930.

Key Issues.

It was during this period that Mao redirected Chinese communism from the
workers to the peasants who, after all, made up the vast majority of the population.
Thus Mao changed the communist goal in China from a workers' revolution to
a peasant revolution, which he saw as the first step toward a socialist revolution.

Furthermore, in cooperation with Zhu De, Mao evolved the strategy of operating
from a stable base area, and of harassing government troops by guerrilla tactics.
These tactics were not new; they were rooted in traditional Chinese military
strategy which Mao knew very well from hisr reading. They were to play a central
role in the ultimate victory of Mao's forces over Chiang.

Equally important was the fact that in the area under their control in southern
Jiangxi, the communists carried out land reform. This really meant distributing the
land equally, except that landlords and richer peasants were to get less than the
others. This did not always work out that way because some landlords and rich
peasants kept more land in return for supporting the communists. But overall, the
communists obtained solid support from the peasants, for whom land reform was
the most important issue. The key to such success as the communists achieved at
this time was the moderate nature of their reforms. This moderation was, in fact,
mandated not by communist dogma but by the existing production shortages which
were exacerbated by the ruthless KMT blockade of CCP-held areas.

Mao emerged as the leading spokesman for these policies. They were embodied in
the Chinese Soviet Republic, known also as the Jiangxi Soviet, which existed from
1931-34. This was the model which mainstream Chinese communism was to
follow from then on. These developments took place independently of Moscow.
However, the CCP went on to impose a very radical regime when other Chinese
communists, called "Bolsheviks," returned to Jiangxi from Moscow and replaced
Mao sometime around 1933. This regime had disastrous results. Mao resumed
power at the beginning of the "Long March" at the Cun Yi conference in 1934. The
Jiangxi Soviet came to an end in late 1934-35, when KMT military pressure
became too great. At that time, the communists had to break out and move
elsewhere to survive. This resulted in the Long March, an event of enormous
significance in the history of Chinese communism. (2)

----------------------------------------

The Long March.

In October 1934, about 100,000 people broke through the KMT armies in south
Jiangxi and trekked some 6,000 miles by a round about route to the northwest
province of Shaanxi (Shensi), which some 20,000 survivors reached in
1935. Yenan became Mao's main base there in 1937. This was a terrible ordeal,
and a defeat in the sense that it was the consequence of the KMT's military victory
over the communists. However, the Long March and the arrival of its survivors in
Shaanxi signified the survival of Mao's brand of communism in a secure base.
Here, it could gather its forces and, by waging a guerrilla war against Japan, lay the
groundwork for its later conquest of China.

Also, the Long March provided a heroic myth for Chinese communists in the
future, much as Valley Forge had done for Americans. It deepened the
communists' sense of destiny. Finally, it provided the leaders of future communist
China. Of the few hundred top PRC leaders that still lived in the 1980s and those
still alive early 1990s, some 90% were/are veterans of that odyssey. (3)

B. The Sino-Japanese War and The Yenan Period, 1937-1945.

In September 1936, the Japanese government presented secret demands to the

government of Chiang Kai-Shek. Disguised as proposals for a common war against
the communists, their acceptance would have meant Japanese domination over
China.
In December 1936, Chiang went north to coordinate a campaign against the Yenan
communists with Marshal Zhang Xueliang. The Marshal, angered by the Japanese
assassination of his father had supported Chiang, but he became angry at the
latter's preference to fight the communists rather than the Japanese. Zhang was in
touch with the communists and when Chiang began to move against him, he
invited the KMT leader to a meeting - - and kidnapped him . At a meeting with
communist leaders and Zhang, Chiang was "persuaded" to give up his anti-
communist campaign and agree to wage a common fight against Japan. Chiang
agreed, and flew back to his capital with Zhang. However, while he proclaimed a
common war against the Japanese, he never forgave Zhang. He kept the marshal
under house arrest all through the war, after which he took him along to Taiwan,
and kept him under guard for decades. (Chiang died in 1975; Zhang was reported
to have left Taiwan in the late 1980s, to visit relatives in the U.S.).

On July 7, 1937, an accidental fire fight between Chinese and Japanese troops
at Lukouchiao, near Beijing, gave Tokyo the long desired pretext for attacking
China. Japanese armies seized Beijing and Tientsin; then they proceeded to
occupy most of eastern China. Many historians suspect that this fight was
precipitated by the Japanese. Whatever the case might be, the Japanese invasion of
China had a dual effect on the country: (a) it swept northeast China clear of the old
authorities, whom the KMT had never been able to control effectively anyway; and
(b) it bogged down the Japanese in a large area of China which they could not
control either. This situation provided the ideal opportunity for guerrilla war, or as
the communists called it -- "The People's War of Resistance."

The communist guerrillas, who were led by "The 8th Route Army", were able to
establish links and contacts throughout northern China. These forces did so by
harassing the Japanese, while at the same time fighting hard - not always
successfully - to protect the peasants in the villages.

The 8th Route Army gave the CCP a very strong claim to represent Chinese
nationalism, especially since the KMT, after putting up a hard fight at the
beginning, reduced its resistance to the minimum when the government settled in
far away Chungking.

But this was only part of the CCP achievement. The other was its use of wartime
resistance to effect a permanent penetration of the villages. Here the communists
generally treated the peasants well by paying for what they needed, and also
implemented popular social-economic policies. Of these, the most important
were rent and interest controls and an end to abuses in tax collection, both very
popular with the peasants. These measures were accompanied by education, i.e.,
teaching the peasants to read and write a basic form of Chinese. These policies,
which followed precedents set in Jiangxi, gave the CCP a mass base, which no
Chinese government had ever had, including the KMT. (Some new studies show,
however, that the CCP was not always as good as this in treating the peasants).

By the end of the war, the results were dramatic. The CCP controlled 19 base areas
with a population of about 100 million and had an army of about half a million.
The Party itself had about 1 million members. Thus, the CCP was all set for a test
of strength with the KMT. From hindsight, the factors outlined above were bound
to result in a communist victory. At the time, however, the KMT had such
superiority in troops and weapons that the CCP doubted it could win.

We should also note some key developments within the CCP during this period. It
evolved a self-image stressing egalitarianism, self-sufficiency, and dedication. At
the same time, Mao implemented the process of rectification or systematic thought
control, i.e., the use of mass pressure to make everyone accept the party line. This
presaged Mao's mass campaigns to promote "correct thinking," after the CCP came
to power. Furthermore, the party, i.e., Mao, exercised control over literature and
the arts on the premise that they "must serve the revolution"; this followed
established Soviet practice and, like thought control, led to the repression of
dissent.

Although the above-mentioned thought and cultural control were related to Soviet
models, it is a mistake to assume that the Yenan CCP was under the control of
Moscow. In fact, from June 22 1941, Stalin was too busy fighting the Germans to
bother with Mao and he continued to recognize Chiang's government in Chungking
as the government of China. Thus the Yenan model was Mao's work, reflecting his
anti-intellectual and dictatorial character. He was to apply these policies on a
massive scale after coming to power.

In conclusion, we should note that by the end of the war in 1945, Chinese
communism under Mao's leadership had both a significant social-revolutionary
content and had become the embodiment of Chinese nationalism. The CCP had
accomplished all this on its own by developing a distinctly Chinese revolutionary
strategy which drew on Chinese traditions and tapped directly into the two great
goals of modern Chinese reformers, communist and non-communist alike, i.e., (a)
effective national unity, and (b) real independence, or freedom from foreign
domination. What is more, the CCP led the way to the third goal, which most
Chinese reformers agreed should follow the first two: social-economic reform,
especially the abolition of the feudal system in the countryside.
 ---------------------

V. The Civil War.

A. The Background.

The roots of the conflict between the CCP and the KMT go back to the late 1920s,
and to the Jiangxi period in particular. It is true that their basic differences were
papered over by the formal 1937 agreement to cooperate in the war against Japan -
- an agreement extracted by force from a reluctant Chiang Kai-Shek during his
kidnapping by young marshal Zhang Xueliang in December 1936. But, in fact, the
8th Route Army fought the Japanese on its own, while Chiang waited for U.S.
victory over Japan and used American aid mostly to build up his strength for the
war he planned to wage against the communists for control of China.

Chiang's passive stance toward Japan was strongly criticized by the U.S. military
adviser in Chungking, General Joseph W. Stilwell (1883-1946). Hi s relations with
Chiang soon developed into mutual hostility. (He called Chiang, "the Peanut").
However, the U.S. media, with the aid of the popular, American-educated, Mme.
Chiang, had built up Chiang and the KMT into the embodiment of free China.
Therefore, President Franklin D. Roosevelt did not believe it politically wise to
abandon Chiang in favor of the more active communist army.

The President did, however, send Gen. Patrick Hurley (1883-1963) to try and patch
things up between Chiang and Mao. He also sanctioned the sending of a U.S.
mission to Yenan. This was called "The U.S. Observer Mission." In the U.S., it
was informally known as "The Dixie Mission," because it went into "rebel"
territory. The mission was led by Colonel David Barrett and established itself in
Yenan in July 1944, where it stayed until 1946. Its members were very favorably
impressed by Mao and his movement. Indeed, if the war with Japan had not ended
with the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Japanese troops had remained in
mainland China, the United States might have given military aid to the communists
because they represented a significant anti-Japanese fighting force there. (4)

-----------------------------------------

B. The Civil War.

The Japanese surrender, forced by the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, caught everyone by surprise and created a conundrum for the American
government. The problem was which Chinese forces were to take over Manchuria
and north China, and how could a civil war be prevented?

President Harry S. Truman sent General George C. Marshall (1880-1959) as

special ambassador to China in December 1945, with the task of mediating an
agreement between the communists and the KMT. However, the U.S. government
was, at the same time, helping Chiang by airlifting his troops to north China.
Officially this was done because the Japanese were ordered tosurrender only to the
KMT or to American troops, but it obviously favored Chiang..

Meanwhile, the Soviet Union had declared war on Japan on August 8th and sent
its troops into Manchuria, occupying it without encountering much resistance. The
Soviets allowed Chinese communist troops to take over the region as well as the
weapons of the defeated Japanese. At the same time, however, they looted the
industrial equipment and sent it to Russia, just as they did in their occupation zone
in Germany and in the former German territories allocated to Poland.

But Stalin did not want a confrontation with the U.S. so he signed a Treaty of
Friendship and Alliance with Chiang on August 14, 1945. In accordance with this
treaty, Chiang ceded Port Arthur and control of Dalian (in Russian, Dairen), in
southern Manchuria to Russia, thus implementing the promises Roosevelt had
made to Stalin at Yalta. The Russians agreed to give up some key cities to the
KMT, but this did not happen until they pulled out in early May 1946. In the
meanwhile, Gen. Marshall managed to arrange a truce between the KMT and the
communists, which was signed in Chungking on January 16, 1946. While neither
side intended to observe it for long, the communists seemed more willing to abide
by it than Chiang.

War broke out in summer 1946. Although on paper the KMT army was three times
the size of the communist army, the men were demoralized and badly led. Above
all, most of them were peasants, so they were naturally attracted to the CCP
program of land reform, which was implemented in all regions that came under the
control of The People's Liberation Army (PLA). We should note here that, just as
they had done in Jiangxi in 1931-34 and in north China in 1938-45, so now the
communists distributed the land to poor and landless farmers, but also left some
land to the landlords and rich farmers. They did not want to alienate them, but
make them allies of the CCP. However, this did not apply to those perceived as
"exploiters," or others seen as enemies. Many of them were killed.

Chiang fought the communists in his old way, i.e., by garrisoning fortified places.
However, they were soon surrounded by Mao's troops. Masses of KMT peasant
soldiers deserted to the PLA, perceiving they had nothing to lose and everything to
gain. The PLA captured their equipment and soon overpowered the KMT. Even
the mainstay of the KMT, the merchants and civil servants, had become alienated
from Chiang because of the terrible inflation that followed the end of the war with
Japan. They looked all the more hopefully to Mao, because he carefully avoided
proclaiming any radical measures, such as the abolition of private property.

Newly declassified Russian documents show that in January 1949, after Chiang
asked for great power mediation, Stalin advised Mao to accept - but Mao refused.
It is clear from the Russian record that Stalin was anxious to avoid a clash between
the United States and Mao in China, which might invovle the USSR. Mao,
however, pursued his own policy. (5)

The PLA crossed the Yangtze river in April and reached Guangzhou (Canton) in
October 1948. Chiang resigned as President of the Republic of China on January
21, 1949, although he kept power in his own hands. On October 1, 1949, the The
People's Republic of China (PRC) was proclaimed in Beijing (Peking), the old
capital of China. The remnants of the KMT fled to Formosa, i.e., Taiwan, where
they set up the government of "Free China."

------------------------------
The communist victory in China was a great shock to U.S. opinion. Wartime
propaganda had portrayed Chiang Kai-shek as the heroic leader of China. At the
same time, the imposition of Soviet domination over Eastern Europe, the Greek
civil war and the Berlin Blockade (1948-1949) marked the beginning of the Cold
War. (See ch.6). Therefore, it was natural for U.S. opinion to see the establishment
of communism in China as directed from Moscow, and to seek an explanation for
the defeat of America's ally, Chiang, in some kind of communist "plot."

This perception was so widespread that it allowed Senator Joseph R.

McCarthy (1908-1957, R. Wisconsin) to launch his campaign against "spies" in the
U.S. State Department in 1950, and to expand it into a general witch hunt against
American communists and sympathizers. McCarthy had so much support among
millions of Americans that President Truman and, for a certain time, President
Eisenhower, did not dare oppose him, even in defense of the State Department's
China experts, who were fired. It was not until McCarthy attacked the Army -- by
which time U.S. opinion was becoming disgusted with his methods -- that
Eisenhower put his foot down and the McCarthy era came to an end.

As it turned out, there were, in fact, some Soviet "moles" in the State Department,
but the Chinese communists did not owe their victory either to them or to the
Soviets. In fact, Stalin was so anxious to avoid a confrontation with the U.S. until
he was ready for it, that at one point he had advised Mao to accept a demarcation
line with the KMT on the Yangtze River, thus leaving south China to Chiang. As
mentioned above, he also advised Mao not to reject great power mediation in in
January1949. Finally, he continued to recognize Chiang's government as the
government of China until Chiang fled to Taiwan.

Stalin's careful policy was probably dictated by two factors: (a) he wanted to
consolidate the growing Soviet hold on Eastern Europe.Therefore, he had to avoid
a confrontation with the United States until he felt he had a good chance of
consolidating his gains. As we know, he risked a confrontation over Berlin in
1948-49 and lost his bid for Germany. He was not about to seek another
confrontation over China, particularly since (b) the U.S. had the monopoly over the
atomic bomb until the Soviets successfully exploded theirs in 1949. But, even then,
they had to wait a few years to produce a stockpile and to develop a delivery
system, while the U.S. had both the bombs and the long-range planes to deliver
them. (We should note, however, that U.S. policy was to use these bombs only in
self-defense and possibly in defense of Western Europe).

Finally, Stalin probably did not trust Mao, who had developed his own brand of
communism and his own power base without Soviet input and control. As with
Tito in Yugoslavia, with whom he had split in 1948, this presaged tensions and an
eventual split between the two communist regimes. But that was to happen many
years later. Furthermore, he probably did not want a strong, united, China on the
Russian border in Asia. China had lost much territory there to Imperial Russia and
the Chinese communists kept these losses very much in mind.