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.
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.
Start and end dates
Many historians agree with the Chinese Communist Party official history that the Chinese Communist Revolution dates to the founding of the party in 1921. A few consider it to be the latter part of the Chinese Civil War, since it was only after the Second Sino-Japanese War that the tide turned decisively in favour of the CCP. That said, it is not entirely clear when the second half of the civil war began. The earliest possible date would be the end of the Second United Front in January 1941, when Nationalist forces ambushed and destroyed the New Fourth Army. Another possible date is the surrender of Japan on August 10, 1945, which began a scramble by CCP and Nationalist forces to seize the equipment and territory left behind by the Japanese. However, full-scale warfare between the two sides did not truly recommence until June 26, 1946, when Chiang Kai-shek launched a major offensive against CCP bases in Manchuria. This article is focused on the political and social developments that contributed to the Revolution, rather than the military events of the Civil War, so it begins with the founding of the CCP.
The most common date used for the end of the Revolution is the Proclamation of the People's Republic of China on 1 October 1949. Nonetheless, the Nationalist Government had not evacuated to Taiwan until December, and significant fighting (such as the conquest of Hainan) continued well into 1950 and the takeover of Tibet in 1951. While never posing a serious threat to the People's Republic, the Kuomintang Islamic insurgency continued until as late as 1958 in the provinces of Gansu, Qinghai, Ningxia, Xinjiang, and Yunnan. ROC soldiers who had fled into the mountains of Burma and Thailand worked with the CIA and KMT to finance anti-Communist activities with drug trafficking well into the 1980s. No formal peace between the ROC and the PRC has ever been negotiated.
Origins
During the final years of the Qianlong Emperor's reign, China began a long period of decline popularly known as the "century of humiliation". Successive administrations within the imperial administration of the Qing dynasty failed to address the mounting problems of economic stagnation, official corruption, and military weakness. Massive peasant rebellions, most notably the Taiping Rebellion, cost millions of lives and ravaged the countryside. Japan and the Western powers forced China to accept unequal treaties that gave them territorial concessions and allowed them to exploit the Chinese economy. China had been turned into a "semi-colony" by the time of the Boxer Rebellion.
The landlord system
Prior to the revolution, the majority of agricultural land in rural China was owned by a class of landlords and wealthy peasants, with between 50 and 65 percent of peasants owning little or no land and thus needing to rent additional land from landlords. This disparity in land ownership differed by region, and was more extreme in southern China where the commercialization of agriculture was more developed. For example, in Guangdong more than half the rural population owned no land at all. Poor peasants owned an average of only 0.87 mu (about 0.14 acres) and so spent most of their time working rented land. Even in north China, where most peasants owned at least some land, the plots they owned were so small and infertile that they remained on the edge of starvation. Periodic famines were common during both the Qing dynasty and the later Republic of China. Between 1900 and the end of WWII, China experienced no less than six major famines, costing tens of millions of lives.
Depending on the system of tenancy, peasants renting land might have been expected to pay in kind or in cash, either as a fixed amount or as a proportion of the harvest. Where a share of the harvest was paid, as in much of north China, rates of 40%, 50%, and 60% were common. A system of sharecropping prevailed in much of Shanxi, where landlords owned all agricultural capital and expected 80% of the harvest as rent. The amount of fixed rents varied, but in most areas averaged about $4 a year per mu. Proponents of peasant exploitation as a cause of the Chinese Communist Revolution argue that these rents were often exorbitant and contributed to the extreme poverty of the peasantry. Agricultural economist John Lossing Buck disagreed, arguing that landlords' return on investment was not especially high in comparison to the standard rates of interest in China at the time.
The land held by the landlords and rich peasants, while ample, was not enough in itself to make them the dominant group in the village. It served primarily as a solid foundation for other forms of open and concealed exploitation which taken together raised a handful of families far above the rest of the inhabitants economically and hence politically and socially as well.
Landlords utilized forms of exploitation such as usury, corruption, and the theft of public funds to enrich themselves and their families. They ran side businesses with the profits from farming to shore up their finances and isolate themselves from the effects of bad harvests. On holidays, funerals, and other important events, landlords had the right to demand their tenants act as servants, reinforcing the social divide and engendering resentment from the peasants. Agnes Smedley observed how even within a short distance from Shanghai, rural landlords operated essentially as feudal lords, paying for private armies, dominating local politics, and keeping numerous concubines.
Radicalization of urban intellectuals
In the first decade of the twentieth century, young Chinese intellectuals such as Ma Junwu, Liang Qichao, and Zhao Bizhen were the first to translate and summarize socialist and Marxist ideas into Chinese. However, this happened on a very small scale, and had no immediate impacts. This would change following the 1911 Revolution, which saw military and popular revolts overthrow the Qing Dynasty. The failure of the new Chinese Republic to improve social conditions or modernize the country led scholars to take a greater interest in Western ideas such as socialism. The New Culture Movement was especially strong in cities like Shanghai, where Chen Duxiu began to publish the left-leaning journal New Youth in 1915. New Youth quickly became the most popular and widely distributed journal amongst the intelligentsia during this period.
In May 1919, news reached China that the Versailles Peace Conference had decided to give German-occupied province of Shandong to Japan rather than returning it to China. The Chinese public saw this not only as a betrayal by the Western allies, but also as a failure by the Chinese Republican government to properly defend the country against imperialism. In what became known as the May Fourth Movement, large protests erupted in major cities across China. Although led by students, these protests were significant because they included the first mass participation by those outside the traditional intellectual and cultural elites. Mao Zedong later stated that the May Fourth Movement "marked a new stage in China's bourgeois-democratic revolution against imperialism and feudalism...a powerful camp made its appearance in the bourgeois-democratic revolution, a camp consisting of the working class, the student masses and the new national bourgeoisie." Many political, and social leaders of the next five decades emerged at this time, including those of the Chinese Communist Party.
The October Revolution in Russia attracted the admiration of many of the organizers of the May Fourth Movement. Although exposure to Marxist theory was extremely limited in China at the time, Chinese radicals found Lenin's ideas about organizing a revolutionary movement to be readily applicable to their own context. Moreover, the Soviet Union (once established in 1922) offered a unique and compelling model of modernization and revolutionary social change in a semi-colonial nation. Historian Tony Saich wrote that the early Chinese Communists "were Bolsheviks before they were Marxists." Interest in the Bolsheviks led to an interest in Marxism. Students formed study groups to discuss Marx's ideas, including one at Peking University led by Li Dazhao. His study group included Chen Duxiu, who was working as a dean at the university. Other future party leaders who became interested in the Communist movement at this time include Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai. As the editor of New Youth, Chen used his journal to publish a series of Marxist articles, including an entire issue devoted to the subject in 1919. By 1920, Li and Chen had fully converted to Marxism, and Li founded the Peking Socialist Youth Corps in Beijing. Chen moved back to Shanghai, where he also founded a small Communist group.
Cooperation with the Nationalists
Foundation of the Chinese Communist Party
By 1920, "skepticism about [study groups'] suitability as vehicles for reform had become widespread." Instead, most Chinese Marxists had determined to follow the Leninist model, which they understood as organizing a vanguard party around a core group of professional revolutionaries. The Chinese Communist Party was founded on 23 July 1921 in Shanghai, at the 1st National Congress of the CCP. The dozen delegates resolved to affiliate with the Communist International (Comintern), although the CCP would only formally become a member at its second congress. Chen was elected in absentia to be the first General Secretary. The Chinese Communist Party grew slowly in its first few years. The party had 50 members at the beginning of 1921, 200 in 1922, and 2,428 in 1925. In contrast, the Kuomintang had 50,000 members already in 1923. The CCP continued to be dominated by students and urban intellectuals living in China's large cities, where exposure to Marxist ideas was strongest: three of the first four party congresses were held in Shanghai, the other in Guangzhou. One exception was Peng Pai, who became the first CCP leader to seriously engage with the peasants. In Haifeng County in rural Guangdong, he organized a powerful peasant association that campaigned for lower rents, led anti-landlord boycotts, and organized welfare activities. By 1923, it claimed a membership of about 100,000, or one-quarter of the population of the entire county. Later that year, Peng worked with the KMT to establish a joint "Peasant Movement Training Institute" to train young idealists to work in rural areas, which slowly increased both parties' awareness of and engagement with the peasants and their issues.