The Yan’an Period

While the CCP was still licking its wounds, recovering and regrouping at Yan’an in 1937, Japan got greedy. This proved a relatively great boon for the greatly weakened party. Japan was regarded as a hated enemy by many Chinese especially since it had been engaged in brutal occupations of various parts of China since the early 1920s (sharing the WWI ‘spoils’ of the other ‘foreign devils’ on the winning side). CCP success in fighting the Japanese would begin to rebuild their popular support and the GMD would also be too busy with the Japanese to attack Yan’an with full force. They might even be forced back into an actual alliance with the CCP, however shaky that might prove. This forced alliance provided breathing space the CCP desperately needed. In the meantime, it had a chance to practice government over around 3,000,000 people.

Jiang actually refused to fight the Japanese in 1937 and this led to his kidnapping by agents of the CCP and his being forced to resume heading a new alliance with the CCP (along with other nationalist parties). Zhou, a former colleague at Whampoa, was instrumental in bringing about his agreement to this state of affairs. The GMD was forced to re-enter into an alliance (a second ‘united front’) with the CCP for the sake of national unity. The fact was, however, that the GMD continued to prefer containing the Communists (while the latter actually fought against the Japanese) to actually fighting the Japanese themselves. For much of the war against the Japanese, around half a million of the GMD’s crack troops were occupied blockading CCP territory.

The GMD forces of the GMD 2IC in fact ran away from Japanese forces invading Manchuria in the North and even in the heartland the GMD abandoned Shanghai to them in November of 1937 (albeit after a little more of a fight than in Manchuria). Japan also took the prizes of Beijing and Tianjin to go along with Manchuria and Shanghai in 1937.

The Japanese proved a brutal occupier and committed notable atrocities in October (around the time their aerial bombardment of Shanghai was also producing mass casualties). In a few short months Japan had gained control of half of the seaboard of China and in December they commenced the so-called “Rape of Nanking”, the by then abandoned capital of the GMD, massacring an estimated 200,000 people there. Further to that, Jiang’s idea of inundating a significant region of China to halt the Japanese advance not only didn’t work, its fruition was the death by drowning of several hundred thousand more Chinese men, women and children and the homelessness of several hundred thousand more again.

Meanwhile Chongqing further west (on the Yangzi in eastern Sichuan province) became the new GMD capital. The Japanese then commenced the bombing of Chongqing. The exodus of people and infrastructure from Nanjing (Nanking) to Chongqing was phenomenal but equally noticeable was the bleeding of many people to the Communist capital of Yan’an (and to a party that was actually fighting the Japanese). People were also inspired by the relative closeness of the CCP leadership to its people (admittedly they had the advantage in this connection of ruling over a smaller population but the 'mass line' (see below) was practiced and that practice was noted and widely admired).

Mao had set up the Anti-Japanese University in Yan’an. This attracted students from all over China seeking training to become military and political/intellectual cadres of the CCP. They were then sent all over China to do the party’s work and could even belong to rural capitalist classes such as the landlord class; this was based on the idea of ‘New Democracy’ (again see below) (provided they weren’t actually collaborating with the Japanese in any way). Women were also permitted to contribute to this mobilisation for the first time in China (as women in the West were also fighting for virtually the first time).

In this war period (after the initial Japanese successes), the Red Army became a formidable fighting force, due in part to its practice at simultaneously fighting external and internal enemies (and making alliances across classes based on the Sun idea of ‘New Democracy’ (again see below - this later proved to be merely pragmatism for Mao)).

The CCP commando/guerrilla tactics proved successful against the Japanese while the GMD preferred to hold back from fighting the Japanese in anticipation of the expected later fight with the CCP, which they hoped would be severely depleted by their virtually unaided fight with the Japanese.

There were indeed also several actual GMD/CCP skirmishes in this period. One that occurred in January of 1941 actually wiped out a complete CCP unit and brought about the end of the formal coalition. Jiang noted at one point something to the effect that “the Japanese are a disease of the skin but the CCP are a disease of the heart” when discussing his attitude to his two foes.

While fighting the Japanese (and GMD) the Communists didn’t neglect home affairs at Yan’an and a style of rule developed that later came to be referred to as “the Yan’an Way”. There were five features:

1) ‘New Democracy’ as a pragmatic theory that recognised the interests of a middle class and ‘national’ capitalists as well as those of workers and peasants;

2) A “mass line” policy that compulsorily and regularly brought leaders (and all CCP members) into close contact with the masses (including a manual work requirement);

3) A comprehensive political, economic, social and military party organisational structure;

4) Ideological and educational campaigns were used to spread correct ideas; and

5) Intellectuals were required to labour with the peasants and literature, intellectualism and art were regarded as subordinate to the service of the revolution.

The CCP then and later

One historical question concerning the next 30 years (1919 to 1949) that I'll in turn be concerned with here is why did the CCP succeed and the GMD fail? The answers are both ideological and practical. In short, the CCP proved to be better nationalists (and fighters of the external enemy) than the nominal Nationalists and also had better economic and social programmes but this state of affairs took time to develop. Another question that I will also get into is how did this period shape the CCP, what is that shape and what has this meant for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) even today? One feature to especially note is the CCP's vastly different effects on each succeeding generation: within the space of three generations China experienced a time before Mao and Communist rule, the Cultural Revolution and other aspects of Maoism and Dengist capitalism and beyond.

In 1920, Communist International (Commintern) agents arrived in China (following the success of Li Dazhou and the May Fourth Movement). At first (founded in July 1921 at Shanghai) the CCP was a party of city intellectuals influenced by the recent (1917) Russian Revolution attempting to inspire a very small urban proletariat in an economically ‘backward’ country. This had not been directly contemplated by Marx in such a country but had been by Lenin. Lenin had also directly suggested that socialist revolution in the mature advanced West (from the Marxian point of view) now in fact depended on national revolutions in the East due to the ameliorative effect on working conditions for the Western proletariat (and thus delay of revolutionary impetus) permitted by exploitation of the East by the West. So in Lenin’s book world revolution or indeed any and all Communist revolutions now actually depended on anti-colonial and anti-imperial revolutions that hadn’t even especially interested Marx as potential historical prime movers. And the Commintern had only just been set up in 1920 in Moscow to set these newly envisaged processes in motion.

The founding leader of the CCP was Chen Duxiu (陳獨秀). The party together with others was easily able to organise strikes and protests in the industrialised cities especially against the extremely harsh working conditions of the time (both local and foreign capitalists were involved) thus linking intellectuals opposed to capitalism with city workers. Membership in the party increased rapidly (from 1,000 in 1924 to 58,000 in 1927) and there was widespread support. Politically, though, the Commintern ordered the party (in 1924) to subordinate itself to the GMD as the GMD then had more resources and political capital and the parties shared a nationalist agenda.

Unity with the GMD was somewhat tested especially with the death of Sun Yat-sen (actually 孫逸仙 – Sun Yixian) in 1925 and accession to the role of GMD leadership of the less charismatic (and more conservative and frankly anti-Communist) Chiang Kai-shek (strictly Jiang Jieshi (蔣介石)) in June 1926. However the push north to unify the country was ready to begin so on it went. The combined GMD/CCP armies defeated 34 warlords in six month in 1926-27. They were at that time disciplined and passionate and had the support of the people. The CCP especially promised better conditions and the CCP forces made a point of always paying for what they ate and drank. Many people readily joined the Communists as they sought to abolish many cruel, outdated or exploitative practices such as foot-binding and the charging of exorbitant rents but there were already reservations. The CCP also sought to do away with sometimes cherished ideas and traditions.

Chiang’s next move upon arrival in Shanghai in April of 1927 (the planned end of the first phase of the northern push) was to bloodily purge the alliance of any Communists and labour activists he could find there. This naturally brought on violent opposition and in the end thousands of Communists were summarily executed.

Chiang then formed his GMD government with its capital at Nanking. He was really now the preeminent warlord of China but was now threatened by both the CCP and Japan. As part of legitimising his rule he then brought Sun’s body to be reburied at Nanking (really Nanjing – literally “South Capital”) and married one of Sun’s relatives. She proved to be a benefit to his rule as she was able to be an appealing Diana Spencer to his less appealing Prince Charles thus aiding in the public relations department. The GMD were now coming to control the heartland of China and were able to modernise and unify China’s currency. Forms of exploitation however persisted (in both the cities and the countryside) and this enabled the CCP to remain a popular force.

I’ll be dividing this history of the rise of the CCP to eventual power in the next few posts into four more stages that also consolidated the power of the then young Mao Zedong: the Jiangxi Soviet period (1927 to 1933), the Long March (1934 to 1935), the Yan’an period when the parties were forced to recombine (however weakly and tactically) against Japan (1936 to 1945) and the second civil war period (1945 to 1949).

The May Fourth Movement, the Nationalists and the Communists

Nationalist demonstrations in May of 1919 (especially on the fourth), partly at the unfair treatment of China at Versailles and Paris and mainly involving students, were important. Germany had lost the war and so its concession and sphere of influence, rather than being given to China, an ally if a weak one of the Western Allies during the war, were given to Japan.

The movement sought self-rule and opposed the continuation of all foreign rule but especially sought the strong and assertive self-rule clearly not then in evidence from the local republican government that had begun in 1911 following the overthrow of the monarchy.

After the initial protests, the cause was taken up especially by intellectuals and students typically either educated overseas or in the new ‘western-style’ schools and the movement came to be called the May Fourth Movement.

The CCP itself sees its origins as being in this movement. The movement was strongly anti-tradition and anti-Confucian as Chinese tradition and Confucianism were seen as the primary causes of China’s current weakness before its adversaries. It promoted modernisation (and even Westernisation – the West was seen as strong) especially in the forms of science, democracy, nationalism, women’s rights and language reform (a welcomed written form of the vernacular language was replacing the opaque Classical Chinese as a literary vehicle). A publishing revolution accompanied the movement: new newspapers and journals popularised new ideas and many works of various kinds were translated from other languages following on from the protests.

The movement was at least partly inspired by the recent success of the revolutions in Russia – a new period of revolutions seemed called for as it had in earlier periods such as in 1848 and later periods such as in 1968 and the last and first two decades of the 20^th and 21^st centuries respectively but it was not especially coherent. It contained everything from Marxists to liberals and anarchists.

The first notable person to popularise Marxism in China (beginning in 1918 when he completed his translations of the works of Marx) was Li Dazhou (李大釗). The two central May fourth themes, though, were nationalism and the sense of a need for (and the possibility of) bold, progressive and substantial reform.

Sun Yat-sen was emerging as the head of the Guo Min Dang (the Nationalist Party – GMD or sometimes KMT because of the Wade-Giles Romanisation then popular) that was much later the final rival of the Chinese Communist Party in 1949 and exiled to Taiwan. Sun sought support from abroad in his battle to unite and strengthen China and interested only the newly formed USSR. He agreed as a condition to work with the then fledgling CCP. With Soviet help he set up the Whampoa Military Academy at Canton (Guangzhou) for GMD and CCP members placing it under the command of Chiang Kai-shek. Zhou En-lai was at the academy. Together these two parties prepared a united push north to the heartland of China to unite the land under the GMD. Both parties sought national unity but it never seemed likely that the CCP would accept the role of junior partner, however, and eventual disunity thus must have seemed inevitable to most members of both parties even then.