Topic 3 Lesson 6
The Comintern and the birth of the Chinese Communist Party
As Spence argues “If China’s youth was going to fight the forces of darkness with
their bare fists, they would need a carefully thought out plan.” 319
Initially though with the civil war in Russia, the opposition of foreign powers and the
lack of a worker’s revolution in Germany, Hungary and Turkey, the situation in the
Soviet Union was not optimistic.
Marxism initially had limited influence in China. The Chinese began to be aware of
Marx when a biography of him was published in 1905 and in 1908 a Journal of
Natural Justice published chapters of the Communist Manifesto. The influence of
Marxism really began with the May Fourth movement when many Chinese lost faith
in the West over the Versailles pronouncement over Shandung when Chinese
intellectuals “found it difficult to accept the West as teacher and oppressor
simultaneously.” Bolshevik Marxism seemed dramatically favourable after the Soviet
revolution and the anti-Western ideas of Saint-Simon, and the anarchism of Kropotkin
and Bakunin became more popular. Socialism became more popular as to quote
Bernal it was a practical philosophy which rejected “both the traditions of the Chinese
past and the Western domination of the present.” 620 Hsu.
The rejection of the new leaders of the Soviet Union of their Tsarist rights in 1918 and
1919 made the Communist rulers in the Soviet Union much more popular in China.
Although this was changed to an offer to negotiate the abolition of the unequal treaties
“it represented an unsolicited, unilateral expression of friendship and a radical
departure from the haughty and rapacious behaviour of imperialist powers.” 620
Capitalism in Leninism was the last stage of imperialism with rivalry and conflict
between capitalist states leading them into conflict and eventual extinction. “The
downtrodden people of Asia and other underdeveloped areas should thus rise against
foreign imperialism and hasten the passing away of the foreign yoke. This Leninist
theory offered comfort to the Chinese intellectuals, for not only did it blame the West
for China’s ills and predict the imminent demise of capitalism, but it also gave Asia a
place in the world revolution – a refutation of the previous stand of European
Marxists who insisted that the problems of the world could be solved only in and by
the West.” 620 Hsu
The intellectual appeal of Marxism-Leninism, the voluntary offer of friendship by the
Soviet regime and the success of the Bolshevik revolution all had a powerful
psychological impact in China. Marxist and Leninist study groups sprung up and
Peking university became a hotbed of radicalism. Li Dazhao pronounced the
Bolshevik revolution to be a “great, universal, and elemental force” as important as
the French revolution. He formed the Marxist Research Society and devoted the 1919
edition of New Youth to the “Victory of Bolshevism.” 621 His library was called
the “Red Chamber” and assistant librarians, including Mao Zedong were to be leaders
of the Communist Party.
The May Fourth incident also had a profound influence in China and whereas before
there were supporters of the West and Westernisation in the form of Western
Democracy, Liberalism and internationalism, despite imperialism, “they now
decisively cut off their dependence on the West and vowed to take China’s fate into
their own hands.” Hsu 621
This was especially true of Chen Duxiu who fled to Shanghai after his imprisonment.
He lost all faith in the West and pronounced that democracy was a tool used by the
bourgeoisie “to swindle mankind in order to maintain political power.” 621 Hsu
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He became the second most important convert to Marxism in China, formed a Marxist
study group in May 1920 and a Socialist Youth corps in August, both forerunners of
the Chinese Communist Party.
In Peking in March 1920 the various Marxist groups had united to form the Peking
Society for the study of Marxist theory.
Lenin though believed in world revolution and to encourage revolutions elsewhere
Lenin formed the Third International of the Communist Party in 1919. They issued a
manifesto to “proletarians of the whole world”, praised the Soviet Union, urged
Communist Parties to fight non- Communist labour movements, and expressed their
support for anti-colonial movements, including the Chinese struggle against the
Japanese. A capitalist stage of production was no longer necessary for a Communist
revolution so peasants soviets were to be encouraged as was “a temporary alliance”
with bourgeois democratic parties. 320
Russians offered to help but real action came in 1920 when Peking and Shanghai
branches of the Communist party were formed.
Before the 2nd Comintern congress met in July 1920 Lenin sent Grigori Voitinksy and
Yang Mingzhai to China to set up a Communist Party. They reached Peking in 1920
and met with Li Dazhao who sent them to talk to Chen Duxiu. They met him in
Shanghai in May 1920 where Chen Duxiu was interested in Japanese village models,
Korean Christian Socialism, Chinese “work-and-learning mutual assistance corps”
and John Dewey’s guild socialism. The Communist delegates gave Chen Duxiu a
plan of what was needed and a nucleus of Communist Party members met in May
drawn from “socialist, anarchist, progressive and Guomindang groups. 321
A Sino-Russian news agency and a foreign language school were created as fronts to
cover the recruitment of members. A socialist youth leagues was formed and under
the leadership of Mao Zedong a Communist group was formed in Hunan. Another
group was formed in Hubei and in Peking by Chinese students in Japan and by workstudy students in France.
There were 1,000 students in France in 1919 and 1920 Zhou Enlai, leader of the
Tianjin student protests in the May Fourth movement, and the youngest was a 16 year
old student from Sichuan, Deng Xiaoping. They worked in factories as well as
studying at universities where they were exposed to socialist ideas. Deng Xiaoping
was especially active. Xiang Jingyu, a friend of Mao’s in Changsha, was to fight for
Chinese women’s rights. She had a revolutionary marriage with another student
being photographed holding a copy of Marx’s Kapital. She wanted Chinese women
to study science.
After a demonstration many Chinese were deported, but Zhou Enlai and Deng
Xiaoping stayed on to join the Communist Party in France, actively and successfully
recruiting members from among the Chinese in Europe.
Mao Zedong did not have the contacts or the money to be sent to Europe and instead
drifted around Peking and Shanghai where he discussed The Communist Manifesto
and other Communist works, working for some months as a laundryman. Mao then
returned to Changsha in the entourage of some Guomindang officials and was
appointed the director of a primary school. He now had the money to marry the
daughter of his teacher, Yang Kaihui, at the same time establishing a Communist cell.
He now took a more active role in politics and was invited “to be the delegate from
Hunan in the first plenary meeting of the Chinese Communist Party held in Shanghai
in July 1921. 322
The meeting was held in secret, at first on the top floor of a girl’s school and then on a
lake in Zhejiang. Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao could not attend the meeting, and as
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Voitinsky had left the country the leading role was played by a Comintern agent under
the codename of “Maring.” 322
There were 13 Chinese delegates representing the 60 Communist members in the
country, and a statement in line with Soviet base positions was drawn up. Because of
Maring's influence the final decisions on party role and organization took a
conventional Leninist line. Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao were honoured as the cofounders of the party.
The proletariat was called upon “to take part in and to lead the bourgeois democratic
movement as well. The line was adopted demanding the organization of a militant
and disciplined Party of the proletarian. The development of the trade union
movement was put forward as a central task of the work of the Communist Party.”
323
There were differences in the party. Chen Duxiu was disdainful of the inert peasant
masses and like European Marxists emphasized the importance of the proletariat with
“progressive urban elements” spearheading the movement while “the backward
peasantry followed meekly” Chen Duxiu “The peasants are scattered and their forces
are not easy to concentrate, their culture is low, their desires in life are simple, and
they easily tend towards conservatism. ... These environmental factors make it
difficult for the peasants to participate in the rev movement.” 622 Hsu
This position was supported by Qu Qiubai.
This position was however directly opposed by Li Dazhao who argued that “In
economically backward and semi-colonial China, the peasantry constitutes more than
90% of the population, among the whole population they occupy the principal
position, and agriculture is still the basis of the national economy. Therefore, when
we estimate the forces of the revolution, we must emphasize that the peasantry is the
imperialist part.” 622-623 Hsu (Spence ignores this difference).
Hsu “impassioned by an innate love of the purity of the countryside and a deep
aversion to the corruption of city life, Li urged young intellectuals to go to the villages
to liberate the peasants and stimulate their revolution energies, in the spirit of the
Russian Populist (narodnik) movement. Indeed, he saw in the liberation of the
peasantry the liberation of China.” 623
Although the party supported the position of Chen Duxiu Li Dazhao’s ideas greatly
influenced the ideas of his assistant Mao Zedong whom he inspired with his Populist,
nationalistic views on the importance of the peasant role in the revolution. After Li’s
execution by a warlord on April 28 1927, “it was Mao who carried on the peasant
struggle and put his mentor’s ideas into practise.” 623
A second key problem was what to do about the Guomindang and the ideas of Sun
Yat-sen. Some delegates argued that there was to be no alliance with Sun Yat-sen as
he was a “demagogue” and as bad as the Beiyang militarists. He and the Chinese
Communist Party therefore represented “two diametrically opposed classes.”
However the majority of delegates argued that although there had to be a critical
attitude to his teachings, his “various practical and progressive actions” should be
supported by “adopting forms of non-Party collaboration.”
“The adoption of this principle laid the basis for further collaboration between the
Communist Party and the Guomindang and for the development of the anti-militarist
and anti-imperialist movement.” 323
Chen Duxiu was elected secretary-general of the Chinese Communist Party in
absentia but the party remained minuscule having only 200 members in 1922, not
including members overseas. But the returning students from France increased the
strength of Communist ranks. Xiang Jingyu organized women workers in Chinese
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factories. However she was only made an alternate member and had to bring up two
children as well while her husband was a member of the newly formed Central
Committee. “Her cases underlined the fact that Chinese Communist Party policies
were directed almost exclusively by men.” 324
In January 1922 delegates of the “Toilers of the Far East” were invited to Moscow
with Qu Qiubai acting as translator. Delegates from Mongolia, Korea, Japan, Java
and India met 10 times in plenary sessions despite the terrible conditions and were
addressed by Grigory Zinoviev s spokesman for the Comintern. He stated that only a
united world proletariat could overcome the forces of the capitalist powers and said:
“Remember that the process of history has placed the question thus: you either win
your independence side by side with the proletariat, or you do not win it at all. Either
you receive your emancipation at the hands of the proletariat, in cooperation with it,
under its guidance, or you are doomed to remain the slaves of English, American and
Japanese camarilla.” 324
One delegate, a member of the Guomindang, said that this was what Sun Yat-sen had
been saying for 20 years, but was reprimanded by being told that while “The
Guomindang had done great revolutionary work” it was only a “national democratic
movement” and belonged to the first stage of the revolution. Its struggle was not the
true “struggle for the proletarian revolution.” 324
But the Guomindang would not go away and at the Party congress in Hangzhou in
1922 it was announced that there was to be a temporary alliance with the Guomindang
to fight “against warlords of the feudal type.” However once the democratic
revolution was successful “the stage of the alliance would be over and the proletariat
would “launch the struggle of the second phase,” which would seek to achieve “the
dictatorship of the proletariat allied to the poor peasants against the bourgeoisie.” In
the eyes of those making these dogmatic and provocative statements, the amorphous
preoccupations and slogans of the May Fourth movement were taking on a specific
shape and focus.” 325
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