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Mao
Zedong formed the Society of the New Masses in 1918. The picture
shows Mao Zedong (seventh left) and some members of the society.
In 1920 Li Dazhao initiated the Communist
Group in Beijing and launched a weekly, Labor Voice,
and the Changxindian Labor Continuation School to disseminate
Marxism.
The
venue of the First National Congress of the Communist Party
of China in Shanghai.
In
1931 the Interim Central Democratic Government of the Workers
and Peasants was founded in Jiangxi's Ruijin. The picture
shows the former meeting hall of the government.
The
Red Army climbed snowy mountains during the Long March in
1935.
The
Eighth Route Army led by the CPC seizing a Japanese fort during
World War Two.
On
April 23, 1949, the People's Liberation Army occupied Nanjing,
putting an end to the rule of the Kuomintang.
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WESTERNERS who came to China between the
1950s and 1970s may have one experience in common: that they
aroused great curiosity among local people, who would surround
them and subject them to intense scrutiny wherever they went.
Helen Foster Snow describes in her Return to China
her visit in 1972, when for about a month, she was the only
Western woman staying at her hotel. Due to the rarity of foreigners
in China during the Cold War period, whenever one appeared,
the Chinese would stop and stare at these strange looking,
big-nosed, blue-eyed Westerners, who appeared to them like
creatures from outer space. However, one of the personages
that the Chinese were, and still are, more familiar with,
and for whom they maintained a great deal of respect during
this period was a Westerner -- Karl Marx. Many factory workers
and farmers could quote verbatim from his works.
Both during the Yihetuan (Boxers) Movement
in the late 19th century, and the Cold War period of the mid-20th
century, the Chinese people were hostile towards the West.
Ironically, the 80-year-old, 60-million-membered Communist
Party of China (CPC) heralded as its founding principles the
political theories formulated in the West -- Marxism from
Germany and Leninism from Russia. The Constitution of the
CPC adopted at the 12th National Congress of the CPC stipulates
that the Party follows Marxism, Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought
as its guiding principles. It is significant that a political
Party, which has claimed from the very beginning to be a proletarian
Party, should base its guiding principles on the theories
of two foreigners. Jurgen Habermas, a representative of New
Marxism, displays a close understanding of the Communist Party
of China, by his comment that all foreign influence has been
adapted to China, even the Marxism originally emanating from
the West.
Why Marxism?
History is not a drama, and can neither
be created nor duplicated. Yet there is a certain level of
inevitability amidst chance. This is true in terms of the
CPC and Marxism.
In 1911, 10 years before the birth of the
Party, China was still under the rule of an emperor. Men wore
a single plait and women bound their feet. Sun Yat-sen, a
Cantonese who had experienced Western democracy, started an
armed revolution with the aim of establishing a democratic
republic. He toppled the Qing Dynasty, established the Republic
of China and thus ended China's imperial era.
During the Paris talks in 1918 at the end
of World War I, China received no acknowledgement of its sovereignty
or status as one of the victorious countries, and the Western
allies, led by the United States, Britain and France ceded
to Japan the special privileges in Shandong Province which
had formerly been Germany's. This was a heavy blow to the
Chinese people. The government of the Republic of China, then
in the hands of warlords, further infuriated the Chinese people
by agreeing to the terms of this decision. On May 4, 1919,
students from Beijing University staged a demonstration, which
was followed by nationwide strikes and protests of students,
workers, and the commercial sector. For the first time in
Chinese history, students and workers joined hands in a common
cause. This was the famous May Fourth Movement.
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The May Fourth Movement was not only anti-imperialist,
patriotic and political, but also an ideological and cultural
movement. The Chinese people blamed centuries of feudalism
for its weakness and humiliation. Many intellectuals went
to the extreme of advocating the complete eradication of Confucianism,
in favor of an introduction of Western thought. Consequently,
numerous Western ideological schools were introduced, and
a concerted effort was made to find a guiding philosophy suited
to China.
In 1917, the October Revolution put an end
to the Tsarist regime in Russia and established the first
workers' and farmers' soviet government in human history.
This Russian phenomenon opened the eyes of Chinese revolutionaries
to the great prospect of Marxism and a proletarian revolution,
and Marxism study groups sprang up right across China. Mao
Zedong was a member of the Hunan Marxism Study Group. It is
recorded that less than six months after the May Fourth Movement,
over 200 publications advocating and disseminating socialism
came into being throughout China. Karl Marx, as founder of
Scientific Socialism, was hailed as the great teacher of the
world's proletariat. Since Marxism infers the inevitable collapse
of capitalism and the ultimate victory of communism, it became
the banner for the world's proletariat. The theory of a proletarian
dictatorship is the essence of Marxism, and during the early
20th century, when China was a semi-feudal, semi-colonial
country, the Marxist theory of overthrowing the exploiting
class by force seemed far more convincing to the oppressed
than any reformist theories.
A historic retrospect shows that many of
the events that occurred in China, and around the world, between
1911 and 1921 paved the way for the emergence of the CPC,
while the dissemination of Marxism and Leninism constituted
the theoretical basis for the Party. It could be said that
the Communist Party of China is an inevitable consequence
of historical development.
On July 23, 1921 the first CPC National
Congress convened in Shanghai, with the Party's formal establishment
as the central topic. The basic task of the Party set at this
Congress was that of striving to realize the proletarian dictatorship
and communism. In 1941, the Party formally designated July
1 as its inauguration date.
The first CPC National Congress had to transfer
hastily to a boat on Nanhu Lake in Jiaxing, Zhejiang Province
half way during its meeting in order to escape espionage of
the reactionary government. This incident seemed to betoken
the rough road ahead for the CPC, as later some of the delegates,
and even a number of high-ranking leaders of the first meeting
became enemies of the CPC. In 1921 the Party had fewer than
50 members, and no one expected that 80 years later, the CPC
would have expanded its membership to 60 million, and have
created the most splendid period of Chinese history.
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