Dawn of the Party: The Wellspring of Communism in 1920s China

Charting the impact of the October Bolshevik Revolution on Chinese Marxist thought, and the informative experience of colonialism and WWI on China’s political trajectory.

China’s current position as a significant player in foreign affairs and its impact on the world’s trajectory in the decades to come, make understanding China a matter of high importance. I aim to provide an attempt at a historical context for the rise of Communism in China after WWI, focusing on the events that would break it free from its colonial 'stagnation' and finally lead it to adopt Marxism-Leninism-Maoism after the next global conflict. China's colonial period was followed by a very different course of development, based on ideas (and actions) that emerged from the Russian Revolution and WWI. These ideas gave China a distinctive national identity and political ideology that prepared it for its rise as a potential superpower.

Sino-Communism is not simply a reproduction of Russian Bolshevik Communism in 1917, but neither was it unaffected by the ideas and intellectuals that came from Russia and influenced the Chinese Communist Party's founders and China as a whole. China's early exposure to Marxism was not very clear or consistent, and other foreign ideologies like republicanism and nationalism were more influential. However, when Lenin's and Trotsky's works became available in Chinese, they changed the situation dramatically. Their ideas had a stronger and more lasting effect than any other foreign ideology before them. The essentially isolated nature of Chinese political culture is what makes the achievement of the Communist Revolution in China so noteworthy - notoriously inaccessible to both diplomats and ideas, regardless of the many attempts throughout centuries to overcome it. The contribution of Leninism and Trotskyism was significant in the development of a particular form of Marxism that accommodated the Chinese peasants' longing for a true 'bottom-up' revolution. This idea was taken up with great vigour by people like Mao Zedong, who would use it on the long course towards China's revolution decades afterwards.

The main focus of the analysis will be on the years 1917-1921, which correspond to the start of the Russian Revolution in October 1917 and the official establishment of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921. Themes and events that occurred before or after those years will also be mentioned, but only as they are relevant to the years and ideologies under study. This aims to give the reader a more specific study that can hopefully enable a more profound comprehension of Chinese Marxism from a historical perspective. The final proposition is that the Russian Revolution and its intellectuals exerted a considerable influence on Chinese Marxist intellectuals, students who advocated for change, and common citizens. The impact of World War I afforded a significant opportunity for these ideas to proliferate in the general public and exposed significant tensions in China with foreign interests, along with considerable contempt for imperialism in particular.

The Industrial Revolution, and Marxism in Russia and China 

Martin Jacques notes in his book ‘When China Rules The World’ that during the Qing dynasty, at the very least, historians have noted China as having entered a period of ‘technological and scientific torpor’. Therefore, the period of Qing dynasty is commonly acknowledged as the period when China lost its lead over the Western world, despite having been superior to it in many respects for centuries prior. Alongside this theme, however, new findings indicate a relatively similar contrast to the West in agricultural productivity, rural living conditions, fertility rates, and population growth in economically affluent regions, as Odd Arne Westad observes. During the Industrial Revolution, Europe began to transition from agriculture to industry, while the Chinese economy was ‘solid but not prosperous’, so while a fighting match for the West on most accounts, China had ‘reached a technological standstill’ – an issue that only a significant demographic and economic adjustment to support industrialisation would solve. We now know that Communism was China’s answer to this quandary - but how did those ideas come about, and are there any distinctions between Russian and Chinese Marxist thought salient enough to explain the prevailing hegemony of the Party in China to this very day?

It is vital, therefore, to distinguish early socialist and Marxist thought in China from the distinctly Leninist/Trotskyist strands that the Chinese Communist Party adopted. Consequently, we must examine the development of these ideologies in both Russia and China to gain a clearer understanding:  

Marxism was introduced to Russia in the 1860s and was developed throughout the 19^th  Century to have several distinct methodologies of socialist revolution. One method would follow the threads of ‘Classical Marxism.’ The Mensheviks were the main proponents of ‘Classical Marxism,’ recognising that Russia had not reached full industrialisation or a capitalist economy, and therefore only possessed a small working class who were ostensibly ‘incapable of organising’ production as ‘effectively’ as the bourgeoisie. Leninism began to gain impetus under the Bolsheviks at the beginning of the 20^th  Century and held that a rapid transformation of the peasantry into the ‘proletariat’ (working class) would occur under a ‘short dictatorship’, which would allow the proletariat to seize power in a shorter period than was promoted by the Mensheviks.

A key contributor to Leninism at the time was Trotsky, who argued in his thesis that a ‘victorious’ socialist revolution in a ‘backwards’ country was more probable than in a technologically advanced one – directly challenging the theory of the Classical Marxists. This deviation from the ‘natural’ progression of Marxism would inform the ideology of the successful Bolshevik socialist revolution in Russia and that of the Chinese Communist Party. If a socialist revolution were to be successful in China, it would have to rely heavily on the role of the peasant – Trotsky's point that the peasantry would be critical allies of the proletariat was one not lost on the CCP (Chinese Communist Party). Mao Zedong, one such peasant from the Hunan province, would take the idea further on his ‘long march’ towards revolution by 1949. Another entry into the growing political scene at the time was Sun Yat-sen. His contribution to the nationalist strand of thought in China is significant, with an impact still detectable today.

In his book ‘Marxism in the Chinese Revolution’, Arif Dirlik observes that the Revolutionary Alliance manifesto of Sun Yat-sen marks the first occurrence of the term “social revolution” in the Chinese language. One of the 'Three Principles' of Sun Yat-sen suggests that China did have some level of tendency towards socialism before the Russian Revolution, however, the Alliance's platform was not grounded in Marxism or a 'bottom-up' movement like the Bolsheviks and CCP eventually advanced and implemented. A nationalist and republican orientation was much more evident but also had some hints of socialist thought – termed ‘People’s Livelihood’, and further clarified as the ‘equalization of land rights’. However, Dirlik maintains that Sun Yat-sen's objective was always to preclude a social revolution, not to execute one. Sun aspired to acquire control of the state and establish reform, not to restructure the social classes from the 'bottom up’. Sun asserted in 1906: "When we commence the ethnic and political revolutions, we must also envisage a way to reform social and economic organization (to) preclude a social revolution in the future". The literature on Chinese Marxism prior to 1917 was sparse and often subject to poor translation from the original sources. The platform of Sun Yat-sen and his supporters was influenced by material that did not give prominence to Marx and that presented selectively from various branches and theoretical origins.

Accordingly, Sun's platform was inconsistent with Marxism, because it recommended the restraint and revision of capitalism, not the complete overthrow and accompanying redistribution of wealth that a Marxist Revolution would entail. An additional argument for a state of underdevelopment of Marxist thought in China prior to the Russian Revolution is to observe that the majority of ‘socialist’ ideas that entered China came from the US, through individuals such as Henry George and Richard Ely – who were not regarded as either socialist or Marxist in the West. Stephen Uhalley Jr concurs with Dirlik, asserting that interest in ‘true’ Marxism did not emerge until after the Bolshevik Revolution. Moreover, Uhalley asserts that before Sun's revolutionary movement in 1911, the Chinese had already started to perceive Russia as the "paradigm of revolutionary progress", with diminishing attention given to the US influences incorporated in Sun's platform.

The Direct Impact of the October Revolution and WWI on Chinese Intellectuals, Revolutionaries, and Communists 

Odd Arne Westad argues that for a lot of the Chinese people, the ‘synergy’ of WWI and Marxism ‘came as a perfect storm’. The war seemed to confirm the Chinese perception that the ‘outside world either hated or was apathetic at best towards China’, and Marxism-Leninism ‘confirmed’ that a country could undertake the path to modernity without either capitalism or ‘foreign interference’. Odd presses the point; “The latter could not exist without the former”. Although spared the physical destruction of the war, China saw WWI as connected to imperialism and foreign interference. Despite their participation on the Allied side the Treaty of Versailles was bitterly disappointing to the Chinese, which handed the previously German-controlled Shandong Province to Japan.

Under imperialism, both China and Russia went through a long period of instability – where most of the lower-class strata felt strong suspicion (or even loathing) of the highest strata, sometimes erupting into revolt. In 1891, a famine would strike Russia, and the many diseases that followed would create great alarm among the common people, and rising distrust of the Tzarist regime. China would also suffer a dreadful calamity that would display the ‘ineptitude’ of their governing dynasty – two enormous floods in 1841 and 1842. By 1905, both Russia and China would have demonstrated and rebelled enough to extract significant reforms from their imperial rulers, and the Empress Dowager was the first to attempt an answer.

Several reforms that enhanced educational freedom in China were implemented by Empress Dowager from 1901-1905 as a consequence of the unrest. These reforms established primary and high schools in each district and added Western subjects to the traditional subjects taught. The reforms facilitated an educational 'efflorescence' that created favourable conditions for the eventual development of the CCP, by generating a new segment of educated youths receptive to their arguments against imperialism and for revolution. Indeed, there existed a ‘political vacuum’ as a backdrop to the May Fourth Movement, an emerging student protest movement that would have a monumental impact on China’s political future. The result of this disappointment was the May Fourth Movement, which initially found fertile ground within the universities.

The intellectual breeding ground for May Fourth was the New Culture movement, with writers such as Chen Duxiu, and Li Dazhao becoming fierce and effective opponents of Chinese tradition, imperialism, religion, and the new Chinese Republic. The New Culture movement went on to inform and help organise what was to become the Chinese Communist Party. Chen was a fervent supporter of the Republic after the 1911 Revolution but Hans Van de Ven claims that by 1918 Chen's writings manifested increasing outrage at Republican politics - by 1919 Chen was distraught, and his writings gloomy and dismal. In his political texts in 1919, Chen would employ terms such as “darkness”, “political horrors”, “ethics…divorced from reason”, “evils”, and “dark aspect”. A gothic element, not all that dissimilar to Marx’s declaration that “a spectre is haunting Europe” is evident, irrespective of any direct influence.  

Li Dazhao was the first to introduce Trotsky to China. Trotsky’s argument that the peasantry could be an ally of the proletariat, which Mao was beginning to adopt at the time, was not coincidental on Mao’s part – Mao served as a library assistant for Dazhao at Peking University. Both Dazhao and Mao were greatly influenced by the Bolshevik Revolution, with Mao asserting in 1920 that "A revolution following the Russian model is the solution when all other options have failed" - while Dazhao articulated that "The achievement of Bolshevism is the achievement of the new spirit of a mutual awakening in the intellects of every individual in the world of the twentieth century". According to the historian Alexander Pantos, the Bolshevik Revolution's triumph and the First World War directly influenced many of the New Culture Movement's members’ embrace of Marxism.

The May Fourth movement witnessed industrial workers collaborating with intellectuals for the first time in considerable numbers, and it appeared as a 'persuasive confirmation' of the Marxist theory that the working class had now allied with them. Alexander Pantsov points out that the October Revolution's anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist character and its total victory over foreign interventions and counterrevolutions after the Bolshevik ascension to power made Chinese intellectuals consider Marxism as the solution for a China that was in desperate need of one. In ‘The Bolsheviks and the Chinese Revolution 1919-1927’, Pantsov quotes Mao Zedong to press home his point; “The Chinese found Marxism as a result of its application by Russians……To follow the Russian way – that was the conclusion”.

If the actions and events of the October Revolution opened the Chinese mind to Marxism, then the ideology of the Bolsheviks specifically would become the foundation of Sino-Communism. Arif Dirlik makes particular emphasis on the fact that although Chinese Communists had a Nationalist ideology as well, they incorporated the key tenet of class reorganisation in the interests of the worker and the peasantry before national identity, with any revisions constituting an ‘offshoot’ of Marxism very much in the same vein as Leninism. It is Lenin’s anti-imperialist theory that permitted the Chinese Communists to equate internal Chinese problems with imperialism. Therefore, Sino-Communism became an extension of Lenin’s decision to admit non-Europeans into the revolution against capitalism as part of the struggle against imperialism. Dirlik believes this accounts for the significant popularity of Marxism in The New Culture Movement, even among those who argued against revolution itself.

Conclusions, and a point on legacy 

Lenin’s ideology gained popularity in China because of its anti-imperialism, and his adaption of Marxism to a method intended to ‘accelerate’ the ostensibly ‘natural’ progression of Classical Marxism. Bolshevism found Chinese supporters more broadly because of the success of the October Revolution. If China were to have another revolution, an example where the revolutionaries were successful would serve as inspiration indeed. The greater enemies in China were always the colonial powers – a factor that at times united what would, in other circumstances, have been the mutually exclusive ideologies of Nationalism and Marxism. 

Chinese Communism was a ‘trinity’, formed by combining Marxism and Leninism with more Sino-specific ideas to become the basis for ‘Maoism’. Mao was not the sole progenitor of Maoism (Sino-Communism), nor is he to be considered the ‘founder’ of the Chinese Communist Party – that honour belongs to Chen Duxiu. Duxiu paved the way for ‘radical’ intellectuals to eagerly take up revolution under an ideology remarkably similar to that of Leninism/Trotskyism.

Trotsky and Duxiu were born in the same year, both would focus on the ‘backward’ nature of their respective countries and how to best implement Marxism in them, and both would be key founders of their respective parties. The similarities go further than that; Trotsky and Duxiu would cause great controversy inside and outside of their parties and would find themselves expelled and ostracised by them. Following their expulsions, revisions of party histories were conducted at a great scale to exclude them from their role in the theorising of their ideology and party foundation.

However, Trotsky still retains a significant amount of credit for his contributions to Marxism, while Duxiu is little known outside of China. All of this comes despite his similar contributions to ideology and a primary place in China’s modern history, described by Lee Feigon as possibly ‘second-only’ to Mao Zedong in that respect. Feigon explains his reasoning for Duxiu’s lack of popularity compared to Trotsky as one related to their legacy by the time they were ejected from their parties. Trotsky had led a successful revolution before he was expelled, whereas the CCP expelled Duxiu in 1929 – ironically due to his Trotskyism, by which time he was largely considered a ‘revolutionary failure’. One can only lament the erasure of such historically important people from the history they helped create through their thoughts and actions, by the very people they found ‘comradeship’ with – during intensely difficult and formidable periods for both of their beloved nations. 

Bibliography 

Dirlik, Arif. Marxism in the Chinese Revolution. State and Society in East Asia Series. Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005. 

Feigon, Lee. Chen Duxiu, Founder of the Chinese Communist Party. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1983. 

Freeze, Gregory L., ed. Russia: A History. 2nd ed. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. 

Harrison, James. The Long March To Power: A History Of The Chinese Communist Party, 1921-72. West Hanover, Mass: Macmillan Press Ltd, 1972. 

Jacques, Martin. When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order. 2. ed., [greatly expanded and fully updated]. New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2012. 

Mackerras, Colin. China in Transformation: 1900-1949. London, UNITED KINGDOM: Routledge, 2008. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/newcastle/detail.action?docID=1710654. 

Pantsov, Alexander. The Bolsheviks and the Chinese Revolution 1919-1927. Routledge, 2013. 

Roberts, John A. G. A History of China. 2. ed. Palgrave Essential Histories. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. 

Smith, S. A. Revolution and the People in Russia and China: A Comparative History. Cambridge University Press, 2008. 

Uhalley, Stephen. A History of the Chinese Communist Party. Histories of Ruling Communist Parties 361. Stanford, Calif: Hoover Institution Press, 1988. 

Van de Ven, Hans J. From Friend to Comrade: The Founding of the Chinese Communist Party, 1920-1927. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991. 

Westad, Odd Arne. Restless Empire: China and the World since 1750. London: Bodley Head, 2012.