Part Two: The Chinese Communist Party in Power 1949 - 1969

This is a four part history of modern China, written for Socialist Party branch meetings in the South East. As well as reading the following, please watch this video which contains many interviews with participants and lots of historical footage of the events described below (click image to go to video).

Part Two: The Chinese Communist Party in Power 1949 - 1969

Mao's policies were a Chinese version of Stalin’s socialism in one country, even though it had brought the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to power it did not mean the new government would, without pressure, proceed toward socialist tasks. The victory of the CCP brought repression against the Kuomintang (KMT) who fled to the island of Taiwan, but Mao's policy was for a collaboration between the workers, peasants and those bourgeoisie not considered tainted by the KMT. As a result, land reform was not advanced immediately, with Mao seeking instead to consolidate the rule of the CCP and not upset the capitalists and landlords. 

Expropriation of private property to be run according to a national plan was not on the agenda, and Mao, consistent with his Stalinist roots, called for another 100 years of capitalism. For instance in 1950, 75% of Shanghai industrial workers were still in private enterprises. These were the policies used to strangle revolutions in the inter and post-war periods by the Stalinist Comintern, because it denied the workers and peasants the potential to realise their power through seizing the property of the possessing classes and putting that property to productive use in bolstering their rule. It wasn't that Mao was unwilling to expropriate, but instead his was a top-down dictatorship, which did not rely on the self-organisation of the working-class, democratically constructed through the organisations of ordinary people themselves, as later Chinese history will show, the fear of this so-called “anarchy” hung heavy on the minds of Mao and the CCP.

Prior to the communist victory China was unable to embark on an independent economic development. The bourgeoisie as a social force couldn't be relied upon to conduct economic develiopment, but if the CCP did not remove their control over the economy by taking hold of the means of production and massively expanding them, how could economic development led by the communists be anything more spectacular than under the KMT? It was the lack of a progressive social base besides the working-class which the CCP feared losing power to which explains the twists and turns of the government after 1949.

The first period of government aimed at cleansing the army and state of the old government and to impose high taxation and low wages to clear the deficit while land reform was initially suspended. Overtures were made to the bourgeoisie in an effort to attract leading figures, while workers and peasants struggles were suppressed. This led to inflation and anger from the workers and peasants. Workers had no way to express themselves, with only the legal right to raise objections, but not to strike or organise independently. Low interest loans were provided to the bourgeoisie who were suffering the affects of inflation, and private property was protected while land reform was started in a very limited way from 1950.

The balancing act after 1949 were revealed as insufficient and they succumbed to the pressures of the period. The new Chinese regime was militarily insecure and faced a hostile power in the form of the US as British, Japanese and later French imperialism had retreated from the Asia-Pacific area. Japan withdrew from Korea in 1945, leaving the North held by the Communist Kim il Sung, and the South by the Right wing Syngman Rhee. The communists had military supremacy and wanted to consolidate the entire peninsula. America sent aid and Mao was confronted with the prospect of losing the Korean buffer while Taiwan remained hostile conducting air assaults in the South. The People's Liberation Army (PLA) joined the attack (despite fears of the exhaustion of the army) and retook Seoul but supply lines were overstretched and the Americans hit back. A stalemate formed at the 38^th parallel, china sent 3m men, 400k died, and china received soviet military assistance, weapons, aircraft and aircraft factories. The war in Korea, which under the UN flag was an anti-communist crusade led by the US, pressured Mao to expropriate US and other foreign owned enterprises, and to initiate and then accelerate the land reform programme in the countryside to bolster national support.

The world had divided into two camps after WWII, the US defended capitalism and Russia under a strengthened Stalinist system which held out a model for development to the rest of the world on the basis of a planned economy. However that planned economy was anti-democratic and relied on fear and repression to maintain its power. The Korean war was a real dividing line for the CCP.

Then under pressure of the mass mobilisation of the Korean war there was a shift towards developing heavy industry while the private sector stagnated. The influence of Russia was key in shifting the PRC towards a bureaucratically planned economy emphasising heavy industry. A new treaty was signed, where Moscow would come to China's aid in the event of war, and extending a $300m loan over 5 years. Industrial aid amounted to 50 large-scale projects (less than expected) and the Soviet Union would receive surplus stocks of tin, tungsten and antimony for 14 years, preventing their sale elsewhere, while Russian advisers were not subject to Chinese law. While of benefit these unequal terms caused anger which would explode in the split between Russia and China in the early 1960's. Concessions were granted to the workers and a privileged elite was encouraged amongst the working-class, dividing their interests. Trade unions were permitted in private enterprises so long as they didn't harm overall production. Repressive campaigns against reactionary elements were directed as much at Trotskyists and other worker-militants.

Although this was a Chinese version of Stalinism, Mao was not a carbon copy of Stalin. He had waged his own struggle to seize power and remain in the leadership of the CCP against the interests of the leadership of the soviet union. Mao was nervous about the development of the bureaucracy in the CCP. While Stalin played different elements of the state against each other, Mao attempted to rely on mass forces to challenge the bureaucracy, however he would not permit the democratic control of society by those mass forces, he would merely invoke them to encourage his ends. While Marx, Lenin, Trotsky and those acting in the Marxist tradition relied on the force of the working-class and emphasised how socialism would be a development from that conducted by capitalism, Mao regarded backwardness as a virtue. He viewed the Chinese as 'poor and blank' in the sense that their subjective attitudes could be shaped for socialist purposes.

Burning official documents during land reform

Land reform remained an unfinished ingredient in the country's development. In 1946 there was limited reform to mobilise for civil war which was then extended in 1948 to all liberated areas. Reform was halted when the KMT was overthrown, and restarted as part of the Korean offensive on a nationwide basis. It was then completed by 1952, and 200m peasants received land as a result. Land reform was the first step in the liberation of the productive forces as it broke up the large estates, but nevertheless the reforms were limited by the protection of private property of industrial and commercial bourgeoisie, and provisions allowing for free sale of land after the reform. This resulted in growing polarisation as the rich still retained significant wealth and capital and the more advanced technology.

Land reform was a task that should have been completed by the bourgeoisie, but the bourgeoisie was too meek and tied up with the landlord system to do it. Agriculture would be the main source of wealth used to develop the nation, but agriculture was condemned to a very low economic level. In deciding whether to apply their profits to the massive task of the industrial development of the countryside the landlords/bourgeoisie were put off by the scale of the task. It made more sense to exploit the mass of the population at a very low economic level than to take on the huge tasks of national development. Once land reform had been completed it spread land ownership far more widely, but inequalities of wealth and inequality of access to technology remained, especially while the property of the industrial and commercial bourgeoisie was protected by the CCP state.

The small scale of owner-cultivator agriculture limited the scale of agricultural development. In an effort to overcome this mutual aid societies were developed in the countryside, with technology pooled together and a share withdrawn on the basis of the technology put in. This evolved into co-operatives with greater sharing of technology and capital, but agriculture remained unable to support the kind of mass industrial drive required. The logical end-point would be the nationalisation of the land. Ownership in the hands of landlord/capitalists would not result in industrial development, but state ownership of the land held out the prospect of capital being directed towards agricultural industrialisation, utilising economies of scale and so on. Similar issues existed with he land in the hands of smallholders, and it threatened the emergence of class relations. Expanding agriculture however required heavy industry to develop agricultural infrastructure and equipment, which could not be developed without an expansion of wealth which relied on agriculture! Collective farming of the land would also meet with the resistance of peasants who had only just had their age-old desire for land satisfied in the land reform.

Eliminating the landlord class was a significant achievement in China and was one of the main steps which laid the foundation for future economic development. However it was still a capitalist system, the poor and the rich would re-emerge if the rural economy was left to its own devices. There was an inequality of agricultural technology which particularly encouraged this differentiation. The government feared the richer peasants forming a base of power against the regime. In addition, because there was no wealth to rely upon other than that of the countryside and the exploitation of the peasantry so a stagnant rural economy threatened to hold back the prospects of industrialisation.

So the three problems standing in the way of raising agricultural production was the state's unwillingness to touch industrial and commercial wealth leaving the wealth of the rich intact in the countryside and giving them power within the villages. The second problem was the low level of industry in the urban areas and its inability to provide the necessary infrastructure for developing the countryside. The third problem was convincing the peasants that sharing the land through nationalisation would be better than working it individually. The first period of the rule of the CCP in the 1950's is marked by these problems and the efforts to overcome them. These then morphed into the power struggles of the 1960's which rocked Chinese society and threatened the continued rule of the CCP itself.

Famine in Russia

In Russia agricultural collectivisation in the 1930's was a response to similar fears. It dramatically struck a merciless blow against not only the rich peasant class but against the peasantry as a whole, forcing them to bear the brunt of the costs of industrial development. It was preceded by mass purges of any individual providing a potential pole of revolutionary attraction, and it was effectively a civil war within the countryside, with troops surrounding the villages to enforce collectivisation. It sparked resistance and sabotage and provoked a terrible famine. The CCP leadership were aware of this and attempted, unsuccessfully, to chart a course to avoid this calamity. Recognising the threat which the growth of capitalist relations could pose in the countryside they aimed to have the land owned by the state and run according to a national plan of agricultural production, linked to an industrial plan of development. However this would mean not only challenging the richer peasants but in effect removing the recently acquired property rights of the entire peasantry, which would not be accepted. Mao pushed for this policy while other sections of the CCP leadership suggested caution.

The impulse towards industrial development was assisted by the soviet union, with the first 5 year plan taking place after the Korean war ended in the North/South Korean stalemate. The plan developed industrial production, but accompanying it was a bureaucratised and politically conservative layer which made Mao in particular nervous. In the countryside peasants were encouraged into the co-operatives and into agricultural collectives. It was at this stage of development that advances in agriculture took place, with important irrigation projects being conducted. But the next large step in agricultural development was yet to occur. This was to take place in the next 5 year plan. Up to this point some of the basic tasks of national development have been performed but at the cost of a developing soviet-style bureaucracy on the one hand and growing polarisation of wealth in the countryside. Significant industrial development was necessary to advance China beyond its low economic level.

Hungary 1956

Prior to the second 5 year plan Mao launched the hundred flowers campaign, aiming to counter the bureaucratic forces that had developed after the first plan. In addition the campaign aimed to give a freedom to the intelligentsia who were sorely needed to develop the country, but had largely fled or were cowed by the CCP. At this time however Khrushchev in Russia had given his 1956 speech criticising Stalin and the 'cult of personality'. This sparked discontent in Eastern Europe and was a challenge to Mao's own personality cult which had been forming. The strongest movement in 1956 was in Hungary which initially developed around an intellectual discussion circle, but later spread throughout the working-class with genuine soviets being formed and proceeding to overthrow the CCP state machine in favour of workers democracy. It was crushed by Soviet tanks and troops who were told they were putting down a fascist uprising. Against this background the Hundred Flowers campaign began to criticise areas of art and literature, until it developed onto more clearly political issues and criticisms of corruption. Once it began to criticise the CCP regime itself the Hundred Flowers movement was ended with a purge known as the anti-Rightist campaign.

The second five year plan was being prepared when Mao intervened calling for higher targets in heavy industrial development, as well as the industrial development of the countryside alongside collectivisation of agriculture. This would be known as the Great Leap Forward (GLF). In his view the construction of socialism could proceed by first seizing state power, transforming social consciousness and then proceeding rapidly through the stages of socialist development towards communism. This meant a speedy transition through stages starting from an extremely low level without much regard for the material obstacles. The Great Leap would aim to address the balance between town and countryside. The aim was to develop industry in the rural areas to alleviate urban unemployment, and collectivise agriculture to raise the productive level and encourage a greater accumulation of capital from the agricultural sector. The result would be a more balanced and consistently industrialised China, breaking its reliance on Russia.

As part of the nationalisation drive rural people's communes were established involving at least 3,000 households or 30-100,000 people. These were intended as embryos of communism, with power decentralised to the communes and away from the central state apparatus, aiming toward the withering away of the state. Once again these were not based on the working-class but Mao's faith lay in the less organised, less united and less politically engaged peasantry whose main aim in following the CCP revolution was to achieve land reform, which had already been completed. In reality the purpose of the communes was to mobilise peasants for massive labour duties, with militarised work units and very long work days. Women were drawn into the labour force in order to meet the ridiculously high targets of the GLF. Social provision like childcare and communal kitchens were provided to encourage women to enter the workplace, but they would then become exploited in the same way as the men. These social resources were very poorly equipped and were enforced on peasants by removing individual cookers obliging them to take part in communal meals.

Backyard furnaces

These policies were resisted by the peasants who waged campaigns of sabotage and protested against the backbreaking level of work, and against the removal of their own land. Attempts at rural industrial development were epitomised in the backyard iron furnaces set up in every household. The aim was to raise iron production by encouraging furnaces in every household but in order to meet the targets peasants would melt down iron products and strip the forests bare to power the furnaces. Other industrial projects weren't such a failure, but nevertheless the policies of the GLF were marked by the top-down approach that missed the reality on the ground, and aimed at milking as much as possible from the peasantry leading to a breakdown of rural society and growing peasant resistance.

Liu Shaoqi

Deng Xiaoping

The dislocation of the Great Leap Forward resulted in famine and the death of around 15-30m people. Mao was eventually sidelined in favour of those layers aiming at bolstering the technocratic bureaucracy, headed by Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping. While the communes were not fully disbanded the grain quotas were relaxed and central state control was re-established over them. Mao was sidelined while the party centre re-established itself. There was a sullen and apathetic mood in the population after the GLF, agricultural industrialisation was reduced and private plots restored. Wages were linked to productivity, industrial employment was reduced in order to increase its efficiency and unemployed workers were sent to the countryside. While the large scale industrialisation in agriculture was abandoned, the aim of an electric infrastructure across the countryside was established. While Mao was sidelined in the party he was still a figurehead and retained influence in the PLA, where his loyalist Lin Piao became Minister of Defence. Grain output and industrial output increased in the early 1960's. As a result of these policies which not only retreated from the policies of the GLF but saw elements of capitalist methods the incomes within the working-class began to diverge and peasant-worker wages diverged even more. Education was geared more towards developing a technical elite and poorer schools were shut down. These were all sources of social discontent and the China that was being built after Mao had been side-lined bottled up a lot of anger and polarisation.

It is worth pausing before we look at the cultural revolution to look at the processes that were taking place. China required industrial development, something which was largely prevented under the KMT-bourgeois regime. The revolution brought the CCP to power which prevents the mass democratic participation of the working-class in the running of society. Under pressure they move towards a planned economy but they do so following a Soviet model. The CCP have cleared the path to economic development in the countryside but have only set the scene. Their attempt in the GLF to proceed towards industrial development was on the basis of super-exploitation of the peasantry who react. A lid has been kept on the working-class who have been prevented from organising and are now subject to rising unemployment and falling wages. The youth are full of expectations but too often find themselves stuck in the countryside or prevented from accessing professional employment. If their background was from the old privileged classes they were prevented from rising due to political reasons. Mao retains significant moral prestige and is pointed to as a national figurehead despite being sidelined after the failures of the GLF. He has developed a base in the army and aims to attack the bureaucracy that has formed and is ossifying into a Soviet-type government.

The Cultural Revolution (CR) perhaps more than many other events, is popularly seen as a collective madness and an example of the power of manipulation by mass political mobilisation. Hopefully this talk will show how the events known as the CR were rooted in the different elements listed above playing their way into the open. Trotsky characterised the Soviet union as run by an anti-revolutionary bureaucracy which nevertheless rested on a planned economy, not capitalist private ownership of the means of production. The working-class was prevented from any kind of participation in the running of society and a further political revolution was necessary in Russia to re-assert the rule of the working-class. The same can be said of China at this point in time, and the mistakes and bottlenecks inherent in this model of society are revealed more and more starkly, especially as the country industrialises and the economy becomes more sophisticated. In the CR aspects of a political revolution can be seen, and it was the fear of this that marked its endpoint. After this event part three of these lead-offs will show how China moved towards the market and capitalism, having exhausted the opportunities provided by a bureaucratically planned economy.

Mao had turned to the PLA as a base for his return to active political life. His aim was not simply to win back control over the party but to address the bureaucracy which he could see growing in China, and to prevent the slow shifts towards capitalism which were taking place under Liu Shaoqi. Lin Biao established a personality cult of Mao inside the PLA. On this base Mao began to return to politics, attacking the bureaucratic elite which had grown stronger under Liu Shaoqi. Post-GLF cultural attacks on Maoist policies had ceased between 1962-65 but in November 1965 a play which implied criticism of Mao was attacked by Maoists. This campaign is encouraged by the PLA and Mao amongst students at Beijing University. The education system was full of discontent due to the polarisation taking place, the frustrated and youthful layers respond with struggles between pro Mao and pro government forces in Beijing University. Mao encourages further rebellion and orders the withdrawal of government forces from the universities. Although attacks on intellectuals is the most widely known aspect of the CR, it was not driven at first by the Maoists but by the pro-government groups, the sons and daughters of party leaders, who attacked intellectuals as easy targets to try and deflect the Maoist's focus away from the party bureaucracy. It was later taken up in attacking everything that was 'old'.

Lin Biao

Struggle session

Burning Buddha statues

Red Guards reading from Mao's Red Book

Mao cult

With Mao's support the movement spirals into a massive force by July 1966 when Mao dubs the students 'red guards' and calls for a national mobilisation. The Red Guards attack cultural and foreign targets as well as examples of corruption. 16 articles were adopted by the 'Cultural Revolution Group' which replaced the leadership of the party based on Mao's prestige and the PLA. These 16 articles call to replace all old ideas with Mao Zedong Thought, and in a vague way they call for the party to be replaced by a government like the Paris commune. The Paris Commune in 1871 was seen by Marx as an example of the working-class taking power. In it he saw a model of a workers government based on widespread election to committees of representatives taking the average wage and being subject to recall at any time. This model was proposed by Lenin as the way a socialist society could be run to avoid a bureaucracy forming. But Mao wouldn't follow this model and encourage power to be taken by the mass of the population.

Schools and universities were closed to encourage these movements and the army helps transport youth around the country to develop the movement. Mass struggle sessions take place against party officials charged with corruption or lagging behind revolutionary thought. In this many of the frustrations of the youth are vented and Mao encourages their development as a weapon against the party machine.

Mao's call also contained a caution to the red guards not to disrupt production or produce divisions within the 'people'. His call for rebellion was made through the army to youthful layers recognising it would not be taken up in the exhausted and disillusioned rural areas Mao would not address his appeal to the working-class. Debates raged at this time over the character of Chinese society and whether class divisions continued to exist and therefore the need for class struggle and towards what end? While Mao wanted to emphasise the conflict that remained he did not want to reject the communist system itself so he argued that individual attitudes still contained bourgeois elements and class struggle was necessary to change those attitudes mainly of the party leadership. The leadership of the CCP argued instead that class heritage from the old society only lingered, so attacks on everything 'old' was fine but class struggle within the party was not necessary. The more radical interpretation which the entire leadership and Mao wanted to avoid, took the view that class struggle was necessary to be rid of the bureaucracy and instead put in place genuine democratic socialism. This was not proposed in such a clear way, and contained many confused variations. If a force calling for this had existed the battle could have proceeded even further down the road to political revolution in China. The working-class had not intervened decisively in Chinese politics since the defeat in 1927, however that was about to change.

The Cultural Revolution Group

In many places the workers and peasants resisted the red guards and factions form within the red guards themselves reflecting the variety of interests within the young generation. Many workers and peasants resist the red guards entering their areas. Nevertheless in some areas workers form their own red guard groups and in traditionally radical and industrial Shanghai a movement developed to destroy the secret files the local party held on the population. Mao supported this call as the files are seen as inhibiting revolt in Shanghai, but the local party continued to refuse. Local party leaders frequently resisted these attacks and broadly two factions developed within the workers movement; the Workers Headquarters which proposed a transfer of power from the party to the popular democracy of the working-class and a conservative faction called the scarlet guards based on the privileged layers of the workforce which backed up the local government. Production was disrupted hugely as armed battles took place across Shanghai, using sticks, spears and knives. On January 5^th 1967 a meeting of 1m people eventually toppled the local government under the threat of insurrection but power went to Zhang Chungqiao, a member of the leading Cultural Revolution Group in government, who made a deal with the workers leader. While it was expected that a leading member of the CRG would support the workers demands Zhang instead used the PLA and secret police to reject the workers demands and force them back to work.

Weapons used in fighting

This betrayal left many disillusioned and into a new camp calling for a New commune to be set up. At this point Mao swings away from the radical calls and recognises the threat that exists. The PLA seizes power in 4 provinces across China including Shanghai calling themselves a revolutionary committee. This military control then puts an end to the radical movements in these areas, with Mao arguing it was necessary as the commune 'cannot deal effectively with counter-revolutionaries'. The role and power of the PLA was enhanced as it was relied on to restore order, but in many areas the stalemate between the left forces and the party apparatus remained undecided without a final showdown. The government attempted to narrow the focus of leftist attacks onto Liu Shaoqi personally, arguing that he was attempting to restore capitalism in China and attempting to deflect attention away from the party itself. Liu was arrested and died in prison in 1969. New offences were introduced against attacking party offices and the schools were reopened to try and dampen the red guard spirits.

Establishing 'Revolutionary Committee' government

In Wuhan where the stalemate between the left and the local government had developed into a siege on the city by general Chen Zaidoo supporting the local government and conservative factions. Chen ignores orders from the party to end the siege and the party sends its own troops to Wuhan to disarm Chen's forces. Chen backed down but the prospect of splits in the PLA, the most stable and final basis of party support for the CCP, brought China to the brink of civil war. At this point Mao decided to end the entire movement and parades with the PLA generals as they were relied on to restore order across China. A purge and massacres of leftists took place and the CR was blamed on so-called ultra-leftists who 'took it too far', in collusion with Liu Shaoqi, with the party arguing that this coalition was aimed at restoring capitalism to China. Into 1968 the suppression of leftists carried on with massacres taking place and students sent to the countryside in huge numbers in a thinly veiled act of discipline.

Crackdown on leftists

The outcome by the end of this crackdown was a massively strengthened PLA and Lin Biao was named Mao's successor while the authority and power of the party rested decidedly on the military. The CR had not failed to touch the life of a single person and it had barely benefited anyone, not least the leftists whose destruction was seen as necessary to restore the authority of the party.

Throughout his revolutionary life Mao was willing to use the peasantry, the army and the youth but never the working-class. His focus on revolutionary consciousness almost in the abstract instead of looking at the economic relations which underpin them, and his rejection of the working-class playing any role besides production epitomised his Stalinist approach. He and the government he founded straddled the classes balancing one off against the other but ultimately it was most fearful of the working-class coming to power, referring to that prospect as chaos. That united Mao, the government and the army in fear for the continuation of their regime, but the experience of Mao's attempts to wriggle out of a straitjacket me made and ultimately relied upon is a very important example of the failures of the kind of Communism established in the image of the Soviet Union. Ultimately, having rejected every other model China turned its face over the next 40 years towards capitalism.

China Part One - Victory of the Chinese Communist Party

This is a four part history of modern China, written for Socialist Party branch meetings in the South East. As well as reading the following, please watch this video which contains many interviews with participants and lots of historical footage of the events described below (click image to go to video).

China Part One - Victory of the Chinese Communist Party

As with a lot of countries modern Chinese history can be traced back to its early contact with Imperialism. By Imperialism I mean the expansion of powerful capitalist nations searching for larger markets across the globe. This contact set off the decline of the Chinese Imperial Qing regime starting from the early 1800's. Since 1644 the Qing dynasty had ruled China, but the regime could not compete with the superior technology and work techniques of the 19^th Century western powers. These powers forced China to accept opium as payment for tea and silk, waging wars in 1842 and 1858 to impose this unequal and socially corrosive trading relationship.

The backwardness of this dynasty was revealed time and again by a rising tide of pressures. Foreign influence was a massive pressure, with British, German, US and later Japanese imperialism hungering for a slice of the significant resources and markets within China. After the Opium wars and the severe blow to the moral prestige of China in the Sino-Japanese war Chinese trading ports were established along the South East coast with the foreign powers racing to establish themselves. Foreign capital rushed into China and the profits began to rush out. The weakness of the government and the social dislocation of the weakened economy and depreciated currency sparked revolts against imperial authority most notably the Taiping rebellion 1850-1864, where large sections of the elite aimed to overthrow the Qing regime. But the revolt also sparked a wider social revolt with the radicalised peasantry pushing for action against the wealthy landowners. This alienated the support of the wealthier classes and while Imperialism initially hedged its bets over who to support in the conflict, they came down on the side of the Qing regime, recognising the opium trade as the most profitable trade at that time and fearful of the Taiping promises to abolish it.

Taiping Rebellion

These two factors need to be remembered when looking at Chinese history: the pressure of imperialism against the backward political and economic systems of China and the internal weakness of the possessing classes from transforming that situation. In comparison Japanese modernisation was sparked by US imperialism, which triggered forces within Japanese society already itching to proceed along the lines of capitalist development. In China these features did not exist, the predominantly agricultural society was worked by peasants and the main power besides the state was that of the landlords. The wealth achieved by native Chinese was either historically that of the landlords or was on the edges of the imperialist trade, with significant wealth accumulated by merchants, but that wealth was invested into land instead of production. Industrial development took place in the late 1800's but it was linked with a thousand threads to imperialism. It suited imperialism to bolster this social arrangement, especially considering that no native force emerged to try and alter it.

Efforts to modernise the imperial system in 1898 in an attempt to emulate the Japanese development were frustrated by resistance from the severely backward imperial system. The reforms were selective in their approach, favouring only aspects of Western modernisation, while attempting to maintain the overall state structure. However it was met with the sluggish resistance of the system which provided an opportunity for the Empress Dowager to effectively seize power and reverse these attempts at reform from above.

Empress Dowager

The dynasty fell in 1912 as a result of the Xinhai revolution and military revolts against the Qing state. The two-year old emperor Pu-Yi was forced to abdicate and Yuan Shikai a Qing General, established a government. He failed to consolidate a central state power and submitted to Japanese demands for greater imperialist influence over the Chinese economy. He attempted to name himself emperor but could not command the unity of the nation. After his government fell various attempts to consolidate a nationwide state structure fell apart and power fell increasingly to the provinces and the local warlords.

Pu-Yi

Yuan Shikai

A nationalist party headed by Sun Yat-Sen called the Guomintang or KMT had been founded with the aim of unifying the nation. While it was not a movement for socialism, extensive links were made between the KMT and the Russian Soviet government. This was because the KMT were a relatively progressive force within Chinese society; the forming of a nation-state advances capitalist industrial development, turning competitive powers outwards instead of inwards and encouraging the development of large-scale industrial workplaces, and a potentially revolutionary working-class. In the face of the national humiliations suffered after the First World War where the Allies gave previously German-held sections of China to Japan, a movement known as the May Fourth movement erupted in 1919. It encouraged a fresh questioning by students and intellectuals and led to the founding of the CCP in 1921. The Bolsheviks advised the CCP to join the KMT, recognising it as the most progressive movement within China, and Russia provided organisational and material support to the KMT who established a military academy in Canton.

Sun Yat-Sen

Attempts to establish a nation-state have historically been led by the bourgeoisie but the peasantry and workers form the foot soldiers, with their interests side-lined after victory. While it is a progressive task insofar as it hastens the development of capitalism and its counterpart, the working-class, in the age of imperialism where the overwhelming power of rival advanced capitalist nations loomed across the continent, it complicated matters. On the one hand industrial development had occurred in very small but concentrated and as a result economically important areas of the country. Secondly the bourgeoisie was intricately tied on the one hand to imperialism, making the assertion of an independent state unsure under their leadership, and on the other the bourgeoisie were tied to the landlords. How could they mobilise the support of the workers and peasants if they were unwilling to shift an inch on the questions which motivated the workers and peasants which cancel peasant debts, redistribute the land, reduce working hours, raise pay and improve workplace conditions and so on. Under these circumstances the seeds of class conflict within the CCP-KMT camp would not take long to flower.

That conflict emerged when the KMT under its leader Chiang Kai-Shek, led a military movement to defeat the warlords and finally to unify the country. This sparked mass movements of workers and peasants who rose up in the rural and urban areas to fulfil their own interests and address their own grievances. Brutal civil war between peasants and landlords raged in the countryside and the main cities saw mass strikes and demonstrations by the workers with their own revolutionary committees of power starting to form. While the peasant revolts were scattered but fierce, it was these workers organisations that held the potential to lead society in the same way the Soviets in Russia had been the instrument of revolution in 1917.

Chiang Kai-Shek

Strikes in 1927

This would lead to a clash, but the CCP remained yoked to the KMT, unable to raise its own demands, and as a result giving no independent lead to the working-class. This policy was resisted by the majority of the CCP leadership, but had been imposed on the youthful party by the Comintern which was increasingly coming under the conservative leadership of the bureaucracy, headed by Stalin. As world revolution drew further away, exhaustion, destruction and economic backwardness in Russia created a reaction against the push that was necessary t defend genuine socialism, towards world revolution. The bureaucracy that came to rule was focussed on stability and strongly counselled against revolutionary movements abroad, and dressed Chiang Kai-Shek up as a 'comrade' when only weeks after accepting the KMT as a sympathising section to the Comintern in March 1926 Chiang Kai-Shek led his troops in committing a massacre against the working-class in Canton. 

Russian Left Opposition 1927

Stalin 1927

News of this was covered up and one year later the same thing happened in Shanghai and finally in Wuhan under the supposed left-wing of the KMT. This debate was very important for the battle between Stalin and Trotsky, as it was in the run up to the December 1927 CPSU congress where Trotsky and the forces he had organised against Stalin and bureaucracy were defeated. As well as covering up the betrayal, Stalin ordered a futile Communist uprising in Canton which only resulted in a further massacre and weakening of the CCP. Suffice to say the blame for this was placed onto the national leadership of the CCP, not the Comintern. In total, 35,000 CCP members were killed in 1927. On the bones of this defeat for the working class, the KMT, financed by capitalists and armed by imperialism, formed a government in Nanking.

Massacre of Communists and workers 1927

This regime did nothing to alleviate rural poverty and inequality, did not cancel debts or redistribute land, and working conditions worsened. In the face of Japanese imperialism the KMT failed to act, preferring to retreat, sparking mass anger and splits within the KMT itself. This was the party of the Chinese bourgeoisie, and it existed as a mass force of corruption and enrichment which performed none of the tasks required of it. After 1927 some of the Communists retreated to the countryside, eventually, under Mao Tse-Tung's leadership, establishing a so-called Soviet base in Kiangsi where land was distributed and an administration was formed under the leadership of the communists. They formed an army from the peasantry which was the ultimate power. This was not a force based on the democracy of a workers movement, but on the scattered and largely powerless peasantry, ensuring the unchallenged leadership of the CCP. This group was not in touch with Russia, and the official party remained in the urban areas until 1931 when repression forced it to flee. Their campaigns had been inspired by the lurch to the left by Stalin when he launched the 5 year plan and collectivisation of agriculture in the soviet union. Prior to this his policy had been to accommodate the richer peasants, but they were forming a force that challenged the regime, so Stalin turned to the left and attacked the entire peasantry as a basis on which to brutally industrialise the country. This meant a reversal of the previously cautious policies, and like in the Canton uprising, it meant the needless massacres of Communists. The Communists attracted towards Trotsky's ideas remained in the cities and built patiently amongst the working-class, trying to form a base of opposition to the Chiang Kai-Shek regime in preparation for the next inevitable revolutionary upturn after the defeat of 1927 had passed. They nevertheless faced severe repression from the KMT.

Mao Tse-Tung

Red Army

Chiang Kai-Shek spent massive resources trying to oust the Red Army base in Kiangsi, eventually succeeding on his fifth attempt with a million troops in 1933. The retreat was a huge feat, later known as the Long March, and as a result Mao gained supremacy as the leader of the CCP against Soviet backed rivals. A new base was established in Yenan, where land reform was implemented and the Red Army forces replenished.

Map of the Long March

Mao on the Long March

In 1935 Stalin's line changed again, calling for the Cps to work in a Popular Front of all parties against fascism, including bourgeois parties. This meant another CCP-KMT alliance against Japan which continued to attack China and aimed at colonisation. Invariably the Popular Front meant lowering CP demands in order to attract these other forces. A serious split in 1936 where one of the KMT generals arrested Chiang Kai-Shek calling for national resistance to Japan and land reform, but the CCP, under Stalin's directions secured Chiang's release instead of pressing the advantage. After this missed opportunity in 1937, when Japanese attacks intensified, the CCP agreed to the following conditions of alliance,

1) Dissolve the Red Army. 2) Dissolve the soviet republic in Shensi and other regions. 3) Stop all communist propaganda, and 4) Abandon the class struggle.

While the Red Army no longer stood for confiscation of the landlords’ land and abandoned their anti-KMT propaganda, nevertheless the CCP retained organisational, political and military independence. While this meant relative independence from Russia's directions, Mao merely put forward a Chinese version of Stalinism that victory would result in controlled capitalism, followed by state capitalism and thereafter an economy modelled on the Soviet Union. Stalin favoured the KMT and from 1937 war supplies were sent from the Soviet Union to the KMT, not the CCP.

Japanese atrocities in Nanking, 1937

The alliance was itching to become a civil war between the CCP and KMT, with the KMT army holding back from major clashes with the Japanese and on several occasions attacking CCP units and the CCP also refusing to engage in battles that would sacrifice troops. Stalin’s entire emphasis – the survival of his own regime, devoid of any revolutionary methods – was a constant brake on Chinese events. In April 1941, Russia signed a non-aggression treaty with Japan. The CCP made no criticism and was formally bound by this agreement not to attack Japanese forces. But three months later, when Germany invaded Russia, the CCP was ordered by Moscow to resume the fight against Japan. Nevertheless by the end of the war the popular prestige of the CCP had risen greatly as a result of their calls to fight the Japanese as well as their revival of the slogan of land reform. On the other hand the KMT were corrupt and unpopular. Stalin continued to support the KMT after the war while the US bent over backwards to ensure the Japanese surrendered to the KMT and not to CCP troops. With the decline of British, French and Japanese imperialism in the region, and the rise of Soviet influence after success in the war, the US was the only imperialist force left.

Mao and Stalin

Stalin transferred Manchuria to the KMT (after stealing all the factories) but supplied some arms to the CCP in a gesture of unity. The CCP had also benefited from Japanese arms seized in the conflict, it was growing into a mass army. Stalin signed a treaty of friendship with the KMT in August 1945 and along with the US pushed for negotiations between the KMT and CCP. After WWII the Soviet union had emerged much stronger, and it was decided with the Allies that Eastern Europe would 'belong' to Stalin, while he would, via the CPs, assist in reasserting the bourgeoisie in countries outside of Eastern Europe. In France and Italy the CPs had joined coalition governments and acted as a break on the working-class movements, while in Greece civil war raged. On the one hand Chiang Kai-Shek favoured a bloody solution to the communists not a coalition, and Mao had no intention of being sacrificed for the Soviet Union, recognising the opportunity to overthrow the KMT. By 1946 the civil war restarted.

At the start, Chiang enjoyed a crushing military superiority. He had 500 air-planes with US pilots, while the CCP had no planes. Chiang also had tanks and thousands of US advisers and technicians. In total, US imperialism gave six billion dollars in aid to the KMT in the period 1946-49. In other words, the KMT’s defeat in the war cannot be attributed to military reasons. Their army also kept winning, until the summer of 1947. The CCP victory was political, its troops were renowned for their role in the war against Japan. Now the masses saw the KMT undo all the social gains in those areas which they reoccupied from the CCP. The KMT government was also correctly held responsible for the great famine of 1942-43, in which 2 million died. It was also tainted by the rampant corruption, speculation and hyperinflation which gripped China after the war.

Chiang Kai-Shek with US General Stilwell

In the first year, the PLA avoided battles, while spreading the agrarian revolution in the countryside. On the basis of land reform, the PLA recruited 1.6 million new soldiers in Manchuria alone. Support for the CCP in the “liberated areas” was massive, because of the land reform and the general revolutionary change in conditions. In 1947, this laid the basis for a turning point in the civil war – Mao'’s peasant guerilla army started to confront the forces of the KMT.

The KMT collapsed in the face of the social revolution that ran parallel with the war. Mass desertions took place and entire military units disintegrated. There was an enormous power vacuum in the country. Imperialism had been forced to retreat, and not even the US could seriously consider an invasion. There was no capitalist party able to show a way out, to unify the country or solve the land question. The KMT was a spent force. The only force seriously aiming for power was the PLA and it steadily won the conflict after 1947. But the victory was of a peasant army led by the bureaucratised CCP it was not a victory of democratic workers’ councils or genuine soviets. There were important strikes in 1947 and in early 1948, marking the beginnings of a re-emergence of the working class, but with the entrance of the PLA into the cities, strikes were repressed. On this basis the CCP came to power in 1949 and the KMT fled to Taiwan.

Red Army marches into Beijing 1949

Mao proclaims the People's Republic of China, 1949

The next talk will look at the CCP in power, the policies it attempted, and why events went the way they did. The future development of the CCP in power explains a lot about the prospects of revolution in one country, but also about the impossibility of economic development outside of a non-capitalist pathway.

Going South: Why Britain Will Have a Third World Economy by 2014

Going South: Why Britain Will Have a Third World Economy by 2014

By Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson

Published by Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, £14.99

LARRY ELLIOTT and Dan Atkinson’s latest book, Going South, provides a description of the “long, steady decline” of British capitalism. It argues, largely by analogy, that this decline is reducing the status of Britain to that of a developing nation. This argument is clearly a sobering thought, although during the course of this 362-page survey the argument is snipped at by caveats.

As well as providing a useful summary of the decline of British capitalism, this book suggests the shape the economy will take by 2014. In short: what Britain could look like after nine years of crisis and austerity. The economic situation, of course, will provide the backdrop for the likely general election in 2015, unless there is a breakdown of the coalition before then.

Some Questions and Points on the Approach of the Revolutionary Socialists/Socialist Workers Party in Egypt

The process of revolution is ongoing in Egypt. After the toppling of Mubarak power was transferred firstly to the Generals and then superficially to Mohammed Morsi and the MB as a result of the elections. Now Morsi is attempting to strengthen his powers with a new constitution that contains provisions which attack the movement of the working-class. These provisions can be used against individual dissent and contains powers to prevent insulting the President. Freedom of expression is threatened as well as the right to strike in a way that further protects the economic interests of the military. A decree that limits trade union representation to one per workplace is a challenge to the flourishing independent trade union networks, while the MB extends its control over the state-controlled Egyptian Trade Union Federation. Restrictions on civil liberties together with attacks against women's rights pose a serious threat to women and religious minorities.

Mursi's attempt to assume extensive Presidential powers is facing serious challenge through protests and strikes, which are being met by state repression. Mass protests in Tahrir Square and outside Mursi's Presidential Palace have been ongoing during the past few days. Textile workers in Mahalla struck in opposition to the constitution.