Communism In China Essay, Research Paper

The Roots of Communist China

To say that the Chinese Communist revolution is a non-Western

revolution is more than a clich?. That revolution has been primarily

directed, not like the French Revolution but against alien Western

influences that approached the level of domination and drastically

altered China’s traditional relationship with the world. Hence the

Chinese Communist attitude toward China’s traditional past is

selectively critical, but by no means totally hostile. The Chinese

Communist revolution, and the foreign policy of the regime to which it

has given rise, have several roots, each of which is embedded in the

past more deeply than one would tend to expect of a movement seemingly

so convulsive.

The Chinese superiority complex institutionalized in their

tributary system was justified by any standards less advanced or

efficient than those of the modern West. China developed an elaborate

and effective political system resting on a remarkable cultural

unity, the latter in turn being due mainly to the general acceptance

of a common, although difficult, written language and a common set of

ethical and social values, known as Confucianism. Traditional china

had neither the knowledge nor the power that would have been necessary

to cope with the superior science, technology, economic organization,

and military force that expanding West brought to bear on it. The

general sense of national weakness and humiliation was rendered still

keener by a unique phenomenon, the modernization of Japan and its rise

to great power status. Japan’s success threw China’s failure into

sharp remission.

The Japanese performance contributed to the discrediting and

collapse of China’s imperial system, but it did little to make things

easier for the subsequent successor. The Republic was never able to

achieve territorial and national unity in the face of bad

communications and the widespread diffusion of modern arms throughout

the country. Lacking internal authority, it did not carry much weight

in its foreign relations. As it struggled awkwardly, there arose two

more radical political forces, the relatively powerful Kuomintang of

Sun Yat-sen and Chiang Kai-shek, and the younger and weaker

Communist Party of China (CPC ). With indispensable support from the

CPC and the Third International, the Kuomintang achieved sufficient

success so it felt justified in proclaiming a new government,

controlled by itself, for the whole of China. For a time the

Kuomintang made a valiant effort to tackle China’s numerous and

colossal problems, including those that had ruined its predecessor :

poor communications and the wide distribution of arms. It also took a

strongly anti-Western course in its foreign relations, with some

success. It is impossible to say whether the Kuomintang’s regime would

ultimately have proven viable and successful if it had not been ruined

by an external enemy, as the Republic had been by its internal

opponents. The more the Japanese exerted preemptive pressures on

China, the more the people tended to look on the Kuomintang as

the only force that prevent china from being dominated by Japan.

During the Sino-Japanese war of 1937, the Kuomintang immediately

suffered major military defeats and lost control of eastern China. It

was only saved from total hopelessness or defeat by Japan’s suicidal

decision to attack the United States and invasion of Southeastern

Asia. But military rescue from Japan brought no significant

improvement in the Kuomintang’s domestic performance in the political

and economic fields, which if anything to get worse. Clearly the

pre-Communist history of Modern China has been essentially one of

weakness, humiliation, and failure. This is the atmosphere in which

the CPC developed its leadership and growth in. The result has been a

strong determination on the part of that leadership to eliminate

foreign influence within China, to modernize their country, and to

eliminate Western influence from eastern Asia, which included the

Soviet Union. China was changing and even developing, but its

overwhelming marks were still poverty and weakness. During their rise

to power the Chinese Communists, like most politically conscious

Chinese, were aware of these conditions and anxious to eliminate them.

Mao Tse-tung envisioned a mixed economy under Communist control, such

as had existed in the Soviet Union during the period of the New

Economic Policy. The stress was more upon social justice, and public

ownership of the “commanding heights” of the economy than upon

development. In 1945, Mao was talking more candidly about development,

still within the framework of a mixed economy under Communist control,

and stressing the need for more heavy industry; I believe because he

had been impressed by the role of heavy industry in determine the

outcome of World War II. In his selected works he said “that the

necessary capital would come mainly from the accumulated wealth of the

Chinese people” but latter added “that China would appreciate foreign

aid and even private foreign investment, under non exploitative

conditions.”

After Chiang Kai-shek broke away from the CPC they found

themselves in a condition that they were not accustom to, they had no

armed forces or territorial bases of its own. It had no program of

strategy other than the one that Stalin had compromised, who from the

Sixth World Congress of the Comintern in 1928 to the Seventh in 1935

insisted, largely because the disaster he had suffered in China that

Communist Parties everywhere must promote world revolution in a time

of depression. The CPC was ridden with factionalism; the successful

effort to replace this situation with one of relative “bolshevization”

or in layman’s term this means imposed unity, which was ultimately

made by Mao Tse-tung, and not by Stalin. Parallel with the

Comintern-dominated central apparatus of the CPC in Shanghai,

there arose a half dozen Communist-led base areas, each with a

guerrilla army, in Central and South China. These bases existed mainly

by virtue of the efforts of the local Communist leadership to satisfy

the serious economic and social grievances of the local civilians,

often violently, through such means as redistribution of land at the

expense of landlords and the reduction of interest rates at the

expense of moneylenders. Of these base areas, or soviets, the most

important was the one led by Mao Tse-tung and centered in the

southeastern city of Kiangsi. Correspondingly, in return for such

service Mao was elected chairman of a Central Soviet Government, who

supposedly controlled all the Communist base areas in 1931.

Before I tell about Mao Tse-tung, I will tell you about Maoism.

By Maoism or “the thought of Mao Tse-tung” as the CPC would put it is

the entire evolving complex of patterns of official thought and

behavior that CPC has developed while under Mao’s leadership. It was

very difficult to unscramble Mao’s individual contribution while not

confusing it with other thinkers of this time period as many have done

and are still doing to this date. It is also difficult to separate the

pre-1949 and the post-1949 aspects and the domestic from the

international aspects. The first basic and most important

characteristic that I believe is a deep and sincere nationalism that

has been merged with the strictly Communist elements. Then closely

resembling nationalism was his populism approach so full of strain

that the CPC saw itself not merely as the Vanguard of the common

people, plus as the progressive side of the middle class, but as

representative of the people. This was important as it played the

opposite position of the “three big mountains” (imperialism,

feudalism, and bureaucratic capitalism) and still yet accept the

passively the leadership CPC. Maoism still possessed two other points

that are significant in understanding this ideology, it recognizes the

decisive importance in history of conscious, voluntary activity and of

subjective forces in more detail than the sometimes compared Leninism

which was opposed to deterministic, objective forces. The last point

it brings out is that Maoism stresses contradictions and struggle, or

what might be called the power of negative thinking, to the point

where it invents enemies of all types and comments on their size and

calls them “paper tiger” as he did in a speech in 1950.

Mao Tse-tung

On December 26th 1893 in a small village about twenty-eight

miles to the west of Hsiangt’an, Hunan in Shaoshanch’ung, Mao Tse-tung

was born. He was born during a time of widespread suffrage, his father

Mao Shun-sheng had left his family to join the army hoping to return

and be able to take care of his family. He soon returned with ample

funds to purchase land and livestock, so was the background of his

childhood and one of the reasons why he cared so much about the

agricultural growth of his people and the need to end their

suffering. His mother was a modest individual who cared about the less

fortunate and believed heavily in prayer to gods for guidance and best

wishes to the needy. Since he started working at the early age of five

he learned and developed his tendency for thoroughness, paying close

attention to what and how his father operated the farmland. His father

eventually brought him a tutor to teach the business side of life and

learned to read and write also. Learning to read opened his mind to

books such as, The Water Margin, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms,

and The Monkey, but the first book was his most favorite. Because it

told of a rebels desire and the spirit of rebellion, what a symbolic

meaning that would play in his future. He would eventually go to

school in Ch’angsha the Capital city where his life took a path he

would never be able to leave from again. The Empire was full of

discontent with the leaders role in the political realm. China

was in political chaos and the leaders new of nothing that could save

them. During these times many disasters would take place such as the

Russo-Japanese war, and the Boxer Rebellion which directed the Chinese

government to construct a shaky, but authoritative constitution to

hope these problems would not destroy their monarchy. At this time Mao

had been in school learning as much as he could about the political

agenda and about the revolution that was going on. He read many books

about the causes of the revolution and the many theories that authors

portrayed that could end this revolt. He himself started to write his

feelings down into what would be his “life works” on what he believed

could halt the problem or really give the Republic back to the people.

This is one of the reasons why China is now called THE PEOPLES

REPUBLIC OF CHINA. From this point of his educational advance, he

would be in close contact with future leaders of the revolution, his

classmates. He helped them take papers and documents around the city

that told of plans of attacking the government. With the help of his

classmates the formed a student society that was a front for the

revolution to reach the students, where they read works and newspapers

such as Hsiang River Weekly, this paper would subsequently print

some of his beliefs. This paper was eventually snubbed by the present

leader Chang Ching-yao. This is when his name became familiar with the

government and they wanted him stopped and suppressed. He would soon

leave to go Peking where he started to issue his views statements

about the current government. This is where he started to learn more

about Marxism and read the book the Communist Manifesto. When he

returned he learned of the Hunan Armies seizures of citizens who they

believed where threats to the society. From this point on, Mao new it

would be his job and role in life to take charge and assert the

necessary precautions to see that his people were treated the way that

they needed to be treated.