2P - The Chinese Communist Party: background
The Chinese Communist Party survived defeat by moving its centre of activity towards the countryside. Learn how that experience shaped Mao's leadership, revolutionary ideas and policies, and why hostility between the CCP and Guomindang remained so deep in 1936.
Origins and the break of 1927
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was founded in 1921 in a country marked by foreign influence, weak central government and social inequality. The Russian Revolution offered an example of a party claiming to overthrow exploitation through revolution. Marxism explained society through class relations and envisaged the replacement of capitalism by socialism; Leninist organisation stressed a disciplined revolutionary party. Chinese Communists initially concentrated heavily on urban workers, but China's relatively small industrial workforce created a problem for a strategy based mainly on cities.
During the First United Front, agreed in the early 1920s, Communists cooperated with the GMD against warlords and foreign domination. Communist members worked within the Nationalist movement while retaining their own organisation. Cooperation helped expand revolutionary activity and contributed to the Northern Expedition. It also exposed disagreements over who would lead the revolution and how far workers and peasants should challenge property owners.
In 1927 Jiang's repression of Communists in Shanghai and elsewhere broke this alliance. Attempts at urban insurrection failed and many Communists were killed, arrested or driven underground. The party then developed rural bases and armed forces. Hostility to the GMD was therefore grounded in direct experience of repression, as well as conflicting social programmes. It was not simply an abstract disagreement about Marxist theory.
The move to rural struggle did not mean abandoning the claim to working-class leadership. The CCP continued to describe the party as the leading revolutionary force. What changed was the practical route to power: organising peasants and maintaining armed bases became essential to survival.
Mao and rural revolution
Mao Zedong argued that peasants could become an active revolutionary force rather than wait passively for leadership from the cities. In the Jiangxi base area, Communists combined administration, political organisation, land policies and a Red Army. Mao and Zhu De were important in developing forces able to fight while living among the rural population. A base was therefore more than a refuge: it allowed the party to experiment with governing and recruiting.
Mao's approach emphasised avoiding decisive battle against superior forces, attacking at favourable moments and retaining the population's cooperation. Guerrilla warfare used local knowledge and mobility to offset weaknesses in equipment and numbers. Political work mattered because soldiers needed food, intelligence and recruits. Rules requiring troops to treat civilians and their property properly sought to distinguish the Red Army from forces associated with requisitioning and abuse. The existence of such rules is evidence of an intended standard, not proof of universal compliance.
Mao's authority was contested. Other leaders favoured different military and political strategies, and Soviet influence remained significant within the party. Nationalist encirclement campaigns threatened Jiangxi. The evacuation beginning in 1934 became the Long March, during which Communist forces suffered enormous losses before reaching northwest China in 1935. Survival was important, but the march should not be described as an easy military triumph.
At the Zunyi Conference in January 1935, earlier military leadership was criticised and Mao's influence increased. This was a major step in his rise, rather than the moment at which he instantly acquired every later office or eliminated all rivals. The survivors' arrival in the Shaanxi base area enabled a new phase of organisation. Later Communist accounts turned the Long March into a story of sacrifice and leadership, helping to legitimise Mao's authority.
Ideology and practical policies
Mao's ideas connected class revolution to China's particular conditions. The CCP sought to overthrow foreign domination and the power of landlords, while building a state under Communist leadership. Land reform could offer poor peasants a material reason to support revolution: reducing rents or redistributing land challenged the authority and income of rural elites. Education, political meetings and propaganda sought to make villagers active participants in party-led change.
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