Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0088/00889.txt

Text File | 1991-06-24 | 12KB | 192 lines

$Unique_ID{COW00889}
$Pretitle{260}
$Title{Chinese History
Chapter 1C.   Rise of the Communists}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Rinn-Sup Shinn, Robert L. Worden}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{war
china
communists
chinese
united
nationalist
states
japanese
communist
government}
$Date{1987}
$Log{}
Country:     Chinese History
Book:        China, A Country Study: China History
Author:      Rinn-Sup Shinn, Robert L. Worden
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1987

Chapter 1C.   Rise of the Communists

      There were forces at work during this period of progress that would
eventually undermine the Chiang Kai-shek government. The first was the gradual
rise of the Communists.

      Mao Zedong, who had become a Marxist at the time of the emergence of the
May Fourth Movement (he was working as a librarian at Beijing University), had
boundless faith in the revolutionary potential of the peasantry. He advocated
that revolution in China focus on them rather than on the urban proletariat,
as prescribed by orthodox Marxist- Leninist theoreticians. Despite the failure
of the Autumn Harvest Uprising of 1927, Mao continued to work among the
peasants of Hunan Province. Without waiting for the sanction of the CCP
center, then in Shanghai, he began establishing peasant-based soviets
(Communist-run local governments) along the border between Hunan and Jiangxi
provinces. In collaboration with military commander Zhu De (1886-1976), Mao
turned the local peasants into a politicized guerrilla force. By the winter of
1927-28, the combined "peasants' and workers'" army had some 10,000 troops.

      Mao's prestige rose steadily after the failure of the Comintern-directed
urban insurrections. In late 1931 he was able to proclaim the establishment of
the Chinese Soviet Republic under his chairmanship in Ruijin, Jiangxi
Province. The Soviet-oriented CCP Political Bureau came to Ruijin at Mao's
invitation with the intent of dismantling his apparatus. But, although he had
yet to gain membership in the Political Bureau, Mao dominated the proceedings.

      In the early 1930s, amid continued Political Bureau opposition to his
military and agrarian policies and the deadly annihilation campaigns being
waged against the Red Army by Chiang Kai-shek's forces, Mao's control of the
Chinese Communist movement increased. The epic Long March of his Red Army and
its supporters, which began in October 1934, would ensure his place in
history. Forced to evacuate their camps and homes, Communist soldiers and
government and party leaders and functionaries numbering about 100,000
(including only 35 women, the spouses of high leaders) set out on a circuitous
retreat of some 12,500 kilometers through 11 provinces, 18 mountain ranges,
and 24 rivers in southwest and northwest China. During the Long March, Mao
finally gained unchallenged command of the CCP, ousting his rivals and
reasserting guerrilla strategy. As a final destination, he selected southern
Shaanxi Province, where some 8,000 survivors of the original group from
Jiangxi Province (joined by some 22,000 from other areas) arrived in October
1935. The Communists set up their headquarters at Yan'an, where the movement
would grow rapidly for the next ten years. Contributing to this growth would
be a combination of internal and external circumstances, of which aggression
by the Japanese was perhaps the most significant. Conflict with Japan, which
would continue from the 1930s to the end of World War II, was the other force
(besides the Communists themselves) that would undermine the Nationalist
government.

Anti-Japanese War

      Few Chinese had any illusions about Japanese designs on China. Hungry
for raw materials and pressed by a growing population, Japan initiated the
seizure of Manchuria in September 1931 and established ex-Qing emperor Puyi as
head of the puppet regime of Manchukuo in 1932. The loss of Manchuria, and its
vast potential for industrial development and war industries, was a blow to
the Nationalist economy. The League of Nations, established at the end of
World War I, was unable to act in the face of the Japanese defiance. The
Japanese began to push from south of the Great Wall into northern China and
into the coastal provinces. Chinese fury against Japan was predictable, but
anger was also directed against the Guomindang government, which at the time
was more preoccupied with anti-Communist extermination campaigns than with
resisting the Japanese invaders. The importance of "internal unity before
external danger" was forcefully brought home in December 1936, when
Nationalist troops (who had been ousted from Manchuria by the Japanese)
mutinied at Xi'an. The mutineers forcibly detained Chiang Kai- shek for
several days until he agreed to cease hostilities against the Communist forces
in northwest China and to assign Communist units combat duties in designated
anti-Japanese front areas.

      The Chinese resistance stiffened after July 7, 1937, when a clash
occurred between Chinese and Japanese troops outside Beijing (then renamed
Beiping) near the Marco Polo Bridge. This skirmish not only marked the
beginning of open, though undeclared, war between China and Japan but also
hastened the formal announcement of the second Guomindang-CCP united front
against Japan. The collaboration took place with salutary effects for the
beleaguered CCP. The distrust between the two parties, however, was scarcely
veiled. The uneasy alliance began to break down after late 1938, despite
Japan's steady territorial gains in northern China, the coastal regions, and
the rich Chang Jiang Valley in central China. After 1940, conflicts between
the Nationalists and Communists became more frequent in the areas not under
Japanese control. The Communists expanded their influence wherever
opportunities presented themselves through mass organizations, administrative
reforms, and the land- and tax-reform measures favoring the peasants--while
the Nationalists attempted to neutralize the spread of Communist influence.

      At Yan'an and elsewhere in the "liberated areas," Mao was able to adapt
Marxism-Leninism to Chinese conditions. He taught party cadres to lead the
masses by living and working with them, eating their food, and thinking their
thoughts. The Red Army fostered an image of conducting guerrilla warfare in
defense of the people. Communist troops adapted to changing wartime conditions
and became a seasoned fighting force. Mao also began preparing for the
establishment of a new China. In 1940 he outlined the program of the Chinese
Communists for an eventual seizure of power. His teachings became the central
tenets of the CCP doctrine that came to be formalized as Mao Zedong Thought.
With skillful organizational and propaganda work, the Communists increased
party membership from 100,000 in 1937 to 1.2 million by 1945.

      In 1945 China emerged from the war nominally a great military power but
actually a nation economically prostrate and on the verge of all-out civil
war. The economy deteriorated, sapped by the military demands of foreign war
and internal strife, by spiraling inflation, and by Nationalist profiteering,
speculation, and hoarding. Starvation came in the wake of the war, and
millions were rendered homeless by floods and the unsettled conditions in many
parts of the country. The situation was further complicated by an Allied
agreement at the Yalta Conference in February 1945 that brought Soviet troops
into Manchuria to hasten the termination of war against Japan. Although the
Chinese had not been present at Yalta, they had been consulted; they had
agreed to have the Soviets enter the war in the belief that the Soviet Union
would deal only with the Nationalist government. After the war, the Soviet
Union, as part of the Yalta agreement, dismantled and removed more than half
the industrial equipment left there by the Japanese. The Soviet presence in
northeast China enabled the Communists to move in long enough to arm
themselves with the equipment surrendered by the