Abstract
China could have remained peaceful were it not for a group of revolutionaries who are located in the southern China. This group led a successful revolt against the Qing Dynasty in 1911. Their purpose was to end the imperial system that existed in China by establishing the Republic of China. The two Opium wars which were focused on the Western powers incurred a great loss to China. It was due to these wars that China lost Hong Kong. This played a key role to the 1949 revolution. This paper discusses elements of the Communists’ view of the revolution, identity and military action and how and why were those ideas reflective of their desire and plans for change within twentieth-century China?
Introduction
Some of the challenges that China was facing was the foreign incursions into Chinese territory. The Russo- Japanese war which took place between 1904 and 1905 further weakened the Qing rule as Taiwan and some parts of Manchuria were taken control over by Great Britain. A series of this kind of imperialism led to the decline of the Qing rule. This also led to formation of a constitutional monarchy which was led by Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao.
The Chinese Communist Party was well established in 1921. The communists broadly targeted the urban areas with specific interests in the working class population who were to carry out the revolutionary activities. Decisions made in this party were based on Soviet Union’s advice. With the union’s direction, the Communist party allied with the Guomindang as a way that would help them defeat the warlords and also assist them to unite China under one leadership, the Guomindang leadership. This went on from 1922 to 1927.
In 1927, Chiang Kai-Shek, who was a political and military leader of the Republic of China, withdrew from the Communist party. He ordered for the members of the party to be assassinated. Majority of the party’s leadership was drawn to the ground in Shanghai. An important member of the group by the name, Mao Zedong was able to flee to a remote province, where, together with his supporters, was able to build themselves an army that was only meant to defend them. In this region Mao and his supporters were able to fight well equipped forces of the Guomindang. It was through this war that he was able to come up with the theory of guerrilla warfare. The struggle went on until 1937 where they had to employ the same theories against Japanese.
The guerrilla war involved using the terrains to fight the opponent. Mao Zedong familiarity with the terrains gave his troops an advantage in the fight against Guomindang forces. Lack of well-equipped and sophisticated weapons was the reason for using this kind of warfare. It was always going to be hard to defeat such a formidable opponent in an open field hence the deployment of this warfare technique. The Japanese also found the guerrilla war tricky during the revolutionary struggle. Lack of knowledge regarding the whereabouts of the enemy proved difficult for the Japanese army. The guerilla war prolong the revolutionary struggle as the Mao Zedong used the technique to attack places where the enemy were concentrated.
It is evident that Mao really cared for the peasants, given that the rural economy was being compromised by revolutionaries. He showed solicitude for the destiny of peasants and the development of the rural economy. In his war towards revolution, he divided China’s economic system into two; the land reform and collectivization. He believed that the peasants had too much power over the economy of China. The first step he took was to go to the rural areas especially those with poverty-stricken peasants. He helped them fight against feudalism and sooner this was popularized across the country and a new democratic rural production relationship was introduced.
Being a communist was not easy as described by Mao. Being a member of the same involved a standardized process that qualified members. There were features that were to exist in candidates to be crowned as members of the party. Those features included; focused on the future, self- sacrificing, least prejudice, and most resolute. Mao also indicated that the candidates should prove that they were able to subordinate their interest over the interests of their county. Communists were supposed to bare the character of being practical.
The revolution took the following paths:
Repression of political opposition: campaigns against corruption, fraud and wastage were led by the communist between 1951 and 1952. This was a way of attacking China’s greatest enemies. Mao still played an important role in this campaign and it took citizens by surprise when he announced two of the leading officials as traitors. This caused the down fall of both Gao Gang and Rao Rashi. About 100, 000 suspected gangsters were executed by the government using information provided by local residents. He caused over twenty five million people to be dehumanized.
The hundred flowers campaign
This was a strategy used by Mao to draw China’s greatest enemies so that he could destroy them altogether. This was one of his best strategies to eliminate his enemies apart from the guerrilla warfare. The a hundred flower campaign showed the confusion among the party’s leadership about the issue of how China would grow. The failure of this campaign was caused by the assumption that the enemy had already been destroyed yet they were still controlling China. Other people suggest that this campaign was a copy of the Khrushchev’s destalinization campaign in Russia.
Treatment of Minority groups
Statistics showed that there were 54 official minorities following the Soviet policies. These officials were given limited liberties and regional autonomy. In 1958, about the a hundred flower campaign, research revealed that some of the minorities wanted separation. However the policy changed into assimilation, such that, the minority were ruthlessly suppressed by tyranny of warlords due to resistance. In other circumstances communes were imposed. China’s culture was revolved through violent assimilation such as what happened to the Mongolian leader, Ulanhu who was put on trial for ‘national splittism’ through encouraging people to learn Mongolian.
The relationship between the people and the party was compared to that of fish and water such that, water being a representative of the people and fish was compared to members of the party. Thus, they said, water can live without fish whereas fish could not live without water. Therefore, the people had a much greater power over the country that the communist. It was therefore the function of the members of the party to act well on the rights of the citizens in order to gain their influence. This kind of relationship was built over a long process of trial and error but they co-existed anyway.
Food shortages was one of the factors that led people into accepting the revolutionaries. Campaigns led by the revolutionaries, include the Great Leap Forward that got its name partly because of the unpreparedness of the Chinese agricultural backwardness and food security. The program was able to influence most of the Chinese peasants and other large scale agricultural farmers.
The revolutionary period played an important role in the Chinese history. It has made one of the most powerful countries across the globe. China has been able to capture most countries in the globe to depend on it. It’s one of the countries that are rapidly growing and they have had to impose policies to regulate its population due to its abnormal growth. China has greatly benefited from the Mao era among other campaigns. Sectors that have grown and improved include; welfare, health care and education which was the cause of the doubling of the population. These improvements would not have happened if it were not for the political and social transformation that followed from the revolution of 1949.
In conclusion, Chinese nationalism has expressed in many ways, the profound insecurity of the elite of China. However, beneath this kind of insecurity several types of nationalism have co-existed. As mentioned above, “the rise to power of the Chinese Communist movement has shaped the history of China for most of the twentieth century.” Features and activities that took pa place during the twentieth century revolution in China are unique but however, some of them are familiar to other countries that have undergone revolution. It was also evident that the great defeat in 1927 lead to more struggle for power in Soviet Russia between Stalin and Trotsky.
Bibliography
Mao Zedong. Report On the Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan March 1927.
Mao Zedong. Selections From On Guerrilla Warfare. Asia for Educators, Columbia University 1937.
Mao, Zedong. Collected writings of Chairman Mao on Being a Communist in China 1938.
Sun Yat-sen. “Selections from a Program of National Reconstruction: “The Three Stages of Revolution” Asia for Educators l Columbia University 1918.
