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How did Communist ideology come to rule over China, a country the size of the United States and with more than one-fifth of the world’s population? How has Communism evolved since it first conquered China in 1949? Political scientist Robert E. Bedeski, a specialist in the politics and governments of Northeast Asia, describes Communism’s rise to power in China and how the Communist Party there has responded to several economic and political challenges.
By Robert E. Bedeski
Communism, popularly believed to be dead, today controls one of the world’s largest economies and the lives of more than one-fifth of the world’s people, that of the People’s Republic of China. China is a major exporter of clothing apparel and household goods. Setting aside decades of hostility, the United States now welcomes China, a Communist nation, as a “most favored” trading partner. Half a century after revolutionary victory, Chinese Communism has created a world power that lives and works under the system of Karl Marx, V. I. Lenin, and Mao Zedong.
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Communism first came to power after the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in 1922. Inspired by the Russian Revolution, a number of Chinese intellectuals believed that China’s problems also demanded revolutionary solution, and they formed a Communist Party in 1921. Like Russia, China was a formerly great continental empire ruled by a weakened monarchy. A democratic revolution led by Sun Yat-sen had ended monarchic rule but had not recovered China’s strength or even gained firm control of the country. To rule such a large country, the founding Communists believed, required a dedicated core of united activists—a revolutionary party.
Communist parties seek sweeping but well-defined objectives: seizure of state power by a disciplined elite in the name of the working class, concentration of power in a single-party dictatorship, elimination of reactionary social classes and attitudes, rapid industrialization of the economy, and control over all aspects of society. Communists believe that history is on their side and that their way of life will succeed. Until success is complete, however, they foresee constant struggles with enemy capitalists who defend their own control of industries and governments.
China’s past and present under Communism officially began with the establishment of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Shanghai in 1921. The early work of Chinese Communists, and the efforts of Soviet leaders V. I. Lenin and Joseph Stalin to promote that work, ran into a major difficulty. China was far behind other countries in industrialization, which meant that no major urban labor force existed to support a Communist revolution. Reliance on an urban workforce was a key feature of Marxism—the Communist political philosophy of Karl Marx. Seeking effective allies to increase its power, the CCP joined in a United Front with the larger and better organized Kuomintang (Nationalist Party) led by Chiang Kai-shek. But Chiang betrayed this alliance and launched a brutal attack on the Communists, jailing or killing thousands in April 1927.
After Chiang’s purge, the Communists were forced to retreat into rural areas. They were repeatedly attacked by Chiang’s Nationalists until they embarked on their Long March to northwestern China in 1934. Cut off from contact with cities, the Communists built a power base among the peasants, a strategy proposed by Mao, who emerged from the Long March as the party’s leader.
Mao, Zhou Enlai, and others developed tactics of guerrilla warfare to use against the Nationalists. After Japan invaded China in 1937, the Communists used these tactics against the Japanese occupiers of northern China. Their military successes and patriotic resistance added to Communist strength among the people.
Following Japan’s defeat in 1945, the United States tried unsuccessfully to mediate between the Nationalists and Communists in China. A civil war followed, with a Communist victory and the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) on October 1, 1949. The Nationalists fled to Taiwan and prepared for a Communist attack, which did not come. Instead, China became embroiled in the Korean War (1950-1953), battling U.S. and allied forces. Support for the defense of Taiwan became a keystone of U.S. policy during the Cold War.
As leader of the PRC Mao Zedong introduced a radical version of Communism with which he hoped to bring about rapid change. The Chinese Communist Party first invited nonparty members to comment and criticize, and then savagely attacked those who spoke out. Then came an economic program called the Great Leap Forward (1958-1960), during which the CCP abolished all private land ownership and tried to industrialize the country almost overnight. The program had a disastrous effect on agriculture. As in the USSR, famine followed collectivization and at least 20 million people died. A less painful failure was an effort to increase steel production by building numerous backyard furnaces. Their output was mostly unusable scrap.
The CCP’s Central Committee forced Mao to abandon these policies and take a more gradual approach to economic modernization. But frustrated by the slowness of change, Mao renewed his efforts to transform China by radical means and launched the violent Cultural Revolution in 1966. Supported by troops of the Red Guards, this social upheaval scourged China with executions, summary trials, factional fighting, and massive relocations of students, farmers, and workers.
While it is clear that Communism has involved a totalitarian dictatorship over the Chinese people, and the effects of its rule have often been destructive, its accomplishments also deserve recognition. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has tried to modernize a largely agricultural, undeveloped country in a short time and under very difficult circumstances.
The challenges Mao faced, his policy responses, and the costs and benefits of those policies can be summarized as follows.
Challenge: A low standard of living, especially in the countryside. Policy Response: The CCP transferred agricultural land to collective ownership (communes), and the central government or its agencies took the crops from the communes and distributed them. Costs: The notion of private property was eroded, and farmers lost much of their incentive to work. Government and party interference in agriculture led to mismanagement, crop failures, and famine. Benefits: Low prices paid to farmers for crops enabled the government to pay for imported machinery that helped develop industrialization and the mechanization of agriculture.
Challenge: Absence of a strong government during the decades before Communist rule, as a result of warlords, foreign colonial powers, Nationalist armies, bandits, Communist armies, and Japanese armies. Policy Response: The Chinese Communist Party took total command of society. All education, media, and associations followed the Communist Party line, with dissenters jailed or executed as traitors and all religion suppressed. Costs: Millions of lives were lost, democracy vanished, and wholesale violation of human rights became commonplace. Benefits: China projected an image of national unity under Mao, and many observers in other countries accepted this image as real.
Challenge: The strength of capitalist and democratic nations hostile to Communism. Policy Response: To break the power of what Mao viewed as capitalist imperialism, the CCP spread guerrilla warfare tactics to developing countries in Southeast Asia and Latin America. Costs: Effective counterinsurgency techniques, combined with development assistance to reduce rural discontent, enabled U.S. and allied forces to counter guerrilla tactics. The (1959-1975) proved costly for both the United States and Vietnam, but demonstrated to China that a so-called people’s war offered no easy or cheap formula for victory. Benefits: Military initiative remained possible for China despite the nuclear might of the superpowers.
After Mao’s death in 1976, the Communist government of China tried to undo the damage caused by extremism. Leadership headed by Deng Xiaoping initiated cautious reforms, encouraging investment from abroad and improving China’s foreign relations. In domestic politics, the National People’s Congress, formerly ineffectual, became active in legislation, passing a number of laws to foster modernization. With private sector business activity and foreign investment mushrooming, China’s economy has grown rapidly, although incomes remain low. China has pushed to host the 2008 Olympic Games in order to showcase its recent accomplishments.
Though the Chinese leadership has made economic reforms to preserve Communist power, it has made practically no concessions to democracy. Demands for greater political freedom were witnessed most dramatically during the 1989 Tiananmen Square Protest in Beijing.
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China; Communism
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