Strategy of Protest and Revolution 5
Mao Zedong & The Chinese Communist Revolution (1921-45)
Part II: Early Attempts & The 1st United Front (1921-27)
Hi, and welcome to Strategy Stuff. This is the 5th entry in ‘The Strategy of Protest and Revolution’, where we examine how historical revolutionary and protest movements achieved success. In this series, we focus on 3 key questions:
- How did activists turn public discontent into a coordinated movement?
- What did successful movements do to achieve their goals? And
- How have successful movement strategies changed over time?
In this 6-part entry, we’ll explore the revolutionary history of the Chinese Communist Party or CCP from 1921 to 45, with a particular focus on the experiences of its eventual leader, Mao Zedong. Here in Part II, we’ll go over the CCP’s early attempts at revolution, culminating in the 1st United Front.
5. 1921-23: Orthodox Leninist Agitation
As shown in the previous chapters, the CCP had a Dual Issue as its mission: to achieve China’s nationalist modernization through the imposition of Soviet Communism. And despite its initial rejection of Lenin’s ‘United Front’ concept, the Party still sought to follow the revolutionary strategy he used during the 1917 Russian Revolutions. Boiled down to the basics, this was a plan to: Firstly, use Issues to gain a core following within the proletarian working class; Secondly, organize, expand and strengthen this base through Mass Agitation; before Finally, launching an uprising to capture the cities and overpower the establishment.
Accordingly, the CCP’s primary focus was on the 2 million industrial workers within China at the time, who were mostly concentrated in the major metropolises with significant pockets in rural mining and railroad settlements. This demographic was relatively new, having mostly emerged in the 1900s due to Western-driven industrialization: inevitably, it also suffered from the typical abuse doled out to workers at the time, such as low wages, humiliating treatment, and more uniquely, cultural friction between indigenous workers and foreign managers.
The Chinese proletariat had already self-organized in response to these abuses. Strikes, sabotages and boycotts were common methods of protest, with groups such as migrant-worker associations, traditional labor guilds and even criminal gangs forming to facilitate such actions. So the CCP’s job wasn’t actually to teach the workers how to resist: it was instead to establish organizational leadership over them, and in doing so shift the goals of proletarian resistance away from mere materialist demands and towards broader nationalist goals.
The situation was quite similar to that which Lenin faced in 1917 Russia, so CCP activists eagerly sought to replicate his success by deploying his Mass Agitation strategy. As such, the Party disseminated propaganda designed to incite proletarian rage, though due to China’s abysmal literacy, the preferred medium was not newspapers as in Russia, but rather group meetings, educational classes and even re-purposed folk entertainment. The content itself was also different: true to its dualistic mission as a Communist and nationalist Party, the early CCP tended to blame ‘Western forces’ for introducing class conflict into China, even suggesting that the country was ‘naturally’ a harmonious agrarian commune!
But even as the CCP propagandized the proletariat, it also emulated another key feature of Lenin’s 1917 strategy, which this series has called a ‘strategy of chaos’. In it, the Party would deliberately if indirectly worsen societal problems, fully expecting that the results would radicalize workers, discredit rivals, and position the CCP as the only viable alternative. In particular, the Party saw traditional labor guilds, which had long mediated between factory bosses and workers, as key rivals whose influence had to be destroyed; accordingly, Party activists began undermining guild attempts to relieve worker discontent, often by drawing attention to unresolved problems or by exposing individual cases of guild corruption. Their efforts were somewhat successful, with disillusioned workers defecting to the newer, CCP-led trade unions, where their actions could be better controlled.
Thanks to these Leninist tactics, the CCP grew quickly: within months, it had branches in all the major metropolises; within a year, it was in the mining and railroad towns of rural China. This all culminated in a major railworkers’ strike in early 1923, but it was here that the CCP would suffer the first of its many devastating setbacks. Fearing that the rising proletarian militancy would lead to yet another Communist revolution, railroad bosses and local elites called in the regional warlord army to suppress the workers with military force. Troops massacred the strikers, shut down the unions, and expelled the activists: in an instant, almost everything the Party had built up so far was destroyed.
The Chinese elite establishment had learnt from 1917 Russia: they recognized the potential danger of the fledgling Communist movement, and swiftly mobilized an overwhelming military force to crush it while they still could. By contrast, CCP activists seemed not to have prepared for the possibility of military suppression, in spite of the violence being doled out to the other leftist movements during this period. This rather naïve attitude can really only be explained by the fact that effective military suppression had not been a factor in the 1917 Revolution, and so the activists who sought only to copy Lenin’s actions were not conditioned to anticipate it. Such rigid adherence to Communist dogma would plague CCP strategy for years to come.
Still, with this setback, it was clear that the Communists would have to find some counter to establishment military suppression. In this vein, a certain Party leader named Mao Zedong proposed shifting the Party’s focus away from the industrial proletariat – whom he considered too linked to Western capitalism to be completely reliable – and towards the rural peasantry, who provided most of the bodies and supplies that kept the warlord armies operational.
Mao’s proposal was ignored: while the CCP claimed to be pro-peasant, and Lenin himself had already endorsed the idea of a ‘worker-peasant alliance’, such a dramatic shift away from classic Marxism was far too radical a move for the Party’s other leaders. In any case, there was another solution that was a far more direct fix for the CCP’s military weakness, and it was the one that the Soviet-led Comintern had been pushing all along…
6. 1923-26: The Rise of the 1st United Front
The 1st United Front or UF was the product of 2 converging interests: on the one hand, the Communist Soviet Union’s desire for influence in China; on the other, the liberal-nationalist-egalitarian Sun Yat-Sen’s need for a patron to back the KMT’s bid for Chinese leadership. This cross-ideological collaboration would be guided by Lenin’s revolutionary template, in which the Soviets and the Chinese proletariat would join with the bourgeois KMT to fight Western imperialism, abolish feudal landlordism, and set China on the path to modernity.
After some negotiation, in early 1923, the Soviets threw their weight behind what they called the KMT’s ‘democratic revolution’, sending money and advisors to the KMT’s base in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou. Crucially, the Soviets also imparted their extensive organizational knowledge to the KMT, transforming them from a Western liberal party reliant on public support, to a Leninist Vanguard capable of manipulating the public into supporting their cause. In fact, the Soviets went even further than that, establishing a Party-Army for the KMT which, through its newfound military strength, could now compel weaker elites and peoples to work for their cause, whether they wanted to or not! In other words, the Soviets had turned the KMT into an Ideologically-Mobilized ‘Party State’, albeit one based on Chinese nationalism rather than Soviet Communism.
In addition, as part of the Soviet support package, the Comintern also pushed the CCP to join the KMT as part of the UF, not merely as allies, but in fact, to merge completely into the KMT and become a faction within it! As mentioned in Chapter 4, the CCP wasn’t thrilled about losing its independence, but after the losses of 1923, its leaders begrudgingly accepted that they needed military power to protect themselves from warlord suppression, and joining the KMT Party-State was the quickest way to get it.
By early 1924, the merger was complete, with CCP members becoming KMT members, soldiers and even leaders, though the Faction itself retained significant organizational independence. Their work remained the same: to represent, agitate and organize China’s industrial proletariat, with a nominal emphasis on peasants in a nod to Sun Yat-Sen’s agenda. All this was in line with Lenin’s revolutionary template, which called for the Communists to aid the KMT in their quest to unify and modernize China, until the proletariat became strong enough to seize power for itself.
The Communists had barely adjusted to their new environment when Warlord China fell into yet another bout of chaos. In mid-1925, the shooting of Chinese strikers by colonial Shanghai police sparked an explosion of nationalist rage across the country, known as the May 30th Movement. Within China’s cities, workers, intellectuals and bourgeoisie flocked to join UF-led protests, strikes and boycotts against imperialism; but even more significantly, for the first time the Chinese peasantry also participated in large numbers, rioting across the countryside as they paralyzed government, burned churches, destroyed foreign property and lynched quote-unquote ‘collaborationist’ elites.
Such rural upheaval was basically what Lenin had envisioned when he called for an assault on feudal institutions: however, now that it was actually happening, most Chinese Communists instead felt surprised and unsettled. Most Faction leaders and even the Comintern were in fact horrified by the rural violence, not only because they worried that it might alienate the rest of the KMT, but also because – as mostly elite landlords – they feared for the safety of their own families, properties and offices. Arguing against them were a small group of radicals, including Mao, who urged Faction leaders to fully embrace the violence and to use it to bring about the societal reform that the Faction claimed to want so much. After all, as Mao famously quipped a few years later, revolution could hardly be quote-unquote ‘an invitation to dinner’.
While the Communists dithered, the KMT – despite the recent death of Sun Yat-Sen – saw May 30th as the golden opportunity that it was, and exploited it decisively. Declaring itself as China’s sole government, the KMT ordered its Party-Armies, under the supervision of War Minister Chiang Kai-Shek, to strike out against hostile warlords in the name of Chinese nationalism. Paradoxically, this ‘Northern Expedition’ finally gave the Communists a common strategy to rally behind, which was: to support the KMT armies. In it, Communist activists would agitate the workers and peasants as before, but rather than advancing their own agenda – which, as we’ve seen, was not clear even to Faction leaders themselves – they would instead facilitate the KMT’s military conquest of China.
A host of newly-perfected movement tactics were now deployed against the UF’s warlord enemies: railway unions disrupted communications and logistics, while undercover agents encouraged soldiers to defect. Once a KMT army was near, Communist urban militias would even rise up and seize cities from their warlord garrisons; and partly as a result, by mid-1926 KMT armies had taken over much of southeastern China, with the Communists following closely behind, finally able to freely organize and work under the KMT’s military protection.
For a moment, the UF seemed perfect: the KMT and their Soviet backers were about to control China, while the unrestricted Communist Faction saw its membership grow tenfold, with its 50 thousand members claiming leadership over millions of peasants and factory workers. The revolution seemed to be unfolding exactly as Lenin had predicted… or so the Communists thought
7. 1926-27: The Fall of the 1st United Front
In theory, the Leninist revolutionary template which guided Communist work under the UF was applicable under all circumstances. In reality, it could not possibly anticipate every counter-strategy deployed by opposing establishments, especially after the Russian Revolution. Despite his ideological zealotry, Lenin as a practical movement leader constantly adjusted his strategy to changing political circumstances; by contrast, his disciples in the Chinese Communists showed no such flexibility. The result was disaster.
So far, the Communist strategy of allying with the liberal-nationalist KMT had achieved amazing results, with the Faction rising meteorically in terms of participants and influence. But such easy success caused Faction leaders to become overconfident in the UF’s imminent triumph, assuming that the imperialists would meekly withdraw from China and the KMT would naively stick to an arrangement that was meant to eventually push them aside. In the case of the latter, a few conservative KMT leaders had virulently opposed allying with the Communists from the very start, even assassinating other KMT leaders who disagreed!
Things were held in check while the KMT was still cooped up in Guangzhou, with everybody looking past their ideological differences to focus on uniting China. But as the Northern Expedition progressed, the balance began to tilt towards the conservative KMT leaders, as the KMT incorporated more and more local elites who had no love for Communism. Even more ominously, much of this shift was occurring within the KMT Party-Army itself, as the natural conservatism of its officers – who were mostly elite landlords – was bolstered by an influx of surrendered warlords, who had only ever dealt with Communists from the tip of a bayonet!
There were also powerful strategic reasons for the KMT to reconsider the UF, as the Front’s anti-imperialist and pro-Soviet stances were quickly attracting intense foreign opposition. For instance, during the UF takeover of the central Chinese metropolis of Wuhan, the city’s foreign merchants were attacked, prompting threats of military intervention from Britain, Japan and the United States, with even the Soviets – wary of being dragged into war – demanding restraint. Under such circumstances, the Communists were not only becoming an impediment to further KMT progress, but could also serve as a convenient scapegoat whose sacrifice could re-brand the KMT and win them international acceptance.
The responsibility for all these considerations was soon seized by Chiang Kai-Shek, the KMT War Minister and Army commander. Chiang was not supposed to be the one making these decisions, but when the Soviets established the KMT military, hoping to free the civilian Party from being dominated by warlords, they unintentionally paved the way for the Party to become dominated by its own Party-Army instead. And thanks to the success of the Northern Expedition, Chiang was now ready to dominate, first freeing the Army from Party oversight, before eventually establishing his own KMT Party-State in Nanjing, which would quickly overshadow the original Party-State in Wuhan.
Instinctively conservative and looking to carve out his own political base, Chiang began distancing himself from Sun Yat-Sen’s revolutionary egalitarianism, re-aligning his KMT to become a defender of the establishment status quo, from ex-warlords to foreign capitalists to rural landlords. As mentioned, the easiest way for Chiang to build up his credibility was to target the Communists: and as a result, even as the Northern Expedition was still underway, he was already removing Faction leaders from KMT leadership, disarming their militias and demanding an end to their organizing efforts.
By mid-1926, Chiang’s hostility had become so obvious that the Communists had to come up with some response: indeed, they were now in an awkward spot, having to both support and guard against Chiang’s Party-Army. It was a dilemma that was probably best left to those on-the-ground to navigate, but the Faction’s inexperienced leaders were not prepared to take charge of the situation. Instead, like ‘good’ Communists, they asked the Soviet-led Comintern for guidance.
The Communists must have hoped that the Soviets would use their leverage against Chiang, just as it had done with its own leaders. But even if that were possible – considering that Chiang was already realigning with the West – this naively assumed that the Soviets would prioritize ideological solidarity over other concerns. In fact, the reality had always been the opposite, and from Moscow’s perspective, even a right-wing KMT regime would be a safer outcome than the Communist Faction in their current form, since the former – if only out of self-interest – would still limit British and Japanese influence in China, while supporting the latter would only result in more chaos and encourage more imperialist penetration into China, thereby jeopardizing the security of the Soviet Far East.
Even worse, the Communists also misjudged how badly Soviet decisionmaking was being warped by the leadership contest that erupted after Lenin’s death in 1925, as his lieutenant Stalin battled his revolutionary comrades for power, chief amongst them Trotsky. In late 1926, Trotsky had – quite reasonably – warned that the UF in China was failing, which to Stalin, meant that he had to prolong the Front for as long as humanly possible. As such, the Stalin-led Comintern replied to the Communists with an interpretation of Leninist strategy, declaring that the Chinese Revolution was actually in quote-unquote ‘temporary retreat’ and the Faction should therefore stop stoking tensions within the UF. Obediently, the Chinese Communists paused their agitation, denounced all violence, and continued to support KMT Armies – even those loyal to Chiang’s regime.
Predictably, such one-sided restraint failed to appease Chiang. Instead, his hostility accelerated, until things reached a breaking point in March 1927, as Chiang’s forces approached Shanghai, China’s largest metropolis and the heart of its capitalist and imperialist systems. By this time, his Nanjing KMT was being offered almost everything in exchange for ditching the UF, ranging from political support to financial subsidies and even international recognition as China’s legitimate government, and Chiang was finally ready to switch sides.
Sensing that the Soviet position in China was on the brink of collapse, Stalin decided on a desperate gamble. Abruptly declaring a quote-unquote ‘revolutionary upsurge’, the Comintern now instructed the Shanghai CCP to rise up, seize the city before Chiang arrived, and deliver it to the Wuhan KMT. This was a frankly irresponsible command that expected local activists to execute complex military and political maneuvers without preparation, but the Faction obeyed anyway. The result was a predictable catastrophe: Chiang’s forces barged their way into Shanghai, where they promptly began to slaughter Communists and called on their allies to do the same.
Over the next few months, the remaining warlords and even the Wuhan KMT joined in on the slaughter: and under the combined effect of these crushing blows, the Communists were once again shattered as an organized force, with its membership plunging from 60 thousand to 10 thousand and its leaders fleeing for their lives. Even worse, the Faction’s sacrifice went unappreciated by Stalin, who self-servingly blamed its leadership for the quote-unquote ‘premature’ action that he himself had ordered!
But in the end, the CCP’s near-death experience in 1927 was largely its own fault. After the 1923 defeat, its leaders recognized the importance of military power, but rather than building up their own strength, they chose instead to rely on KMT and Soviet protection. While outsourcing seemed like the easier choice at the time, it also left the Party at the mercy of people who ultimately did not agree with its Issues, and the 1927 massacres demonstrated how quickly that would lead to movement defeat. Future CCP leaders would learn to trust only in their own security, or as Mao famously stated in his analysis of the disaster: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”
Still, it would be unfair to attribute the CCP’s collapse solely on political naivete alone. While many Communists did not appreciate or even rejected the importance of raising their own forces, the key reason why the Party did not do so was because the Soviets refused to let them do it, for fear of disrupting the UF. And since the Soviets justified their policies as authoritative interpretations of Communism, that meant that defiance jeopardized not only access to Soviet aid, but also one’s legitimacy to lead as a ‘good’ Communist. Such incentives made it impossible for CCP leaders to do anything other than toe the Comintern line, no matter how flawed they knew it to be.
This was the essence of Soviet ideological control, and it would endure for as long as Party members continued to view the Soviets as authoritative interpreters of Communism. For all its perceptiveness, Mao’s quip about guns failed to recognize this aspect of political ‘soft’ power, where collective notions of what was ‘legitimate’ or not would place real limits on what the Party could use those guns for. And Mao would quickly become very familiar with these limitations, as his career transitioned from political activist to frontier warlord.
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Thanks for watching the video, and please like, subscribe and hit the bell button! If you have any questions, I’ll be happy to answer them in the comments section. This is Part II of a 6-Part series; Part III will see the CCP become an independent military power in its own right, focusing on Mao’s experiences on Jinggangshan.
