Chinese Communist Party

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The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) emerged out of the infiltration of Western ideas into China at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century in the environment of the May Fourth Movement (1917–1921), in which Chinese students and intellectuals protested the injustices of the Treaty of Versailles. (The treaty ceded Chinese territory to Japan despite China's having participated in the war on the side of the allies; the actual demonstrations against it took place on 4 May 1919.) The founders of the CCP, Chen Duxiu (1879–1942), and Li Dazhao (1888–1927), were both then at Peking (Beijing) University.

Chen left the university after his arrest for leading street demonstrations. Like many others, he became increasingly radicalized. During this period, Li, the more active Marxist, organized various study groups that included later leaders of the CCP, including Mao Zedong (1893–1976). By this time agents of Comintern, the international Communist organization dominated by the Soviet Union, were actively agitating for the formation of a Chinese Communist Party.

This step was finally taken in July 1921. The first party congress was held in secret at a girls' boarding house in Shanghai. Chen and Li were not among the twelve organizing delegates, but their views dominated. Chen favored revolution based upon urban workers, while Li wished to establish a more popular base for revolution, an idea later taken up by Mao.

The period between 1921 and 1927 was traumatic for the CCP. The Comintern was willing to sacrifice CCP interests to those of Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist Party (Guomindang), with whom the Comintern compelled the CCP to work. The CCP also found it difficult to foment the urban, workers' revolution desired by Chen in China, as the vast majority of China's population was engaged in agriculture.

In 1927, the Nationalists, who leaned more to the right after the Northern Expedition (a campaign against regional warlords), turned against their CCP allies, more or less destroying its urban base. The CCP had no choice but to regroup in rural areas in south and central China.

Between 1927 and 1934, the CCP fought a losing battle against the well-armed Nationalist army. By 1934, its very survival was at stake, and surviving CCP armies began the trek to the north, then outside direct Nationalist influence, known as the Long March. It was completed in 1936. CCP forces regrouped in a stronghold in Shaanxi. By this time, Mao, by no means dominant before, had emerged as the CCP's leader.

By 1936 the political situation in China had changed dramatically. Japanese aggression had become overt after the Manchurian Incident of 1931, in which the Japanese created an excuse to attack Chinese troops in Manchuria. Chiang Kai-shek (1887–1975) would have preferred to consolidate his regime and to suppress enemies, including the CCP, but he was propelled into a war with Japan by an outraged public. It was disaster. He lost their capital and most other important Chinese cities, and had to retreat to impotence and isolation in Sichuan.

The CCP, by contrast, safely out of the main line of Japanese advance, could nurture its strength. When the Allied victory in World War II came, the CCP quickly expanded its influence in the chaos following the Japanese surrender. It acquired large stocks of arms through its own efforts and with the help of the Soviets.

The United States wanted the Nationalists to negotiate with their CCP enemies, but the Nationalists trusted in their own power to win any civil war. They proved surprisingly inept militarily, while mismanagement of the economy lost them support. In 1949 they retreated to Taiwan and by 1950 held little else.

The People's Republic of China was proclaimed on 1 October 1949, under Mao's control. The next two decades were a period of national recovery and experimentation. Mao remained true to his populist roots, and radical policy was often the result. The most important of Mao's initiatives were the Great Leap Forward (1958–1960), a failed effort to industrialize China on the village level, and the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), in which gangs of youth terrorized their elders and those in positions of authority, armed with the words of Mao. Only the behind-the-scenes guidance of Premier Zhou Enlai (1898–1976) prevented a total meltdown. The Great Leap Forward actually set China's industrial production back; it also cause widespread famine. During the same period, China broke with its Soviet ally.

In the waning years of the Cultural Revolution, the CCP had to reinvent itself, to become less radical, less isolated internationally, and more approachable to the majority of Chinese. As part of this change, the CCP allowed a normalization of relations with the United States after 1971. That same year, party insiders eliminated Mao's chosen successor, Lin Biao (1908–1971). Although radical leaders of the Cultural Revolution, led by Mao's wife, Jiang Qing (1914–1991), staged a comeback in 1973, the tide turned decisively against them after Mao's death. In 1977, the Gang of Four (as the leaders were known) was ousted and brought to trial. As their influence declined, Deng Xiaoping (1904–1997), previously purged for his perceived capitalist tendencies by Mao's faction, remerged as the dominant force in the party.

After 1977 the CCP decisively rejected radicalism and pushed economic liberalization. This has resulted in rapid growth and the emergence of a new class of wealthy Chinese, whose interests are now intertwined with those of the party. Most important, the party has survived the collapse of Soviet Communism, although at the cost of a frightful massacre of "democratic" elements in 1989. Successions are now orderly rather than through power struggle, and there has been no repetition of the kind of events surrounding the down-fall of Lin Biao or the trial of the Gang of Four.

In addition to its success with the economy, the party has achieved a number of foreign-policy successes. They include the 1997 return of Hong Kong to China, followed by that of Macao, and China's assertiveness, against the United States in particular, based upon a rapidly modernizing military.

Nonetheless, the future is clouded. The party remains a geriarchy, staid, conservative, and northern based. That the future may lie elsewhere, with the maritime region of the southwest, and an associated Taiwan and Singapore, and their wider economic community, may not be clear to those in power. Nor is the party actively considering the costs of militarism, perhaps because it is not in the interests of those driving the economy. Although the CCP has changed its spots repeatedly, it may lack the ability to respond to the new world of the twenty-first century. Some old ideas may be too thoroughly engrained within it.

Hsñ, Immanuel C. Y. (2000) The Rise of Modern China. 6th ed. New York: Oxford University Press.

Nathan, Andrew J., and Perry Link, eds. (2001) The Tiananmen Papers. New York: Public Affairs.

Snow, Edgar. (1938) Red Star Over China. New York: Grove Press.