China: A Political History, 1917-1980

Richard C. Thornton

• Publisher: Routledge
• Edition: 1
• Year: 2019
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Print ISBN:
  9780367168568
  9780367018696
• Subtopic: Asian Politics
• eBook ISBN:
  9780429724503
• Index: Politics & International Relations

It is the purpose of this work to provide an integrated analytical framework that will serve as a guide to further study of the vast and complex subject of Chinese Communist politics. The outpouring of materials from U.S., Soviet, Chinese Communist, and Chinese Nationalist sources in recent years has greatly enriched our fund of knowledge about China. For the historian of Chinese politics the new data have provided answers to hitherto unresolved problems and raised questions about seemingly settled issues. Although it is now possible to piece together the main outlines of the struggle for power in China, obviously no single volume can presume to encompass all aspects of the story.

PART I
The Origin and Development of Chinese Communism, 1917-1941

I
To Build a Communist Movement in China, 1917-1927

The final collapse of the Ch'ing dynasty in 1911 created a political vacuum in China, intensifying the struggle for hegemony over the mainland of Asia, which had begun in the nineteenth century. World War I further upset the balance of power in the Far East as European battlefields drew the attention and energies of the major powers away from Asia. The Russian revolution, too, forced a temporary withdrawal from Far Eastern affairs as the Bolsheviks battled in civil strife to secure their victorious coup d'état. Japan emerged from the cataclysmic events of war and revolution the most powerful and expansionistic state in Asia. Under these circumstances, Japan's drive to expand into China was as inevitable as were the efforts by the major powers to contain the Japanese.

The fledgling Soviet regime was most immediately and directly affected by the absence of a balance of power in Asia. Japanese dominance of China would place the Soviet Union at severe strategic disadvantage; therefore, after the revolution, Soviet leaders strove to repel the Japanese advance. The Bolshevik revolution dramatically altered the means and objectives of traditional Russian foreign relations. The concepts of class struggle, imperialism, and world revolution, as developed by Marx and Lenin, liberated Soviet leaders from the limiting effects of the nation-state concept. The Bolsheviks were not confined to traditional ways of conducting international relations. Their aims could be pursued on a worldwide front—by conventional diplomatic and unconventional revolutionary means—promoting and assisting what they termed the "class struggle" wherever it was deemed in their interest to do so.

The Soviet Union was, of course, still too weak to assist directly in the promotion of revolution. The Communist International, or Comintern, established in 1919, gave the young Communist regime greater operational flexibility. After initial expectation that revolution would erupt spontaneously had faded, Bolshevik leaders turned to the task of organizing the world revolution, Radical socialist groups all over the world had sprung up proclaiming allegiance to the Soviet state. To these groups the Soviet leaders, primarily through the organization of the Comintern, sought to give direction and cohesion, with the objective of creating organizations around the world responsive to the Soviet will.

To an extraordinary degree the Bolsheviks applied the experience and perspectives of their own revolutionary effort in Russia to the international scene. They did so in more than the commonly understood sense of extending on a world scale the Leninist party organization. A much deeper conception of the revolutionary process dominated Bolshevik attitudes and policies—a conception which actually had only a superficial relationship to the thoughts of Marx and Engels. That conception derived from the chain of events which unfolded in Russia from the dissolution of the monarchy through the Bolshevik coup to the consolidation of the regime during the civil war period. It was dvoevlastie, or dual power.¹

The Bolshevik Experience

In Russia after the fall of the monarchy in March 1917, two organs of power quickly formed: the Provisional Government, composed of former Duma members, and the soviets of workers', peasants', and soldiers' deputies, controlled by the Menshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. Over the course of the year, for various reasons, real power shifted from the Provisional Government to the soviets. Initially, the Bolsheviks participated in but did not control the soviets. By September, however, they managed to gain a majority in them and created their own military force, the Red Guard, which was the primary instrument employed in the coup of October 25 (November 7). Throughout, Lenin's strategy was to support the soviets versus the Provisional Government, even though his group did not initially control the soviets. He directed the Bolsheviks to work for control of the existing revolutionary alternative, the soviets, rather than create a third force. The soviet of workers', peasants', and soldiers' deputies was the symbol of revolution in Russia in 1917.

When Soviet leaders undertook to formulate revolutionary policy for the "colonial and semi-colonial east" their discussions reflected the dual power conception of their own revolutionary experience. The decisive phase of the policy-making process occurred at the Second Congress of the Comintern, in August 1920. The policy alternatives which emerged from the discussions were contained in the positions expressed by Lenin and M. N. Roy, an Indian Communist. Although both agreed on the elemental premise of dual power, each proposed a different course of action in response to the question: What were the immediate steps necessary to foster the growth of a revolutionary movement in China?

Roy held that China's chaotic conditions permitted the immediate establishment of an independent, openly Communist-led and controlled revolutionary movement on the basis of soviets. Lenin disagreed, arguing that the prerequisites for an independently based Communist movement were yet to be established in China, a fertile but unplowed ground. Time was the necessary condition to permit the incubation of the movement. It would require some time to educate the masses in the concepts of Marxism-Leninism and to organize a revolutionary "vanguard." Therefore, Lenin postulated, in the beginning it would be necessary to support an existing revolutionary grouping ("national revolutionaries," it was agreed to call them) that already commanded a substantial following.² To do otherwise would be to risk the total destruction of the movement before it could be firmly established, because the warlords, "bourgeois revolutionaries," and imperialists all would combine to attack the nascent Communist organization. Lenin's proposals prevailed, but Roy's position was duly noted, being included in the congress's published resolutions because it reflected a policy which could be followed if conditions evolved that were capable of supporting an independent movement. The policy followed toward China, until 1928, when circumstances forced a change, was Lenin's.

Once it had been decided to build a revolutionary movement by working through an existing "bourgeois" revolutionary organization, rather than by establishing an independent Communist movement based on "soviets," the next question was: which revolutionary grouping should the Soviet Union support? The criteria for selection were obvious. The most desirable "national revolutionary" organization to support would be one that was popular but vulnerable to penetration. Warlords Wu P'ei-fu and Feng Yii-hsiang both controlled independent armed forces in the north and northwest, but were less susceptible to penetration than a revolutionary organization in south China led by Sun Yat-sen. Sun's Kuomintang, or Nationalist party, was a highly popular, quite disorganized revolutionary group in Kwangtung province subsisting largely at the mercy of local warlord troops because it had virtually no military force of its own. Moreover, the Nationalists espoused an ideology, the San Min Chu Yi, or Three People's Principles, which was not incompatible with Bolshevism's minimum program of the bourgeois-democratic revolution.

The Soviet Union Aids the Kuomintang

After protracted negotiations, the Soviet Union entered into an agreement to aid the Kuomintang. This was the Sun-Joffe agreement of January 27, 1923.³ The decision to support the Kuomintang was fully in accordance with the larger objective of creating the conditions of dual power in China. The "revolutionary" Kuomintang would counterpose the "legal" government at Peking. The Soviet Union would assist the Kuomintang in its struggle for power while at the same time attempting to gain control of it from within. In this task the Chinese Communists played a crucial role.

Efforts toward the formation of a Chinese Communist Party were begun shortly after the establishment of the Communist International. It was part of the larger effort to give greater cohesion to the radical groupings around the globe clamoring for direction from the makers of the Russian revolution. Such basic organizational work would be undertaken in any case, regardless of the outcome of higher-level strategy discussions in the Soviet Union and Soviet negotiations with the various groupings inside China itself. When the Comintern's agent, Grigorii Voitinsky, arrived in China in the spring of 1920, the groundwork had already been laid and he quickly made contact with leaders of these groups, of whom Li Ta-chao and Ch'en Tu-hsiu were most notable. By the fall of that year, half a dozen small "Marxist study groups" were functioning in China, with a group in Japan and one in Paris composed of Chinese students abroad on work-study programs.

At the end of July 1921 (the exact date is unclear), the founding congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was held under the auspices of another Comintern agent, one Henry Sneevliet (alias Maring).⁴ The Chinese Communists immediately became active in the labor and youth fields, in agitation and propaganda, translating the works of Marx and Lenin, publishing pamphlets and other literature. These endeavors met with but a modicum of success, but some organizational cohesion was realized. As it became apparent that the Kuomintang (KMT) would be the vehicle for Soviet influence in China, the Chinese Communists, not entirely willingly, began to join the Kuomintang as individuals.⁵ When the Sun-Joffe agreement was signed in January 1923, the Chinese Communists were well on the road to forming a Bolshevik faction within the Nationalist party.

Soviet aid to the Kuomintang centered around two major interrelated programs, the political reorganization of the Nationalist party and the establishment of a national-revolutionary army. In October 1923 Michael Borodin arrived in Canton as the representative of the Soviet Government, and by the following January he had rewritten the party constitution, thoroughly restructuring the KMT along the lines of "democratic centralism." The First National Congress of the Kuomintang, held that month, officially concluded an alliance with the CCP. Soviet influence was especially strong at the Whampoa Military Academy, which had been established in April. Headed by General Galen, scores of Soviet military advisors and instructors drilled Chinese cadets in Soviet methods, using Soviet weapons, equipment, and supplies.⁶ In addition to actual military training, weapons instruction, tactics of attack and deployment, and so forth, the curriculum included political economy, the theory of imperialism, the Three People's Principles of Sun Yat-sen, the history of China, and the history of the revolutionary movement in the West.

The striking feature of the Soviet military aid program was the organization of a political commissar system in the army which created twin political and military command systems from the top to the company level, with the political commissar having the power to countermand orders of the military commander. Although Chiang Kai-shek was military commander of the Whampoa Academy, the Chinese Communists built a strong position for themselves in the political section. Chou En-lai, who as a student in Paris had been one of the founders of the French branch of the CCP, held appointment as head of the political section at the academy. At this stage, however, Chiang's position as commandant cannot be interpreted as an attempt to balance the Communists and non-Communists. Chiang had returned in January 1924 from several months' study in the Soviet Union. Undoubtedly his assignment as commandant of the military academy was looked upon by Moscow with pleasure. It suggested that persons willing to cooperate with the Soviets were in command of both the military and political sections at Whampoa.

Within the short space of a year the massive Soviet aid effort began to show signs of success. The first Soviet arms shipment arrived at Whampoa on October 7, 1924 and was shortly followed by others.⁷ By the end of the year the young Nationalist army disbanded the local militia and in the first eastern expedition early the next year routed regional forces which earlier had been troublesome,⁸ providing a secure base on which in July to establish a "National Government." Under these conditions the CCP, too, expanded by leaps and bounds, increasing its power within the KMT. From a total of about fifty in 1921, CCP membership exceeded twelve thousand by 1926.⁹ At the First Congress of the Kuomintang in January 1924, seven Communists were elected to the Central Committee and to several other key posts, including that of the Organization Department, which was headed by the Communist Tan P'ing-shan. The Second Congress of the Kuomintang, held in January 1926, saw the further extension of Communist power. Of thirty-six regular Central Committee members, seven were Communists, and seven other Communists were named as alternate members, including Mao Tse-tung, who also served briefly as head of the Propaganda Department. Most important, three of the nine members of the Central Executive Committee were Communists.¹⁰

Chiang Kai-shek and the Communists

Sun (and after his death on March 12, 1925, Chiang) was not oblivious to the growing Communist position in the Kuomintang, but was willing to take some risks because of the high returns accruing from Soviet aid. With Sun's death the principal candidates in the succession struggle were Chiang and Wang Ching-wei. Chiang's steps to secure his own position led him to oppose the Soviets because they had thrown their support to Wang. Chiang's first move was precipitated by an alleged Communist plot to kidnap him by taking him on board the gunboat Chungshan, anchored in the river near the Whampoa Military Academy. Instead, during the night of March 19-20, 1926, Chiang's men arrested the political commissars in the detachments under his command (about fifty Communists), detained all Soviet advisors in Canton, raided the headquarters of the Hong Kong Strike Committee, confiscating all arms found there, and disarmed the "Workers' Guard," a disguised CCP military formation. By the morning of the 20th, Chiang had stripped the Communists from power in military units under his command and had taken undisputed control over a significant part of the army, especially his own First Army Corps.

Borodin was out of the city when the coup took place. He had gone to the northwest to discuss with Feng Yü-hsiang the conditions under which the warlord would assist in the planned "Northern Campaign" against the Peking government. Upon his hasty return to Canton, Chiang confronted Borodin with a fait accompli, demanding that the northern campaign be initiated immediately. Borodin reluctantly agreed to continued Soviet aid for the campaign, in return for which Chiang released those whom he had arrested.¹¹ Borodin's reluctance to agree to the immediate beginning of the northern campaign is quite understandable, even apart from the events of March 20. The Communists had secured a strong position in the Kuomintang before March 20, but one not strong enough to be decisive in any showdown with Chiang. After the 20th, Borodin had even less reason to believe that the Communists could secure victory within the Kuomintang in an open contest with Chiang. Still, his choice was either to withdraw altogether, which would remove all possibility of having another opportunity to gain control, or to continue assistance in the hope that another opportunity would arise. So Borodin assented. Chiang, of course, preferred an early start for the campaign because a victory would give him access to alternate sources of funds and materiel from the businessmen and arsenals of the economically relatively advanced Yangtze River area. Such access would make him less dependent upon Soviet arms, money, and advisors.

Having gained acquiescence to begin the northern campaign immediately, Chiang discussed with Borodin the battle plan. Borodin urged a march on Wuhan, which would enable KMT forces to coordinate action with Feng Yü-hsiang; Chiang agreed. The mobilization order of July i reflected the Soviet proposal precisely. But while accepting this plan, Chiang supplemented it by sending his own First Army Corps, commanded by Ho Ying-ch'in, through the coastal provinces of Fukien and Chekiang toward Nanking and Shanghai.¹² On July 9, the National Government at Canton appointed Chiang commander-in-chief of all forces in the northern campaign. Three days later Nationalist forces captured Ch'angsha and within a month they destroyed the forces of Wu P'ei-fu, marking a successful first phase of the campaign. During the initial phase Borodin and the KMT Central Executive Committee accompanied Nationalist forces on the march toward Wuhan, while Chiang remained in Canton. It was not until Nationalist armies stood at the gate of Wuhan in August that Chiang went into the field to assume on-the-spot direction of the campaign.¹³

The struggle against the tri-city complex was long and arduous, and when Wuhan finally capitulated on October 10, the Communists, who had led strikes within the city and gained control of it, delivered it to the KMT Left. This, combined with military developments in the field, placed Chiang in a dangerous position. During the siege the warlord Sun Chuan-fang had shifted his forces in an attempt to attack the Nationalists from behind. Chiang's supply of arms was now imperiled, for the Communists were unlikely to supply Chiang's forces from the Hanyang arsenal in Wuhan, and if Sun Chuan-fang's moves were successful, arms could no longer be obtained from Canton. Against the heated protests of the Soviet advisors, Chiang decided to move trusted forces eastward toward Nanchang, Nanking, and Shanghai to break the encircling movement by Sun, and, in the process, to capture the arsenals at Nanking and Shanghai.¹⁴ After a difficult struggle Nanchang was captured in early November, making not only a figurative but a literal split in the KMT, with the Left at Wuhan and the Right at Nanchang. For the next few months each side maneuvered to win over the other, to no avail. Meanwhile, in Moscow the struggle between Stalin and Trotsky for Lenin's mantle was reaching its climax and China policy bec...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Part I The Origin and Development of Chinese Communism, 1917-1941
• Part II The American Experience in China, 1941-1949
• Part III The Sino-Soviet Relationship, 1949-1968
• Part IV The Evolution of U.S.-China Relations, 1969-1980
• Notes
• Suggested Readings
• Index