Page 294 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol IV

revolution—china 1595

there was more rapid growth of the modern sector of the Comintern, Lenin’s association of national Communist
economy, with factories and new social classes—Chinese parties, came to China in the early 1920s, they found
capitalists and a nascent industrial working class— eager converts to Marxism and social revolution. They
appearing in the coastal cities. Finally, of most direct also used financial, military, and political aid to persuade
import, there was the cultural iconoclasm of the New Sun Yat-sen to reorganize his Nationalist Party and launch
Culture movement, which blamed traditional culture and a renewed revolution against imperialism and war-
social habits (Confucianism was a prime target) for lordism. The newly formed Chinese Communist Party
China’s backwardness. The new universities, notably also followed Moscow’s guidance by accepting a subor-
those in Beijing, were at the center of this intellectual dinate position in a revolutionary united front with the
revolution, which emphasized “enlightenment” and a Nationalists.
broader concept of revolution. Thus the ideology of the second revolution was much
However, it was two external events that precipitated more anti-imperialist in its nationalism and, at least
the politicization of this cultural radicalism. One was the potentially, much more anticapitalist in its social and eco-
deeply felt disappointment with the Western democra- nomic policy, although Sun attempted not to alienate his
cies’ decision to let Japan keep control over China’s more conservative supporters in the Nationalist Party and
Shandong Province, which the Japanese had taken from the Comintern insisted that China was ripe only for a
Germany during World War I. To Chinese nationalists, bourgeois-nationalist, not a socialist, revolution.
this was a gross violation of Woodrow Wilson’s principle The events of 1927 confirmed the Comintern’s thesis
of self-determination.The Bolshevik revolution in Russia in an ironic way.After SunYat-sen’s premature death from
offered an alternative, anti-imperialist vision of national cancer in 1925, tensions grew between the radicals and
salvation to the pro-democratic capitalist path that had moderates in the revolutionary movement. In 1926
originally attracted Sun Yat-sen. When recruiters from Chiang Kai-shek (1887–1975), commander of the new
Nationalist Party army based
in Guangzhou (Canton),
launched the Northern Expedi-
tion (1926–1927) against the
warlord armies. After success-
fully liberating the Chang River
valley, including the modern
metropolis of Shanghai, he
broke with his radical allies,

The economic success
of Communist China has
rested to a significant
extent on the physical
labor of its people. Here
a work gang discusses
the day’s schedule.