Why did the Communist Party emerge, grow and eventually seize power in contemporary China? The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has constantly instilled into the Chinese people’s minds that history has chosen the CCP, that the people have chosen the CCP, and that “without the CCP there would be no new China.”
Did the Chinese people choose the Communist Party? Or, did the Communist Party gang up and force Chinese people to accept it? We must find answers from history.
From the late Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) to the early years of the Republic period (1911-1949), China experienced tremendous external shocks and extensive attempts at internal reform. Chinese society was in painful turmoil. Many intellectuals and people with lofty ideals wanted to save the country and its people. However, in the midst of national crisis and chaos, their sense of anxiety grew, leading first to disappointment and then complete despair. Like people who turn to any available doctor in times of illness, they looked outside China for their solutions. When the British and French styles failed, they switched to the Russian method. They did not hesitate to prescribe the most extreme remedy for the illness, in the hope that China would quickly become strong.
The May Fourth movement in 1919 was a thorough reflection of this despair. Some people advocated anarchism; others proposed to overthrow the doctrines of Confucius, and still others suggested bringing in foreign culture. In short, they rejected Chinese traditional culture and opposed the Confucian doctrine of the middle way. Eager to take a shortcut, they advocated the destruction of everything traditional. On the one hand, the radical members among them did not have a way to serve the country, and on the other hand, they believed firmly in their own ideals and wills. They felt the world was hopeless, believing only they had found the right approach to China’s future development. They were passionate for revolution and violence.
Different experiences led to different theories, principles and paths among various groups. Eventually a group of people met Communist Party representatives from the Soviet Union. The idea of “using violent revolution to seize political power,” lifted from the theory of Marxism-Leninism, appealed to their anxious minds and conformed to their desire to save the country and its people. They immediately formed an alliance with each other. They introduced communism, a completely foreign concept, into China. Altogether thirteen representatives attended the first CCP Congress. Later, some of them died, some ran away, and some, betraying the CCP or becoming opportunistic, worked for the occupying Japanese and became traitors to China, or quit the CCP and joined the Kuomintang (the Nationalist Party, hereafter referred to as KMT). By 1949 when the CCP came to power in China, only Mao Zedong (also spelled Mao Tse Tung) and Dong Biwu still remained of the original thirteen Party members. It is unclear whether the founders of the CCP were aware at the time that the “deity” they had introduced from the Soviet Union was in reality an evil specter, and the remedy they sought for strengthening the nation was actually a deadly poison.
The All-Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik) (later known as the Communist Party of the Soviet Union), having just won its revolution, was obsessed with ambition for China. In 1920, the Soviet Union established the Far Eastern Bureau, a branch of the Third Communist International, or the Comintern. It was responsible for the establishment of a Communist party in China and other countries. Sumiltsky was the head of the bureau, and Grigori Voitinsky was a deputy manager. They began to prepare for the establishment of the CCP with Chen Duxiao and others. The proposal they submitted to the Far Eastern Bureau in June 1921 to establish a China branch of the Comintern indicated that the CCP was a branch led by the Comintern. On July 23, 1921, under the help of Nikolsky and Maring from the Far East Bureau, the CCP was officially formed.
The Communist movement was then introduced to China as an experiment, and the CCP has set itself above all, conquering all in its path, thereby bringing endless catastrophe to China.
Stay tune, to find out more the inherited traits of CCP.
No comments:
Post a Comment