Brothers, Comrades or Competitors? The Communist Party and Youth League in Shanghai, 1925–1927

Reviewed by: From Nothing to Nothing: The Chinese Communist Movement and Hong Kong, 1921-1936 Gordon Y. M. Chan (bio) Chan Lau Kit-Ching . From Nothing to Nothing: The Chinese Communist Movement and Hong Kong, 1921-1936. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999. ix, 342 pp. Hardcover $59.95, ISBN 0-312-22428-1. As Professor Chan Lau Kit-Ching aptly observes, Hong Kong's first encounter with Chinese Communism predates July 1, 1997. It has been involved in the Chinese Communist movement ever since the movement's inception in 1921, and for many years before the Communist takeover in 1949 Hong Kong had served as headquarters for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Guangdong. The examination of this previously neglected history promises to shed light on our knowledge of the revolutionary movement not just in the locality of Hong Kong but also in Guangdong and the Chinese nation as a whole (pp. 1-2). Based in Hong Kong, Chan enjoyed a favorable position while exploring this topic. Besides ready access to local archives, both government and private, the proximity of Hong Kong to Guangzhou allowed her to conduct archival research conveniently in the Guangdong Provincial Archives, which hosts the most comprehensive collection of pre-1949 Party documents on Guangdong (including Hong Kong) accessible to both Chinese and foreign historians.1 Furthermore, the Feng Ping Shan Library at the University of Hong Kong has an impressive and expanding acquisition of historical materials on the CCP in Guangdong, published [End Page 412] both publicly and internally in the People's Republic of China (PRC). These resources were within "easy reach" (p. 12) for Chan, who teaches at the University. Given Chan's obvious advantages, the outcome of her research is, however, disappointing. Notwithstanding some shrewd observations, this present work is marred by a marked unfamiliarity with the historiography of the Chinese Communist Revolution. A quick historiographical survey will refute Chan's belief that there is "a dearth of regional studies of the Chinese Communist Movement, especially in the English language" (p. 2). Over the last two decades, Western scholarship has produced intensive studies of the revolution in local contexts,2 although they are predominantly rural in focus. Chan's study could well be a valuable contribution to the underrepresentation of the Chinese Communist urban revolution in the recent literature. Unfortunately, her lack of awareness of many major issues at stake, coupled with her reluctance to discuss the possible implications of her own findings with other scholars in order to enhance our general understanding of the CCP's history, suggests otherwise. The structure of this book is simple. Its four main parts trace the history of the CCP in Hong Kong and Guangdong from 1921 to 1936. The story begins with the small Guangzhou Communism Group that was initiated, in 1921, by Chen Duxiu, together with three Guangdong students he had taught in Beijing who had been exposed to the "new thoughts" of the May Fourth Movement. About a year later, the Socialist Youth League, which was to be superseded by the Communist Youth League in 1925, was established in the province. This organization represented the earliest Communist presence in Hong Kong (the CCP was not founded in the colony until 1924). As a British colony, Hong Kong expectedly exhibited many political and socioeconomic features distinct from those of Guangdong. The awareness of their existence impelled many Hong Kong cadres to ask their superiors on the other side of the border for special treatment and greater autonomy in pursuing revolutionary activities. Several times Chan emphasizes that these appeals mark the initial conception of "one country two systems"—a principle that the PRC employed to resolve the colonial questions of Hong Kong and Macao. The inference drawn here is interesting. Readers should bear in mind, however, that the desire of the regional Party branches for more autonomy based on concerns about their peculiar local conditions was common in the early history of the CCP and was by no means unique to the Communists in Hong Kong.3 Before 1925, Communists had made little headway in Hong Kong; it took the Guangzhou-Hong Kong Strike/Boycott to bolster their position. Because of this...

NEWLY RELEASED SOVIET DOCUMENTS reveal that during the 1920s the Soviet Foreign Ministry East Asian specialists assigned growing significance to the British crown colony of Hong Kong. One may credibly argue that, at least in Britain's case, Cold War conflicts with the Soviet Union for influence over existing colonies, for example, Hong Kong, and in such developing countries as China, began in 1920. This article examines the interactions and issues generated by the collision of British Hong Kong, the Soviet Union and China during the 1920s. It investigates the extent of Soviet involvement in Hong Kong and South China, the reasons why the communist movement collapsed so drastically in both places by the late 1920s, divisions between Comintern and Soviet Foreign Ministry (MID) officials over Soviet policy toward the area, and Hong Kong's significance in Soviet policies toward both China and colonial

This chapter describes the contribution of Comintern officer Grigorii Naumovich Voitinsky to the Chinese Communists movement. The earnest prodding from the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and the Comintern on China to form a Communist Party is said to have begun when The Foreign Section of the Vladivostok Branch of the Far Eastern Bureau of the Russian Communist Party sent Voitinsky and his group to China in April 1920. There, Voitinsky's team met with Li Dazhaoon on several occasions in the library in the Red Chamber of Beijing University to discuss the organization of the Communist movement in China, particularly, they met to discuss the formation of the Chinese Communist Party.

The three periods, 1937-8, 1939-43, and 1944-5 were the principal phases of the Communist movement during the Sino-Japanese War. The outbreak of war transformed the political and military environment for all Chinese parties and forced the Chinese Communists into fundamental reconsideration of all important policies, of strategy and of tactics. The principal issues confronting Party Central during the first year and a half of the war were the following: The united front; Military strategy and tactics; and Leaders and leadership. At the outbreak of the war, Mao Tse-tung's position in the Chinese Communist movement was that of primus inter pares. The Communists used the euphemism ' friction' to describe their conflicts with the Nationalists during the middle years of the war. Chinese Communist Party and its principal armies expanded greatly during the Sino-Japanese War. The Japanese were preparing for their greatest military offensive in China since 1937-8, Operation Ichigo.

The early relationship between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Kuomintang (KMT) is regarded as an important issue in contemporary Chinese history, but the explanation of this phenomenon has differed for a long time. There is a major dispute in controversy in interpretations of this event. Some hold that the KMT ”accommodated Communists,” and the CCP insists that the Communists ”allied with the KMT,” The CCP realized that allying with the KMT was the correct choice at the time, and it was also in accordance with the Marxist-Leninist revolution strategy. Why dose the CCP say so? And what is the truth? This essay, from the perspective of the history of the Chinese Communist movement, attempts to understand what the CCP means by the ”historical conditions of the time?” Why was cooperation with the KMT the right historical choice? Is it possible or not to say, from the point of view of the CCP, that joining the KMT was ”the only choice?” In the 1920's, both parties were facing the difficulties of social mobilization, and there also existed the complementary interaction for revolutionary identification. In fact, the CCP leaders of that time clearly recognized that the only method which Dr. Sun Yet-sen would accept was that Communists could join the KMT as individuals, instead of as a group under the name of the CCP. On the other hand, because the Comintern was supporting both the CCP and the KMT, if the CCP did not join the KMT, the Comintern might have had to choose between the two parties. Since the danger of losing the support of the Comintern was much greater than that of joining the KMT, we may say that for the CCP, joining the KMT was in fact the one and only choice they had at the time.

1 HE history, present position and perspectives of the Communist movement in China are probably more beclouded by distortions and ignorance than any other topic of major world importance of the present day. Offhand one might find no grounds for surprise in this, for those who mortally hate and fear Communism have usually found solace in the most consciously wilful and often most ludicrous misrepresentations of the methods and activities of the Communist movement and the character and objectives of Communist thought. What complicates matters as regards the Chinese Communist movement is the fact that the fog which enshrouds it derives not only from the counter-propaganda of the Kuomintang, but in large measure from conditions within the Communist movement itself; from the propaganda of the Communist International and its apologists. There is naturally no mystery concerning the Kuomintang's opinion of the Communists, which has been forcibly expressed during these past eight years through the State police and the Kuomintang armies. That the Kuomintang regime has conducted this campaign of repression out of a deep consideration for its own interests no one will deny. But if we are to understand the nature of the Chinese Communist movement, its past blunders and its future perspectives, we must consider the Communist premise that salvation for China, the solution of its acute social and economic contradictions, lies only in the overthrow of the Kuomintang regime and its replacement by a Chinese soviet state. The Chinese Communist Party was born amid the growth of productive forces and the consequent social ferment which gave rise to the Chinese revolutionary movement in the years following the Great War. Rapidly maturing conditions for a radical change

Reviewed by: Zhou Enlai: The Enigma Behind Chairman Mao by Michael Dillon Yafeng Xia (bio) Michael Dillon. Zhou Enlai: The Enigma Behind Chairman Mao. London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2020. xi, 302 pp. Paperback $29.95, isbn 978-178-831-930-0. Among several books in English on the late Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai (who served from 1949 to 1976), two stand out. The first, by Barbara Barnouin and Yu Changgen, “explores the nature of” Zhou’s political behavior and assesses how such behavior affected twentieth-century Chinese history.1 The second, by former senior Chinese Communist Party (CCP) historian Gao Wenqian, which is based on classified party documents and personal interviews with high-level party officials, provides a revisionist account of Zhou Enlai. This volume is an abridged English translation of Gao’s Wannian Zhou Enlai (Zhou Enlai’s Later Years), which, having been adapted for Western readers, includes the stories of Zhou’s earlier years prior to the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) and elaborates the political context of the Cultural Revolution and the behavior of other actors (chapters 2–7, pp. 21–104).2 Relying primarily on Chinese sources supplemented with writings by Western journalists who visited CCP bases during the War of Resistance against Japan and foreign diplomats stationed in Beijing in the 1950s and the 1960s, Michael Dillon presents a sympathetic account of Zhou’s life from his birth in 1898 to his death in 1976 in twenty-three chapters. This is a standard biography of Zhou, covering his childhood, education, upbringing, personality, political activism, and revolutionary activities, presenting a thorough picture of Zhou the diplomat and statesman. Dillon argues, “This private side of Zhou Enlai is one [End Page 263] of the reasons why he became the world’s favorite Chinese Communist, but Zhou’s character was complex” (p. viii). According to Dillon, Zhou “was a statesman rather than simply a political operator and achieved much on the international stage” (p. ix). But scholars on Zhou Enlai and the history of the CCP will not be pleased, as the book does not add much to what they have already known about Zhou. To correctly understand and evaluate Zhou’s historical role in the Chinese Communist movement and the People’s Republic of China (PRC), it is crucial that we correctly understand Zhou’s relationship with Mao Zedong, the CCP Chairman and China’s paramount leader from 1949 to 1976. The reviewer cannot agree with several of Dillon’s major assertions, such as, “Zhou had remained personally close to Mao, never criticized him in public, and was himself never criticized openly :: : . Eventually he was attacked, viciously but covertly, by Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing” (p. 264). I feel that the author is unfamiliar with some of the new findings on Zhou Enlai that have been revealed in the last two decades. In the following paragraphs, I try to set the record straight. The relationship between Zhou Enlai and Mao Zedong has attracted much scholarly attention, and it is a key issue in our understanding of Chinese politics in the late 1960s and early 1970s. There are three popular models of the relationship: Zhou was a faithful follower of Mao; Zhou was a puppet of Mao; and Zhou was a moderating force on Mao, which is the version the official Chinese Communist historiography promotes.3 Dillon falls into the third model, as he writes, “During the Great Leap and particularly the Cultural Revolution, Zhou was in an impossible position. To survive, he said and did things he would have preferred not to. By surviving, he ensured a degree of damage limitation and protected many friends and colleagues” (p. 270). For years, Zhou was “the Beloved People’s Premier,” a sensitive and effective administrator and a moderating force in the PRC’s politics. He was good-looking, urbane, brilliant, and a master diplomat. He always valued the nation’s needs above his own. He managed to save hundreds of purged officials during the Cultural Revolution. But Gao Wenqian turns the tables on Zhou. According to Gao, Zhou was a tragic backroom schemer, a puppet of his master Mao, and a man who so rigorously observed a...

Malaysian Communist Party (MCP) Explaining its Early Political Orientation

The purpose of this study is an examination of the policies which were important in Mao Tse-tung’s rise to power in China and those policies which have been instrumental in keeping him in power. Documentary and secondary sources were consulted with secondary sources used only where insufficient documentary evidence existed or when they made a significant contribution to the subject. The study was confined primarily to the four volumes of the English translation of the Selected Works of Hao Tse-tung and the three publications of the American Consulate General at Hong Kong entitled, Survey of the China Mainland Press, Current Background and Extracts from China Mainland Magazines. The formation and foundation of Mao's political concepts consisted of his early education and contact with Communist ideologies, his theory of practice and the development of his materialist-dialectic philosophy. Mao's use of the peasants in the Communist movement in China and his class analysis of the rural areas were part of the basis for his agrarian program. Major policies aiding his program were land reform, collectivization and the commune system. Examination of labor's role in the Chinese Communist movement and the division of the classes of labor show Mao's concept that labor must lead the revolution in China. His policies, such as the use of communes and the Trade Union Law, give examples of his efforts to bring labor to the front in the revolutionary movement. Mao is apparently trying to transform the broad masses of the peasantry into an industrial proletariat in support of his belief that this will make the Communist movement more stable. Mao Tse-tung has made extensive use of the military forces both in resisting the Japanese and in overthrowing the Kuomintang and Chiang Kai-shek. The communes are designed along military lines to give him more authority in all areas. This would imply that Mao is depending extensively upon the military forces for his control of China. The early economic policies of Mao and the Chinese Communists were to proceed with all economic construction possible as well as essential and to concentrate on the agricultural and industrial programs in the formation of a sound economy. By the use of the commune system Mao hopes to build a strong economic basis for Communist China. Mao is attempting to control the education and culture of the Chinese people as closely as possible. His program is aimed at the young people with the New Democratic Youth League and the commune boarding schools designed to obtain the support of the youth. He also maintains that all art and literature should be adapted to fit the needs of the revolutionary movement. In the formation of the Chinese Communist government Mao maintains that two stages, new democracy and socialism are necessary to achieve Communism. More recent developments indicates Mao's belief that China is in the latter part of the socialist stage and ready to advance into an early phase of the true Communistic state. His program of consolidation of the masses and the elimination of feudalism is important to the achievement of his goals. The commune system and the Chinese Communists' international relations are also important in the political organization of Mao's government. He reserves the right to interpret Communism to fit the needs of China, or, more correctly, to satisfy his own desires.

A prominent issue in recent literature on the women's movement in China is the relationship between feminism and the revolutionary process. Discussion and debate are still ongoing concerning the legitimacy and compatibility of feminist goals such as equal social, economic and political rights for women as an interest group in relation to the political and economic objectives of the People's Republic of China. Much work remains to be done to explain the role of women in the Chinese Communist movement. This essay will examine the involvement of women in the Chinese Communist Party's major educational institutions for leadership personnel prior to 1945. A focus on the leadership question should not obscure the fact that feminist issues were often much more directly confronted at the grassroots level of Chinese society. Yet studies of the participation of women in responsible positions of authority are one indicator of the progress of female emancipation within the Chinese Communist movement.

While Mao Zedong might still be China's most famous communist, only scholars of the history of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have heard of Wang Jiaxiang and even they have never studied his career in detail. But recent Chinese publications show that there were very few CCP leaders who had such a tremendous impact on the Chinese communist movement in general and Mao Zedong's career in particular. This article will show that Wang not only supported Mao during the power struggles of the 1930s and helped convince Stalin that Mao should be acknowledged as the CCP's leader, but that Wang also played a decisive role in establishing Mao Zedong-Thought as the Party's guiding ideology. The release of numerous Party documents in the last five years also throws some light upon the relations and conflicts between Mao Zedong and other CCP leaders such as Wang Ming, Zhou Enlai, Zhang Guotao and Liu Shaoqi in the decade between the Long March and the Seventh Party Congress of 1945.

After the downfall of the communist system and the disintegration of the Soviet Union, a reevaluation and new interpretation of its history, as well as the history of the communist movement in general, began in the country. Efforts were made to comprehend what has happened in Russia and in the world after the collapse of the Russian monarchy and the October Revolution of 1917. In the process of reconstruction and reform that began in Russia in the late 1980s and early 1990s, many of the former state and Party central archives changed their previously strict rules and opened their doors. A large number of documents that were earlier restricted for study and publication were made available for scholars and researchers. Among them were numerous invaluable documents on the history of the world communist movement in the twentieth century. For those involved in research on the history of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the so-called Comintern Archive, which is incorporated into one of the central archives now opened, is very important. Several such archives exist in Moscow: the State Archive of the Russian Federation (the former Central State Archive of the October Revolution), the Russian State Military-History Archive, the Russian State Military Archive (the former Archive of the Soviet Army), the Archive of the Foreign Ministry of the Russian Federation, the Russian State Historical Archive, the Center for Preservation of the current documents, the Presidential or Kremlin Archive (both reorganized from the former Archives of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union [CPSU]), and so on. One of the most essential is the so-called Central Party Archive. In October 1991 it was reorganized into the Russian Center for Preservation and Study of Documents of Contemporary History (RCPSDCH). The Center has three departments: the Department of Social History of Europe, containing historical documents and materials dating from the beginning of the nineteenth century to its end, including papers of Marx and Engels; the Department of Political History of Russia, with a section that includes Lenin's documents and the personal files of other communist leaders; and the Department of International Labor and the Communist Movement, including a section on the Communist International (Comintern) and the Communist Information Bureau (Cominform). The Center is now the largest depository of documents on the international communist movement, as well as on the history of the CPSU. It has preserved more than 1.5 million written documents, 9,300 photographic materials, and 1,600 meters of movie tapes gathered in 551 collections.

Introduction. The Communist Party of China and the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (since 1952, the League of Communists of Yugoslavia) are parties that came to power in the PRC and the FPRY respectively as a result of World War II, national liberation and social revolutions (1945-1949 and 1945, respectively. The history of the relationship between these two actors of the international communist movement developed in a very complex and contradictory way. This article examines the dynamics of inter-state and inter-party relations between the PRC and Yugoslavia. The scale and nature of interaction between these two parties and states was in close interrelation with their relations with the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (since 1952 - the CPSU) and the USSR. Materials and methods. The article analyses official party documents of the CPC, CPSU/UKY and CPSU, transcripts of meetings of leaders of these parties and states, minutes of meetings and reports of the Cominfom, party newspapers and magazines, personal notes of party leaders, as well as literature on the problems of relations between the CPC/ PRC, UKY/Yugoslavia and the CPSU/USSR. The authors used the following methods in their research: narrative, reconstruction, historical-genetic, comparative-historical and historicaltypological methods. Analysis. The International Communist Movement (hereinafter - ICM) unites communist parties, organizations and movements all over the world, striving to build a society based on socialist principles and, ultimately, to transition to communism. The communist movement was formed on the basis of the teachings of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and Vladimir Lenin, and later developed with the influence of leaders and, over time, becoming theorists such as Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong and Josip Broz Tito. After the October Revolution, in 1919 the Comintern, an organization uniting the communist parties of various countries, was established in Russia and existed until 1943. It was succeeded by Cominform (Information Bureau of Communist and Workers' Parties), which operated from 1943- 1956 and united the most influential communist parties in Europe. CominformincludedtheAll-UnionCommunistPartyofBolsheviks, as well as the Communist Parties of Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, France and Italy. The central printed organ of the organisation was the newspaper ‘For lasting peace, for people's democracy!’, initially published in Belgrade, and after the beginning of the conflict between the USSR and Yugoslavia in 1948, in Bucharest. One of the main tasks of the Cominform was to combat ideological deviations within the communist movement. The decision to dissolve Cominform was taken on 17 April 1956. The official reason was the desire of the USSR and its allies to strengthen international communist cooperation on a bilateral basis rather than through a centralized structure. However, the real reason was the gradual decentralization of the ICD, which began after the 20th Congress of the CPSU in 1956. After the abolition of the Cominform, the ICD functioned at the level of meetings of communist and workers' parties - world, pan-European and socialist countries. Results. Based on the results of the study, the authors concluded that in 1945-1957 the relations between the ruling communist parties underwent a complex evolution.

Since Xi Jinping entered his third term, various memorials dedicated to the Chinese Communist Party(CCP) and the Communist Revolution throughout China have been regressing from their normal roles and functions. The Xiangshan Revolutionary Memorial Hall near Beijing, as of late 2019, is one such example. An analysis of the various documents, artifacts, and their layout, the museum's founding principles, exhibition content, and intentions revealed several distinct characteristics. First, the Xiangshan Revolutionary Memorial Hall lacks any blueprint for future development, philosophy, or national vision beyond the Communist Party's rule. Second, while Mao Zedong is portrayed as a great revolutionary leader who defeated the “comprador capitalist clique” and ended the “feudal” era, Xi Jinping is presented as a leader who, along with the CCP, must realize the “Chinese Dream”, demonstrating his legitimacy and historical legitimacy. Third, the negative aspects of modern Chinese history and the Chinese Communist Revolution are absent, and only the positive aspects of the CCP are highlighted. In an effort to emphasize the historical inevitability and legitimacy of the planned CCP rule, the uniqueness of the victory of the CCP Revolution, and the necessity of Xi Jinping’s greatness and leadership, too many data and facts are distorted, altered, omitted, or concealed. Fourth, the CCP employs a traditional unification strategy and tactic: anti-Kuomintang, anti-Chiang Kai-shek, anti-Japan, and anti-Americanism are used as political propaganda tools and means to unite and confront the United States by fostering patriotism and nationalism among the Chinese people. The Xiangshan Revolutionary Memorial Hall confirms that the history taught and propagated by the CCP is uniform, excluding or blocking diverse historical interpretations while enforcing the uniqueness and uniformity of historical facts. In other words, the seeds of Xi Jinping’s personality cult are sprouting. This violates the CCP’s principle of “prohibiting personality cults.” How persuasive will such an exhibition filled with distortions and exaggerations, emphasizing the inevitability of the advent of a communist society, the legitimacy of Chinese rule, and the exaltation of Xi Jinping’s greatness be to the people dissatisfied with the CCP’s one-party dictatorship and Xi Jinping’s dictatorship? If the Chinese people repeatedly see this kind of one-sided propaganda and publicity about Xi Jinping, they will ultimately develop hostility toward the Kuomintang, anti-Japanese and anti-American sentiments, and a one-sided belief in China’s greatness. As I have argued many times before, it is regrettable that Xi Jinping’s China is running in a direction that runs counter to the flow of history. It will be interesting to see how the exhibition at the Xiangshan Revolutionary Memorial Hall will change once Xi Jinping steps down from power.

xvi, 411 p. : ill., maps. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number.