Sharing a similar fate: the historical process of the Korean Communists’ merger with the Chinese Communist Party (1919–1936)

The political in North Korea has been characterized as a Dominant Party-State System. Since mid-1980s, however, its political has displayed two interesting aspects. Formally, broad System has been maintained; in practice, however, Workers' Party of Korea, Korean People's Army, and government have come to acquire respectively different and considerably strengthened roles. Under this new regime, Kim Jong Il (Suryong) directly rules over party, government, and military. Meanwhile, political-ideological base, military base, and economic base are administered respectively by party, army, and government. Interestingly, while power of party still overwhelms that of military and government, party's means of influence has changed from giving direct orders to providing provisions or encouraging policy outlines. Key words: North Korea, Communist parties, East Asian politics Introduction The political in Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK or North Korea) has experienced significant changes since death of its longstanding leader, Kim Il Sung, in 1994. No plenary meeting of party's Central Committee (PCC), highest leadership body of North Korea, has been held since December 1993. In addition, two significant political institutions, presidency and Central People's Committee (CPC), were abolished by constitutional revision that took place in 1998. Specifically, abolishment of CPC weakened consulting channel between Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) and government. These changes, in turn, reinforced roles of cabinet and Korean People's Army (KPA), both previously controlled by WPK. In other words, under rule of Kim Jong Il, the cabinet responsibility system on which administrative-economic apparatus is concentrated, is actively operating, and politics, or Songun policy, has become central theme of North Korean politics. This makes KPA driving force of economic development and national security. Previous literature on political in North Korea has shown different findings regarding Suryong (great leader) system, Suryong's direct rule, party-government relations and party-military relations in eras of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. Specifically, most studies are divided into two perspectives regarding core issue of socialist political systems, party control. Some scholars argue that similar to era of Kim Il Sung's rule, WPK under Kim Jong Il exercises guidance and leadership over government and KPA. This is so even though he has bolstered status of KPA and autonomy of cabinet.1 Meanwhile, other scholars point out that because of development of military-first politics and cabinet responsibility system, previous relations among party, government, and KPA have significantly changed, or at very least, formerly direct control WPK once had has been weakened during Kim Jong Il era.2 If so, why were previous studies on socialist political systems concentrated on relations between communist party, government, and military? According to Schurmann's seminal study,3 socialist political systems, especially Chinese communist in 1960s, can be analyzed by focusing on hierarchical structure among Chinese Communist Party, People's Liberation Army, and government. That is, power structure in socialist countries is characterized by communistparty dominant pattern within a strict power triangle that consists of communist party, government, and military.4 Thus, Schurmann's study implies that for analysis of socialist political systems, we need to scrutinize identity of supreme power and its relations with other actors. In this regard, North Korea is not so different from other socialist political systems. …

The ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) abolished its total ban on religious activities in 1982. However, the distrust that the CCP feels for religions remains obvious today, and the religious restrictions in contemporary China remain tight. Conventional wisdom tells us that the official atheist ideology of Marxism-Leninism is the main reason behind the CCP’s distrust for, and restriction of, religion. However, taking a historical institutionalist perspective, this paper argues that the religious restrictions in contemporary China are in fact rooted in the fierce political struggles of the country’s two major revolutions in the first half of the twentieth century. Without the support of religious groups, the Nationalist Republicans would have found it difficult to survive and succeed in overthrowing the Qing Dynasty during the Chinese Republican Revolution in the first decade of the twentieth century. Likewise, without cooperating with a wide range of religious groups, the CCP would have struggled to defeat the Nationalist regime and the Japanese invaders in the Chinese Communist Revolution between 1920s and 1940s. Thanks to the collaborations and struggles with various religious groups during the two revolutions which lead to its eventual ascent to power, the CCP thoroughly understands the organisational strength and mobilising capability embedded within religious groups. The tight restrictions on religious affairs in contemporary China is therefore likely to stem from the CCP’s worry that prospective competitors could mobilise religious groups to challenge its rule through launching, supporting, or sponsoring collective actions.

Reviewed by: Mao's Generals: Chen Yi and the New Fourth Army Peter O. Hefron (bio) Lanxin Xiang . Mao's Generals: Chen Yi and the New Fourth Army. Lanham, New York, and Oxford: University Press of America, 1998. xi, 223 pp. Hardcover $37.50, ISBN 0-7618-1129-x. Lanxin Xiang, Professor of International History at Geneva's Graduate Institute of International Studies, has written a well-researched work that is part biography of Chen Yi and part military history of the Chinese Communist Revolution. It traces Chen Yi's career from radical student to founder and commander of the New Fourth Army (NFA). It is also a military history of the NFA, dealing especially with its pivotal role in destroying the main power base of the Guomindang (GMD) in central and eastern China during the 1947-1949 period. One of the book's strengths is Xiang's use of his interviews with surviving members of the NFA as well as his utilization of newly published primary sources, mainly from the People's Republic of China (PRC). The history of the Eighth Route Army, created by the veterans of the Long March, is well known. Xiang provides us with an in-depth look at what happened to those scattered Chinese Communist Party (CCP) guerrilla units in Southeast China that the CCP Central Committee left behind at the start of the Long March. From these units and their commanders arose the New Fourth Army. He traces the evolution and unification of these units during their three years of isolation from Mao Zedong's Yan'an headquarters. Communications were reestablished in late 1937, parallel to the creation of the second CCP-GMD United Front. From the surviving thirteen thousand "Red Bandits," Mao in Yan'an, Chen Yi and his guerrilla cohorts in southern China, and the Guomindang fashioned the New Fourth Army from October to December 1937. Xiang gives a detailed analysis of the chief battles of the NFA as well as of the controversies between Mao and the NFA leadership over correct military and political strategy. The NFA soon became a microcosm for the factional rivalry between Mao's real and imagined enemies within the CCP, ranging from the pro Stalinist Comintern group to potential rightists among CCP military officers. The NFA ostensibly harbored both varieties. The NFA also served as the arena for strategic debates between Mao and the NFA's leadership, soon personified by Chen Yi and a number of his generals such as Su Yu, Ye Fei, and Huang Kechang. At issue were three matters: Should the CCP continue to rely on Mao's guerrilla warfare strategy or escalate permanently to conventional mobile warfare using regular CCP troop units? By 1947, mobile warfare was favored and successfully practiced by the NFA. To do otherwise, Chen felt, would extend the civil war by allowing the GMD to dominate the battlefield. [End Page 248] Should the NFA follow Mao's periodic desire to rebuild the CCP guerrilla bases south of the Yangzi River or follow Chen's strategy of taking the revolution to the GMD's strategic heartland north of the Yangzi River? Xiang discusses this seesaw debate in detail. Finally, should the CCP's chief goal for the second CCP-GMD United Front be to fight the Japanese invaders or to use it as cover for the CCP to expand its territory, troops, and population at the expense of the GMD? Unlike the other two issues, this latter debate was easily won by Mao. Soon most of the NFA leadership accepted Mao's view that the anti-Japanese war was secondary. CCP expansion, even at the risk of restarting the civil war, was necessary if Mao was to defeat the GMD government after the Western Allies defeated Japan. Xiang includes an analysis of Mao's pre-1949 purges of his CCP opponents, most notably the anti-Bolshevik purge of the early 1930s and the 1942 rectification of both Rightists and Cominternists. Mao's egocentric determination to become "China's Stalin" through periodic purges, regardless of their impact on the revolution, is a forerunner of post-1949 Maoist excesses. Inevitably these issues focus the author's attention on the credibility...

The generally accepted view of the first United Front in China was that the Communist International (Comintern) initially proposed this policy in 1920, at approximately the same time that Marxist study groups were being formed into a communist party in China.' According to this view, an active policy of alliance between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Guomindang (GMD) began in 1922, as a result of the intervention of Henk Sneevliet (Maring), an agent of the Moscow-based Comintern. These dates assume the existence of the CCP prior to the Comintern's adoption of the United Front, an interpretation that most recently published Western histories of the CCP accept.2 Not surprising, historians from the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the former USSR also subscribe to this view because to do otherwise would devalue the CCP's role.3 However, this traditional view that the CCP was integral to the United Front is contradicted by a wealth of evidence showing that the Bolsheviks proposed this policy almost three years before the CCP was formed. In fact, Soviet officials first promoted an alliance with Sun Zhongshan (Sun Yat-sen) during summer 1918 before there were any communists in China at all. The Comintern followed suit during spring 1919, more than a year before Marxist study groups were formed. Finally, with the Comintern's backing, in January 1921 Chen

After 22 years of conflict with its nationalist rivals domestically and Japanese invaders, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) took control of Beijing in January 1949 and Shanghai in May the same year. By 1950 the Guomindang (Nationalist) forces only retained control of the island of Taiwan. Though CCP leader Mao Zedong told the Chinese people that they had stood up, the country the CCP now controlled in their name was economically backward, predominantly agrarian and contained considerable opposition to communist rule. Victory returned the CCP to the cities they had been forced to abandon following repression by the nationalists. CCP leaders now had to return the revolution to the cities, build an industrial base and a working class whom they were supposed to represent, create new political institutions and train officials to staff them. Pockets of opposition remained from troops loyal to the nationalists with whom the CCP had fought two civil wars (1927– 37 and 1945–49, see Box 2.1) and there was armed fighting with Tibetans who resisted incorporation into the PRC. In addition many, especially in the cities and the south, were suspicious of the CCP’s motives and intent. The economy had suffered badly from the dislocation and destruction not only of the civil wars but also the Japanese invasion (1937–45), and the country was suffering from rampant inflation.

After the Second World War, a bipolar world, known as the Cold War Era, has been clearly formed between the Western Bloc and Communist Bloc while the United States and the Soviet Union at the peak on each side. In Eastern Europe, the United States was restrained and felt helpless about Soviet expansion in this area with the perception of Yalta system. On the other hand, in Asia, with the breakdown of talks, an all-out war resumed. A Chinese civil war fought between Kuomintang (also as KMT or Chinese National Party) and Chinese Communist Party (CCP). At the end of 1948, KMT has occupied the inferior position. In the early period of 1949, CCP forces crossed the Yangtze River and successfully captured Nanking, the capital of KMT’s Republic of China (PRC) government. On October 1, 1949, Mao Zedong proclaimed the People’s Republic of China (PRC) with its capital at Beiping, which was renamed Beijing. Chiang Kai-shek and millions of Nationalist Chinese retreated from mainland China to the island of Taiwan. Confronted with the CCP takeover of mainland China, the United States came to reformulate its China Policy which later marked a turning point in Sino-American relationship during the period of 1949 to the middle 1950. In June 1948, the leader of Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia, Josip Broz Tito, was officially denounced and his party, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY), was ejected as a member of the Cominform by the Soviet Union. Since the West branded Tito a Soviet puppet for his loyalty and constancy of faith to Stalinism, the Tito-Stalin Split presented a whole new realm of possibilities to the United States for its dilemma in china—“Chinese Titoism.” With the influence of Stilwell Incident over Sino-American relationship and the facts of Tito-Stalin Split, Truman made an about-face change to U.S. China Policy in 1949. By the early 1949, the Truman Administration has already been making plans to diverge from Chiang and his KMT such as the publication of China White Paper; at the same time, Truman Administration keeping making chances to have conversations with the CCP. By meeting and negotiating with the CCP officials, Truman Administration attempted to disunite Communist China and the Soviet Union, expected Mao to be the “Asian Tito,” and then Communist China can joint forces with the United States to fight against the Soviet Union, especially in the Asia-Pacific region. Until the outbreak of Korean War in June 1950, the United States finally realized that what it faced is hostile china along with the Sino-Soviet partnership. By applying Graham T. Allison’s three decision-making models, namely, the Rational Actor Model (RAM), the Organizational Behavior Model (OBM), and the Governmental Politics Model (GPM) as the theoretical structure and basis, the thesis would step by step explore the decision-making process of Truman Administration in engaging China to counter the threat from the Soviet Union during the period of 1949 to the middle 1950 through the perspectives of the rational assessment and choice on national interest, struggles between/among organizations based on different target and organizational culture, and pulling, hauling and bargaining games among relative bureaucrats. In addition, the thesis also applied the principles from Alexander L. George’s book, Presidential Decision-making in Foreign Policy, to aim at examining how President Truman’s, who has the final say, character, personality, value and world views made effect in the decision-making process of the target case study. In the process of theory confirming, the thesis discovered that by the period of transformation of Chinese regimes in 1949, the Tito-Stalin Split of 1948 presented the United States a new inspiration for the Communist World, that is, the Eastern Bloc is not a rigid “Iron Curtain.” Truman Administration considered that Titoism may set its roots upon China, the Yugoslav-Soviet Conflict could be a replay situation that occurred in mainland China, and both would put the strategic thought—Engaging China to counter the Soviet Threat—into practice. Nevertheless, from the historical perspectives, this kind of strategic thought seemed over-optimistic, which did not conform to fully rational considerations. However, with regard to the background of the early Cold War Era and the suspicion between the Truman Administration and KMT, the alternative that the United States took reflected the principles of “bounded rationality model.” As a result, by examining the decision-making process of Truman Administration in engaging China to counter the threat from the Soviet Union during the period of 1949 to the middle 1950, what the thesis explored not only the facts about the Sino-American relationship in this period, but also the continuity and change of Truman’s China Policy along with its cause and effect.

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.

To call Hitler evil may well be true and morally satisfying. But it explains nothing. Ian Kershaw, Hitler: 1936–1945 Nemesis , p. xvii. On November 29, 1937, a Soviet plane landed in a blizzard in Yan'an, the communist capital in the northern Shaanxi wasteland. On board were Peter Vladimirov, Moscow's new representative to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP); Kang Sheng, the CCP Central Committee's representative to the Communist International (Comintern), who would go down in history as the Chinese communists' most loathsome spy chief; and Chen Yun, the architect of the post-Mao economic reforms and at the time the Central Committee's representative to Xinjiang warlord Sheng Shicai. The most important passenger was Wang Ming (alias Chen Shaoyu), who had been in Moscow since 1931. The mission's arrival meant the beginning of a struggle for power between Wang, representing an internationalist Moscow-oriented tendency in the CCP, and Mao Zedong, calling for the Sinification of revolution. Mao would prevail before a year had passed, but he focused a good part of his attention in the remaining years of World War II on wringing Wang Ming–type communist cosmopolitanism from the CCP. World War I had generated powerful opportunities for globalizing forces because its horrors had led to widespread disenchantment with bourgeois-dominated nation-states. World War II shut down these opportunities while arming national liberation movements. In transforming the CCP during the 1937–45 Sino-Japanese War from a defeated, demoralized, and divided party oriented toward Moscow into an organization with a strong ethos, a clear sense of a separate Chinese identity, and a powerful army, Mao domesticated, militarized, and nationalized revolution in China.

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.

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

The communist revolution of China was led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which was founded in 1921 in the wake of the May Fourth movement. The CCP began as a very small Marxist‐inspired left‐wing intellectual club, with little political influence prior to its alliance with the Chinese Nationalist Party (GMD) in 1924. The GMD were motivated to ally with the CCP in order to obtain support from the Soviet Union in their fight with the northern warlords. With the help of the CCP, the GMD was remodeled from a loose organization into a Leninist party, and the GMD also received financial and other support from the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, the CCP also developed quickly by infiltrating the GMD‐controlled army and by expanding its organizations in the urban and rural areas of southern China. While the alliance between the GMD and CCP brought great success for both parties, tensions also grew as the parties pursued different agendas. After the initial military success against the warlords during the Northern Expedition, a growing number of the GMD's leaders and generals became very unhappy about the CCP's infiltration into the GMD‐controlled army as well as about the CCP's radical property redistribution policy, which was implemented in the territories recently occupied by the GMD's Northern Expedition army. As a result they no longer wanted to share power with the CCP. In early 1927, shortly after Northern Expedition troops occupied Shanghai, the GMD started to purge the CCP‐controlled organizations in the city and labeled the CCP an illegal organization. The purge soon spread, with hundreds of thousands of CCP members and their sympathizers arrested and killed. In response, the CCP staged several military uprisings in late 1927 in places where they had strong influence. While all these uprisings were easily suppressed by the GMD army, the surviving members of the CCP were able to retreat to mountain areas and conduct guerrilla warfare.

The communist revolution of China was led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which was founded in 1921 in the wake of the May Fourth movement. The CCP began as a very small Marxist‐inspired left‐wing intellectual club, with little political influence prior to its alliance with the Chinese Nationalist Party (GMD) in 1924. The GMD were motivated to ally with the CCP in order to obtain support from the Soviet Union in their fight with the northern warlords. With the help of the CCP, the GMD was remodeled from a loose organization into a Leninist party, and the GMD also received financial and other support from the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, the CCP also developed quickly by infiltrating the GMD‐controlled army and by expanding its organizations in the urban and rural areas of southern China. While the alliance between the GMD and CCP brought great success for both parties, tensions also grew as the parties pursued different agendas. After the initial military success against the warlords during the Northern Expedition, a growing number of the GMD's leaders and generals became very unhappy about the CCP's infiltration into the GMD‐controlled army as well as about the CCP's radical property redistribution policy, which was implemented in the territories recently occupied by the GMD's Northern Expedition army. As a result they no longer wanted to share the power with the CCP. In early 1927, shortly after Northern Expedition troops occupied Shanghai, the GMD started to purge the CCP‐controlled organizations in the city and labeled the CCP an illegal organization. The purge soon spread, with hundreds of thousands of CCP members and their sympathizers arrested and killed. In response, the CCP staged several military uprisings in late 1927 in places where they had strong influence. While all these uprisings were easily suppressed by the GMD army, the surviving members of the CCP were able to retreat to mountain areas and conduct guerrilla warfare.

From its very beginning, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had a shifting policy towards the bourgeoisie. Until the early 1940s, it maintained a relatively stable policy which successfully isolated the monied classes in China and helped it overthrow the rule of the KMT. But with the establishment of the new regime, the CCP Central Committee came under conflicting pressures: on the one hand it continued its former policy out of political expediency; on the other hand, based on traditional socialist political theory and Soviet experience, it kept a close watch on the bourgeoisie and even proposed targeting them as the chief enemy of next revolution. After the establishment of the PRC, as a result of the failing economy and the new government's lack of economic support and political experience, the CCP firmed up its policies on the bourgeoisie. However, with the bourgeoisie and capitalism still prominent elements in Chinese society, the communists became uncertain about which direction to take. As the CCP Central Committee had anticipated, officials of both the party and the government often gave way to corruption after taking over major cities. The Central Committee regarded this particular combination of money and power as a “violent attack” against the new communist regime by the bourgeoisie as a whole. In order to tighten its grip on national power, the Central Committee launched two anti‐corruption movements known as the Three‐Antis and the Five‐Antis. These movements were in fact aimed at the bourgeoisie as a whole, and succeeded in destroying the basis for capitalist business in the New China. Encouraged by this outcome, the CCP launched a policy of socialist transformation aimed at depriving Chinese capitalists of their means of production. Thus the CCP gradually and inevitably moved away from its original policy of cooperation with the national bourgeoisie.

Was Maoist China a Clone of the Soviet Union? Felix Wemheuer Lucien Bianco, Stalin and Mao: A Comparison of the Russian and Chinese Revolutions, translated by Krystyna Horko. 448 pp. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2018. ISBN 978-9882370654. $65.00. Elizabeth McGuire, Red at Heart: How Chinese Communists Fell in Love with the Russian Revolution. 462 pp. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. ISBN 978-0190640552. $34.95. It has become fashionable in Western China studies to write about transnational entanglements between the People's Republic (PRC) and the Soviet Union or to compare the development of both countries. The similarities of Stalin's Soviet Union and Mao's China are obviously many, making it impossible to cover them all in a single text. Two new books approach this comparison from different angles. Lucian Bianco looks at the great leaders and macropolitics in Stalin and Mao: A Comparison of the Russian and Chinese Revolutions, while Elizabeth McGuire uses a focus on personal relations and microhistory in Red at Heart: How Chinese Communists Fell in Love with the Russian Revolution. This review discusses the two monographs within the larger context of Western China studies and with attention to paradigm shifts in Sino-Soviet relations. Paradigm Shifts in Western China Studies Since the mid-1930s, Western scholarship regarding the impact of the Soviet Union on the Chinese Revolution and later the PRC underwent several paradigm shifts. During World War II and under the alliance of the United States and China against the Japanese Empire, Chinese Communists were often considered anti-imperialists and nationalists. The bestseller Red Star over China, written by the American journalist Edgar Snow, contributed to [End Page 442] the view of Mao Zedong as a grassroots revolutionary. The lives of communist leaders in the revolutionary base area in Yan'an were presented by Snow as simple and egalitarian. Therefore, Snow saw Chinese communism as an alternative to bureaucratic state socialism in the Soviet Union.1 When the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) took power in 1949, the Cold War had already started. Anticommunist hardliners in the McCarthy era blamed "liberals" of the former Roosevelt administration and scholars in China studies for underestimating the communist threat and causing the "loss of China." In the 1950s, the newly founded PRC was often seen in the West as a "Soviet satellite state" and "totalitarian dictatorship." Western perception started to change significantly due to the rise of the Anti–Vietnam War movement and the New Left around 1968. Activists and many scholars then saw Maoist China through the lenses of anti-imperialism and Third World liberation movements.2 The New Left considered the Cultural Revolution (1966–76) an experiment in mass participation and rural based-development strategies. Western media reports about the horrors of the Cultural Revolution were often ignored as "anticommunist propaganda"; violence was rationalized, because "revolution is not a dinner party," as Chairman Mao had said. The guerilla fighter and the "barefoot doctor" became poster children for an alternative development model to Western and Soviet modernity. CCP criticism of "Soviet revisionism," and in part Western scholarship, emphasized the "Chinese way" of building socialism.3 From the 1930s until the early 1990s, the history of the CCP was often written as step-by-step emancipation from domination by the Comintern and the Soviet Union. The departure from revolutionary Maoism in China after "Reform and Opening" in 1978 destroyed many dreams and illusions. However, it was only after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the opening of the archives of the Comintern and CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union), that the history of the Chinese Revolution was rewritten again. The new findings from archives deconstructed the myths that the CCP had taken an independent path from the Soviet Union. Stalin's guidance and Soviet support had played [End Page 443] a crucial role in creating the second United Front with the Nationalists (GMD) against Japan in 1937 and in bringing the CCP into power in 1949.4 Archival documents show that Soviet advisers influenced the development of the political and economic system in China in the early 1950s based on the Stalinist model. In the fields of culture, education, agriculture, and policies...

Lecturer in Political Science, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand. The research for this article was begun on a post-doctoral fellowship at the Centre for East and Southeast Asian Studies, Lund University, Sweden, and completed with the help of a research grant from the University of Canterbury.CCP[Symbol Not Transcribed] [copyright]China in the 21st century is a post-communist society with a communist government. How does the Chinese Communist party (CCP) maintain its political acceptability as it goes about dismantling the socialist system? How can the government maintain popular support when the uniting force of Marxist-Leninist-Maoist ideology is spent and discredited? And what has taken the place of communist ideology? Since the two major political watersheds of the last ten years of the Mao era and the dramatic events of 1989, the CCP has undergone a repackaging, similar to the re-invention of the British Labour party under Tony Blair.(1) The CCP would like to extend its rule over China indefinitely; to do so, it is attempting to move from a revolutionary party to a political party. In the post-1989 era the outward symbols and the all-important name brand CCP[Symbol Not Transcribed] [copyright] remain, but the content and meaning of the party's activities have changed significantly.Rather than the revolutionary romanticism of the Mao period, 'scientific guidance' is the new theme of CCP rule. Party strategists now acknowledge the collapse of faith in Marxist revolution and in the dictatorship of the proletariat and Marxist economics, but they have yet to find another means to justify the one-party state in China. The new economic and political goals of the post-Mao era are symbolized by the Four Cardinal Principles and the Four Modernizations of Deng Xiaoping. In practice this has meant adopting marketization and other capitalist style systems - but never calling them that - while maintaining the CCP dictatorship. Post-1989 and throughout the 1990s, Prime Minister Jiang Zemin attempted to forge a new consensus in China, a logic for continuing CCP rule indefinitely. The party leadership is determined that the CCP will avoid the fate of the Communist party of the Soviet Union and that it will learn from its mistakes.(2) Party thinktanks are also studying the fate of other long-term one-party states, such as Mexico, and trying to learn from their mistakes and successes. In 1999 Jiang Zemin announced the 'three represents,' which called for the party to represent the 'advanced social productive forces, the forward direction for China's cultural advancement, and the truest representative of the fundamental interests of China's vast population.'(3) Now party leaders are refining notions of turning the CCP into a 'party for all the people' (quanmin dang). At meetings for senior leaders at the resort of Beidaihe in September 2001, Jiang hinted that the CCP's long-standing goal of class struggle had been abandoned. He said that the party had to open its door to the 'new classes' of private business people and professionals and that in the current era business people and professionals had displaced workers and peasants as the 'vanguard' of society.(4)Propaganda is playing a central role in the repackaging of the CCP. Propaganda - publicizing the government's activities and educating the population - has always been an essential element of the CCP hold on power. The Central Propaganda Department (Zhongyang xuanchuanbu) of the CCP sets guidelines for the Chinese media, film, drama, art, news, literature, and education and disciplines those who break the rules on what can and cannot be presented in those media.(5) The propaganda system (xuanjiao xitong) remains one of the key groupings of bureaucracies within the Chinese political system.(6) This article surveys the modernization of the propaganda system in China and examines continuities and new developments in the system, particularly attempts to manufacture consent for the re-invention of the CCP. …