Wang Jiaxiang, Mao Zedong and the ‘Triumph of Mao Zedong-Thought’ (1935–1945)

Abstract

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.