The Chinese Revolution is condemned as a bloody tragedy by bourgeois historians. But if it was all simply a disaster, then how do we explain China going from a backward colonial holding to the second world power today? In this episode, we deal with the truth about the Chinese Revolution of 1949.

We welcome Daniel Morley from the Executive Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Party in Britain to talk about the history of the Chinese Revolution and Mao Zedong’s rise to power.

He explains that the victory of Mao’s peasant army was based on the rottenness of the capitalist regime of Chiang Kai-shek, which looted China’s wealth, starved its masses, and utterly failed to defend it from Japanese invasion, instead obsessively hunting the communists.

While Mao and the Red Army eventually soared to power on a wave of revolution that swept the country after WW2, it was not their intention to expropriate capitalism. But were compelled to do so given the utter bankruptcy of Chinese capitalism.

On the basis of the planned economy, there were huge advances for the Chinese people in terms of living conditions; the rights of women, workers and peasants; and the modernisation of the country.

However, the peculiar nature of the Chinese Revolution, which was not led by a workers’ party but a peasant army, meant the regime that was established (in the image of Stalinist Russia) did not base itself on workers’ democracy, but rather military-style commandism.

This created many problems for China (including severe famine) that were not the result of communism, but rather the failure to establish the democratic planning necessary for real socialism and communism. This in turn laid the basis for the eventual restoration of capitalism.

Despite this, we genuine Marxists defend the legacy of the Chinese Revolution, which liberated hundreds of millions from the yoke of imperialist domination and ushered China into the modern world. The tasks of the revolution today remain incomplete!

Sources:

‘Stalinist land programme wins peasants: Chiang’s conscripts roped to prevent escape’, Ted Grant, https://www.marxists.org/archive/grant/1949/01/china.htm

‘The Chinese Communist Party 1927-37 – The development of Maoism’, Daniel Morley, https://marxist.com/chinese-comminist-party-1927-37-part-1.htm

‘The Chinese Communist Party 1937-49 – The Unfolding of Historical Necessity: China’s Great Revolution’, Daniel Morley, https://marxist.com/the-chinese-communist-party-1937-49-the-unfolding-of-historical-necessity-chinas-great-revolution-part-one.htm

‘Peasant War in China and the Proletariat’, Leon Trotsky, https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1932/09/china.htm

‘On Contradiction’, Mao Tse-tung, https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm

‘Is China Communist?’, Spectre of Communism, https://marxist.com/audio-and-video/podcast-is-china-communist

‘The Legacy of Mao Zedong is Mass Murder’, Lee Edwards, https://www.heritage.org/china/commentary/the-legacy-mao-zedong-mass-murder (criticised in episode)