How Mao conquered China (Edited by Hal Draper)
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Workers' Liberty 3/24: How Mao conquered China
Foreword
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“The Chinese Communist Revolution was the greatest event of the 20th century after the October 1917 Russian Revolution.”
Statements like that were for decades common on the Trotskyist left.
Introduction
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Original introduction to the 1970 edition
The articles that follow were written and published while the events themselves were still unfolding, during the crucial 1948–9 period when the Maoist party was still conquering China. Without benefit of 20–20 hindsight, without benefit of documents and research that became available only afterward, Jack Brad called all the shots.
Chronology
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1909–12: democratic upheaval. Abdication of the last Emperor, formation of the Guomindang (1912), followed by a period dominated by the rule of regional warlords.
1. The symbiosis of reaction
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The governmental crisis is unresolved. The Kuomintang remains the dictatorial ruler of nationalist China.
2. Two Chiangs on the skids
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The fall of Tsinan, capital of Shantung Province in Northern China, brings to a head the military crisis of the Kuomintang government of Chiang Kai-shek.
3. The “secret” of Communist success
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A disaster of tremendous importance overwhelmed China with the fall of Mukden. All Manchuria, with its million square miles and 40 million population, is now in Stalinist hands.
4. Blind alley in Nanking
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The armies of Chinese Stalinism are advancing on the Kuomintang capital at Nanking. The extent of social disintegration of the Kuomintang is even more rapid than the advance of the Communist Party armies and this factor alters the picture.
5. The rats begin to desert
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The last few weeks have seen the political initiative in China fall to the Communists, on the heels of their military victories.
6. The Communists confront the cities
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Stalinist armies continued to mop up in North China with great strides this past week as Central Government troops pulled back to the Yangtze River as the next defence line.