On October 1st we commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Chinese Revolution.
China from 1949-76 took social equality or revolutionary democracy to an unparalleled magnitude, surpassing every third world country in literacy, health, agricultural and industrial production.
The triumph of the New Democratic revolution in 1949 sowed the seeds and paved the path for the, the socialist revolution. A virtual symmetry was illustrated in the crystallising of every stage from the new democratic Revolution, to the Socialist Revolution, to the Great leap forward and finally the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, escalating Socialism to a higher plane. From 1949 onward, the two paths of socialism and capitalism clashed in an intense duel with each other in China in complex ways. This was the precursor to struggles as heroic as the Long March and victories no less spectacular as the defeat of the KMT armies in 1949. The socialist revolution was finally upstaged in 1976, but only after reaching an a height unclimbed during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of 1966-76, laying the basis for the later advance of the world proletarian revolution, including in China itself.
After 1978 China reverted it's policies and followed a path in a directly opposite direction to that of 1949-76. At an international level abandoned all support to national liberation Struggles. Today China is a major imperialist country which is a contender for world hegemony over markets and pursues expansionist military policies.
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Pre-1949
As distinct from the Russian Revolution based on urban insurrection, the path of the Chinese revolution was rural based, with the peasants encircling the cities from the countryside
The practice of the CPC before 1949 also was an illustration of democratic practice within a Communist party at an unprecedented scale. ‘Edgar Snows China’ most illustratively recounts how the CPC established genuine democratic institutions through building base areas in Hunan, Shanghai or Kiangsi and portrays how the red army established genuine democracy in base areas with the peasants controlling production after confiscation of land from warlords and schools built for villager’s children.
In Red Star Over China. Snow clearly anticipated the eventual victory of the CCP over their rivals the Nationalist Party (KMT), projecting rural China in the 1930s was driven by horrific inequality; peasants were languishing in deep poverty, and the CCP was working to create a new society and economy. Red Star Over China, reiterated that the CCP was seeking “democracy”. When he observed a propaganda theatre performance near Baoan, he remarked: “It would be hard to imagine a more democratic gathering.”
In 1934, The Long March, was one of the most extraordinary military feats of the 20th century where Mao led 100,000 Red Army fighters and communist organizers on a 6,000-mile long march to regroup and reorganize forces for revolution trekking through dangerous swamplands and treacherous mountains and confronting warlord and reactionary armies.
American journalist Jack Belden wrote about how the Communists defied all odds and placing their own lives at stake to fight the Japanese aggressors, winning over the trust and respect of the people with undeterred faith in victory. He also recounted about how the local people, motivated by the same revolutionary ideals, treated the soldiers as family and did everything they could to ensure supplies. Belden noted that the people "no longer regarded the government with the terror of the old days" and replacing a class of "rulers above and aloof, the government had become something close to earth that they could touch and trust." This denoted the victory of the CPC was the choice of history and of the people.
The CPC was able to seize power, not only because it won the war, but also because it addressed the land issue and established the people's aspiration of "land to the tiller." Belden wrote about how, the CPC issued a Directive on the Land Question on 4 May 1946 to promote the peasants' struggle to take land from landlords by exposing traitors, settling accounts, and reducing land rents and loan interests. This proved that CPC did not win power by chance, but by winning over the very hearts and minds of the masses and defending their fundamental interests.
Socialist Revolution
During accomplishing the Socialist Revolution from 1949-56 the CPC undertook land reforms by confiscating land from the coffers of landlords and distributing it to the peasantry .Never in a third world country had such an agrarian revolution been put into operation.,at such a scale. In the 3-antis and 5-antis campaign corruption was hit at an intensity never reached before.
By the early 1950s, the new revolutionary state power had distributed 30-40 percent of China’s cultivated land away from landlord-exploiting classes, to some 300 million peasants. This was truly a mass movement from below, led by the Party.
In 1950, a new marriage law put an end to child and arranged marriages. The new law guaranteed the right to divorce for women as well as men. The Party cultivated a practice of relying on widows and orphans even in waging the struggle for land reform and cooperative forms of agriculture.
Great Leap Forward
The Great Leap Forward was launched early 1958 not merely as a economic project but also to show the Soviet Union that the Chinese approach to economic development was more creative than the Soviet model
On the one hand, all the people in the country were organized to help produce the amount of steel that was needed to attain the goal of surpassing England. Everywhere, small backyard furnaces were built, where everybody pitched in in around-the-clock shifts. In the countryside, the various forms of rural cooperatives were merged into huge people’s communes
Edgar Snow was greatly impressed by a Commune in North Pao An, named Sandstone Gulch, revealing how starting from scratch with seventeen donkeys, and with minimal help from the state, dug into the sandstone hills, to plant trees and crops and going very deep, found water and excavated reservoirs .Incredible that now 127 households, harvested 225 tons of grain and 115 tonnes of apples, peaches ,pears etc ,on what was originally barren bridges, now bounded together by woodlands and terraces.
No doubt, there were serious errors, as Edgar Snow described, with zeal, haste and inexperience coming to the fore, to cause chaos. The Party was forced to make concessions towards free enterprise.
Modern writers to the Great Leap Forward are unable to grasp that the work that was done in these years also laid the base for the continuing overall success of Chinese socialism in improving the lives of its people. They fail to seriously consider evidence that indicates that most of the deaths that occurred in the Great Leap Forward were due to natural disasters not policy errors. Besides, the deaths that occurred in the Great Leap Forward have to be weighed against the Chinese people’s success in preventing many other deaths throughout the Maoist period. Improvements in life expectancy saved the lives of many millions. If India’s rate of improvement in life expectancy had been as great as China’s after 1949, then millions of deaths could have been prevented. Even Mao’s critics acknowledge this.”
One must also grasp that had there been no Leap and no adoption of the policies of self-reliance once the rift with the Soviet Union occurred, China may well of fallen off it’s two legs.
Of course it is also important that we do learn from the mistakes of the past to avoid them in the future. We should note that Mao to criticize himself for errors made during this period.
Cultural Revolution
A major accomplishments of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution from 1966-76, was the empowerment of ordinary people and the path -breaking democratization of Chinese society soaring at an unprecedented height.. China adopted a distinctive approach from Soviet model of development, opposing the concept of rapid industrialization based on concentrating resources in the urban areas, and at the expense of peasants in agriculture. It gave priority to rural based production instead of heavy industry, decentralising economic structure.
A strong egalitarian social climate in China blossomed with a strong work ethic and led to an economic performance unparalleled in world history. Chinese management personnel were required to participate in manual labour and workers participated in management’s decision-making process.
Never in the history of the world was a set up constructed with factories created just besides farms and schools.
Experiments in the field of medicine were path breaking.
All commodities were more affordable than in any third world country before, unemployment unheard of, and price rise controlled as nowhere else.
No army in the world was more democratic or ethical, exchanging roles of the workers and peasantry and aiding them in labour as the Peoples Liberation Army.
The workers administered and revolutionized production decisions and methods in factories to an extent no country ever did .Through revolutionary committees peasants exercised rights as nowhere else.
Forms of mass movements were undertaken to enable the masses to exercise political power unparalleled in history.
For the first time in history of man were ranks abolished in the army.
China was the only country till then to successfully overcome three-fold crisis of agriculture, rural areas, and peasants, because of its collective farming practices.
Women were emancipated as never before in the third world. Every Chinese village, factory, school, and government office had a women’s federation committee during the Cultural Revolution years. If a husband did not treat his wife properly, the women’s federation in the village would organize a group of women to confront the husband, and force him to apologize to his wife.
During mass movements, cadres were subjected to the criticism of the masses and were forced to reform their bureaucratic style of management which checked the abuse of power ... The Cultural Revolution was the first period when that of having the CCP give direction to the movement; many initiatives came from below at the grassroots level for an alternative to the existing power structure, like setting up Revolutionary Committees to manage factories and other administrative functions.
Writers like Dang Hongpin, Fred Engst and Pao yu Ching confirmed that from the viewpoint of the proletariat, what the Cultural Revolution accomplished outweighed what it failed to accomplish.
The construction and functioning of the Tachai brigade formed in 1963, took revolutionary power of the peasants to heights unexplored or unprecedented in history of mankind. Two major conferences were launched there in 1975 and 1976. Similarly the student capture of Tsinghua University in 1968 was another path -breaking experiment as well as the workers capturing the Municipal headquarters in Shanghai in 1967.
Edgar Snow in ‘Long Revolution’ described the remarkable innovations of acupuncture in medicine, which was used from surgical conditions such as appendicitis to chronic conditions like diabetes. and had dramatic effects on illnesses of neurological causes, like arthritis or facial paralysis. He narrated the great emphasis placed on ‘Serve the People’ like a Peoples Liberation Army running a school for deaf and mute children, experimenting with acupuncture to cure deafness .and conduct medical training. He recounted the army being highly disciplined, democratic, integrating with workers and peasants and based on them and less burdensome to the population than most armies. Exchanges of criticism between officers and ranks were frequent. and difference in living conditions and payment between them reduced to minimal. Snow described how the army was self policing, and grew much of the food it consumed.
He described how students in may 7th schools students engaged in manual labour in farms, before going on to higher education. State farms were run by the Army, who engaged in production.
International Policy
China exhibited no degree of nation Chauvinism from 1949-76, supporting every national liberation movement and challenging the hegemony of both superpowers, America and Russia.
It never intervened or imposed itself on the foreign policies of other countries, not even Communist parties. It is fascinating that CPC even opposed the formation of a Communist International in the 1960's.
Most unfairly China was blamed for the 1962 war when the fault lay with India, itself who cut across the Macmohan line.
China played a major role in Vietnam's triumph over America.
Its behaviour with North Korea in 1954 in the war was an exemplary example of its foreign policy exhibiting no nation chauvinist tendencies.
Relevance Today
Today experience if the Chinese revolution is still a model to emulate in third world countries, being predominantly agrarian .However it cannot be mechanically duplicated ,with urbanisation escalating mass influx of rural people into cities and will have to be improvised in accordance to transformed conditions. Today armed struggles emulating path of Chinese revolution are still blazing in Phillipines, India and Turkey and till 2 decades ago in Peru and Nepal.
The lessons of the Cultural Revolution are a historic lesson, on the need for a revolution, even within a Socialist state, with new capitalist class sprouting.
Harsh Thakor is a freelance journalist Thanks information from ‘Edgar Snow’s China ; ‘The Long Revolution’ by Edgar Snow ,Jack Belden China Shakes the World, ‘Re-thinking Socialism’ by Pao Yuching and essays by Raymond Lotta,Joseph Ball and Dongpin Han .
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