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Republican of China - Its Birth

Modern China dates from the revolution of 1911 which overthrew the corrupt Manchu monarchy and proclaimed the republic. The Revolution of 1911 came to a head after a seventy-year period in which the big imperialist powers-Britain, France, Russia, America, Germany and Japan-had completed the economic and political domination of China. Foreign powers, led by Britain, had seized important Chinese territories and forcibly opened the coastal ports for their trade. They had forced “extra-territoriality” on China under which foreign nationals-especially westerners-were not subject to Chinese laws. Foreign occupation troops were permanently stationed in major Chinese cities, including the capital city of Peiping. Foreign settlements in these cities operated their own police forces, enacted their own laws and ran their own courts. They were states within a state. They received the customs revenue and controlled all foreign trade.

Foreigners in the so-called treaty ports remained immune from taxation and local regulations. About eighty percent of the railways and seventy-eight percent of deep-sea and river navigation was in their hands. Foreign businessmen exercised a monopoly of taxes on salt, wine and tobacco which yielded them vast revenue. Foreign merchant vessels freely plied China’s inland waterways. And in special leased territories, such as Hong Kong and Kowloon, the invaders enjoyed even wider powers. China’s sovereignty was nominal only. She lay prostrate at the feet of foreign robbers.

The chief cause of China’s plight was to be found in her decadent feudal economy. Four-fifths of the Chinese people were peasants. These millions tilled the soil and dwelt in thousands of small villages. By 1920 over half the peasants did not own the land they cultivated.

In a typical area of China two and one half million landlords owned more than half the tillable soil, whereas thirty-one million peasants held the remainder. The payment of rent took from sixty to ninety percent of the peasant’s harvest. In addition, the tenants had to supply the landlord with a specified number of chickens, ducks and wine, and had- to work for him, free, for a certain number of days. Taxes, too, were exorbitant. In addition to the main tax, there were thirty types of special taxes for the army, the garrison, the militia, the guards, etc. In many cases taxes were collected ninety years in advance. All this exploitation lined the pockets of the landlords, the state officials and warlords. The result was that in southern China only thirty-two peasants out of a hundred owned their land.

. Political control in the villages rested in the hands of officials recruited on the basis of civil ‘Service examinations. The qualifications demanded to pass these examinations stressed a profound knowledge of philosophy and literature, which only the sons of the rich country gentry could acquire. In this way a class of landed aristocracy and scholar-gentry arose in China, who controlled effective economic and political power.

These conditions led’ to widespread unrest in the countryside. Sometimes it took the form of banditry and sometimes of open rebellion against the landlords and the state. Both the Taiping and Boxer Rebellions were primarily agrarian in character, although the latter was also strongly anti-imperialistic. Consequently, the Chinese peasants in their millions constituted the main base of the impending democratic revolution.

Hundreds of thousands of ruined peasants flocked to the big cities wherever foreign capital established industrial enterprises to exploit China’s resources and cheap labor. In the early twenties of this century, there were five million workers in China, of whom two million were employed in large-scale city industry. The workers were accorded barbarous treatment. They were crowded into unsanitary factory barracks and fed with a few bowls of rice. The working day, fixed at twelve hours, was frequently stretched to eighteen hours. The average wage for a skilled worker amounted to twenty cents a day. Child labor was universally employed. In the Hankow factories boys between the ages of nine and fifteen earned one cent a day by working from four in the morning until 8.30 at night, with only one intermission for dinner. Only two rest days were allowed per month. Under these conditions, it was inevitable that revolutionary sentiments should take a strong hold among the workers. These workers formed the most advanced detachment of the revolution.

In the chief cities and coastal ports a new class of Chinese merchants had sprung into being. As agents of foreign enterprises, this group coined handsome profits. Their attempts to establish independent Chinese industries were, however, met with the determined opposition of the imperialists. Nevertheless, while eager to retain their former profits, they sought greater elbow room to expand their separate business operations.

Together with these major developments-a new Chinese intelligentsia came into being. These intellectuals were deeply affected with liberal and radical ideology. Like every other section of the people they keenly felt the searing shame of national degradation imposed upon China by the powers and sought for measures to overcome it.

China, however, escaped complete colonial subjugation.

This was avoided because American imperialism had appeared late on the scene in China and because of the acute rivalries that existed among the big powers themselves. While the western imperialist powers, particularly Britain, Tsarist Russia and France, had carved their spheres of influence out of China preliminary to their outright annexation, America, the late-comer, improvised the “Open Door” policy. This policy served to regulate the acute rivalries among the powers and for a considerable period checked the outright annexation of China by anyone power.

Numerous anti-Manchu and anti-imperialist secret societies, among them the Kuomintang (Chinese National Populist Party), operated in China. Revolution broke out in October, 1911, while Dr. Sun Yat-sen, its leader, was still abroad. The Manchu regime crumbled like a castle of sand. The revolutionaries, however, failed to consolidate their gains, largely because they had no mass base among the peasants and workers and because very little cohesion and discipline prevailed in their own ranks. The revolutionary forces were compelled to retreat. Dr. Sun Yat-sen was succeeded as president of the “republic” by the feudal warlord Yuan Shih-kai.

During the next fifteen years, numerous regional warlords (politicians with private armies) remained in power. Foreign powers subsidized one or another of the warlords and in return got them to mortgage China’s rich resources and to act as watch dogs for their special privileges and investments. In 1915 Yuan Shih-kai signed away China’s sovereign rights to Japan. The warlords conspired and continually fought against one another.

The Russian revolution of 1917 exercised a profound influence upon China. The young Soviet government unconditionally renounced all extra-territorial rights and the special privileges enjoyed by the Tsars in China. It invited China to sign its first equal trade and friendship treaty. The masses of China saw in the Russian revolution a clarion call of liberation, a new path to freedom.

A mighty anti-imperialist movement, combining students, workers, peasants and businessmen, culminated in the Shanghai general strike of May 26, 1919. It forced the resignation of the warlord Anfu clique government. In 1922, thirty thousand Chinese seamen struck in Hong Kong and won most of their demands after a fifty-five-day battle. Strikes and anti-imperialist demonstrations spread to other parts of the country.

In the midst of this revolutionary upsurge two major political parties, the Kuomintang and the, Communist Party, sprang into prominence. The Kuomintang, organized earlier by Dr. Sun Yat-sen, was largely supported by liberal merchants and intellectuals. The Communist Party, organized in 1921, enjoyed wide support among the workers and peasants.

Dr. Sun quickly realized that the unity of these two forces was imperative for China’s progress. On January 20, 1924, he convoked the first congress of the Kuomintang at Canton and, despite the opposition of rightists, invited the Communists to join the Kuomintang. A revolutionary coalition representing the liberal merchants, intellectuals, peasants and workers was formed. A common program of agrarian and labor reforms was adopted. The congress welcomed Russian advisors and support to the revolutionary forces and pronounced the Soviet Union to be “the only country anxious to see China a liberated nation,”

At this congress Dr. Sun elaborated his famous “Three Principles of the People,” These were defined as “Nationalism, Democracy and People’s Livelihood,” “Nationalism” was declared to mean the complete independence of China from foreign domination and the extension of equal rights to the Mongols, Manchus, Tibetans, Mohammedans and other nationalities inhabiting the vast country. “Democracy” was defined as a government “of the people, for the people and by the people,” and the right to universal suffrage, initiative, referendum, recall, equal rights for women, freedom of speech, press, assembly and the right of the workers and peasants to organize. “People’s Livelihood” was stated to represent the economic reconstruction of China along democratic lines. Among other things, Sun’s principles included the provision of land to the peasants who till it; tax reforms; rent reduction; state loans to the peasants; the eight-hour day; social insurance for industrial workers; compulsory education, and the creation of a peoples’ army.

Around this broad democratic program the revolutionary forces formed a united front. Canton became the centre of the first revolutionary government. A revolutionary army was organized, and plans laid for a great march to the north for the liberation of the rest of China from the grip of feudal warlords and imperialists. Sun Yat-sen, however, died in March 1925, before this project could get under way. In a message from his deathbed, he urged a firm and continued Sino-Soviet friendship.

General Chiang Kai-shek, then a leading Kuomintang official, was appointed commander-in-chief of the northern expedition. In the summer of 1926, the revolutionary forces began to advance north. The people flocked to their colors in millions. By the end of the year, in a giant sweep, the revolutionary forces had gained control of the rich provinces of Hunan, Hupeh, Kiagsi, Honan, Kiagsu and Chekiang. In the rich Yangtze valley they came face to face with the main strongholds of imperialism. The Chinese people, however, were in no mood for compromises. They stormed the British concessions in Hankow and Kuikiang. In retaliation the British, bombarded Wanhsien and killed three hundred and sixty Chinese. Early in 1927 the forces of the revolution stood at the gates of Shanghai, the imperialist Bastille in China. A revolutionary government was established at Hankow.

At this critical moment, however, when victory lay within their grasp, the right wing of the revolutionary forces began to waver. In the liberated areas the peasants began to establish organs of local people’s power, as propagated and envisaged in Dr. Sun’s program. They divided landed estates, refused to pay rent, burned the land deeds and organized committees of the poor.

In the cities the working class had played a leading role in the revolutionary movement from its very inception. The general strike of May-June 1925 had in fact been the beginning of the revolution. Now the working class emerged from underground where it, too, had been forced by the warlords, Trade unions sprang up like mushrooms and the Communist movement gained in strength and prestige. The workers everywhere fought for their rights through mammoth demonstrations and strikes. In many cases they began to arm themselves as integral detachments of the revolutionary forces.

The vested interests within the coalition-the bankers and landlords, some of whom had belatedly joined the ascending revolution-at this point concluded that the revolution had gone far enough. Terrified at the prospect of genuine people’s power, they bargained with imperialist groups and with the surviving northern warlords for protection against the insurgent masses. A group of Shanghai bankers reached a secret understanding with Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. They paid him a sum of $30 million in return for which he undertook to halt the revolution and to suppress the growing power of the peasants and workers.

On April 12, 1927, Chiang broke with the Hankow revolutionary government and made peace with the northern warlords and the imperialists, the mortal enemies of the revolution. With their aid he established a banker-landlord dictatorship at Nanking. The Hankow (or Wuhan) government denounced Chiang at a traitor. Shortly thereafter the remaining Kuomintang elements still within the Hankow group also deserted and joined the counter-revolutionary camp.

The Chiang-led Kuomintang now waged a ruthless war of extermination against all revolutionary elements, and adopted measures aimed at restoring the old slave conditions for the workers and peasants. Spontaneous popular resistance sprang up against this terror. It achieved organized form when the armies, loyal to the revolution, led by the Communists Mao Tse-tung, Ho Lung and Chu Teh and the non-Communist Yeh Ting, merged into the Chinese Red Army and established the first workers’ and peasants’ Chinese Soviet Republic at Haifeng in Kwangtung in November 1927.

Civil war raged unchecked for ten long years. In Kuomin tang China increased burdens on the people further depressed their living standards. The bankers, landlords and imperialists were masters once again and the people were soon reduced to the status of serfs. In contrast, in the Soviet areas, feudalism was abolished and the landed estates distributed among the people; hunger rents were eliminated; education and sanitation measures were introduced; and organs of peasant self-government were created to administer these reforms.

With the aid of foreign arms and German military advisors, Chiang organized seven expeditions against the Soviet areas. In each case he failed. The Red Army later staged a strategic withdrawal from the Kiangsi Soviet areas and after a historic march of six thousand miles through remote regions in China, re-established itself in the ShensiKansu-N inghsia Border Area.

Nanking’s sovereignty over China was only nominal.

Semi-independent warlords still warred with one another and also with the central government. In this way they played directly into ‘the hands of Japan, which in 1931 had invaded the Chinese mainland. In addition, Chiang’s war against democratic elements at home and his continued good relations with China’s imperialist enemies abroad kept the nation divided, weak and dependent upon foreign powers. This policy encouraged Japanese aggression in Manchuria and later in China itself.

Realizing the danger represented by Japanese imperialism the Chinese Soviet government declared war on Japan in April 1932 and repeatedly appealed to the nation for the immediate cessation of civil war. It urged the legislation of democratic reforms and the formation of a national united front of resistance against Japan, This policy of unity, democracy and resistance, while officially rejected by the Kuomintang, found favor with the majority of Chinese people. The Nanking policy of appeasing Japan and continuance of civil war was universally condemned. Influential sections of the bourgeois elements, groups which had supported Chiang’s 1927 betrayal, now became aware of the bankruptcy of the Kuomintang and swung behind the progressive forces. During 1936, the wrath of the people reached a new height. Mammoth demonstrations for a united front swept China like wildfire. Patriotic “Save the Nation” societies united to form the All-China Federation of National Salvation.

The climax was reached when Generalissimo Chiang was kidnapped at” Sian late in 1936, by his own troops, who had refused to attack the Red Army and demanded to be sent against Japan. Chiang refused to consider the rebel demands for the cessation of civil war, the enactment of democratic reforms and the organization of resistance to Japan. Chiang’s mortal foes, the Communists, were instrumental in saving his life and procuring his release. The Sian events paved the way for the national united front which emerged in 1937. Knowing that the consolidation of China’s unity imperiled her plans of conquest, Japan hastened to invade China on July 7, 1937.

From the start of the war until the fall of Hankow and Canton in October, 1938, China displayed remarkable unity in action. The Kuoinintang and Communist Eighth Route and New Fourth armies co-operated and fought side by side. Popular guerrilla warfare was encouraged. Political liberties were widened and economic reforms pledged. An advisory Peoples’ Political Council of all groups was established.

The trend toward unity, democracy and resistance, however, was gradually weakened by the end of 1938. The Japanese occupation of the industrial areas weakened both the economic and political influence of the industrialists inside the Kuomintang government. The nation’s economy now became increasingly dependent upon agriculture, and as a result the political influence of the feudal landlords became once more predominant. While the landlords and state officials speculated and profiteered, the burden of war was entirely shifted to the backs of the peasantry and working class. Industrial development was stifled. In order to preserve the power of vested interests no reforms were introduced to alleviate the people’s plight. Consequently, the war never became a people’s war in Kuomintang China.

The Communist program, on the other hand, while no longer confiscating the landed estates succeeded in enlisting support for widespread guerrilla warfare by enacting far-reaching agrarian reforms. This policy immediately brought them into sharp conflict with the Kuomintang landlords. To the Kuomintang landlords the Japanese invaders, who preserved feudalism, were a “lesser evil’ than the Communist allies. As the conflict progressed, these contradictions seriously strained the united front. The Kuomintang diverted troops from the war front and deployed them to blockade the Communist-held areas. Clashes between the two forces became a common occurrence.

Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, these two trends were further crystallized. The Kuomintang feudalists gambled on the inevitability of Allied victory and held the view that China could “sit the war out.” Such a policy of limited war, they argued, would necessitate no serious reforms and it would enable them to maintain their dictatorship in post-war China, after they had first crushed the Communists.

The Communist-led forces, on the contrary, maintained that China must make a maximum effort to mobilize her total resources. They urged the immediate enactment of democratic reforms. This, they argued, would not only speed victory, but also strengthen China in her bid for equality among the nations after the war. Otherwise she would remain a weak pawn in imperialist hands.

The practical outcomes of these two policies were staggering indeed.