How the Communist Party of China liberated a quarter of humanity from imperialism and feudalism
Before 1949, China endured over a century of imperialist domination, feudal oppression, and national degradation. Beginning with the Opium Wars of the 1840s, Western imperialist powers forced unequal treaties on China, carving out concessions, extracting reparations, and flooding the country with opium. Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Japan, and the United States all participated in this plunder.
The Chinese people — numbering hundreds of millions — lived under a semi-feudal, semi-colonial system. Landlords owned vast estates while peasants starved. Foreign capital controlled ports, railways, and mines. Warlords fought over territory while the imperialist powers manipulated them from behind the scenes. Life expectancy was approximately 35 years. Literacy was below 20 per cent. Famine was a regular occurrence.
Repeated attempts at reform and revolution — the Taiping Rebellion, the Boxer Uprising, the 1911 Revolution that overthrew the Qing Dynasty — failed to fundamentally alter China's condition. Sun Yat-sen's Republic of China quickly degenerated into warlordism. A new kind of revolution was needed — one guided by Marxism-Leninism.
"The Chinese people have stood up!"
— Mao Zedong, 1 October 1949The May Fourth Movement of 1919 — a mass protest against the Treaty of Versailles, which handed German concessions in China to Japan rather than returning them — marked the beginning of a new era. Chinese intellectuals turned to Marxism-Leninism as the only theory capable of explaining China's oppression and charting a path to liberation.
The Communist Party of China (CPC) was founded in July 1921 in Shanghai, with assistance from the Communist International. Among the founding delegates was Mao Zedong, a young library assistant from Hunan province. The party initially had only about fifty members but quickly grew as it organised workers and linked with the peasant masses.
The CPC initially cooperated with the Kuomintang (KMT) — Sun Yat-sen's nationalist party — in a united front against warlordism and imperialism. This cooperation ended in catastrophe in April 1927 when Chiang Kai-shek, who had succeeded Sun Yat-sen, launched a bloody purge of communists in Shanghai and other cities. Thousands of communists and trade unionists were massacred.
After the 1927 massacre, the CPC was driven from the cities. Mao Zedong and others recognised that in a predominantly peasant country like China, the revolution must be based on the peasantry as well as the working class. This was a creative application of Marxism-Leninism to Chinese conditions — not a departure from it.
The CPC established rural base areas — "Soviet" zones — where land was redistributed from landlords to peasants, and new forms of democratic self-government were practised. The largest was the Jiangxi Soviet, established in 1931.
Facing encirclement by Chiang Kai-shek's armies, the Red Army undertook the Long March (1934–1935), an epic 9,000-kilometre retreat across some of the most punishing terrain on earth. Of the approximately 86,000 who set out, only around 8,000 reached the destination of Yan'an in Shaanxi province. The Long March forged the CPC into a disciplined, battle-hardened revolutionary party, and Mao emerged as its central leader.
The Long March demonstrated that a revolutionary party with correct theory, iron discipline, and deep roots among the masses can survive even the most devastating setbacks. Retreat is not defeat — it is the preservation of revolutionary forces for future victory.
In 1937, Japan launched a full-scale invasion of China, beginning one of the most brutal occupations in modern history. The Japanese military committed horrific atrocities, including the Nanjing Massacre. Tens of millions of Chinese civilians were killed during the eight-year war.
The CPC formed a second united front with the KMT against Japan, but it was the communist-led guerrilla forces — the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army — that bore the heaviest burden of resistance in north and central China. While Chiang Kai-shek hoarded his forces for a future civil war against the communists, the CPC organised the peasantry in the occupied areas, fought the Japanese through guerrilla warfare, and expanded its base areas.
By the end of the anti-Japanese war in 1945, the CPC had grown from 40,000 members in 1937 to over 1.2 million, and controlled liberated areas with a combined population of nearly 100 million people. The party had proved itself in fire — not as an elite conspiracy, but as the authentic leader of the Chinese people's resistance.
"Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun."
— Mao Zedong, 1927After Japan's defeat, US imperialism attempted to broker a coalition government between the CPC and the KMT — on terms favourable to Chiang Kai-shek. When this failed, the US backed the KMT with billions of dollars in arms and equipment for a full-scale civil war against the communists.
Initially, the KMT had enormous advantages: a larger army (4.3 million vs 1.2 million), control of all major cities, US air support, and vastly superior equipment. But the CPC had something more powerful — the support of the peasant masses. Wherever the People's Liberation Army (PLA) advanced, peasants provided food, intelligence, and recruits. Wherever the KMT ruled, corruption, hyperinflation, and forced conscription turned the population against them.
Three decisive campaigns in late 1948 and early 1949 — Liaoshen, Huaihai, and Pingjin — destroyed the KMT's main armies. In the Huaihai campaign, over 500,000 peasants served as stretcher bearers, supply porters, and logistics workers for the PLA. The people carried the revolution to victory on their shoulders.
On 1 October 1949, Mao Zedong proclaimed the People's Republic of China from Tiananmen Gate in Beijing. A quarter of humanity had been liberated. Chiang Kai-shek fled to Taiwan with the remnants of his forces.
The achievements of the Chinese Revolution were immense and transformed the lives of hundreds of millions of people:
Over 300 million peasants received land. The landlord class that had dominated China for millennia was eliminated. Feudal relations of production were swept away in the most extensive land reform in human history.
The Marriage Law of 1950 abolished arranged marriages, bride prices, child marriage, and concubinage. Women gained equal rights to divorce, property, and education. Foot-binding was permanently ended.
Mass literacy campaigns raised the literacy rate from under 20% to over 80% within a generation. Universal primary education was established. Universities opened their doors to workers and peasants for the first time.
Life expectancy nearly doubled from 35 to 65 years between 1949 and 1976. The barefoot doctor programme brought basic healthcare to every village. Diseases like smallpox, cholera, and plague were eliminated or drastically reduced.
China was transformed from a pre-industrial agrarian society into a major industrial power. Steel production, electrification, railway construction, and heavy industry were built from virtually nothing, laying the foundation for all subsequent development.
All unequal treaties were abolished. Foreign concessions were reclaimed. China stood up as a sovereign nation for the first time in over a century. The century of humiliation was over.
The Chinese Revolution offers essential lessons for every communist party and every revolutionary movement:
"The people, and the people alone, are the motive force in the making of world history."
— Mao Zedong, On Coalition Government (1945)Explore the revolutionary history that changed the world — and the theory that guided it.