Under the influence of the October Revolution in
Russia, China’s May 4th Movement arose. During this
great anti-imperialist, anti-feudal revolutionary movement
led by patriotic students, the Chinese proletariat for the
first time mounted the political stage. The May 4th Movement
marked the change of the old democratic revolution
to the new democratic revolution. It enabled
Marxism-Leninism to further spread and link up with the
Chinese people’s revolutionary practice, and prepared
the ideology as well as the cadres necessary for the
founding of the Communist Party of China. In 1921, Mao
Zedong, Dong Biwu, Chen Tanqiu, He Shuheng, Wang Jinmei,
Deng Enming and Li Da, representing the communist groups in
different places throughout the nation, held the First
National Congress in Shanghai, founding the Communist Party
of China (CPC). In 1924, Sun Yat-sen, pioneer of
China’s democratic revolution and the founder of the
Kuomintang (KMT), worked together with the Communist Party
of China to organize workers and peasants for the Northern
Expedition (historically known as the Great Revolution).
After Sun Yat-sen passed away, the right-wing clique of the
KMT headed by Chiang Kai-shek staged a counter-revolutionary
coup d’etat in 1927, murdering Communists and
revolutionary people, and founded the Kuomintang regime in
Nanjing. Thus the Great Revolution ended in failure. After
that, the CPC led the Chinese people to wage the
10-year Agrarian Revolution War against the reactionary rule
of the Kuomintang, which is also known as the “10-Year
Civil War.”
In July 1937, Japan launched
all-out aggression against China. The Kuomintang armies
started a series of battles, which gave relentless blows at
the Japanese invaders. In the enemy’s rear area, the
Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army, under the
leadership of the CPC, fought against most of the Japanese
forces, and almost all the puppet armies under extremely
difficult conditions, thus playing a decisive role in the
victory of the War of Resistance Against Japan.
From June 1946, the Kuomintang armies launched
an all-round attack on the Liberated Areas led by the CPC,
and an unprecedented large-scale civil war started. To
thoroughly emancipate the Chinese people, the CPC led the
army and people in the Liberated Areas to start
the nationwide War of Liberation.
Through the
Liaoxi-Shenyang, Huai-Hai and Beiping-Tianjin campaigns, the
CPC overthrew the rule of the Kuomintang and won a great
victory in the new democratic revolution in 1949.
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