By Gu Changjuan
History is fair. In the more than 100 years of humiliation in modern China, it gave opportunities to every social class and every political force to turn the tables. However, the Communist Party of China (CPC) was its final selection.
When the CPC was firstly established in Shanghai a hundred years ago, there were over 200 political groups and parties in China. At that time, no one was able to foresee the practical and far-reaching significance of the establishment of the CPC. Thirteen deputies attended the first National Congress of the CPC, including the 19-year-old Liu Renjing, who was the youngest member then.
Why could a party that had only 53 members in its early days become the one that established the People’s Republic of China?
I. The CPC is an advanced political party that always believes in seeking truth from facts
The greatness of CPC members isn’t about whether they can make godlike prophecies, but that they always have a valuable sense of smell for history. Such sense of history enables them to deeply understand the law of history and build prospects for social development, and helps them rapidly correct their mistakes and adopt appropriate opinions from others. Seeking truth from facts, which is the soul of CPC members, forms a mighty inner force for them.
It was because of the failure in occupying urban areas in those years that the CPC broadly established revolutionary bases and rural revolutionary powers, which not only blazed a new trail of political theories unique to the CPC and established an armed force of the CPC – the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army, but also helped the political party get rid of the economic dependence on the Communist International. The campaign to attack despotic landlords and redistribute their land to farmers was a foundation for both the political mobilization of proletarian revolution and the economic independence of the CPC.
The CPC never absolutizes Marxism or its own experiences. On the contrary, it is solving Chinese problems in Chinese ways in accordance with Chinese realities. That is the biggest advantage the party enjoys in overcoming difficulties and achieving successes.
II. The CPC never ceases to explore its own independent path when receiving assistance from the Communist International
The Communist International catalyzed and accelerated the establishment of the CPC, but it was also unquestionable that the CPC, which was like a fetus, must mature in the womb of China. After the first National Congress of the CPC, most of the leaders of the party believed that the CPC must form policies based on its own decisions and implement its own strategies. They held that the Communist International shall act as only a consultant.
What was unique about the Chinese revolution is that the CPC was founded in the developed concession area of Shanghai, but its revolutionary bases were rooted in poor and underdeveloped mountainous and rural areas. This was the revolutionary path explored by Mao Zedong and other CPC members of his generation – to encircle cities from the countryside and then capture the political power.
That was how the Chinese communists became a real independent political power who decided their own leaders, selected their own paths and made their own policies.
A conference convened in Zunyi, southwest China’s Guizhou Province from Jan. 15 to 17, 1935 marked the official beginning of the CPC’s independent path. The conference established the correct leadership of the new Central Committee represented by Mao Zedong and criticized dogmatism. Late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, who attended the conference, remarked that the collective leadership of the CPC was gradually formed after the Zunyi Conference.
III. The CPC comes from the people and is supported by the people
Li Hongzhang, a landlord-class liberal, Kang Youwei, a bourgeoisie reformer, and Sun Yat-sen, a bourgeoisie revolutionist, all transformed the Chinese society relying on a few elites and didn’t take the general public as a focus of revolution. They all believed that the public was a target, rather than a driving force of reforms, so what they finally encountered were only failures after failures in the revolution they started. Such contempt for the public was not rare in the modern history of China.
The public’s support was the biggest reason for the success of the CPC. Mao Zedong noted that the mobilization of the common people throughout the country will create a vast sea that would drown the enemy, remedy China’s l in weapons, and create the prerequisites for overcoming all difficulties in the war.
The Chinese Communists, represented by Mao Zedong, didn’t take the Chinese people as a burden or a reform target. On the contrary, they considered the public as an impetus, as well as the most powerful force driving social changes.
In Mao Zedong’s work “On Protracted War” published in May 1938, he stressed the huge energy of the Chinese people. If a weak country doesn’t want to be wiped out by a strong country and even hopes to defeat the latter, it must mobilize, organize, arm and rely on its people. Only by mobilizing all of its people and launch a people’s war, could China protract the war and defeat the Japanese invaders, he said.
Since the establishment of the CPC, it has taken wholeheartedly serving the people as a fundamental tenet, as well as a starting point and goal of all of its work. It has united the people and fought with them heroically for their liberation and happiness. That’s why the CPC receives supports from the Chinese people.