Communism in China

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CHINESE Communism did not originate as a direct result of activities carried on in China by the Third International. It owed its first beginnings to Chinese students returned from Soviet Russia. Occupied with the consolidation of the Revolution and throwing the weight of its international effort toward Central Asia, Moscow did not realize the potentialities of China until 1919. Moscow then saw that China offered an almost priceless first step in the world revolution. Fomentation of Chinese turmoil would result in the destruction of the special position enjoyed by "capitalistic" states in China. From that time on Moscow was active. It worked at the beginning through the bourgeois intellectuals, who were to direct the revolution in its first stages, then through the proletariat, which was young, weak and lacking in class consciousness, and finally -- and most importantly -- through the peasants, who were to achieve an agrarian revolution within the social revolution.

In 1919 and 1920 Soviet Russia proclaimed its desire to establish friendly intercourse with China and its intention to scrap the so-called imperialistic features of the treaties signed during the Tsarist régime. As a result the Peking Government withdrew recognition of the White Russian Legation on September 28, 1920, although it was not until May 3, 1924, that a treaty was ratified with Soviet Russia. From 1920 on, then, the Third International possessed a strong focus for its activities in China. From this outpost, to which Joffe and Karakhan were successively assigned, there flowed a steady stream of direction and propaganda for seven years. Activity was concentrated among the students in Peking and among the laborers in the industrial centers, notably Shanghai, Hankow, Tientsin, Canton and Hongkong. It was non-spectacular, dangerous spade work; its value cannot be measured quantitatively, but its effects are still to be seen...