Rev Left Radio - Modern China Pt. 2: The Chinese Revolution & Civil War w/ Ken Hammond

Episode Date: April 22, 2024

In this episode of Guerrilla History, we get into part 2 of our 4 part miniseries on modern Chinese history featuring Ken Hammond (and guest host Breht O'Shea of Revolutionary Left Radio) with this absolutely terrific discussion on the Chinese Revolution & Civil War!  If you haven't already listened to part 1 of the series, on the Taiping and Boxer Rebellions, be sure to do so because we pick up right where we left off last time.  The next two installments will cover the Great Leap Forward and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, and then the Reform period up to the present day, so be sure to not miss any of those upcoming episodes! Ken Hammond is Professor of East Asian and Global History at New Mexico State University. He has been engaged in radical politics since his involvement in the anti-war movement at Kent State in 1968-70.  Ken is also the author of the book China’s Revolution & the Quest for a Socialist Future.

You don't remember Den Ben-Boo? No! The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rank. The prince had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare. But they put some guerrilla action on. Hello, and welcome to Guerrilla. History, the podcast that acts is a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history and aims

to use the lessons of history to analyze the present. I'm one of your co-host, Sanry Hakimaki, unfortunately not joined by my other co-host, Professor Adnan Hussein, who of course is historian and director of the School of Religion at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada. He's a little under the weather today, but we are hoping that he'll be back for the next time that we convene. Fortunately, we are joined by a guest host, who the listeners will be very very familiar with, as not only was he also the guest host of the last installment of this mini series, but Brett O'Shea was also co-host of guerrilla history for the last three and a half years until just recently. So again, we're joined by guest host Brett O'Shea, who is host of

Revolutionary Left Radio and co-host of the Rank Menace podcast. Hello, Brett. It's nice to see you again. Hello, yeah. Nice to see you as always. And I'm very, very excited for this entire series and particularly this installment, so this will be a good time. Yeah, absolutely. I'm glad that we were able to twist your arm into coming back for this series. But that's a joke, listeners. Brett was more than happy to come here. I did not threaten him in any way. Before I introduce our guest again, who again is returning for this mini-series and introducing the mini-series that we're in,

I just want to remind you, listeners, that you can help support the show and allow us to keep up and running and releasing more episodes like this by going patreon.com forward slash gorilla history. G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A history. And you can follow us on Twitter to keep up with everything that we're doing individually and collectively at Gorilla underscore Pod. Again, G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A-U-Skore pod. As mentioned already, this is a continuation of a mini-series, and specifically, it's a continuation of our ongoing modern history of China miniseries

that we are very blessed to be hosting Ken Hammond for. So Ken Hammond, again, is professor of East Asian and global history at New Mexico State University, author of China's Revolution and The Quest for a Socialist Future and a returning guest on the show. Hello, Ken. It's nice to have you back on. Glad to be here. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. So this is part two of our planned four-part miniseries on modern Chinese history. listeners, if you haven't listened to either the kind of introductory episode that we recorded before we knew we were going to be doing a miniseries on China's Revolution and the quest for a socialist future, go back and listen to that. And then part one of this mini series should have come out either one or two weeks ago at this point. And that was on the Taiping

and Boxer Rebellion. So if you haven't listened to that episode, I highly recommend that you go back and listen to that first, as we are essentially picking up more or less where we left off with that episode. Today's topic is going to be the Chinese Civil War with a particular focus on the Long March, because that is something that I've wanted to devote an entire episode to, basically since the show has started. So Ken, when we're talking about the Chinese Civil War, and as we talked a little bit off the record, there's always this tendency to try to think, well, how far can we stretch back to the past when we're analyzing? You know, we're historical materialists. We always think how these things relate to previous events and how the material

conditions of society and how those material conditions came about influence specific events. When talking about the Chinese Civil War, we could go back a long way to lay the roots for it. But I think we should pick up in 1911. So I think that I will just leave it open for you here, because as I said, we did leave off kind of at this point in the last episode. Can you tell the Listeners, why we are picking up in 1911. What happened in 1911 and why this is laying the roots for the Chinese Civil War? Well, the 1911 is the year of when the Qing dynasty finally enters its stage of collapse. The dynasty had been tottering for the last decade since the suppression of the Boxer Rebellion that we talked about last time. There had been

some, you know, too little too late efforts at reform of the imperial state, but that was just not, you know, the pressure for change that had been building up through the late 19th century and in that first decade of the 20th century. It just finally reaches a breaking point. And what happens is in October of 1911, the military, the imperial army, was an arena within which which the revolutionaries, the folks hoping to overthrow the Qing state, have been doing a lot of organizing. It's always good if you have military forces that are politically engaged and are not going to be prepared to fire on the popular movement if that movement starts to express itself. The Qing state, though, was worried about the influence of nationalist revolutionaries, the people, you know, basically organizing. organized around Dr. Sanyat Sen, they were worried about their presence in the military

and in one particular place in the city of Wuhan, what is today the city of Wuhan, their rumors started to spread that the authorities were going to arrest members of what was called the Tom Menghui, the revolutionary organization, who were in the military. And in an effort to block that, there's a there's a, there's a, There's a butany. And the leaders, there were, in fact, of course, Tongbang Hui people in the military, they rise up. They bring their other fellow soldiers with them. They take over the not just the military base there, but they take over the city. They get a local progressive sort of political leader to agree to front their new government. very quickly proclaim that the province, Hubebe province, which is the area surrounding the city, is going to separate itself.

It's going to secede from the Qing dynasty. And this is a huge, you know, shock. But very, very quickly, over the following couple of months, about half of the provinces within the empire declare their independence, declare that they're leaving the dynasty. and mostly these are along the Yangtze River and in the south, but by the end of the year, by the end of December, it's clear that this is a very, very serious crisis for the dynasty. And by January, when Sanyat Sen, who had been out of the country, he'd actually been in the United States on a fundraising tour

when he gets the word. He's on a train between San Francisco and Denver, when he gets the word. word that, you know, the revolution has broken out, this mutiny has broken out. He gets back to China in January and then the sort of terminal crisis of the dynasty takes place. And the little boy, last emperor is, he abdicates. And that's it. February 15th, 1912, the Qing dynasty is over and the whole imperial system is gone. Oh, feel free to go forward. Can I raise my hand just because as an aside, and you brought it up when you said that, Sun Yatsin was in the United States, I was just going to point out that specifically he was on his way to Denver of all places,

which I don't know why. Just I find that particularly amusing. I know Denver is a big city and all, but you don't expect the person who's coming out of a Chinese revolution to be, you know, coming out of it as being one of the leaders to be in Denver when the revolution is taking place. Anyway, that was just an aside. I didn't mean to interrupt you.

Oh, no, no, no, no problem. You know, well, that is it. I'm always fascinated by that, too. He was on a fundraising tour and, in fact, goes on, you know, from Denver to Kansas City, St. Louis, winds up in New York, takes a boat over to London, you know, raising money for the revolution the whole way, speaking to overseas Chinese communities. There was a significant Chinese community in Denver, people who had been working in the silver mines up in the Rockies and all that. So he's drawing on those communities. But he returns, once he gets to London, he then moves pretty quickly back to China. And when the arrangements are made for the emperor to abdicate,

the fellow who represents the imperial state is a military leader named Yuan Shirkai. And Yuan Shur Kai had been in the late years of the dynasty, he had been a real force for modernization of the military. So he's in control of what's called the Bayang Army, the northern most modernized units within the military. But he sees the writing on the wall, and he also sees an opportunity for his political advantage. So the plan, the hope of the revolutionaries,

was that Sanyat Sen would become the president of a successor state, of a republic that would be established. And indeed, he does when he gets back to China. He is proclaimed as the first president of this incipient republic. But the deal that Yuan Shurkai brokers, in order to negotiate a peaceful transition of power, so that there doesn't have to be fighting at this point, San Yansan agrees to step aside and allow Yen Shirt Kai to become president. but this is all very provisional, and the idea is that there will be elections held to put together a constituent assembly, an assembly with a mandate to draw up a constitution, to create a new governmental infrastructure.

So it's a very ad hoc situation there starting in February of 1912. As that goes forward, elections are a deed held, and the nationalist, by the nationalists, by the, this time, the Tongmeng Hui has sort of reconstituted itself as the Nationalist Party, the Guomindang. They win, you know, a majority of seats in the new legislature of the Republic. But Yuan Shurkai is not, he's not really playing fair at this point. He doesn't want to have the nationalist be the dominant force. He doesn't want to surrender the presidency back to Sanyat-Sin. So when the National Assembly is about to convene up in Beijing, a number of things happen. The leader, the formal leader of the legislative party, if you will, the Guelman Dog, is assassinated.

He's blown up on a train platform down in Shanghai. And Yuan Shurkai declares that most of the delegates elected by the Guelanong are ineligible to take up their seats. So he basically purges the legislature before it even has a chance to convene. And then has the leftover legislators elect him to be president. And then a couple of years or about a year after that, he then proclaims himself to be president for life. So it's a very, it's a very abortive start to these efforts to create a republic. You know, the dream, apparently, initially at least, for many people, had been to create a sort of liberal Republican state modeled on, you know, Western bourgeois democracy. But that goes off the rails very, very quickly.

Uynchukai doesn't last that long in April of 1916. he tries to stage an imperial restoration with himself now as the new emperor. He gets fancy imperial robes made and he puts together a sort of like a cabinet of officials but gives them all titles from the old imperial system. He actually goes down to the temple of heaven, where in the spring every year the elder emperor would go and sort of do these rituals to start the end. agricultural calendar. He goes down and does that, but he doesn't get any traction. People,

the massive people in the capital, you know, are kind of laughing at this. And so his effort to become a new emperor collapses. He leaves the city, and he dies about six weeks later of people say of a broken heart, but, you know, whatever collapse he went through, you know, he's off the stage. But that's, in many ways, that's a good thing, but it also meant that there was now no longer a powerful political center. Sanyat Sen had a lot of following, but, you know, the organization of the Gwomen Dang was not really prepared to assume national leadership at that point. And so this is the moment from 1916 for the next decade that China really fragments into what we call the warlord era, where there are, you know, 20 or more different military strongmen,

some of whom control a province, some may control two or three provinces, some provinces are divided between a couple of warlords. It's a very chaotic period. There's lots of fighting. It's very tough on the ordinary people. This is the period, the end of the teens and the beginning of the 20s, when the livelihoods of people, especially in the countryside, are just ground down to their absolute, you know, base, rock-bottom level.

And people are struggling every day just to survive and hang on. So this, you know, the end of the imperial system, this abortive effort to start a republic, and then the collapse of that and the fragmentation into, you know, this warlord era. That's what sets the stage for what will become the emergence of, of the Communist Party and the socialist revolutionary struggle. So we can move on to that unless you have a particular topic or question you want to get to first. Sure. I'll just add some. I have some thoughts for sure. One thing is it's just fascinating because when we look back over these transitions towards liberal democracy, towards capitalism,

there are never these sort of clean breaks that just happen and then this thing is installed and then we move forward. There's always this stutter step, this reaction. I mean, look at the French Revolution, you know, compared to other bourgeois revolutions, very left-wing. But then there's also the Thermidorian reaction, and that gives eventually rise to Napoleon, which in some ways carries forward the French Revolution in serious ways, but in other ways betrays it and ends it becomes Emperor of France himself. And I think we should keep that in mind when we're thinking about socialism and the transition in that direction, which is it's never going to be a perfect, clean, you know, first attempt we succeed. approach to transitioning in that way. So I think that's interesting. Another element that jumps out

to my mind is, you know, in the West, we're enamored with the Roman Empire. That lasted. I mean, you know, the exact dates are of course fuzzy, but about a thousand years. And I think one thing that we should pause and reflect on is this 1911 revolution and everything that happens after is the end of over 2,000 years of this chain of imperial dynasties in China, over 2,000 years, which is hard to wrap our minds around. And I think that that, of course, is going to, you know, influence the way people think and influence that transition in really interesting ways. Just for some chronological orientation for listeners, at the time of the 1911 revolution,

Mao is about 18. The Chinese Communist Party is going to be created in about a decade out from this, and then the Civil War about 15 years out from this, so just people can orient themselves. But my question is, in this transition period, Mao is growing into adulthood. Do you have any insights into his experience during this time, his thoughts, and how his political evolution sort of took place in this 1911 up through the 20s of Chinese history? Sure, sure. Yeah, I mean, in many ways, Mao's story is kind of a microcosm of what happens for many, many. young, educated Chinese who were passionately hoping and seeking a path forward to create a China

that would be, you know, more just, more equitable, able to stand on its own feet again, able to stand up to Western imperialism, and, you know, to go forward and solve these dreadful problems that were oppressing the Chinese people. You know, that combination of domestic oppression and imperialist exploitation, you know, was just, as I said, just grinding people down, you know, to the rock bottom. Mao, in the teens, you know, goes through, he's affected by, and actually it becomes a part of what's called the new culture movement. The new culture movement was, in many ways, it's often portrayed as a rejection of traditional thought and traditional political culture. and it certainly is. But it's not a complete rejection.

It's an effort to both draw from the outside world, new ideas, new inspirations, new ways of doing things, but also to work with elements from within the Chinese tradition because the Chinese tradition is a vast and complex field, and there were certainly progressive elements within that. We had things like the Taiping Rebellion, the Boxer Rebellion, you know, which were egalitarian and anti-imperialist movements right in, in, you know, recent history for them, but also reaching deep back throughout Chinese history, popular uprisings,

calling for social justice and economic transformation and all that. So Mao wants to, Mao and the new culture movement, they want to draw on both, you know, new ideas coming in from the outside world, but also on radical and progressive elements from within the Chinese tradition. So the new culture movement, and people, figures like Chengdu Shoe and Li Da Zhao, Tsai Yuan Pei, who is the chancellor of Peking University, they're writing, they're publishing, they're putting out newspapers and journals, the journal New Youth, that's addressed at, you know, young people who are trying to find a path forward.

Jo N. Lai, who studies in Japan for a little bit at this time, is another. So these young people are questing for new ideas. And Mao, we can see a very interesting political development. He starts out trying to grapple with things like China's weakness. This was a big theme, the weakness of China. And he connects that up, not just to sort of political institutions and an economy that's been radically transformed by imperialist penetration, but even down to the level of the individual. And he gets very involved in promoting sort of what I suppose we would call physical fitness.

You know, the idea that young Chinese people need to be strong. They need to be strong physically. They need to be strong morally. They need to be strong mentally. And he writes a number of essays about that. He's also, as many budding socialists and communists were, he's very concerned with gender issues. There's a famous essay that he writes about a young woman who commits suicide rather than be forced into an arranged marriage that she didn't want. And Mao writes about that, and that becomes an issue for the new culture people and all this.

And then, of course, in 1970, we have the outbreak of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. And as news of that starts to come into China, many people who had been involved with the new culture movement, including Mald-Zadol, start to read about that. And they start to be more and more interested in what Lenin is saying. And, of course, then they go back and they start studying more deeply about Marx and Engels in their writing. So now we see Mao and Joanne Lai and other people like that, as well as the leaders of the new culture movement, particularly Chendu Shou and Li Da Jop. You know, they're getting involved in Marxist study groups. So they're getting together and reading translations of the manifesto and the critique of political economy and the civil war in France and all these, you know, classic political writings. and they start thinking about, you know, going forward along that path.

The Bolsheviks, of course, once, you know, once things kind of go forward a bit in Russia, you know, the Bolshev revolution had hoped had been premised in many ways in Lenin's thinking on the idea that it would be a trigger for revolution in Europe and of spreading world revolution, that, unfortunately, doesn't happen. There are uprisings in Hungary and in Berlin and in Spain, but, you know, they don't flourish. They don't lead to the kind of global revolution that Lenin had hoped for. And so now the Bolsheviks set about creating what we come to call the Third International or the Communist International to help support budding revolutionary movements in the, you know, wherever they're going to be around the world. But also, Lenin, of course, writes about imperialism as the highest state.

of capitalism. And so they recognize that the colonial world, the world of imperialist exploitation, is critical if global revolution is ever going to be on the agenda, that you have to break up the dominance of the European and North American imperialist systems in order to be able to advance the revolutionary struggle. So they're looking at all these kinds of ideas and all these writings. This is, of course, in the context of the First World War, which ends in November of 1918. And then we have the Versailles Peace Conference, at which the victorious bourgeois states totally betray the rhetoric of democracy and self-determination for people, which they had used for propaganda purposes during the war. Now at the Versailles Peace Conference, in the

in the specific issue of China, they take the former German colonial possessions that we talked about last time as one of the triggers for the boxer rebellion. And instead of returning them to Chinese sovereignty, they give them to Japan. Japan had occupied Qingdao at the beginning of the war. But, you know, China and Japan were both allied

with the Western powers. China had sent tens of thousands of workers to France to help their economy while the war was going on. And yet the bourgeois victors, they just totally betray China. And that, when news of that arrived in Beijing on May 4th, 1919, that triggers the first big national anti-imperialist movement, huge boycotts directed primarily against Japan, but also a lot of agitation about Western imperialism

because it was the Western powers who had betrayed China. China at Versailles. So all of that, you know, the Bolshevik Revolution giving a new inspiration to Marxism and socialism, the Versailles Peace Conference revealing, you know, so starkly the bankruptcy of bourgeois democracy, that combination gives rise then by 1920 and especially 1921 to the efforts to form a communist party. The International in Moscow sends advisors out. They work with these Marxist study groups, and they finally convene in July and August of 1921, first in Shanghai, and then they have to shift to a lake down in Jujan for security reasons. But that's the first Congress of the party. And Mao Zedong is right there. He's one of the delegates, along with

you know, 11 others representing at that point a total membership of about 65 but it starts to grow very, very rapidly once they sort of make their presence known. Yeah. Yeah, just to hop

in for a second. So as we had mentioned, Yuan Shikai died in 2016 and this opens up what was widely called the warlord era and it's in the backdrop of this that we have. the the Foundings of the Communist Party

but also at the same time we have a lot of changes happening within the Womontong. And so I'm wondering if we can talk a little bit about how the conditions within China influence the formation of the Communist Party as well as changes that were happening within the Guamentong. And specifically, as you had just mentioned, which was a statistic I was planning on bringing up, at the foundation of the Communist Party, there was only about six. members of the Communist Party, and there was a grand total, if you're looking at the First National Congress, only 13 people who actually were able to make it to the Congress. So we're talking about a very, very small foundation, which rather quickly actually started to gain

quite a bit of grassroots support. But if you can talk a little bit about how that warlord era kind of condition of the country influenced the way that the way that the the CCP was founded as well as changes that were happening within the Kuomantang and what were the changes that were happening in the Kuomintang because that will obviously play a pretty major role of how things are going to unfold as we get farther into this history. Yeah, yeah. I mean, the beginning of the 20s is it's such a crucial moment.

You know, China is just being kind of torn apart by these warlord rivalries. different conflicts between individual warlords. There are alliances of warlords that get together. They're fighting for control. One of the sort of ironic aspects of it is that whoever controlled the city of Beijing was seen by the imperialists as the national government, even though they might only control the city and its immediate environment, it's hinterlands but because that's where the foreign powers had their embassies and all

whoever was in control there was seen as the national government and sometimes the city would change hands different warlords would take control but then they became the national government so that that was kind of a a strange aspect of that period but for the for the you know both the the communist and the nationalists this is a moment of 19, 20, 21, 22, where they're trying to figure out the path forward. And that's a very complicated analytical challenge for, I'm going to talk about the nationalists first because that's a little more straightforward.

And then we'll talk about the problems that the Communist Party faced. The nationalists, you know, Sanyat Senn had been the nationalist leader for a long time, really since the 1890s. But he was a great mobilizer and a great fundraiser. He wasn't necessarily the strongest organizational thinkers, shall we say. So when the international sends advisors out to China, they not only work with building the new Communist Party, but they also work with the nationalists.

Sanyat sends ideology, Sanyat sends political thinking. was, you know, sort of moderately socialist. He talks in what he calls the three people's principles of one of his basic writings. He talks about what's called people's livelihood. And the idea, as he understood it, and as he propagated it, was, you know, a kind of basic socialist perspective on having those who labor and those who produce value share in the social distribution of the wealth that they're creating. You know, it wasn't, it wasn't, he didn't have a historical materialist analysis. He wasn't a communist. He didn't have a Marxist, you know, approach to things. But he did have this sort of general, progressive socialist, you know, ideology. So he was open to working with, with the representatives from the international. And they worked with him to transform the Gormandan, interestingly, into a Leninist party, that is to say, a party that operated on the principles of democratic centralism, a party that enforced discipline so that it became a more effective

and efficient organization. And, you know, that greatly strengthened the nationalist party and created or began the process of creating the conditions that would allow them by the mid-1920s to, you know, launch the effort to reunify the country, to bring the warlord period to an end, and to create, once again, an actual functional national government. So that's going on. And that's an important thing to have on the table. But on the side with the communists, this gets very, very complex. because the question was, okay, we're going to organize, we're going to have a Communist Party,

and the ultimate objective, of course, is going to be to have a socialist and communist revolution. But in China, at that point, the industrial proletariat, the sort of industrial working class, was a very small proportion of the population, of the economy, the agricultural economy, was still overwhelmingly. you know, the place where most people lived and worked. And although it was a commercial agricultural economy, it was a capitalist agricultural economy, nonetheless, it wasn't the industrial proletariat. And the Bolsheviks, in their, you know,

from their point of view, from their perspective, viewed the industrial proletariat as the only class with the potential to be a revolutionary class. They viewed the peasantry drawing on things that Marx had written about in the context of France as a petty bourgeois strata, which could not be relied upon. It might align itself with the working class, but it might go over to the bourgeois elements as well, depending upon particular circumstances. So that was sort of a fundamental perspective.

that meant was that in this context of the early 20s, the international advisors urged the communist leadership to form a united front with the nationalist. They viewed the nationalists, basically as a bourgeois party, a bourgeois nationalist party that was deeply connected to the Chinese capitalist element. And of course, there were there were patriotic capitalists. There were capitalists who were anti-imperialist because they wanted a free field for their operations within China. And they, you know, and they saw getting rid of imperialism as a way to, you know, clear the path for their capitalist development. Okay. So, you know, Ken, one could say that they hadn't reached the highest stage of capitalism at that point.

Well, absolutely, absolutely. But then, yeah, but that was, that was sort of the class position the economic position of the nationalist party. They were nationalists, and that's, you know, that's what they called themselves. And so they wanted to, they were anti-imperialist at that point because they wanted to create the conditions for the national bourgeoisie to be able to flourish. So the international advisors advocated a United Front. That United Front is created. That becomes actually a great thing for the communists because it gives them the opportunity to organize within the Gwomen Deng, but also continue on their own. And they become a great force in the labor movement.

Trade unions begin to be organized, and a lot goes forward. But Sanyat Sen passes away, and in the mid-20s, about 1925, beginning of right beginning of 19th, I think it's February of 25. And the leadership that emerges within the Nationalist Party after that, comes to be dominated by Changkaishek. And Changkishk is a rabid anti-communist. He is deeply involved with financial capital. He marries into the Song family.

TV Song becomes the finance minister of the Guamandang government once it gets constituted. And, you know, they're deeply embedded with Chinese financial capital. Plus, there's a kind of, unholy alliance with a lot of organized criminal groupings, especially in Shanghai. So this creates a very difficult situation because in 8th world, well, in 1926, Chonkajek launches what's called the Northern Expedition, which is a military campaign. The military, the nationalist military has been built up. The nationalists had been in control of one province.

They were basically like other warlords in some ways. They had Guangdong province in the south. They built up their military forces there with advice from the international as well. They helped with organizing the military. And then in 1926, they start this northern campaign, retracing in many ways exactly the course that the Taipei rebels had taken back in the 1850s. So if it's a, you know, it's a history of repeating itself kind of moment. And they are, they are, you know, the Northern Expedition, the goal is to, to subordinate all the various warlords to Guelma don't authority, to create a unified national government led by, dominated by the nationalists.

And they're able, you know, they're pretty successful at this to begin with. They either fight with and defeat particular warlords or what they're. They demonstrate their military capabilities, they get other warlords to sign on and agree, yes, I'll accept the authority of the nationalist. By April of 27, they've reached central China. They now have control over Wuhan and the Yangsa River Valley, and they're coming to Shanghai. Shanghai, of course, was an international city. It was a concessionary city governed by the foreign imperialists. but it was also a city where the Communist Party had its greatest strength in the factories, in the labor unions, and it was a city where the criminal gangs had a tremendous amount of control and influence.

So when Chankajek and the Nationalist Army are approaching Shanghai, the communists stage an uprising to seize control of the city so that they can, expectation is they can welcome the nationalist forces, and then they'll have a significant position in Shanghai and in Central China going forward. But what Chalkajek does is he stops. He stops outside of Shanghai, and a combination of the imperialist police forces and gangs from the criminal organizations, a stage of counter coup, and that's. Thousands of workers are killed. The leadership of the party is decimated.

Many of the important leaders are either killed a right or arrested and later killed in prison. It's a terrible blow. This is the split between the nationalists and the communists. And that throws the party into, you know, disarray to say the least. Now they're not, you know, the United Front is over, and the question is going forward then, you know, as Lennon would say, what is to be done? What are you going to do at this point? How are we going to move forward? And this leads to a period from 1927 until about 1933, where the party really struggles with trying to adapt to the conditions, the realities of life in China and figure out how to create a viable revolutionary movement. And it's at this point that Mao Zedong begins to emerge, and by 1933, will emerge as the key figure in the Chinese Revolution. Because Mao, who, you know, during the United Front, like most of the members of the party, has also joined the Golan Dong, has had a position.

He's made director of the Peasant Bureau, and he's out in Hunan province, his home province in Central China, working with peasant U.S. farmers unions. And he writes, of course, his famous report on the peasant movement in Hunan, in which he, and he does this in a number of other writings as well, but in that report, he makes a critical breakthrough, a critical theoretical leap that becomes the foundation of the success of the revolution, which is that he writes about the vast majority of the agricultural workers. He calls them agricultural proletarian. And he divides this up in various ways, and it's a very, very clear analytical profile of the situation in Houdan. And he writes other reports about other areas eventually in which he does the same thing. But this categorization

of the majority of agricultural workers as agricultural proletarians is critical, because what it does is it positions the peasantry, the majority of the peasantry. Not all the peasants. There's rich peasants and, you know, various categories that he deals with. But maybe 70% of the agricultural workers, he characterizes as proletarians. And so if they're proletarians, they are the natural allies, the brothers in arms of the industrial proletariat. So even though the industrial proletariat is relatively small, the agricultural proletariat is huge. And And so bringing those forces, those class forces together is the key to advancing the revolutionary project. And it takes time.

You know, he produces this report. That doesn't mean that the leadership of the party suddenly goes, oh, yeah, of course, let's go with this. There's internal struggles. There's changes in leadership, you know, figures who had been important from the start like chendusho wind up being purged. Li Da Jiao is killed by the Nationalist. It's a period of turmoil, the late 20s, at the very beginning of the 30s. But by the early 30s, Mao has established

the first of what they call the red base areas, the Jiangxi Soviet, an area in the remote mountainous part of southern Jiangxi province, which has about 10 million people living in it, So it's not like just it's some little rural thing. And that's where they begin to experiment with land reform, with reform of the gender system, with a number of productive activities to try to create an economic base for the party.

That becomes the focal point. And it's not the only base area, but it's the biggest and the most significant one to begin with. That becomes the focal point of the struggle. because in the cities the party has to be underground it has to be very careful about its work but in the Soviet in the in the Jiangxi base

area they're able to it's like a laboratory for socialism it's a laboratory for adapting Marxist theory to the realities of Chinese society I mean yeah we have so much to learn

from the Chinese Communist Party the way they organized the theoretical innovations that they've made, the creation of red bases, the sort of pre-figureative experiments and territories that they did control. So the civil war lasts from the 20s through the 40s until the communist win, of course. In that midterm period, we have World War II, and we have the second United Front against Japan. We'll get there in a second. But leading up to the second United Front between the nationalist and the Chinese communists in order to defeat the Imperial Japanese, we have the long march.

So, you know, during this period of time from the late 20s and the early 30s and just brilliantly and expertly laid out for us, we have this ongoing civil war, we have certain territories that are claimed by certain sides, big cities outside of communist control, they have to operate in an underground fashion. Mao makes this theoretical breakthrough with the agricultural proletary to combine them when the industrial proletariat, build their numbers, they're experimenting, and all of this leads eventually to one of the most famous periods of the last century of Chinese history, which is the Long March. So can you kind of talk about leading up what the, you know, the events

were leading up to the Great March, and then we can get into the Long March itself and talk about that? Sure thing. The Janshee Base area, you know, becomes really the center, the most important node within the revolutionary movement by 1931, 32. And as such, it becomes the focus of what the Nationalists called their bandit suppression campaigns. They characterize the communists, you know, not as a rival political force, but just as sort of, you know, bandits, you know, vagabonds in the countryside. And, you know, that's all just for propaganda purposes. But what the Nationalists did was launch a series of encirclement campaigns, as they called them, where each year, beginning in 1930 or so, they would build, literally build a whole ring of fortifications,

these sort of concrete bunkers around the base area. And they would control those areas, and they would fight it over those things. And then the next year, they would push in a little further. I build a new ring. So every year they were tightening the ring around the Jiangxi Soviet. And by the late summer of 1934, they realized the communist leadership began to realize that they just couldn't hold out.

They were going to, you know, they risked being basically overrun by the nationalist forces. And so in October, they made the decision that they had to break out. There was a heroic unit that was tasked with launching an attack on the nationalist forces on the northeast corner of the base area. But that was a that was a deception because the breakout takes place place on the

southwest corner and about 120,000 fighters, mostly men, they're relatively few women, but about 120,000 fighters, break out, break through the nationalist lines, and start what will become the long march. Their goal, well, they weren't entirely clear to begin with on what the goal was going to be, but their goal becomes reaching another base area, one even more remote than the Jiangxi Soviet, the base area in northern Shanxi province in the northwest of China. At that point, it had not yet settled in the area of Yanon. Yanon will become the focal point of the northwest base area, and that's their ultimate destination. But it takes a year. It takes a year for them to literally walk from the south you know south central china southern jang shi they go west

they loop around a few places they have to cross marshes they have to cross high snowy mountains they have to cross rivers that run through deep gorges they're they're instantly harassed and and you know attacked by nationalist forces they're bombed with you know by airplanes it's an amazing epic movement in the midst of which, at close to the beginning of it, January of 35, they reach a town in Guajos province called Zunyi, and at that point they paused. They stop for a little while,

and they have a meeting, what's called the Zunyi Conference. And it's at the Zunyi Conference that Mao Zodong's ideas are finally accepted by the leadership of the party. And Joe Enly becomes his closest supporter. At first, Joe Enly is proposed to become the new leader of the party, but he doesn't want to do that. He, you know, Joe Enly is the consummate organization man, and he wants to be able to preserve his ability to, you know, to guide the party. but he doesn't necessarily want to be the number one leader. He supports Mao Zedong. Mao doesn't become chairman of the party at this point.

People often think that that's what comes out of the Zonni conference. He becomes chairman of the military commission of the party. So he becomes, in effect, the military commander of the Red Army. He doesn't formally become chairman of the party until 1945. But his ideas, the idea of accepting the agriculture, agricultural proletariat as a revolutionary class building the movement based upon the unity of workers in the industrial and agricultural proletariat. That becomes now the guiding ideology of the Communist Party of China. So the Juni Conference is where that political transformation

takes place. And then, of course, they're back on the road. By October of 35, they reach northern Shanxi. Only about 18,000 of the original 120,000 who set out on the long march arrived in northern Shanxi. Some had died along the way. People died in fighting. People died trying to cross these harsh conditions. Some people had to drop out because of injuries or illness. Some people left along the way, you know, because they, they couldn't take it. Some people left for ideological reasons. But 18,000 arrive in Shanxi, and that then becomes, from the end of 1935 until for about a decade until 1945, that becomes the critical base area. And Yanon, once they finally settle in Yenna, that becomes the new laboratory for socialism.

And, you know, the kinds of things that had been experienced on the Long March, those 18,000, and others, you know, even others who had survived but hadn't necessarily made it all the way to northern Shanshee, those men and women, because there were a number of women who made it the whole way, they were the heroes. They were, they were legendary. When I first lived in China in the early 1980s, there were still a lot of Long March veterans around. And, you know, when one of them would pass away, you know, there would be national mourning. These, even people who were just ordinary fighters, ordinary soldiers who were just, you know, walking and carrying their packs and, you know, taking part of the struggle that way. not glorifying the leadership, but anyone who had been on the long march. These were the heroes of the revolution. And, you know, that was just, it was an amazing thing to know that they were there around you.

And I've met one or two over the years, you know, and it's just such an amazing, inspiring experience to talk to someone, to meet someone who had gone through all that. And that it creates this ethos within the party that even people who weren't on the long march, but who were dedicated revolutionaries, the people who are in the other base areas, the people who are operating underground in the cities, they identified with the spirit of the long march, that the revolution itself is a long march. There's the long march of the physical experience, but there's also the long march of the dedication to the revolution. that there are victories and there are defeats, that there are times that we're rising and there are times that we have to drop back. And, you know, to have that epic tale as the inspiration for the revolution,

I think it's something that gives the Chinese revolution a quality that in many ways is still with us. You know, that when Xi Jinping these days talks about, you know, staying true to the original mission of the revolution, he's hearkening back to that Long March spirit, if you will. And I think that that still remains a powerful inspiration. And not just, you know, I mean, at this point, there's not a lot of Long March veterans.

I don't know that there are any Long March veterans still around. But, you know, for the Chinese people, this is still something that is very, very much alive in their hearts and in their political consciousness. So, yeah, the Long March is quite the tale. There's, there's, you know, thousands of stories. And of course, they've made movies about it and there's books about it. And it's something that is a very living presence. in China for the people and for the party, of course, all the way to the present moment. I mean, absolutely, you know, remarkable that there was anybody that was able to make it up to Shanshi, given what they were facing.

And I believe it was in the last episode. I said it's one of the most inspiring moments of modern human history to me. And I'm really glad that we're getting to have this conversation, even though, man, we're at an hour already. and we haven't gotten all that close to the end of this episode yet. But before we move on, you know, at risk of making this episode way too long, we look at the Long March today and think of how inspiring it is and how, you know, incredible, heroic these individuals that were embarked on the Long March, much less the ones that actually made it to Shanxi, but even just the ones that decided to embark on this March.

Because if you look at the plans of the Long March, man it I mean it takes a special kind of person to even just look at the plan and decide that you're going to try much less the ones that were actually able to make it to shan shita destination you know just looking at and listeners you know I highly recommend if I remember I'll try to link you know something in the show notes but even if I don't just Google the long march and you'll find images of the planned march and I'm telling you that is that is remarkable but Ken what I'm particularly in interested in, and briefly, because otherwise this episode will never end. I'm really curious about what they were experiencing at the time, not in terms of the hardship that they were facing, but what were things like when they would come across people on the long march, on the way to Shanshi? How were they, I don't want to say greeted, that's probably the wrong word, but how are their interactions with ordinary, you know, not the nationalist troops, not the people that were trying to hunt them down, but just ordinary Chinese civilians on their way

to Shanshi, what were they viewed like this? You know, it's this big moving, you know, like guerrilla forests going up north. It's very interesting to think about what the people that are just in the villages of, you know, rural China are thinking and experiencing as they see this group going through their village. Yeah, that's a, that's a really good topic to address a bit because it's really critical to understanding how the revolution worked and how the revolution was able to build solidarity with the people. Because, you know, this is the period where the Red Army puts into practice, you know, its policies about relating to the people.

The idea, you know, they used to talk about how the people are the sea and the communists are the fish, you know, and the fish can't live without the sea. you know, but you have to, you know, the Red Army and the Communist Party have to be the extensions of the people, you know, and so this is when the ideas of the discipline of the Red Army, the idea, you know, don't take a single thing without paying for it. You know, people would, you know, the units would come into a village and, you know, maybe going to be going to spend the night, right? And just as a sense of what the, these conditions were like, you know, they would, they would, and this was with, you know, the, the, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the next day of, of a house, and put it on a couple of sawhorses, and that would be the bet, you know, a soldier would sleep on a door like that, right? But, but the Red Army guidelines said, when you, when you, when you get up the next day and you're going to be on your way, hang the door back up, you know, you know, clean up after yourself. take care of yourself pay for the things you have don't impose yourself you know it's funny just a couple days ago it was in a conversation with uh with a young comrade here something about the american constitution and the provision in there about the quartering not you know barring the quartering of troops and he was like what what the heck was that about and i was like well that's what imperialist armies used to do you know they would come in and take over people's homes and just and just you know ransack them and just you know you know live off the fat of of the land, as it were. That's not what the Red Army did. The Red Army respected the people

because it was the people. It was the extension of the people. And that worked out in a couple of ways on the Long March. Of course, when they were encountering, you know, rural villages of Chinese, of Han peasants and everything, that was one thing. And that generally went pretty smoothly. But because of, you know, the nature of the Long March, they passed through a lot of areas that were pretty remote, that were pretty rugged, and that many of them were occupied by non-con minority populations. And that could sometimes be a tense situation because, you know, many of those people had not had a very positive experience of their relationship with the imperial government. And so now here was an armed force arriving in their midst. Was this going to

be another, you know, occupation army? Was this going to be another force of like the imperialist government, the imperial government? No, you know, the communists had to stop. They had to work with people. They had to, you know, embrace local customs. You know, if they could find people, if they had members of the party, or they could recruit people as translators so that they could work with these communities as they encountered them. This was a challenge. And there were points of friction. There's no, you know, there's no, you know, you don't want to, you don't want to pretend it was just a succession of a big group hugs. This was a challenging endeavor.

But the party addressed that, and the Army, the Red Army, addressed that by putting into practice these principles of being a people's army. And that's all the people, you know. They weren't an army of the Han Chinese. They were an army of the Chinese people as, you know, as they live there in that, in that, in those places in that time. So, you know, the relations with the ethnic minority communities, you know, they, basically worked that out as they went and obviously succeeded in building that unity. And that's something, again, that's something that we have to bear in mind today that, that, you know, China is a multi-ethnic state and it's a state which respects the identity, the traditions, but also the

contemporary realities of, you know, 56 different ethnic groupings. And yeah, and that that, that tradition, that respect is based upon the ties, the cooperation, the relationships that were built in the course of the Long March. Yeah, it's so, so fascinating. Just for people who are, you know, in the U.S. and might not have a really extensive knowledge of China. You know, it's roughly, China is roughly about the size of the continental U.S. So, you know, I'll just do some quick math while you were talking. And you started from Atlanta. You walk to Phoenix. And then you walk from Phoenix to Seattle. And then you walk from Seattle to Minneapolis, and you're still not at 6,000 miles, which is how long the long march was. Just kind of put it in perspective for an American.

That is, I mean, all the detours and all the setbacks and you're being attacked. And mountains and rivers, just like you would have been in the U.S. as well. Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, you just can't fathom what these people went through. So I just wanted to make that clear. So at the end of the long march is more or less the about a year out from the beginning. of what is known as the second United Front,

which after years and years of fighting, the Nationalist and the Chinese Communists come together once again in a relationship of convenience to fight the Imperial Japanese. So I was hoping you could talk a little bit about the second United Front. And then if you also have a moment or thought about this,

during this entire time, the entire Civil War, what was the posture or the assistance from the Bolsheviks up north, right? did did they play a significant role throughout this conflict obviously they prefer the the chinese communists to win but i'm wondering how far they went to try to assist them but then also really focus i think on the second united front is the important thing here yeah well those are those are two related uh uh topics uh so let me yeah let me you know the second united front comes about pretty straightforward would be in some ways uh the japanese uh you know japanes uh you know japan had

its own trajectory of modernization and tries to position itself and does position itself as one of the imperialist powers by the late 19th century. You know, they fight a war with China in 1895 over Korea. They annex Korea in 2010. They invade Manchuria in 1931 and separate that from the rest of China, setting up a puppet state there. They, you know, the Japanese had this, this. vision of their own imperial dominance, they were opposed to Western imperialism, but only to facilitate the expansion of their own imperialism. And they saw China, at least, you know, the army elements

in Japan saw China as the great arena for their expansion. They wanted to gain control of China, the wealth that they knew could be produced out of China, the resources that they could gain access to. So Japanese imperialism, you know, has its own, its own very clear and direct agenda. And by 1936, they are, they are positioned on the northern borders of the rest of China. In December of 36, there's a, there's an incident, what's called the Xi'an incident, when Chiang Kai Shik goes out to Xi'an in northwestern China in the southern part of Shanzh. Xi province. Okay, so the communists are at Yanan in the northern part

of Shanxi province. Shian is the capital of Shanxi province in the south. And there's a warlord there, Zhang Shoyang, whose father had been a warlord and had been assassinated by the Japanese. Zhang Shou Liang

is violently opposed to the Japanese. Of course, they blew up his daddy. He'd be a little upset about that. And he's very critical of Chiang Kai Shack. He says that, you know, why are you devoting your energies to fighting the communists who are, who are, you know, just patriots as opposed to resisting Japanese imperialism? And Chankajic goes out there to have an out with John Shelyan. But Zhang Shul Yang kind of puts him under house arrest, locks them up. And then invites the communists to come down and have a little

chat. So Jo-in-Lye flies down to Shiann, and Joe-N-Lai and Zhang Shrilyong and Chankhish have a little set to. And as a result of that, Chang Kai-Shek agrees to the second United Front to fight against the Japanese. And then he departs and goes back to his capital at Nanjing, taking Zhang Shui Liang with him, and they keep, the Nationalists, keep John Shuellyang under house arrest until the 1980s, even after they, you know, retreat to Taiwan in 49, they take him along and he's finally released only after Chankajek dies and then he's released in the 1980s. So it's crazy. That's a crazy story of his experience.

But the Second United Front is formed. That seems to have convinced the Japanese military leadership. You know, they were happy with the nationalists and the communists fighting each other. because a divided China could be more easily manipulated. Now the United Front, they see that as a problem. And so just six months later, in July of 37, the Japanese launched their invasion. They come down across the Great Wall Line in the north, and they invade via Shanghai up the Yangtze River.

And that starts the war of Japanese aggression. And, of course, they occupy a considerable portion of China, particularly in the sort of northeast quadrant of the country, but also the ports along the south coast. They, of course, occupy Hong Kong eventually. And, you know, they establish themselves there and try to try to exploit China as much as they can. But it's not a walkover by any means. The communists in the north wage a prolonged guerrilla war against the national, I guess the Japanese. And the nationalist forces do fight the Japanese.

They keep them from controlling much of the South. But John Kai Sheck still has his main focus on the communists. He very famously at one point says that the Japanese are like an irritation of the skin, but the communists are a disease of the gut. So he accepts the Second United Front. And the nationalists armed forces do resist the Japanese. We don't want to, you know, pretend that they just sat back. But Chankajek also hoards a lot of military equipment that is supplied mostly by the United States with an eye to being prepared to fight the communists once the Japanese are defeated.

Chankajek knows that the real contest in the Pacific War is between the United States and Japan, and that eventually the United States will defeat Japan. America's industrial strength so far outstrips where Japan can mobilize, even with, you know, the territories that it occupies in 1941, that eventually, you know, the Americans are going to crush the Japanese. And, of course, that's what happens. So Chankajek knows that he can sort of ride it out. And so, you know, they resist further Japanese expansion, but they don't really do much to attack the Japanese in the areas that they're occupying. That work is done by the communists fighting behind Japanese lines, out in the villages. You know, the Japanese controlled the railways and the cities,

but the countryside was largely in the hands of the communists. And the communists did a lot of work to present themselves as they were, as the real defenders of China, right? And this belt further solidarity with the masses of the Chinese people who saw Chiang Kai Shack, you know, kind of sitting it out. When the war comes to an end, of course,

you know, the Americans drop atomic bombs on Japan. That's not a great thing either. But it does bring the war to an end in August of 1945. There's a brief period, end of 45 and into 46, where there are efforts at creating a coalition government. Joe Lai spends a lot of time first in Chongqing, the wartime capital, and then in Nanjing, when the nationalists moved back there,

trying to negotiate a, you know, trying to convert the United Front into a coalition government. And how there's various interim agreements who reach. The Americans send in George Marshall to try to negotiate some of that stuff. but the contradiction between the nationalists and the communists is just it's too real you know the nationalists are a corrupt bourgeois party that has embraced the western imperialists by this point working hand in glove with them the communists are revolutionaries who want to create a new different order a socialist china that contradiction isn't going to be resolved and that that is what leads by 47 to the outbreak of the act civil war. But let me step back just a moment from that and address the other question that you raised, because it's a thorny one. It's a, it's a, it's a, not a, not actually a very, a very nice tale. Stalin and the, and the, the Soviet leadership didn't really embrace Mao's ideas about

the peasantry as an agricultural proletarian. They, they accepted the need to, to provide some support to the communists, but given the position of the communists in Yen and other isolated base in areas around the country, they couldn't provide a lot of direct support to the communist forces. But that, I mean, that's one set of material realities. But the sad part of it is that the, you know, Stalin and the Soviet leadership continued to see the nationalist party. as basically, you know, the viable force for future development in China. And they provided military assistance, advisors, financial assistance to the nationalist government. Now, in part, of course, that was because the nationalists were eventually fighting the Japanese.

The Japanese were part of the Axis powers. even though Russia and Japan signed a mutual non-aggression treaty back in 1939, clearly, you know, the Soviets wanted, you know, Japan not to be prevailing. Because if Japan was successful, that would be a boost to Hitler and Mussolini and all that. So that gets bound up in the geopolitics of World War II. But the Soviet Union continued to provide assistance to the nationalists all the way down to 1948. Once it became clear, especially by the end of 48, with this great battle of the Hawaii campaign where the communist forces, the Red Army finally just crushed the nationalist

forces, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of Nationalist soldiers deserted to the Red Army side. This was the real turning point. At that point, the Soviet Union cuts off its support to Chiang Kai Sheck and really begins to throw support back to the Red Army and the CPC. But it's a problem. It leaves a legacy of mistrust between Mao and Stalin and between the two parties, between the Soviet party and the Chinese party, which, you know, as read it, as you were saying, a little while ago. You know, revolutions are not, they're not something that you lay out a schematic and you just assemble it and everything works perfectly. They're human. They have their

flaws. You know, that relationship has its ups and downs, you know, even after liberation, as we know, through the 50s and beyond. But a lot of the legacy of tension between the Soviet Party and the Chinese Party is based on this long support for the nationalists, for the Gwomenon that was based on, you know, really on Stalin's mistrust of the peasantry as a revolutionary force. I know Brett and I both have brief follow-ups for this section of the conversation before we move into the closing of it. I guess I'll go first, which is you actually had mentioned more or less what my follow-up was, but I just want to nail you down a little bit more on this specific point. You talked about how a lot of weaponry was being set to the nationalist during the fight against Japanese imperialism.

You talked about how Chinkajek was a very strong ally of the United States in this fight. And actually, you know, interestingly, again, I like to harken back to what I was taught during middle school and high school, because it's just interesting to think about how students in the United States are taught about this history. And Mao, I don't remember being brought up at all. I don't remember the CCP being brought up at all in the discussion of World War II. It was always Chiang Kai Shek and the Chinese army, which is very interesting because while the nationalist army, which was being presented in the textbooks, is just the Chinese army as if there was one all-encompassing Chinese army that represented all of the people of China, which, you know, just logically thinking

about it, that would be very strange then to see the change. that happened immediately after the Second World War ended if there had been one all-encompassing army that represented all of China rather than two armies that were operating kind of in unison but separate from one another. It's very interesting because you see all of the weaponry being funneled to Shinkajik, but on the other hand, and as you pointed out,

this actually ended up kind of working against them in the long run because the communists were just so much better and much more effective at fighting the Japanese. You know, that people were able to see that the Red Army, despite not getting that sort of support from the Western allies of China in the fight against Japanese imperialism, they were just that much more effective. So just briefly, Ken, and again, I know you touched on this.

I just want to nail you down to a specific question on this topic. What made the Red Army so effective, whereas the nationalist army, again, was kind of sitting on the sidelines, and how did that impact the recruitment of new members of the Communist Party? Because that, of course, is going to play immediately into the way the things unfold after the Second World War ends. Yeah. Well, I mean, yeah, it sounds a little right, but basically, you know, the Red Army was a people's army.

It was an army largely of peasant soldiers. Most of the soldiers, certainly when they came into the Red Army, were illiterate. The party, of course, carried out a lot of educational programs. But, you know, you're fighting a war. You know, that can't be the, you know, people aren't spending 40 hours a week doing their homework, you know. So, you know, the Red Army was a people's army. It was based upon the people. It was a volunteer army.

No one was drafted or conscripted into the Red Army. They respected the people. We talked to be, you know, I mean, hang the door back up after you sleep on it. You know, pay for the food that you get. You know, don't see the people as a resource to be exploited, but see the people as your hosts, as you're the people for whom you are fighting, right, in a very, very concrete way. the Nationalist Army was largely a conscript army by the time of the Civil War after World War II a lot of them hadn't been paid

their equipment was not kept up some of them didn't have uniforms, some of them didn't have shoes you know it was so much there was so much corruption in the nationalist system in the government and in the military There were units where, you know, there were all these names on the roster, but half of them, you know, were dead or out of action, and the officers were simply taking their pay. I mean, it was a rotten structure. And, you know, when they encountered the communists who were dedicated, seasoned fighters from having confronted the Japanese for so long, a lot of the, a lot of the, a lot of the national.

Nationalist soldiers just laid down their arms and put their hands up and went over to the other side. And many of them became dedicated fighters for the Red Army, you know. So it's really just, it's really a basic contrast between a people's army and a conscript army of a corrupt, of a corrupt government, a corrupt regime. It's not a lot of mystery to it, you know. And so that made, that made the Red Army. Army an attractive thing. And of course, when

liberation comes, when the Civil War comes to an end, when the Red Army enters Beijing in January, February in 1949, you know, there's wonderful footage of the parade. You know, they come in, the

Southgate, the central Southgate, and they march right up through what the area called Chenman, into, you know, the heart of the old city, the old capital. And literally, you know, I mean, Beijing at that point had a population of about a million people. And when you see the footage of this, it looks like all million of them are standing on the streets, cheering and waving flags and, you know, it's liberation.

You know, we talk about liberation. And that's what it was. It's liberation from Japanese imperialism first and then liberation from the nationalist, you know, throughout nationalist government. So that's, you know, that brings the civil war to an end, that that brings the revolution, not to an end, but really to a beginning. And of course, the exactly we're talking about with regards to the nationalists, it plays out when they go to Taiwan and they initiate the white terror, which maybe we can touch on here in a bit, right? that rot and that sort of clearly who are the bad guy's situation. It does play out after liberation and after the nationalist get pushed to Taiwan. Really quick, though, I do have just sort of a side question. You don't have to spend much time on this, but just I'm just out of pure

curiosity. Do you have any insight into how the Chinese people writ large, maybe Mao Zedong in particular, or the Communist Party in particular, were reacted to the nukeying of Japan? Because obviously it's this horrific event in human history zoomed out, but it also ended you know, Japanese power and really settled that score for the Chinese, especially after all the atrocities Japan committed within China. Do you have any insight into the reaction on the part of China to the nuclear bombs against Japan? Well, there was certainly an awareness that these weapons had been used. But in the context, you know, Japan had also been subjected to a campaign of incendiary bombing, which actually killed more people than the nuclear bombing. And, of course, Germany, the

same thing, the fire bombing of Dresden and other cities. You know, the brutality of the imperialist armies was clearly on display. You know, this idea of total war, of waging war, not just against enemy army, but against the civilian population. of the enemy countries. This is like the inversion of people's war. And so there was an awareness of that. And, of course, the anticipation of that in the post-war confrontation with imperialism.

You know, we have to remember that in the early 1950s, President Eisenhower threatened to use nuclear weapons against China in the disputes over some of the offshore islands that were still being held by the nationalists. You know, so there was an awareness of the incredible destructiveness of nuclear weapons. But, you know, of course, Chairman Mao also very famously said that the atomic bomb was a paper tiger. And that gets ridiculed a lot. But what he meant, of course, was that, yes, it's a terrifying weapon.

It is a weapon of mass destruction. but no weapon is going to destroy the revolutionary spirit of the Chinese people. That was what Chairman Mao was talking about. That technology is technology and the imperialists are willing to use it, but that China would survive and would triumph over that. So that's the sense in which he says that the atomic bomb is a paper tiger. not because he doesn't take its destructive capacity seriously, but because he sees the strength of the revolution

as able to overcome even so devastating a weapons. Yeah, terrific. So, Ken, I've got one question left for us today. I mean, I've actually got about a thousand, but I'll ask one, and then we'll close out the conversation because, as I was telling Brett in the chat, we're at risk of making this a 12-hour episode if we ask everything we want to.

So the question is, you know, you took us more or less to the end of the Chinese Civil War. Can you talk a little bit as we talk about the closing of this, you know, the Chinese revolution and the civil war? How did the Chinese Communist Party consolidate the revolution after the success of the Civil War? You mean after liberation? Yes, after liberation. So, okay, we've talked up until liberation. So what happened at that moment, you know, I guess we didn't talk about the Commenton being. kicked out but oh okay okay but then you know take us after after that that liberation of sorry

from the japanese up through uh the end of the civil war itself which i know we had kind of like touched on in previous answers and then how was the revolution consolidated in 49 and and up uh yeah yeah yeah i mean the struggle the the the civil war itself uh basically is is 47 and 48 Because by the beginning of 49, the nationalist forces are just disintegrating. And, you know, it's clear that the Red Army is going to prevail. The liberation of Beijing is probably the most symbolic turning point. And that takes place January, February of 49. You know, I mean, coming out of the war, coming out of all that resistance to nationalist aggression,

to Japanese aggression. The Iran Army had tremendous popular support. The Communist Party also, the program of the party, the party in the areas that came under its control, you know, began implementing land reform already in 1948, taking land from, you know, wealthy landlords and redistributing it to peasants who needed more to survive, you know. An incredibly popular, you know, policy program.

So, you know, the revolution as a political agenda just got, you know, tremendous popular, popular support. And with the victories of the Red Army, people came to see, you know, the Communist Party and the new socialist China. The new China, as they talked about it, Xinjianghua, you know, as something that was going to take place. They were, this was going to happen. And 1949, of course, is the critical year. Beijing is liberated at the very beginning of the year. The leadership establishes themselves out in the western hills, just a little bit outside of the walled city.

And, you know, they begin the construction, the process of developing a new national government. The Red Army goes on south. Shanghai is liberated later in the year. They cross the Yangtze River and start moving into the southern provinces. You know, it takes until, you know, 1950, well into 1950,

for all of the different parts of China to come under the political authority of the New People's Republic. But 49 is the transitional year. They convene what's called the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, which is a mouthful. But that is a grouping of,

people outside the Communist Party, and the CPPCC still exist. It's meeting right now, as a matter of fact, as we're recording this, along with the National People's Congress. That sets the agenda for creating the new government, trying to start constructing a constitutional order for the People's Republic. The People's Republic, of course, is proclaimed October 1st, 1949. This year, of course, will be the 75th anniversary of that. It's going to be an amazing celebration in China and for those of us supporting China around the world. Yeah, so there, you know, there's this vision of what the Chairman Mao talked about of what he called New Democracy, which was the idea that, you know, the communists weren't going to take over and become some dictatorial force. They wanted to build a broad-based new order, new political order. So the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, the National People's Congress, as it was going to be constituted, these were going to be the mechanisms through which the government would come to be.

And there would be, you know, they created different ministries. And, of course, the Red Army now becomes the People's Liberation Army. So this process of constructing a new political order pretty much occupies their time through much. much of 49, the summer and the early fall of 49, until the actual proclamation in October. And then, of course, Chairman Mao gets on a train and goes to Moscow to negotiate the Sino-Soviet friendship treaty, which is critical for that first decade of development that lies ahead. I know we're going to talk about that period in the next episode. But that's that, you know, the, the infrastructure for that is what's created in 1949 and going into the very beginning of 1950.

And yeah, two quick questions as we wrap up here. How did the nationalists end up in Taiwan? What was the sort of deliberations around that? Why did the, you know, the new Communist Party even allow them that, you know? And then as we wrap up as well, I like like maybe a recommendation for a movie with, regards to the long march because we could talk about it, we can read about it, sometimes having really good visual representations of a historical event like that really help people learn. So maybe that would be a cool thing you could do at the back end, but I'm particularly

interested in Taiwan. Yeah, well, you know, the nationalists, once the negotiations for a coalition government broke down and once the Civil War got going in earnest, it didn't take them long, I think, to realize that they were not going to prevail. they begin preparing to evacuate to Taiwan. Taiwan, of course, had been part of the Japanese Empire, and so when Japan surrenders in August to 45, a nationalist forces cross over to the island and occupy it to, you know, to displace the Japanese colonial government. And they begin to, you know, anticipate withdrawing there, certainly by, by 1947. There's just a story.

historical precedent, of course, for that. Ming loyalist forces all the way back in 1644 had withdrawn to Taiwan and resisted the Qing dynasty for a while there until around 1660. So, you know, I'm sure they were drawing on some of that precedent. But the people on Taiwan were not particularly thrilled about this. They, you know, saw the nationalist as corrupt and arrogant and oppressive. In February, of 48, there's an uprising against the nationalist, and it is this which has put down so brutally, thousands, tens of thousands of people killed, others put in prison. This is when martial law is declared on the island, February of 48, that isn't lifted until the late 1980s. So, you know, this is the foundation of what becomes this very oppressive regime on Taiwan, you know, even well into the 70s and the early 80s, dancing was illegal because some weird, you know, Christian precept that the nationalists embraced, you know, mandated that. It was a very weird regime that they established out there. But once they had suppressed this uprising in 48 and imposed martial law, they prepositioned themselves to get out. And when the national those forces began to disintegrate, you know, they started forcing soldiers onto airplanes,

onto ships, and taking them across to Taiwan to establish their military presence there. There were men, you know, who'd been conscripted from their villages, who, you know, who never saw their families again, never saw their wives, their kids. Not until after the ending of martial law in the 80s, was it possible for family reunions to begin? and there's a whole wave of that that goes on where people who had families that had been separated and of course sometimes this was successor generations, the children of nationalist soldiers,

going back to the villages from which their fathers had come and being embraced by the people there because, of course, Taiwan is part of China and, you know, this was just part of the hopes at that point for national reunification. But, you know, the move to Taiwan is not, a sort of, you know, glorious transition, but it's a really brutal evacuation, a forceable evacuation of thousands and thousands of ordinary soldiers. And, of course, the looting of the mainland,

you know, the treasures from the Palace Museum that had been taken by the Nationalists when they evacuated Beijing, you know, wind up in the National Palace Museum in Taipei even today. You know, they, as these so-called Taiwanese nationalists and independent advocates, you know, they forget that they are the bearers of the traditions of Chinese culture in the National Museum there, in the Palace Museum there. So, you know, it's a very contradictory situation, obviously, and that legacy, of course, remains unresolved all the way down to the present moment, although people on both sides of the strait certainly recognize that they are all Chinese. Yeah, and then just really quick, I ask that question, just about a movie recommendation for the Long March. Yeah, boy, well, there are lots of good movies about the Long March in Chinese. Feel free to recommend those. I was going to ask if you could. Yeah, you know, you kind of put me on the spot with that.

I know there's a group actually up in Michigan that shows Chinese films online every week. And I sat in with them for a while last year when they were doing. a bunch of films about, including ones about the Long March, I'm going to have to look at my notes and dredge up the actual names, but I'll get those. I can't produce them off the top of my head right at the moment. But there are many, many excellent films about the long march and about the revolution, you know, overall that are really, you know, very much worth viewing. And as you say, they're very inspiring. You know, I think especially for young people to see these struggles and the heroism involved, it's good to have that sort of visual

component. So I'll get back to you. Email, please me. We'll put it in the show notes. Listeners, if you're interested in movies on the Longmarts, just check the show notes, and we will inevitably have recommendations from Ken there. All right, we're going to wrap up this episode here. Brett, my lovely guest, host for this episode. Can you let the listeners know how they can find your excellent podcasts? Sure, yeah. Thank you again, Ken. Absolutely fascinating whirlwind of history. I am entranced every time you speak and the depth of your wisdom and knowledge of these histories are fascinating. So thank you so much for spending time with us. As for me, you can find

everything I do at Revolutionary Left Radio.com. Excellent. And Ken, can you remind the listeners how they can get your latest book? Sure. The book is China's Revolution and the quest for a socialist future, and that is available from 1804 Books in New York at 1804books.com. Terrific. As I said, unfortunately, our co-host, Adnan, was not able to make it today, but you can find him on Twitter at Adnan A. Hussein, H-U-S-A-I-N. Check out his other podcast, The M-J-L-I-S, which is on the Muslim world and Arabic diaspora.

No, Arabic world, Muslim diaspora. I got that backwards, but I corrected myself. It's okay. That none will not be that mad at me. As for me, listeners, you can find me on Twitter at Huck-1995, H-U-C-K-1-995. You can help support the show. Keep us up and running by supporting us at patreon.com forward slash guerr-R-R-I-L-A history. Follow us on Twitter at Gorilla-U-N-S-Pod, to stay abreast of all of the latest things that are

coming out from us individually as well as collectively. And I will remind you, listeners, that this was installment number two officially because we did have that kind of preamble episode that we did with you back in the fall, Ken, last year. But this is episode two officially of our mini-series on Modern Chinese History. Stay tuned. Episode three on the Cultural Revolution will be coming your way in one or two weeks. So be sure to keep your ears peeled for that one. And until next time, listeners, solidarity.

I'm going to be able to be.