The Roots of Communist China
The Roots of Communist ChinaTo say that the Chinese Communist revolution is a non-Western
revolution is more than a clich�. That revolution has been primarily
directed, not like the French Revolution but against alien Western
influences that approached the level of domination and drastically
altered China's traditional relationship with the world. Hence the
Chinese Communist attitude toward China's traditional past is
selectively critical, but by no means totally hostile. The Chinese
Communist revolution, and the foreign policy of the regime to which it
has given rise, have several roots, each of which is embedded in the
past more deeply than one would tend to expect of a movement seemingly
so convulsive.
The Chinese superiority complex institutionalized in their
tributary system was justified by any standards less advanced or
efficient than those of the modern West. China developed an elaborate
and effective political system resting on a remarkable cultural
unity, the latter in turn being due mainly to the general acceptance
of a common, although difficult, written language and a common set of
ethical and social values, known as Confucianism. Traditional china
had neither the knowledge nor the power that would have been necessary
to cope with the superior science, technology, economic organization,
and military force that expanding West brought to bear on it. The
general sense of national weakness and humiliation was rendered still
keener by a unique phenomenon, the modernization of Japan and its rise
to great power status. Japan's success threw China's failure into
sharp remission.
The Japanese performance contributed to the discrediting and
collapse of China's imperial system, but it did little to make things
easier for the subsequent successor. The Republic was never able to
achieve territorial and national unity in the face of bad
communications and the widespread diffusion of modern arms throughout
the country. Lacking internal authority, it did not carry much weight
in its foreign relations. As it struggled awkwardly, there arose two
more radical political forces, the relatively powerful Kuomintang of
Sun Yat-sen and Chiang Kai-shek, and the younger and weaker
Communist Party of China (CPC ). With indispensable support from the
CPC and the Third International, the Kuomintang achieved sufficient
success so it felt justified in proclaiming a new government,
controlled by itself, for the whole of China. For a time the
Kuomintang made a valiant effort to tackle China's numerous and
colossal problems, including those that had ruined its predecessor :
poor communications and the wide distribution of arms. It also took a
strongly anti-Western course in its foreign relations, with some
success. It is impossible to say whether the Kuomintang's regime would
ultimately have proven viable and successful if it had not been ruined
by an external enemy, as the Republic had been by its internal
opponents. The more the Japanese exerted preemptive pressures on
China, the more the people tended to look on the Kuomintang as
the only force that prevent...
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