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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 February 2009
Early in 1928 the Chinese Communist Party was in crisis. It might have disintegrated and disappeared. Yet in fact it persisted, constantly refashioned itself, and ultimately became the political system of the country. The broad questions we may ask about this historical fact are: What was the nature of the Party in 1928? What had been the experience of the leadership? And what was the relationship between the Party, with its distinctive ideology, and the Chinese social environment?
1 I am indebted to Lifton, Robert J., Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: a Study of “Brainwashing” in China, New York: Norton, 1961Google Scholar, for the concept of a student generation in which the individuals were “at war” with themselves and the society.
2 Wilbur, C. Martin and How, Julie Lien-ying, Documents on Communism, Nationalism, and Soviet Advisers in China, 1918–1927: Papers Seized in the 1927 Peking Raid, New York: Columbia University Press, 1956, pp. 135–137Google Scholar.
3 “Tang ti Tsu-chih Wen-t'i Chüeh-i-an” (Resolution on the Question of Party Organization), 9 November 1927, quoted in Chien-min, Wang, Chung-kuo Kungch'an Tang Shih Kao (A Draft History of the Chinese Communist Party), Taipei: Privately Printed, 1965, Vol. 1, p. 529Google Scholar. Of the approximately 4,000 active members, “most are engaged in unplanned, unorganised, and individual heroic struggles.”
4 Wilbur, and How, , op. cit., p. 115Google Scholar.
5 Lists of graduates and auditors in the first five classes are given in Lo Ch'i-yuan, “Pen Pu I Nien Lai Kung-tso Pao-kao Kai-yao” (Short Report of the Past Year's Work of This [i.e., the KMT Fanners] Bureau), Chung-kuo Nung-min, No. 2, 02 1926, pp. 147–203Google Scholar. The information is brought together in Shinkichi Eto, “Hai-lu-feng—The First Chinese Soviet Government: Part I,” The China Quarterly, No. 8 (10–12 1961), pp. 160–183, p. 182Google Scholar. The Resolution describing the shortage of Communists in the Farmers Movement appears in Kwangtung Nung-min Yün-tung Pao-kao (Report on the Kwangtung Farmers Movement) n.p., October 1926, pp. 165–189, pp. 170 and 188. This work is on microfilm at Hoover Library, Stanford, ex libris Taihoku Imperial University.
6 Wilbur, C. Martin, “The Ashes of Defeat,” The China Quarterly, No. 18 (04–06 1964), pp. 3–54, pp. 6 and 22CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
7 The list was built up from a variety of sources and probably is not exhaustive, objectively balanced, or free from errors. I began with a purge list drawn up in early 1927 and appended to the records of a meeting of the Kuomintang Central Control Committee on 2 April. This listed 196 alleged Communists in the Kuomintang Central Executive Committee, Central Control Committee, and various provincial committees. Ko-ming Wen-hsien (Documents of the Revolution), Vol. 17, Taipei: Chungkuo Kuomintang Central Executive Committee's Commission for Compiling Historical Documents of the Party, 1957, pp. 3091–92Google Scholar. A similar list appears in KMWH, Vol. 16, pp. 2826–27. Many of the persons named were Kuomintang leftists and not members of the Communist Party, so far as I can discover. On the basis of other evidence, 64 entered my list of 121. (Another 15 might have entered the list had there been more evidence of their leadership in the CCP.) Another source is two Chinese collections of biographies of Communist martyrs, one printed in Russia in 1936, the other compiled by Hua Ying-shen (Hong Kong: Hsin-min, 1949), which together contain 33 different names. I searched the following biographical dictionaries: Boorman, Howard L., Ed.: Biographical Dictionary of Republican China, Vol. I: Ai-Ch'ü, New York: Columbia University Press, 1967Google Scholar; Union Research Institute, Who's Who in Communist China, Hong Kong: Union Research Institute, 1965Google Scholar; and Gaimusho, , Gendai Chūgoku Jinmei Jiten (Biographical Dictionary of Contemporary China), Tokyo: Gaikō Jihōsha, 1962Google Scholar. Donald Klein kindly sent me many entries from the forthcoming biographical dictionary to be published by Harvard University Press. I also consulted four Chinese studies: Yün-han, Li, Ts'ung Jung Kung tao Ch'ing Tang (From the Admission of the Communists to the Purification of the [Nationalist] Party), Taipei: China Committee for Publication Aid and Prize Awards, 1966Google Scholar; Yung-ching, Chiang, Bolot'ing yü Wu-Han Cheng-ch'uan (Borodin and the Wu-Han Regime), Taipei: China Committee for Publication Aid and Prize Awards, 1963Google Scholar; Wang Chien-min, Chung-kuo Kung-ch'an Tang Shih Kao, op. cit.; and Chung kuo Kung-ch'an Tang chih T'ou-shih (Perspectives on the Chinese Communist Party), Taipei: Wen Hsing Bookstore, 1962Google Scholar. (This is reprinted photographically from a study of the Investigation Section of the Organisation Department of the Kuomintang, 1935, and is Part 3, Vol. 1 in the series Chung-kuo Hsien-tai Shih Liao Ts'ung-shu.) Two sources useful for execution lists are: Hsü, U. T. (Hsu En-tseng), The Invisible Conflict, Hong Kong: China Viewpoints, 1958Google Scholar and Issues and Studies, Taipei: Institute of International Relations, 01, 1967, pp. 43–50Google Scholar. In addition, I consulted many Western language histories of the Communist movement.
8 See table I at the end of the article.
9 For the second group the Union Research Institute, Who's Who in Communist China and the above-cited Japanese Biographical Dictionary were most useful, as were the works of Edgar Snow and Helen Foster Snow (Nym Wales).
10 Based upon my recent study of the May 30th Movement. Teng Chung-hsia says it was the strategy of the Party to make the Joint Committee the focal point of the United Front; to have the General Labour Union make connections with the left wing of the Students' Association to repress its right wing; to use the Students' Association to make connections with the left wing of the Federation of Street Merchants' Associations to repress its right wing; and to use the Federation to make connections with the left wing of the General Chamber of Commerce to repress its right wing. Chung-kuo Chih-kung Yün-tung Chien Shih (A Brief History of the Chinese Labour Movement), many editions since 1930; I have used one published by Hua-chung Hsin-hua Shu-tien in 1949, p. 160.
11 Chesneaux, Jean, Le Movement Ouvrier Chinois de 1919 à 1927, Paris: Mouton, 1962, pp. 85–218Google Scholar , and my study of the May 30th Movement on how unions were formed.
