One July day in 1936, a sharp-featured, blue-eyed foreigner, mounted on an old nag named Mongrel, rode into Baoan, the seat of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). This foreigner was the American journalist Edgar Snow, who soon became known around the world as the first Western reporter to visit the communist base areas. His book Red Star over China also circulated widely throughout China.[1] Colorful stories concerning his journalistic exploits, as well as his brilliant reports themselves, exerted a profound influence, and even became a subject for research by scholars and specialists. Snow fully deserved the honors people accorded him because he felt the pulse of the times accurately, and he was at the leading edge of Chinese historical development.
It is not enough, however, simply to praise Snow’s magnificent historical accomplishment. If we ponder his 1936 trip more deeply, the following questions arise. Why did the CCP welcome Snow in 1936 but not earlier? Why did the communist leaders consider Snow’s visit so important that not only did they carefully attend to every detail of his reception, but Mao Zedong himself “frequently set aside piles of reports and telegrams, and canceled some meetings” so that he could talk with the American?[2] These deceptively simple questions are not so easy to answer. The answers actually involve the profound changes that occurred in Chinese Communist foreign policy and foreign relations in the mid-1930s within the broader context of China’s mounting national crisis as the world confronted the danger of fascist aggression and slavery.
From its earliest beginnings, the CCP clearly proclaimed that the Chinese revolutionary movement was part of the world proletarian revolutionary movement. From its position within the international communist ranks, the CCP declared war against the entire capitalist world. In the political context of the struggle to change China and the world, the Soviet Union and the working class represented the CCP’s only true supporters. This view derived partly from Lenin’s theories concerning imperialism and the colonial question, and partly from the CCP’s reading of the contemporary international situation.
After China sank to the level of a semi-colonial country, it was the constant target of collective aggression by several imperialist countries. At the same time, these countries had conflicts of interest in China that frequently led to struggles and direct clashes among them. When it came to opposing China’s nationalist revolution and social transformation, however, their policies were identical. After the capture of Peking by the Eight Power Allied Army in 1900, the Powers for the first time set forth certain principles aimed at coordinating their China policies in order to protect their interests by supporting the Qing dynasty. The suppression of the Boxer Rebellion and the signing of the Boxer Protocol in 1901 were direct results of the Powers’ coordinated policy toward China.
The 1911 Revolution and World War I undermined the old order that the Powers had established in China. Following the Washington Conference (1921-22), the Powers again coordinated their policies toward China. They formed a counter-revolutionary united front to support the Beiyang warlords and preserve the old order in China. The Washington Conference may be seen as an attempt to create a system aimed at obstructing and destroying China’s nationalist and democratic revolutionary movement. It was a powerful international barrier blocking the development of the Chinese revolutionary movement.
After the October Revolution, the Soviet Union’s influence on China grew by leaps and bounds. Russia’s October Revolution triumphed just at the point when the Chinese revolutionary movement touched bottom, and the Chinese people, humiliated at the Versailles Peace Conference, were filled with righteous indignation. It provided the Chinese people with an unprecedented example. The theory that pointed the way to the success of the October Revolution was quickly disseminated within China. Moreover, the Soviet government, headed by Lenin, voluntarily gave up territory seized from China by the czarist government, abandoned the special privileges it enjoyed in China by virtue of the unequal treaties, and renounced the indemnities owed it under the Boxer Protocol.
The victory of the October Revolution and the actions of the Soviet government led patriotic Chinese to believe that the Soviet Union was China’s only genuine friend in the struggle to secure national independence and liberation. In the minds of progressive Chinese, “taking the Russian road” had two profound meanings. First, the October Revolution created a successful model for the Chinese revolution, and provided an ideological weapon in place of Western democracy. Second, “taking the Russian road” not only signified the formation of a new social order, but also the achievement of complete national independence and liberation and the establishment of a truly equitable international order on a new foundation.
It was in this international context that the CCP made its choice. The Second Congress of the CCP proclaimed that, “The Washington Conference has created a new situation for China. The long-standing competitive aggression of the imperialists has changed into cooperative aggression. This cooperative aggression intends to strip the Chinese people completely of their economic independence, and turn four hundred million exploited Chinese into the slaves of the new-style masters, the international trusts. Therefore, the fate of the Chinese people now hangs in the balance, and they have no choice but to rise up and struggle.... China’s anti-imperialist movement will certainly join the national revolutionary tide of the oppressed peoples of the whole world, and united with the world proletarian revolutionary movement. Only then will it be able to defeat the common oppressor - international capitalist imperialism.”[3]
In the mid-1920s, the Chinese Communists joined the ranks of the powerful revolutionary movement. They became the driving force, the organizers, and the leaders of this revolution. After the defeat of the Great Revolution of 1927, Chinese Communists again held high the banner inscribed with the words, “Overthrow imperialism, and strive for complete national liberation.” They aimed at establishing an independent, armed regime of workers and peasants, using military force to overthrow imperialism and Guomindang rule. During the period of the land revolution that lasted almost a decade, the communists were repeatedly encircled by counterrevolutionary forces. The Nationalist Army’s military campaigns of “encirclement and suppression” continued without interruption on an ever-larger scale. In Nationalist territory, the White Terror and cultural “encirclement and suppression” proved just as cruel and intense as the military variety. The plight of the communists was exactly as Snow described it, “ FILL IN QUOTE FROM RSOC.”
Tightly encircled by counterrevolutionary forces, the communists inevitably suffered from an extremely limited understanding of the world situation and its influence on China’s political situation. Their outlook was primarily shaped by the influence of the theories and policies of the Soviet Union and the Comintern. At this time, these were some of the basic guiding theorems within the party concerning the world situation and its connection with the Chinese revolution.
