THE CHINESE Communist Revolution, led by the Communist Party of China and Chairman Mao Zedong, resulted in the proclamation of the People’s Republic of China, on 1 October 1949, 70 years ago to the day.
Mao Zedong (1893-1976) and his comrades were party members in the 1920s. Mao was instrumental in establishing an early form of Chinese communism in the years 1928-34.
He led the Long March (October 1934-October 1935), which was a military manoeuvre undertaken by the Red Army of the Communist Party of China, the forerunner of the People’s Liberation Army, to evade the pursuit of the Kuomintang (KMT or Chinese Nationalist Party) army.
Under the command of Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, the Red Army marched circling to the west and north, which traversed over 9,000 kilometres (5600 miles) over 370 days.
Mao was instrumental in developing the military and political strategy in the Yenan years of 1935-45 that won the revolution in 1949. He then went on to develop Communist China and ruled it – in his last years – until his death in September 1976.
Celebrations today will be flush with fireworks, fanfare and a huge military parade.
The main celebrations will take place in the capital, Beijing, where there will be a grand military parade with ‘advanced weapons’ on display, followed by a ‘mass pageant’.
The military parade feature the world’s longest range intercontinental nuclear missile and a supersonic spy-drone.
The last time China held a parade on a similar scale was in 2015 when 12,000 troops marched to commemorate the end of World War II Two.
President Xi Jinping will address the Chinese people.
His speech, which is expected to celebrate China’s rapid growth, will be closely watched for any indication of the country’s direction in the coming years.
The president will also hand out honours for contributions to the country and in the evening there will be a grand gala and another fireworks show.
Meanwhile celebrations have already taken place in Lebanon for the 70th anniversary.
Hundreds of Chinese art lovers on Saturday attended the celebration held at the old historical Serail of Baabda in Lebanon to celebrate the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
Celebrations were also held in Tibet to celebrate 70 years since the Chinese revolution.
More than 1,000 people performed Guozhuang dance on Sunday to celebrate the anniversary.
While around the world workers celebrate the Chinese revolution, in Hong Kong, a right wing movement has developed, hell bent on causing chaos and mayhem, demanding that Hong Kong embraces western capitalism and turns its back on China.
The past month has seen thousands of people storming the Hong Kong parliament and raising the Union Jack flag – known as the ‘Butcher’s Apron’, a visible symbol of the former brutal occupation by British imperialism over China, that began with the notorious ‘Opium Wars’.
On Monday Hong Kong’s main business and shopping district was a scene of total anarchy, with savage riots again today, the streets filled with tear gas and burning barricades.
Riot police repeatedly fired water cannon and tear gas at protesters hurling petrol bombs and marching en masse towards the government office complex.
Thousands of protesters, many clad in black with umbrellas defied a police ban.
Some of them tore down and burned signs congratulating China’s Communist Party ahead of the anniversary, while others sprayed graffiti and smashed windows.
They hurled bricks and petrol bombs back at the police and started street fires on Sunday as demonstrations entered their 17th week.
The protests were sparked in June by a planned law, now ditched, that would have allowed the extradition of suspected criminals to mainland China.
The protests have spiralled out of control with mobs turning on individuals in the crowd and hospitalising them.
The crisis that has erupted in Hong Kong can only be understood as a direct result of the Stalinist policies of the Chinese Stalinist bureaucracy and the counter-revolutionary role that Stalinism has played in China. This goes back to the very first Chinese workers’ revolution between 1925 and 1927, when the country was gripped by an intense period of strikes and uprisings by workers and peasants against imperialist domination.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was a powerful force but it was guided politically by the policy of the Communist International (CI) which, since the death of Lenin in 1924, was dominated by Stalin.
Stalin issued a thesis on China in which he contended that imperialist oppression of China had created conditions whereby the laws of the class struggle did not exist. Instead, he advanced the reactionary policy of the ‘bloc of four classes’ which held that the oppression by imperialism had dissolved class antagonisms, and that bourgeois, worker, peasant and intellectual were united in the nationalist revolution against imperialist domination.
Under orders from Stalin, the CCP was instructed to enter into the nationalist movement, the Kuomintang (KMT) led by Chiang Kai-shek, and completely subordinate the party to the bourgeois nationalists.
Indeed, the KMT were even granted ‘sympathiser’ status in the CI – only Trotsky voted against this proposal when it was put to the Politburo. In 1927, the KMT, scared by a mass strike movement, determined to smash the communists physically. A workers uprising in Shanghai was massacred by the KMT.
The disastrous policy forced on the CCP by Stalin strangled the Chinese revolution and led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of workers, peasants and communists. The Party was forced to engage in the ‘Long March’ from the south to northern China to escape the Kuomintang armies and renew its strength in the struggle against the Japanese imperialist invaders.
After World War 2, the CCP, led by Mao Zedong, learning the bitter lessons of the first Chinese Revolution rejected alliances with the nationalist bourgeoisie and built a mass movement throughout the country culminating in the revolution of 1949 which established the People’s Republic of China and expelled the Kuomintang to Taiwan.
It then sought to go directly to Communism with the collectivisation of the land and the complete expropriation of the bourgeoisie.
In the 1960s, Mao launched the cultural revolution against the right wing of the CP and mobilised millions of youth in the fight to prevent a swing to the right. Mao put Deng Xiaoping and Co into dunce’s caps and warned the youth that they wanted restoration.
After Mao’s death in 1976, Deng once again emerged as a leader and led the way to a major right turn.
The ‘One country, two systems’ formulated by Deng and adopted by the Stalinist bureaucracy established ‘administrative regions’ such as Hong Kong and Macau with their own economic and administrative bureaucracy, where capitalism was not only allowed to develop, but encouraged as the way that China could be reunited, with the Red Army being the final arbitrator.
What we see now in Hong Kong is the Chinese bourgeoisie re-emerging and beginning its challenge to overthrow the workers’ state and lead the bourgeois elements that one country two social systems has encouraged.
The only way forward for Chinese workers is to play their part in the victory of the world socialist revolution by organising direct rule through workers soviets, expropriating the bourgeoisie all over China, and forming a section in China of the Fourth International.
