The Communist
Revolution in China
AP World History
Chapter 28
“The Rise and Fall of Communism”
(1917 – Present)
Review: Collapse of the Imperial System in
China
• 1911 = End of the last
(Qing) dynasty
• 1912 = China became the
Republic of China
• Republic of China ruled
from 1912 until 1949
– First president of the
Republic of China = Sun
Yat-sen
Warlords in the 1920s
• 1916 – 1928 = China’s
central government
fractured and various
warlords ruled different
sections of China
• (Like Yuan Shi-kai)
China in 1924
The Nationalist Party
• 1928 = The Nationalist
Party gained control of
China and reestablished a
unified central government
• Under the leadership of
Chian Kai-shek = a military
officer
• He led the Nationalist
Party until 1949
The Nationalist Party
• Promoted modern development
– Railroads, banking, airline services,
etc.
• Problem #1: Impacts of these
achievements only in the cities
rural areas (where most of the
population lived) were still
impoverished
• Problem #2: Left the Nationalist
Party with a limited base of support
– Urban elites; rural landlords; Western
Chiang Kai-shek powers
The Nationalist Party
• Constantly faced
opposition from the
newly developed Chinese
Communist Party (CCP)
– Founded in 1921
– Grew enormously over the
next 28 years
– Found a charismatic leader
in Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong as a young revolutionary
The Nationalist Party
• 1927 = Nationalist
Party chased the CCP
out of China’s cities
– CCP developed a new
strategy = appeal to
China’s peasants for
support
Chinese Communist Party
• Slowly gained the respect and
support of the peasants by:
– Using guerrilla warfare tactics
against the Nationalist Party
– Experimenting with land reform
in areas under communist
control
– Efforts to empower women
– Creation of a communist
Chinese Communist Guerrillas
military force to protect against
Nationalist Party attacks
Chinese Communist Party
• CCP gained an enormous
amount of support during
Japan’s brutal invasion of
China
– Nationalist Party lost control
over most of China and was
forced to retreat to the
interior
– Nationalist Party seemed more
concerned with eliminating
Japanese Invasion of China, 1937 the CCP than fighting Japan
Chinese Communist Party
• CCP, with its communist-led
People’s Liberation Army,
fought the Japanese
vigorously
• Offered security to many
Chinese faced with Japanese
atrocities
• CCP membership grew from
40,000 in 1937 to 1.2 million
The People’s Liberation Army (late-1940s)
in 1945
Chinese Communist Party
• The CCP gained even more
support by doing the
following in areas it
controlled:
– Reduced rents, taxes, and
interest rates for peasants
– Taught literacy to adults
– Mobilized women for the
struggle
– Encouraged peasants to fight
back against their landlords
Chinese Communist Party
• In 1949, 4 years after
WWII, the CCP swept to
victory over the
Nationalist Party
– Most of the Nationalist
Party’s leaders fled to
Taiwan
– New leader of communist
China = Mao Zedong
Building Socialism in China and
the Soviet Union
Building Socialism
• 1st step in building socialism =
modernization and
industrialization of their
“backward societies”
• Simultaneously wanted to
eliminate inequalities of class and
gender, prevent the growth of
new inequalities as they
modernized, and promote values
of selflessness and collectivism
• In order to do this, government
had to be completely dominated
by the Communist Party
Building Socialism
• Communist governments in
China and the Soviet Union,
therefore, became totalitarian:
– Other political parties forbidden
– Government controlled almost the
entire economy
– Government ensured that the arts,
education and media conformed
to approved ways of thinking
– Organizations for women, workers,
students, and professional groups
operated under party control
Communist Feminism
• Both communist
regimes took steps to
liberate and mobilize
their women
• State-directed
women’s initiatives
A man and woman working side-by-side as
power plant operators in the Soviet Union
Communist Feminism in the USSR
• As a result of laws and decrees passed
by the Soviet Union:
– Women were granted full legal and
political equality
– Divorce was legalized and made easier
– Abortions were legalized and made easier
– Marriage became a civil procedure among
freely consenting adults
– Illegitimacy was abolished
– Women no longer had to take their
husbands’ last names
– Pregnancy leave for employed women was
mandated
– Women were actively mobilized as
Soviet women reading and studying
industrial workers
Communist Feminism in China
• The Marriage Law of 1950 in
China implemented:
– Free choice in marriage
– Relatively easy divorce
– The end of concubines and child
marriages
– Permission for widows to remarry
– Equal property rights for men and
women
• Chinese women also became
more involved in industrial
production
Communist Feminism
• Problems for women:
– Still expected to take care of the
children and the housework
now had the double burden of
that PLUS paid employment
– Women appeared only very
rarely in the top political
leadership
– Communist feminism did not
continue and faded within a
decade of its beginning in each
country
Socialism in the Countryside
• 1st stage of socialism in the
countryside = involved taking
over landlords’ estates and
redistributing that land
equally among the peasants
• 2nd stage of socialism in the
countryside = collectivization
of agriculture
– Designed to completely end
private property
Collectivization in China
• Peaceful process due to the close
relationship between the CCP and the
peasantry
• “Great Leap Forward” in the late-
1950s = an effort to mobilize China’s
population for rapid development
– Created “people’s communes”
– Designed to move toward a more fully
communist society with more social
equality and collective living
– Massive famine caused by
administrative chaos and bad weather
Some communes had up to
2,000 households
killed 20 million Chinese between 1959
and 1962
Collectivization in the Soviet Union
• Much more violent process Soviet
communists did not have much
support in the countryside
• Peasants were forced into collective
farms
• A lot of resistance from the peasants
example: many of them
slaughtered and consumed hundreds
of thousands of animals because
they didn’t want to surrender them
to the collectives
Victims of the Famine • Terrible famine ensued caused
about 5 million deaths
Communism and Industrial Development
• China used the same model for
industrial development that the
Soviet Union had developed
decades earlier:
– A series of five-year plans =
brought all agricultural and
industrial production under
government control
– State ownership of property
– Priority = heavy industry
– Massive mobilization of the
nation’s human and material
Poster highlighting industrialization in resources
the Soviet Union
Pros & Cons of Industrial Development
(In both China & the Soviet Union)
Pros Cons
• Increased literacy rates • Rapid urbanization
• More educational • Exploitation of the
opportunities countryside to provide
• More social mobility resources for industries in
the cities
• Growth of a bureaucratic
and technological elite class
with more privileges
Responses to these Social Outcomes: Joseph
Stalin
• Largely accepted these outcomes
• Stalin had created a conservative
society that had abandoned
much of its revolutionary legacy
• Commitment to full equality =
abandoned
• Endorsed: Russian patriotism,
traditional family values,
individual competition, and
differences in wages to stimulate
production
Responses to these Social Outcomes: Mao
Zedong
• Did not accept these outcomes
continuously strove to
combat these inevitabilities of
industrialization
• Tried to preserve the
“revolutionary spirit” of China
• Mid-1960s = launched the Great
Proletarian Cultural Revolution
– Designed to combat the capitalist
elements that had “infiltrated”
China
The Cultural Revolution (1966-1976)
• A campaign against the “Four
Olds” = old thoughts, old culture,
old habits, and old customs
• Message = revolution and rebellion
is good
• Wanted to put “intellectuals” in
their place
– Many schools were shut down
• Wanted to establish a more
equitable society
– Brought healthcare, education, and
rural industrialization to the
countryside
The Search for Enemies
• Mao Zedong = convinced that
many within the Communist
Party had been “seduced” by
capitalist values
– Called for rebellion against
Communist Party itself
– Red Guards = students and other
young people that responded
– Red Guards attacked local party and
government officials, teachers,
intellectuals, factory managers, and
others they defined as “enemies”
that had embraced capitalism
The Search for Enemies
• Stalin used secret police to find
“enemies” within the Soviet
Union and his own Communist
Party
• Late 1930s = “The Terror” or “The
Great Purges” millions of
people were arrested for
treason/disloyalty (usually in the
dead of night)
– Tried and sentenced either to death
or to long years in harsh and remote
labor camps, known as the “gulag”
Workers at a Soviet Labor Camp
The Search for Enemies
• Stalin had close to 1
million people executed
between 1936 and 1941
• About 5 million were
sent to the gulag, where
they died in appalling
numbers
• Throughout Stalin’s
entire dictatorship,
approximately 20 million
people died in the Soviet
Union
