From 1840 it was increasingly clear to all sections of Chinese society that something in China was fundamentally wrong and big changes were required. By the beginning of the 20th century, dissatisfaction with the old regime and demand for change were reaching boiling point. It was increasingly apparent that the old regime could not reform itself but was determined to cling to its power and privileges. Organisations with the goal of the revolutionary overthrow of the Qing Dynasty and the establishment of a national bourgeois Chinese republic proliferated, especially in the South and East of the country centred on Canton and Shanghai.[36]
Between 1905 and 1912, Sun Yat-sen built a political movement for the military overthrow of the Qing regime. Sun’s prestige came from his successful merging of small revolutionary groups into a single larger party providing a more effective base for the nationalist struggle. Sun was dedicated to the bourgeois democratic revolution, and between 1900 and 1908 he led or organised no fewer than five failed uprisings. In early 1911 another Sun attempt in Canton failed, but on 10 October 1911, soldiers in Hubei province rebelled and proclaimed a republic. This did not ignite any popular response but coming as it did from within the military-bureaucratic apparatus, this ‘tap’ was sufficient to knock over a thoroughly rotten structure.
Politically, Sun Yat-sen was a petty-bourgeois who presented socialism as a vague state of well-being rather than a social and economic system. His famous Three Principles for the liberation of Chinese society from imperialism specifically exclude the idea that this might require a class struggle; instead the concept of “people” was used to obscure the idea that China might have different classes with different interests.
With the overthrow of the Manchu dynasty, Sun’s supporters in Nanjing (capital of Jiangsu province) declared themselves a National Assembly and elected him President of a loosely federated Republic of China. In this capacity he did a deal with the representative of the old dynasty (General Yuan Shikai [Yüan Shih-k’ai] a warlord from the North, with large forces at his disposal), offering him the presidency if he arranged the permanent departure of the Manchus.[37] Rather than mobilise the masses throughout the country on a social programme to overthrow the regime, Sun Yat-sen – in a classic example of the Asiatic mode of rebellion – simply changed the personnel at the top. The party of the liberal bourgeoisie and national democratic revolution entered into a reactionary compromise with the counter-revolution.[38]
After the Taiping rebellion, the authority of the emperor had been more nominal than actual with real power held by the provincial governors. The Republic in 1911 finally severed any remaining loyalties to the emperor and the provincial governors representing themselves alone assumed both military and civil power. These regional warlords corresponded closely to the spheres of interest of the Great Powers, and the incessant civil wars reflected the conflict of interests between those powers. In Manchuria, Japan supported Chang Tso-Lin while Britain supported Wu Pei-Fu in Northern China, and Sung Chan-Fang in Central China.[39] Despite the disintegration of the country, the Beijing government remained the symbol of China’s national sovereignty and thus its capture continued to be the goal of Sun Yat-sen and the nationalists.
The failure of the 1911 revolution (known as the First Chinese Revolution) demonstrated the weakness of the national bourgeoisie. Forming a stable national government, creating a national market, and carrying through radical land reform were beyond the capacities of this social group on its own. Sun Yat-sen bowed to reaction with the result that two years after 1911, the party of the revolution found itself outlawed and Sun forced to seek asylum in Japan. Confusion, disorder and turmoil would now be the order of the day until the CCP victory in 1949.
After the First Chinese Revolution, the situation of the national, middle, and small bourgeoisie became ever worse due to disintegration of the country and continuous civil wars. The previous general hatred of the monarchy was now directed at the warlords and their backers, the imperialists. The energy that had previously gone into peasant revolt now fuelled a nationalist movement of tremendous force for reunification of the country and against imperialism.[40]
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Fairbank, Op. cit.
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North, R. Moscow and the Chinese Communists, Stanford U.P., 1963.
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Serge, V. The Class Struggle in the Chinese Revolution, 1927, Rev. Hist. 5(3)83.
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Jacobs, D. Recent Russian Material on Soviet Advisers in China: 1923-1927. The China Quarterly, No. 41, 1970, p103-112.
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Pantsov, The Bolsheviks … Op. cit.