The KMT united all reactionary influences, including the feudal remnants, to resist the masses and to suppress them. It was consequently unable to fulfill any of the bourgeois-democratic tasks, not even such a slight reform as a 25% reduction in rents. It was mainly characterised by consummate Asiatic despotism, corruption, and inefficiency. These characteristics were completely revealed during the ‘War of Resistance’.
Following the twists and turns of Moscow and the ECCI, the CCP returned to the class-collaborationist policies that had ended in white counter-revolution and the massacres of tens of thousands of Communists and millions of peasants. The so-called United Front was revived and the political direction of the CCP was determined not by the needs of Chinese workers and peasants, but by Stalin. The political programme adopted by the CCP – in particular its land programme – was limited so as not to offend the KMT. This unity had other consequences such as undermining the gains made by women in society by backtracking on freedoms gained in marriage and divorce.
The CCP presented to the world the rose-tinted picture of a Yenan as a fair, just and equitable society where everybody worked for the common good and enjoyed a common standard of living. However, within the Soviet areas and within the Party, the bureaucracy was quietly acquiring for itself material and social privileges that set it apart from the rank and file. This behaviour was corrupting the party and many Shanxi peasants who joined did so in the hope of acquiring land and/or stock to rise from being a landless labourer or poor peasant to a middle peasant.
Mao, the major figure in the Party, was determined to silence criticism of the bureaucracy and, if necessary, was quite prepared to kill the individuals concerned. Within the Party, extreme methods were used in rectification campaigns to ensure unquestioning obedience by the mass of Party members. This approach to Party discipline and democracy was Stalinist through and through.
The CCP was a Stalinised organisation: it accepted the theories of socialism in one country and of stages, was part of the Stalinist International, and had the corresponding bureaucratic centralist party structure and norms. Party democracy was stifled and the cult of the individual promoted – first Stalin and then Mao. As would be expected, the general direction of the CCP programme was towards class-collaboration; occasionally in specific circumstances it would zig to the left to strengthen peasant support before zagging to the right and returning to its natural path: thus land expropriation and re-distribution policies varied with date and location.
The fable that Mao had fought against Stalin and put the interests of the Chinese before those of the Russian bureaucracy has been debunked by documents released in Moscow and Beijing. Before and during the Yenan period the ECCI and Moscow consistently promoted Mao’s interests and finally in 1938 the General Secretary made it plain that Mao Zedong was his choice for leader of the CCP.