The Chinese Communist Party won the civil war against the Kuomintang and founded the People's Republic of China on 1 October 1949. There are many factors that led to the victory in the impossible struggle against the Kuomintang and the reunification of China, but I have only examined the political factors that occurred from 1921 to 1949. Since the founding of the Communist Party of China in 1921, the first cooperation between the Communist Party and the Kuomintang in 1924 laid the foundation for the development of the Communist Party. During the first round of cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, members of the Communist Party joined the Kuomintang in their personal capacity and received official guidance from the Kuomintang, but were able to maintain their status as Communists. As a result, the Communist Party developed rapidly during the first period of cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party. In May 1925 the party had 1,000 members, but by the end of the year it had 10,000, and by 1927 it had grown rapidly to 58,000, and trade unions and peasant associations were also expanding and developing. In response, the conservative faction of the Kuomintang raised the issue of the National Alliance of the Communist Party of Chinaand began to expel Communist Party members. The First United Front was destroyed in April 1927 when the Kuomintang crushed the CCP organisation in Shanghai. The Chinese Communist Party also declared the end of the first cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party by issuing the Declaration of the National Situation on 13 July 1927, and China once again entered the situation of civil war between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party.
The Chinese Communist Party became an illegal political party after the initial cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party ended, but it continued to rebuild its base among the peasant class through underground activities. In this process, the outstanding members of the Communist Party began to take a different line from that of the Soviet Union, the motherland of the Communist Party, while intensifying their activities in the countryside. They carried out armed self-defence movements in relati vely isolated areas and began to establish bases as a Soviet regional regime. As a result, in November 1931, the Chinese Communist Party established the Chinese Soviet Republic and began to unify the Soviet bases scattered throughout the region. At the time, the Jiangxi Central Soviet Republic included many counties in Jiangxi Province, and the number of Communist Party members rose to 300,000 in 1933. As the number of Communist Party members increased, the Kuomintang began to put pressure on them through repression, making it difficult for the Communists to operate in Jiangxi Province. Overall, however, the plan to suppress the People's Army did not produce significant results. When Chiang Kai-shek launched the Fifth Anti-Communist Campaign in 1933, the Communist Party abandoned Jiangxi Province, its revolutionary stronghold, and began the Long March northwest. Along the way, Mao Zedong was elected leader of the Chinese Communist Party at the 1935 meeting in Nanjing (a city in northern Guizhou Province), but by the time some of the Communist Party troops arrived in northern Shaanxi, their strength had been greatly reduced.
7 July 1937. When Japan invaded China, the Communist Party entered into a second nationalist-communist collaboration with the Kuomintang, but unlike the first collaboration, it entered into a military truce for the purpose of an anti-Japanese alliance. The Kuomintang also temporarily abandoned its suppression of the Communist Party at this time, and the Communist Party also abandoned the Soviet Union. At this time, all regions and armies in China agreed to be part of the national government led by the Kuomintang. The Communist Party in particular took advantage of this situation to occupy Yan'an in the north of Shaanxi Province and extend its influence with the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia border region as its capital. By the end of the war in 1945, the Communist Party had 1.2 million party members and 910,000 troops, and the population under its control had grown to about 95.1 million.
During the anti-Japanese war, the CCP greatly expanded its organisation and changed the political landscape to the detriment of the Kuomintang. After the Second World War, the Communist Party was not as powerful as the Kuomintang, but it became the ruling party nationwide. During the purges of 1942-1944 and the 7th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in April-June 1945, Mao Zedong Thought was established as the unifying and coordinating force of the Communist Party and became the educational norm for Party members, cadres and military leaders. The United States then tried unsuccessfully to mediate between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, and in 1946 another civil war broke out between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party. The Kuomintang initially won some local victories, but the situation changed after 1948 and the Communists eventually won the war and established a new government in unified China in 1949. The Chinese Communist Party was founded in 1921 and it took 28 years to establish the new regime in 1949. The political factors behind the victory are as follows
■ Political Mobilization and Military Struggle
The CCP firmly believed in political mobilisation and military struggle as its political essence. Therefore, it regarded its victory as the result of political mobilisation aimed at opposing imperialism and feudalism and breaking the Kuomintang's bureaucratic capitalism. During the revolution they were subjected to military encirclement and repression by the Kuomintang, but the values of military fervour, heroism, sacrifice and collectivism grew. In the process, they came to believe that only weapons could create a regime, and that if they continued to engage in political and military struggle, they could defeat the Kuomintang and at the same time destroy imperialism and feudalism. In particular, the revolution also strengthened the political and military struggles by realising that the continuation of a passive attitude could also lead to opposition. Although it required the sacrifice of many people, they saw it as a natural process for them to win.
■Crowd Route
The Chinese Communist Party has taken the mass route. The mass mobilisation approach is a basic principle that the CCP generally adopts in a situation where it is trying to seize power. In other words, if it relies only on Party members, it will not be able to sustain the revolution, so it must rely on the masses who are not Party members to provide resources such as food and new members. It can be said that the mass line requires a degree of control over Communist Party officials and intellectuals.
In particular, the CCP has a strong aversion to bureaucracy and the incorruptible spirit of intellectuals in Chinese history, so it has required party members to engage with the masses through the mass line policy, while allowing many administrative positions to be open to the public. This broke the existing bureaucratic system in China and won the absolute support of the people. In addition, the CCP wanted to realise a kind of democratic trend and demanded that Party members be responsible to the masses. Party members and the masses ate, lived, worked and held meetings together, allowing for mutual criticism. This was an important factor in legitimising the regime through attempts to establish a relationship between the leadership and the masses.
■ Self-reliance
The self-reliance of the CPC is the third important factor that has won the support of the masses from the historical experience of cooperation with the Nationalist Party. This ideological source is the experience of the revolutionary base of the CPC being politically, economically and geogra phically isolated as it was continuously pushed back by the Kuomintang since 1927. They were geographically cut off from the outside world by the Chinese Kuomintang's military and economic blockade, and it was difficult for them even to communicate with each other.
In addition, most of the CCP's bases were very backward, and postal, telephone and communication services were basically unthinkable. In this situation, the Communist army realised self-sufficiency without relying on the people in its own territory. This self-sufficiency of the Communist Party became an important method of struggle to win the support of the masses, and it became the basic foundation for the Party to win the support of the masses even when it was defeated by the Kuomintang. The meaning of self-sufficiency includes not only the internal meaning of the Chinese Communist Party, but also the external meaning of achieving revolutionary victory without relying on international capabilities.
■Ideological Education
The Chinese Communist Party attached great importance to ideological education. At the centre of this ideological education was Marxism. The main theoretical problem facing the CCP was how to build a socialist state and proletarian revolution in an agrarian country with a rich feudal history. The question was how to carry out a proletarian revolution in the absence of a proletarian base. After 1927, for example, the Kuomintang abandoned the united front and began to repress the Communist Party, which was even struggling to survive. In this situation, Mao Zedong tried to organise the Nonggong Red Army to achieve self-defence through the realisation of armed revolution. The Nongong Red Army was originally composed of peasants, bandits and other complex elements, but through active ideological education it was rearmed with ideological consciousness. The CCP's ideological education was formed during the Soviet era through mass media dissemination, political education, small group discussions, study in Party schools, and criticism and self-criticism, and was further revitalised during the Yan'an period. Even after the founding of New China in 1949, ideological education was institutionalised and given great importance. In addition, the Chinese Communist Party developed Marxism-Leninism into Mao Zedong Thought and Deng Xiaoping Theory, which remain the central ideologies of the Communist Party to this day.
In addition, there are various factors that can be cited as the CCP's victory over the Kuomintang, but above all it can be said that it is the CCP's own reforms, the establishment of its ideology, and its adherence to a pro-people line. These three factors worked together to enable the Party to educate its members continuously during the Long March and the period of collaboration with the Kuomintang, and to drive the Kuomintang out of Taiwan. Even today, the basic line and policies of the CPC are aimed at implementation from a long-term perspective, and once a policy is decided, it is consistently pursued for the promised period.
The CCP, as the most elite group, will continue to run China. In particular, there will be an attempt to replace the existing system with a full market economy and Western political institutions under the rubric of 'Chinese characteristics'. However, such a policy will only be promoted by the Chinese Communist Party and will not introduce a full multi-party system or a market economy. It is seen as the best way to control such a vast territory and population. However, it does not include the so-called basic human rights issues that the international community is concerned about. In other words, it interprets the concept of universal human rights in the West using the term 'Chinese characteristics'. The CCP will continue to lead China and have its own voice in the international community. But we will only adjust the speed and level.
The THAAD (Theater of High Altitude Area Defense) issue between South Korea and China has had a significant impact on the CCP's various unilateral policies and measures and has provided an opportunity to organise the direction South Korea should take. As the only divided nation in the world, North and South Korea are in a confrontation, and North Korea's nuclear armament is seen as an obstacle to reunification, and the problems that may arise from this will provide more opportunities for the four neighbouring powers than for South Korea. In this international reality, we must seriously consider whether China can become a friend of Korea.
