Nationalism V Communism

After the Boxer Protocol, came the end of Imperial China - this meant that the people were no longer governed by the ‘Son of Heaven’, and thus left with no other form of guidance. In a way, they were forced to look at other options. One option was a political philosophy, Three People’s Principles, developed by Sun Yat-sen to make China a free, prosperous, and powerful nation. This led to the emergence of the Nationalist party, also known as the Kuomintang. However, instead of devoting interests towards this ‘unification’ of one nation through Nationalism, democracy, and the livelihood of the people, China had experienced widespread instability in a rift between the Chinese people and the Nationalists that governed them. War provided the means by which the Communist Party could enter Chinese political life; its war record made its Communist ideology legitimate. It was legitimate in the sense that the Chinese Communist Party came to power on the basis of a loyal constituency of about 100 million peasants during the war, and that this citizenry was still further expanded as a result of Japan’s defeat and the Communists’ successful discrediting on Nationalist grounds of the semi-exiled government of Chiang Kai-shek during and after the war (Johnson 2000). Ultimately, the reason why the newly created Communist Party had triumphed over Nationalism was due to the fact that they had capitalized on the demoralization and dissatisfaction of the Chinese population. The Communist Party appealed to the common folk – it offered to meet the needs of the people for leadership in organizing resistance to the invader and in alleviating war-induced anarchy in the rural areas. The leader of the Nationalist party was Sun Yat-sen who believed in reclaiming China from the warlords to return peace and stability to the populace. His efforts were never realized because following his death Chiang Kai-shek became the new leader of the KMT, one who wanted to “eliminate the cancer of

Cited: Chang, Jung. Wild Swans. New York: NY. 1991. Johnson, Chalmers. Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power: The Emergence of Revolutionary China, 1937-1945. New York: NY. 2000. “Quotes from Mao’s Little Red Book.” 2011. Date accessed: 18 Oct. 2012 Wright, Mary C. “The Chinese Peasant and Communism.” Pacific Affairs, Vol. 24, No. 3 1951. 256-265.