Thehistory of the Chinese Communist Party began with its establishment in July 1921. A study group led byPeking University professorsChen Duxiu andLi Dazhao to discussMarxism, led toChinese intellectuals officially founding theChinese Communist Party (CCP) in July 1921.
In 1923, the founding father of theRepublic of ChinaSun Yat-sen invited the CCP to form aUnited Front, and to join his nationalist party, theKuomintang (KMT), in Canton for training under representatives of theCommunist International, theSoviet Union's international organization. The Soviet representatives reorganized both parties intoLeninist parties. Rather than the loose organization that characterized the two parties until then, the Leninist party operated on the principle ofdemocratic centralism, in which thecollective leadership set standards for membership and an all-powerfulCentral Committee determined theparty line, which all members must follow.
The CCP grew rapidly in theNorthern Expedition (1925–1927), a military unification campaign led by Sun Yat-sen's successor,Chiang Kai-shek. The party, still led by urban intellectuals, developed a radical agenda of mass mobilization, labor organization, rural uprisings,anti-imperialism, and national unification. As the Northern Expedition neared success, Chiang in December 1927 unleashed aWhite Terror that virtually wiped out the CCP in the cities.
Nevertheless,Mao Zedong, whoseAutumn Harvest Uprising had been a spectacular failure in mobilizing local peasants, became the leader of the CCP and established rural bases inYan'an and theJinggang Mountains. To protect these bases, he also formed theChinese Red Army and engaged in prominent military campaigns such as theLong March. During theSecond Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) Mao led arectification campaign to emphasizeMaoism and solidify his leadership of the party and after the war, he led the CCP to victory in theChinese Civil War (1945–1949) and established thePeople's Republic of China (PRC).
In the years after 1949, the structure of the CCP remainedLeninist, but the CCP's style of leadership changed several times.
.svg)
Marxist andsocialist ideas began to take root in China towards the end of theQing dynasty as Chinese intellectuals began studying the work of European philosophers.[1] One of the earliest Chinese promoters of Marxism wasZhu Zhixin, a revolutionary author and close colleague ofSun Yat-sen who in 1905 published the first Chinese translation ofThe Communist Manifesto.[1][2] Sun Yat-Sen was also an early proponent of certain socialist ideals, arguing that socialism and communism were both subsets of the doctrine ofMinsheng, or People's Livelihood, an idea centered around thetaxation of land.[3] The CCP still claims descent from Sun Yat-Sen, viewing him as aproto-communist and one of the founders of their movement.[4][5] Sun stated, "Our Principle of Livelihood is a form of communism".[6] His widow,Soong Ching-ling, eventually became Honorary President of the PRC.[7]
| New Culture Movement |
|---|
Background |
Practice
|
Major publications |
Following the 1919May Fourth Movement, communism began to gain traction in China.[8] During 1919 and 1920, reading groups focused on the study of Marxism began to develop in China, with participants who had been involved in political movements of the 1910s likeChen Duxiu andLi Dazhao, as well as younger activists includingMao Zedong.[9]: 23
In the summer of 1919, theRussian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) decided to assist people of theFar East by establishing theFar Eastern Bureau of the Communist International.[10] In April 1920, a SovietCommunist International (Comintern) agentGrigori Voitinsky was one of several sent to China, where he met Li Dazhao and other reformers.[10]: 95 While in China, Voitinsky financed the founding of the Socialist Youth Corps.[11]: 32–35 Voitinsky founded the Far Eastern Bureau of the Comintern at Shanghai. On 5 July, he attended a meeting of Russian communists in China to promote the establishment of the CCP. He helped Chen found the Shanghai Revolutionary Bureau, also known as the Shanghai Communist Group. Numerous Comintern agents went to China to help the Chinese andKoreans establish communist groups. Voitinsky provided these groups with promotional conference and study abroad expenses.[12]: 114
In November 1920, Voitinsky, working with Chen Duxiu and others, issuedThe Chinese Communist Party Manifesto and started a monthly publication calledThe Communist Party.[13] Voitinsky left the Republic of China in early 1921, prior to the founding meeting in July 2021.[10]: 123
In early June 1921, two Comintern representatives,Vladimir Neumann, known as Nikolsky, and Dutch nationalHenk Sneevliet, known as Maring, arrived in Shanghai, and urgedLi Da to call various communist cells in the country to come together for a national-level meeting to form a communist party.[10]: 233
The CCP's first formal meeting took place on July 23, 1921, when 13 Chinese representatives of local groups, totaling 57 members,[14] who had met over the course of the preceding two years gathered in Shanghai.[9]: 24 Thesite of the meeting was the residence ofLi Hanjun in theShanghai French Concession at 106 Rue Wantz (now 76 Xingye Road).[10]: 1, 255
After several days of meeting, security concerns prompted the group to instead meet on a houseboat on lake in nearbyZhejiang.[9]: 24 The General Assembly adoptedThe First Program of the Communist Party of China, stating that "the Party is to be named the Communist Party of China" and specifying its objectives: "to overthrow the power of the capitalist class[,]" to "eradicate capitalism and private ownership of property[,]" and to "join the Comintern."[15] The key delegates in the congress were Li Dazhao, Chen Duxiu,Chen Gongbo,Tan Pingshan,Zhang Guotao,He Mengxiong,Luo Zhanglong andDeng Zhongxia.[16]
Mao Zedong was present at the first congress as one of two delegates from a Hunan communist group. Other attendees includedDong Biwu,Li Hanjun,Li Da,Chen Tanqiu,Liu Renjing,Zhou Fohai,He Shuheng,Deng Enming. Comintern representatives Henk Sneevliet andVladimir Neumann, commonly known as Nikolsky, also attended the meeting.[17][10]: 229
The period of the CCP's development between 1921 and 1934 is often referred to as the "Communist International era" because the Soviet Union was the key sponsor of CCP activities.[18]: 35
In the early 1920s, the Bolsheviks and the Communist International's leaders believed that in China, theKuomintang should be supported as it was in their view the country's most viable progressive force.[9]: 24 In August 1922, Sneevliet called a surprise special plenum of the central committee. During the meeting Sneevliet proposed that party members join the Kuomintang on the grounds that it was easier to transform the Nationalist Party from the inside than to duplicate its success. Li Dazhao, Cai Heshen and Gao Yuhan opposed the motion, whereupon Sneevliet invoked the authority of the Comintern and forced the CCP to accept his decision.[19]
Under the guidance of the Comintern, the CCP was reorganized alongLeninist lines in 1923, in preparation for theNorthern Expedition. The Northern Expedition was intended to unify China under a single government.[20]: 35 The nascent party was not held in high regard.Karl Radek, one of the five founding leaders of the Comintern, said in November 1922 that the CCP was not highly regarded in Moscow. Moreover, the CCP was divided into two camps, one led by Deng Zhongxia and Li Dazhao on the more moderate "bourgeois, national revolution" model and the other by Zhang Guotao, Luo Zhanglong, He Mengxiong and Chen Duxiu on the strongly anti-imperialism side.[21]
Comintern agentMikhail Markovich Borodin negotiated with Sun Yat-sen andWang Jingwei the 1923 KMT reorganization and the CCP's incorporation into the newly expanded party. CCP cadres would join the KMT while remaining under CCP discipline.[9]: 25 In 1923, the parties were the two largest political parties in China, with the KMT having several thousand members and the CCP almost a hundred members.[22]: 18
Borodin and GeneralVasily Blyukher (also known asGalen in Chinese) worked withChiang Kai-shek to found theWhampoa Military Academy. Soviet advisors were the academy's instructors.[9]: 26 The academy produced officers who later became leaders of both the Nationalist forces and the Chinese Red Army.[9]: 26
The CCP's reliance on the leadership of the Comintern provided a strong indication of theFirst United Front's fragility.[23]
The CCP's first major involvement in large-scale urban worker militancy was theMay Thirtieth Movement.[24]: 61 The movement also resulted in major growth for the party, with its membership growing from 1,000 members in May 1925 to more than 57,000 by 1927.[25]: 56 Local communist organizations also expanded rapidly.[26]: 110
The growth of the CCP after the May Thirtieth Movement also created organizational challenges and disagreements within party leadership.[26]: 111 Some leaders, such asPeng Shuzhi andChen Duxiu advocated for centralizing party authority.[26]: 111 Others, such asCai Hesen andQu Qiubai, advocated for the party to allow greater flexibility to local bodies.[26]: 111
In 1927, the KMT broke the United Front, committing theShanghai Massacre and violently suppressing the CCP.[20]: 35 CCP leaders sought to respond with armed uprisings inNanchang andChangsha, which briefly seized power before being defeated by KMT forces.[9]: 27 CCP cadres fled urban areas and, in southern China, led their small armies to establish a base atJinggangshan.[20]: 35 TheRed Army left Jiaggangshan following the Kuomintang's counterinsurgency campaigns. They moved into the Jiangxi-Fujian borders to establish theJiangxi–Fujian Soviet.[20]: 35
The 1929Gutian Congress was important in establishing the principle of party control over the military, which continues to be a core principle of theparty's ideology.[27]: 280 In the short term, this concept was further developed in the June 1930 Program for the Red Fourth Army at All Levels and the winter 1930 Provisional Regulations on the Political Work of the Chinese Workers and Peasants Army (Draft), which formally establishedCCP control of the military.[28]: 307
By the early 1930s, the political center of the Communist movement had shifted to the rural base areas.[9]: 28 In 1931, the CCP consolidated a number these base areas into a state, theChinese Soviet Republic (CSR).[20]: 1 The CSR reached its peak in 1933.[20]: 1 It governed a population which exceeded 3.4 million in an area of approximately 70,000 square kilometers.[20]: 1 The CSR had a central government as well as local and regional governments.[20]: 1 It operated institutions including an education system, court system, and education system.[20]: 1 The CSR also issued currency.[20]: 1
Although various counter-insurgency campaigns by the Kuomintang failed to defeat the CSR, thefifth encirclement campaign succeeded.[29][page needed] The CCP had to give up their bases and started theLong March (1934–1935) to search for a new base.
In January 1935, the Red Army reachedZunyi.[9]: 29 At theZunyi conference, party leadership addressed the events leading to the defeat of the CSR, the overall state of revolution in China, and how to proceed.[9]: 29 The course set by previous leaders includingBo Gu, international advisorOtto Braun, Li Lisan, and Qu Qiubai were the subject of criticism.[9]: 30 Although Zhou Enlai was among the criticized leaders, he remained respected and continued to hold a leadership position.[9]: 30 Mao Zedong was elected to the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau and became the movement's most influential leader.[9]: 30 Mao's elevation also reflected a theoretical shift and strategic shift to an increased focus on the rural peasantry as the primary revolutionary class.[9]: 30
After the Zunyi conference, the Long March resumed.[9]: 31 The Red Army settled inShaanxi to expand an existing base into theYan'an Soviet.[30]: 174
The Western world first got a clear view of the main base of the Chinese Communist Party throughEdgar Snow'sRed Star Over China. Snow was also the first person to present Mao as the main leader – he was previously seen as just a guerilla leader and mostly as second to Zhu De (Chu Teh).[31]
During this period, young people dominated the CCP from its lowest to its highest levels.[29]: 145 According to Snow, the average age of Red Army rank-and-file soldiers was nineteen as of 1936.[29]: 145 The CCP's highest-ranking leaders had been students during the May Fourth period and were thus in their mid-thirties or forties after more than a decade of leadership.[29]: 145
![[icon]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=http%3a%2f%2fen.m.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aWiki_letter_w_cropped.svg) | This sectionneeds expansion. You can help byadding missing information.(September 2025) |
During theSecond Sino-Japanese war (1937–1945), the CCP and the KMT were temporarily inan alliance so they could fight against their common enemy. The Yan'an Soviet moved its headquarters fromBao'an (Pao An) to Yan'an (Yenan) in December 1936.[30]: 175 TheChinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army became army groups belonging to the national army (8th route army and New 4th Army), and the Soviet Republic of China changed its name to theShaan-Gan-Ning Border Region.[32] However, essentially the army and the region controlled by CCP remained independent from the KMT's government.[citation needed]
In eight years, the CCP's membership increased from 40,000 to 1,200,000 and the size of its military forces increased – from 30,000 to approximately one million in addition to more than one million members of militia support groups.[33] It remained a primarily rural party, with its non-rural presence generally limited to the suburbs of major cities.[22]: 179
| This sectionneeds expansion. You can help byadding missing information.(September 2025) |
After the conclusion of World War II, the civil war resumed between the Kuomintang and the CCP. Although the CCP participated in the National Constituent Assembly, due to the attacks by theNationalist government, the party was officially banned by the Nationalist government in June 1946, with party leaders including Mao Zedong wanted.[34]
Despite initial gains by the KMT, they were eventually defeated and forced toflee to off-shore islands, most notably Taiwan. In the war, the United States supported the Kuomintang and the Soviet Union supported the CCP, but both to limited extent. With the KMT's defeat andretreat toTaiwan, Mao Zedongproclaimed the People's Republic of China in Beijing on 1 October 1949 before a crowd at Tiananmen Square.[9]: 37
At the time of the PRC's establishment, the CCP had 1 million members.[9]: 37 The CCP headed theCentral People's Government.[12]: 118 From this time through the 1980s, top leaders of the CCP (like Mao Zedong, Lin Biao, Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping) were largely the same military leaders prior to the PRC's founding.[35] As a result, informal personal ties between political and military leaders dominated civil-military relations.[35]
Soviet leader Joseph Stalin proposed aone-party state when Liu Shaoqi visited theSoviet Union in 1952.[36] In 1954, thePRC constitution was enacted, which changed the previous coalition government and established the CCP's sole ruling system.[37][38]
During the 1960s and 1970s, the CCP experienced a significantideological separation from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.[39] By that time, Mao had begun saying that the "continued revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat" stipulated that class enemies continued to exist even though the socialist revolution seemed to be complete, leading to theCultural Revolution in which millions were persecuted and killed.[40]
Following Mao's death in 1976, a contest for power between CCP chairmanHua Guofeng and Vice-chairmanDeng Xiaoping developed.[41] Mao had designated Hua as his successor.[42]: xiii–xiv
An important aspect of the contest over power arose in theideological controversy involving Hua's slogan of theTwo Whatevers ("We will resolutely uphold whatever policy decisions Chairman Mao made and unswervingly follow whatever instructions Chairman Mao gave").[43] Deng criticized this idea as being contrary to the tenets of Marxism and emphasized Mao's method ofseeking truth from facts to contend that "only through practice can the correctness of one's ideas be proved, and there is no other way of testing truth."[43]
Deng won the struggle, and became the "paramount leader" in 1978.[41] Deng, alongsideHu Yaobang andZhao Ziyang, spearheaded thereform and opening up, and introduced the ideological concept of socialism with Chinese characteristics, opening China to the world's markets.[44] In reversing some of Mao's "leftist" policies, Deng argued that a socialist state could use themarket economy without itself being capitalist.[45][non-primary source needed] While asserting the political power of the CCP, the change in policy generated significant economic growth.[citation needed] The new ideology, however, was contested on both sides of the spectrum, by Maoists as well as bythose supporting political liberalization. With other social factors, the conflicts culminated in the1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre.[46] The protests having been crushed, Deng's vision on economics prevailed, and by the early 1990s the concept of asocialist market economy had been introduced.[47] In 1997, Deng's beliefs (Deng Xiaoping Theory), were embedded in theCCP constitution.[48]
In 1980, Deng called for a rejuvenation of thecadre system via promotion of "revolutionary, younger, more educated, and more technically specialized" cadre.[49]: 120 Subsequent regulations included establishing a cadre retirement system, age limits for leading cadres, and new recruitment and promotion rules.[49]: 120–121 The CCP also implemented the "third echelon" policy.[49]: 121 The policy sought to promote a total of 135,000 younger officials at all levels to prepare for the retirement for the impending retirement of older leaders in 1985.[49]: 121–122
CCP general secretaryJiang Zemin succeeded Deng as "paramount leader" in the 1990s, and continued most of his policies.[50] Since Jiang's administration, the highest positions in the party-state (General Secretary, Chair of the Central Military Commission, and President of China) have all been simultaneously held by a single leader.[18]: 37
In the 1990s, the CCP transformed from a veteran revolutionary leadership that was both leading militarily and politically, to a political elite increasingly regenerated according to institutionalized norms in the civil bureaucracy.[35] Leadership was largely selected based on rules and norms on promotion and retirement, educational background, and managerial and technical expertise.[35] There is a largely separate group of professionalized military officers, serving under top CCP leadership largely through formal relationships within institutional channels.[35]
In 1991, the party launched the nationwidePatriotic Education Campaign.[51]: 99 The major focus of the campaign was withineducation, and text books were revised to reduce narratives ofclass struggle and to emphasize the party's role in ending thecentury of humiliation.[51]: 99 As part of the campaign, Patriotic Education Bases were established, and schools ranging from primary to the college levels were required to take students to sites of significance to theChinese Communist Revolution.[51]: 99
As part of Jiang Zemin's legacy, the CCP ratified theThree Represents for the 2003 revision of the party's constitution, as a "guiding ideology" to encourage the party to represent "advanced productive forces, the progressive course of China's culture, and the fundamental interests of the people."[52] The theory legitimized the entry of private business owners andbourgeois elements into the CCP.[52]Hu Jintao, Jiang Zemin's successor as general secretary, took office in 2002.[53] Unlike Mao, Deng and Jiang Zemin, Hu laid emphasis oncollective leadership and opposed one-man dominance of the political system.[53] The insistence on focusing on economic growth led to awide range of serious social problems. To address these, Hu introduced two main ideological concepts: theScientific Outlook on Development andHarmonious Socialist Society.[54]
Hu resigned from his post as CCP general secretary and Chairman of the CMC at the18th National Congress held in 2012, and was succeeded in both posts byXi Jinping.[55] Since taking power, Xi has initiated a wide-reachinganti-corruption campaign, while centralizing powers in the office of CCP general secretary at the expense of the collective leadership of prior decades. Commentators have described the campaign as a defining part ofXi's leadership as well as "the principal reason why he has been able to consolidate his power so quickly and effectively."[56] Xi's leadership has also overseen an increase in the CCP's role in China.[57] Since 2014, the CCP has led efforts in Xinjiang that involve the detention of more than 1 million Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities ininternment camps, as well aspersecution that some characterized as agenocide orcrimes against humanity.[58]
Xi has addedhis ideology, named after himself, into the CCP constitution in 2017.[59] The Party Congress declared that China and the CCP entered a "new era of socialism with Chinese characteristics" in 2012.[60] Celebrations of the100th anniversary of the CCP's founding, one of theTwo Centenaries, took place on 1 July 2021.[61] In the sixth plenary session of the 19th Central Committee in November 2021, the CCP adopted aresolution on the Party's history, which for the first time credited Xi as being the "main innovator" of Xi Jinping Thought while also declaring Xi's leadership as being "the key to the great rejuvenation of theChinese nation".[62][63] In comparison with the other historical resolutions, Xi's one did not herald a major change in how the CCP evaluated its history.[64] After the20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party held in 2022, Xi Jinping wasre-elected as the CCP general secretary for a third term, that made Xi the firstCCP leader since Mao Zedong to be chosen for a third term.[65][66]
.svg)
_cap_insignia.svg)
.png)
{{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help){{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link){{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)