History of the Chinese Communist Party

The history of the Chinese Communist Party began with its establishment in July 1921. A study group led by Peking University professors Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao to discuss Marxism, led to Chinese intellectuals officially founding the Chinese Communist Party in July 1921.
In 1923, the founding father of the Republic of China Sun Yat-sen invited the CCP to form a United Front, and to join his nationalist party, the Kuomintang, in Canton for training under representatives of the Communist International, the Soviet Union's international organization. The Soviet representatives reorganized both parties into Leninist parties. Rather than the loose organization that characterized the two parties until then, the Leninist party operated on the principle of democratic centralism, in which the collective leadership set standards for membership and an all-powerful Central Committee determined the party line, which all members must follow.
The CCP grew rapidly in the Northern Expedition, 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 a White Terror that virtually wiped out the CCP in the cities.
Nevertheless, Mao Zedong, whose Autumn Harvest Uprising had been a spectacular failure in mobilizing local peasants, became the leader of the CCP and established rural bases in Yan'an and the Jinggang Mountains. To protect these bases, he also formed the Chinese Red Army and engaged in prominent military campaigns such as the Long March. During the Second Sino-Japanese War Mao led a rectification campaign to emphasize Maoism and solidify his leadership of the party and after the war, he led the CCP to victory in the Chinese Civil War and established the People's Republic of China.
In the years after 1949, the structure of the CCP remained Leninist, but the CCP's style of leadership changed several times.

Origins of the CCP (1905–1922)

Before the First Congress

and socialist ideas began to take root in China towards the end of the Qing dynasty as Chinese intellectuals began studying the work of European philosophers. One of the earliest Chinese promoters of Marxism was Zhu Zhixin, a revolutionary author and close colleague of Sun Yat-sen who in 1905 published the first Chinese translation of The Communist Manifesto. Sun Yat-Sen was also an early proponent of certain socialist ideals, arguing that socialism and communism were both subsets of the doctrine of Minsheng, or People's Livelihood, an idea centered around the taxation of land. The CCP still claims descent from Sun Yat-Sen, viewing him as a proto-communist and one of the founders of their movement. Sun stated, "Our Principle of Livelihood is a form of communism". His widow, Soong Ching-ling, eventually became Honorary President of the PRC.
Following the 1919 May Fourth Movement, communism began to gain traction in China. 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 like Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao, as well as younger activists including Mao Zedong.
In the summer of 1919, the Russian Communist Party decided to assist people of the Far East by establishing the Far Eastern Bureau of the Communist International. In April 1920, a Soviet Communist International agent Grigori Voitinsky was one of several sent to China, where he met Li Dazhao and other reformers. While in China, Voitinsky financed the founding of the Socialist Youth Corps. 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 and Koreans establish communist groups. Voitinsky provided these groups with promotional conference and study abroad expenses.
In November 1920, Voitinsky, working with Chen Duxiu and others, issued The Chinese Communist Party Manifesto and started a monthly publication called The Communist Party. Voitinsky left the Republic of China in early 1921, prior to the founding meeting in July 2021.
In early June 1921, two Comintern representatives, Vladimir Neumann, known as Nikolsky, and Dutch national Henk Sneevliet, known as Maring, arrived in Shanghai, and urged Li Da to call various communist cells in the country to come together for a national-level meeting to form a communist party.

First Congress

The CCP's first formal meeting took place on July 23, 1921, when 13 Chinese representatives of local groups, totaling 57 members, who had met over the course of the preceding two years gathered in Shanghai. The site of the meeting was the residence of Li Hanjun in the Shanghai French Concession at 106 Rue Wantz.
After several days of meeting, security concerns prompted the group to instead meet on a houseboat on lake in nearby Zhejiang. The General Assembly adopted The 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." The key delegates in the congress were Li Dazhao, Chen Duxiu, Chen Gongbo, Tan Pingshan, Zhang Guotao, He Mengxiong, Luo Zhanglong and Deng Zhongxia.
Mao Zedong was present at the first congress as one of two delegates from a Hunan communist group. Other attendees included Dong Biwu, Li Hanjun, Li Da, Chen Tanqiu, Liu Renjing, Zhou Fohai, He Shuheng, Deng Enming. Comintern representatives Henk Sneevliet and Vladimir Neumann, commonly known as Nikolsky, also attended the meeting.
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.

First United Front (1922–1927)

In the early 1920s, the Bolsheviks and the Communist International's leaders believed that in China, the Kuomintang should be supported as it was in their view the country's most viable progressive force. 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.
Under the guidance of the Comintern, the CCP was reorganized along Leninist lines in 1923, in preparation for the Northern Expedition. The Northern Expedition was intended to unify China under a single government. 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.
Comintern agent Mikhail Markovich Borodin negotiated with Sun Yat-sen and Wang 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. 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.
Borodin and General Vasily Blyukher worked with Chiang Kai-shek to found the Whampoa Military Academy. Soviet advisors were the academy's instructors. The academy produced officers who later became leaders of both the Nationalist forces and the Chinese Red Army.
The CCP's reliance on the leadership of the Comintern provided a strong indication of the First United Front's fragility.
The CCP's first major involvement in large-scale urban worker militancy was the May Thirtieth Movement. 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. Local communist organizations also expanded rapidly.
The growth of the CCP after the May Thirtieth Movement also created organizational challenges and disagreements within party leadership. Some leaders, such as Peng Shuzhi and Chen Duxiu advocated for centralizing party authority. Others, such as Cai Hesen and Qu Qiubai, advocated for the party to allow greater flexibility to local bodies.

Chinese Civil War (1927–1937)

In 1927, the KMT broke the United Front, committing the Shanghai Massacre and violently suppressing the CCP. CCP leaders sought to respond with armed uprisings in Nanchang and Changsha, which briefly seized power before being defeated by KMT forces. CCP cadres fled urban areas and, in southern China, led their small armies to establish a base at Jinggangshan. The Red Army left Jiaggangshan following the Kuomintang's counterinsurgency campaigns. They moved into the Jiangxi-Fujian borders to establish the Jiangxi–Fujian Soviet.
The 1929 Gutian Congress was important in establishing the principle of party control over the military, which continues to be a core principle of the party's ideology. 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, which formally established CCP control of the military.
By the early 1930s, the political center of the Communist movement had shifted to the rural base areas. In 1931, the CCP consolidated a number these base areas into a state, the Chinese Soviet Republic. The CSR reached its peak in 1933. It governed a population which exceeded 3.4 million in an area of approximately 70,000 square kilometers. The CSR had a central government as well as local and regional governments. It operated institutions including an education system, court system, and education system. The CSR also issued currency.