Lesson 14 Birth of the Chinese Communist Party

The Spread of Marxism

Before the May Fourth Movement, few people in China knew about Marxism, but in 1917, the victory of the October Socialist Revolution in Russia brought the dawn of advanced intellectuals in China. In 1919, New Youth published a special issue on Marxist studies, which included an article by Li Dazhao entitled "My View of Marxism", which provided a more systematic introduction to Marxism. Marxism was introduced systematically. Subsequently, many groups for the study and propagation of Marxism were established throughout the country.

The victorious development of the May Fourth Movement made advanced Chinese intellectuals realize the great power of the working class. Many intellectuals began to move toward the working masses. They helped workers organize trade unions, opened labor remedial schools and workers' literacy classes, published publications reflecting workers' lives, propagated Marxism to workers in easy-to-understand language, and inspired workers' class consciousness. Marxism began to be integrated with the Chinese workers' movement.

Founding of the Communist Party of China

In the summer of 1920, with the help of the Communist International, Chen Duxiu established the first early Communist Party organization in China in Shanghai. Then, early Communist Party organizations were established in Beijing, Changsha and Wuchang.

In July 1921, the First National Congress of the Communist Party of China was secretly held in Shanghai. The congress was attended by 13 delegates, including Mao Zedong, Dong Biwu and Li Da, representing more than 50 party members nationwide. Marin, a representative of the Communist International, and others attended the meeting.

The congress adopted the first party program in the history of the Chinese Communist Party. The Party Program determined the name of the Party as the Communist Party of China, and the goal of the Party was to overthrow the bourgeois regime, establish the dictatorship of the proletariat and realize communism. The Congress determined that the central work of the Party was to lead and organize the workers' movement, and established the Central Bureau, the central leadership of the Party, of which Chen Duxiu was elected as the Secretary. Thus, the Chinese Communist Party, the vanguard of the Chinese proletariat, was born!

The birth of the Chinese Communist Party was a groundbreaking event in the history of China. Since the birth of the CPC, the face of the Chinese revolution has been transformed. The birth of the Chinese Communist Party was not an accident, but an objective need to meet the social progress and revolutionary development of China since modern times, and the inevitable result of the choice of modern history.

In July 1922, the Communist Party of China held its Second National Congress in Shanghai. The congress reaffirmed that the ultimate goal of the Party was to build communism, and at the same time formulated the Party's minimum program. The program stipulated that during the stage of democratic revolution, the main task of the Party was to defeat the warlords, overthrow imperialism, and unify China into a true democratic republic. Thus, for the first time in the history of China, the CCP put forward a thorough anti-imperialist and anti-feudal democratic revolutionary program.

The upsurge of the national workers' movement

After the founding of the CPC, the Secretary Department of the Chinese Labor Union was established to centrally lead the nationwide workers' movement. Under the Party's organization and promotion, from the beginning of 1922 to the spring of 1923, the first workers' movement nationwide rose to a climax, with more than 100 strikes of various sizes held and more than 300,000 participants.

In February 1923, the workers of the Beijing-Hanzhou Railway held a general strike. The striking workers formed the General Union of the Beijing-Hanzhou Railway and called on the workers to "fight for freedom and human rights", bringing the first national workers' movement to its peak. The strike was bloodily suppressed by the imperialists and the direct warlord Wu Peifu. After that, the national workers' movement temporarily turned into a low tide.

After the failure of the Beijing-Hanzhou Railway workers' strike, the Chinese Communist Party realized that it could not win the revolution on its own, but had to unite all possible allies in order to overcome the powerful enemy.（701words）