To what extent was the Maoist approach to insurgency shaped by conditions that were unique to China?

“The laws of war – this is a problem which anyone directing a war must study and solve.

The laws of a revolutionary war – this is a problem which anyone directing a revolutionary war must study and solve.

The laws of China’s revolutionary war – this is a problem which anyone directing China’s revolutionary war must study and solve.”

- Mao Tse-Tung “Strategic Problems of China’s Revolutionary War”

The entire basis of the Maoist approach to insurgency stems from Mao’s interpretation of China as a ‘semi-feudal’ and ‘semi-colonial’ country. This, coupled with the war of resistance against Japan forms the basis of Mao Tse-Tung’s writings on the strategy of warfare in China.

The conditions for insurgency began in the latter half of the 19th Century with the ancient autocratic ‘Manchu Ching’ Dynasty that had (amongst others) ruled relatively unchanged for thousands of years enacting ‘piecemeal’ democratic reforms in order to prevent itself from being toppled by revolutionary forces demanding wholesale changes within the governmental structure. China was also in danger of becoming another ‘Africa’ for the European powers to divide up between themselves. The regime responded by attempting (with some success) to regain control over foreign trade and to improve its defence capabilities. However, the old ‘imperial’ regime of China was totally unable to efficiently and coherently run the huge territory and population that was (supposedly) within its domain; thus inevitably, revolution came in 1911. “The first Chinese revolution, the revolution of 1911 which led to the establishment of the Republic, was a large scale national uprising against the increasingly insistent humiliations to which the Chinese State in its imperial form had been subjected”. 1911 marked the beginning of a long and protracted state of internal (and external) conflict in China leading up to the events of 1949.

In 1927, the leader of the Kuomintang (KMT) Chiang Kai-Shek halted his advance against the warlordships of China (during the nationalists efforts to unite the country) in order to purge the KMT of its communist elements. This prompted the communists to begin the ‘Autumn Harvest’ uprising in the south-eastern cities of China. This uprising was based around an urban insurgency prompted by advice from Moscow. The uprising was a complete disaster for the communists who fled, leaving Chiang Kai-Shek and the KMT nationalists seemingly victorious in their efforts to re-unite China. This was to have a profound effect on the ...

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During the Fifth Party congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) not long after the Chiang Kai-Shek led purges in 1927, Mao made his first hint of his views on insurrection in the a report that was influenced by the peasant-led uprising in the province of Hunan, an event that greatly impressed upon him. “In this report on the peasant movement in Hunan [Mao] argued that peasant dissatisfaction was the main potential force for revolution in China; if the new government in Wuhan supported the peasant movement the revolution could be victorious.” Mao also stipulated that the peasant classes must first seize power and then be educated in Marxist thought, rather than vice versa. This established the bedrock of Mao’s belief in a revolutionary-peasant guerrilla army.

After the failure of the United Front (KMT nationalist forces, communists and other forces united in favour of national unity) in July 1927, the CCP almost collapsed. The failure of external influences on the CCP from organisations such as the communist international and the USSR resulted in subsequent CCP policies and ideology to take on a highly individualistic flavour (i.e. a Marxist party without many of the conventional Marxist-Leninist ideas, most notably the lack of emphasis on the urban proletariat) from the 1930’s onwards. Urban insurrections had taken place in the late 1920’s and early 1930’s under the guidance of Moscow in cities such as Nanching, Hunan and Canton without any success and urban insurrection was ‘put on the back burner’, reserved only to ‘support the rural soviets’.

After the collapse of the Manchu Ching Dynasty, China was broken up into ‘warlordships’, a situation that was unique to China. This left the majority of Chinese people without any real political power or universal democracy. This phenomenon was unusual in that the ‘bourgeois democratic revolution’ as defined by Marx (i.e. a revolution similar in nature to that of the French 1789 revolution) had floundered and been replaced by a situation of civil war amongst the ‘ruling classes’ (or as Mao puts it: ‘the landed gentry and comprador class’). These circumstances lead to a temporary alliance between the communists (claiming to represent the working classes) and the reformists (claiming to represent the bourgeoisie) in a bid to ‘overthrow imperialism’ in the name of a democratic revolution. “The content of China’s democratic revolution, according to the directives of the Third International and the [communist] Party centre, includes overthrowing the rule in China of imperialism and its tools, the warlords, so as to complete the national revolution; and carrying out the agrarian revolution so as to eliminate the feudal exploitation of the peasants by the landed gentry.” Mao also points towards the constant feuding between the ruling warlords as the reason why ‘red political power can exist in China’ another condition that was unique to the Chinese situation during the 1920’s and 1930’s. The constant feuding between the warlords allowed ‘pockets’ of communist strongholds within China to exist for long periods of time. Mao described the need for the communist movement in China to develop a strong armed force in order to ‘further the revolution’. “The existence of a regular Red Army of adequate strength is a necessary condition for the existence of Red political power. If we only have Red guards of a local character but no regular Red Army, then we can only deal with the house-to-house militia, but not the regular White troops.”

The cultural influences on the Maoist approach to insurgency are very important in trying to understand the context in which it was formed. Due to the extremely rich cultural heritage of China that stretches back millennia, it would have been totally impossible and undesirable for Mao and his fellow communists to enact a complete ‘break with the past’. “Mao himself, while he sought in that peculiar Westernizing ideology known as Marxism-Leninism the ideas and methods by which to re-shape his own society, also stressed the need to adapt and transform Marxism in the Chinese environment.” The basis behind the Chinese traditional methods of political philosophy was the doctrine of ‘Confucianism’