Even though the Chinese Communist Party started out being a minute party, it managed to increase in numbers rapidly within a couple of years. Mao reached out to the peasants living in the rural areas because he believed that the support of the large peasant population would be the key to success. The communists promised the redistribution of land so that everyone would be given a piece of land. The peasants were attracted to this because almost all the land in China belonged to the aristocrats and they believed that they would gain land from them. Industrial workers were also interested in communist ideas because they were suffering from appalling working conditions, low wages and the abusive nature of the managers. The communists promised to help improve these conditions if they received their support. Therefore, industrial workers supported them because the nationalist party was more interested in their own self-interests than the people of China.
Another reason why Mao and the party attracted the majority of the peasants was because Mao was born in a peasant family- he would be able empathise with the peasants since he understood what they were demanding for. Whereas the Guomindang’s (GMD) leader Sun-Yat Sen came from a middle-class background and later when Chiang Kai-Shek came to power, he was more concerned in strengthening China than improving the lives of the population. At least 80% of the population was made up of peasants; this gave the communists an advantage when they were looking for more support because the majority of the peasants resided in the rural areas. The communists were able to reach out to the peasant population by travelling to the countryside whereas the GMD did not bother to visit those areas. Since the countryside was far from the cities and the peasants were illiterate, they would naturally support the communists who came to promote themselves.
At the beginning of the 1930s, China was threatened by the Japanese when they attempted to invade. The GMD was undoubtedly weakened because it had to divert its attention to fighting the Japanese, communists, as well as securing its hierarchical dominance over the massive peasant population. They endangered their reputation when they failed to drive the Japanese out of China and the corruption within the party itself. They were receiving foreign support, which the Chinese detested because they have always suffered from foreign intervention. Due to this, the communists were able to gain more support from the Chinese population since they were more efficient at defending against the Japanese invaders.
Nevertheless there were drawbacks with their ideas in instituting socialist ideals in the people. Although land reform was carried out by redistributing the land the landlords and the richer peasants owned, some of landlords and rich peasants were able to keep more land if they supported the communists. This defeats the principles of equality because some people were getting more land. The communists were also strictly disciplined- they would purge would be opponents as well as being willing to sacrifice their own members. As a result, this led to people being sacrificed or mistakenly accused of their wrong doings.
Overall the communist were mostly successful at implementing socialist ideas into the Chinese people because they were able to capture the minds of the vast peasant population. They acknowledged that the issue of land reform was an important matter in gaining peasant support even though they did not always redistribute the land equally. Mao was also able to attract the merchants and civil servants because he carefully avoided proclaiming any radical measures, such as the abolition of private property. The principle ideas of the communist party were more appealing since they were determined to drive out foreign influence in China because the Chinese had been undermined by the foreign powers since the 19th century.
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