NOTES

NOTES

1.By the term "bourgeoisie", Comrade Mao Tse-tung means the national bourgeoisie. For his detailed account of the distinction between this class and the big comprador bourgeoisie, see "On Tactics Against Japanese Imperialism" (December 1955) and "The Chinese Revolution and the Chinese Communist Party" (December 1939

2. These four cliques of warlords fought together against Chang Tso-lin and occupied Peking and Tientsin in June 1928

3. Chang Tso-lin, who headed the Fengtien clique of warlords, became the most powerful warlord in northern China after defeating Wu Pei-fu in the second Chihli-Fengden War in 1924. In 1926, with Wu Pei-fu as his ally, he marched on and occupied Peking. In June 1928, while retreating to the Northeast by rail, he was killed en route by a bomb planted by the Japanese imperialists whose tool he had been.

4. This reform movement arose after the Japanese invaders occupied Tsinan on May 3,1928, and after Chiang Kai-shek openly and brazenly compromised with Japan.

Within the national bourgeoisie which had identified itself with the counter-revolutionary coup d'état of 1927, a section acting in its own interests gradually began to form an opposition to the Chiang Kai-shek regime. The careerist counter-revolutionary group of Wang Ching-wei, Chen Kung-po and others which was active in this movement formed what became known as the "Reorganization Clique" in the Kuomintang.

5. In 1928 Chiang Kai-shek, backed by British and U.S. imperialism, drove north to attack Chang Tso-lin. The Japanese imperialists then occupied Tsinan, the provincial capital of Shantung, and cut the Tientsin-Pukow railway line to check the northward spread of British and American influence. On May 3 the invading Japanese troops slaughtered large numbers of Chinese in Tsinan. This became known as the Tsinan Massacre.

6. The organizational form of China's Red political power was similar to that of Soviet political power. A Soviet is a representative council, a political institution created by the Russian working class during the 1905 Revolution. Lenin and Stalin, on the basis of Marxist theory, drew the conclusion that a Soviet republic is the most suitable form of social and political organization for the transition from capitalism to socialism. Under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party of Lenin and Stalin, the Russian October Socialist Revolution in 1917 brought into being for the first time in world history such a socialist Soviet republic, a dictatorship of the proletariat. After the defeat of the 1927 revolution in China, the representative council was adopted as the form of people's political power in various places in the mass revolutionary uprisings led by the Chinese Communist Party and, first and foremost, by Comrade Mao Tse-tung. In its nature political power at that stage of the Chinese revolution was a people's democratic dictatorship of the anti-imperialist, anti-feudal, new-democratic revolution led by the proletariat, which was different from the proletarian dictatorship in the Soviet Union.

7. During World War II, many colonial countries in the East formerly under the imperialist rule of Britain, the United States, Prance and the Netherlands were occupied by the Japanese imperialists. Led by their Communist Parties, the masses of workers, peasants and urban petty bourgeoisie and members of the national bourgeoisie in these countries took advantage of the contradictions between the British, U.S., French and Dutch imperialists on the one hand and the Japanese imperialists on the other, organized a broad united from against fascist aggression, built anti-Japanese base areas and waged bitter guerrilla warfare against the Japanese. Thus the political situation existing prior to World War II began to change. When the Japanese imperialists were driven out of these countries at the end of World War II, the imperialists of the United States, Britain, France and the Netherlands attempted to restore their colonial rule, but, having built up armed forces of considerable strength during the and-Japanese war, these colonial peoples refused to return to the old way of life. Moreover, the imperialist system all over the world was profoundly shaken because the Soviet Union had become strong, because all the imperialist powers, except the United States, had either been overthrown or weakened in the war, and finally because the imperialist front was breached in China by the victorious Chinese revolution. Thus, much as in China, it has become possible for the peoples of all, or at least some, of the colonial countries in the East to maintain big and small revolutionary base areas and revolutionary regimes over a long period of time, and to carry on long-term revolutionary wars in which to surround the cities from the countryside, and then gradually to advance to take the cities and win nation-wide victory. The view held by Comrade Mao Tse-tung in 1928 on the question of establishing independent regimes in colonies under direct imperialist rule has changed as a result of the changes in the situation.

8. These were the first counter-attacks which the people under Communist leadership launched in various places against the forcer of the counter-revolution after Chiang Kai-shek and Wang Ching-wei successively turned traitor to the revolution in 1927 On December 11, 1927, the workers and revolutionary soldiers of Canton united to stage an uprising, and set up the people's political power. They fought fiercely against the counter-revolutionary forces, which were directly supported by imperialism' but failed because the disparity in strength was too great. Peasants in Haifeng and Luteng on the eastern coast of Kwangtung Province had started a powerful revolutionary movement during 1923-25 under the leadership of Comrade Peng Pai, a member of the Communist Party, and this movement contributed greatly to the victory of the two eastern campaigns launched from Canton by the National Revolutionary Army against the counter-revolutionary clique headed by Chen Chiung-ming. After Chiang Kai-shek's betrayal of the revolution on April l2, 1927, these peasants staged three uprisings in April, September and October, and established a revolutionary regime which held out until April 1928. In eastern Hunan Province, insurrectionary peasants captured an area embracing Linyang, Pingkiang, Liling and Chuchow in September 1927. At about the same time, tens of thousands of peasants staged an armed uprising in Hsiaokan, Macheng and Huangan in northeastern Hupeh Province and occupied the county town of Huangan for over thirty days. In southern Hunan, peasants in the counties of Yichang, Chenchow, Leiyang, Yungheing and Tzehsing rose in arms in January 1928 and set up a revolutionary regime, which lasted for three months.

9.The Red Guards were armed units of the masses in the revolutionary base areas, whose members carried on their regular productive work.

10.The Lohsiao mountain range is a large range running along the borders of Kiangsi and Hunan Provinces. The Chingkang Mountains are in its middle section.

11. By the term "petty bourgeoisie" Comrade Mao Tse-tung means those elements other than the peasants--handicraftsmen, small merchants, professional people of various kinds and petty-bourgeois intellectuals. In China they mostly live in cities but there are quite a number in the countryside.

12. Five Wells designates the villages of Big Well, Small Well, Upper Well, Middle Well and Lower Well, in the Chingkang Mountains, which are situated between Yunghsin, Ningkang and Suichuan in western Kiangsi and Linghsien County in eastern Hunan.