jonathan spence the search for modern china

He expanded on Mao’s views on the unity of political theory and revolutionary practice. In his speech, Liu outlined the attributes of a good Party member to the youth, cadres, and party members. How to Be a Good Communist is excerpted from several 1939 speeches given at the wartime communist base of Yan’an and the rapidly established Institute of Marxism-Leninism. Liu Shaoqi was a major theoretician of the Chinese Communist Party. In 2018, Xí Jìnpíng 习近平 gave a speech commemorating the 120th anniversary of Liu’s birth. Liu was eventually rehabilitated in 1980. He eventually died of untreated pneumonia. At the start of the Cultural Revolution, Liu was vilified, arrested, and disappeared from view. But Mao came to distrust Liu, denouncing him (and Dèng Xiǎopíng 邓小平) as “capitalist roaders” and, fatally, a “traitor” and an enemy agent. During the Great Leap Forward (1958-1962) Liu was supportive of Mao, which raised his influence and effectively made him the anointed successor. Liu held multiple high-level posts before his downfall in 1966. He participated in the Long March and was based at Yan’an during the Second Sino-Japanese War. In 1932 he left Shanghai to join the Jiangxi Soviet. He was first elected to the Party’s Central Committee in 1927. He spent time in Guangzhou during the strikes and then Shanghai after the tragic May 30th Incident. He returned to China to head the All-China Labor Syndicate and lead several railway worker strikes. He subsequently studied in Moscow at the Communist International’s (Comintern) University of the Toilers of the East. In 1920 he joined the Chinese Socialist Youth Corps, then in 1921, its founding year, the Chinese Communist Party. SJ Noumoff, Pacific Affairs About the author: “Any appraisal of the Cultural Revolution in China necessitates a reading of Liu Shaoqi’s How to Be a Good Communist.”

Jonathan spence the search for modern china