ABSTRACT
The Chinese Communist Party came to power at the head of a mass nationalist movement with a broad mandate for change following more than a century of political, economic and social turmoil. During that epoch of internal collapse, national humiliation, foreign invasion, war, and revolutionary conflict, China was toppled from its position as a regional and global power, the ideological underpinnings of dynastic rule and gentry legitimacy were destroyed, the nation experienced a massive death toll and concomitant destruction and dislocation. The first half of the twentieth century was also, to be sure, an era of ferment, creative change and innovation. By the late 1940s, however, important elements of the modernist project associated with capitalism and Guomindang rule were discredited. In this sense, and building on its own innovative revolutionary experiences in the maquis, the CCP leadership enjoyed a rare open historical moment.
