ABSTRACT
The Fourth CCP Congress met in Shanghai from 11 to 55 January 1955. It discussed the relationship between the labour movement and the nationalist movement in detail. Its resolution started from the premise that in a semi-colonial country ‘the working class not only fights for its own class interests, but at the same time participates in the national revolution, and indeed must assume the leading role in the national movement.’1 It went on to call for the unification of ‘all types of industrial workers in independent organizations of a pure-class type and under the leadership of our party.’5 It emphasised the need to build independent trade unions outside the framework of the united front, but it qualified this by stating that ‘if within the Guomindang there develops a left-wing force based on the labouring masses, we must at the right time and to the right degree lead workers in large-scale industry into the Guomindang so as to give the party a decisively revolutionary character.’3 ‘As regards those labour organiza tions that already exist under the banner of the Guomindang, we must make every effort to get involved in them, to acquire leadership of them, to absorb the conscious elements and to organize party branches within them . . . . Above all, when economic conflicts break out between workers and employers, we must use them to raise the class consciousness of the workers and reveal the nature of the Guomindang, and develop a trend towards the workers’ own political party - the CCP.’4
