ABSTRACT
Mao Zedong’s definition of semi-colonialism in 1928 and its implications for the revolution in China amounted therefore to a major theoretical innovation which had a direct bearing upon the strategy to be pursued by the ccp after the breakdown of the United Front. ‘A single spark starting a prairie fire’ is a fitting description of the present state of affairs. Mao himself only reached Chingkangshan after leading the abortive Autumn Harvest Uprising against Changsha in September, for which failure he was punished with dismissal from the Party Politburo. Instead, within a few months of arriving on Chingkangshan, Mao had typically formulated an entire theoretical perspective on where the Chinese revolution stood. Typically also, it was a view which traced a direct and causal connection between the concerted operations of imperialism in China, and the small spark of Soviet power which Mao was fanning in a comer of the countryside.
