ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the course of the Chinese communist revolution. Two major themes of the revolution - nationalism and socialism - are discussed. The chapter argues that the Chinese communist leadership was able to synthesize the two ideologies and place them in the particular social and political context of China. The Chinese Communist Party was founded in May 1921, in Shanghai, with Chen Duxiu as its first general secretary. Mao Zedong was one of the 12 founding members of the CCP, all of whom were essentially revolutionary intellectuals inspired by the social and political ferment in China, rather than representatives of the working classes of the country. It discusses the role of the various classes, political elites and the leaders of political movements to assess the making of the communist revolution. This was in keeping with the second orthodoxy of the Comintern - a Marxist view of communist parties as vanguards of the working class.
