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Revolutions - Political Alliances and Socio-Economic Conditions

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?The success of revolutions owes more to the strategic construction of political alliances and oppositions than to underlying social or economic conditions. The human beings have faced different kinds of revolutions. Some of the revolutions were in the scientific field, which push forward the progress of human civilization such as the first and second industrial revolutions. Such revolutions usually happened in one country and influence the whole world. Some of the revolutions were in social political field, which changed the power or organizational structures of one country. As Samuel P. Huntington writes in Political Order in Changing Societies, the revolution “is a rapid, fundamental, and violent domestic change in the dominant values and myths of a society, in its political institutions, social structure, leadership, and government activities and policies” (1968, p.264). Such revolutions have occurred through human history and vary widely in terms of methods, duration, and motivating ideology. Their results include major changes in economy, culture, and social political institutions. Generally speaking, most people regard these kinds of revolutions are positive to the development of human society. Comparatively speaking, it is more difficult to find out the reasons for social political revolutions than scientific revolutions for its more complexity. Some scholars claim the success of revolutions owes more to the strategic construction of political alliances and oppositions. While some believe in it owes to underlying social or economic conditions. The answer may be found out if we analyst and compare the revolutions of China and the other countries. Since 1840, there were many revolutions in China. From 1851 to 1864, Hong Xiuquan led the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom movement, (some Chinese scholars regard it as a revolution) which was finally failed. The Xinhai Revolution led by Sun Yat Sen in 1911 overthrow the Qing Dynasty but unable to prevent the warlordism. The Communist revolution seemed to be the most successful one which gained support from most Chinese people and built up the People’s Republic of China in 1949. Why does the Communist revolution success? Many scholars have tried to find the answer. Chalmers Johnson (1962) argues that the anti-Japanese invasion nationalism of peasants is the main factor. He thinks the Japanese invasion forced the Kuo Min Tang to withdraw to the south and southwest part of China, Japan occupied the north part of China but not capable to control the vast territory, especially the countryside. So, the communist take the chance to build up the maximum unity of an anti-Japanese alliance. Johnson is right that there was indeed a vacuum in the Japanese occupied area, but why didn't the KMT try to fill up the vacuum? KMT was also good at underground organizing and had plenty of talented intelligence agents. The KMT had a big advantage of representing the Chinese central government at that time. Then, it is important to check how the Communist Party achieved that. The answer will probably be as Mark Selden argued, it is the socioeconomic factor. In order to explain how the Communist Party’s revolution succeeded during the 1930s and 1940s, Selden (1970) “develops the concept of “Yenan Way” to explain the dynamics of wartime Chinese Communism” (Chen 1986, p4). The “Yenan Way” was actually an economic reform which helps the peasants to get land from the landlords. The interests of the peasants were protected, they were encouraged to support the Communist Party and fight against the Japanese invasion. The “Yenan Way” was widely accepted by many people, but it overlooked that China is such a big country and Yenan is only a small part in China. The Communist Pary did have adopted different methods to push forward the revolution in different areas, especially in some rich areas and some areas inhabited by ethnic minorities. The Communist Party also divided the peasants into different classes. They were divided to farm labourers, poor peasants, middle peasants and rich peasants. Because the Communist Party need the support of maximum alliances to survive and fight with the powerful Japanese, the land reform policy adopted in different places were always different. In the big cities like Shanghai, definitely only depending on peasant would never achieve the success of revolution. Tetsuya Kataoka points out the importance of the Communist Party leadership and organizational weapons came after military conquest to provide the key to peasant mobilization because of Mao’s famous view of “Political pow

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