Painting History: China’s Revolution in a Global Context By Jiawe ...

to 1949. Of course, while brutality was one of its strengths, it was in fact the new relationship between people that was largely responsible for the CPC’s growth and rise to power.

Snow’s book provides an answer for how and why the CPC succeeded in winning over a large majority of the population, including vast numbers of intellectuals, and eventually was able in 1949 to establish a new regime with genuine popular support at its foundation. However, from 1950 onwards, endless political movements led to a decline in popular support. By 1957 any dissenting voices from intellectuals had been silenced, and by the time of the Cultural Revolution a decade later the rest of the thinking population had also been silenced. It was not until 1976 during the Qingming Festival when the death of Zhou Enlai¹² was commemorated that people began for the first time to express their anger against the injustices perpetrated on themselves personally and on the population collectively for so many decades.

Corruption within the CPC was worse than it had been during the KMT regime that it had replaced. This situation has its origins in the 1942 “rectification” movement that Mao orchestrated in Yan’an to begin his dictatorship. However, when Snow visited the soviet region in Bao’an in 1936, it was during a brief but glorious period in the history of the CPC, before Mao had been able to assert his authority over other CPC leaders. The members of the CPC were mostly men and women under thirty years of age who had joined to fight for the ideal of a democratic, free, and just society. They belonged to a new generation of radicalized youth who were highly critical of Old China’s traditional practices and ways of thinking, and they saw revolution as the only solution. Japan had already invaded China when the Chinese edition of Snow’s book was published. After reading the book, many young students endured great hardship to travel to the CPC base in Yan’an where the Red Army had relocated in January 1937. Sixty years later, those who survived are denoted “moderates” within the CPC. Outstanding examples are Gu