At the start of the Chinese Civil war in 1927, the Kuomintang had spread its rule over much of China, despite Japan’s advances into the country. While the CCP and KMT had cooperated at first in order to overcome the warlord period, they became divided when the CCP had a new vision for the future of China. At this time, the peasants of the country had been met with an unexpected consistency of mistreatment from the KMT government. They were exploited for money with unfair taxes and land distribution, with the wealthy receiving the most land. The poor living conditions also led to the anger of the peasants. In an autobiography by Jung Chang, she states that her mother turned against the Kuomintang because of the death of her cousin and “hope …show more content…
From this history, Mao set out to turn the current workers revolution into a peasant revolution. Mao himself believed that the road to success relied “mainly on the alliance of the workers and the peasants” (Zedong, 1949). Even with Zedong’s proclamation of unity, it was seen that the peasants themselves became the driving force of the war. Up until 1926, years before the war, the workers and peasants had been more united, but in this year the peasants were given more responsibility and separation from the workers. Leon Trotsky evaluated the position of the peasants and workers and argued that while the peasants “desire a friendship with the workers” that they are incapable of maintaining it (Trotsky, 1932). Peng Shuzi discusses the alliance of the peasants and workers in his letter to the Fourth International after the war in support of Trotsky as through his first hand experience it was the peasants that led to the victory. In an opposing view, despite the freedom of the peasants, “the revolutionary force was still dominated by workers”, hence why it had previously been a workers revolution (Saich, …show more content…
In return for the CCP’s efforts, the peasants themselves fully embraced the war efforts. They allowed the CCP members and their army to stay in their villages, and many of the peasants joined the army to create their effective peasant armed forces. According to Peng Shuzi, the addition of peasants to the army can be argued as a main reason the CCP achieved victory. While they were in possession of very limited equipment before the help of the Soviet Union, the CCP still “depended on the peasant army alone to conquer cities” (Shuzi, 1951). The Congress itself “stressed the importance of guerilla warfare carried out by the peasantry” (Saich, 2014). The fact that made the peasants such a powerful force in the war is that they had their own needs to fight for, as opposed to some in the KMT army that simply joined because they were expected to. If the CCP lost he war the peasants would lose all of the land they had acquired from the wealthy and the fair treatment of peasants would face a severe decline. By the end of the war in 1950, the dynamics of China have completely