I. Learning is at the root of the CPC's success

The development of the CPC in China started from scratch, having advanced from a small weak party to one both large and strong. It was learning that made possible the CPC's growth and success. Learning improved the quality and ability of the Party's backbone and, more importantly still, unified its thinking to ensure Party solidarity and unity. “It is impossible to build the Party, rejuvenate the Party and strengthen the Party without learning.” (The CPC's History of Learning, Tr.) The support that learning has given the CPC has been crucial to its successive victories. The history of the CPC in building, rejuvenating, and strengthening itself also attests to the great importance it attaches to constant and adept learning.

1. Learning gives birth to the CPC

As time advanced along the winding course of history to the modern harbour of the 19th century, prospects for China, this ancient Eastern civilization and erstwhile major power, looked bleak. The artillery fire of the Opium Wars had destroyed the remnants of decadent Qing Dynasty governance and signaled the prelude in China's modern history to its invasion by foreign powers. The country faced an unprecedented crisis wherein its peoples were helplessly marooned in a chilling abyss that threatened to subjugate their nation. It was a time when Chinese thinkers, writers, and reformers sought desperately to apply their lofty ideals to salvaging the nation, and when various political campaigns, including the Taiping Rebellion(1), the Self-Strengthening Movement(2), the Hundred Days’ Reform(3),and the Xinhai Revolution(4) successively came to the fore in attempts to gain control over and save it. But they all failed.

Despite its failure, the Xinhai Revolution opened the gate to ideological emancipation. In September 1915, Chen Duxiu founded the journal Youth (later renamed New Youth) in Shanghai, which precipitated the New Culture Movement in China's history. In the wake of its rise various schools of thought, such as corporatism, Tolstoyism, anarchism, experimentalism, nationalism, new village doctrine, to name a few, spread rapidly in China. For a while, all kinds of doctrines and schools of thought met and mingled in kaleidoscopic fashion to a point where people got confused and unable to distinguish the true from the false, as if “looking at the morning fog through a screen-door.”(5) China's elites fell into a state of uncertainty, unsure of what to learn and how.

As the New Culture Movement got under full swing in China, a major event – the October Revolution(6) – took place in China's neighboring country, Russia, which changed the entire world pattern. The Bolshevik 5 Qu Qiubai: “Journey to Russia”, Selected Poems and Essays of Qu Qiubai, Vol. I, People's Literature Publishing House, 1982, p. 35. Party, led by Lenin(7) , overthrew the decadent regime of the Russian bourgeois interim government and established the world's first socialist state. The October Revolution seemed like the sunlight at dawn, showing China's thinkers and reformers the way toward to saving the nation.

The first person to propose learning from Russia's October Revolution was Li Dazhao(8). At the end of 1918, Li delivered a speech titled, “Victory of the Common People” and wrote an article titled “Victory of Bolshevism” in which he raised his vision, “the globe of the future must be a world of red flags,” emphasizing that this new world trend “must be welcomed, not rejected.”(9) On New Year's Day of 1919, Li stated in an editorial published in the Weekly Review that the October Revolution had opened “a new era,” like a lone star at midnight, illuminating the path toward a new life(10). Soon after he published more articles on the October Revolution. Although not yet systematic, these writings truthfully portrayed the essence of Marxism, so enabling it to flow into the hearts and minds of young Chinese intellectuals.

After the May 4th Movement of 1919, a group of intellectuals who actively explored the road to save the nation and its people appeared and formed a team of students and researchers of Marxism. The team consisted of leaders of the New Culture Movement, including Li Dazhao and Chen Duxiu(11), and also some new figures, including Mao Zedong(12) and Zhou Enlai, and certain young intellectuals who had studied abroad, such as Cai Hesen(13) and Zhao Shiyan(14). Led by them, the ancient land of China witnessed an upsurge of Marxism learning and research.

After the May 4th Movement and the spread of Marxism in China, and its initial integration with the Chinese workers’ movement, the task of establishing a working class political party arose. In March 1920, after many discussions between Li Dazhao and Deng Zhongxia, the Marxist Theory Research Association was founded at Peking University. In May of the same year, Chen Duxiu launched the Marx Research Society in Shanghai, whose aim was to explore socialist theory and social transformation in China(15). In August, a nascent Communist organization was formally established in Shanghai, initiated by Chen Duxiu, Chen Wangdao(16), Shi Cuntong(17), and others. Soon after, Communists throughout the country organized Marxism research societies and, on that basis, established infant Communist organizations.

The main task of these nascent Communist organizations was to study and promote Marxism in a planned and organized manner. Some organizations set up study groups, such as the Marxism research societies where progressive youth learned fundamental Marxist theory, and about the problems of putting it into practice in China. Others published revolutionary journals, so expanding the scope for learning Marxism.

On the basis of New Youth, the Party organization in Shanghai published the monthly journal The Communist Party, and Consciousness as a supplement to the Republic of China Daily. Mean-while the Wuhan Weekly Review was published in Hubei, the fortnightly journal New Dynamism in Jinan, and Journal for the Masses in Guangdong.

In order to enrich their learning content, Party organizations also accelerated the collection, translation, and study of Marxist-Leninist works. For example, the Party organization in Shanghai set up the New Youth Society, and successively published a series of booklets on socialism and New Youth books. It also translated and published dozens of works, including The Communist Manifesto, The Preamble to Das Kapital, and Scientific Socialism. The publication of these works greatly enriched the content of materials for learning about Marxism.

In addition, Party organizations assumed the important function of educating workers about Marxism and Socialism, and bringing into effect the workers’ movement. For example, some Party organizations set up tutoring schools, night schools for workers, and literacy classes to strengthen education for the working class. Other Party organizations formed the Socialist Youth League, an organization aiming to unite and educate revolutionary youth and train a talented echelon in the learning and publicizing of Marxist theory. These activities contributed to the further dissemination of Marxism in China, and more progressive Chinese began to join the ranks that were learning about Marxism. A group of progressive working class Marxists appeared in this process, laying a solid ideological and class foundation for the establishment of a unified Communist Party in China.

On July 23, 1921, the CPC held its First National Congress in Shanghai which officially established the Party that had come into being through learning.

2. The CPC grows and prospers from learning

The CPC was a very small organization when first founded. Whether or not the Party could stand out amid the competition of so many other political parties depended on whether or not it could correctly define the historical task facing the Chinese nation, and mobilize and organize the people to complete this task. In July 1922, the Second CPC National Congress was held in Shanghai. It marked the first time the Congress put forward a clear program of anti-imperialist and anti-feudal democratic revolution for all the Chinese people. The Congress observed that in China, “democratic revolutionary movements against imperialism and feudal forces are of great significance.” The Party's ultimate aim is to realize socialism and communism, but at this stage the revolutionary program should be to overthrow warlords, overturn the oppression of international imperialism, and unify China to make it a true democratic republic. Current conditions constitute an insurmountable stage in China's advance towards socialism and communism. The Congress also proposed forming a “democratic united front” in order to achieve the revolutionary goal of anti-imperialism and anti-warlordism. The Chinese democratic revolution, which had begun in the 19th century, was slow to specify the object and motivation of the revolution. Nor did it raise any specific proposals to combat imperialism and feudal forces. The CPC basically solved the problem just one year after its founding. This shows that only the CPC, armed with Marxism, could point the way forward to-wards the Chinese revolution, and why the CPC would soon become the leading force of the Great Revolution(18).

However, the Great Revolution ended tragically in 1927. At the time, the CPC's primary task was to find the correct path for China's new democratic revolution. To appropriately solve this major problem, CPC members made extensive and arduous explorations. At that time, the CPC Central Committee remained in Shanghai, while the focus of the Party's work was in urban centers. However, all uprisings aimed at occupying these cities failed. After a while, most of the remnant troops of these failed uprisings gradually transferred, mainly by trial and error, to rural areas far from the Nationalist Party's ruling centers. There they mobilized peasants to engage in guerrilla warfare and carry out an agrarian revolution, and created workers’ and peasants’ political regimes. This met the requirement of the objective law of the Chinese revolution after 1927 of making rural areas the focal point for revolutionaries’ mobilization of peasants, carrying out of the agrarian revolution and armed struggle, and building of base areas. Mao Zedong made outstanding contributions to the process of opening up a new road of revolution. In practice they included leading the Autumn Harvest Uprising(19) and creating the Jinggangshan revolutionary base area. With regard to theory they included the series of articles he wrote, including, “Why Is It That Red Political Power Can Exist in China?”; “The Struggle in the Chingkang Mountains”; “A Single Spark Can Start a Prairie Fire”; and “Oppose Book Worship”, which basically expounded on the strategic thought of encircling cities from rural areas and seizing state power through armed struggle.

The failure of the Great Revolution did not quench the revolutionary enthusiasm of the Chinese Communists. Instead, they explored a way of learning revolution from revolution, and learning war from war. In his article titled, “Problems of Strategy in China's Revolutionary War” Mao Zedong wrote: “Reading is learning, but applying is also learning, and the more important kind of learning at that.”(20) It was from the latter kind of learning that the CPC explored a correct path for the Chinese revolution along which the Red Army and the red revolutionary base areas all over the country expanded. By 1930, 15 revolutionary base areas had been established, and the Red Army had expanded to more than 100,000 troops. The Nationalist Party was shocked at the vigorous development of the revolutionary base areas and constant expansion of the Red Army. At the end of 1930, the Nationalist Army launched a series of large-scale encirclement campaigns(21) against the central revolutionary base area and other revolutionary base areas in an attempt to wipe out the revolutionary forces. The CPC led the Red Army in carrying out the heroic counter-encirclement campaigns and won the first four. But they lost the fifth campaign due to the erroneous command of Bo Gu, leader of the temporary CPC Central Committee, and Otto Braun, the German military adviser. The CPC Central Committee was consequently forced to abandon the central revolutionary base area and carry out a strategic transfer through the heroic 25,000-li Long March.

To solve the problem of the “dread of incompetence”(22) during the Chinese People's War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression(23) the Sixth Plenary Session of the Sixth CPC Central Committee launched a learning campaign. Mao Zedong called on the whole Party, “to participate in a learning competition,” and May 5th, the birthday of Karl Marx, was designated the “Study Festival.” Learning thus became the order of the day in Yan’an. Especially noteworthy is the Yan’an Rectification Movement, which turned the entire Party and base area into a large school, and through which the Party as a whole experienced a great ideological emancipation. It was the Marxism learning campaign on the largest scale since the founding of the Party. The CPC established the principle of seeking truth from facts, and overcame the long-term erroneous tendency of taking Marxism as ready-made dogma and sanctifying the instructions of the Comintern which were to be unquestioningly followed. As a result, the CPC became mature and powerful, and led the Chinese people to victory not only in the War of Resistance, but also in the War of Liberation.(24)

3. The CPC makes remarkable achievements through learning

The victory of the New Democratic Revolution throughout the country made the CPC the ruling party of the whole nation. Faced with a brand-new environment and heavy tasks, in order to obtain optimum achievements (Mao), Comrade Mao Zedong called on the Party as a whole to learn anew, to become adept at learning, and to work assiduously at learning what was new in order to build new China. Through learning, the Party has led its members and the people in the determined effort and hard toil toward the tremendous achievements of socialist construction that laid the material foundation for China's socialist development. During this period, Mao Zedong painstakingly explored paths of socialist construction in search of the one best suited to China's national conditions, and came up with positive results.

In the new era of reform and opening up, and faced with the rapid progress of certain countries in the world, the rapid development trend of science and technology, and the ardent expectations of the people of China, the CPC issued a mobilization order to learn anew. The leader issuing this order was Deng Xiaoping. Comrade Deng Xiaoping called on all Party members to become adept at learning and at learning anew, to work hard at learning new ideas, new knowledge, and new experiences conducive to the development of our country, and to proactively draw on all the achievements of human civilization. Since then, CPC leaders have continued to emphasize learning to adapt to the new developments of reform and opening up. Comrade Jiang Zemin called on the whole Party to study even harder with a strong sense of responsibility to the Party, the people and history, “to study, study, then study some more” (Jiang).Comrade Hu Jintao continued to place study in a more prominent position as a strategic task related to the prosperity and development of the Party. The Fourth Plenary Session of the 17th CPC Central Committee solemnly proposed that, “the building of a Marxist learning party should be regarded as a major and urgent strategic task.” Soon after the 18th CPC National Congress, General Secretary Xi Jinping firmly pointed out:“Study makes progress. To a large extent we Chinese Communists have relied on learning to make achievements, and we will surely continue to do so in the future. If our officials, our Party, our country, and our people are to make progress, we must be strong advocates of learning. We must study, study, then study some more, and we must practice, practice, then practice some more.”(25)

Since the beginning of reform and opening up, and in accordance with these requirements, the CPC has constantly promoted learning innovations. It has not only successfully pioneered, but also widened the socialist road with Chinese characteristics, making world-renowned achievements. China is now the world's second largest economy, the largest trading nation possessing the largest foreign exchange reserves, the largest manufacturer, ranking top in production of 210 industrial products, the producer of more than 50 percent of the world's steel, and the largest producer and consumer of cars. On the basis of its economic strength, the country has made remarkable progress in science and technology, military, aviation, infrastructure, sports, and culture. It is now a major player in manned space flight and lunar landing, a military power with nuclear weapons and aircraft carriers, and a world sports power. It ranks first in the world in patent applications, high-speed railway mileage, and in the number of netizens and mobile phones in the information era. The speed at which China has made these amazing achievements has made the country a focus of global research into what generated this miracle in human history.