Henk Sneevliet and the Comintern guided the Young Communist Party of China

Henk Sneevliet Encouraged a First United Front with the KMT

Welcome back to the Chinese Revolution.  Last time, we segued to a discussion of atheism and religion in China both before and after the communist revolution.

Now we should return to the early days of the Communist Party of China.  They had their first Congress in the French concession in Shanghai and then on South Lake to escape police surveillance. 

I would like to thank a follower for pointing out that it was a woman, Wang Huiwu, who planned the Congress and who booked the boat for the meeting on the lake.  She is a hero to many Chinese women. 

The Chinese communists present represented about 57 party members throughout China.  They were assisted in this first national congress by two Communist International (Comintern) representatives (one Russian, one Dutch).  A key first question was, how to grow the Communist Party of China?

Henk Sneevliet, also known by the pseudonym Maring, was a Dutch communist who had been active in the labour movement in the Netherlands and in the anti-colonial struggle in the Dutch East Indies.  That is today’s Indonesia.  He had caught the attention of Vladimir Lenin, the leader of Russia’s successful communist revolution.  Sneevliet was then appointed as Comintern representative in the Far East.  That is how Henk came to be a key figure at the First Congress of the Communist Party of China, even though he did not speak Chinese.

He had strong opinions, bordering on arrogance.  His endorsement by Lenin and his appointment by the world’s first Communist government were his credentials and they certainly opened doors for him among Chinese Marxists.  Henk was able to push his views on the nascent party but faced resistance and doubts. 

His first recommendation was that China needed a disciplined Leninist party.  That might seem obvious, given the recent success of such a party next door in the vast Russian Empire.  But it wasn’t a given.  Chen Duxiu had wondered whether the party should be called a Socialist or Communist Party.  Communist, he was told by his foreign advisors.  There were different strands of socialist and communists, including anarchists, social democrats, Mensheviks and more.  Which to choose? The majority of Chinese Communists preferred to follow the Leninist model.  It had succeeded next door.

But how to duplicate its success in China?

Sneevliet had an opinion on that too.  The Communist Party could not work at this early stage, with so few members, in isolation.  It was essential to ally with the nationalist movement in China.  It was Sneevliet who pushed for the Communists to ally with the Nationalists and have Communists join the KMT as individuals while maintaining membership in the Communist Party.

This idea faced a lot of resistance.

Most of the Chinese delegates opposed the idea of collaborating with “bourgeois nationalists”.  Zhang Guotao chaired the meeting and argued against Sneevliet’s recommendations.

The First Congress wrote up documents suggesting that Capitalists needed to be overthrown by a revolutionary army of the proletariat” and that other political parties should be confronted with “independence, aggression and exclusion.”

Sneevliet was not impressed with the debate.  He thought the early members were naive and that the party had been born too early.  He thought labour activism and propaganda work would be better use of Comintern resources.

Sneevliet was much influenced by his experience in the Dutch East Indian colonies.  He had worked with local nationalists there to oppose the colonial administration.

He had discussed these ideas at the Comintern’s Second Congress in 1920 with Lenin himself and MN Roy from India.  One outcome of those international discussions was a decision that in colonial and semi-colonial countries, Communists could work with “national revolutionary” movements but not “bourgeois democratic” parties.  The key was whether the others were revolutionary or not and if they would allow the Communists to organize the workers and peasants in a revolutionary way.

Sneevliet then travelled south and met with Sun Yat-sen in Guangxi.  Sun was planning a Northern Expedition.  Sun was curious about the New Economic Policy that had just been introduced in Russia, which Sun saw as like his own views.  They discussed setting up a military academy, reorganizing the KMT and possible collaboration.

Sneevliet wasn’t impressed with the KMT at this time.  He thought it had potential but needed to be reorganized into a big tent to attract students, workers and peasants.  Propaganda was necessary so the party would not be reliant on generals.

Sneevliet was amazed by a large seamen’s strike in 1921 and 1922 and credited the KMT for it.  He wrote that the work stoppage “was undoubtedly the most important event in the history of the young Chinese labor movement.”  By March 1922, the authorities had caved, and the striking workers gained wage increases of 15-30%. 

The main leaders of that strike were not members of any political party.  But there were links between the KMT and the Seamen’s Union.  So Sneevliet overestimated the KMT’s role in the strike.  He pointed out that the local Communists had not even supported it.  Sneevliet believed that the KMT was a “national revolutionary” movement that the Comintern could work with, especially in southern China around Guangzhou.

Now he just needed to get the Chinese and the leadership in Moscow to agree.

Even the KMT needed convincing.  But Sneevliet’s promise of two million gold rubles from Russia for the KMT party was a sweetener that interested Sun Yat-sen. 

Resistance among the Chinese Communists was initially fierce.  Chen Duxiu wrote to Voitinsky, who was back in Moscow, noting that the Chinese members had voted and expressed “complete disapproval”.  Chen said the policies of the two parties were very different and that the KMT was interested in collaboration with the Americans and with warlords.  By June 1922 Chen had softened his tone and hoped that the KMT might “temporarily follow the same road as us.”

Sneevliet travelled to Moscow and delivered a report in July 1922.  He noted the absence of a modern working class in China and an undifferentiated peasantry.  He wrote that the Chinese Communists had no independent power base.  He believed they were an ineffective organization, and he was very pessimistic about its chances.  That is why he believed the party needed to work with the KMT.

Interestingly, Sneevliet stressed that the KMT was made up of four groups and was not a party made up of only the bourgeois class.    It had leading intellectuals, who could be attracted to socialism.  It had the overseas Chinese, who provided financial support and desired a united China free of warlords and foreign exploitation.  It had soldiers of the southern government.  And lastly, there were the workers, such as the seamen who had recently gone on strike. 

The Comintern agreed with him and when Sneevliet returned to China, he brought along “August Instructions” which the Comintern had allowed him to draft.  They instructed the Communist Party to move its headquarters south to Guangzhou and to work closely with Sneevliet.  There they could operate in the open, rather than in secret in Shanghai.

Sun Yat-sen was no longer in Guangzhou and that was known to the Communists.  They were prepared to work with the KMT regardless of whether Sun was its leader.  Some Chinese Communists and the majority in Guangzhou were more open to working with the local warlord Chen Jiongming than with Sun.

The instructions from Moscow included plans for the Communists to support the progressive elements of the KMT.  Separately, they were also to set up an independent propaganda organization and establish trade unions.  This was the beginning of the United Front.

By then, Chen Duxiu had come around to the idea and recognized that the KMT had more influence with workers than the Communists did.  He encouraged the Chinese Communists, anarchists and the KMT to work together.  But he was pessimistic about the KMT and preferred an alliance outside of the KMT.  Sneevliet pushed for a “bloc within”, with Chinese Communists joining the KMT as individual members.

According to the Chinese side, Chen and Zhang Guotao resisted the idea of communists joining the KMT, but Sneevliet insisted using the Comintern’s authority and the documents he had brought from Moscow.  Sneevliet’s version was that he did not need to use his authority and that was no serious objection. Only comrades from Guangzhou opposed the idea, he said. 

Either way, the outcome was the same.  Individual communists would join the KMT while maintaining membership in the Communist Party.  The Communist Party would continue to criticize the KMT and push it in a revolutionary direction.

The Russian diplomat Adolph Joffe negotiated an agreement with Sun Yat-sen.  Since Sun had been pushed out of Guangzhou and was not receiving meaningful support from any other foreign powers, he had little alternative but to accept Russian support.  In January 1923, the Soviet Union and Sun announced a historic Joint Statement.  It enabled Soviet financial and military support.

But Chinese Communists were writing to Moscow directly and contradicting Sneevliet.  People were questioning whether the Communist Party there should build as a mass party.  Sneevliet dismissed the idea that 250 Chinese Communists could do that independently.  Voitinsky seemed to disagree.  So too did Richard Schueller, the Austrian head of the Communist Youth International.  In the end, Moscow stuck with Sneevliet’s line.  The KMT was to be nudged towards the Soviet Union and against European, American and Japanese imperialism.  The Communist Party was “to enlighten and organize the laboring masses, and to create labor trade unions in order to lay the foundation for a strong mass Communist Party.”  In other words, the United Front was a first step before the mass Party could exist.

This strategy was given credibility by the early troubles of the Communists in organizing railway workers in northern China.  They formed a dozen unions along the Beijing – Hankou railway.  Then on February 1, 1923, a meeting was planned halfway along the line to merge them into one union.  Wu Peifu ordered the meeting to be obstructed.  In response, the unions called a general strike.  20,000 workers put down their tools and walked off the job.  Wu Peifu’s military police responded with violence.  They attacked the union headquarters and killed forty union organizers.  Then striking workers were fired.  The strike was a failure.  The Chinese Communists reconsidered their approach and internal support for the United Front grew.

The directives from Moscow evolved in 1923.  In June 1923, Voitinsky wrote a new set of directives, but Bukharin watered them down a bit.  Organizing a worker-peasant alliance was highlighted and the leadership of the peasant movement was to be in the hands of the party of the working class.  This was a significant step.  Moscow was telling the Chinese Communists to organize and lead a peasant movement.

The Third Party Congress of the Chinese Communists was heated.  It followed the crushing of the railway workers’ strike.  Sneevliet was angry that Zhang Guotao was spreading rumors about him and calling him a rightist.  Sneevliet responded that “the Chinese are very immature in experience and most of them lack knowledge.”  Personal friction was palpable.  There was much debate about the best way forward for the Communists in China at the Third Congress.  Chen Duxiu wrote resolutions along Sneevliet’s thinking.  Zhang argued against them.  The vote was close.  21 to 16 in favour of the Chen / Sneevliet proposal. 

Resistance continued and little progress was made over the next few months.  In fact, the Party moved its headquarters back to Shanghai from Guangzhou.  Sneevliet disagreed with that.  So, Chinese Communist resistance to his ideas were quite strong. 

In October 1923, Sneevliet left China for Moscow.  In Irkutsk, in Siberia, he met his replacement: Mikhail Borodin.  That is how Sneevliet learned that his duties in China were over.  The internationalist Dutch was being replaced with a Soviet Russian.  Internationalism was now less important in Moscow than the Soviet Union’s national interests.  The Dutch globetrotting revolutionary exited the Chinese Revolution. But his ideas for a United Front remained. 

By the time of the 4^th Party Congress in 1925, the Communist Party of China had 900 members. Its real growth came thereafter.  The United Front seems to have provided the Communist Party with a chance to mobilize and grow, while being allied with a large, more popular and more successful political party. 

There will be more to say about the United Front going forward.