午夜剧场

Until its victory in the civil war in 1949, it would not have been surprising if the Chinese Communist Party had collapsed at any moment. Whether in 1927, when the First United Front collapsed and the party was driven into the countryside; in 1934, when it was forced into a grueling retreat by Nationalist forces; or in 1941, when it faced a dual offensive from both the Japanese military and the Nationalists—at any of these points, it would not have been strange for the organization to have vanished. Therefore, the party's 100-year history is a story of a political organization that somehow survived, seized national power, engaged in extreme projects such as the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, and eventually became the world's largest political party, exerting global influence. Why did this organization survive?

In the 1920s and 30s, the top levels of the party organization were ruled by people well-versed in the ideals and practices of world revolution. However, at the level of local organizations, people who were completely indifferent to revolutionary ideals were engaged in their own "revolutions" solely in pursuit of survival and social advancement. Although I could not include everything due to space constraints, internal party documents record not only the fact that local organizations funded themselves primarily through kidnapping for ransom, but also numerous acts unimaginable for a group called the Communist Party, such as profit-driven murders by party members, numerous rapes, and opium production. These people, who did not act like typical Communist Party members and pursued survival at any cost, became the "life-support system" that allowed the party to persist.

However, the desire to make the Chinese Revolution a part of the world revolution—and even to have the former lead the latter—did not disappear. Such desires occasionally possessed leaders and significantly altered the trajectory of the revolution. When demands from "above" resonated with enthusiasm from "below," the revolutionary project began to "run wild" and took on an extreme character. Extremity is precisely the characteristic of the Chinese Communist Party's movement. This has not been lost even in the era of Xi Jinping. In the future, even if the party embarks on projects that surprise people again, the reader will likely not be shocked. This is because it is a lesson learned from observing the growth process of this "political party" over 100 years.

I hope this book serves as a guide for considering the Chinese Communist Party within a long-term perspective.

Nobuo Takahashi

午夜剧场 Press

384 pages, 2,970 yen (tax included)

*Affiliations and titles are as of the time of publication.