Power Games.
权力游戏
Ideology, propaganda and totalitarian rule.
Power Games
Ideology, propaganda and totalitarian rule.
Lead essays & audio editions · 2
essay · Episode 3Why Power Needs You to LieA sign in a shop window, an ancient deer led into court, and a unanimous vote of 2,958 green lights. Why totalitarian rule requires not your belief, but your public repetition.▶ Listenessay · Episode 10The Monopoly on Memory: Three Historical Resolutions and the Rewriting of the PastIn 1945, 1981, and 2021, the Central Committee convened as a supreme court of history to declare which catastrophes were necessary and which dead must be forgotten. Why a regime built on infallibility must perpetually police yesterday.▶ ListenThe October RevolutionOn 7 November 1917, Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik Party seized power in Petrograd, establishing the world's first socialist state and proving to radical Chinese intellectuals that an economically backward agrarian nation could overthrow tyranny and leap directly into modern revolutionary socialism.Read →The Communist International founded in MoscowIn March 1919, Vladimir Lenin founded the Third Communist International (Comintern) in Moscow to coordinate world socialist revolution, explicitly identifying the oppressed colonial and semi-colonial peoples of Asia as indispensable allies against Western imperialism. Within a year, Comintern envoys were dispatched to China with funds, printing presses, and ideological instructions to build a revolutionary communist party from the ground up.Read →Comintern agents arrive in ChinaIn the spring of 1920, Grigori Voitinsky and a team of Comintern operatives arrived in Beijing and Shanghai, bridging the gap between Soviet state power and scattered Chinese radical circles to midwife the founding of the Chinese Communist Party.Read →First National Congress, ShanghaiIn late July 1921, thirteen young delegates representing fifty-seven communist members nationwide gathered secretly in a Shanghai French Concession shikumen house to inaugurate the Chinese Communist Party under the watchful guidance of Comintern representative Maring, before fleeing French detectives to finish the congress aboard a rented wooden pleasure boat on Nanhu Lake in Jiaxing.Read →Second Congress, the Party joins the CominternIn July 1922, twelve delegates representing 195 members gathered in Shanghai for the Second National Congress, adopting the party's first complete constitution, formally joining the Communist International as an obedient national branch, and inaugurating the strategic two-stage revolutionary theory of anti-imperialist, anti-feudal democratic revolution.Read →The Sun-Joffe ManifestoIn January 1923, Nationalist leader Sun Yat-sen and Soviet diplomat Adolph Joffe signed a historic joint declaration in Shanghai, pledging Soviet military and financial assistance to the Kuomintang while acknowledging that communism was not suited for China, unlocking the geopolitical door for the First United Front.Read →The First United FrontIn January 1924, Sun Yat-sen convened the First National Congress of the reorganized Kuomintang in Guangzhou, adopting the policy of alliance with Russia, cooperation with the Communists, and assistance to peasants and workers, which inaugurated the First United Front and transformed two rival revolutionary movements into a formidable national coalition.Read →The August Seventh ConferenceOn 7 August 1927, twenty-one communist leaders convened an emergency secret conference in Hankou under the guidance of new Comintern representative Besso Lominadze, summarily removing Chen Duxiu from leadership, adopting land revolution and armed insurrection as the general line, and hearing Mao Zedong deliver his fateful maxim that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.Read →The Mukden IncidentOn the night of 18 September 1931, Japanese Kwantung Army officers detonated a small explosion on the South Manchuria Railway near Mukden (Shenyang) as a fabricated pretext to invade and conquer Manchuria, igniting fourteen years of Japanese imperial aggression across China while Chiang Kai-shek ordered non-resistance to prioritize wiping out the Communists.Read →The Chinese Soviet Republic proclaimed, JiangxiIn November 1931, the Chinese Communist Party proclaimed the Chinese Soviet Republic in Ruijin, Jiangxi, electing Mao Zedong as Chairman of the Central Executive Committee and creating a revolutionary state-within-a-state that governed three million citizens with its own constitution, red bank notes, courts, and postal stamps.Read →The Zunyi ConferenceIn January 1935, during an emergency enlarged Politburo conference in the captured Guizhou town of Zunyi, the Chinese Communist Party repudiated Comintern adviser Otto Braun and Bo Gu's dogmatic military command, electing Mao Zedong to the Standing Committee and placing him at the helm of the Red Army in a decisive declaration of strategic independence.Read →The Marco Polo Bridge IncidentOn the night of 7 July 1937, skirmishes between Japanese garrison troops and the Chinese 29th Army at Wanping near the Lugou Bridge ignited the Second Sino-Japanese War, ending eight years of regional appeasement and dragging China into eight years of total, devastating resistance.Read →The Sino-Soviet Non-Aggression PactOn 21 August 1937, Nationalist China and the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact in Nanjing, initiating four years of massive Soviet credits, artillery shipments, and volunteer fighter squadrons sent directly to Chiang Kai-shek rather than Mao Zedong's communists in Yan'an.Read →The Red Army is renamed the Eighth Route ArmyIn late August 1937, the Chinese Communist Party reorganized its forty-five thousand Red Army veterans into the Eighth Route Army of the National Revolutionary Army, accepting Nationalist cap badges and nominal subordination on paper while preserving absolute Communist Party command and independent guerrilla strategy in practice.Read →The Second United Front declaredOn 22 September 1937, the Central News Agency published the CCP's manifesto on national unity followed the next day by Chiang Kai-shek's formal statement recognizing the legal status of the Chinese Communist Party, formally sealing the Second United Front and burying ten years of bitter civil war beneath a shared imperative to resist Japan.Read →The Sixth Plenum; Mao defeats Wang Ming's lineIn October and November 1938 at the enlarged Sixth Plenum in Yan'an, Mao Zedong decisively defeated Comintern favorite Wang Ming's capitulationist United Front line, receiving Stalin's personal endorsement via Comintern representative Wang Jiaxiang and formally proclaiming the historic mandate for Sinified Marxism.Read →The Soviet-Japanese Neutrality PactOn 13 April 1941, the Soviet Union and Imperial Japan signed a five-year neutrality pact in Moscow, shocking China as Joseph Stalin recognized Japanese-controlled Manchukuo in exchange for Tokyo respecting Outer Mongolia, abruptly terminating Soviet military shipments to China and leaving the country diplomatically isolated.Read →Pearl Harbor; China becomes an Allied theatreOn 8 December 1941, following Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, China formally declared war on Japan, Germany, and Italy, joining the Grand Alliance as an indispensable Allied theatre and securing vast American financial and military assistance while fundamentally altering Chongqing's incentive to sacrifice troops in frontline combat.Read →The Dixie Mission reaches Yan'anIn July 1944, the United States Army Observation Group, codenamed the Dixie Mission, touched down on the dusty airstrip at Yan'an, marking the first official American diplomatic and military liaison with the Chinese Communist Party and producing glowing intelligence reports that contrasted Yan'an's vigor and honesty with Chongqing's corruption and decay.Read →YaltaAt Yalta in February 1945, Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill decided the post-war fate of Manchuria and Outer Mongolia without a single Chinese representative present. To draw the Soviet Union into the war against Japan, the Western allies paid Stalin with rights on Chinese soil, trading away China's sovereignty before the world war had ended.Read →Seventh Congress, Mao Zedong Thought written into the Party constitutionIn April 1945, after seventeen years without a national congress, the Chinese Communist Party convened in Yan'an to codify Mao Zedong's ideological supremacy. By enshrining 'Mao Zedong Thought' in the Party constitution, the congress transformed a revolutionary organization into an instrument of personal authority, establishing the ideological doctrine that governed China for decades.Read →The Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and AllianceOn 14 August 1945, Moscow signed the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Alliance with Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist government, formally recognizing Chongqing as China's sole legitimate authority. In exchange for Soviet recognition and a promise of non-interference, Chiang surrendered China's claims over Outer Mongolia and granted Moscow joint rights over Manchuria's key railways and naval bases.Read →Soviet forces enter Manchuria; Japan surrendersOn 9 August 1945, over one million Soviet troops poured across the border into Manchuria, crushing Japan's Kwantung Army in days just as American atomic bombs compelled Tokyo's surrender. The sudden Soviet takeover placed China's richest industrial base in Moscow's hands, fundamentally reshaping the geopolitical balance before Chiang Kai-shek's troops could arrive.Read →Soviet withdrawal from Manchuria completedIn May 1946, the Soviet army completed its withdrawal from northeast China, leaving behind a stripped industrial wasteland and an open battleground for civil war. Before departing, Soviet authorities dismantled and shipped across the border billions of dollars worth of Japanese-built machinery, generators and rolling stock, treating Manchuria's industry as war trophies.Read →
Lean to one sideOn 30 June 1949, in his seminal essay 'On the People's Democratic Dictatorship', Mao Zedong officially proclaimed that the future Chinese state would 'lean to one side', aligning itself unconditionally with the Soviet Union and the socialist camp. Three months before the People's Republic was even formally founded, Mao slammed the door on diplomatic ambiguity with the West, tying China's destiny to Moscow.Read →The People's Republic is proclaimedOn the afternoon of 1 October 1949, standing atop Tiananmen Gate in Beijing before a crowd of three hundred thousand people, Mao Zedong proclaimed the founding of the People's Republic of China. As the five-starred red flag rose, the ceremony marked the end of a century of civil wars and foreign invasions, establishing a Leninist one-party state governing a quarter of humanity.Read →Mao travels to MoscowIn December 1949, Mao Zedong boarded a special train for Moscow on his first journey outside China, seeking to replace the humiliating 1945 treaty with a new security pact with Stalin. Kept waiting in an isolated dacha for weeks by a suspicious Soviet dictator, Mao endured cold diplomatic snubs until tough bargaining finally secured a mutual defense alliance in February 1950.Read →The Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance and Mutual AssistanceOn 14 February 1950, in the Kremlin, China and the Soviet Union signed the thirty-year Treaty of Friendship, Alliance, and Mutual Assistance. After nine weeks of tense bargaining between Mao and Stalin, the pact committed the USSR to defend China against Japanese or American aggression, cementing the Sino-Soviet military bloc that anchored the Asian Cold War.Read →The Korean War beginsOn 25 June 1950, North Korean armies struck across the 38th Parallel with Soviet tanks and artillery, initiating the Korean War after Stalin secretly greenlit Kim Il-sung's plan. The sudden invasion caught Mao Zedong by surprise, disrupting the planned assault on Taiwan as Washington dispatched the Seventh Fleet to the Taiwan Strait, cementing America's Cold War containment perimeter.Read →Stalin, Mao and the decision to enter KoreaBetween 1 and 18 October 1950, Mao Zedong fought an agonizing internal battle against his own Politburo colleagues to send troops into Korea, overcoming widespread resistance from military commanders who warned against fighting the United States. Soviet archive documents reveal that Mao viewed intervention not merely as border defense, but as an existential test of revolutionary commitment to prove China's standing to a sceptical Stalin.Read →Stalin diesOn 5 March 1953, the death of Joseph Stalin removed the domineering patriarch of international communism, fundamentally altering the balance of power between Moscow and Beijing. Stalin's sudden exit broke diplomatic stalemates to allow the end of the Korean War, exposed volatile leadership rivalries in the Kremlin, and elevated Mao Zedong into the preeminent elder statesman of the socialist world.Read →The Gao Gang and Rao Shushi affairIn 1953–1954, the young People's Republic suffered its first fierce internal power struggle when Northeast chief Gao Gang and East China boss Rao Shushi mounted an abortive bid to displace Liu Shaoqi and Zhou Enlai. Sensing that their ambitions threatened Party unity, Mao withdrew his tacit encouragement and permitted their downfall, ending in Gao's suicide and a sweeping liquidation of semi-autonomous regional power bases.Read →Khrushchev in Beijing; Port Arthur and Dalian returnedIn September 1954, Nikita Khrushchev arrived in Beijing on his first state visit, eager to court Mao Zedong's friendship amidst Kremlin succession battles. Over two weeks of intense talks, Khrushchev agreed to return the strategic Port Arthur naval base, hand over Soviet stakes in joint companies, and expand industrial aid, bringing China its greatest recovery of sovereign territory since 1949 and lifting the Sino-Soviet alliance to its golden era.Read →The first Constitution of the PRCIn September 1954, the First National People's Congress adopted the first Constitution of the People's Republic of China, replacing the provisional 1949 Common Program. Creating the modern offices of State Chairman and Premier and creating the State Council, the constitution legally enshrined the 'transition to socialism' while ensuring that real administrative, legislative, and judicial power remained anchored in the Communist Party hierarchy.Read →Khrushchev's secret speechIn the early morning hours of 25 February 1956, Nikita Khrushchev delivered a secret midnight speech to the 20th Congress of the CPSU, denouncing Joseph Stalin's brutal purges, mass executions, and megalomaniacal personality cult. The revelations sent political shockwaves through the global communist movement, infuriating Mao Zedong and driving the CCP to begin re-evaluating its unquestioning adoption of Soviet institutions.Read →Eighth CongressIn September 1956, the Chinese Communist Party convened its Eighth National Congress, marking the institutional zenith of collective Party leadership and pragmatic economic planning. Endorsing de-Stalinization, the congress struck 'Mao Zedong Thought' from the Party charter, declared class struggle virtually over, and resolved to focus national energy on expanding backward productive forces, setting down a cautious roadmap that Mao would soon violently repudiate.Read →The Hungarian uprisingIn October 1956, the Hungarian Revolution erupted onto the world stage as workers and students took up arms to overthrow Soviet domination and dismantle state secret police. The sight of communists being lynched in Budapest sent shockwaves through Zhongnanhai; Beijing pushed a hesitant Kremlin to deploy tanks to crush the rebellion, while Mao watched nervously for any spark that could trigger similar unrest inside China.Read →Mao at the Moscow ConferenceIn November 1957, Mao Zedong travelled to Moscow for the 40th anniversary of the October Revolution, acting not as a humble pupil of Soviet power but as the ideological chieftain of global communism. Celebrated by world communist delegates following the Soviet launch of Sputnik, Mao declared that 'the East Wind prevails over the West Wind' and horrified his European hosts by casually arguing that world socialism would triumph even if a global nuclear war wiped out half the world's population.Read →