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tion, has brought about a new alignment of classes, given rise to a
tremendous upsurge in the peasant revolution, imparted thoroughness
to the revolution against imperialism and feudalism, created the pos-
sibility of the transition from the democratic revolution to the socialist
revolution, and so on. None of these was possible in the period when
the revolution was under bourgeois leadership. Although no change
has taken place in the nature of the fundamental contradiction in the
process as a whole, i.e., in the anti-imperialist, anti-feudal, democratic-
revolutionary nature of the process (the opposite of which is its semi-
colonial and semi-feudal nature), nonetheless this process has passed
through several stages of development in the course of more than
twenty years; during this time many great events have taken place —
the failure of the Revolution of 1911 and the establishment of the
regime of the Northern warlords, the formation of the first national
united front and the revolution of 1924-27, the break-up of the united
front and the desertion of the bourgeoisie to the side of the counter-
revolution, the wars among the new warlords, the Agrarian Revolu-
tionary War, the establishment of the second national united front
and the War of Resistance Against Japan. These stages are marked
by particular features such as the intensification of certain contradic-
tions (e.g., the Agrarian Revolutionary War and the Japanese invasion
of the four northeastern provinces), the partial or temporary resolution
of other contradictions (e.g., the destruction of the Northern warlords
and our confiscation of the land of the landlords), and the emergence
of yet other contradictions (e.g., the conflicts among the new warlords,
and the landlords’ recapture of the land after the loss of our revolu-
tionary base areas in the south).
In studying the particularities of the contradictions at each stage
in the process of development of a thing, we must not only observe
them in their interconnections or their totality, we must also examine
the two aspects of each contradiction.
For instance, consider the Kuomintang and the Communist Party.
Take one aspect, the Kuomintang. In the period of the first united
front, the Kuomintang carried out Sun Yat-sen’s Three Great Policies
of alliance with Russia, co-operation with the Communist Party, and
assistance to the peasants and workers; hence it was revolutionary and
vigorous, it was an alliance of various classes for the democratic
revolution. After 1927, however, the Kuomintang changed into its
opposite and became a reactionary bloc of the landlords and big