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ON PROTRACTED WAR 191

to build stable base areas in the places it occupied; moreover, after establishing its
capital in Nanking, its leading group committed many political and military errors.
Therefore it was unable to withstand the combined onslaughts of the counter-
revolutionary forces of the Ching government and the British, U.S. and French
aggressors, and was finally defeated in 1864.
8 The Reform Movement of 1898, whose leading spirits were Kang Yu-wei, Liang
Chi-chao and Tan Szu-tung, represented the interests of the liberal bourgeoisie and
the enlightened landlords. The movement was favoured and supported by Emperor
Kuang Hsu, but had no mass basis. Yuan Shih-kai, who had an army behind him,
betrayed the reformers to Empress Dowager Tzu Hsi, the leader of the die-hards,
who seized power again and had Emperor Kuang Hsu imprisoned and Tan Szu-tung
and five others beheaded. Thus the movement ended in tragic defeat.
9 The Revolution of 1911 was the bourgeois revolution which overthrew the
autocratic regime of the Ching Dynasty. On October 10 of that year, a section of
the Ching Dynasty’s New Army who were under revolutionary influence staged an
uprising in Wuchang, Hupeh Province. The existing bourgeois and petty-bourgeois
revolutionary societies and the broad masses of the workers, peasants and soldiers
responded enthusiastically, and very soon the rule of the Ching Dynasty crumbled.
In January 1912, the Provisional Government of the Republic of China was set up
in Nanking, with Sun Yat-sen as the Provisional President. Thus China’s feudal
monarchic system which had lasted for more than two thousand years was brought
to an end. The idea of a democratic republic had entered deep in the hearts of the
people. But the bourgeoisie which led the revolution was strongly conciliationist in
nature. It did not mobilize the peasant masses on an extensive scale to crush the
feudal rule of the landlord class in the countryside, but instead handed state power
over to the Northern warlord Yuan Shih-kai under imperialist and feudal pressure.
As a result, the revolution ended in defeat.
10 The Northern Expedition was the punitive war against the Northern war-
lords launched by the revolutionary army which marched north from Kwangtung
Province in May-July 1926. The Northern Expeditionary Army, with the Communist
Party of China taking part in its leadership and under the Party’s influence (the
political work in the army was at that time mostly under the charge of Communist
Party members), gained the warm support of the broad masses of workers and
peasants. In the second half of 1926 and the first half of 1927 it occupied most of the
provinces along the Yangtse and Yellow Rivers and defeated the Northern warlords.
In April 1927 this revolutionary war failed as a result of betrayal by the reactionary
clique under Chiang Kai-shek within the revolutionary army.
11 On January 16, 1938, the Japanese cabinet declared in a policy statement that
Japan would subjugate China by force. At the same time it tried by threats and
blandishments to make the Kuomintang government capitulate, declaring that if the
Kuomintang government “continued to plan resistance”, the Japanese government
would foster a new puppet regime in China and no longer accept the Kuomintang
as “the other party” in negotiations.
12 The capitalists referred to here are chiefly those of the United States.
13 By “their governments” Comrade Mao Tse-tung is here referring to the
governments of the imperialist countries — Britain, the United States and France.
14 Comrade Mao Tse-tung’s prediction that there would be an upswing in China
during the stage of stalemate in the War of Resistance Against Japan was completely
confirmed in the case of the Liberated Areas under the leadership of the Chinese Com-
munist Party. But there was actually a decline instead of an upswing in the Kuomintang