Western ideological traits but
was not communistic. This changed with the success of communism in
Russia and with the theoretical writings of Lenin. Here it was shown
that communist theories could be applied to a country similar to China
in its level of development. Already from 1919 on, some of the leaders
of the Movement turned towards communism: the National University of
Peking became the first centre of this movement, and Ch'en Tu-hsiu, then
dean of the College of Letters, from 1920 on became one of its leaders.
Hu Shih did not move to the left with this group; he remained a liberal.
But another well-known writer, Lu Hsuen (1881-1936), while following Hu
Shih in the "Literary Revolution," identified politically with Ch'en.
There was still another man, the Director of the University Library, Li
Ta-chao, who turned towards communism. With him we find one of his
employees in the Library, Mao Tse-tung. In fact, the nucleus of the
Communist Party, which was officially created as late as 1921, was a
student organization including some professors in Peking. On the other
hand, a student group in Paris had also learned about communism and had
organized; the leaders of this group were Chou En-lai and Li Li-san. A
little later, a third group organized in Germany; Chu Te belonged to
this group. The leadership of Communist China since 1949 has been in the
hands of men of these three former student groups.

After 1920, Sun Yat-sen, too, became interested in the developments in
Soviet Russia. Yet, he never actually became a communist; his belief
that the soil should belong to the tiller cannot really be combined with
communism, which advocates the abolition of individual land-holdings.
Yet, Soviet Russia found it useful to help Sun Yat-sen and advised the
Chinese Communist Party to collaborate with the KMT (Kuomintang). This
collaboration, not always easy, continued until the fall of Shanghai in
1927.

In the meantime, Mao Tse-tung had given up his studies in Peking and had
returned to his home in Hunan. Here, he organized his countrymen, the
farmers of Hunan. It is said that at the verge of the northern
expedition of Chiang Kai-shek, Mao's adherents in Hunan already numbered
in the millions; this made the quick and smooth advance of the
communist-advised armies of Chiang Kai-shek possible. Mao developed his
ideas in written form in 1927; he showed that communism in China could
be successful only if it was based upon farmers. B