had been known in China long ago, this
line of development of Western philosophy had interested Chinese
intellectuals much less than liberalistic, democratic Western ideas. It
was widely believed that communism had no real prospects for China, as a
dictatorship of the proletariat seemed to be relevant only in a highly
industrialized and not in an agrarian society. Thus, in its beginning
the "Movement of May Fourth" of 1919 had 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 landholdings.
Yet, Soviet Russia found it useful to help Sun Yat-sen and advised the
Chinese Communist Party to collaborate with the KMT (Kuo-min-tang). 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.