Two legendary revolutions, 160 years apart, separated by 8,000km. One caused democracy while under a dictatorship. The other caused the beginning of a world powerhouse while making billions suffer. Filled with juxtaposition, these two revolutions are the symbol of classic revolution, two laboratories in which all the modern possibilities of governance, both positive and negative, were tested for the first time. [A New World Begins]. So similar and so different, the Chinese communist revolution and the French revolution have changed the country and the world around them fundamentally. Nevertheless, the fact remains that both succeeded due to the inherent power of the populace and showed how easily the populace could be manipulated and the suffering it can cause. It was the summer of 1788, crippled by a bad harvest, Paris’s bread prices sharply increased, and life became harder for the populace, again.
The seven-year war, participation in America’s revolution, and various other factors created the biggest deficit in the 18th century. Furthermore, with France being the most populated country in Europe with over 26 million inhabitants [Social Causes of the Revolution], there were simply no resources to provide as 90 percent of the peasants lived at or below the poverty line. [Social Causes of the Revolution]. The populace was deeply aware of their situation due to the ideas from the Enlightenment and the American Revolution. They all wanted something to change, even if it was the abolishment of the system. The century-old French monarchy, however, did nothing and was unwilling to change the system nor discuss it with the populace to continue their lavish lifestyle. To account for the deficit, the monarchy, instead of taxing the privileged, increased the tax on the third estate, which resulted in taxes on almost every single aspect of the French common class. This, combined with the general realization of the government's oppression, pushed the populace to the limit.
The seed of the Chinese communist revolution was planted when the last dynasty, the Qing, finally collapsed in 1911 due to numerous rebellions. However, China’s first non-dynastic government, the Chinese Republic, completely fell apart before it even started, which resulted in China between 1916 and 1927 as filled with anarchy and localism. During that period, nearly all Chinese intellectuals across the political spectrum wanted the abolition of the feudal-Confucian system, foreign privilege, and power, as well as the unification of their vast country. The feudal-Confucian system has plagued China for the past hundreds of years, with the imperial system falling into decay and corruption rampant. Furthermore, due to the humiliating loss of the opium war and the Sino-Japanese War, foreign powers had firmly established themselves in major coastal cities, where they had extensive economic-political privileges and formed unequal treaties. Finally, the yearning for a reformed, united, and free of foreign privilege in China was a shared sentiment. These three aspects were the foundation for the two conflicting parties that were the core of the Chinese communist revolution: The KMT (Kuomintang) and the CCP (The Chinese Communist Party). The Chinese communist revolution officially started in 1945 and ended in 1949, and it is the final part of a greater historical event known as the Chinese Civil War.
The civil war is divided into three distinct stages: 1927 to 1937 where the KMT dominated, 1937 to 1945 where both parties fought “together” against the Japanese’s invasion of China, and 1945 to 1949, the final phase of the civil war. While there are some minute differences between the two revolutions on how the revolution is carried out, there is always a dichotomy between two opposing ideological parties. In both China and France, the early period of the revolution was marked by the dominance of a certain party. KMT was dominant in China because of support from foreigners, and Moderate in France because they were the initial group. However, both ultimately failed in their ambition of reunification. Facing all the violence across the country, the assembly was unwilling to oppose the increasing violence but instead chose to embrace it, thus paving the way to the brutality of the 1790s. Furthermore, despite the new government, the average citizen was still concerned with actual living and was fearful and hostile. On the other hand, while the KMT was the embodiment of Chinese nationalism at that time, they failed to create an alliance to reunite China. Just like the French Revolution, the Chinese communist revolution had a period of “inactivity”, as both parties fought against the invading Japanese. However, at the interlude period of the Civil War, there was a clear winner and loser. Even before the Japanese invasion, the KMT was an ineffective, brutal, and corrupt government, and proved to be incapable of carrying out the dream of unity as all of the problems of a divided China remained. Plus, the KMT had been terrible at fighting against the Japanese no matter how much help they received, which decreased their prestige among the Chinese commoners.
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In direct contrast with the KMT, the CCP gained significant advantages during this interlude period. Their “8th Route Army”, was able to establish links and contacts throughout northern China, and gave evidence that it represented Chinese nationalism. They did not pillage local lands, gave the populace a greater say in local government, and implemented numerous popular social-economic policies from ending tax abuse to free education. By the end of the war, with a mass base of 100 million, the CCP replaced the KMT in its embodiment of Chinese nationalism by satisfying the reformation that the Chinese people had wanted for hundreds of years. It was during the final stages of the revolution that the French and the Chinese communist revolutions diverted in their respective events. For the Chinese, this period was the final stretch of the two-decade struggle for power and ended “mythically” through one of the biggest comebacks in history. The KMT lost against the CCP at every turn and were eventually pushed out of the mainland and forced to flee to Taipei (Now Taiwan). On October 1, 1949, Mao proclaimed the establishment of the People’s Republic of China. By the end of 1949, virtually all of China was controlled by Mao's party, spelling the new beginning of a new China. For the French revolution, the revolution ended quietly with the monarchy already abolished in 1792 and the extreme regime of radicalism quickly forgotten.
After the end of the radicals, a more moderate group took over and an insubstantial Directory was formed. Eventually, Napoleon returned from a shocking victory in Europe, staged a coup, and returned France to a dictatorship once more. The outcomes and implications of these revolutions were simply revolutionary. However, it is essential to note a majority of the outcomes are long-term. It took nearly a century after the French Revolution of 1789 to know the implications of modern capitalist and democratic development. Almost no one celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the 1789 Revolution in 1839. [The significance of the Chinese Revolution in world history]. The revolution in China to many has been seen just as a small event, rather than something that changed China fundamentally. [Bridging 1949: Brethren Missionaries and the Communist Revolution]. There are uncanny similarities between these two revolutions, and the outcomes of these revolutions are no exception. In both countries, the revolution ended with a powerful leader, and the action of this leader questioned the success of the revolution as a whole. Napoleon, being the dictator he is, reverted numerous groundbreaking equality policies that were established in the French Revolution, such as women and slavery rights.
Due to China being drained after the civil war, Mao used people’s desire for peace and stability to create an iron rule. While initially improving the economy, he forcefully implemented brutal programs such as the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, which killed more than it helped. In a similar vein, while both countries saw the populace returning to their status quo, they will eventually receive the benefits, no matter if it is the Third Republic of 1870 or the recent boom in China’s standard of living. In terms of ideologies, the French Revolution was the first step toward democracy, capitalism, and individual liberty. Its Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen was momentum in spearheading Western freedom and equality and one of the founding documents in the human rights movement. Further, the result of this revolution has inspired numerous other nations to question their state of liberty, from colonies to prosperous European countries, as this struggle for national liberty became the most important theme of 19th and 20th-century politics. While the French Revolution implemented numerous seeds of liberation, it also showed the effect of democracy’s darker side and the problem of changing a country overnight. No matter the Reign of Terror conducted by the first modern totalitarian dictators, the constant bloodshed of the switching governments, or the later Napoleon’s coup, it showed the negatives of demagogic populism and the effect of how the media could corrupt politics. Further, the revolution also made the populace realize that independent thought was possible through the development of the concept of “ideologies.” After 1789, through a combination of enlightenment ideals and revolutionary events, no form of government could be accepted as legitimate without justification. Instead of developing and revolutionizing a brand new ideology, what the Chinese communist revolution did was transform its old ideology into the powerhouse we see today.
First, since the Chinese were not able to achieve modernization without abolishing the old and the foreign, the revolution’s first step was abandoning the old traditions. While the old culture could be celebrated, it can function only insofar as the celebration of old traditions such as the Mandate of Heaven hindered China’s political growth. Further, the destruction of the traditional dominating gentry ruling class was conceded with another crucial achievement, land reform. The land reform in the early 1950s not only destroyed the landlord but brought a sense of social equity to the Chinese countryside and tied remote villages to a national political structure. But most importantly, land reform created the essential basis for modern industrial development and modernization. This turned China from a country with an industrial base even smaller than Belgium to the largest economy in the world in less than a century, the greatest development feat in history. [The significance of the Chinese Revolution in world history]. Due to this, it seems like the Chinese communists accomplished a capitalist/bourgeois revolution without much participation from the actual Chinese bourgeois. Finally, the communist victory in China further hardened Western resolve in the Cold War, as it seemed like the East’s biggest country had just become communist.
Both revolutions are deeply ingrained with the concept of class and started because of the class struggle. France, for its abusive dominance of the first two estates and the failure of the monarchy. And China, for its abolishment of both the gentry class and the ineffective imperial dynasty. Both revolutions were also sustained and influenced by the class. France, for its increasingly violent mobs that determined the direction of the revolution, and China for the CCP’s usage of the rural populace to alter the course of history. Furthermore, both revolutions showed how easily the class difference could be manipulated and the suffering it can cause. France for the use of its literature to control the bourgeoisie, and China with its use of systematic thought control to alter the thoughts of the populace. Finally, both revolutions have shown the “wasted” suffering of the populace, as France’s status quo returned to the pre-revolution age under Napoleon, and Mao’s great leap forward killed more than the entire civil war itself All in all, with so many differences and so much more surprising similarities, both revolutions, even though they are separated by culture, space, and time, are somehow able to show the same phenomenon: society’s drive to abolish the old and ineffective to bring the new and revolutionary, as well as the same warning of how evolution leaves a power vacuum for abuse of power. Most importantly, it showed the same notion that while the inherent power of the populace can be manipulated and cause suffering, the people, and only the people alone, can make history.
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