[Marxism] Fidel Castro - The Chinese Victory (Part Two, English)

[Walter Lippmann]

(Fidel looks at the international campaign against China regarding
Tibet and explains why he thinks this is part of an effort to cut
Chinese power and influence down in the world today.  He provides 
documentation on CIA covert intervention in Tibet, and the support 
which the Dalai Lama has given to the various U.S. aggressive wars.
He then takes up Taiwan's recent presidential election, won by the 
Kuomintang in a move widely seen as reducing tensions with China. 
He looks at what he calls Chinophobia, which he summarizes thus: 

"There are those who suffer from Chino-phobia, a condition shared 
by many Westerners, accustomed by their education and cultural
differences to regard whatever comes from China contemptuously."

(He concludes:

("I respect the Dalai Lama's right to believe, but 
I am not obliged to believe in the Dalai Lama.")
================================================================

Reflections by comrade Fidel
THE CHINESE VICTORY
(Part II)

http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/reflexiones/2008/ing/f310308i.html

(Part I)
http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/reflexiones/2008/ing/f300308i.html


When the First World War broke out in 1914, China joined the allies.
As recompense, China was promised that the German concessions in the
province of Shandong would be returned at war's end. After the
signing of the Treaty of Versailles, which President Woodrow Wilson
imposed on friends and foes alike, the German colonies were
transferred to Japan, a more powerful allied than China.

Thousands of students gathered in Tiananmen Square on May 4, 1919 to
protest this move. The first triumphant nationalist movement in China
was born there. Called the "May 4th Movement", it brought the petite
and national bourgeoisie and the workers and peasants under one
coalition.

The founding of the Kuomintang or National People's Party had
consolidated the nationalist currents that emerged at the close of
the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. It was headed by Dr. Sun
Yatsen, a progressive intellectual and revolutionary heavily
influenced by the October Revolution, with which he strengthened his
party's ties.

The Chinese Communist Party was founded at a congress held from July
23 to August 5, 1921. Lenin sent representatives of the International
to that Congress.

The Communist movement devoted efforts to reunite China. The young
Mao Zedong was among its founding members. Between 1923 and 1924, the
Chinese Communist Party and Kuomintang joined forces to form the
First United Front.

Following Sun Yatsen's death in 1925, Chiang Kai-shek took command of
the Kuomintang. He focused on establishing firm control of southern
China, the Shanghai region in particular.

Kaishek did not sympathize with the communist doctrine and, in 1927;
he undertook a large-scale repression of communists within the
National Revolutionary Army, unions and other social institutions in
the country, especially in Shanghai. The Left within the Kuomintang
was also heavily repressed.

In 1932, following the five-month military occupation of Manchuria,
Japan established the state of Manchukuo, which posed a great threat
to China. Chiang Kaishek launched five campaigns to besiege and
eliminate the communists, who had gathered strength in the bases set
up in southern China.

In 1927, leading those who had managed to evade Chiang Kai-shek's
treacherous move to the mountainous region of Jiangsu and Fujian, 
Mao Zedong established an encompassing center of armed resistance,
primarily made up of devoted and well-organized communists. This
center came to be known as the Soviet Republic of China.

In 1934, pitted against Chiang Kai-shek's nationalist forces, 
which were vastly superior in number, nearly 100 thousand Chinese
combatants under Mao's command undertook the Great March towards
China's northeast. Skirting China's central region, the combatants
traversed over 3,750 miles and fought almost continually through a
year. This unprecedented feat made Mao the undisputed leader of both
China's Communist Party and Revolution. The application of Marx's and
Lenin's ideas to China's political, economic, natural, geographic and
cultural conditions established him as the brilliant political and
military strategist who liberated a country whose significance in
today's world cannot be underestimated.

The second Sino-Japanese War broke out on July 7, 1937. The Japanese
deliberately brought about the incident that sparked the war. 
A Japanese soldier disappeared while his troop was in a military parade
at the Marco Polo Bridge, over a river located some 10 miles west of
Beijing. China's army, based across the river, was accused of
kidnapping the soldier, and an armed conflict which lasted several
hours ensued. The soldier reappeared, almost immediately after combat
began. The accusation was false, but the Japanese commander had
already ordered the attack. With its usual arrogance, Tokyo made
unacceptable demands from China and ordered the deployment of three
divisions, equipped with the country's best weapons. In a few weeks'
time, the Japanese army secured control of the East-West corridor
between the Gulf of Chihli (today Bo Hai) and Beijing.