Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Chinese students in Paris were told about this, they immediately
surrounded the quarters of the Chinese delegation in an around-the-
clock vigil. As a result, the Chinese delegation did not sign the final
peace agreement ending World War I.
TO GO WEST OR GO EAST, YOUNG MAN:
THAT IS THE QUESTION
The Versailles settlement was deeply disappointing to many
Chinese intellectuals and led many of them to become disillusioned
with the West. Perhaps the West, after all, did not have the answers
to China's problems. Western Europe, which many Chinese intellec-
tuals had looked to as the pinnacle of modern civilization, had very
nearly destroyed itself in World War I. What had caused the tragic
war—excessive materialism, rampant nationalism, unfeeling capital-
ism? Western Europe and North America then stood by and did little
to blunt Japanese ambitions toward Shandong. Were they really
China's friends after all? Many disillusioned students began listening
to voices critical of the West, including Chinese nativists and, more
important, the Bolsheviks. Perhaps the answers were in Eastern
Europe and Russia. One of the most extensive and penetrating
critiques of Western civilization was Marxism-Leninism, an ideology
that both excoriated the West's domination of the world and predicted
its eventual collapse. Such ideas were comforting and powerfully
appealing to a generation of young Chinese hotheads angry with
how the West sold out China at Versailles. Out of this anger and disil-
lusionment came renewed interest in Marxism-Leninism and the
Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. Perhaps in a very real way, the West's
failure to emerge as China's friend at a crucial historical moment
turned a good portion of modern China's key transitional generation
away from the West and toward the East.
THE FOUNDING OF THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY
In order to make sense of the history of communism in China, it is
necessary to have a rudimentary understanding of Marxist-Leninist
dogma, which holds that history is driven by class conflict and unfolds
in five main stages. The most primitive historical stage is “slave
society,” in which slaves are ruled over by masters. Eventually the
slaves rise up and overthrow their masters, and this leads to a “feudal
society.” In the feudal society, serfs eventually overthrow their lords
