During this period the CCP rapidly expanded its membership, organized a militant labor movement in several of China's major cities, and established rudimentary peasant associations in rural areas.

Although the Nationalists at first held most of the country, sympathy for the Communists grew in urban areas suffering from high unemployment, runaway inflation, and rampant government corruption.

The Communist victory had a major impact on the global balance of power: China became the largest socialist state by population, as well as a third force in the Cold War following the 1956 Sino-Soviet split.

[20] Japan and the Western powers forced China to accept unequal treaties that gave them territorial concessions and allowed them to exploit the Chinese economy.

[35][36] Agricultural economist John Lossing Buck disagreed, arguing that landlords' return on investment was not especially high in comparison to the standard rates of interest in China at the time.

[42] Agnes Smedley observed how even within a short distance from Shanghai, rural landlords operated essentially as feudal lords, paying for private armies, dominating local politics, and keeping numerous concubines.

[59][60] Although exposure to Marxist theory was extremely limited in China at the time, Chinese radicals found Lenin's ideas about organizing a revolutionary movement to be readily applicable to their own context.

[80] The CCP continued to be dominated by students and urban intellectuals living in China's large cities, where exposure to Marxist ideas was strongest: three of the first four party congresses were held in Shanghai, the other in Guangzhou.

[84] At the same time as CCP was developing in Shanghai, in Guangzhou the seasoned revolutionary Sun Yat-sen was building the Chinese Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang (KMT).

[92][93][94] Concerns about the rising power of the leftist faction, and the effect of the strike on the Guangzhou government's ability to raise funds, which was largely dependent on foreign trade, led to increasing tensions within the United Front.

When Sun Yat-sen had died on 12 March, his immediate successor as chairman was the moderate Liao Zhongkai, who supported the United Front and the KMT's close relationship with the Soviet Union.

[98][99] In the aftermath of the coup, Chiang negotiated a compromise whereby hardline members of the rightist faction, such as Wu Tiecheng, were removed from their posts in compensation for the purged leftists.

Sun Chuanfang put up a stronger resistance, but popular support for the KMT and opposition to the warlords helped the National Revolutionary Army (NRA) make inroads into Jiangxi, Fujian, and Zhejiang.

[106] At the same time as workers organized in the cities, peasants rose up across the countryside of Hunan and Hubei provinces, appropriating the land of the wealthy landowners, who were in many cases killed.

[126][129] Although it was a mix of both Nationalists and Communist soldiers within the army who had participated in the riots, Chiang Kai-shek's faction accused Lin Boqu of planning the unrest in order to turn international opinion against the KMT.

[134] Only in Wuhan, where leftist sympathizer Wang Jingwei split from Chiang and proclaimed a rival nationalist government, were the Communists safe to hold their Fifth National Congress.

[136][137][138] In 1927, immediately after the collapse of Wang Jingwei's leftist Kuomintang government in Wuhan and Chiang Kai-shek's suppression of communists, the CCP attempted a series of uprisings and military mutinies in Guangzhou, Nanchang and Hunan.

The immediate effect was to make it clear to CCP leaders that a formal military apparatus was needed, and during the flight from Nanchang they founded the Chinese Red Army.

[143] With the help of the 28 Bolsheviks, Chinese students studying Marxism at the Moscow Sun Yat-sen University, Xiang replaced Chen Duxiu as general secretary to the dismay of CCP leaders back in China.

Under the influence of Moscow, the strategy of direct confrontation with the KMT by organizing urban uprisings continued until 1933, when party leadership was finally forced to evacuate to the countryside.

[152] This triggered debates inside China on whether the Nationalist Government of Chiang Kai-shek, the administration with the strongest claim to national leadership at the time, should declare war on Japan.

[164] Using their experience in rural guerilla warfare, the Communists were able to operate behind the front lines and gain influence among the numerous peasant resistance groups set-up to fight the Japanese.

[179][180][181] When the Japanese surrendered, the Communists' "Liberated Zone" grew to contain 19 base areas (mostly in north China), making up one-quarter of the country's territory and one-third of its population.

Although Chiang Kai-shek was confident that he was in a strong position to win a civil war against the CCP, he also knew that if the Communists gained control of Japanese materiel, the balance of power would change.

The goal of the Marshall Mission was to bring both parties into a coalition government, with the hope that a strong, non-Communist China would act as a bulwark against the encroachment of the Soviet Union.

Mao quickly seized the opportunity, ordering Lin Biao and Zhu De to begin taking key cities, including Siping and Harbin.

[216][217] These favourable conditions also facilitated many changes inside the Communist leadership: the more radical faction who wanted a complete military take-over of China finally gained the upper hand and defeated the careful opportunists.

[216] The conflict would escalate to the scale of a nation-wide civil war over the summer, as Chiang Kai-shek launched a large-scale assault on Communist territory in north China with 113 brigades (a total of 1.6 million troops).

[196] Stalin initially favored a coalition government in postwar China, and tried to persuade Mao to stop the CCP from crossing the Yangtze and attacking the KMT positions south of the river.

[230][231] The founding of the Central People's Government of China was formally proclaimed by Chairman Mao Zedong on October 1, 1949, at 3:00 pm in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, the new capital.