What role did the Chinese peasantry play in creating the prolonged revolutionary crisis following the 1911 political revolution that culminated in the success of the Chinese Communist Party in building a strong popular basis for its revolutionary movement in the rural base areas from the late 1920s through World War II in 1945?
1. What was the “sinification of Marxism”?
2. What role did the party’s interaction with the peasantry play in the “sinification” of Marxism — the adaptation of Marxism and Leninism to China — made by Mao Zedong and Liu Shaoqi?
3. Conversely, what was the significance of the party’s sinification of Marxism — = including its appeal to Chinese nationalism — for the role the peasantry itself played in transforming what began as a “political revolution” and prolonged political crisis (under warlordism and during the Northern Expedition) into a “revolutionary crisis” that was socio-economic in nature? (In other words, what was the relationship between the newly adapted theory of the Chinese revolution and the practical implementation of it in the CCP base areas?)
Your answer must make a single sustained, coherent argument regarding the sinification of Marxism supported by copious quotations and/or citations from the primary and secondary sources assigned. Be sure to define “revolutionary crisis” (referring to the Skocpol readings) as well as the “peasantry” as a socio- economic class and cite specific events (which may include events prior to the 1911 revolution when you discuss Chinese “nationalism”).