Making Revolution: The Communist Movement in Eastern and Central China, 1937-1945 (Volume 26)

Center for Chinese Studies, UC Berkeley

by Yung-fa Chen

Making Revolution is a book of signal importance: it is the first detailed empirical study of the most crucial period in the rise to power of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the 1930s and 1940s, when the Party organized the peasantry into armed forces and guerrillas. The author's exhaustive primary sources in Chinese and Japanese and, in particular, his generous inclusion of direct quotations are great strengths of this book, which is far and away the best researched and most complete treatment of a key question in modern history. His monumental work is certain to change our understanding of the relationship of the CCP to rural society during wartime.

Dr. Chen's research is unrivaled in the quality and quantity of internal CCP documents it employs, and a fuller and far more complex and convincing description of CCP successes in wartime rural China emerges from this volume than from those we have had up to now.

The book focuses on the military struggle, peasant mobilization, and the united fronts. In each of these areas Dr. Chen offers readers a tangible grasp of an exemplary peasant revolution that until now has remained an elusive abstraction because of a lack of detailed information. To readers interested in wartime China, he offers the insights of cadres into rural society--insights that were proven to be correct in practice. And to readers interested in China today, Dr. Chen offers clues to the dilemma faced by the Party in its attempt to modernize the nation.

Genres: History, China

700 pages, Hardcover

First published April 17, 1986

Reviews

[AskHistorians]

a history of the Communist Party in China from their guerrilla tactics against the Japanese to the Cultural Revolution.

[汪先生 · Rating 4 out of 5]

2020-02-18 17:12:09
读了三年才读完，总是拿起又放下，最近在家才慢慢啃完剩下一部分。讲的还是农民动员，与我起初料想的不太一样。另外再谈一下陈院士同样是千页巨著却没有条目的“七十年”，可称现存最好的中共党史大学教科书，详略得当，观点深刻，一些小错误，高、杨都说的很清楚了。

[Eudokia Larasati · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not as glamorous as accounts of combat, however the methodical work of peasant mobilization by the CPC is rather important to understand their ultimate victory in the Chinese Civil War. Might become a morass of data and anecdotes for non-professional readers (like me), though. Still an important and rather overlooked body of work.