The Historical Tasks of Modern China and the Revolutionary Struggle of the Chinese People

Before the Opium War of 1840, China was a feudal society. The development of commodity economy within Chinese feudal society had nurtured the germ of capitalism, and without the influence of foreign capitalism, China would have gradually developed into a capitalist society. But the Opium War of British Aggression against China in 1840 began to interrupt the original course of Chinese history and change the direction of Chinese historical development. With the invasion of foreign capitalist-imperialist forces, the Chinese society was faced with two fundamental changes: firstly, independent China had gradually become a semi-colonial China; secondly, feudal China had gradually become a semi-feudal China.

As Mao Zedong pointed out: “The contradiction between imperialism and the Chinese nation and the contradiction between feudalism and the great masses of the people are the basic contradictions in modern Chinese society.” “But the contradiction between imperialism and the Chinese nation is the principal contradiction among all kinds of contradictions.” “These contradictions and their intensification must inevitably result in the incessant growth of revolutionary movements. The great revolutions in modern and contemporary China have emerged and grown on the basis of these two basic contradictions.”

For quite a long time, the imperialist powers—big and small ones—all had bullied China; and all the wars against aggression in the modern period of China had ended with failure and China was forced to sign numerous humiliating unequal treaties and lost its power. What was the reason for this? Mao Zedong pointed out: “Reasons are: first, corruption of social system and second, backwardness of economy and technology.” In order to make China firmly stand up in the world arena, and get rid of poverty and backwardness and to enable the Chinese people to live a free, happy and prosperous life, it was necessary to change the semi-colonial and semi-feudal social system under the joint yoke of imperialism and feudalism and to strive for national independence and the liberation of the people; China had to transform its backward economy and technology (that is, the realization of China’s modernization) and realize the prosperity and the well-being of the people. Since the modern times, this was how the two fundamental historical tasks of striving for national independence and the liberation of the people; realizing strong and prosperous country and the well-being of the people put forward. Since the modern times, countless people with lofty ideals, generation after generation of Chinese people, have devoted arduous, indomitable, and heroic struggles in order to accomplish these above two historical tasks and to achieve the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. They have made an arduous, indomitable, heroic struggles.

As Liu Shaoqi pointed out at the Seventh National Congress of the CPC: “Over the past hundred years, the Chinese nation and the Chinese people, who have suffered great disasters, have accumulated innumerable rich experience in bloody struggles for their own liberation, and these practical struggles and their experiences will inevitably form their own great theories so that China, as a nation, should not only fight, but also have modern scientific revolutionary theory.” “This theory can only be created by the representatives of the Chinese proletariat, of which Comrade Mao Zedong is the most outstanding and prominent representative.”