Historical Characteristics of the Chinese Revolution

In January 1940, Mao Zedong wrote in his “On New Democracy”: “In the course of its history the Chinese revolution must go through two stages: firstly, the democratic revolution, and secondly, the socialist revolution, and by their very nature they are two different revolutionary processes. Here democracy does not belong to the old category, it is not the old democracy, but belongs to the new category, it is New Democracy.”

Mao stressed: “Such are the historical characteristics of the Chinese revolution at the present time.”

He also pointed out that it followed from the colonial, semi-colonial and semi-feudal character of that-day Chinese society that the Chinese revolution must have been divided into two stages: the first step was to change the colonial, semi-colonial and semi-feudal form of society into an independent, democratic society. The second step was to carry the revolution forward and build a socialist society.

This first stage of the Chinese revolution (which was divided into many smaller stages), whose social nature was a new type of bourgeois-democratic revolution, was not yet a proletarian socialist revolution, but had already become part of the world revolution of proletarian socialism and was then even more a great part of this world revolution, a great ally of this world revolution.

The first step or stage in the revolution was definitely not, and could not be, the establishment of a capitalist society under the dictatorship of the Chinese bourgeoisie, but it would result in the establishment of a new-democratic society under the joint dictatorship of all the revolutionary classes of China led by the Chinese proletariat. The revolution would then be carried forward to the second stage, in which a socialist society would be established in China. Regarding these, Mao Zedong emphasized: “This is the fundamental characteristic of the Chinese revolution of today.”