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2 - Making Revolution in Twentieth-Century China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2012

By
Joseph W. Esherick
Edited by
Timothy Cheek
Timothy Cheek
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia, Vancouver
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Summary

With our several thousand years of accumulated ailments, where everything is contrary to the needs of the times, if we wish to change what is unsuitable and achieve what is suitable, we must overturn things from the foundations, clean things out thoroughly. Alas! Alas! This is the task of Revolution [English in original] (what the Japanese call kakumei [Chinese: geming] …). It is the one and only way to save China today.

Liang Qichao, “Explaining ‘ge,’” 1903

Why are Chinese like a sheet of loose sand? What makes them like a sheet of loose sand? It is because there is too much individual freedom. Because Chinese have too much freedom, therefore China needs a revolution.… Because we are like a sheet of loose sand, foreign imperialism has invaded, we have been oppressed by the commercial warfare of the great powers, and we have been unable to resist. If we are to resist foreign oppression in the future, we must overcome individual freedom and join together as a firm unit, just as one adds water and cement to loose gravel to produce something as solid as a rock.

Sun Yat-sen, “Three Principles of the People,” 1924

Revolution is not a dinner party, or literary composition, or painting, or embroidery. It cannot be done so delicately, so gentlemanly, and so “gently, kindly, politely, plainly, and modestly.” Revolution is an insurrection, the violent action of one class overthrowing the power of another.

Mao Zedong, “Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan,” 1927
Type
Chapter
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A Critical Introduction to Mao , pp. 31 - 60
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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