In 1924, urged by the Comintern, the Guomindang (GMD) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) reached an agreement on their cooperation, which is known as “The First United Front". In the same year, the GMD held the first National People's Congress in Guangzhou, in which the party adapted the policies of "alliance with the Soviets; admission of the Communists", and "supporting the peasants and workers". Since then, the peasants became a major concern of the mobilization policy of the GMD. Although the GMD was the leader of the peasant movement, very few of their members, who were brought up in the city, were willing to engage in the movement by going to the rural areas. Therefore, the task of organizing and mobilizing the peasants was left to the CCP. This thesis attempts to examine how t...[ Read more ]

In 1924, urged by the Comintern, the Guomindang (GMD) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) reached an agreement on their cooperation, which is known as “The First United Front". In the same year, the GMD held the first National People's Congress in Guangzhou, in which the party adapted the policies of "alliance with the Soviets; admission of the Communists", and "supporting the peasants and workers". Since then, the peasants became a major concern of the mobilization policy of the GMD. Although the GMD was the leader of the peasant movement, very few of their members, who were brought up in the city, were willing to engage in the movement by going to the rural areas. Therefore, the task of organizing and mobilizing the peasants was left to the CCP. This thesis attempts to examine how the CCP mobilized the peasants in rural Nanhai under such circumstances.

The present study takes rural Nanhai, one of the major counties in the Pearl River Delta, as the geographical focus of this research. Nanhai was one of the regions where peasant movement had once flourished. Besides, it was here that the first Peasant Self-defense Corp was established. Thus, Nanhai was equally important as Hailufeng, where the first Soviet regime in China was founded. Before 1924, there was no groundwork for any peasant movement in Nanhai. Nanhai was under the rule of the GMD led by Dr. Sun Yat-sen. Nanhai, therefore, provides an ideal setting for understanding how the peasant movement developed under the First United Front.

Based on archival materials such as WuBu Dang and HanKou Dang, as well as conteurporay newspapers and magazines, this study examines the spontaneity of the peasants, explores the CCP’s methods of mobilizing the peasants during 1924-1927, the responses from the peasants to mobilization and the difficulties the CCP encountered and how it tried to resolve them. In the process of analysis, both “political-elite approach” and “ecological approach” are adopted in order to providing a somewhat different prespective on the subject matter.