Who was the leader of the Communist Movement in China?
The founders of the Chinese Communist Party were a prominent leader in the New Culture Movement, Li Ta-cha’o and Ch’en Tu-hsiu. Iconoclastic and brilliant, he fundamentally disagreed with the ideas of the other major leader of the New Culture Movement, Hu Shih, who believed that Chinese society should be changed gradually, “drop by drop.” Ch’en, however, believed that Chinese society should be changed all at once in a revolution modelled after the Bolshevik Revolution. In 1921, he formed the Chinese Communist Party, which came under the supervision of Gregory Voitinsky, a Soviet representative of the Comintern (Communist International). On July 20, 1921, the CCP held its first congress with twelve Chinese and two Russians present. Li Ta-ch’ao could not make it, but those in attendance including the later leader of the Communist revolution and Communist China, Mao Tse-tung.
