The setting up and adaptation of “democratic centralism” in the Chinese workers’ and peasants’ Red Army: the Jiangxi Fourth Red Army led by Mao Zedong

ABSTRACT Democratic centralism was a way of organizing political parties that was introduced by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from Soviet Russia in the twentieth century. Its introduction and adaptation underwent a convoluted process, in which the early years of the Agrarian Revolutionary War (1927–1937) served as a pivot. This happened because the Jiangxi Fourth Red Army (Jiangxi hongsijun), the CCP’s most important main force at that time, experienced a complex transformation in its leadership body and this sparked intense controversies within the Party. The present article reconstructs the process in which the Fourth Red Army gradually established and recognized the Front Committee (Qiandi weiyuanhui) appointed by the Central Committee of the CCP to hold centralized leadership over the army and its regional party organization in the revolutionary base areas. The article probes the different forms and operational characteristics of democratic centralism in the CCP’s army and local Party organizations. It presents the intricate relationships between the main Red Army and the local Party organizations at all levels. During the Yan’an period, the CCP more fully absorbed the Fourth Red Army’s historical experiences, and therefore facilitated the maturation of the practice of democratic centralism within the Party.