People's History of Ideas Podcast · Matthew Rothwell

The Chinese Communist Party Interventions in the 1929 Sino-Soviet War

·23 min·1 clip

The Manchurian committee’s 1929 plan starts with workers, then cities, railways, and labor unions.

1. People's History of Ideas Podcast episode 129 focuses on Chinese Communist Party interventions in the 1929 Sino-Soviet War. 2. The host frames the discussion around the CCP, the Kuomintang, Shanghai propaganda, and Manchurian organizing because those groups and places shaped the episode's argument. 3. The episode asks what the CCP tried to do politically while the Soviet Union fought the Kuomintang over the Chinese Eastern Railway. 4. The host reviews the war timeline: Kuomintang raids in May and July 1929, then Soviet operations in August, October, and November. 5. He places the war between earlier coverage of the Red Army in Jiangxi and Fujian and the later discussion of the Gutean Resolution. 6. In Shanghai, the CCP held a pro-Soviet rally on July 14, 1929 and launched posters, graffiti, and flyers. 7. The slogans called for alliance with “the world’s proletariat and Soviet Russia” and for restoring friendship between China and Soviet Russia. 8. The leaflets condemned “imperialist aggression” against Soviet Russia and linked the war to anti-Guomindang agitation. 9. A cartoon at Shanghai’s Springwell Temple showed Chinese soldiers led by a Guomindang officer who was being ridden by a Japanese woman. 10. The host argues that the CCP portrayed the Guomindang as serving foreign imperialist interests while presenting the Soviet Union as the ally of Chinese workers and peasants. 11. He notes that diplomats and newspapers in Britain, Japan, the United States, and China often viewed the Soviet side more favorably than the Guomindang side. 12. The New York Times editorialized on December 8, 1929, and Miles Lampson later praised Soviet “restraint” and “extraordinary skill.” 13. In Manchuria, the CCP faced heavy repression, arrested cadres, and a disrupted labor movement at the start of 1929. 14. The host uses Fushun, near Shenyang in Liaoning, as an example of Japanese-built heavy industry with steel mills, cement factories, and machine plants. 15. Yang Jingyu and other activists recruited advanced workers and built a basic union structure before Japanese and Chinese police coordinated a roundup of 35 communist and sympathetic workers. 16. In June 1929, Liu Shaoqi was sent to lead the Manchurian committee with six veteran cadres, including Ting Chunyang and Meng Yongqian. 17. The host reads the committee’s “Outline of Operational Plan of the Manchurian Committee, 1929,” which lists workers, peasants, soldiers, students, publications, women, and anti-imperialist work. 18. He emphasizes that the plan shows a movement just getting started, with few mass organizations and an efficient repressive apparatus ready to respond. 19. Listeners interested in CCP strategy, Manchuria, and 1929 revolution history will get the most from this episode. 20. Listeners wanting a short war recap without party-organizing detail may want to skip it.

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