Page "Mao Zedong" Paragraph 23

The Communist Party of China was founded by Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao in the French concession of Shanghai in 1921 as a study society and an informal network.

Mao soon set up his own branch in Changsha, also establishing a branch of the Socialist Youth Corps.

He also opened a bookstore under the control of his new Cultural Book Society, whose purpose was to propagate revolutionary literature throughout Hunan.

He also became a labour organiser, helping to set up workers ' strikes in the winter of 1920 – 1921.

Mao was also involved in the movement advocating autonomy for the province, a viewpoint shared by figures from a variety of different political persuasions.

Mao's hope was that the creation of a Hunanese constitution would increase civil liberties in the province and thereby make his revolutionary activity easier ; although it proved successful, in later life, he would subsequently deny any involvement in the movement.

By 1921, small groups of Marxists existed in six Chinese cities: Shanghai, Peking, Changsha, Wuhan, Canton and Tsinan, with a further group having been founded by Chinese students in Paris.

It was decided that they should send delegates for a central meeting, which began in Shanghai on July 23, 1921.

The first session of the National Congress of the Communist Party of China was attended by 13 delegates, Mao included, and initially met in a girls ' school that had been closed for the summer.

After the authorities learned of this meeting and sent a police spy to report on their subversive activities, the delegates instead moved their activities to a boat on South Lake near to Chiahsing, where they escaped detection by claiming to be on a holiday excursion.

Although delegates from the Soviet Union and Comintern had attended, the first congress ignored Lenin's advice by refusing to accept a temporary alliance between the communists and the " bourgeois democrats " who also advocated national revolution ; instead they stuck to the orthodox Marxist belief that only the urban proletariat could lead a socialist revolution.