Page "Mao Zedong" Paragraph 25

At the Third Congress of the Communist Party, held in Shanghai in June 1923, the delegates reaffirmed their commitment to working with the Kuomintang, accepting that they should become the driving force leading the labour movement in China.

A staunch supporter of this position, at the Congress Mao was elected to the Communist Party Committee, taking up residence in Shanghai.

He became involved with the Kuomintang, attending their First Congress, held in Canton in January and February 1924.

His enthusiastic support for the nationalist party earned him the suspicion of some of the communists ; he was even elected an alternate member of the Kuomintang Central Executive Committee, and in February 1924 put forward four resolutions that argued that power in the party was too centralized among a few cadres in Canton, and that power should instead he decentralized to urban and rural bureaus.

Biographer Stuart Schram would later comment that during the period between 1925 and 1927, Mao was closer to the Kuomintang than he was to the Communist Party, something he attributed to Mao's belief that the good of China was more important than the cause of socialism.