The transition from urban to rural in the Chinese revolution

The Chinese revolution's rural presence developed gradually over a period of years, not suddenly in desperation in 1927. Its extension from city to countryside evolved through a multi-stage process that was predominantly elite-initiated and elite-centred. This process owed as much to the structural and cultural features of the new educational system and the dynamics of elite local politics as to any new ideological or organizational innovations made by Mao or the Party. The initial development of embryonic base areas in many places after 1927 likewise stemmed not from conscious application of a specifically "Maoist" type of strategy, but from the military and political exigencies that were common to local revolutionary movements that had little or no initial contact with Mao or his thinking. Conceptions about how to compete for local power and about the functions and purposes of localized "bases" drew heavily on existing repertoires of behaviour. This facilitated the sprouting of numerous small and disconnected nodes of revolutionary power, but it also encouraged the development of parochially independent behaviour by local cadres that eventually came into conflict with efforts to centralize and integrate the separate small bases into a much broader and more uniform movement.