Book Review

Asia

From a historical perspective, Shanghai certainly occupies a special position in the development of the Chinese Communist movement. It was here that the First Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was held in July 1921, and, in the following years, it was from this city that a handful of Chinese Communists secretly operated their Central Executive Committee. In May 1925, Shanghai workers went on strike, which soon induced the outbreak of a sixteen-month-long general strike and boycott in Guangzhou and Hong Kong. In late 1926 and early 1927, Shanghai labor radicalism reached its climax when three abortive armed uprisings were staged under the Communist leadership. Although the Chinese Communists had to retreat to the countryside after these uprisings, they continued to promote underground activities, trying to recapture their influence among the workers, students, and intellectuals of Shanghai until they gained power in 1949. In retrospect, then, it was in Shanghai that the Chinese Communists took their first tentative steps along the long and winding road to power.	1
S. A. Smith's book is a welcome addition to the current Western historiography of local urban case studies of the Chinese Communist revolution. As with Patricia Stranahan's Underground: The Shanghai Communist Party and the Politics of Survival, 1927–1937 (1998), and Chan Lau Kit-ching's From Nothing to Nothing: The Chinese Communist Movement and Hong Kong, 1921–1936 (1999), Smith's research relies to a great extent on recently released Chinese Communist documents. Both Smith and Stranahan made extensive use of the Shanghai Municipal Police Archive, but, in addition, Smith has also used the newly published materials from the Comintern archives of the former Soviet Union. Access to these documents means that Smith has been able to reassess the role of the Comintern in the Chinese Communist revolution as well as presenting us with a highly detailed local study.	2
But Smith's work is more than a local study. He adopts a narrative approach to interpret the events in Shanghai and articulates its experience in the context of the Chinese nationalist movement. The book begins with a detailed discussion on the early development of Communist influence in Shanghai among the urban populace, noticeably the workers, merchants, youths, women, and members of secret societies. In discussing the political aspect of the Shanghai Communist movement, Smith skillfully interprets the political mechanism within the First United Front (1924–1927), highlighting not only the conflict between the CCP and the Nationalist Party but also the differences among the Chinese Communists. Smith concludes his study with a detailed discussion of the problems faced by the Shanghai Communists in mobilizing the radical workers during the three abortive armed uprisings in 1927, which were followed by the Nationalist Party's military suppression.	3
In addition to positioning Shanghai in China's national political arena, Smith also gives considerable attention to relations between the Chinese Communists and the Comintern agents. He challenges those historians who have recently downplayed Moscow's influence in the Chinese Communist movement during the mid-1920s. Using newly released materials, Smith provides many new details regarding the Comintern's dominant position among the Shanghai Communists. But, as many other studies have shown, the policies favored by Moscow and the Comintern agents were not in harmony with those of the Chinese Communists. Furthermore, the level of political division within the Comintern, according to Smith, was higher than is conventionally suggested.	. . .