Editing Communist Party of China (section)

==History==
The CPC has its origins in the 1919 May Fourth Movement, during which radical Western ideologies like Marxism and anarchism gained traction among Chinese intellectuals. Other influences stemming from the Bolshevik revolution and Marxist theory inspired the Communist Party of China.

The communists dominated the left-wing of the KMT, a party organized on Leninist lines, struggling for power with the party's right-wing. When KMT leader Sun Yat-sen died in March 1925, he was succeeded by a rightist, Chiang Kai-shek, who initiated moves to marginalize the position of the communists. Fresh from the success of the Northern Expedition to overthrow the warlords, Chiang Kai-shek turned on the communists, who by now numbered in the tens of thousands across China.

On 1 October 1949, Chairman Mao Zedong announced the 21 September 1949 establishment of the PRC before a massive crowd at Beijing Square. By the end of the year, the CPC became the major ruling party in China. From this time through the 1980s, top leaders of the CPC (like [[Mao Zedong]], Lin Biao, [[Zhou Enlai]], and [[Deng Xiaoping]]) were largely the same military leaders prior to the PRC's founding. As a result, informal personal ties between political and military leaders dominated civil-military relations.

During the 1960s and 1970s, the CPC experienced a significant ideological separation from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. By that time, Mao had begun saying that the "continued revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat" stipulated that class enemies continued to exist even though the socialist revolution seemed to be complete, leading to the Cultural Revolution in which millions were persecuted and killed.

During the [[Cold War]], the CPC provided financial and military support to [[Pol Pot]] and the [[Khmer Rouge]] in Cambodia, and also supported the [[Communist Party of Vietnam]] (first lead by [[Hồ Chí Minh]], and later [[Lê Duẩn]]) and the [[Việt Cộng]] during the [[Vietnam War]]. However, relations between China and Vietnam would sour in 1979 due to a series of border disputes. They wouldn't normalize until 1991.

Following Mao's death in 1976, a power struggle between CPC Chairman [[Hua Guofeng]] and Vice-chairman Deng Xiaoping erupted. Deng won the struggle and became the "paramount leader" in 1978. Deng, alongside [[Hu Yaobang]] and [[Zhao Ziyang]], spearheaded the Reform and opening policy, and introduced the ideological concept of socialism with Chinese characteristics, opening China to the world's markets. In reversing some of Mao's "leftist" policies, Deng argued that a socialist state could use the market economy without itself being a capitalist.

While asserting the political power of the Party, the change in policy generated significant economic growth. The new ideology, however, was contested on both sides of the spectrum, by Maoists as well as by those supporting political liberalization. With other social factors, the conflicts culminated in the [[Tiananmen Square Massacre|1989 Tiananmen Square protests]]. The protests had been crushed, Deng's vision on economics prevailed, and by the early 1990s, the concept of a socialist market economy had been introduced. In 1997, Deng's beliefs (Deng Xiaoping Theory), were embedded in the CPC constitution.