It is amazing that so little has been said in the imperialist media about the 60th anniversary of the Chinese Revolution, especially considering that one-fifth of the world's people live in China and that it has become the manufacturing hub for much of the globe.
If you added up all the people of North, Central and South America, plus the Caribbean—in other words, all the 38 countries of the Western Hemisphere--you would still need to add 400 million more people to reach the size of China. And the many different peoples in China all live under one central government and are affected by its plans for development.

1. How did it begin?
It was an earth-shaking event when, on October 1, 1949, after the defeat of the U.S.-supported Kuomintang army, Mao Zedong addressed a huge crowd in Tienanmen Square and said, "The Chinese people have stood up." The revolutionary war, which had gone on for decades, not only liberated the peasants from the tyranny of the landlords and the workers from capitalist exploitation but it had an enormous impact on world events – and on Workers World Party.
At that time, the Soviet Union was considered the leader of the international communist movement. Both the USSR and People's China were helping defend the Democratic People's Republic of Korea against a massive invasion and war by U.S. imperialism, which was aimed at crushing the spread of revolution in Asia.
The Chinese Revolution was not just an agrarian reform or a national liberation struggle—although it incorporated both these vital features. He argued that it represented a fundamental change in class forces and that the new state rested on the working class and was oriented toward the building of socialism.
But the revolution was not "chemically pure." What did that mean?
The working class of China was then very small. In the course of the revolutionary war, the Communist Party had built what it called a "bloc of four classes" that included not only the workers, peasants, and