The Chinese revolution did not result from an abrupt and untimely uprising of the masses - it was actually a Civil War between Nationalists and Communists.
The conflict started in some cities in southern China in 1927 and culminated in a general war in which millions of men participated.
The war lasted for a total of twenty-two years.
The civil war can be classified into three major periods: first one goes from 1927 to 1930, when the Chinese Communist Party went on to occupy large cities such as Shanghai, Guangzhou (Gengzhou) and Changsha and defeated and expelled the nationalist army.
The second civil war period was between the years 1930 and 1937, when the Chinese Communist Party was led by Mao Tse-tung and they tried to create "rural soviets" with support from the peasants living in rural areas.
Mao Tse-tung changed the party strategy from "patience and cooperation" to "sheer force" and focused on improvement of guerrilla warfare which was its main instrument of struggle.
After being forced to abandon his first "soviet" in the mountains of Ching-Kangshan, from where the Communists withdrew under pressure, the so-called "5th extermination campaign" ordered by General Chiang Kai-shek started and led to the Long March (1934/35).
Walking along a path over almost 10,000 km through inland China, between 1934 and 1935, the Communists were able to shelter survivors in Yenan soviet in the province of Shensi.
The third period of Chinese revolution started after the end of World War II, when the Maoist guerrillas, after a short civil war, finally broke up the divisions of General Chiang Kai-shek and established the People's Republic of China on 1 October 1949.
The Chinese communists or Maoists adopted the ideologies of Marxism and adapted to the circumstances of a peasant nation long humiliated by the colonial powers.
They focused on developing national infrastructure that could help peasants, rather than developing cities furnished with modern amenities.
Quantitatively this was the greatest social revolution of all time, but qualitatively its scope was much narrower than the two others mentioned because it was confined only to the borders of China.
If the Jacobins and Bolsheviks claimed to have discovered the algebra of revolution valid for its time, Maoism was more modest and was a revolutionary solution to be followed by preferentially colonized countries of the Third World.
The social base of the Maoists was much broader than that of the Bolsheviks.
Behind the National Liberation Army led by Mao Tse-tung were millions of peasants, workers, students and intellectuals who saw Maoism as an integrator of China which was crumbling internally and was constantly plundered by foreign powers.
The Bolsheviks, as is known, relied on scarce urban Russian working class that does not make up more than 3% of the population of the country and practically had no significant connection with poor peasants.
After establishing the People's Republic of China, the greatest challenge that was faced by the Maoists was to develop economy, technology, science and education that were virtually non-existent at that time.
However, with support from the peasants and the working class, the country finally could stand back on its feet.