This chapter follows the activities of the Paul and Gertrud Ruegg Defense Committee in Shanghai, which was led by Soong Ching-ling and Agnes Smedley. The two women recruited the young American Harold Isaacs, fresh out of Columbia University, to establish a Comintern-funded newspaper (the China Forum) to publish partisan articles designed to embarrass the Guomindang government. Meanwhile, Willi Münzenberg sent the young Swiss lawyer Jean Vincent to Shanghai to be his eyes and ears during Rudnik and Moiseenko’s upcoming trial – all at the expense of the Comintern. While Rudnik and Moiseenko were awaiting their trial, the Japanese bombardment of Shanghai in early 1932 threw the Guomindang into chaos, and resulted in bringing Chiang Kai-shek – who was desperate to see them punished – back into power.

This chapter allows readers to see why the Comintern set up the Far Eastern Bureau in Shanghai, how it was operated, who composed its staff, and what its objectives were. It pays particular attention to the role of Rudnik, who at this point was in Shanghai without Moiseenko and was responsible for nearly all of the FEB’s logistical needs. It also discusses the finances of the FEB, as well as its mandate for aiding communist revolutions in Malaya, the Philippines, Indochina, Korea, and Japan.

This chapter follows the activities of the FEB after 1930, when Moiseenko arrived in Shanghai with her son. It chronicles the many conflicts between FEB staff and the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and then shows how the FEB steadily gained influence over the CCP by recalling its leader to Moscow and by rigging elections to the Politburo. During this time, the Comintern’s commitment to Zhou Enlai as a Politburo member remained strong, and FEB members seem to have persuaded him not to resign when his protégé Gu Shunzhang turned traitor in April 1931. The far-reaching goals of the Comintern in China, via the FEB, help to explain why the Comintern was so anxious to ensure Rudnik and Moiseenko did not reveal their secrets to the Guomindang.

In 1937, Japanese aggression once more influenced Rudnik and Moiseenko’s story, because the Japanese attack on Nanjing in August led the Guomindang to release all political prisoners in accordance with the Soviet-brokered Second United Front with the CCP. Rudnik and Moiseenko tried to get back to the Soviet Union, but were delayed for nearly two years. They finally made it back to Moscow in 1939, just after the worst of Stalin’s Great Terror was ending. Even after they were home, they still had to wait until 1944 to finally be reunited with their son.

This chapter follows the fate of Rudnik and Moiseenko, as well as the fate of the FEB, after the couple’s conviction in 1932. For the prisoners, the next few years were extremely difficult. They had little hope of being released, they both experienced serious illness, and their young son nearly died of typhoid fever at his foster home. Meanwhile the Comintern tried to rebuild the FEB, but was hampered at every step by surveillance and repression at the hands of the Guomindang. In Germany, Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 led Willi Münzenberg to go underground, which made communication between the prisoners and Moscow extremely difficult. And to top it off, the foster family caring for Rudnik and Moiseenko’s son became staunch Nazi supporters. In 1936, much to the sorrow of Moiseenko, their son was sent to an orphanage in the Soviet Union.

This chapter begins with a concise overview of China’s economic modernization since the 1980s, highlighting its domestic and international ramifications. It introduces the theoretical framework of political guardianship psychology, emphasizing the importance of studying political psychology within the context of China’s political evolution. This framework offers a valuable lens for understanding public trust in government, attitudes toward democracy, and perceptions of China’s rise in relation to foreign nations. In addition, the chapter elaborates on the book’s central themes and outlines the datasets employed to address the theoretical questions explored throughout the work.

The past few decades have witnessed a significant religious revival in China, coinciding with a sharp increase in economic inequality. This chapter investigates the impact of religion on the Chinese public’s perceptions of income disparity and political trust. The findings reveal a notable difference in the perceived fairness of personal income distribution between religious and nonreligious individuals. Religious beliefs are positively correlated with a heightened sense of fairness regarding both personal and national income distribution. These perceptions of fairness, in turn, contribute to fostering people’s trust in political institutions and government officials. However, religious beliefs mitigate the positive effect of perceived fairness in income distribution on institutional trust. Consequently, when income distribution is perceived as unfair, institutional trust declines more sharply among religious believers compared to their nonreligious counterparts.

Democracy is a contested concept; utilizing four rounds of national survey data, this chapter elucidates the characteristics of the Chinese public’s perception of democracy and its longitudinal changes over the past few decades. The findings indicate a growing percentage of individuals who understand democracy in procedural terms. This popular perception of democracy holds significance, as those who adopt a substantive view tend to perceive democracy as less compatible with China and to overestimate the democratic nature of the current regime, compared to those who approach democracy procedurally.

China’s engagement with the global arena and its economic modernization are anticipated to foster democratization and alignment with the liberal international order. However, despite several decades of economic development, the authoritarian system remains resilient, and China’s foreign policy has become increasingly assertive. This chapter aims to unveil the micro-foundations underlying the unexpected trajectory of China’s rise by examining the public’s nationalist and international orientations. The findings indicate that international orientations exert a limited influence on popular attitudes toward domestic politics and foreign relations, whereas nationalist orientations significantly bolster public support for the authoritarian regime and China’s assertive foreign policy. Additionally, intergenerational variations in public opinion are evident, with the Xi generation displaying a distinct pattern of political values compared to preceding generations.

Citizens in authoritarian regimes comprehend the concept of democracy through a lens shaped by state manipulation and individual agency. This chapter investigates Chinese citizens’ perceptions of three principles of governance – government (1) of the people, (2) by the people, and (3) for the people – without explicitly invoking the term “democracy.” Notably, the principle of government by the people is the most favored among the Chinese people. Those who frame their understanding of democracy through the lens of government of the people express dissatisfaction with the current state of democracy and are critical of authoritarian politics. Conversely, public interpretations of democracy based on government for the people exhibit an anti-democratic orientation and align more closely with support for authoritarian rule.

Chapter 11 focuses on the creation, expansion, and operating mechanism of the communist totalitarian regimes in China. Its coverage starts from the first of these regimes, the Chinese Soviet Republic, founded in 1931, up to the founding of the nationwide regime, the People’s Republic of China, and the establishment of a full-fledged classical totalitarian system. The key communist totalitarian strategies were state mobilization and domination, including land reform and the suppression of those deemed to be counterrevolutionaries. The chapter explores the regime’s progression from decentralized to centralized totalitarianism, detailing how power became more concentrated over time. The final section explores the “Sovietization” of the state, describing the construction of a classical totalitarian system, following the Soviet model, which was characterized by strict centralized control and ideological uniformity. This transformation laid the groundwork for the pervasive and enduring nature of the Chinese communist state.

Chapter 10 investigates the establishment and growth of China’s Bolshevik Party, the core element in the communist totalitarian revolution and regime, that was orchestrated by the Comintern. The chapter commences with an examination of the inception and operational dynamics of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as a Comintern offshoot. It also addresses the reorganization of the Kuomintang (KMT) and the formation of the CCP-KMT alliance as key strategies implemented by the Comintern to bolster the fledgling CCP.

The narrative underscores the essential role the Chinese secret societies played in the development of the CCP’s organizational and military forces, following the directives of the Comintern and their implementation in practice. Additionally, the chapter examines the introduction of totalitarian rules within the CCP and its military branches, which fostered a reign of terror and enabled the rise of a totalitarian leader. It traces the initial establishment of a totalitarian institutional structure within the CCP and assesses the Comintern’s decisive role in fortifying the CCP’s ultimate leadership, suggesting its profound and lasting impacts on the Chinese political landscape.

This chapter explores Angang and Northeast China during the economic reforms following Mao’s death in 1976. As the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) developmental strategy shifted its focus to export-oriented light industry, regions with a greater presence of heavy industry such as Northeast China fared worse than light industry regions such as East China. Despite a series of state-owned enterprise (SOE) reforms including privatization, the PRC further integrated larger SOEs such as Angang into the party-state bureaucracy. The final echo of the Maoist era emerged in the form of SOE workers protesting for job security and social welfare benefits by appropriating the socialist discourse of the state. As China moved away from socialist industrialization, the legacies of this period in Northeast China transformed the region into a rust belt filled with ageing, unprofitable SOEs in heavy industry.