In the early decades of the 20th century, as empires crumbled and revolutionary movements surged, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin looked far beyond Russia’s borders. The Bolshevik leader and founder of the Soviet Union believed the struggle against imperialism would not be won in Europe’s industrial heartlands alone, but in the colonised and semi-colonised nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Among them, China held a special place in his revolutionary imagination.
Though Lenin never set foot in China, his writings and strategies left a profound imprint on the country’s modern history. In his 1916 work Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, Lenin argued that powerful states thrived by exploiting colonies and semi-colonies. China, then divided by foreign spheres of influence and weakened by internal turmoil, embodied this theory. For Lenin, liberation from imperialist domination was a necessary first step before any socialist transformation.
This perspective shaped Soviet policy toward China. Lenin urged support for national liberation movements even if they were not socialist. His call for unity among workers, peasants, intellectuals, and even national capitalists resonated strongly with Chinese revolutionaries. By 1923, Soviet aid began to flow to Sun Yat-sen’s Nationalist Party, and cooperation between Chinese communists and nationalists gave rise to the First United Front.
Lenin’s organisational ideas also endured. His theory of the vanguard party and emphasis on the worker-peasant alliance directly influenced the Chinese Communist Party, founded in 1921. Mao Zedong later acknowledged Lenin’s role, adapting his theories to China’s rural realities and transforming them into a blueprint for revolution.
Today, Lenin’s legacy remains visible in the Chinese Communist Party’s self-identification as a Marxist-Leninist party. While modern China has evolved far beyond its original vision, the intellectual scaffolding of its revolution still rests on the foundations Lenin laid a century ago.