An Interview with Historian Stephen Smith on Internationalist Nationalism in the Early Chinese Labour and Left-wing movement
Interviewed by K The revolutionary 1920s does not merely leave a legendary page in the official history of the Chinese Communist Party, more importantly, the internationalist spirit and action burgeoning across the political and cultural fields during that period remains pertinent to the agenda of today’s scattered labour and left-wing movements around the globe. To reignite the discussion on the internationalist tradition, we talked to Stephen Smith, Professor of History at the University of Oxford, on the labour participation and national imagination in several significant historical events in the 1920s of Chinese history. The interview is based on Prof.Smith’s works of the international history of Communism in modern China and Russia: Like Cattle and Horses: Nationalism and Labor in Shanghai, 1895-1927, and Revolution and the People in Russia and China: A Comparative History. Q: While May Fourth is often celebrated as a patriotic cultural movement, wit...