From Sun Yat-sen and Communism by Shao Chuan Leng and Norman D. Palmer, 1960

Maring, whose real name was Sneevliet, was sent to China by Lenin, in the spring of 1921, as the Comintern’s representative to observe revolutionary possibilities there. He first met General Wu P’ei-fu in the North and then went south to confer with Dr. Sun Yat-sen at Keeling and later at Canton. In their interviews, Maring informed Sun of the real conditions in Russia, especially the revolutionary methods of the Bolsheviks and the New Economic Policy. He was impressed with Sun’s movement, but he quickly pointed out that the Kuomintang could not shoulder revolutionary responsibilities due to its weakness in organization and propaganda, and its dependence on General Ch’en Ch’iung-ming. Consequently, he presented to Sun two concrete proposals. First, to carry out the Chinese revolution, there must be a good political party allied with all classes, especially the proletariat and peasantry. Second, to obtain armed forces for revolution, a military academy must be established. Although these resulted in no definite commitment, Sun expressed his interest in Marin’s proposals and a way for future cooperation was paved.

His interviews with Dr. Sun, together with his observation of the conditions in China, convinced Maring that the Kuomintang was the nucleus of the Chinese national-revolutionary movement, and that Soviet interests lay in cooperation with it. These views were expounded in an article on South China, published in Kommunisticheskii International in 1922, in which, while critical of the Kuomintang in some respects, Maring focused his attention on improving Communist relations with Sun’s Party—in opposition to the warlords in China. His recommendations won the approval of the Kremlin and helped to start a new orientation of Soviet policy in China. Nevertheless, there was no unanimity in approach to Dr. Sun Yat-sen and the Chinese problem among the Soviet elite . . . . Within the Comintern, Lenin and Maring continually stressed the positive features of Sun’s regime, favoring a policy of cooperation, but Zinoviev, G. Safarov, and M. N. Roy “featured the negative aspects of the Canton regime, constantly referring to the time when the Chinese bourgeoisie could be overthrown and smashed.”  . . .

Before his return to Russia in September 1922, Maring personally laid the foundation for cooperation between the Chinese Communists and the Kuomintang. From the Soviet point of view, such a step was necessary not only for a possible Moscow-Canton alliance, but also for the growth of Chinese Communism. Making use of the Kuomintang, the young Chinese Communist Party could widen its contacts among the masses and prepare a basis for its future hegemony. The question was, however, how to bring the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communists together.

New York : Praeger, 1960, pages 55-6.

From M. N. Roy’s Mission to China, Robert C. North and Xenia J. Eudin, 1963

At the time of the Second Congress Moscow was already in touch with scattered Marxist groups in China. In the spring of 1920 the Comintern had sent Grigorii Naumovich Voitinsky and Yang Ming-chai, an overseas Chinese, to help organize a Chinese Communist movement. In Shanghai these two men met Li Ta-chao, who introduced them to a Marxist study group organized there by Ch’en Tu-hsiu. Voitinsky established a headquarters and began organizational work. By autumn a group had been drawn together in Peking, and at about the same time Mao Tse-tung and Tung Pi-wu started similar units in Hunan and Hupeh respectively.²⁰

Some months later the Comintern commissioned Hendricus Sneevliet (Maring), a Hollander, to attend the organizational meeting and First Congress of the Chinese Communist Party.²¹ Under Comintern influence the Second Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, held at West Lake, Hangchow, in June and July 1922, called for closer relations with Sun Yat-sen’s Kuomintang. A Party manifesto made clear, however, that the “proletariat support to the democratic revolution” should not be construed as a “proletarian surrender to the capitalists.”²²

”If we, the Communists, wish to work successfully in the southern Chinese trade unions,” Maring wrote in an official Comintern publication, “we must first of all maintain the most friendly relations with southern Chinese nationalists. In China, when the proletariat is still in the first stage of development, we, while applying the theses of the Second Congress, must at the same time support in every way possible the revolutionary national elements in the South. We must try to unite [ob’edinit] these revolutionary national elements and to push [tolkat] the entire movement leftward.”²³

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      20. Chunk-kuo hsien-tai koming yün-tung shih, I, 88.
      21. Hatano, (etc). See also Chen Pan-tsu, “Reminiscences of the First Congress of the Communist Party of China, “ The Communist International, October, 1936, pp. 1361-1363.
      22. “Ti-erh-tz’u (etc), in Chu Hsin fan, Chung-kuo ko-ming (etc), I, 277.
      23. Maring, “Revoliutsionno-natsionalisticheskoe dvizhenie v iushnom Kitae,” Kommuisticheskii Internatsional, No. 22, 1922, pp. 5814-1815.

( University of California Press, 1963 )
New York : Octagon Books, 1977, page 19.

Maring, G. (Hendricus Sneevliet). "Revoliutsionno-natsionalisticheskoe dvizhenie v iuzhnom Kitae" (Revolutionary-nationalist movement in South China). Kommunisticheskii Internatsional, No. 22, 1922, pp. 5803-5815.
[ North / Eudin, "M. N. Roy's Mission, etc.", p. 383. ]