Difference between Russian and Chinese revolution?

[Exterminatus]

I've seen some well-respected Marxists on this site and outside of it claim that Russian revolution was the only genuine proletarian revolution and that Chinese revolution was bourgeoisie in nature. Why is this? I understand that China was a feudal state with huge peasant majority, but so was Russia. Was it because Chinese proletariat wasn't class conscious and didn't held any real power in contrast to workers in Russia? Was CPC ever a true vanguard party of the proletariat?

[John Nada]

Besides tendency biases, the Chinese Revolution in 1949 was a "bourgeois-democratic revolution", as was the February Revolution in Russia. Take away the modern connotations of bourgeois as evil capitalist. Relative to feudalism and colonialism, bourgeois-democratic revolutions are progressive and a step up. However, it was yet to be completed in China before 1949. This did not mean the bourgeoisie can or would complete it, so that left the proletariat as the leading class. The minimum program(immediate objective) of the CCP was to fight fascism and imperialism and complete the bourgeois-democratic revolution, then move on to the maximum program(strategic goal) of a dictatorship of the proletariat.

In Tsarist Russia, the Russian bourgeoisie, being too weak and dependent on the semi-feudal state, were unable or unwilling to complete the bourgeois-democratic revolution. This left the proletariat as a small minority, with the vast majority peasants. The peasantry wavers on revolution, it either gets behind revolution or counterrevolution. They were either going to follow the proletariat or the bourgeoisie. The minimum program of the Bolsheviks before 1917 was to have a bourgeois-democratic revolution. This would lead to what Lenin called the democratic-dictatorship the proletariat and peasantry.

The proletariat, being a small minority in Russia, had to form an alliance with the peasantry. They overthrew the Tsar and carried out the bourgeois-democratic revolution, instead of the bourgeoisie, in the 1917 February Revolution. And the proletariat didn't stop, moving on to the maximum program of a proletarian socialist revolution in the October Revolution and establishing a dictatorship of the proletariat in alliance with the poor peasantry that same year.

In the case of China, it was a semi-feudal, semi-colonial country. Imperialism was keeping China underdeveloped and propping up backward element like the puppet-capitalists and landlords. Because of imperialism and its low level of developement, the proletariat was a minority. The workers couldn't fight imperialism alone, they needed an alliance with the peasantry.

The proletariat, in alliance with the peasantry and other oppressed classes, was tasked with fighting imperialism and semi-feudalism for a bourgeois-democratic revolution. The revolution against first Imperial Japan and later the imperialist puppets the KMT, was to carry out the bourgeois-democratic revolution. This completed the minimum program for a democratic-dictatorship(New Democracy) led by the proletariat, which was supposed to move uninterrupted into a dictatorship of the proletariat(maximum program), which began in the early 50s against the KMT hold-outs and the national bourgeoisie. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was to finally rid the superstructure of capitalism. Sadly, it clearly wasn't enough.