Post WWI Chinese Revolutionary Leaders in Europe

Abstract

This article is an exploration of a leadership network of 133 Chinese revolutionary leaders who were trained in Western Europe and the Soviet Union during the 1920's. The article utilizes quantitative, geospatial, and network analytical methods and also proposes two approaches to expand network visualization utility and understanding. The results demonstrate that there are two groups within the SRL, those who went to both Western Europe and the Soviet Union (the Euro-Soviet Group) and those who went solely to the Soviet Union (the Soviet Group). The new network dissection techniques and network graphs reveal the importance of both well-known individuals and relatively unknown individuals who may be potentially influential actors indicating that this initial historical network approach with biographical data affords an additional way to study these important historical individuals.

Keywords

• Chinese Communist Party
• Zhou Enlai
• Liu Shaoqi
• Deng Xiaoping
• Soviet Returned Leaders