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Chapter Two ‖ Unleashing the Storm of the Land Revolution

Editorial Group of This Book

January 1, 2021

第二章 掀起土地革命的风暴

本书编写组

Chapter Two ‖ Unleashing the Storm of the Land Revolution第二章 掀起土地革命的风暴

Note: this document was translated using machine learning technology. Learn more.

Originally Written By
Editorial Group of This Book本书编写组
Publisher
CPC History Press中共党史出版社

Chapter Two ‖ Unleashing the Storm of the Land Revolution

第二章 ‖ 掀起土地革命的风暴

After the failure of the Great Revolution, the entire country was plunged into a reign of white terror. The young Communist Party of China faced the most severe test it had encountered since its founding. Confronted with the bloody massacres carried out by the reactionaries, the Communist Party of China and the Chinese people were not intimidated, conquered, or annihilated. They picked themselves up off the ground, wiped the blood from their bodies, buried their fallen comrades, and fought on.

I. Armed Struggle Against the Reactionary Rule of the Kuomintang

The August 7th Emergency Conference, the Nanchang Uprising, the Autumn Harvest Uprising, and the Guangzhou Uprising

After Chiang Kai-shek and Wang Jingwei betrayed the revolution, the domestic political situation reversed abruptly. The land of China was engulfed in a reign of blood and terror, and the Chinese revolution stood at a critical juncture where its fate hung by a thread.

Through bitter struggle and lessons paid for in blood, the Party came to a profound understanding: without a revolutionary armed force, it would be impossible to defeat the armed counter-revolution, impossible to shoulder the heavy responsibility of leading the Chinese revolution, impossible to achieve victory in the Chinese revolution, and impossible to change the fate of the Chinese people and the Chinese nation. To refrain from armed resistance was no different from sitting and waiting for death,

and allowing all of China to become a China of darkness.

On August 1, 1927, under the leadership of the CPC Central Committee’s Front Committee, with Zhou Enlai as its secretary, He Long, Ye Ting, Zhu De, Liu Bocheng, and others led more than 20,000 troops under the Party’s command and influence to fire the first shots of armed resistance against the Kuomintang reactionaries in Nanchang. After more than four hours of fierce fighting, the uprising forces captured Nanchang. Subsequently, in accordance with the Central Committee’s plan, the uprising forces withdrew from Nanchang and marched south toward Guangdong. In early October, the uprising forces were defeated in the Chaozhou-Shantou area of Guangdong. Part of the surviving forces moved to the Hailufeng area of Guangdong and joined up with local peasant armed units; the main force, under the command of Zhu De and Chen Yi, moved to the Hunan-south area to carry out guerrilla warfare.

The gunshots that rang out over Nanchang were like a bolt of lightning splitting the night sky. The Nanchang Uprising marked the beginning of the Communist Party of China’s independent leadership of revolutionary warfare, the founding of a people’s army, and the seizure of power through armed force—it opened a new era in the Chinese revolution. From that moment on, the people’s army under the leadership of the Communist Party of China threw itself heroically into the historical tide of seeking liberation and happiness for the Chinese people and independence and rejuvenation for the Chinese nation, binding its fate inextricably to that of the Chinese people and the Chinese nation.

★ Site of the August 7th Emergency Conference

On August 7, the CPC Central Committee secretly convened an emergency conference in Hankou, Hubei (the August 7th Emergency Conference). The conference established the general guideline of carrying out land revolution and armed resistance against the Kuomintang reactionaries. This was a correct guideline—a correct conclusion reached at the cost of much bloodshed. Mao Zedong, who attended this conference, emphatically stressed in his remarks: “From now on, we must pay the utmost attention to military affairs. We must know that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

The August 7th Emergency Conference was a turning point. It pointed the way forward for the Communist Party of China, which was then mired in ideological confusion and organizational disarray, and made an enormous contribution to saving the Party and the revolution. This was a historic transformation from the failure of the Great Revolution to the rise of the Land Revolution War.

After the August 7th Emergency Conference, the Party dispatched many cadres to various localities to restore and reorganize party organizations and launch armed uprisings.

Mao Zedong traveled to Hunan as a special envoy of the Central Committee to convey the spirit of the August 7th Emergency Conference, reorganize the provincial party committee, and lead the Autumn Harvest Uprising. The Front Committee of the CPC Hunan Provincial Committee, with Mao Zedong as its secretary, consolidated the various armed forces participating in the uprising—more than 5,000 men in total—into the First Division of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Revolutionary Army, and launched the Autumn Harvest Uprising along the Hunan-Jiangxi border on September 9. After the assault on the central city of Changsha was repulsed, Mao Zedong decisively changed plans, led the troops to regroup at Wenjiashi in Liuyang, presided over a meeting of the Front Committee, and decided to seek a foothold in rural mountain areas where enemy control was weak. The shift from attacking major cities to advancing into the countryside was a new starting point of decisive significance in the history of the Chinese people’s revolutionary development.

On September 29, Mao Zedong led the uprising forces through the famous Sanwan Reorganization in Sanwan Village, Yongxin County, Jiangxi. Party branches were established at the company level, soldiers’ committees were set up at all levels, a democratic system was implemented, and officers and soldiers were made politically equal. This began to transform the old military habits and poor work styles within the uprising forces, established the Party’s leadership over the army on an organizational basis, and was an important starting point in building a new type of people’s army under proletarian leadership.

On December 11, Zhang Tailei, secretary of the CPC Guangdong Provincial Committee, together with Ye Ting, Ye Jianying, and others, led the Guangzhou Uprising. The uprising forces briefly occupied the vast majority of Guangzhou’s urban districts and established a Soviet government, but were ultimately defeated on the third day due to being vastly outnumbered. Zhang Tailei and many revolutionaries died heroic deaths. Revolutionary couple Zhou Wenrong and Chen Tiejun, who participated in the uprising, were unfortunately captured. In February 1928, the two held a solemn wedding ceremony at the Honghuagang execution ground in Guangzhou and went calmly to their deaths.

The Guangzhou Uprising was yet another heroic counterattack against the Kuomintang reactionaries’ policy of massacre. Practice once again proved that, given the situation in which the Kuomintang new warlords possessed powerful armed forces in the central cities, it was impossible to achieve revolutionary victory through urban armed uprisings or by capturing major cities.

By early 1928, the Party had also led a series of other armed uprisings, the more important of which included: the Hailufeng Uprising, the Qiongya Uprising, the Huang’an and Macheng Uprising, the Donggu Uprising, the Yiyang and Hengfeng Uprising, the Wan’an Uprising, the Southern Hunan Uprising, the Sangzhi Uprising, the Western Fujian Uprising, the Queshan Uprising, and the Weinan and Huaxian Uprising. Although most of these uprisings failed due to the enemy’s strength and our weakness, erroneous policies on the part of their leaders, or immature objective conditions, they demonstrated that the spark of revolution could not be extinguished by counter-revolutionary military suppression—because this was a just cause that accorded with the aspirations of the broad masses of the people. Some of the uprising forces held on in remote mountain villages along the borders of several provinces, carrying out guerrilla warfare, and laid an initial foundation for the subsequent greater development of the Red Army and revolutionary base areas.

The Sixth National Congress of the Party

During this period, the Party launched a series of armed uprisings, but the revolutionary situation remained at a low ebb. Because the Party was still in its infancy at the time and politically immature, there were still differences of understanding and debate within the Party on major questions such as the nature of Chinese society, the nature, driving forces, and prospects of the Chinese revolution. It was therefore imperative to convene a national congress of the Party. Due to the extremely severe white terror within the country, the CPC Central Committee, with the approval of the Communist International, decided to hold the Sixth National Congress of the Party in the Soviet Union.

From June to July 1928, the Sixth National Congress of the Communist Party of China was held in the outskirts of Moscow. A total of 142 delegates attended the congress. The congress passed a series of resolutions on political, military, organizational, and Soviet power questions, as well as a revised Constitution of the Communist Party of China, and elected a new Central Committee.

The congress scientifically analyzed the nature of Chinese society and clearly pointed out that China remained a semi-colonial and semi-feudal country; that the nature of the Chinese revolution at its present stage was a bourgeois-democratic revolution; that the current political situation in China was situated between two revolutionary high tides, with the first revolutionary wave having passed and a new wave not yet having arrived; and that the Party’s general line was to win over the masses. The Sixth Congress shifted the focus of work from doing everything possible to organize uprisings to engaging in protracted and arduous mass work, established winning over the masses as the Party’s primary task, and identified “left” deviationism as the main danger to be opposed. This was an important transformation in the Party’s work guideline.

The party constitution adopted by the congress set out in detail the content of democratic centralism and made new provisions regarding the system of party member management and party organizational structures.

The line of the Sixth National Congress was basically correct, and it unified the thinking of the entire Party at a time when ideological confusion was rife within the Party. After the Sixth Congress, the entire Party implemented the Sixth Congress line, restored and rebuilt party organizations, led the development of mass struggles, and the Chinese revolution began to move toward recovery and development.

II. Mao Zedong and the Opening of a New Path for the Chinese Revolution

The Establishment of the Jinggang Mountains Revolutionary Base Area and the Advance into Southern Jiangxi and Western Fujian

After the failure of the Great Revolution, the struggle at the Jinggang Mountains revolutionary base area led by Mao Zedong and Zhu De most clearly embodied the correct direction of the Chinese revolution.

After the Sanwan Reorganization, Mao Zedong led the uprising forces first to the Jinggang Mountains. The Jinggang Mountains are located in the middle section of the Luoxiao Mountain Range along the Hunan-Jiangxi border. Mao Zedong chose to establish a revolutionary base area there for the following reasons: the mass foundation in this area was relatively good, and party organizations and peasant associations had been established in the counties along the Hunan-Jiangxi border during the Great Revolution period; some of the old-style peasant armed forces in the area were willing to join forces with the Workers’ and Peasants’ Revolutionary Army; the terrain was strategically advantageous and easy to defend but difficult to attack; the surrounding counties had a self-sufficient agricultural economy that made it convenient for the troops to raise funds and procure grain; and the area was located along the Hunan-Jiangxi border, relatively far from the centers of Kuomintang rule, while contradictions between the warlords of Hunan and Jiangxi meant that their control over this area was relatively weak.

Mao Zedong seized on the favorable opportunity presented by new rifts within the ruling class to devote full effort to building the Party, the army, and political power along the border. In November 1927, the first red political power in the Hunan-Jiangxi border area was established—the Chaling County Workers’, Peasants’, and Soldiers’ Government. In mid-February 1928, the Jiangxi Kuomintang army’s offensive against the Jinggang Mountains area was repelled. By this point, the Jinggang Mountains base area had been preliminarily established, and party organizations along the border were gradually being built up.

Regarding the Workers’ and Peasants’ Revolutionary Army, Mao Zedong demanded a break from the old tradition of armies concerned only with fighting, and called on the forces to take on three tasks: fighting to annihilate the enemy, raising funds by striking local tyrants, and carrying out mass work. In April 1928, he further summarized the troops’ experience in mass work and stipulated that the forces must observe the Three Main Rules of Discipline and the Six Points for Attention. The Six Points for Attention were later expanded to Eight Points for Attention. These regulations embodied the essential nature of the people’s army and played a major role in correctly handling relations within the army, relations between the army and the people, and the work of disintegrating enemy forces.

In late April 1928, Zhu De and Chen Yi led the forces preserved from the Nanchang Uprising and more than 10,000 peasant soldiers from the Southern Hunan Uprising in a gradual move to the Jinggang Mountains area, where they joined forces with the troops led by Mao Zedong. The Fourth Army of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Revolutionary Army (later renamed the “Fourth Army of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army”) was established, with Zhu De as army commander and Mao Zedong as party representative and secretary of the military committee. From that point on, the army they led became known as the “Zhu-Mao Red Army.” In May, the first congress of the Party along the Hunan-Jiangxi border elected the Special Committee of the CPC Hunan-Jiangxi Border Area, with Mao Zedong as its secretary.

In the course of repeatedly repelling offensives by Kuomintang forces from Hunan and Jiangxi, Mao Zedong and Zhu De distilled the basic principles of guerrilla warfare into the sixteen-character formula: “When the enemy advances, we retreat; when the enemy halts, we harass; when the enemy tires, we strike; when the enemy retreats, we pursue.” Under their leadership, the Fourth Red Army, with fewer than four regiments, fought against Kuomintang forces of eight or nine regiments and even eighteen regiments, showing no fear of a powerful enemy or of hardship, and steadily expanded the base area.

The struggle at the Jinggang Mountains base area was inseparable from the land revolution. At the outset of the base area’s establishment, land distribution was only tried out in individual localities. As the base area was gradually consolidated, a high tide of land distribution swept through the border counties from May to July 1928, and the Jinggang Mountains Land Law was promulgated at the end of the year. The broad masses of impoverished peasants came to understand through the fact of receiving land that the Red Army was fighting for their interests, and they supported the Red Army and the development of the base area in every way possible. This was the social foundation that enabled the Jinggang Mountains base area to exist and develop.

The establishment of the Jinggang Mountains base area kindled the spark of armed worker-peasant separatist rule and blazed a correct path for the Chinese revolution that no one had traveled before—surrounding the cities from the countryside and seizing power through armed force. The most precious legacy of the Jinggang Mountains period is the Jinggang Mountains Spirit, whose most important aspects are: steadfast faith and arduous struggle; seeking truth from facts and daring to blaze new trails; relying on the masses and the courage to achieve victory.

In December 1928, Kuomintang forces from Hunan and Jiangxi again launched an offensive against the Jinggang Mountains with a force of 30,000 men advancing in five columns. In January 1929, Mao Zedong, Zhu De, and Chen Yi led the main force of the Fourth Red Army on a sortie into southern Jiangxi, subsequently joining up with the main force of the Fifth Red Army that had broken out of the Jinggang Mountains, and then advancing into western Fujian. In the spring of 1930, the southern Jiangxi base area and the western Fujian base area took shape, and the Southwest Jiangxi Soviet Government and the Western Fujian Soviet Government were successively established, laying the foundation for the subsequent establishment of the Central Revolutionary Base Area and serving as an inspiration and model for the development of Red Army guerrilla warfare and base area construction in various regions.

The Gutian Conference and the Establishment of Principles for Party and Army Building

The Gutian Conference was convened at a critical juncture of life and death for the Red Army. At the time, as the Fourth Red Army fought its way through southern Jiangxi and western Fujian, differences of opinion arose among the leadership over questions of army building, and non-proletarian thinking within the army—including the purely military viewpoint, the roving-rebel mentality, and remnants of warlordism—had grown. After the Eighth Party Congress of the Fourth Red Army, the Fourth Red Army’s eastward offensive into the East River area failed, the troops fell into ideological confusion and low morale, and the army faced a severe test.

In December 1929, the Ninth Congress of the Party of the Fourth Red Army (the Gutian Conference) was convened in Gutian, Shanghang County, Fujian Province. The congress elected a new Front Committee of the CPC Fourth Red Army, with Mao Zedong elected as its secretary. In accordance with the spirit of the Central Committee’s September letter, the congress adopted the Gutian Conference Resolution drafted by Mao Zedong. The most important part of the resolution was the resolution on correcting erroneous thinking within the Party, which established the principle of building the Party ideologically and building the army politically.

In terms of Party building, the resolution centrally embodied the unique path of Party building that emphasizes building the Party primarily through ideology, profoundly expounded on the extreme

★ Site of the Gutian Conference

importance of strengthening the Party’s ideological construction, and identified the manifestations, sources, and methods of correction for various non-proletarian ideological tendencies within the Party. The resolution also put forward the task of strengthening the Party’s organizational construction, calling for “the rigorous practice of democratic life under centralized guidance,” emphasizing quality in the recruitment of new party members, and so forth.

In terms of army building, the resolution stipulated that the Red Army was an armed body executing revolutionary political tasks, that it must absolutely submit to the Party’s leadership, and that it must wholeheartedly struggle for the Party’s program, line, and policies. It criticized the purely military viewpoint that set military affairs in opposition to politics. It again put forward the requirement that the Red Army must shoulder the three-in-one task of fighting, raising funds, and carrying out mass work. It emphasized the need to strengthen the Red Army’s political work, especially political education work.

The Gutian Conference Resolution is a programmatic document for the building of the Communist Party of China and the Red Army, and an important milestone in the history of building the Party and the people’s army. The Gutian Conference established the Marxist principles for building the Party and the army, established the guidelines, principles, and institutions for the army’s political work, put forward the principled direction for resolving the fundamental question of how to build an army composed mainly of peasants into a new type of people’s army of a proletarian character, and enabled the army to be reborn through fire. The army’s political work, whose foundation was laid at the Gutian Conference, played a decisive role in the army’s survival and development.

The Party’s absolute leadership over the army is the eternal soul of the people’s army, never to change. This fundamental principle and institution originated at the Nanchang Uprising, was laid as a foundation at the Sanwan Reorganization, and took definitive form at the Gutian Conference. It is the political character and fundamental advantage that completely distinguishes the people’s army from all old-style armies. Countless revolutionary officers and soldiers remained steadfastly committed to heeding and following the Party, growing stronger in the face of setbacks and pressing forward courageously through hardship, forging a steel army that could not be worn down or broken, that was invincible in attack and undefeated in battle.

After the principles of Party and army building were established, the Red Army entered a period of great development. In June 1930, the Red Army forces in the Jiangxi-south and western Fujian areas were merged into the First Red Army Corps, with a total strength of more than 20,000 men. In August, the First Red Army Corps joined with the Third Red Army Corps of more than 30,000 men led by Peng Dehuai and Teng Daiyuan to form the First Front Army of the Red Army, with Zhu De as commander-in-chief and Mao Zedong as secretary of the General Front Committee and general political commissar. It became the most powerful fighting force among all the Red Army units nationwide.

After Mao Zedong led the Autumn Harvest Uprising forces up to the Jinggang Mountains, he addressed the doubts of some within the Party about “how long the red flag can keep flying.” Starting from the realities of the Chinese revolution, he scientifically explained that in China, where agriculture is the main economic activity, the development of revolution through military means is a distinctive feature. He profoundly demonstrated the subjective and objective conditions for the long-term existence and development of red political power, and put forward the concept of armed worker-peasant separatist rule. In his essay “A Single Spark Can Start a Prairie Fire,” he pointed out that the establishment and development of the Red Army, guerrilla forces, and red areas was the most important factor in promoting a nationwide revolutionary high tide. This gave rise to the concept of surrounding the cities from the countryside and seizing power through armed force. This was a summation of the experience of the Party’s leadership of the Red Army and base area struggles after the failure of the Great Revolution, and was a creative application and development of Marxism in China.

After the failure of the Great Revolution, the Chinese Communists guided the Chinese revolution toward revival and gradual victory along a unique path—the path of surrounding the cities from the countryside and seizing power through armed force.

In semi-colonial and semi-feudal China, after the Great Revolution had suffered defeat and the balance of forces between the enemy and ourselves was extremely lopsided, it was impossible for the Chinese Communists to achieve nationwide revolutionary victory by first occupying the central cities, as had been done in the Russian October Revolution. Instead, they had to first establish revolutionary base areas in the countryside, accumulate revolutionary strength, seize the cities when conditions were ripe, and finally achieve nationwide revolutionary victory.

This correct revolutionary path suited to China’s actual conditions was blazed through the collective struggle of the Party leading the people. In this process, Mao Zedong made the most outstanding contribution. Not only did he first place the foothold of armed struggle in the countryside in practice, leading the opening up of the Jinggang Mountains base area and creatively resolving a series of fundamental problems that had to be solved in order to uphold and develop rural base areas, but he also gradually provided a clear theoretical account of the question of the path of the Chinese revolution.

III. The Victory of the Red Army’s Anti-“Encirclement and Suppression” Struggles and the Building of Rural Revolutionary Base Areas

The Recovery and Improvement of the Revolutionary Situation

In the two years following the Sixth National Congress of the Party, the Party’s organizations experienced considerable recovery and development as a result of the Party’s resolute shift in its work. By September 1930, according to statistics from the enlarged Third Plenary Session of the Sixth Central Committee, the number of party members nationwide had grown to more than 122,300. By the end of the year, the Party had restored 17 provincial committees (or provincial work committees) and many special committees, municipal committees, and county committees across the country. The Party accumulated rich experience in underground work through its arduous struggle in the Kuomintang-controlled areas. The Central Special Branch, established in November 1927 under the direct leadership of Zhou Enlai, played an important role in protecting the safety of the Party Central Committee, rescuing arrested comrades, punishing traitors, gathering intelligence, establishing radio communications with the various Soviet areas, and coordinating with the Red Army in the base areas in combat operations.

The Party Central Committee also strengthened its leadership over the Red Army forces and rural revolutionary base area work in various localities at this time, enabling the work to achieve tremendous development. By March 1930, the Red Army nationwide had grown to 13 armies with more than 62,000 men. In addition to the southern Jiangxi and western Fujian base areas led by Mao Zedong and others, other important revolutionary base areas included those in western Hunan-Hubei, Hubei-Henan-Anhui, Hunan-Jiangxi, Hunan-Hubei-Jiangxi, Fujian-Zhejiang-Jiangxi, the Zuojiang and Youjiang rivers area of Guangxi, the East River area of Guangdong, and Qiongya. The establishment and development of revolutionary base areas was the most important factor contributing to the improvement of the revolutionary situation during this period.

In western Hunan-Hubei, in early 1928, He Long, Zhou Yiqun, and others successively arrived in the Honghu area of Hubei and the Sangzhi area of western Hunan, organized several peasant guerrilla units, established new revolutionary armed forces, and reorganized them into the Fourth Army of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Revolutionary Army. In July 1930, they joined forces with the Sixth Red Army, which had been expanded from the Western Hubei Guerrilla General Headquarters, at Gong’an in Hubei. The combined force grew to more than 10,000 men and formed the Second Red Army Corps, with He Long as commander-in-chief and Zhou Yiqun as political commissar. Shortly thereafter, the Western Hunan-Hubei Soviet Government was also established.

In Hubei-Henan-Anhui, the Red Army guerrilla forces also developed rapidly. They were initially divided into three base areas: the Hubei-Henan border area, the southeastern Henan area, and the western Anhui area. The Central Military Commission dispatched Xu Xiangqian to the Hubei-Henan border area to take charge of military command. In early 1930, the Central Committee decided to establish the Special Committee of the Hubei-Henan-Anhui Border Area, dispatching Guo Shushen as its secretary to provide unified leadership over these three base areas, and established the First Red Army. This was the predecessor of what later became the Hubei-Henan-Anhui Central Bureau and the Fourth Front Army of the Red Army.

In Hunan-Hubei-Jiangxi, after Peng Dehuai and Teng Daiyuan led the Fifth Red Army back to this area from Hunan-Jiangxi, they joined up with local guerrilla forces and expanded into the Third Red Army Corps, with Peng Dehuai serving as commander-in-chief and secretary of the Front Committee and Teng Daiyuan as political commissar, establishing the Hunan-Hubei-Jiangxi Revolutionary Base Area.

In western Guangxi, Central Committee representative Deng Xiaoping, together with Zhang Yunyi, Wei Baqun, and others, led a portion of the Guangxi army forces under Party influence and local peasant armed units to launch the Baise Uprising in December 1929 and the Longzhou Uprising in February 1930. The Seventh Red Army and the Eighth Red Army were established, with Li Mingrui as overall commander of both armies and Deng Xiaoping as political commissar, creating the Zuojiang-Youjiang Revolutionary Base Area.

The Red Army’s Anti-“Encirclement and Suppression” Struggles

The tenacious existence and rapid development of the Red Army and the base areas alarmed the Kuomintang ruling clique. Chiang Kai-shek concentrated his forces and launched multiple large-scale “encirclement and suppression” campaigns against the various base areas and the Red Army.

The focus of the Kuomintang army’s “encirclement and suppression” campaigns was the Central Revolutionary Base Area and the First Front Army of the Red Army led by Mao Zedong and Zhu De. Beginning in October 1930, Chiang Kai-shek mobilized more than 100,000 troops to launch the first “encirclement and suppression” campaign against the Central Revolutionary Base Area. The First Front Army, with more than 40,000 men, adopted the operational guideline of “luring the enemy deep,” annihilated 13,000 enemy troops, and successfully broke the Kuomintang army’s first “encirclement and suppression” campaign.

Shortly thereafter, Chiang Kai-shek directed 200,000 troops to launch a second “encirclement and suppression” campaign against the Central Revolutionary Base Area. The First Front Army continued to uphold the guideline of “luring the enemy deep.” From May 16 to 31, 1931, it fought five consecutive victorious battles, sweeping across 700 li from the banks of the Gan River all the way to Jianning in Fujian, annihilating more than 30,000 enemy troops in total, breaking the Kuomintang army’s second “encirclement and suppression” campaign, and further expanding the Central Revolutionary Base Area. “Seven hundred li in fifteen days, the Gan River vast and the Fujian mountains green, sweeping away a thousand troops like rolling up a mat”—Mao Zedong’s magnificent verse vividly recorded this inspiring victory.

In June, Chiang Kai-shek personally assumed command of the “encirclement and suppression” forces, mobilizing 300,000 troops to launch the third “encirclement and suppression” campaign. Over three months, the First Front Army annihilated more than 30,000 enemy troops and smashed the Kuomintang army’s third “encirclement and suppression” campaign. Thereafter, the two base areas of southern Jiangxi and western Fujian were essentially merged into one, expanding to cover a vast area spanning more than 20 counties.

Inspired by the Red Army’s victories, more than 17,000 troops of the Kuomintang army’s 26th Route Army staged an uprising at Ningdu in Jiangxi on December 14, 1931, and were reorganized into the Fifth Red Army Corps, causing a great shock within the Kuomintang army.

At this time, the anti-“encirclement and suppression” struggles in other base areas also achieved victories.

In Hubei-Henan-Anhui, from the winter of 1930 to the summer of 1931, the Red Army broke two “encirclement and suppression” campaigns by the Kuomintang army. In November 1931, in accordance with a Central Committee decision, the Fourth Red Army and the 25th Red Army in the Hubei-Henan-Anhui base area were merged into the Fourth Front Army of the Red Army, with Xu Xiangqian as commander-in-chief and Chen Changhao as political commissar, totaling nearly 30,000 men.

In the western Hunan-Hubei, eastern Jiangxi-northern Fujian, Hunan-Jiangxi, Hunan-Hubei-Jiangxi, and Qiongya base areas, victories were also achieved in the anti-“encirclement and suppression” struggles. At the same time, Liu Zhidan, Xie Zichang, Xi Zhongxun, and other founders of the Northwest Red Army, through arduous struggle, established the Shaanxi-Gansu Border Base Area and the Northern Shaanxi Base Area (which later developed into the Shaanxi-Gansu Base Area, also known as the “Northwest Base Area”), changing the configuration of China’s revolutionary base areas. Revolutionary base areas now existed not only in the south but also in the north. This had an important influence on the subsequent development of the Chinese revolution.

In the anti-“encirclement and suppression” struggles, the Red Army developed strategic and tactical thinking centered on: annihilating the enemy’s effective strength; concentrating forces to destroy the enemy one by one; “fight when you can win, retreat when you can’t,” discovering the enemy’s weaknesses during mobile operations, and achieving quick decisions. These strategic and tactical ideas were built on the foundation of people’s war and resolved the problem of how the Red Army, with inferior numbers and outdated equipment, could defeat a powerful enemy. They represent an outstanding contribution to Marxist military doctrine.

The Land Revolution and All-Around Construction in the Base Areas

The land revolution was one of the basic components of China’s New Democratic Revolution and a concrete embodiment of the Party’s fulfillment of its founding aspiration and mission. The Party led the broad masses of peasants to “strike down local tyrants and distribute land,” with the aim of enabling the broad masses of peasants to stand up and achieve liberation—this was the struggle for the fundamental interests of the people. As the Red Army and rural revolutionary base areas were established and developed, the land revolution was carried out on a wide scale.

In the southern Jiangxi and western Fujian base areas, Mao Zedong put forward a series of policies and principles for deepening the land revolution. In April 1929, he presided over the drafting of the Land Law of Xinguo County, changing the provision in the Jinggang Mountains Land Law of “confiscating all land” to “confiscating all public land and the land of the landlord class.” In July, under his guidance, the resolution passed by the First Congress of the Party in western Fujian stipulated the principles of “not confiscating the land of self-cultivating farmers” and “taking from those with more to supplement those with less,” enabling land to be distributed across an area of more than 300 li in western Fujian and giving more than 600,000 impoverished peasants access to land. In February 1930, under the guiding principle of distributing land equally on a per capita basis, a comprehensive land distribution movement was launched across the entirety of Xinguo and five other counties, as well as parts of Yongfeng and other counties. In February 1931, Mao Zedong further revised the provisions in the Jinggang Mountains Land Law that had restricted peasants to only the right to use land and prohibited the buying and selling of land, affirming the peasants’ ownership rights over land.

At the same time, the land revolution was also carried out with great momentum in the revolutionary base areas of eastern Jiangxi-northern Fujian, western Hunan-Hubei, Hubei-Henan-Anhui, Hunan-Hubei-Jiangxi, the Youjiang River area of Guangxi, and Qiongya in Guangdong.

Over more than three years of land revolution practice, a set of relatively practical and feasible land revolution lines, policies, and methods was essentially formed. The main elements were: rely on poor peasants and farm laborers, unite with middle peasants, restrict rich peasants, eliminate the landlord class, and transform the feudal land ownership system into a peasant land ownership system; take the township as the unit, distribute land equally on a per capita basis, and on the basis of existing cultivated land, take from those with more to supplement those with less, and take from the fertile to supplement the infertile; and so forth.

Their political and economic emancipation rapidly enabled the broad masses of peasants to distinguish between the merits of the two parties and two political powers—the Kuomintang and the Communist Party—and greatly stimulated their revolutionary enthusiasm. They supported the land revolution and the Communist Party, flocked to join the Red Army, threw themselves into the anti-“encirclement and suppression” struggles, and supported the front lines and provided comfort to the Red Army, forging a fish-and-water relationship and a bond of flesh and blood between the Party and the masses, and between the army and the people.

Amid the situation of continuous development of the Red Army and the various base areas, the First National Congress of the Chinese Soviet was convened in Ruijin, Jiangxi in November 1931. It elected the Central Executive Committee of the Chinese Soviet Republic and proclaimed the establishment of the Provisional Central Government of the Chinese Soviet Republic. Mao Zedong was elected chairman of the Central Executive Committee and chairman of the People’s Committee of the Central Executive Committee.

The Chinese Soviet Republic was the first nationwide worker-peasant democratic political power in Chinese history and an important experiment in the Communist Party of China’s governance of a partial area. The establishment of the Provisional Central Government of the Chinese Soviet Republic strengthened, to a certain degree, the central command function over the various base areas that were in a state of separation, and also produced a great political impact, promoting the construction of political power, the economy, culture and education, and the Party itself in the various base areas.

The Chinese Soviet Republic implemented a system of workers’, peasants’, and soldiers’ congresses, and elected ★ The seat of the Central Workers’ and Peasants’ Democratic Government during the Land Revolution War period—Ruijin, Jiangxi governments at all levels. Under extremely arduous conditions, it also strove to develop cultural and educational undertakings, with schools of various kinds established throughout the base areas, making concentrated efforts to cultivate cadres and specialized personnel in all fields.

Soviet governments at all levels broadly absorbed representatives of workers and peasants to participate in the management of political power and exercise their right to be masters of their own affairs. From November 1931 to January 1934, the Central Revolutionary Base Area conducted three rounds of democratic elections and promulgated detailed rules for the electoral law; in many localities, those participating in elections accounted for more than 80 percent of the total number of eligible voters. Other base areas also successively convened workers’, peasants’, and soldiers’ congresses at all levels and elected Soviet governments at all levels.

The Soviet government attached importance to clean governance and judicial construction. In December 1933, the Central Executive Committee issued an order to punish corrupt and wasteful behavior and seriously investigated and dealt with corruption cases. In 1934, an audit and supervision system was established, which played an important role in standardizing financial and fiscal revenues and expenditures, investigating and dealing with corruption and waste, and promoting clean governance. The Provisional Central Government promulgated more than 120 laws and decrees, preliminarily establishing a legal system with distinct class characteristics and the features of the times.

The Soviet government led the military and civilian population of the base areas in actively carrying out economic construction, waging the struggle to break the enemy’s economic blockade, and achieving a certain degree of development in agriculture, industry, commerce, transportation, postal and telecommunications services, finance, and banking. Under extremely arduous conditions,

Party building was also strengthened: the ranks of party members continued to expand, party organizations at all levels were improved and consolidated, and the fine work styles of arduous struggle, clean and self-disciplined conduct, and close ties with the masses were cultivated. The Soviet Area Spirit was forged, whose main content includes: steadfast faith, seeking truth and being pragmatic, wholehearted dedication to the people, clean and upright conduct, arduous struggle, striving to be the best, and selfless dedication. “The Soviet area cadres have a fine work style—they bring their own rations to work. By day they wear straw sandals to make revolution; by night they walk mountain paths to visit poor peasants.” This folk song was widely sung throughout the Soviet areas and has been passed down to this day, serving as a true portrayal of the Soviet Area Spirit.

The vibrant scene of the rural revolutionary base areas led by the Communist Party of China stood in sharp contrast to the miserable scene of the people living in dire poverty in the Kuomintang-controlled areas, giving the Chinese people, who had sunk into an abyss of suffering, a glimpse of light and hope.

IV. The Situation After the September 18th Incident and the Beginning of the Long March of the Central Red Army

The Outbreak of the September 18th Incident and the Rise of the National Salvation Movement

Late at night on September 18, 1931, the Japanese Kwantung Army, stationed in China’s northeast under an unequal treaty, launched an attack on the Chinese army’s garrison at Beidaying and on the city of Shenyang. This was the September 18th Incident. The following day, Japanese forces occupied Shenyang. By February 1932, the three provinces of Liaoning, Jilin, and Heilongjiang had fallen under Japanese occupation. In March, the Japanese puppet regime of Manchukuo, with Puyi as “chief executive,” was established in Changchun, Jilin.

The September 18th Incident was the inevitable result of the Japanese militarists’ long-standing policy of aggression and expansion toward China, and was also a grave step they took to turn China into their exclusive colony.

An unprecedented national catastrophe awakened an unprecedented national consciousness. After the September 18th Incident, the Sino-Japanese national contradiction gradually rose to become the principal contradiction, major changes occurred in China’s domestic class relations, and the national salvation movement rapidly rose up across the country. In Shanghai, 35,000 dock workers launched an anti-Japanese general strike. Workers and other laboring masses in Nanjing, Tianjin, Beiping, Hankou, and other cities petitioned, donated funds, and boycotted Japanese goods. Young students, the urban petty bourgeoisie, the national bourgeoisie, the upper strata of the petty bourgeoisie, and the upper strata of the intelligentsia all raised their voices demanding resistance against Japan and the implementation of democracy.

The Communist Party of China was the first to raise the banner of armed resistance against Japan. In September 1931, the CPC Central Committee issued the Declaration of the Communist Party of China on the Violent Occupation of the Three Northeastern Provinces by Japanese Imperialism, loudly proclaiming: “Oppose Japanese imperialism’s forcible occupation of the three northeastern provinces!” The CPC Manchuria Provincial Committee instructed party organizations in various localities to carry out the anti-Japanese struggle. The Party Central Committee dispatched Zhou Baochong, Zhao Yiman, and others to the northeast to strengthen party organizational forces. By early 1933, anti-Japanese guerrilla units directly led by the Communist Party—including those in Bayan, South Manchuria, Hailong, East Manchuria, Ning’an, Tangyuan, and Hailun—had been successively established and gradually became the main anti-Japanese armed forces in the northeast.

★ On September 19, 1931, Japanese troops firing into the city from the walls of the Xiaoximen gate in Shenyang

The Chinese people’s resistance in the mountains and rivers of the northeast became the starting point of the Chinese people’s War of Resistance Against Japan, and at the same time drew back the curtain on the world’s anti-fascist war.

The Kuomintang government repeatedly capitulated and retreated in the face of Japan’s aggression against the northeast. In July 1931, Chiang Kai-shek put forward the guideline of “pacifying the interior before resisting foreign aggression.” When the September 18th Incident occurred, the Kuomintang government telegraphed the Northeast Army: “In order to avoid the expansion of the incident, absolutely adopt a policy of non-resistance.” All of this emboldened Japanese imperialism to use military force to launch large-scale attacks on China with even greater abandon.

At this critical moment of national crisis, divisions appeared within the Kuomintang camp. Northeast Army commanders Ma Zhanshan, Li Du, and others resisted Japan in the northeast. On January 28, 1932, when Japanese forces attacked Shanghai, Jiang Guangnai and Cai Tingkai commanded the 19th Route Army to mount a spirited resistance. But under the basic policy of seeking peace, the Nanjing government successively signed the Shanghai Ceasefire Agreement and the Tanggu Truce with the Japanese aggressors, both of which damaged state sovereignty. Feng Yuxiang organized the Chahar People’s Anti-Japanese Allied Army at Zhangjiakou, but this too was sabotaged and forcibly disbanded by the Kuomintang government.

The Party’s Work in the Kuomintang-Controlled Areas and the Left-Wing Cultural Movement

After the September 18th Incident, the national crisis grew increasingly severe. In an extremely difficult environment, Communist Party members in the Kuomintang-controlled areas continued to persist in the struggle, using various platforms to carry out their work.

In March 1930, the League of Left-Wing Writers was established in Shanghai. Subsequently, left-wing cultural organizations such as the League of Left-Wing Social Scientists, the League of Left-Wing Dramatists, the League of Left-Wing Artists, the League of Left-Wing Educators, and film and music groups were also successively established. Under the Party’s leadership, this new left-wing cultural force actively engaged in Marxist propaganda and revolutionary literary and artistic creation, forming a left-wing cultural movement of considerable momentum and strength.

In terms of Marxist propaganda, left-wing social science workers translated and published the earliest complete Chinese translations of Marxist classics including Volume One of Capital, Anti-Dühring, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, and Materialism and Empirio-Criticism.

Some Communist Party members maintained close ties with patriotic progressive figures such as Song Qingling and Lu Xun, promoting the national salvation movement and opposing Chiang Kai-shek’s dictatorial rule. Through a large number of highly combative essays, Lu Xun mercilessly exposed the comprador-landlord clique’s fawning on foreign powers and dictatorial nature, their shameful policy of non-resistance, and their brutal cultural “encirclement and suppression.” Mao Zedong pointed out: “Lu Xun’s direction is the direction of the new culture of the Chinese nation.”

Left-wing cultural workers also strove to cooperate with the centrist faction in joint struggle. Essays by Lu Xun, Qu Qiubai, Mao Dun, Zhou Yang, and others were published in the literary supplement Free Talk of Shenbao and in the monthly journal Literature. Mao Dun’s celebrated novel Midnight was published in January 1933 and went through four reprints within three months. Communist Party members Xia Yan, Yang Hansheng, Tian Han, and others produced a large number of progressive films that attracted large audiences in the Kuomintang-controlled areas. The momentum of this left-wing cultural development was such that even Kuomintang opinion cried out in alarm that it was “like mercury spilling on the ground, seeping into every crack.”

Inspired by the intense atmosphere of the national salvation movement, “The March of the Volunteers,” composed by Nie Er with lyrics by Tian Han, spread rapidly across the land as soon as it appeared, becoming the most powerful voice of the era and playing an enormous role in mobilizing the people to rise up in resistance against Japan and save the nation. “The Chinese nation has reached its most dangerous moment; every person is forced to let out his final roar…” This song, stirring to the soul and etched in the heart, expressed the pent-up grief and indignation of the entire nation, ignited the intense patriotic passion of every Chinese person, sang out the heroic spirit of defending the motherland to the death, and became an immortal masterpiece of the great spirit of patriotism.

The left-wing cultural movement in the Kuomintang-controlled areas during this period forged a strong revolutionary cultural force and played an important role in promoting the national salvation movement.

The Failure of the Fifth Anti-“Encirclement and Suppression” Campaign

In January 1931, under the direct intervention of Mif, secretary of the Far East Bureau of the Executive Committee of the Communist International, the enlarged Fourth Plenary Session of the Sixth Central Committee was convened in Shanghai. Wang Ming, who lacked practical combat experience, was not only co-opted as a Central Committee member but also became a member of the Central Political Bureau, and the “left” deviationist dogmatism represented by Wang Ming began a four-year domination of the Party’s leading organs.

After the plenum, a series of extraordinary situations arose in the Party’s work in the Kuomintang-controlled areas, and party organizations suffered serious damage. Central Committee members and Political Bureau members in Shanghai had already fallen below half their number. At the proposal of the Far East Bureau of the Executive Committee of the Communist International, a Provisional Central Political Bureau (Provisional Central Committee) was established in the second half of September 1931, with Bo Gu (Qin Bangxian) bearing overall responsibility.

At the end of 1932, Chiang Kai-shek mobilized more than 30 divisions to launch the fourth “encirclement and suppression” campaign against the Central Revolutionary Base Area. At this time, under the domination of dogmatist errors, Mao Zedong’s correct proposals were criticized and his leadership positions in the Red Army were erroneously removed. Zhou Enlai and Zhu De applied and developed the successful experience of previous anti-“encirclement and suppression” campaigns to break the Kuomintang army’s “encirclement and suppression,” creating a model of large-formation ambush warfare in the history of Red Army warfare.

In the second half of 1933, Chiang Kai-shek launched the fifth “encirclement and suppression” campaign against the revolutionary base areas, mobilizing one million troops to attack Red Army forces in various localities, with 500,000 of those troops beginning their offensive against the Central Revolutionary Base Area in late September.

At this time, Bo Gu handed over military command to Li De, a military adviser sent by the Communist International. They were unfamiliar with China’s actual conditions, mechanically applied the experience of regular positional warfare, advocated “keeping the enemy outside the gates,” and after suffering setbacks in the offensive, adopted a strategic guideline of passive defense and the tactic of “short, sharp thrusts,” fighting positional warfare and fortress warfare against a well-equipped enemy, causing the Red Army to fall increasingly into a passive position.

In mid-to-late April 1934, Kuomintang forces concentrated their strength to attack Guangchang, the northern gateway of the Central Soviet Area. Due to errors in tactics and strategy, after 18 days of bloody fighting, the Red Army suffered heavy casualties and Guangchang fell.

In order to draw away and pin down the enemy and relieve pressure on the Central Revolutionary Base Area, in early July the Seventh Red Army Corps was reorganized into the Northern Expedition Anti-Japanese Vanguard and dispatched to operate in the Fujian-Zhejiang-Anhui-Jiangxi border area. After joining up with the Tenth Red Army led by Fang Zhimin, it was reorganized into the Tenth Red Army Corps. Under heavy pursuit and interception by Kuomintang forces, the Tenth Red Army Corps suffered severe losses in late January 1935. After being captured, Fang Zhimin was heroically executed in August. While in prison, he wrote immortal works including My Beloved China and Clean and Honest. He not only made the solemn pledge that “the enemy can only cut off our heads, but can never shake our faith,” but also described his hopes for the future: “China will certainly have a praiseworthy and bright future,” and “the mother who gave birth to us will also be adorned most beautifully, joining hands as equals with all the other mothers of the world.”

The Central Red Army Begins the Long March

In early September 1934, Kuomintang forces intensified their offensive into the heartland of the Central Revolutionary Base Area, and it was no longer possible for the Red Army to reverse the military situation in place. In October, the CPC Central Committee and the Central Revolutionary Military Commission led the main force of the Central Red Army—more than 86,000 men—onto the long journey of strategic relocation, beginning an unprecedented feat in world history.

The Central Committee leaders who had previously implemented “left” deviationist errors committed the error of flight-ism in retreat when carrying out this breakout and strategic relocation, and turned the strategic relocation into a household-moving operation, bringing along heavy equipment such as printing machines and military-industrial machinery. More than 80,000 men of the entire army marched along narrow mountain paths, hopelessly congested, often covering only one mountain pass in an entire night.

The Kuomintang “pursuit and suppression” forces comprised 16 divisions and 77 regiments, and set up four lines of blockade. When breaking through the fourth blockade line at the Xiang River, the Red Army suffered enormous casualties under the combined attack of the Kuomintang’s Hunan and Guangxi armies. The 34th Division, which was tasked with providing cover, had been reduced to fewer than 1,000 men and became an isolated force trapped behind enemy lines with no way to cross the river. Facing an enemy more than ten times its own strength, division commander Chen Shuxiang was full of courage and utterly fearless. He led the entire division in fierce resistance, using flesh and blood to build a “wall,” fighting the enemy for four days and five nights and winning precious time for the Red Army to cross the Xiang River. After being seriously wounded and captured, as the enemy was carrying him away to claim credit, he regained consciousness, tore out his own intestines, and died a heroic death. The 34th Division and the 18th Regiment of the Third Red Army Corps, cut off on the eastern bank of the Xiang River, ultimately ran out of ammunition and food, and the majority died heroic deaths. The blood of the martyrs dyed the Xiang River red, giving rise to a saying among the local people: “For three years, do not drink the water of the Xiang River; for ten years, do not eat the fish of the Xiang River.” After crossing the Xiang River, the Central Red Army’s strength had plummeted from more than 86,000 men at the start of the Long March to more than 30,000 men.

After the Battle of the Xiang River, fierce debate continued within the Party over the direction of advance for the Central Red Army. In December 1934, the Central Political Bureau held a conference at Liping in Guizhou and, based on Mao Zedong’s proposal, passed a resolution abandoning the plan to join up with the Second and Sixth Red Army Corps in northwestern Hunan and instead advancing toward northern Guizhou. On January 7, 1935, the Red Army captured Zunyi, a key town in northern Guizhou. A turning point that would determine the fate of the Party and the Red Army was at hand.

V. The Zunyi Conference and the Victory of the Red Army’s Long March

The Zunyi Conference Achieves a Great Historic Turning Point

In January 1935, the Party Central Committee convened an enlarged conference of the Political Bureau in Zunyi, Guizhou, to concentrate on resolving the military and organizational questions that were of decisive significance at the time. The conference co-opted Mao Zedong as a member of the Standing Committee of the Central Political Bureau, entrusted Zhang Wentian with drafting the Resolution of the Central Committee on the Summary of the Struggle Against the Enemy’s Fifth “Encirclement and Suppression” Campaign, and abolished the “Three-Man Group” that had been established before the Long March.[1] Shortly after the conference, while advancing toward the Zhaxi area of Yunnan, the Standing Committee of the Central Political Bureau decided that Zhang Wentian would replace Bo Gu in bearing overall responsibility, and that Mao Zedong would serve as an assistant to Zhou Enlai in military command. Subsequently, a three-person group composed of Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, and Wang Jiaxiang was established to take charge of the entire army’s military operations.

The Zunyi Conference was a turning point of life-and-death significance in the Party’s history. Convened at the critical juncture of the Red Army’s failure in the fifth anti-“encirclement and suppression” campaign and severe setbacks in the early stages of the Long March, the conference in effect established Mao Zedong’s leadership position in the Party Central Committee and the Red Army, began to establish the leading position of the correct Marxist line represented primarily by Mao Zedong within the Party Central Committee, and began to form the first-generation central

★ Site of the Zunyi Conference

leadership collective with Mao Zedong at its core. It opened a new stage in which the Party independently and autonomously resolved the practical problems of the Chinese revolution, and at the most critical moment saved the Party, saved the Red Army, and saved the Chinese revolution. The defining characteristics of the Zunyi Conference were: upholding truth, correcting errors, establishing the correct leadership of the Party Central Committee, and creatively formulating and implementing strategies and tactics suited to the characteristics of the Chinese revolution.

After the Zunyi Conference, the Central Red Army, under the command of Mao Zedong and others, flexibly shifted its operational direction in response to changing actual conditions, maneuvering and weaving between the enemy’s heavy forces. From late January to late March 1935, the Red Army crossed the Chishui River four times. In late March, it crossed south over the Wu River and feinted an attack on Guiyang. Chiang Kai-shek, who was personally directing operations in Guiyang, urgently called in Yunnan army forces for reinforcement. The moment the Yunnan forces were drawn away, the Red Army immediately made a bold dash toward Yunnan, with its spearhead pointing directly at Kunming. The Yunnan authorities urgently deployed forces to defend Kunming, weakening the defenses along the Jinsha River. The Red Army then suddenly turned north and crossed the Jinsha River in early May.

At this point, the Central Red Army had shaken off the pursuit and interception of hundreds of thousands of Kuomintang troops, smashed Chiang Kai-shek’s plan to encircle and annihilate the Red Army in the Sichuan-Guizhou-Yunnan border area, and achieved a victory of decisive significance in the strategic relocation. This victory was achieved after the change in the Central Committee’s military leadership, fully demonstrating Mao Zedong’s superb art of military command.

The Red Army’s Northward March and the Grand Rendezvous of the Three Armies

After the Central Red Army crossed the Jinsha River, it continued to march north. Upon entering the Yi ethnic group’s inhabited area of the Greater Liangshan Mountains, Chief of the General Staff Liu Bocheng swore a blood oath of brotherhood with Xiao Yedan, the leader of the Yi Guoji clan, and the Red Army passed smoothly through the Yi area and reached the Anshunchang crossing on the southern bank of the Dadu River. The Anshunchang area, with its swift currents and steep mountains, was the place where Shi Dakai of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom had failed to cross northward and met his final destruction. A portion of the Red Army, led by 17 brave soldiers, successfully forced a crossing. But it was still impossible for the main force to cross the river quickly at this location. Before the enemy had time to destroy the Luding Bridge upstream on the Dadu River, the main force covered 340 li in two days and made straight for the Luding Bridge. A shock force of 22 soldiers, braving the enemy’s dense fire, climbed along the iron chains of the bridge and charged across the Luding Bridge, and the Central Red Army successfully crossed the natural barrier of the Dadu River.

After crossing the river, the Central Red Army climbed over the first great snow mountain on the Long March that was rarely visited by human beings—Jiajin Mountain. This mountain, located south of Maogong (present-day Xiaojin), stands at an altitude of more than 4,000 meters; the ascent and descent together cover 70 li, and the high-altitude oxygen deficiency claimed the lives of many Red Army soldiers on the march.

After the Central Red Army joined forces with the Fourth Front Army of the Red Army in the Maogong area, a conference of the Central Political Bureau was convened at Lianghekou in June to determine the next course of action, deciding that the Red Army would concentrate its main force to advance northward and establish a Sichuan-Shaanxi-Gansu revolutionary base area. Before long, however, Zhang Guotao put forward a guideline of advancing south into Sichuan and Xikang, casting a shadow over the prospects following the rendezvous of the two armies.

In early August, the First and Fourth Front Armies were mixed together and reorganized into left and right columns to march north. Mao Zedong, Zhang Wentian, Zhou Enlai, and others led the Central Committee organs and the forward command headquarters with the right column. Zhu De, Zhang Guotao, Liu Bocheng, and others led the Red Army General Headquarters with the left column. On August 21, the right column set out from Mao’ergai and crossed the vast, uninhabited grasslands, waiting for the left column to come and join up.

At this time, Zhang Guotao, relying on his superior numbers and strength, openly contested power with the Party, put forward various pretexts for refusing to march north, and demanded that the right column march south. On September 9, he telegraphed Chen Changhao, political commissar of the right column, ordering the column to march south and “thoroughly develop the intra-party struggle.” Upon learning of this situation, Mao Zedong urgently consulted with Zhou Enlai, Zhang Wentian, Bo Gu, and Wang Jiaxiang, and decided to lead the First and Third Red Armies[2] and the Military Commission column northward that very night. The Party Central Committee repeatedly telegraphed Zhang Guotao demanding that he immediately lead his forces north, but Zhang Guotao paid no heed.

On September 12, the Central Political Bureau convened an enlarged conference at Ejie (present-day Gaoji Village) in Diebu County, Gansu, passed a resolution on Zhang Guotao’s errors, and renamed the northward-marching Red Army the “Shaanxi-Gansu Detachment.”

The vanguard of the Shaanxi-Gansu Detachment broke through the natural stronghold of Lazikou on the Sichuan-Gansu border in a single assault on September 17 and occupied Hadapu the following day. There, Mao Zedong and others learned from newspapers that there was a sizable base area and Red Army activity in northern Shaanxi. At just this moment, the 25th Red Army, which had set out on the Long March from the Hubei-Henan-Anhui base area in November 1934, arrived at the Shaanxi-Gansu base area and joined forces with the local 26th and 27th Red Armies, which were merged into the 15th Red Army Corps. They broke the enemy’s heavy “encirclement and suppression” campaign, creating conditions for the Party Central Committee to establish the main base of the Chinese revolution in the northwest. On September 27, the Standing Committee of the Central Political Bureau convened a meeting at Bangluo Town and formally decided to proceed to northern Shaanxi. Shortly thereafter, the Shaanxi-Gansu Detachment successfully crossed the main peak of the Liupan Mountains, and Mao Zedong composed the Qingpingle · Liupan Mountains lyric: “Today the long cord is in our hands; when shall we bind fast the grey dragon?” This expressed the Red Army’s indomitable and dauntless revolutionary spirit.

On October 19, the Shaanxi-Gansu Detachment arrived at Wuqi Town in northern Shaanxi. At this point, the Long March of the Central Red Army’s main force—covering 25,000 li and traversing 11 provinces—came to a victorious conclusion. As the Long March of the Central Red Army’s main force was about to conclude in victory, Mao Zedong composed the Seven-Character Regulated Verse · The Long March, artistically and vividly expressing the indomitable and heroic spirit and revolutionary optimism of the Red Army soldiers. “The Red Army fears not the trials of the Long March, treating ten thousand crags and torrents as nothing at all.” “More joyful still, the Minshan Mountains’ thousand li of snow: after the three armies have passed, all faces glow.”

The Shaanxi-Gansu base area was the only intact revolutionary base area remaining in the entire country in the later period of the Land Revolution War. It provided a foothold for the Party Central Committee and the various Red Army forces at the conclusion of the Long March, and provided a point of departure for the main force of the Eighth Route Army—reorganized from the Red Army after the outbreak of the nationwide War of Resistance Against Japan—to advance to the anti-Japanese front. After the Shaanxi-Gansu Detachment arrived in northern Shaanxi, the designation of the First Front Army was restored, and the 15th Red Army Corps was incorporated into the First Front Army’s order of battle. From February to July 1936, the First Front Army successively conducted the Eastern Expedition and the Western Expedition, expanding the Shaanxi-Gansu base area into the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia base area.

In October 1935, Zhang Guotao, who opposed the northward march and insisted on marching south, openly established a rival “Central Committee” and appointed himself “chairman.” The Party Central Committee repeatedly telegraphed Zhang Guotao, ordering him to immediately dissolve the rival “Central Committee” and cease all anti-party activities. Zhang Guotao’s anti-party and splittist behavior was also unpopular within the Fourth Front Army. Moreover, the Fourth Front Army forces that had marched south again suffered more than fifty percent casualties in combat. In June 1936, Zhang Guotao was compelled to dissolve the rival “Central Committee.”

The Second and Sixth Red Army Corps, originally led by Ren Bishi, He Long, and others in the Hunan-Hubei-Sichuan-Guizhou base area, set out from Sangzhi in November 1935, overcame every hardship, and joined forces with the Fourth Front Army at Ganzi in early July 1936. The Party Central Committee designated the Second and Sixth Red Army Corps, together with the 32nd Red Army, to be merged into the Second Front Army of the Red Army, with He Long as commander-in-chief and Ren Bishi as political commissar.

Through the strenuous efforts of Zhu De, Liu Bocheng, Ren Bishi, He Long, and others, and with the support of many cadres and soldiers of the Fourth Front Army including Xu Xiangqian, the Fourth and Second Front Armies finally marched north together. On October 9, the headquarters of the Fourth Front Army arrived at Huining in Gansu and joined forces with the First Front Army. On October 22, the headquarters of the Second Front Army arrived at Jiangtaibao in Longde, Gansu (now part of the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region), and joined forces with the First Front Army. At this point, the three main Red Army forces had achieved their grand rendezvous in victory.

The Long March of the Chinese Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army was a great expedition of ideals and convictions, a great expedition that tested truth, a great expedition that awakened the masses, and a great expedition that opened up a new landscape. The victory of the Long March fully demonstrated that the Communist Party of China and the Chinese Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army it led were an invincible force.

On the 25,000-li journey of the First Front Army, on average one Red Army soldier was sacrificed for every 300 meters. “Revolutionary ideals are higher than heaven.” The suffering, setbacks, and death along the Long March tested the ideals and convictions of the Chinese Communists, proving to the world that the ideals and convictions of the Chinese Communists are indestructible. The heroic Red Army soldiers fought more than 600 battles and engagements against the enemy, crossed nearly 100 rivers, and climbed more than 40 high mountains and dangerous peaks, including more than 20 snow-capped mountains above 4,000 meters in altitude, and traversed the vast grasslands known as the “death trap.” While crossing the great snow mountains, one comrade froze to death wearing thin, worn-out clothing. The commander called for the supply officer to be brought forward, wanting to ask why this frozen comrade had not been issued a padded jacket. A comrade in the ranks told him with tears in his eyes that the comrade who had frozen to death was the supply officer himself. The officer in charge of clothing and supplies had rather frozen to death himself than take a warmer garment for himself first. It was precisely because of such lofty ideological character that the Red Army overcame unprecedented difficulties, conquered the limits of human survival through indomitable will, and created a man-made miracle that shook heaven and earth.

The victory of the Long March greatly promoted the Party’s political and ideological maturity. The Party came to a further understanding that only by combining the basic principles of Marxism with the concrete realities of the Chinese revolution, and independently and autonomously resolving the major questions of the Chinese revolution, could the revolutionary cause be led to victory. This was a truth arrived at through lessons paid for in blood and the tests of struggle. Tempered through the Long March, the Party continued to mature ideologically, achieving an unprecedented unity of the entire Party and the Red Army on the basis of pursuing and upholding truth.

The Red Army’s Long March ended with our victory and the enemy’s defeat. It fully demonstrated the power of the Communist Party of China’s nature and purpose, propagandized the Party’s propositions, sowed the seeds of revolution, and expanded the influence of the Party and the Red Army. The Red Army received enthusiastic support from the people’s masses along the march. When passing through Shazhou Village in Rucheng County, Hunan, three female Red Army soldiers stayed overnight at the home of an elderly woman named Xu Jiexiu. When they left, they cut their only blanket in half and left it for the old woman. The old woman said: “What is the Communist Party? The Communist Party is people who, even when they have only one blanket, will cut it in half to give to the common people.” The story of “half a blanket” helped the people’s masses come to know the Communist Party and regard the Party as one of their own.

The victory of the Long March was the key to turning the Chinese revolution from danger to safety. Mao Zedong once vividly pointed out: “The Long March is the first of its kind in the annals of history. The Long March is a manifesto, the Long March is a propaganda force, the Long March is a seeding machine.” It proclaimed the complete failure of the Kuomintang reactionaries’ scheme to annihilate the Communist Party of China and the Red Army, proclaimed that the Communist Party of China and the Red Army, bearing the hopes of the nation, had victoriously accomplished the strategic relocation of marching north to resist Japan, achieved the great turning point of the Communist Party of China and the Chinese revolutionary cause from setback to victory, and opened a new great advance by the Communist Party of China in its struggle for national independence and the liberation of the people. Although the number of Red Army soldiers preserved after the Long March was not large, they were the Party’s most precious essence, forming the backbone that subsequently led the nationwide War of Resistance Against Japan and the People’s Liberation War.

The Long March forged the great Long March Spirit. This spirit consists of: placing the fundamental interests of the people of the whole country and the Chinese nation above all else, steadfastly holding to revolutionary ideals and convictions, and believing with certainty that a just cause will inevitably triumph; the spirit of fearing no hardship or obstacle and being willing to pay any sacrifice in order to save the nation and the people; the spirit of upholding independence and autonomy, seeking truth from facts, and proceeding from reality in all things; the spirit of taking the overall landscape into account, strictly observing discipline, and maintaining close unity; and the spirit of relying closely on the people’s masses, sharing life and death with the people’s masses, sharing weal and woe, and engaging in arduous struggle. The Long March Spirit has provided a powerful spiritual driving force for the Chinese revolution to advance continuously from victory to victory.

In late October 1936, in order to open up a supply route from the Soviet Union, a portion of the Fourth Front Army of the Red Army, acting on orders from the Central Revolutionary Military Commission, crossed the Yellow River westward in preparation for executing the Ningxia Campaign plan. On November 11, the river-crossing forces were designated the Western Route Army in accordance with a Central Committee decision. The Western Route Army soldiers, who had penetrated deep into the Hexi Corridor, fought heroically for four months under extremely difficult conditions, annihilating more than 20,000 enemy troops, but ultimately suffered a catastrophic defeat in March 1937 due to being vastly outnumbered, their blood soaking the Qilian Mountains. The heroic spirit of the Western Route Army in facing hardship without fear and fighting to the last drop of blood, and the spirit of heroic sacrifice for the Party and the people, are of one lineage with the Long March Spirit and have become an important component of the red genes of the Chinese Communists and the precious spirit of the Chinese nation.

▶ A Brief History of the Communist Party of China Chapter Two

The Southern Red Army Guerrilla War and the Struggle of the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army

When the Central Red Army’s main force withdrew from the base areas, the Party Central Committee decided to establish the Soviet Area Central Sub-Bureau and the Central Military Region, with Xiang Ying as secretary of the sub-bureau and concurrently commander and political commissar of the military region. At the same time, an office of the Provisional Central Government of the Chinese Soviet Republic was established, with Chen Yi as its director.

The approximately 16,000 Red Army troops and guerrilla forces remaining in the base areas, under the leadership of Xiang Ying and Chen Yi, coordinated with and covered the strategic relocation of the main Red Army forces, then dispersed to break out of encirclement and carry out guerrilla warfare. Due to the vast disparity in strength, they suffered heavy losses. The Soviet Area Central Sub-Bureau continued to persist in leading and carrying out guerrilla warfare in the Fujian-Jiangxi border area and the western Fujian area. In late March 1935, Xiang Ying, Chen Yi, and others led approximately 300 men to the Jiangxi-Guangdong border area, where they persisted in arduous guerrilla warfare centered on Youshan. During this period, Chen Yi wrote: “To throw oneself into the revolution is to make it one’s home; the storms of blood and wind must have their end. To die for righteousness is today’s task; the flowers of freedom will bloom throughout the world.” This expressed the revolutionary will and spirit of the Communists to remain steadfastly committed and never give up in the face of an extraordinarily difficult struggle.

At the same time, in northern Fujian, eastern Fujian, central Fujian, the Fujian-Guangdong border area, Anhui-Zhejiang-Jiangxi, southern Zhejiang, southern Hunan, Hunan-Hubei-Jiangxi, Hunan-Jiangxi, the Hubei-Henan-Anhui border area, the Hubei-Henan border area, and Qiongya, party organizations and Red Army guerrilla forces also relied closely on the masses and carried out heroic and tenacious guerrilla struggles.

During the three years of guerrilla warfare in southern China, many cadres and soldiers who remained to persist in the struggle—including He Shuheng, He Chang, Mao Zetan, Wan Yongcheng, Gu Bo, and Ruan Xiaoxian—died heroic deaths. After being captured, Qu Qiubai remained steadfast and unyielding. Before being escorted to the execution ground, he wrote with composure: “When the smoke and clouds before my eyes have all passed, it is precisely where I roam at ease.” Arriving at a grassy clearing on Luohan Ridge, he looked around, sat down cross-legged, and said to the executioner: “This place is just right. Open fire!” Qu Qiubai, only 36 years old, went calmly to his death, demonstrating the dauntless spirit of the Chinese Communists who face death with equanimity.

After the September 18th Incident, the Communist Party of China actively organized and led armed anti-Japanese struggles in the three northeastern provinces. Beginning in September 1933, the CPC Manchuria Provincial Committee successively reorganized the anti-Japanese guerrilla forces under Party leadership into the Northeast People’s Revolutionary Army. In February 1936, the Northeast People’s Revolutionary Army and the various anti-Japanese guerrilla forces led or influenced by the Party were successively reorganized into the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army.

The Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army opened up three major guerrilla zones in southeastern Manchuria, northern Manchuria, and eastern Jilin. By the time the nationwide War of Resistance Against Japan broke out in 1937, it had developed into 11 armies with a total strength of more than 30,000 men. Operating across a vast area stretching from the Changbai Mountains in the south to the Lesser Khingan Mountains in the north, from the Ussuri River in the east to the eastern bank of the Liao River in the west, they carried out guerrilla warfare and fought thousands of large and small battles against Japanese and puppet forces, smashing the enemy’s repeated “punitive campaigns.” Their heroic struggle dealt a powerful blow to Japan’s colonial rule in China’s northeast, tied down large numbers of Japanese troops, and supported and inspired the nationwide anti-Japanese national salvation movement.

Within the ranks of this heroic Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army, countless moving heroes and heroic deeds emerged. In August 1936, Zhao Yiman, only 31 years old, wrote in her final letter to her son before her execution: “My dearest child! Your mother will not use a thousand words to educate you, but will educate you through her actions. When you have grown up, I hope you will not forget that your mother sacrificed her life for the nation!” Zhao Yiman’s noble character of “pledging to serve the people, not the family” vividly embodies the great Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army Spirit.

VI. The Struggle to Establish the Anti-Japanese National United Front

The December 9th Movement and the New High Tide of the National Salvation Movement

After occupying the northeast, the Japanese aggressors intensified their contest for North China. In mid-June 1935, under Japanese coercion, the Kuomintang’s “Central Army” withdrew from Beiping, Tianjin, and Hebei, and the whole of North China was in imminent peril. Students in Beiping cried out in grief and indignation: “North China is so vast, yet there is no longer room for a quiet desk!”

Under the leadership of the CPC underground organization, students in Beiping held a massive anti-Japanese demonstration on December 9, 1935, which was suppressed by Kuomintang military police. The December 9th Movement that began with this event rapidly spread throughout the country. Students and workers in many major cities threw themselves into the national salvation movement. Patriotic figures and organizations in Shanghai and elsewhere established national salvation associations of all circles, demanding an end to the civil war and the dispatch of troops to resist Japan. The anti-Japanese national salvation struggle developed into a nationwide mass movement.

In late December, under the Party’s leadership, the Beiping Student Federation organized a southward propaganda corps of Beiping and Tianjin students to carry out anti-Japanese propaganda in the rural areas of Hebei, taking the path of integrating with workers and peasants. Building on the foundation of the propaganda corps, the Chinese National Liberation Vanguard was established in early February 1936, rapidly growing to more than 20,000 members and playing an important role in uniting the broad youth and promoting the national salvation movement.

The December 9th Movement exposed Japan’s scheme to annex North China and then monopolize China, struck a blow against the Kuomintang’s policy of capitulation and retreat, greatly promoted the awakening of the Chinese nation, and marked the arrival of a new high tide in the Chinese people’s national salvation movement.

The Formulation of the Anti-Japanese National United Front Strategy and the Peaceful Resolution of the Xi’an Incident

The rise of a new nationwide high tide in the anti-Japanese national salvation movement indicated that China was on the eve of a great political transformation. The historical mission of bringing together all the forces demanding resistance against Japan to form an anti-Japanese national united front to jointly resist the foreign enemy fell upon the Communist Party of China.

On August 1, 1935, the CPC delegation to the Communist International drafted the Declaration to All Compatriots on Resisting Japan and Saving the Nation by the Chinese Soviet Government and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (the August 1st Declaration), which was publicly released shortly thereafter. The declaration advocated an end to the civil war, the organization of a national defense government and an anti-Japanese allied army, and combat against Japan.

In December, the Central Political Bureau convened an enlarged conference at Wayaobao in northern Shaanxi and passed the Resolution of the CPC Central Committee on the Current Political Situation and the Party’s Tasks. Two days later, Mao Zedong delivered a report titled On Tactics Against Japanese Imperialism at a conference of party activists. The Wayaobao Conference resolution and Mao Zedong’s report explicitly put forward the Party’s basic strategic task of building a broad anti-Japanese national united front, and criticized the erroneous tendencies of “left” adventurism and closed-doorism that had long existed within the Party.

After the Wayaobao Conference, the Party took concrete measures to advance the rising tide of the anti-Japanese national salvation movement. At the end of 1935, the Party Central Committee dispatched Liu Shaoqi to North China to restore, reorganize, and rebuild party organizations in various parts of North China, rapidly opening up a new landscape of work.

In the first half of 1936, the Party Central Committee and the CPC delegation to the Communist International successively dispatched Feng Xuefeng and Pan Hannian to Shanghai to reestablish contact with the party organizations there and actively carry out united front work. In May, patriotic figures Song Qingling, Shen Junru, Zou Taofen, Tao Xingzhi, Zhang Naiqi, and others initiated the establishment of the National Salvation Association of All Circles, advocating “an end to the civil war and united resistance against Japan.”

At the same time, the Party’s united front work with the Northeast Army headed by Zhang Xueliang and the 17th Route Army headed by Yang Hucheng, both stationed in the northwest, achieved a breakthrough. By the first half of 1936, the Red Army and the Northeast Army and 17th Route Army had in practice ceased hostile operations against each other.

However, Chiang Kai-shek’s guideline of “pacifying the interior before resisting foreign aggression” had not fundamentally changed. On December 4, 1936, Chiang Kai-shek personally traveled to Xi’an to pressure Zhang Xueliang and Yang Hucheng into leading their forces to “suppress the Communists.” After their demand for resistance against Japan was rejected by Chiang Kai-shek, Zhang Xueliang and Yang Hucheng, in the early morning of December 12, carried out a “military remonstrance,” detaining Chiang Kai-shek and issuing a nationwide telegram putting forward eight demands including an end to the civil war and united resistance against Japan. This was the Xi’an Incident, which shocked China and the world.

After the incident occurred, Zhang Xueliang telegraphed the CPC Central Committee that very night. The Party Central Committee dispatched Zhou Enlai, who arrived in Xi’an on December 17. After clarifying the situation, the Party Central Committee, placing the overall landscape of the Chinese nation’s united resistance against Japan above all else, independently and autonomously determined the guideline of resolving the Xi’an Incident through peaceful means. Accordingly, Zhou Enlai, together with Zhang Xueliang and Yang Hucheng, worked jointly and through negotiations compelled Chiang Kai-shek to make the commitment to “cease the suppression of the Communists and unite with the Red Army to resist Japan.”

The peaceful resolution of the Xi’an Incident became the pivot of a transformation in the political situation, and played an important role in promoting the establishment of the anti-Japanese national united front based on cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party. From that point on, the decade-long civil war essentially came to an end and domestic peace was preliminarily achieved. Under the premise of resisting Japan, the second cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party had become an irresistible tendency of the broader situation.

Summing Up Historical Experience and Strengthening Self-Building

At the turning point when the course of the Chinese revolution and Kuomintang-Communist Party relations were about to undergo major changes, the CPC Central Committee vigorously strengthened the Party’s own building, especially its ideological and theoretical construction.

After the Red Army’s Long March arrived in northern Shaanxi, Mao Zedong and the CPC Central Committee devoted great effort to theoretical construction work. In December 1935, Mao Zedong’s report On Tactics Against Japanese Imperialism expounded the Party’s new policy of the anti-Japanese national united front and systematically explained the various questions of the Party’s political tactics. In December 1936, his work Problems of Strategy in China’s Revolutionary War summarized the great debates within the Party on military questions during the Land Revolution War and systematically explained the various questions concerning the strategy of China’s revolutionary war. In the summer of 1937, in his two important philosophical works embodying the theoretical achievements of the Sinicization of Marxism—On Practice and On Contradiction—he drew on the heights of Marxist epistemology and dialectics to expose and criticize the subjectivist errors, especially dogmatist errors, that had long existed within the Party, expounded the Party’s Marxist ideological line, and formed a Marxist philosophical thought with a distinctly Chinese character, arming the Chinese Communists ideologically and theoretically. These rich fruits of theoretical construction greatly advanced the process of the Sinicization of Marxism and made the political and ideological preparations for welcoming the arrival of the great nationwide War of Resistance Against Japan.

The Party also paid attention to strengthening organizational construction. In accordance with the spirit of the Wayaobao Conference, the Party overcame closed-doorism, paid attention to developing party members, established and improved party organizations at all levels, and enabled the Party’s organizations and the ranks of party members to develop and grow.

In May 1937, the CPC Central Committee successively convened the Party’s Soviet Area Representatives’ Conference and the Party’s White Area Representatives’ Conference, further summing up historical experience and clarifying the Party’s tasks during the period of resistance against Japan. The Party’s construction in all respects got onto a track of healthy development, laying a solid ideological, political, and organizational foundation for welcoming the imminent nationwide War of Resistance Against Japan.

The ten years from the failure of the Great Revolution to the eve of the nationwide War of Resistance Against Japan was an important period in which the Communist Party of China persisted in struggle under extremely difficult conditions and reached political maturity. During this period, the Party twice endured severe tests: once with the failure of the Great Revolution, and once with the failure of the fifth anti-“encirclement and suppression” campaign. Both failures caused the Party’s strength to be greatly weakened and brought it to the brink of destruction. Yet the outstanding members of the Communist Party of China, in an environment of danger that ordinary people could scarcely imagine, consistently demonstrated a revolutionary optimism full of confidence in the future and an indomitable tenacity, calmly responding to adversity, working with their heads down, and miraculously passing through the darkest moments to open up a new landscape.

The historical experience of these ten years proved that the strength of the Chinese Communists came from combining the universal truths of Marxism with the concrete realities of the Chinese revolution, standing firmly together with the vast majority of the people of the whole country, and upholding the principles of seeking truth from facts, the mass line, and independence and autonomy. During these ten years, although the Party several times committed errors of rash adventurism in its guiding ideology, causing the revolutionary cause to suffer serious setbacks, the Party ultimately relied on its own strength to overcome these errors. It was precisely for this reason that the Party was able, amid the complex and intertwined situation of national contradictions and domestic class contradictions, to adopt correct guidelines to preserve the main revolutionary achievements of the Land Revolution War period and advance toward the new historical period of the nationwide War of Resistance Against Japan.

[1] In preparation for the strategic relocation of the Central Red Army’s main force, the CPC Central Committee had established in the summer of 1934 a “Three-Man Group” composed of Bo Gu, Li De, and Zhou Enlai.

[1] 中共中央为准备中央红军主力战略转移，曾在1934年夏成立由博古、李德和周恩来组成的”三人团”。

[2] At that time, the First, Third, Fifth, and Ninth Army Corps of the First Front Army were renamed the First, Third, Fifth, and 32nd Armies respectively.

[2] 当时红一方面军的第一、三、五、九军团分别改称红一、三、五、三十二军。

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