Long March

Also called: Zunyi Conference, Chang Zheng

Driven from its base at Ruijin in Jiangxi by Nationalist encirclement campaigns, the Communist Red Army walked about 12,000 km over a year from October 1934 to northern Shaanxi; along the way Mao Zedong took the leadership.

After the Shanghai coup the Communists built rural bases and in 1931 proclaimed a Chinese Soviet Republic at Ruijin. Chiang Kai-shek, following the policy of “first internal pacification, then external resistance”, launched five encirclement campaigns, and in October 1934 about 86,000 Red Army troops abandoned the base and broke out westward.

After heavy losses crossing the Xiang River, a party conference at Zunyi in Guizhou in January 1935 criticized the existing military leadership and brought Mao Zedong into the leading group. Crossing the Luding Bridge over the Dadu River, snow-covered ranges and marshland, the army reached northern Shaanxi in October with only a few thousand of those who had set out. In the August First Declaration of 1935 the party called for an end to civil war and joint resistance to Japan, and from 1937 it made Yan’an its base.

The Long March saved the party from annihilation and consolidated a leadership centred on Mao; it also served as propaganda, spreading the revolution to the peasants along its route.