The Triumph of Mao and the CCP, 1934-49 » The Long March, 1934-35

Breaking out of Jiangxi

By the autumn of 1934 the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was in deep trouble. Chiang Kai-shek's fifth Extermination Campaign, with its ring of forts and its slow, steady advance, was squeezing the Jiangxi Soviet. Food and salt were running short, and the Red Army could not win a fight in which it had to hold ground.

The party leaders decided to break out and find a new base. In October 1934 the main Red Army, about 86,000 people, set off from Jiangxi. Almost nobody outside the leadership knew where they were going. The leaders at that time included Zhou Enlai, the military commander Zhu De, the party chief Bo Gu and Otto Braun, an adviser sent by the Comintern (the Soviet-led organisation that backed communist parties abroad). Mao Zedong, who had helped set up the Jiangxi Soviet, had lost control of military planning.

Key terms:

• Long March: the retreat of the main Red Army from Jiangxi to northern Shaanxi, October 1934 to October 1935, covering about 9,000 kilometres.
• Zunyi Conference: the meeting of communist leaders in January 1935 that criticised the old leadership and raised Mao Zedong to a leading role.
• Propaganda: information, often one-sided, spread to win support for a cause.

The first months: heavy losses

The first part of the March went badly. The leaders carried heavy equipment and moved in a long, slow column, which made it easy for Guomindang planes and troops to find and attack. At the Xiang River in late 1934 the Guomindang caught the column as it crossed, and the Red Army lost tens of thousands of people. By the end of the year it was reduced to a fraction of its original size, and morale was low.

The Zunyi Conference, January 1935

In January 1935 the leaders stopped at Zunyi, in Guizhou province, and held a meeting. Bo Gu and Otto Braun were blamed for the defeat in the fifth campaign and for the heavy losses on the March. Mao, who had argued for flexible guerrilla tactics, won support from other leaders, including Zhou Enlai.

The results were important:

• Bo Gu lost the leading role in the party, and Braun lost his influence over the army.
• Mao gained a leading role, especially in deciding military plans. He did not yet hold the top party post, which he took later.
• The army moved in a faster, lighter and more flexible way, avoiding big battles it could not win.

Zunyi is often seen as the point where Mao began to rise to the top of the CCP.

Rivers, mountains and the Luding Bridge

The route kept changing, because the Guomindang tried to cut it off at every turn. The marchers crossed many rivers and mountain ranges, including the Jinsha (the upper Yangzi) in May 1935. They faced hunger, cold, illness and attacks. They also passed through regions where the people were not Han Chinese, and sometimes met hostility.

The most famous moment came in May 1935 at the Dadu River, in Sichuan. The only way across was the Luding Bridge, a chain bridge of iron chains with planks laid across them. The Guomindang had removed many of the planks and had troops waiting at the far end. On 29 May a group of Red Army volunteers is said to have crossed hand over hand along the chains under fire, and taken the bridge. If the Red Army had failed to cross, it would have been trapped between the river and the pursuing forces. Historians disagree about how fierce the fighting really was, and later communist accounts made the story more dramatic. What is clear is that the crossing was vital.

In Sichuan the main force met another communist army, led by Zhang Guotao. The two leaders disagreed about where to go next, and the armies parted. Mao's force went north.

Arrival in Shaanxi, October 1935

In October 1935 Mao's force reached northern Shaanxi, a poor and remote region in the north-west, where a small communist area already existed. Only a small fraction of the original marchers arrived: fewer than 10,000 of the 86,000 who had left Jiangxi. Some had died, some had been left behind to fight or hide, and some had deserted. Other Red Army groups made their own marches, which ended in 1936, but this lesson follows the main force. The leaders later moved to Yan'an, which became the communist base from 1937. It was far from Chiang's main strength, and hard for the Guomindang to attack.

Why the Long March mattered

It is important to see both sides. The March was a retreat, forced on the communists by defeat, and it cost them most of their army and their Jiangxi base. But it left them alive, and it left Mao stronger than before.

Change and continuity

Common mistakes

Exam-style question

Explain TWO ways in which the position of the Communists in northern Shaanxi at the end of 1935 was different from their position in Jiangxi in 1933. [6 marks]