Most Significant Events In The History Of The Chinese Communist Party

As one of the most significant events in the history of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the Long March was a victory for the Communists. The Chinese civil war between the CCP and the Nationalist Party broke out in 1927. In the period of 1931 and 1934, under the control of Chiang Kai-shek, the Nationalist government launched a series of five military attacks designed to wipe out the forces of the CCP. The Communists successfully beat back the first four attacks; however, during the fifth attack, the CCP was overwhelmed by the military alliance of the Nationalists and German troop. The Communists decided to break out the encirclement, and the Long March began on October 16, 1934. The historian Arthur Lewis Rosenbaum among others argues that

In 1921, the Chinese Communist Party was founded, and set up the Chinese Soviet Republic ten years later in Jiangxi province. The then leader was Zhu De, who abolished Mao Zedong’s position in the Political Bureau. Zhu De was one of the returned students; they were a group of young abroad students trained in Moscow. Zhu indiscriminately imitated the knowledge he learned from the socialist revolution in Moscow, and applied to the Chinese revolution, which led to the most sobering defeats of the CCP during the civil war, and the Red Army was forced to reposition. In 1935, the Political Bureau held an enlarged meeting at Zunyi to discuss lessons from the retreat and where to head next. The resolutions adopted by the meeting, which pointed to the Zhu De’s tactical mistakes of conventional warfare as opposed to Mao’s more mobile warfare with small units. And Mao was elected to the leader of the Political Bureau of the CCP. The historian David Pong observes that this conference during the Long March confirms Mao’s leadership in the Chinese Communist Party, and also his views of guerrilla warfare, which is proven to be a great strategic thinking for the Red Army, later in the Chinese civil war and World War II (Pong, 23). Mao Zedong used the Long March to retake his important position in the CCP, and implemented his mobile

As early as in 1927, Mao Zedong wrote a report about the importance of peasant movement in China. “In a very short time, in China’s central……several hundred million peasants will rise……no power……will be able to hold it back”, said Mao (Mao). Mao Zedong had clearly realized the urgency of organizing and taking advantage of the peasant movement. Unfortunately, the others from the CCP did not want to lose the forces of working class in urban area, and they did not believe that the Communists would benefit from the peasants, since at then, all the main forces of socialist revolution in other socialism countries were industry workers. Ironically, the help from the local peasants was one of the most important reason that the Red Army was able make it through the hard long march. And it was exactly during the Long March, the Communists realised that, based on the Chinese circumstances of that time, the most influential power in China was the peasants. The importance of the peasant movement in China is also insisted by historian Lucien Bianco. Bianco is insistent that peasant rebellion was “essentially reactive” both in France and China, a “defense of the status quo” (Bianco, 199). And also we can learn from the history of China after the Long March, what an important character had the peasant