MAO ZEDONG AND THE LONG MARCH, 1934–1935

A heroic journey of about 6,000 miles, the Long March took Chinese Communist forces from the encircled Jiangxi Soviet in the south to a new base at Yan’an in the northwestern province of Shaanxi. During the march, Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung) emerged as the leader of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

In 1934 Zhu De (Chu Teh), the Red Army commander-in-chief for the Jiangxi Soviet, met with Communist Party leaders and decided to abandon the soviet. The Chinese Nationalists (Guomindang) under Chiang Kai-shek seemed on the verge of conquering the area. Zhou Enlai (Chou En-lai) planned the breakout strategy. The commander of one of the army corps leading the breakout was Lin Biao (Lin Piao). Many of those who would become the Chinese Communist Party’s most important leaders over the following four decades participated in the Long March.

Some 80,000 men and about 35 women, each carrying about a two-week ration of rice and salt, started the march on 16 October 1934. Among the women was Mao’s pregnant second wife, He Zizhen. The communist forces had to break through four lines of defense before they could reach and take the city of Zunyi in Guizhou province in January 1935. Later that month a high-level party conference took place in Zunyi. The resolutions issued after the conference reflected Mao’s criticism of the leadership of the Jiangxi Soviet. It was an important step in his rise to power in the party.

Perhaps the most extraordinary adventure experienced by participants was securing the Luding Bridge, the last across the Datong River. Nationalist forces had removed most of the planks from the chain suspension bridge. Twenty soldiers crawled across and routed the defenders, making it possible for their comrades to cross safely. Another difficult segment of the journey involved crossing the “Great Snow” mountain range with some passes as high as 16,000 feet. Mao, ill with malaria, had to be carried at times on a litter.

By June 1935 the communists had lost half their original force. Mao nevertheless pressed them to continue on to Shaanxi. Thousands died, however, from illness and exhaustion crossing a large marshy area on the way.

Between 8,000 and 9,000 communists finished the march on 20 October 1935 in Shaanxi. More than 70,000 died or slipped away during the march. In the course of the march, Mao had become the leader of the Chinese Communist Party. Simply by surviving, the party had won a great moral victory over the Chinese Nationalists. The Long March served as an inspiring saga for party members for decades to come. It was a key event in the eventual victory in 1949 of the Chinese Communists over the Chinese Nationalists. Suggestions for Term Papers
1. Investigate Mao’s career in the early 1930s. Why did he have only limited success in winning party members over to his ideas about the peasantry?
2. Trace the route taken by the communists on the Long March and describe some of the different cultures they came across in the course of their journey.
3. Some scholars believe Chiang Kai-shek avoided destroying the communist forces on purpose. Supposedly, chasing them allowed him to extend his influence into new areas. Draw your own conclusions on the basis of your reading.
4. Write a one-act play based on the discussions that took place at the Zunyi Conference.
5. Compare the activities of other top leaders before the Long March with those of Mao.
6. How was the story of the Long March used in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution some thirty years later?

Research Suggestions

In addition to boldfaced items, look under the entries for “Mao Zedong’s ‘Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan, March 1927’” (#17), “The Victory of the Chinese Communist Party, 1949” (#46), and “The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China, 1966–1976” (#73). Search under Communist International (Comintern).

SUGGESTED SOURCES

Primary Sources

Braun, Otto. A Comintern Agent in China, 1932–1939. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1982. An inside perspective on the Long March and events leading up to it from the Comintern representative in China.

Mao Zedong. Mao’s Road to Power: Revolutionary Writings: 1912–1949. Vol. 3, From the Jinggangshan to the Establishment of the Jiangxi Soviet, July 1927–December 1930. Edited by Stuart Schram. Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1995. Vol. 4, The Rise and Fall of the ChineseSoviet Republic, 1931–1934. Edited by Stuart Schram, 1997. Highly useful background material.

Snow, Edgar. Red Star over China. New York: Grove/Atlantic, 1989. Rev. ed. The original was published in 1938. A famous contemporary report from a journalist highly sympathetic to Mao and the Chinese Communist Party.

Secondary Sources

Ch’en, Jerome. Mao and the Chinese Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press, 1965. A useful and thorough biographical study.

Salisburg, Harrison. The Long March. New York: HarperCollins, 1985. A readable account by a well-informed journalist.

Schram, Stuart. Mao Tse-tung. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1966. A good introduction.

Schwartz, Benjamin. Chinese Communism and the Rise of Mao. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958. An excellent discussion of Mao’s struggle to gain acceptance for his ideas.

Smedley, Agnes. The Great Road: The Life and Times of Chu Teh. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972. Originally published in 1956. A dated but still useful biography of Zhu De by a writer sympathetic to the CCP.

Spence, Jonathan D. The Search for Modern China. New York: W. W. Norton, 1990. A wonderful synthesis of modern Chinese history. Probably the best starting point for any paper on China.

Wilson, Dick. The Long March of 1935: The Epic of Chinese Communism’s Survival. London: Hamilton, 1971. A detailed and dependable account of the Long March.

Yang, Benjamin. From Revolution to Politics: Chinese Communists on the Long March. Boulder: Westview Press, 1990. A recent scholarly analysis by an expert on the period.