Lesson 16: Mao Zedong opens up the road to Jinggang Mountain

Nanchang Uprising

From the lessons of the failure of the Revolution, the Chinese Communist Party began to realize the importance of independently mastering the revolutionary armed forces. On August 1, 1927, Zhou Enlai, He Long, Ye Ting, Zhu De and Liu Bo Cheng led the revolutionary army to launch an armed uprising in Nanchang and occupied the city. The uprising forces then withdrew from Nanchang as planned and went south to Guangdong to establish a base there, but were blocked by the enemy on the way and suffered serious losses. Zhu De and Chen Yi led some of the ranks of the Nanchang Uprising to fight in southern Hunan and persist in the struggle. The Nanchang Uprising fired the first shot of armed resistance against the reactionary rule of the Kuomintang.

The Autumn Harvest Uprising and the Jinggang Mountain rendezvous

On August 7, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) held an emergency meeting in Hankow, known as the "August 7 Meeting", which adopted the general policy of the Agrarian Revolution and armed resistance against the reactionary rule of the Kuomintang and decided to launch an armed uprising in the autumn harvest. At the conference, Mao Zedong made the famous assertion that "power is obtained from the barrel of a gun".

After the 87th meeting, Mao returned to Hunan to lead the Autumn Harvest Uprising, which was held in September 1927 at the Xiang-Gan border under the banner of "Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army". The uprising started smoothly, capturing some counties, but due to the strength of the enemy in the city, the uprising army suffered serious setbacks. In October 1927, Mao Zedong led the uprising forces to the Jinggangshan area and created the first rural revolutionary base.

In April 1928, Zhu De and Chen Yi led some of the troops from the Nanchang Uprising and the workers and peasants in southern Hunan to meet with the Workers and Peasants Revolutionary Army led by Mao Zedong at Jinggangshan. After the rendezvous, the two armies were combined into the Fourth Army of the Chinese Workers and Peasants Revolutionary Army, which was soon renamed the Fourth Army of the Chinese Workers and Peasants Red Army. The army consisted of more than 10,000 men, with Zhu De as its commander and Mao Zedong as its party representative. After the rendezvous, the Red Army carried out armed struggle in Jinggangshan, and the Jinggangshan base area was consolidated and expanded.

The Nanchang Uprising and the Autumn Harvest Uprising were the beginning of the Chinese Communist Party's independent leadership of the armed struggle and the creation of a revolutionary army, which kicked off the transition of the Chinese Revolution from urban to rural areas and the establishment of rural revolutionary bases.

Workers' and Peasants' Armed Struggle

Mao Zedong led the revolutionary army of workers and peasants to fight the landlords and divide the land in Jinggang Mountain, establish revolutionary power and carry out guerrilla warfare, creating the situation of "armed division of the land between workers and peasants". After the establishment of Jinggang Mountain revolutionary base, Fang Zhimin, Deng Xiaoping, He Long, Xu Qianqian, Liu Zhidan and others also led armed uprisings and established revolutionary bases in various places. By 1930, more than a dozen revolutionary bases of various sizes had been established throughout the country. Among them, the Central Revolutionary Base Areas established by the Red Army in Ganan and western Fujian were the largest in area. Within the revolutionary bases, people's power was established in hundreds of counties. The revolutionary armies grew to 100,000 people.

In the winter of 1931, the First National Congress of the Chinese Soviet was held in Ruijin, Jiangxi. The conference announced the establishment of the Provisional Central Government of the Chinese Soviet Republic, with the capital set in Ruijin, and Mao Zedong was elected as the Chairman of the Provisional Central Government.（568words）