Quick questions on The Long March and Mao Zedong's emergence 1934-1935: HSC Modern History National Study China

The Fifth Encirclement Campaign had reduced the Jiangxi Soviet to a small core around Ruijin by mid-1934. The Politburo decided on a breakout in summer 1934 and prepared in secrecy. Around 86,000 troops and party officials of the First Front Army left Ruijin on 16 October 1934, leaving around 16,000 wounded and rearguards behind. The plan was to break out west and join the Second Front Army in Hunan.

The Politburo met at Zunyi in Guizhou from 15 to 17 January 1935. Mao, supported by Zhou Enlai and Wang Jiaxiang, attacked the strategic line of Bo Gu and Otto Braun that had cost the Soviet. The conference resolutions condemned positional warfare and restored mobile guerrilla strategy.

After Zunyi, Mao's plan was to head north-west. Zhang Guotao's Fourth Front Army was already moving from Sichuan. The First Front Army feinted east, west, and north before crossing the Jinsha (upper Yangtze) River in May 1935.

The Jiajinshan range (June 1935) and the Great Grasslands of the Tibetan-Qinghai plateau (August 1935) tested altitude, weather, and supplies. Deaths from cold, illness, drowning, and bog were heavy. The Grasslands traverse alone killed perhaps 10,000.

The First Front Army (Mao, around 15,000 by then) met Zhang Guotao's Fourth Front Army (around 80,000) at Maoergai in June 1935. Zhang outranked Mao in party seniority and had the larger force; he wanted to base in Sichuan. Mao insisted on continuing north to link the CCP to the war against Japan.

Mao's column reached Wuqi in northern Shaanxi on 19 October 1935. The march of the First Front Army from Ruijin had taken 370 days and covered perhaps 6,000 to 8,000 kilometres (the celebrated "25,000 li" figure aggregates all routes). Of around 86,000 who started, around 8,000 reached Shaanxi. The total CCP forces in Shaanxi by 1936, including pre-existing local Communist base areas and remnants of other columns, were around 30,000.

Edgar Snow (Red Star Over China, 1937) provides the heroic narrative. His 1936 interviews with Mao set the official account that the CCP propagated for decades.

Mao was not made supreme leader at Zunyi; that came at the Seventh Congress (1945) and through the Rectification Movement (1942-1944). Zunyi made him the central military figure.

The split at Maoergai (June 1935) was the closest the CCP came to splitting permanently. Zhang outranked and outnumbered Mao at the time.