The Long March 1934 to 1935 and the emergence of Mao Zedong as Communist leader, including the Zunyi Conference, the relationship with Zhang Guotao, and the establishment of the Yan'an base area

What this dot point is asking

NESA expects you to explain how the Long March (October 1934 to October 1935) saved a fraction of the CCP from the Fifth Encirclement, how the Zunyi Conference (January 1935) brought Mao to dominance, how the Maoergai split with Zhang Guotao was overcome, and how the survivors built the Yan'an base. Strong answers separate the military retreat from the political turning point.

The answer

The breakout from Jiangxi

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 first major blow came at the Xiang River (25 November to 1 December 1934). Three KMT armies caught the column crossing. The Red Army got through but with around 50,000 casualties. By late December the column had shrunk to around 30,000.

The Zunyi Conference

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.

Personnel changes followed:

• Mao Zedong joined the Standing Committee of the Politburo.
• Mao was elevated to the Military Commission, with Zhou Enlai and Wang Jiaxiang.
• Zhang Wentian replaced Bo Gu as nominal general secretary.
• Otto Braun lost his military authority.

Mao was not yet the supreme leader. He shared military authority with Zhou Enlai and held no top party post until 1943. But Zunyi reversed the line and re-centred the CCP on the rural-guerrilla model Mao had developed.

Crossing the Yangtze and the Luding Bridge

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 Dadu River was the next obstacle. The Anshunchang ferry (May 1935) carried only one boat, too slow under pursuit. The Luding Bridge crossing (29 May 1935), an iron-chain suspension over the gorge, was forced by a vanguard of perhaps 22 soldiers. Reality is contested (Sun Shuyun's interviews suggest the bridge was not heavily defended), but the symbolic value in CCP narrative is enormous.

The Snowy Mountains and the Grasslands

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 split with Zhang Guotao

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.

The two forces split in September 1935. Mao went north with around 8,000. Zhang went south and was broken in fighting through 1936; his remnants joined the surviving CCP forces in northern Shaanxi in 1936-1937. Zhang defected to the KMT in 1938.

Reaching the north

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.

The capital moved to Yan'an in January 1937.

Long March outcomes

• Leadership. Mao emerged as the dominant strategist, although still subordinate in titles. The 28 Bolsheviks line was broken.
• Strategy. Mobile guerrilla doctrine, integrated with peasant base-building, was vindicated.
• Geography. The new base in Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia was close to the Japanese front and remote from KMT power, ideal for the war years.
• Myth. Edgar Snow's Red Star Over China (1937) made the March the founding epic. Subsequent CCP propaganda recycled and amplified it.

Timeline 1934-1935

Historiography

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.

Sun Shuyun (The Long March, 2006) interviewed forty surviving veterans in the early 2000s. She finds harder casualties, more contested leadership, less heroic Luding, more peasant conscription than recruitment.

Stuart Schram (Mao Tse-tung, 1966) is the canonical political biography. He treats Zunyi as the decisive event in Mao's rise.

Harrison Salisbury (The Long March, 1985) was the first Western journalist to retrace the route after 1949 and produced a vivid, broadly sympathetic narrative.

Benjamin Yang (From Revolution to Politics, 1990) is rigorous on the Zunyi politics.

How to read a source on this topic

Sources include Snow's Red Star Over China, contemporary Comintern reports, Mao's later poetry on the March, and KMT propaganda about "bandit suppression." Three reading habits.

First, separate the political turning point from the geographical odyssey. Zunyi happened in January 1935, only three months in. The rest of the march was Mao consolidating influence and choosing the destination.

Second, treat the "25,000 li" figure with caution. It is an aggregate of all routes, not the distance any single individual marched. Most veterans walked around 6,000 to 8,000 kilometres.

Third, watch the Comintern angle. Radio contact was lost during the march. Zunyi was the CCP's first major decision taken in autonomy from Moscow, which is part of why Mao could later build a "Chinese Marxism."

Common exam traps

Treating the Long March as Mao's project from start to end. Mao did not control the breakout (he was politically sidelined). He came to control the route after Zunyi.

Inflating Zunyi. 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.

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

In one sentence

The Long March (16 October 1934 to 19 October 1935) carried around 8,000 of an original 86,000 from Jiangxi to northern Shaanxi, and used the Zunyi Conference (15-17 January 1935) to elevate Mao Zedong to military leadership, repudiate the Bo Gu and Otto Braun line, and set up the Yan'an base from which the CCP would fight the Japanese and ultimately win the civil war.