Mao's role in the Long March of 1934 to 1935, including the breakout from the Jiangxi Soviet, the Zunyi Conference of January 1935, the trek to Shaanxi, and the consolidation of Mao's authority within the CCP leadership

What this dot point is asking

NESA expects you to outline the Long March of 1934 to 1935 with a focus on Mao Zedong's role: the breakout from the Jiangxi Soviet, the disaster at the Xiang River, the Zunyi Conference that elevated Mao, the route through Sichuan and Gansu, and the arrival at the northern Shaanxi base. Strong answers integrate the military narrative with the political consequence: the Long March made Mao the leader the CCP would not displace.

The answer

The Fifth Encirclement Campaign

Chiang Kai-shek launched five encirclement campaigns against the Jiangxi Soviet between 1930 and 1934. The first four were defeated by Mao and Zhu De's mobile guerrilla tactics. The fifth campaign (1933 to 1934) used Hans von Seeckt's blockhouse strategy, building thousands of fortified posts that compressed the Soviet to starvation. The Comintern adviser Otto Braun (the German Manfred Stern, known in China as Li De) and the 28 Bolshevik Bo Gu insisted on positional defence. By late summer 1934 the Soviet was untenable.

The breakout, 16 October 1934

On 16 October 1934 about 86,000 troops, with around 35 women including Mao's third wife He Zizhen, broke out from Ruijin to the west. Mao was politically marginalised at the moment of departure. The column carried printing presses, gold reserves, and the apparatus of a state.

The Xiang River, November to December 1934

The KMT had three blocking lines across Hunan. The crossing of the Xiang River at Daoxian and Quanzhou in late November and early December 1934 broke the Red Army. Estimates vary, but the force was reduced from about 86,000 to about 30,000. The disaster discredited Braun and Bo Gu.

The Zunyi Conference, 15 to 17 January 1935

At the captured Guizhou town of Zunyi the CCP Politburo held an enlarged conference. Mao, allied with Zhou Enlai, Wang Jiaxiang, and Zhang Wentian, accused Braun and Bo Gu of "left adventurism" and "purely defensive" doctrine. The conference removed Braun and Bo Gu from military command; Zhang Wentian replaced Bo Gu as General Secretary; Mao was elected to the Standing Committee and shortly after to a new three-man military command with Zhou Enlai and Wang Jiaxiang. Zunyi is conventionally dated as the moment Mao took command of the CCP, though formal supremacy was completed only at Yan'an.

The march to Shaanxi, January to October 1935

From Zunyi, Mao led a series of feints and forced marches:

• Crossing the Jinsha (Yangtze) River, May 1935, by feinting south to threaten Kunming.
• Luding Bridge, 29 May 1935. The famous (and contested) assault across a chained iron bridge over the Dadu River gorge in Sichuan. Jung Chang and Jon Halliday (2005) argued the assault was a propaganda construction; most historians accept the bridge was held by KMT defenders but disagree about the scale of resistance.
• Jiajin (Great Snowy) Mountains, June 1935. The crossing of the 4,000 m passes inflicted heavy losses to cold and altitude.
• Maoergai, July 1935. Mao met Zhang Guotao's Fourth Front Army; Zhang outnumbered Mao but Mao prevailed politically. The forces parted and Zhang's southern column was destroyed.
• The Grasslands, August 1935. The crossing of the high marshes of Aba prefecture inflicted further losses.
• Lazikou Pass, September 1935. The breakthrough into Gansu.
• Wuqi, Shaanxi, 19 October 1935. About 8,000 of the original Jiangxi force reached the existing northern Shaanxi Soviet. The CCP relocated its capital to Yan'an in late 1936.

The total distance is conventionally given as 9,000 km (the figure was 25,000 li, where 1 li is about 0.5 km). The duration was 370 days. The survival rate was below 10 percent.

Significance for Mao's leadership

The Long March made Mao the leader of the survivors. The Comintern's influence, severed by the loss of radio contact for much of 1935, declined. Wang Ming, the Comintern's preferred CCP leader, was discredited. At Yan'an from 1936, Mao consolidated authority through the Rectification Campaign (1942 to 1944) and the Seventh Party Congress (1945) elected him Chairman of the Central Committee with Mao Zedong Thought enshrined as official doctrine.

Timeline

Historiography

Edgar Snow (Red Star Over China, 1937) gave the original Western narrative of the Long March, based on interviews at Bao'an in 1936. Snow's narrative is heroic and broadly accepted in outline.

Harrison Salisbury (The Long March: The Untold Story, 1985) re-walked the route in 1984 with PRC cooperation and produced a detailed reconstruction.

Sun Shuyun (The Long March, 2006) interviewed surviving veterans and emphasised the suffering of ordinary soldiers and the political function of the foundation myth.

Jung Chang and Jon Halliday (Mao: The Unknown Story, 2005) argued that several Long March episodes (Luding Bridge, the Grasslands losses) were exaggerated and that Chiang allowed the Red Army to escape. Their thesis has been criticised by Andrew Nathan, Stuart Schram, and Lowell Dittmer.

Maurice Meisner (Mao's China and After, 3rd ed. 1999) treats the Long March as the central foundation myth of the PRC, embedded in school curricula, films, and political legitimacy from 1949 onwards.

Common exam traps

Treating Zunyi as Mao's formal accession to leadership. Zunyi gave Mao a place on the military command and the Standing Committee; formal supremacy came at the Seventh Congress in 1945.

Overstating the route. The 25,000 li figure refers to the longest column (the First Front Army) and includes loops and detours; some columns marched much less.

Forgetting Zhang Guotao. The conflict with Zhang at Maoergai in 1935 was as politically significant as Zunyi.

In one sentence

Mao Zedong's role in the Long March of October 1934 to October 1935 was to recover from political marginalisation at Ruijin, exploit the disaster at the Xiang River to capture military command at the Zunyi Conference of January 1935, lead the surviving Red Army across the Jinsha, the Dadu at Luding Bridge, the Jiajin Snow Mountains, and the Grasslands to the northern Shaanxi base, and emerge with the foundation myth and the leadership cohort that would define the CCP through 1976.