III.

Rise to Power

In 1920 Mao returned to Changsha, where his attempt to organize a democratic government for Hunan province failed. He traveled to Shanghai in 1921 and was present at the founding meeting of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which was also attended by Li Dazhao and Chen Duxiu. Mao then founded a CCP branch in Hunan and organized workers’ strikes throughout the province. At this time warlords controlled much of northern China. To defeat the warlords, the Kuomintang (KMT) party of Sun Yat-sen allied with the CCP in 1923. Mao joined the KMT and served on its Central Committee, although he maintained his CCP membership.

In 1925 Mao organized peasant unions in his hometown of Shaoshan. Because of his peasant background, he was named director of both the CCP and KMT Peasant Commissions in 1926. In 1927 Mao wrote a paper titled “Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan,” in which he declared that peasants would be the main force in the revolution. Because this viewpoint was contrary to orthodox Marxism, which held that workers were the basis for revolution, and because peasant revolt would alienate the KMT, the CCP rejected Mao’s ideas.

The KMT broke with the CCP in 1927 and KMT leader Chiang Kai-shek, who had taken control of the KMT after Sun Yat-sen’s death in 1925, launched a violent purge against the Communists. In battles that became known as the Autumn Harvest Uprising, Mao led a small peasant army in Hunan against local landlords and the KMT. His forces were defeated and Mao retreated south to mountainous Jiangxi province where he established a base area in 1929 known as the Jiangxi Soviet. There Mao experimented with rural land reform and recruited troops for the Communist military, known as the Red Army. Working with Red Army general Zhu De, Mao developed new guerrilla warfare tactics that drew the KMT forces deep into the hostile countryside, where they were harassed by peasants and destroyed by the Red Army. Mao married He Zizhen while in Jiangxi, after his first wife was killed by KMT forces.

Chiang was determined to eliminate the Communists and in 1934 intensified his extermination campaign, surrounding the Jiangxi Soviet. Mao and his followers burst through Chiang’s blockade and began the 9600-km (6000-mi) Long March to the remote village of Yan’an in northern China. Along the way the marchers stopped at Zunyi, where top Communist officials met to discuss the CCP’s future. Those opposed to Mao’s plan of peasant revolt and Chinese military strategy were criticized, while Mao and his supporters gained power and prestige. The Zunyi Conference, as the meeting became known, was a crucial turning point in Mao’s ascendancy to CCP leadership.

From his base in Yan’an, Mao led Communist resistance against the Japanese, who had invaded Manchuria in 1931 and China in 1937. Although the CCP temporarily allied again with the KMT to halt Japanese aggression, most resistance against the Japanese in northern China came from the Communists. The CCP skillfully organized the peasantry and built up the ranks of the Red Army. Mao further consolidated his leadership over the CCP in 1942 by launching a “Rectification” campaign against CCP members who disagreed with him. Among these were “returned Bolshevik” Wang Ming, who had studied in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), and others, such as the writers Wang Shiwei and Ding Ling. Also while in Yan’an, Mao divorced He Zizhen and married the actor Lan Ping, who would become known as Jiang Qing and play an increasingly important role in the party after 1964.

In 1945, shortly after Japan surrendered in World War II, civil war broke out between CCP and KMT troops. The CCP, who had mass peasant support and a well-disciplined Red Army, defeated the KMT in 1949. On October 1 Mao declared the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in Tiananmen Square in Beijing.