his year marks the centenary of the establishment of the Communist Party of China (CPC). The CPC’s foundation is considered one of the most remarkable parts of the 20th century. However, in the formative years of modern China, the outcome of certain revolutionary events were the key moments to determine country’s destiny, such as the Long March - an epic journey of endurance.

The Long March was a 12.500 km tactical retreat that resulted in the ultimate advantage of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (the forerunner of modern PLA) and led to fundamental changes in the history of modern China. Moreover, the relocation process of the revolutionary troops is generally considered to have begun the ascent to power of the Communists and later determined the country's political future. Subsequently, precisely 13 years after the event, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was officially founded in Beijing under the leadership of the CPC.  

The ideological confrontation between the CPC and the KMT (the Chinese Nationalist Party or Kuomintang) was a major source of the conflict which later evolved into a devastating civil war. The costly political rivalry and the armed conflict between the two parties lasted intermittently for more than two decades (1927 - 1949). Over the course of the Chinese Civil War, both sides suffered considerable losses in a series of bloody battles with little progress.

However, Japan's attack on eastern regions and the rapid occupation of North China created a temporary alliance between the Communists and Nationalists in the late 1930s. Notably, even the National Revolutionary Army under the command of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek had been extensively supported by its western allies; the Communists forces were much better at putting up effective resistance against the foreign enemy, as they had experienced in mobilizing the local population and waging the guerilla warfare tactics.

Before the Long March, the Nationalists had been planning to achieve a decisive victory over the Communists, so the KMT had launched several extensive military encirclement campaigns to eliminate the last Communist’s stronghold – the Jiangxi Soviet, an unrecognized self-declared communist state and a primary base of operation of CPC’s forces in the early 1930s. Nevertheless, between 1930 and 1934, Mao Zedong-led army successfully withstood those attacks, thanks to the well-developed guerilla warfare tactics. Indeed, this came at a very high cost in casualties for revolutionary troops as both sides fought intensively.

In October 1934, during the most chaotic period of Modern China, the Red Army, numbering some 86,000 men, set out the world’s longest continuous march to smash the heavy encirclements of the Nationalist forces and to engage in fighting against the Imperial Army of Japan in order to liberate the Northern regions of the country. In fact, there were a series of marches between 1934 and 1936, as various Communist troops commenced the long arduous journeys at different times and via various routes. 

The initial attempts failed to penetrate the KMT’s lines and caused the death of thousands of soldiers. Thereafter, as a result of failure, in January 1935, in Zunyi (Guizhou province), the CPC’s Central Committee held the extended conference of the Politburo to establish new military leadership and revise more effective warfare tactics and strategies to enhance the Red Army’s fighting ability. Mao’s approach began to be reintegrated into the army's methods, as his strategies were replaced with conventional warfare tactics – a plan of fixed positional warfare during the final siege of the Nationalists before the Long March that almost had brought the end of the Red Army. Most importantly, the Zunyi Meeting consolidated the power of Mao Zedong and subsequently led him to become the most influential political figure within the party hierarchy, as he was elected as a standing committee member of the CPC. Moreover,  the revolutionary strategy and mobile war tactics proposed by him became the dominant approach for accomplishing the mission.

Throughout a frantic year-long pursuit from the southeastern province of Jiangxi to the northwestern province of Shaanxi, the red army units crossed 18 mountain ranges and 24 rivers across the country. Whilst trying to reach the north under the violent attack of Nationalists, the Communists also encountered geographical and climatic challenges that caused appalling casualties, as only a few thousand managed to survive. Nevertheless, severe starvation, natural barriers of the region as well as the extreme weather conditions and the KMT’s intense aerial bombardment couldn’t prevent the activities of the Red Army.

After overcoming innumerable hardships and arriving at the final destination – the town of Yan’an in northern Shaanxi, the Communists immediately set up their new headquarters; consequently, Yan’an, the cradle of the Chinese revolution, had served as a CPC’s primary base from 1937 to 1945, where the Red Army reunited with other Communist units, rebuilt its forces, and improved the combat effectiveness to continue the struggle. In the meantime, thousands of young people flocked to the northwest of China to join the revolutionary army. As the Japanese launched a full-scale invasion of China in 1937, the Red Army’s newly formed combat units became the backbone of the Anti-Japanese National Salvation Movement. All the experiences and skills gained from previous endeavours have led to an undisputed triumph in their struggle toward national independence and liberation.

Accordingly, the Long March has increasingly been seen as a crucial step in gaining prestige and esteem that later contributed to the party's victory. In the following years, after several fierce battles, the CPC ultimately defeated its primary rival – the KMT, which ruled China since 1912. Indeed, the decisive victory over the Nationalists and the Japanese invaders helped CPC grow substantially and spread the Communist revolution through the entire country. The Nationalists, who failed to maintain stability, were unable to solve the country's most pressing issues, finally pulled their troops out and fled to the island of Taiwan as the Communists gradually expanded their political influence and eventually asserted control over the country.

The profound impact of the Long March remains high as it had radically altered the sociopolitical development of China, with the defeat of the KMT and the Japanese forces — and the Communists’ seizure of the central power in Mainland China, which led to the transformation of the whole world order and founding of the PRC on 1 October 1949.

As Harrison Evans Salisbury (an American writer and journalist who traveled the entire route of the Long March back in the 1980s) once noted: “It will be inappropriate to compare the Long March with anything else; it is a unique spiritual expedition transcending state borders, national differences, and ideological realms. The Long March does not belong to China alone; it belongs to the whole world.”

About the Author: Vusal Guliyev is a Research Fellow at the Davis Center of Harvard University and a Ph.D. Candidate in International Politics at Shanghai International Studies University. He is also an Associate Expert at the Topchubashov Center, a Baku-based global policy think tank. Email: vusalguliyev@fas.harvard.edu