Chinese Communist Revolution
...the Hunan branch. At this stage the party formed a united front with the Koumintang, the party of republican followers of Sun Yat-sen. Mao worked with the united front in Shanghai, Hunan and Canton, concentrating on labour organization, party organization, propagande and the Peasant Movement Training Institute. His 1927 "Report on the Peasant Muvement in Hunan" expressed his view of the revolutionary potential of the peasantry although this view was not yet phrased in a proper Marxian form. Chiang Kai Shek Chiang was born in Fenghua, Zhejiang Province, on October 31, 1887. After some training at the National Military Academy in Baoding , he went to Tokyo in 1907. There he attended the Military Staff College and met Sun Yat-sen, a revolutionary leader opposing the reigning Qing Manchu dynasty. Chiang joined Sun's T'ung-meng Hui (Chinese for Revolutionary Alliance), a secret organization and the forerunner of the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party, or KMT). When the 1911 uprising broke out in China, Chiang returned to Shanghai, where he took part in the overthrow of the imperial government and the establishment of the Republic of China . He also participated in the subsequent Second Revolution and the campaign against the warlord Yüan Shih-k'ai, in office from 1915 to 1916. In 1923, when seeking assistance from the Soviet government, Sun sent Chiang to the USSR to study the Soviet military and social systems. In 1924 he became superintendent of Whampoa Military Academy, the training center for the KMT army. Then he was confronted with the CCP KMT meets the CCP In 1927, Chiang, who had gained control of the Kuomintang after the death of Sun Yat-sen, reversed the party´s policy of cooperation with the Communists. By the next year, when he had control of the Nationalist armies as well as the Nationalist government, Chiang purged all the Communists from the movement. As a result, Mao was forced to flee to the countryside. In the mountains of south China he established with Chu Teh a rural base defended by a guerrilla army. It was this almost accidental inoovation that was to make Mao the leader of the CCP. Because of their growing military power, Mao and Chu were able by 1930 to defy orders of the Soviet-controlled CCP leadership that directed them to capture cities. In the following year, despite the fact that his position in the party was weak and his policies were criticized, A Chinese soviet was founded in Juichin in the Kiangsi province, with Mao as chairman. A series of extermination campaigns by Chiang Kai-shek´s Nationalist government forced the CCP to abandon Juichin in october 1934 and to commence the Long March. At Tsun-i in Kweichow, Mao for the first time gained effective control over the CCP, ending the era of Soviet direction of party leadership. Remnants of the Communist forces reached Shensi in October 1935, after a march of 10,000 km. They then established a new party headquarters at Yen-an. Mao’s Triumph When the Japanese invasion of 1937 forced the CCP and the Kuomintang once again to form a united front, the Communists gained legitimacy as defenders of the Chinese homeland, and Mao rose in stature as a national leader. The soundness of Mao´s self-reliance and rural guerilla strategies was proved by the CCP`s rapid growth during the Yen-an period from 40,000 members in 1937 to 1,200,000 members in 1945.Shortly after Japan surrendered, fighting broke out between Communist and Kuomintang troops over the reoccupation of Manchuria. A temporary truce was reached in 1946 through the mediation of the U.S. General George C. Marshall. Although fighting was soon resumed, Marshall continued his efforts to bring the two sides together. In August 1946...