The Long March was not a fight against the Japanese in the north but a flight of last resort

The 2021 edition of A Brief History of the Chinese Communist Party proclaims that the Long March “proclaimed that the Chinese Communist Party and the The 2021 edition of A Brief History of the Chinese Communist Party declares that the Long March “announced that the Chinese Communist Party and the Red Army had carried the hopes of the nation to the north and achieved the strategic transfer to fight against Japan. However, countless historical sources prove that this is another big lie, and that the Long March was nothing more than a desperate escape from the Nationalist encirclement.

Chinese Communist Party: The Long March was to “go north to resist Japan”

The originators of the Long March as “going north to resist Japan” were Mao Zedong, Chairman of the Central Government of the “Chinese Soviet Republic”, and Zhu De, Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Committee of the Chinese Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army. In their joint “Declaration of Anti-Japanese Salvation” issued in November 1935, they said: “The Central Government of the Chinese Soviet Republic and the Revolutionary Military Committee of the Chinese Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army have constantly roused the people of the country to unite to fight against Japan, and have sent the main force of their own Red Army to fight against Japan after a long march of 25,000 miles. and through hardships and difficulties went north to fight against Japan.”

Here Mao and Zhu illustrate that the Long March was an act of initiative by the CCP to ‘go north to resist Japan’.”

There is a growing body of CCP history and the memoirs of the participants that the Long March was a “strategic transfer” forced on the Chinese Red Army by the workers and peasants in order to survive and develop, (or more accurately, a “retreat” or “However, no Chinese Communist expert has yet dared to admit that this transfer had nothing to do with the “northward anti-Japanese movement.

The “anti-Japanese advance party” did not go to the front line of the resistance

Before the Long March, the Red Army of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China sent a so-called Red Army “northward anti-Japanese advance party”, which has been used by the Communist Party of China as evidence and proof of the Communist Party’s determination to resist the war from the beginning. “The Red Army’s advance party to the north against the Japanese was the first to raise the anti-Japanese banner, fully proving that the Chinese Communist Party was the central force in saving the country and achieving national liberation.”

Regarding the purpose of sending this advance party, the 2021 edition of the brief history of the CPC puts it in the section “The Failure of the Fifth ‘Anti-Encirclement'”. The brief history says: “In order to mobilize and restrain the enemy and reduce the pressure on important revolutionary bases, the Seventh Red Army Corps was reorganized into a northward anti-Japanese advance party in early July and went to the border areas of Fujian, Zhejiang, Gan and Anhui. Therefore, it can also be seen from the whereabouts of this advance party that their real destination was not the anti-Japanese front in Northeast and North China, but the area around Fujian and Zhejiang. It is worth mentioning that no Japanese soldiers were present in Fujian and Zhejiang at that time, which, on the contrary, had been a strategic area in the heart of the Nationalist government.

Later, information disclosed by the Chinese Communist Party revealed that the real purpose of this group was to “test the Red Army’s main force for a breakthrough”. It “held back about 200,000 Nationalist troops and strongly responded to the strategic transfer of the Central Red Army”.

On November 16, 1936, one and a half months after the Central Red Army embarked on the Long March, the 25th Red Army, under the name of the “Second Advance Team of the Northward Anti-Japanese Army”, left the EYUAN area and moved to the west. The army did make a declaration to go north to resist Japan, and the army did go north, but it finally arrived in Shaanxi, where there were no Japanese troops, and after arriving, it did not go to the front line of resistance in North China, but went west to Gansu.

The Long March began as a purposeless exodus

On October 10, 1934, the “Long March” of the Central Government of the Communist Party of China, the Central Revolutionary Military Commission and the main forces of the Central Red Army from Ruijin, Jiangxi, also had nothing to do with the anti-Japanese resistance.

Li De, the military adviser to the Communist International in China at the beginning of the Red Army, commented in China Chronicle 1932-1939 about the Long March and the “northward anti-Japanese march”: “At that time, no one, not even in his dreams, actually thought of going north to resist Japan. Although resistance to Japan was the main political slogan, it was never the military plan of the Party and Red Army leaders.”

The new version of the history book says: “In early September 1934, the Kuomintang army intensified its attacks on the hinterland of the Central Revolutionary Base, and there was no longer any possibility of the Red Army turning the tide of battle in its place.”

According to the eight-episode historical documentary “The Forever Long March” made by the Party History Research Office of the CPC Central Committee in 2016, due to the failure of the Central Red Army in the fifth siege operation of the Kuomintang, the Central Soviet Area was “almost in a desperate situation” and was forced to “break out” , “evacuate As a result of the defeat of the Central Red Army during the fifth siege by the Kuomintang, the Central Soviet was forced to “break out” and “evacuate” and “carry out a strategic transfer”. According to historical records, at that time, the “Long March” was not called “Long March”, but “Western March” and “Breakthrough”. It was the “Western Expedition” and the “Breakthrough.

The film, which was produced to promote and glorify the Long March, also inadvertently reveals that the Red Army did not have a clear direction when it evacuated the Jiangxi Soviet, and that the Red Army frequently changed its direction and “landing point” plan on the way to the Long March because of the Nationalist Party’s siege.

It was not until June 1935, when the Central Red Army arrived at Lianghekou in Mao Gong, Sichuan, and met up with the team of Zhang Guotao, another leader of the Communist Party, that it decided to go “north”, “because there was no way out to the south”.

In his 2009 book “The Splendor of Suffering”, Jin Yinan, an expert on military issues and a major general in the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, also said of the “northward policy” of the Lianghekou meeting: “The only feasible thing was to develop northward and connect with the Soviet Union to obtain international assistance. ” In order to open up the international route, Mao suggested organizing an expeditionary force to occupy Xinjiang “at an appropriate time”.

Although many CCP materials later said that the Lianghekou Conference laid the foundation for the Red Army to “go north to resist Japan,” for the CCP leaders at the time, the more urgent task of the Lianghekou Conference was for the Central Red Army and Zhang Guotao’s Red Army to go north together to create the Sichuan-Shaanxi-Gan base area. This plan did not materialize because of Zhang Guotao’s disagreement (Zhang Guotao made a split as the CPC party history says).

On September 12, 1935, after breaking with Zhang Guotao, the Central Red Army led by Mao Zedong decided to march to the Sino-Soviet-Mongolian border in Gansu, “to create a base in a place close to the Soviet Union. close to the Soviet Union to create a base area”, “open up links with the international community, reorganize and recuperate the troops, expand the ranks of the Red Army and …… develop eastward in the future”.

The decision to go to Shaanbei was made by chance: on September 18, 1935, in the northwestern town of Hadapu, Mao Zedong decided to go to Shaanbei to rendezvous with the Red Army of Shaanbei led by Liu Zhidan after he happened to learn from an old Ta Kung Pao that there were still a considerable number of Red Army troops active in Shaanbei and that there was still a sizeable base area.

From October 10, 1934, when the Long March began, to September 22, 1935, when it was announced that it would settle in northern Shaanxi, the “landing point” of the CPC Central Committee changed seven times.

In his book “The Mystery of the Growth of the Chinese Communist Party – The Hidden Truth about China’s War Against Japan,” Xie Youtian, a former visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Research Center, says, “The truth about the Long March is that it was a military operation to escape and survive after a defeat.”

He summarizes the experience of the Central Red Army’s Long March this way: “Initially intending to rendezvous with He Long in western Hunan, and after failing to move westward to Guizhou; after Mao Zedong took over the reins of the Party, he was scheduled to cross the Yangtze River and go north to Sichuan, and then failed again; then fled to Yunnan, which was desolate but had fewer pursuers; by this time, there was no longer, and could not be, a set objective, but merely to avoid being wiped out as much as possible in order not to evading combat as much as possible in order not to be annihilated, while drifting around Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan; this Central Red Army made its first trip north to meet up with the Fourth Front Army of the Red Army already waiting for them in Xikang, Sichuan. Knowing from a chance that Gao Gang and Liu Zhidan were in northern Shaanxi, Mao Zedong went north again on his own. There was never a strategic northward ‘Long March’ for the sake of anti-Japanese resistance.”

On October 19, 1935, the CPC Central Committee and the Central Red Army arrived in the town of Wuqi in northern Shaanxi to rejoin the Red Army in northern Shaanxi. Thus ended the long march of the Central Red Army, which “lasted one year, spanned 11 provinces and covered 25,000 miles. The strength of the Central Red Army was also reduced to 7,200 from 86,000 before its departure.

The Long March was followed by the Eastern and Western Expeditions to open up a channel to the Soviet Union.

In the propaganda of the Communist Party, Shanbei was both the “landing point” of the Central Committee and the Red Army’s Long March and the “starting point” of the anti-Japanese campaign. Mao Zedong and Zhu De, soon after landing in Shaanbei, did issue the “Anti-Japanese Manifesto”, and then, for the Red Army at that time, the primary task was not to resist Japan, but to “defend and expand the Soviet area in northern Shaanxi”.

On October 22, 1935, the Political Bureau of the Central Committee held a meeting in Wuqi Town, clearly stating that the important task of the Shaanxi-Ganxi detachment (the name of the Red Army in the late Long March) was to “defend and expand the Soviet area in northern Shaanxi” and that “the main enemies were Chiang Kai-shek, Zhang Xueliang and Yan Xishan. “

In December 1935, the Communist Party of China (CPC) held the crucial Wajao Fort Conference in the history of the CPC. In the words of the Communist Party, this meeting marked the Communist Party’s transition from the “Agrarian Revolutionary War to the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression”. Although the CPC put forward the theory and strategy of establishing the anti-Japanese national united front at the conference, its primary task was still to “consolidate and expand the existing Soviet areas” and “open up the Soviet Union”.

The Resolution of the Central Committee on Military Strategy adopted at this conference determined that the strategic policy and tasks of the Red Army in 1936 were to “open up the Soviet Union” and “consolidate and expand the existing Soviet zones”, with opening up the Soviet Union as the central task and Shanxi and Suiyuan as the main directions of Red Army operations and development of Soviet zones. The main direction of the Red Army’s operations and development in the Soviet Union was Shanxi and Suiyuan.

According to Jin Yinan’s “Splendor of Suffering,” the “Eastern Expedition” and “Western Expedition” launched by the Red Army in 1936 as the “Anti-Japanese Vanguard Army of the Chinese People’s Red Army” were all related to this goal. The Chinese Communist Party knew at the time that the Soviet Union was supporting the Communist Party in establishing bases on the Soviet-Mongolian border.

He said, “The Eastern and Western Expeditions were all based on the words of Zhang Hao (one of the early leaders of the CCP) that Stalin did not oppose the development of the Red Army to the north and northwest, near the Soviet-Mongolian border.” According to him, this statement “was the hope for the survival and development of the Red Army.”

A 2017 study by Wang Shulin of the First Research Department of the Party History Research Office of the CPC Central Committee said the factors of the Communist International and the Soviet Union were crucial in the final establishment of the landing point of the Chinese Workers and Peasants Red Army’s Long March.

The article said that in view of the Japanese invasion of northeastern China and control of northern China and the loss of the CCP’s Soviet bases in central and southern China, the Communist International and the Soviet Union put forward the idea of opening Soviet bases for the Chinese Red Army in Sichuan, Shaanxi and, if possible, in the direction of Xinjiang, and then introduced plans to support the Soviet zone in Sichuan and develop the revolutionary movement in northwestern China, gradually forming a new strategic policy for advancing the Chinese Soviet Revolution, which was to support and help the Communist Party and the Red Army to develop into northwest China, close to the Soviet Union and Mongolia to establish strategic bases for the Chinese revolution.”

He also emphasized that “the Communist International’s support for the Chinese Soviet Zone in Sichuan and the development of the Chinese revolution in Northwest China was a realistic necessity for the Soviet Union to balance the Japanese invasion of China in the Far East and thus safeguard national security.”

Both the Eastern and Western Expeditions were unsuccessful, and at the time the CPC Central Committee even made plans to move again in case northern Shaanxi could not hold on. Mao Zedong had sent a telegram to Stalin, intending to abandon Shanbei and break out to the south.

It was only with the Xian Incident on December 12, 1936 that the Communist Party of China (CPC) really reached a turning point in its fate, and the history of China took a fundamental turn.