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The Fourth Red Army

In July 1935, the troops under Mao united with the Fourth Red Army, led by Zhang Guotao, which had retreated west from Henan. The Communist leadership was determined to move into Shaanxi province, although the decision was not unanimous. Zhang Guotao preferred to establish a refuge near the border with the Soviet Union. In command of a much smaller force, Mao carefully avoided Zhang's discovery of this fact, and overcame Zhang's influence over the subordinate commanders of the Communist forces. After disagreement over the direction in which the troops should move, the two forces split up.^[12] Zhang Guotao's Fourth Red Army, which took a different route, south, then west and finally north through China, was largely destroyed by the forces of Chiang Kai-shek and his Chinese Muslim allies, the Ma clique. The remnants of Zhang's forces joined elements of the Second Red Army, eventually linking up with Mao's forces in Shaanxi.^[13]

While costly, the Long March gave the Communist Party of China (CPC) the isolation it needed, allowing its army to recuperate and rebuild in the north of China. It also was vital in helping the CPC to gain a positive reputation among the peasants due to the determination and dedication of the surviving participants of the Long March. Mao wrote in 1935:

"The Long March is a manifesto. It has proclaimed to the world that the Red Army is an army of heroes, while the imperialists and their running dogs, Chiang Kai-shek and his like, are impotent. It has proclaimed their utter failure to encircle, pursue, obstruct and intercept us. The Long March is also a propaganda force. It has announced to some 200 million people in eleven provinces that the road of the Red Army is their only road to liberation."^[18]

In addition, policies ordered by Mao for all soldiers to follow, the Eight Points of Attention, instructed the army to avoid harm to or disrespect for the peasants, in spite of the desperate need for food and supplies. This policy won support for the Communists among the rural peasants.^[12]

For those who survived it, the Long March was an epic story of human endurance. Between 80,000 and 90,000 people set out on the March in October 1934; about 4,000 completed it a year later. Some marchers were left along the way to start new guerrilla bases, but more than 50,000 of them died on the March. The survivors had travelled between 6,000 and 7,000 miles. About half-way along the route, Mao became undisputed leader of the CCP.

What could possibly have inspired people to endure such hardships? The main answer lies in the conditions in the Chinese countryside in the 1930s. Most peasants lived lives of desperate poverty, trapped between the landlord and the money-lender, sliding deeper and deeper into debt every year. Famine and drought were regular occurrences – between 1926 and 1931 one-third of the population of Gansu died in famines, floods, typhus epidemics and local wars, and three million people starved to death in Shaanxi. Come what may, the landlords insisted on their rents being paid; even death merely transferred the debt to the next generation. As the landlords were also the local magistrates, their word was literally law.

The Red Army promised an end to the power of the landlords, and the land to the peasantry. The mere fact that they treated the peasants as human beings, in contrast to the casual brutality of all other Chinese armies, made it possible for the peasants to believe them. Not that the landlords were ever completely dispossessed in the “Soviet areas” – but even there the Red Army enforced lower rents than had been the norm before.

When Mao took command in 1935, he added another cause to fight for: national liberation from the Japanese invasion of 1931. The Guomindang government had proved completely incapable of stopping the Japanese advance, and by 1935 they had overrun much of north China. The only armed opposition they faced was from guerrillas from the “Soviet areas” in Shaanxi; but in Beijing a powerful nationalist movement erupted among students, which spread to campuses throughout eastern China.

It was the anti-Japanese war which turned the CCP into a force capable of challenging for power. In 1937 they had some 30,000 members, and the Red Army was 40,000-strong. By 1940 these figures had risen to 800,000 and 500,000 respectively, with hundreds of thousands more peasants organised in small guerrilla bands. The lessons in guerrilla warfare that had been learnt on the Long March were applied brilliantly on the north China plain and in the hills. The Japanese controlled the towns and the railway lines, the Red Army the countryside in between.

It was thus on nationalism that the CCP built its power base; but they also retained their popularity among the peasantry, by breaking the absolute power of the landlords. Wherever the Red Army went, they enforced both the paying of rents and the lowering of rents “in the interests of national unity”. To the peasants, this was a better deal than they had ever dreamed of. The CCP stood as a force above all classes, acting in their own interests as a future ruling class – but in the process they treated peasants and landlords as equals.

The United Front with the Guomindang coincided with the general strategy of Popular Frontism espoused at the time by Stalin in Europe – unity of the Western Communist Parties with the “progressive” bourgeoisie against fascism. But unlike the Popular Fronts in Spain and France, in China this policy led to the strengthening of the CCP, rather than weakening it. One crucial reason for this was the empirical lesson that Mao had learned from 1927 – hold onto your guns. One historian of the period argued that: “Perhaps the most important thing about this revolutionary movement is not that it was armed with a doctrine and a strategy, but that it was armed.” [6] The CCP and the Guomindang faced each other as two independent armed forces. While in the cities the weak organisations of the CCP could be sacrificed to unity, in the countryside Mao kept tight control of the Red Army.

The second part of the explanation was to have more long-term implications. For the CCP took on the Guomindang on their home ground of nationalism – and won. If a ruling class cannot defend the territorial integrity of its own state, it loses its claim to power. The Guomindang, deeply corrupt and riven by factionalism, was incapable of defending the “national interests” of China against Japanese imperialism. It was the CCP who proved capable of the task. They thus staked their claim to be the rulers of China after the war.

By 1945 more than 10 per cent of China was in the hands of the Red Army, and CCP guerrillas were operating over much wider areas. The civil war which broke out almost immediately after the victory over Japan was a completely unequal affair. Despite vast quantities of American arms, the Guomindang steadily lost ground, with hundreds of thousands of their soldiers deserting to the Red Army in battle after battle. The war dragged on for three years, largely because of the immense distances which the Red Army had to cover, but the outcome was never in doubt.

In 1949 Chiang Kai-Shek admitted defeat and fled to Taiwan. Mao was master of China.

One reason for all the paranoia is that, at heart, the countries still don't totally understand each other. China's hamfisted style of one-party rule remains at odds with American democracy: "It lies at the heart of the distrust between these two countries," says Minxin Pei, a China expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

So at the same time that China remains uncomfortable with its new role (but craves recognition of its rise), the United States needs real help overcoming global challenges but doesn't want to give offense. Analyze that!