This colorized photo shows a meeting between Mao Zedong and Zhu De in about 1937, which was after the Long March and in the midst of the Sino-Japanese War.
Mao Zedong (Tse Tung) and Zhu De (Chu Te) in Yenan Communist mountain stronghold Source: (Getty/colorized by Klimbim).
The Communist Party of China was formed in 1921, and in 1927, Civil War between the Nationalists and the Communists began. Around 1925, Zhu De joined the Communist party, and his affiliation with Mao Zedong began in 1928. He had been under the protection of Fan Shisheng, from which he defected and marched his army of 10,000 men to Jiangxi and the Jingjang Mountains. Here, he began building his army into the Red Army. Zhu De met Mao Zedong on April 28, 1928 on the Longjiang Bridge. Mao Zetan, who was Mao Zedong’s brother, had carried a letter from Zhu to Mao Zedong which stated “We must unite forces and carry out a well-defined military and agrarian policy.” After this meeting, they merged forces to become the Fourth Red Army. Zhu acted as Military Commander and Mao Zedong was the Communist Party representative.
Chang Kai-shek Could Not Trap Them
The Fifth Encirclement. Source: (Wikipedia).
In 1931, Mao Zedong was elected chairman of the Soviet Republic of China, which was newly established in Jiangxi province in the southeast. Nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek began five encirclement campaigns against the Chinese Soviet Republic between 1930-1934. For the first four campaigns, the Communists utilized guerilla tactics to resist the Nationalists. However, in the fifth, Chiang Kai-shek built fortifications around the Communists after raising a massive force. When Mao was removed as chairman and the new Communist leadership began using more conventional warfare tactics, the Red army was decimated.
On October 16, 1934, as they faced defeat, the Communists broke through the encirclement at the weakest points, a campaign which Zhu helped to form. It took weeks for the Nationalists to realize that the main part of the Red army had gotten away. This force first consisted of more than 85,000 troops, along with accompanying personnel, carrying their supplies and weapons, either on their backs or in horse drawn carts. They formed a line of marchers which stretched for miles, typically marching at night, creating a column of torches stretching over valleys and hills.
Mao Marches For A Year
The Long March. Source: (Wikimedia).
Mao did not stay out of power for long, starting to regain influence quickly, and in January, during a meeting of party leaders in Zunyi, a captured city, he stepped back in as a top military and political leader. After this he shifted his strategy, attempting to confuse the Nationalists by breaking his force into columns and taking varying paths. The Long March ended on October 20, 1935, after enduring skirmishes nearly every day, as well as aerial bombardments from the National forces. Mao halted his columns in northern Shanxi. All told, the march covered more than 4,000 miles, crossed 24 rivers, and 18 mountain ranges, and was completed by 8,000 marchers, although that number may have been lower. Although the Communists ended the March, it solidified Mao Zedong’s position as the leader of the Chinese Communists, and inspired thousands of Chinese to travel to Shaanxi to enlist in Mao’s Red Army.
History Leading Up To The Second Sino-Japanese War
Meanwhile, the Chinese had to confront problems from the Japanese. In 1894-1895, the first Sino-Japanese war grew out of the conflict between the two countries as they fought for supremacy in Korea. Japan forced Korea to open to Japanese trade and worked to modernize the Korean government. Eventually war was declared, and although, it was assumed that China would be able to win, Japan successfully invaded Shandong province and Manchuria. In the Treaty of Shimonoseki ended the conflict, recognized the independence of Korea, and ceded Taiwan as well as the Pescadores and the Liaodong Peninsula in Manchuria.
Japan also got trading privileges in China. The war had other effects on China: it helped to incite a reform movement to transform the governments, and it also helped to start the revolutionary activity against the Qing dynasty rulers.
In 1912, after the Xinhai Revolution, the Republic of China was founded, but the Republic’s authority tell apart because of regional warlords, including one Zhang Zuolin of Manchuria who cooperated with the Japanese and received military and economic assistance. Three years later, Japan issued the Twenty-One Demands to extort more political and commercial privilege. This was followed by the Jinan incident from May 3-11, 1928, when Japanese killed Chinese officials and fired artillery shells into Jinan, and the relationship between the two countries continued to deteriorate. In 1928, China reunified, and one year later, a conflict over the Chinese Eastern Railroad (CER) led to the Sino-Soviet conflict, which allowed the Soviets to reassert control over the CER. It also revealed Chinese military weaknesses
The Invasion Of China
Japanese troops along a street in Nanking. Source: (Wikipedia).
As divisions in China provided more opportunities for Japan, which considered Manchuria an endless supply of raw materials as well as a market for its own manufactured goods. Japan invaded China in September 1931 with the Mukden Incident. According to Japan, its rights in China, which had been established after it won the Russo-Japanese War, were being violated. They fought for five months, and then in 1932, Japan established Manchukuo, a puppet state, with Puyi, the Last Emperor of China, as the puppet leader. After China appealed to the League of Nations, they condemned Japan, and Japan withdrew from the League.
Japan then attacked the Great Wall region in 1933, and in the resulting Tanggu Truce, Japan gained control of Jehol province, and a zone between the Great Wall and Beiping-Tianjin region, as Japan tried to create a buffer zone between Manchuko and the Chinese government in Nanjing. Meanwhile, interior conflicts continued in China, as Japan followed a policy called the Specialization of North China, or the North China Autonomous Movement, wherein sections of the country were under control of local warlords; some were friendly to Japan. As 1935 drew to a close, the Chinese government abandoned the North for the most part.
The Alliance Continued
Image colorized by Klimbim
In 1937, the Japanese started a full-scale invasion of China which would become the Second Sino-Japanese War. A sporadic skirmish which started on July 7, 1937 turned into a battle, which resulted in the fall of Beijing and Tianjin. Skirmishing on the frontier led to the Marco Polo Bridge incident. Under the Sian agreement, the Chinese Nationalists (KMT) and the Chinese Communists (CCP) agreed to fight side by side to defeat the invaders. During the war, De Zhu held the position of Commander-in-Chief of the Red Army. Stalin, who saw Japan as an increasing threat, supplied arms to China, and the Western democracies also sent aid.
The Japanese quickly captured Nanking (Nanjing) and Shanghai, as well as the remaining key Chinese industrial centers and ports. Both the Chinese and Japanese used scorched earth tactics, and the combined forces of the CCP and KMT continued to resist. After the fall of Nanking, the Japanese killed between 40,000 and 300,000 Chinese, during the “Rape of Nanking.” Additionally, they raped 80,000 women. The Japanese also engaged in reprisals against Chinese peasants who had engaged in guerilla warfare against the Japanese, and by the end of the war, an estimated 10 to 20 million Chinese civilians had died. The war had reached a stalemate by 1940, as the Japanese were unable to reach a victory, and the Chinese were unable to oust the Japanese from the territory they had taken. The west instituted economic sanctions, which led to the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor. By 1938, the shaky allegiance between the CCP and KMT had begun to fall apart. By 1945, the Second Sino-Japanese War had ended, and on October 1, 1949, Mao Zedong proclaimed the founding of the People’s Republic of China and Zhu De continued his allegiance with Mao Zedong.
The photo at the top of this story was colorized by Olga Shirnina, aka Klimbim; you can see more of her work at her Flickr page.
