The Long March Reaches Shaanxi
- Date
- 1934–1935
- Category
- Military & conflict
- Region
- East Asia (China)
- Era
- Modern
- Significance
The Long March was the epic 6,000-mile retreat that transformed Mao Zedong into the paramount leader of the Chinese Communist Party and seeded the movement that would rule China.
Encircled and battered by Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist armies in their Jiangxi base, roughly 80,000 Communists broke out in October 1934 and began a year-long fighting withdrawal across some of Asia's harshest terrain—crossing snow-covered mountains, the treacherous Great Grasslands, and defended river gorges such as the Luding Bridge. The First Front Army straggled into northern Shaanxi in October 1935 with only about 8,000 survivors. Though a staggering human catastrophe, the march became modern China's founding myth: at the Zunyi Conference along the way, Mao consolidated control of the Party, and the survivors' endurance won peasant admiration that fuelled later recruitment. From the new base at Yan'an, the Communists rebuilt, positioning themselves to resist Japan and, ultimately, to win the civil war and found the People's Republic in 1949.
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Empires active in 1934–1935
- Soviet Union1922 CE – 1991 CE
- Empire of Japan1868 CE – 1947 CE
- French Colonial Empire (Second)1830 CE – 1962 CE
- British Empire1583 CE – 1997 CE
- Spanish Empire1492 CE – 1976 CE
- Portuguese Empire1415 CE – 1999 CE
Related military & conflict events
- The Long March of the Chinese Red ArmyOctober 1934 – October 1935
- Italy Invades Ethiopia1935–1936
- Second Sino-Japanese War and the Nanjing Massacre7 July 1937 – 2 September 1945
- German invasion of Poland and outbreak of World War II1 September 1939
- Attack on Pearl Harbor7 December 1941
- Operation Barbarossa: German invasion of the Soviet Union22 June 1941
Further reading
The wider story
Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan
Pulitzer-winning life of the emperor and his empire.
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