The role of the Long March in his rise to power.

Table of content

Tabla de contenido
Introduction
Investigation 4
Dismantling the Long March’s myth 5
Mao Zedong’s manipulation of the myth 6

Introduction

Investigation

- Dismantling the Long March’s myth

Conclusion

Mao and the Long March

To what extent was The Long March a propaganda tool for Mao Zedong’s rise to power?

Introduction

The Chinese civil war was a great marking event in the country’s history, mainly due to the
ideological conflict and the outcome of the war. The two sides battling for the control of China
were the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Guomindang (GMD) also known as the
nationalist party. The CCP's leader was Mao Zedong. He is known for his doings in aid of China,
as well as the bloody purges and the undeniable famines the country suffered under his rule.
However, his unchallengeable leadership would not be continuous during the war; one of the
significant events that enabled Mao to consolidate his leadership was the famous Long March.
The Long March meant a miraculous achievement by the communist party, because of the
several life-threatening feats the communists were able to survive. For this there are several
perspectives, there are those who approve and retell the communist miracle like the
acknowledged American journalist Edgar Snow, who in his book Red Star Over China portrays
The Long march as “one of the great exploits of military history.”[ CITATION Sno18 \l 9226 ].
However, there is an opposite perspective that explains the significance of the event as
“China’s ever long-lasting myth” who the historian Jon Halliday and Sino-British writer Jung
Chang explain in their book Mao: The Unknown story after 10 years of investigation. The
significance of the Long March and its effects vary from one perspective to another. The
attempt to disjoin the mythical aspect from the veracious is the objective of the investigation,
to understand why the Long March was mythologized.

Therefore, and considering Mao's actions to consolidate power, the question: To what extent
was the veracity of The Long March distorted and used for Mao Zedong's rise to power? will be
analyzed. There is no denial of the fact that Mao emerges as the rightful leader of the
communist party after the Long March, which was unclear right before this feat took place.
The achievement of the CCP has a psychological consequence on the survivors who feel
invincible, that Mao appears to show and take advantage of. Though the exaggeration and
distortions of the events might add significance to explain Mao's accelerated rise to power.
The debate around the Long March is a tough topic since the Chinese government prevents
opposite sources from being distributed in the country. One of the sources used for this
investigation as Jung Chang says during an interview: “I don´t think the regime (current
Chinese) does not want our book to be known at all.”[ CITATION steve \l 9226 ] Therefore, the
effects, significance, and veracity of the Long March reach as far as today.

Bypassing the causes of The Long March, the central Red Army’s abandonment of the Chinese
Soviet base in Rujian, Jiangxi province, is one of the strangest events to explain without
seeming miraculous. However, there is solid evidence that explains this situation differently
from what is commonly said. There are several perspectives for the main reasons that allowed
the CCP to escape from their base. There were 4 encirclement blockades around the base.
Three of them were easily passed by the communists, due to a lucrative agreement they had
with local warlords and landlords who allowed them through without any inconvenient 1.
Moreover, Jiang Jieshi was oddly interested in letting the communists escape. He allowed the
communist to break away to the southwest, since he had been rejected in three of the most
important provinces of the area, Yunnan, Guizhou, and Sichuan, by Cantonese tough warlords.
Jiang Jieshi saw this vast territory as his containment base in case of entering a war against the
Japanese. He planned to push the strong forces of the communist and guide them towards this
area, so that the warlords ruling the territory would request nationalist assistance, and finally
allow them in without fighting their way. 2 However, the nationalist leader knew that the only
real threat for which the warlords would request his assistance was the mayor and strongest
part of the Red Army. Therefore, he permitted the communist through three of the blockades.
The fourth one, however, was where he took nearly half of the communist forces, who held at
least 40’000 casualties, but enough survived to complete Jiang’s plan.
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 Another perspective argues Jiang was being indirectly blackmailed by the USSR because they
held his son "hostage"3 back in Moscow. He was sent there due to the Soviet support for the
GMD to stablish state power back in 1925. Nevertheless, he was accompanied by a red mole
named Shao Lizi, who deceived the nationalist leader. For that reason, Jingguo, his son, never
returned to China; and as Chinese culture demands, a decent leader must have a rightful heir
to build a proper family. Jingguo was Jieshi’s only blood son and could not afford to lose him.
Hence, he proposed a trade, that involved assuring the CCP’s survival during the escape to
have his son back.4 He was naive to believe in the soviet's goodwill, and his son never returned,
but the communist still made it through his once successful blockades.

Then, one of the most significant events of The Long March acknowledged by the Chinese is
the Zunyi meeting. According to Jon Halliday and Jung Chang, the veracity of the happenings in
Zunyi are debatable. They argue that Mao did not emerge as the leader of the communist
party by the majority’s consent, he supposedly forced his way in by playing “dirty”. Mao’s
cleverness inspired Luo Fu and Wang Jiaxiang, both ambitious, discounted members of the
party. They all agreed that the party needed a change in leadership. Then so, in Zunyi, they
overthrew German military advisor Otto Braun and current leader Bo Gu, justifying that the
Red state’s downfall back in Jiangxi soviet base was on them to blame. The secretary agreed,
but still did not appoint Mao as the leader; Luo Fu took this place 5. Mao knew that from the
four members of the secretary that were present during the march, he had a severe influence
on two. Luo Fu, his ally and Zhou Enlai due to blackmail. Communication with the USSR had
been lost, this explains why the members of the party did not consult anything that happened
in Zunyi with the Comintern. Therefore, Mao was allowed in the secretary and he managed to
be assigned the redaction of the act sent to the soviets, which he would manipulate to his
benefit. He blackmailed Zhou Enlai, saying his act would acknowledge him as the military
blamable for the defeat against the encirclement campaign that entailed the Long March. 6
Hence, Mao was able to install himself in both the political and military components of the
CCP. The whole party knew Luo Fu was always under Mao's influence and Zhou appointed him
as a military assistant, a new position made exclusively for him.

Another critical and arguably propagandistic event that took place in the Long March is the
crossing of the Dadu River. It is also commonly known as the Luding Bridge Battle. The less
acknowledged perspective again portrays this event as a propaganda miraculous tool. Instead
of crossing a flaming bridge, holding only on chains, crossing while being continuously aimed
for and watching their companions fall to death, some argue the communists didn’t even live a
battle. When they arrived to cross the river, the nationalists were far behind, there was no
military threat. Mao and his colleagues went through the Luding Bridge. Though in disrepair,
the bridge was fairly fit for the communists to cross it. They even used door and wooden coffin
caps to complete the bridge and replace the fallen planks. Also, according to Jung Chang,
Communist military leader Zhou Enlai was worried about the possible casualties that the army
could have suffered after the events, to which the commander, Yang Chengwu responded:

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“none”7. There was never a battle. Sun Shuyan, a Chinese Oxford-educated woman said: “This
matter was not as complicated as people made it out to be later." When referring to the
Luding battle.8[ CITATION Mar06 \l 9226 ]

The Luding bridge Battle is probably the most mythical and heroic events of The Long March.
To cross the Dadu River, the Red Army had to pass through a 300-year-old chain suspended
bridge that was guarded by the GMD. Chinese Daily says that The Red Army soldiers climbed
on the iron chains to take over the bridge after the enemy took away the planks in May 1935. 9
There have been several propagandistic posters that portray this feat to exaggerate and
mythologize the Luding Bridge Battle.

One of the best examples of Mao Zedong’s attempt to create a mythical story of the events of
the Long March was his poem on why was the Long March a victory. “Let us ask, has history
ever known a long march to equal ours? No, never. 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, Jiang Jieshi and his like, are impotent.  . . .  The Long March is also a seeding
machine. In the 11 provinces, it has sown many seeds which will sprout, leaf, blossom and bear
fruit, and will yield a harvest in the future”[ CITATION Mao35 \l 9226 ]. During a military
discussion of military tactics, Mao expressed his perspective on the recent achievement of the
communists in 1935. The strength of the Red Army is now shown to the whole world, by being
incomparable to any other achievement worldwide.

Besides, The Long March did not only allow Mao to rise to power and consolidate his
leadership within the communist power, but it was also a tool for the spread of communism
throughout the country, especially in the countryside. By crossing

The way color evokes emotions, a fearless sentiment.

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Oil on Canvas, 1980. Long Museum Gallery 2[ CITATION She80 \l 9226 ]

The Red Army soldiers climbed on the iron chains to take over the
bridge after the enemy took away the planks in May 1935.
Also,

The perspective of the vast majority of the Chinese perceives the Long March as an incredibly
miraculous achievement. For every specific event, there is an almost mythological feat that
gives it greatness. Mattering the actual escape from their base in 1934, the Chinese News
documentary explains how the "central Red Army had fought its way through three
Goumindang encirclements".[ CITATION CGT16 \l 9226 ] Days before entering the Xiangjiang
river, where the communist lost 30’000 soldiers. Besides, the current Chinese online
newspaper China Daily portrays the events during the Zunyi Conference in Guizhou as the
critical moment where Mao emerges as the clear, undoubted leader of the communist party.
Essentially, there was an important, diplomatic meeting where the communists set up a new
central leadership represented by Mao Zedong. 10 He became the “dominant” leader of the
CCP Politburo at the Zunyi conference, so he was ultimately controlling the party, principally
from the political scope.

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The effects of Mao´s propaganda have a reach that lasts until nowadays. The Chinese
government has banned and prohibited several books that portray a new, opposite
perspective about Zedong, his ideals and achievements. Books like Jon Halliday’s and Jung
Chang’s Mao, the unknown story after ten years of research, or as Sun Shuyan’s Long March
account, for which she interviewed more than 40 Long March survivors. 11[ CITATION Mar06 \l
9226 ] It is evident how Chinese modern history has been severely unrevised with over 75
years being perplex and still to be resulted. "We are far from accepting the real truth. The
most important base for the ruling party ideology is a favorable description of party history,”
says Li Datong. The dismissed editor of the Freezing Point magazine attempts to question mots
of China’s modern history, arguing the questioning of Chinese historical events never ends.

Besides, there are several “facts” of the Long March’s acknowledgement that expose how Mao
manipulated the propaganda top expose a true perspective, but distorted to consolidate his
power, and create a greater myth around the Long March. Firstly, there are two important
perspectives regarding the CCP’s initial escape from their Soviet base in Jiangxi. The number of
people who left the base is unclear, it varies between 80’000[ CITATION Jun06 \l 9226 ] and
100’000 [ CITATION Edw94 \l 9226 ]. The number has never been exact, and the approximate
varies too widely. Most of the western News sources state the Long March lasted a year, from
October 1934 to October 1935 like History Channel 12. However, Chinese sources like China
Daily and China Global Television Network [ CITATION CGT16 \l 9226 ] where the duration of
the Long March is counted until the last Red army’s company crosses to the new base in the
Gansu province, in October 1936. Though it is not wrong to say the March finished once the
Three major forces of the army arrived in Gansu, most of the soldiers did not march for two
straight year. Mao distorted this to make people believe that the brave, immortal soldiers

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marched the whole of country for two years instead of one. Even though it is still heroic, the
two-sided perspective on this matter supports the fact that Mao distorted the truth to his
favor.

Moreover, another blurry measurement of this feat is the distance travelled by the red Army.
As well as the number of marchers, western perspective sources like History Channel state the
travelers covered around 4’000 miles through the whole March. In contrast, Edgar Snow’s
account of the Long Marching Red Star over China, states that the distance was more than
5’000 miles. The bias pf Snow’s account of the Long March has been proved several times.
Both in the origin and content, even the purpose has an evident bias towards Maoist
perspective, where the mythologization of the story is evident. The significance of Edgar Snow
in Chinese modern history, especially in the Long March’s account is critical to understand
Mao’s distortion of the truth and manipulation of the masses to consolidate both his
leadership and power over the CCP a China respectively. Carolin Gutman, refers to Edgar
Snow’s role in the historiography of the Chinese communist where she says his
acknowledgment of the journey is 6’000 miles. 13 However, it is clear that Snow’s perspective is
directly influenced by Mao’s by being the interviewed giving his own testimony about his own
myth. Whether it was intended or not, Red Star over China develops a testimony that became
one of the founding sources to explain the legend of the Long March, which was available for
everyone in China and abroad. This ensured Mao that western perspective on the CCP’s
achievement was also positive, due to Snow’s reputation and ethnic origin. The American
journalist was the first to acknowledge the Long March as a marking feat and gave Mao the
opportunity to spread his myth to the whole world.

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