1. Li Lisan Awakens Chiang Kai-shek

In the violence of the Chinese revolution no actions were more stirring than Chiang Kai-shek's campaigns to encircle the Communists and Mao Zedong's counter-campaigns.

After Chiang Kai-shek had suppressed the Cmmunists and their sympathizers in Shanghai on April 12, 1927, he did not anticipate needing an encirclement campaign to suppress the Communists.

Still less did he anticipate a second, third, fourth and fifth campaign when the first one did not succeed.

For the last three campaigns Chiang had to take personal charge as commander-in-chief, leaving him too preoccupied to attend to the September 18th Incident of 1931, or the Shanghai Incident of January 28, 1932, both events seeing Japan making inroads in China. He was entirely fixated on his policy that “Domestic stability takes precedence over resisting foreign invasion.”

And for the fifth campaign he mobilized each and every force at his disposal.

Even when taken prisoner in Xi'an by Zhang Xueliang, in a hopeless situation, Chiang was still moaning about being two weeks short of achieving his goal.

Chiang was distressed and regretful beyond words at his failure to annihilate the Communists.

Initially his confrontation with the Communists went pretty smoothly. During the period from the Zhongshan Warship Incident in 1926 to the Shanghai Massacre of 1927, he came out on top time and again; he was having an easy ride.

After the Zhongshan Warship Incident, the Communists were forced to withdraw from the First Army and the central executive committee of the KMT, and to accept the KMT resolution on rectifying party affairs. It was a wholesale backing down for the CPC.

On April 12, 1927, Chiang launched a sudden attack on Communists, the curtain raiser to a bloodbath that virtually decimated the CPC's urban membership: In his words “to cleanse the party it is preferable to kill one innocent by mistake than mistakenly let one Communist escape.” Many irresolute and timid members began quitting the CPC, and some even made anti-Communist announcements in newspapers or helped the KMT round up and arrest their comrades.

Chen Yannian was betrayed by an underground messenger under his leadership and thus he was arrested.

Zhao Shiyan was arrested at home by KMT detectives guided to his door by the secretary-general of the CPC Jiangsu Provincial Committee.

The turncoat He Zhihua sold Luo Yinong out for a lump sum in US dollars and two passports. She was Zhu De's ex-wife. When Luo was taken, she chatted idly with the concession police in German.

At this abnormal time, communist beliefs could be bought woefully cheap.

But on the other hand it was so costly.

Chiang seemed totally confident that the CPC had been brought down. As commandant of the Whampoa Military Academy, he had exhorted its cadets, apparently with all patience and sincerity, to uphold the “Three Principles of the People.” But now he was unwilling to see any of those pouring in to surrender to him.

It was an unprecedentedly successful year for the commander-in-chief. The next year he followed up by suppressing the Haifeng-Lufeng armed peasants uprising, the Nanchang Uprising ²³ , the Autumn Harvest Uprising, the Huangma Uprising, and the Guangzhou Uprising, which boosted his belief that the Communists, as an organized force, had generally been eradicated, and that the remaining small teams of “bandits” escaping into the mountain areas were no cause for alarm.

Now that his hands were free, from the second half of 1927 to the second half of 1930, he was fully occupied in getting rid of Zhang Zuolin and Zhang Zongchang, Tang Shengzhi and Li Zongren, and Feng Yuxiang and Yan Xishan as well.

For three whole years he was tied up in tangled warfare with these warlords.

When the decapitated head of Guo Liang, chairman of the Hunan Federation of Trade Unions and acting secretary of the CPC Hunan Provincial Committee, was hung as a warning sign at the city gate of Changsha, the writer Lu Xun observed, “Revolutionaries have rarely been scared off by a hung head.” “Do revolutions not happen precisely because of the darkness and the lack of a way out?”

That point was lost on Chiang Kai-shek. Therefore, it never occurred to him that during the three years of extraordinary growth of his military might and political power, those little sparks expelled by him into the remote mountains could eventually become his real and final gravediggers.

He was awoken from his complacency by Li Lisan who, in 1930, drew up a plan for the forces of the Red Army to surround and attack Wuhan and “water the horses at the Yangtze.”

The Communist Party of China, in its early days, engaged mainly in two types of revolutionary movement: the workers' movement and the peasants' movement.

Mao Zedong was the leader of the peasants' movement, while Li Lisan led the workers' movement.

Li Lisan's original name was Li Longzhi. On his return from France in 1922, he reported for duty at the CPC Hunan Regional Committee. Mao was its secretary at that time.

Li Lisan was well-known for being a resolute revolutionary with a notorious temper.

In early 1920 he left China for a study-work program in France, where he worked as a foundry worker, a grueling and physical job that others were unwilling to take on. Since his instructor was a member of the French Communist Party, the 21-year-old came to know communism, taking active part in student movements and in Chinese labor rights struggles in France. Emphatic and impassioned, he could really arouse people. Whenever the reactionary forces were mentioned, he would shout: “Overthrow them! Topple them! Kill them!” His boldness and impetuosity earned him the nickname “Tank” from other Chinese students in France.

At the Spring Festival of 1922, Li returned home to see his parents. His father, Li Jingrong, assuming he was only just back from France, asked, “What do you plan to do now that you're back from your studies?”

“I'll work for communism!” Li answered.

Li Jingrong was unaware that his son was already in Anyuan mobilizing the railroad and mine workers to go on strike.

Li Senior thundered back at him. “What nonsense! You want to kill yourself, don't you? The military governor has so many soldiers and guns, but you're just a few kids. You don't stand a chance in hell!”

Li Junior replied: “The warlords have guns, but we have truth, and the people. It doesn't matter if we die. Some people may well die in the attempt, but more people will rise to join the revolution. The revolution will succeed!”

Father and son argued all the way through the Spring Festival.

Later Li Jingrong often said, “I had no choice but to tell myself as if he had never been born.”

Li Jingrong was intimidated by the violence of the military governor. Just a few days earlier, Huang Ai and Pang Renquan, two leaders of the Hunan Workers' Association, had been killed outside the Liuyang Gate of Changsha by the warlord governor Zhao Hengti. Actually Li Lisan faced the same risk. Without the protection of the workers, Li Junior might have been killed in Anyuan.

Informed that the chief of the railway and mine workers club Li Lisan was leading a strike, Wang Hongqing, the overseer of the Anyuan Coal Mine, offered 600 yuan for having him killed. When the workers learned of the news, they accompanied Li right around the clock. Whenever he had to appear in person, dozens of workers would surround him, and when the conversation went beyond 10 minutes, they would escort him away, keeping him out of a killer's reach.

Li Lisan met violence with the threat of violence. At a critical point in the negotiations, the mine authorities attempted to play tricks again after working out the 13-article “draft agreement.” Li got to his feet, saying, “This is the maximum concession we are prepared to make. If you accept the terms, the miners will return to work; if not, I, Li Longzhi, will leave the mine, and let the workers act on their own.” The mine authorities thought the words “act on their own” meant insurrection. The mine director Li Shouquan noted in his diary, “At such a critical moment, if there is an insurrection, there's hardly a chance of saving assets worth millions.... The only way out is to reach an agreement for the moment, allowing a return to work, so that things can calm down.”

On the Anyuan Strike, Liu Shaoqi said, “It was a really rare victory for the fledgling workers movement in China.”

The victory provided great impetus for workers movements nationwide. After the Beijing-Hankou Railway Workers Strike failed in February 1923, workers' unions across the country were closed down and driven underground. The Anyuan Railway and Mine Workers' Club was the only exception. Thanks to its cohesive structure and powerful working class strength, the reactionary authorities there dared not suppress it without careful consideration. Later, in Short History of the Chinese Labor Movement , Deng Zhongxia described Anyuan as the only true Land of Peach Blossoms, an earthly paradise.

Li Lisan made a great contribution to China's workers movements, but it did not make him swollen-headed. In a letter to workers who asked him to stay on as club director, Li wrote, “The people ultimately have the power, and association ultimately has strength. An individual alone does not have strength… provided you understand socialism you don't need to know who the individual is.”

Li Lisan at this time was a fearless, dynamic but sober-minded trailblazer.

The CPC developed rapidly thanks to the successful Anyuan Strike. By the end of 1924, there were 900 CPC members in total, of whom 300 were from the Anyuan mines.

In 1926, Li Lisan left for Wuhan to lead the workers movement there. In Wuhan, Xiang Zhongfa, a former boatman, was the nominal leader while Li Lisan was in real charge of union work. It was said at the time that a call from Xiang and Li would produce 300,000 workers from the three towns of Wuhan doing exactly what they said.

For Li Jingrong, it meant the loss of a rebellious son; for the revolution, it meant one more valiant and unyielding warrior.

This warrior's contribution to the Chinese revolution was not confined to workers movements. In the Dictionary of the History of the Chinese Communist Party, published in the 1990s, the entry on “Li Lisan” presents him thus: “After Chiang Kai-shek and Wang Jingwei betrayed the revolution, [he] participated in the August 1st Nanchang Uprising and served as member of the CPC Frontline Committee, member of the CPC Revolutionary Committee, and director of the Political and Security Division.”

Li did more than just participate in the Nanchang Uprising which kicked off the CPC's armed resistance to the Kuomintang. He was the first to propose it.

After the 1925-1927 revolution failed, Li continued to advocate meeting counterrevolutionary violence with revolutionary violence.

On July 12, 1927, the CPC Central Committee reshuffled its leadership as instructed by the Comintern, suspending Chen Duxiu from his duties. Borodin named Zhang Guotao, Zhang Tailei, Li Weihan, Li Lisan and Zhou Enlai to form the five-member Standing Committee to act for the Politburo.

Initially, there was no plan for the Nanchang Uprising. The priority work of the ad hoc central authority was to arrange for Party organizations going underground and the retreat of the central organs from Jiujiang to Shanghai. Li Lisan and Secretary-general of the Central Committee Deng Zhongxia were first sent to Jiujiang to organize the retreat and in the meantime study the possibility of staging another uprising in Guangdong, taking advantage of Zhang Fakui's “back to Guangdong movement.”

But once in Jiujiang, in no time at all, Li turned the retreat-planning mission into organizing an armed uprising.

On July 20, he had a meeting with Tan Pingshan, Deng Zhongxia and others. He presented his points: The possibility of success relying on Zhang Fakui's “back to Guangdong movement” was slight; even if it did succeed, rupture with Zhang would still be inevitable because of the CPC's general principles guiding the ongoing land revolution; it followed, therefore, that independent military action was necessary. “Militarily we need to immediately gather forces in Nanchang and win over the support of the 20th Army to raise an insurrection there, so as to disarm the Third Army, Sixth Army and Ninth Army in Nanchang. Politically we oppose both the Wuhan government and Nanjing government and call for the establishment of a new government,” he said.

This was the first time the Nanchang Uprising was mooted.

Prior to the first Jiujiang meeting, the CPC central authorities had adopted a general approach of armed resistance against the KMT assaults, but there were no further detailed plans as to how, when, where and what kind of uprising. Li Lisan's decisiveness in proposing the Nanchang insurrection was a great merit that subsequent events could not obliterate.

Once the meeting ended, Li Lisan and Deng Zhongxia went to Mount Lushan, reporting to Borodin, Qu Qiubai and Zhang Tailei who had just arrived there.

Borodin kept silent while Qu Qiubai and Zhang Tailei gave wholehearted approval.

Just then, they learned that an emergency meeting would take place in Hankou since the new Comintern representative V.V. Lominadze had just arrived there. Li urged Qu Qiubai who was off to attend the Hankou meeting to report their proposal to the central authorities for a quick decision.

Back in Jiujiang, Li went ahead with his planning, while waiting instructions from the central authorities. He convened the second Jiujiang meeting on July 24, which decided that the forces under the command of Ye Ting and He Long would gather in Nanchang before July 28 and start the uprising on the night of July 28. He then wired the central authorities again for a quick decision. The arrow was on the bowstring and it must fly.

Now when we look back, had there been no second Jiujiang meeting, the uprising might well not have happened; indeed it might not even have happened at Nanchang.

Zhou Enlai was the first person in Wuhan to receive Li's report. The CPC Central Committee held two meetings to discuss the issue and finally approved the proposal. But it chose Nanxun, not Nanchang, for the insurrection, and Zhou Enlai was sent immediately from Hankou to Jiujiang.

On July 25, Zhou arrived and convened the third Jiujiang meeting. He told the meeting that the Standing Committee of the Central Committee and the Comintern representative had agreed to launch the insurrection in the area of Nanxun, and the forces were then to proceed from eastern Jiangxi into Guangdong to join the Dongjiang Army.

Li did not agree on Nanxun. He argued that the presence of warlord armies in the Jiujiang area would put the CPC forces at a disadvantage, and the armies of Ye Ting and He Long had already begun leaving for Nanchang; therefore, the uprising had to happen there.

Zhou finally gave Nanchang the green light.

Zhou, Li and other leading officers formed a frontline committee before leaving for Nanchang, which decided on the night of July 30 for starting the uprising.

Nevertheless, no sooner does one wave subside when another rises. Early in the morning of July 27, Zhang Guotao, the highest ranked member of the Standing Committee of the CPC Central Committee, arrived in Jiujiang, bringing with him the Central Committee's view that the uprising be postponed. On the morning of July 30, the frontline committee held an emergency meeting at a women's vocational school in Nanchang. Zhang Guotao relayed the instruction of the Central Committee that the uprising be debated once more.

Zhang was in mid-sentence when Li stood up abruptly, and interjected: “Everything's in place; what's the need to discuss things again?”

Zhou Enlai followed: “The mission given me by the Comintern representative and the Central Committee is to take charge of the movement. What you just said seems at odds with my mission. If the uprising gets halted, I'll resign!” Zhou later told others that this was the first time in his life he banged the table in anger.

Seeing that Li was the kingpin, and that by getting him on side, he would more easily convince the others, Zhang Guotao took Li aside for a private talk immediately after the meeting. Li responded to his efforts with these words, “Everything's in place. It's too late to make any changes.”

Zhang had no option but to bow to the majority. The uprising was set to start in the small hours of August 1.

The Nanchang Uprising was an armed insurrection launched at a critical moment of the Chinese revolution. The Chinese Communists had to take up arms and fight against the Kuomintang's policy of bloody slaughter. It marked the start of armed struggles independently led by the CPC amid the darkest and hardest days for the Party and its members. Mao Zedong described himself at that time as being “gloomy and somewhat at a loss for a way forward.” Li showed great determination and resolution by insisting on the Nanchang Uprising, and took the lead in meeting armed counter-revolution with armed revolution. In this, he made a huge contribution to the Chinese revolution.

Li Lisan's stubbornness in clinging to his course resulted in the so-called “Lisan Line.”

In classic Marxism and Leninism, workers movements were considered more orthodox. Li Lisan, who had led the workers movement for years, initially looked down on the peasant movement led by Mao Zedong. He also disagreed with Mao's practice of establishing independent regimes of armed workers and peasants and revolutionary rural base areas.

Between the winter of 1928 and autumn of 1930, Li was a leading official on the CPC Central Committee. He personally drafted this “Letter from the CPC Central Committee to the Frontline Committee of the Fourth Army”:

You're now totally reflecting peasant ideology and politically are expressing the error of opportunism. Your mistakes are as follows: One, conducting the land revolution from the perspective of peasants, as in “taking the countryside being the first step and the cities as the second step.”... Two, your view of setting up independent regimes is also from the perspective of peasants, for instance, you think it necessary to first have the independent regime of armed workers and peasants established in the three-province border area (Hunan, Hubei and Jiangxi) before going to attack the City of Nanchang....

He belittled Mao's idea of “rural bases,” believing that “the villages are the limbs of the ruling class while the cities are their brain and heart. Simply chopping their limbs without severing their heads and blowing out their hearts is not enough to ensure their death, never to rise again. The cruel struggle to chop the head and heart of the ruling class will mainly rely on armed uprisings - the final fierce battles waged by the working class.”

It was on this point that Li, who advocated his “beheading” theory in the late 1920s, lost touch with the reality of the Chinese revolution.

After June 1930, Li became the de facto leader in charge of CPC Central Committee. But as soon as he took over as captain, the ship he was steering recklessly ahead started shaking violently.

Chiang Kai-shek was then engaged in the Central Plains War with Feng Yuxiang and Yan Xishan, which led the 31-year-old Li to believe “the time for unprecedented change and revolution is fast approaching.” It seemed the Chinese revolution was about to succeed overnight. He made plans for armed uprisings in central cities, whilst also regrouping Red Army troops across the country so as to fight for large cities.

Li's scheme was:

To organize the Fourth, 12th and Third armies into the First Corps led by Zhu De and Mao Zedong to attack Nanchang and Jiujiang, cutting off the enemy's Yangtze River supply line so as to ensure a victory of the offensive in Wuhan;

To organize the Fifth, Eighth and 16th armies into the Third Corps led by Peng Dehuai, Huang Gonglue and Teng Daiyuan to capture Dayan, cut off the Wuhan-Changsha Railway line and press towards Wuhan;

The Second Corps, formed on the basis of the Red armies in Hunan and western Hubei area and led by He Long and Zhou Yiqun, to help with local uprisings and press towards Wuhan;

The First Red Army in the Hubei-Jiangxi-Anhui region, led by Xu Jishen and Xu Xiangqian, to cut the Beiping-Hankou Railway line (Beijing was renamed Beiping from June 1928 to September 1949 - Tr. ) and press towards Wuhan;

The Seventh and Eighth armies in Guangxi, led by Deng Xiaoping and Zhang Yunyi, to attack Liuzhou and Guilin and press towards Guangzhou, and then turn north and jointly attack Changsha.

The attack arrows for all the route armies on the war map converged at the heart of China: “surround and attack Wuhan” and “water the horses at the Yangtze.”

In Shanghai, as he drew up this unprecedentedly ambitious plan for military offensives and armed uprisings, Li Lisan must be burning with aspirations.

And shivers would have gone up Chiang Kai-shek's spine had he seen this “Working Plan of the Yangtze Office of the Central Military Commission.” The plan showed that the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army had grown during the previous three years of tangled fighting between warlords: It was now over 100,000 strong.

On July 27, 1930, Peng Dehuai led the Third Corps to attack and take Changsha. He Jian, commander-in-chief of the KMT Fourth Route Army and a ruthless butcher of Communists, had a notice put up in the downtown area, saying, “People of Changsha, you are not to panic. I shall live or die together with Changsha.” But then he fled alone to the west bank of the Xiangjiang River.

This was the only case of the Red Army conquering a provincial capital during the decade-long Agrarian Revolutionary War (1927-1937).

It was said that Li Lisan had a big mouth, big enough to fit his fist in. Capturing Changsha made his voice even more sonorous. On August 6, he made a report to the Central Action Committee titled “The Current Situation and the Party's Mission During the Preparations for Armed Uprisings”:

“Comrades, the Chinese revolution at present is forging ahead at ferocious pace, and obviously we are on the eve of a great historic change.

“A person ignorant of China's reality will surely see this as communist exaggeration or as Blanquism [akin to putschism]. But if he now goes to a factory and asks the workers whether an uprising is needed, the workers will definitely answer yes. Many of them would say, ‘When you do launch an uprising be sure to let me know.’

When the Fifth Army attacked Changsha, they had only a force of three to four thousand men as opposed to He Jian's more than seven regiments. Nevertheless, when the Red Army men came to face He Jian's men, they surrendered to the Red Army like water.... Now if the Red Army goes to attack Wuhan, who knows this won't happen again? If this is possible - actually it's not just possible, it's inevitable - so why shouldn't we lead the Red Army to attack Wuhan? To keep the Red Army at a distance waiting for the workers in Wuhan to rise up.… I'm afraid only a bookish fool would think that way....”

Actually the enemy did not “surrender to the Red Army like water.” As Commander-in-Chief of the Third Corps Peng Dehuai said, the Red Army men fought to the death in every battle against the White armies. In terms of military craft, the Red Army fell greatly behind their rivals. Before Peng's troops took Changsha, they had captured several field guns and mountain guns in Yueyang, but within the whole corps, no one other than Peng himself and Wu Ting, an ethnic Korean officer, knew how to use them. Consequently, Peng and Wu Ting had to fire them during the battles.

But this Red Army unit had artillery at long last, which enabled it to take Changsha, a development that astonished the world.

One result of the shock was that rumors started spreading.

Criticized by Li Lisan on behalf of the CPC Central Committee, Mao Zedong and Zhu De had to lead the First Corps towards Nanchang. They put on a show of force surrounding Nanchang and then withdrew, without actually launching an assault. But false reports were printed that Nanchang had been occupied by the Red Army.

On August 4, 1930, Guowen Weekly ( National News Weekly ) carried a report under the banner headline COMMUNISTS CAPTURE CHANGSHA AND NANCHANG:

“The Central Plains have recently become a battlefield. As most of the troops in various provinces have been deployed and sent to the front, the rear defense has become vulnerable. The Communists therefore took the opportunity to launch attacks. On the night of the 27th they took Changsha and occupied Nanchang on July 30. Meanwhile, the Communists in northern Hubei blocked the Beiping-Hankou Railway at Huayuan town and advanced further to take Xiaogan. Wuhan therefore is in a state of panic.... In the space of a few days, two provincial capitals have fallen. If the same ill fate falls on Wuhan, the upper reaches of the Yangtze may fall entirely into communist hands.”

In the same period, the National Weekly News and Chronicle reported: “On July 30, Wednesday, the Communists seized Nanchang, burning down all government buildings and diplomatic mission premises. Then they left for Jiujiang.”

The groundless stories remained uncorrected for six days. The official reports of imaginary killings and arson are indicators of the level of panic and confusion inside the KMT.

On the battlefield, Chiang's rivals, Yan Xishan and Feng Yuxiang, accused him of “tolerating communist bandits” and “indulging Communists while causing harm to the people.”

The news reports, true and false alike, along with pressure, sent Chiang Kai-shek in great shock.

While Li Lisan was planning a victorious meeting of revolutionary forces in Wuhan, Chiang sent a coded telegram to Nanjing from the Henan battlefront. It ordered the immediate release of a notice appointing He Yingqin, director of his Wuhan headquarters, as “commander-in-chief of the Hubei-Hunan-Jiangxi suppression campaign.” Also the Third Officer Training Division under Chiang's direct control was first deployed to move south.

So, before the Central Plains War came to an end, Chiang Kai-shek had begun preparing for war to suppress the Communists.

The curtain went up on a long performance - the encirclement and suppression of China's Soviet areas.

But before the KMT's encirclement began, the “Lisan Line” was already declared finished. Li had demanded that the Soviet Union suspend its five-year plan in order to support the Chinese revolution and that Outer Mongolia be returned to China. He was slapped down fast for this by the Comintern and Stalin.

The “Lisan Line” survived for three months, but subsequently was criticized for 30 years.

And, in fact, for much longer.

Chiang Kai-shek did not know of this. He did not need to.

While the CPC Central Committee was preoccupied with cleaning up the “Lisan Line,” Chiang began his encirclement campaigns of the Central Soviet Area.

The genie was out of the bottle.

For the first campaign, he deployed 100,000 troops and put them under the command of Lu Diping, the Jiangxi provincial governor. The plan was for a pincer attack by converging columns of troops driving straight into the Soviet area.

For the second campaign, Chiang named Minister of the Military Administration He Yingqin as commander-in-chief and allocated some 200,000 troops. The game plan was to go ahead steadily, strike sure blows, and advance gradually.

For the third campaign, Chiang took personal control as commander-in-chief of some 300,000 troops; the offensive strategy was to drive straight in from different directions to corner and annihilate the Red Army.

For the fourth campaign, Chiang made himself “Commander-in-chief of the Hubei-Henan-Anhui Encirclement and Suppression” and appointed He Yingqin as “Commander-in-chief of the Jiangxi-Fujian-Guangdong-Hunan Suppression.” Their strategy was to first attack the Hubei-Henan-Anhui Soviet base with 300,000 troops and the Hunan-West Hubei Soviet base with 100,000 troops; having won victories in these two campaigns, they would muster forces of 500,000 troops to attack the Central Soviet. Combined military and political effort would gradually eliminate all the Communists.

For the fifth campaign, Chiang mobilized a million troops, practically the nation's total military strength he could muster. Half of them were pitted against the Central Soviet. Chiang's own elite troops sallied forth in full force, with Chiang himself as commander-in-chief. His tactics were: “30 percent military, 70 percent politics”; blockading tightly and developing transportation; waiting quietly and then pouncing, using defense as a means of attack.

In order to destroy the Chinese Communists, Chiang saw no troop numbers as excessive, and no strategy beyond consideration. He committed himself utterly to their destruction.

During the first encirclement campaign, Chiang offered a reward of 50,000 silver dollars for the capture of Zhu De, Mao Zedong, Peng Dehuai and Huang Gonglue. He also set “a time limit of three to five months to root out” the Red Army. It seemed like he was doing a futures transaction on the Shanghai market as he had done in earlier life.

On December 5, 1930, Chiang left Nanjing for Jiujiang aboard a warship, to direct the war against the Communists.

It was all show; actually, he was rather disdainful of Zhu, Mao, Peng, Huang and their Red Army.

Chiang spent up to a million silver dollars on buying over local warlords; actually his one lump sum gift to Yan Xishan reached 10 million yuan. By comparison, the price he put on the heads of the Red Army's leaders was rather modest.

By that time, he had already subdued Tang Shengzhi who owned 200,000 troops, coerced into submission Li Zongren and Bai Chongxi with a force of 300,000 troops, incorporated into his KMT forces Zhang Xueliang and his 400,000 men, and had just defeated Feng Yuxiang and Yan Xishan with their 700,000 troops. Accordingly, he thought much of himself and turned up his nose at the 30,000 Red Army men in southern Jiangxi. He made a perfunctory tour of Jiangxi and paid a visit to Mount Lushan with his aides. He then granted command authority to Lu Diping before returning to Nanjing to await news of victory.

He waited in vain. What came instead was the head of Zhang Huizan, commander of the 18th Division, drifting downstream along the Ganjiang River, and a sorrowful telegram from Lu Diping: “In the action at Longgang, the 18th Division was completely wiped out.”This division was the main force in the encirclement.

While He Yingqin and Lu Diping wept for Zhang Huizan in Nanchang, Chiang was grieving in Nanjing, “Alas! Shihou [Zhang Huizan]! May your soul come back and visit us.” Chiang's first encirclement campaign ended amid sobbing and weeping at the funeral.

The second encirclement began with new deployments aimed at “terrifying the bandits with fresh troops.” Joining the armies of the first encirclement, the Fifth Route Army commanded by Wang Jinyu and the 26th Route Army commanded by Sun Lianzhong were sent to Jiangxi for the campaign.

However, the fresh troops showed little enthusiasm to pitch in.

Wang Jinyu used various excuses to delay their departure for the battle front. It was not until Chiang promised to offer him the seat of governor of Jiangxi that he reluctantly hit the road as the head of his northern troops. Full of pauses and stops on the way under the excuse of harassment from the communist troops, they marched forward at snailspace.

Sun Lianzhong's 26th Route Army began destroying railways and vehicles on their way south. Just six months earlier, Chiang's army had been their mortal enemies in the bloody Central Plains War. Now they were expected to turn around to serve as cannon fodder in Chiang's army, so it was hardly surprising.

Under cajolery and coercion from Chiang and He, Wang and Sun finally reached the assigned rendezvous points, but it was already half a month later than the date scheduled for the offensive to begin.

Chiang secretly intended killing two birds with one stone. His favored modus operandi was to use proxy armies to achieve his ends. But sometimes this technique backfired: Too much planning and plotting could also result in harming himself.

The second encirclement was another crushing defeat.

Chiang clung to the belief that inferior troops and inferior commitment were to blame. He began to commit his key forces.

Starting from the Third Encirclement Campaign, the Sixth Division led by Zhao Guantao, the Ninth Division led by Jiang Dingwen, the 10th Division under Wei Lihuang, the 11th Division under Luo Zhuoying, and the 14th Division under Chen Cheng joined in the KMT offensive. These five divisions directly under Chiang had 100,000 troops and were assets that Chiang had raised at Whampoa. Their participation showed the strength of Chiang's determination.

But great determination does not necessarily bring success. Only now did Chiang realize the gravity of the problem. He had been able to smash city-based communist organizations in the course of a single night, but three encirclement campaigns failed to do the slightest harm to Zhu De and Mao Zedong's Red Army in the armed independent regimes.

For the first time, Chiang felt somewhat helpless.

Mao Zedong told Lin Biao that “a single spark can start a prairie fire.” Now Chiang, who had driven the Communists out of the cities and into the countryside, finally discovered the truth of these words.

Chiang said, somewhat bitterly, “[The Communists set up] a ‘temporary central government of the Soviet Republic of China’ in Ruijin, and developed Hubei-Henan-Anhui, Central Hubei, Western Hubei and Southern Hubei revolutionary bases to encircle Wuhan. The areas being disturbed by them involve Hunan, Jiangxi, Zhejiang, Fujian, Hubei, Henan and Anhui, seven provinces in all, covering a total area of 200,000 square kilometers at least. There is social unrest and the people are panicky. The prairie fire seems to be getting out of control.”

Xiong Shihui, Lu Diping's replacement as governor of the KMT Jiangxi government, sent a coded telegram to Chiang Kai-shek on April 1, 1933. It read: “The communist bandits are growing in strength... small bands of them have been gradually spreading. We see them growing but have no way to curb them. Zixi and Lichuan are the strategic points in the border area of Jiangxi, Fujian and Zhejiang provinces, but since losing them to the enemy we cannot retake them. They are also approaching and disturbing Nancheng and Jinxi, popularizing Red ideas among the locals. Such sparks will start a prairie fire.”

Albeit reluctantly, the KMT had to face the challenge directly: how to prevent the sparks igniting revolution.

In response, Chiang mobilized all the armies possible across China to wage the Fifth Encirclement Campaign. Apart from some units left behind to guard, all available troops from all locations were mobilized and transferred, including his own elite forces. They built blockhouse lines and cut off highways. Consolidating what they had achieved at each stage, they closed in little by little. In face-offs they dug in, attacking as soon as a crack was seen.

Things seemed to be going their way: They drove the Red Army into a narrow strip and were about to finish them off. But then the Communists broke through and started their Long March.

A long flow of molten Red steel began its 25000- li journey, winding its way through pain and glory. Chiang tried to pursue and block it at the same time, but could not destroy it.

Chiang met an opponent like none before him.

But the opponent had no idea of what hardships lay ahead. There would be snow-mountains and grassy marshland to cross, Luding Bridge and Lazikou to fight over. And there would be 25,000 li to march before reaching a place of safety. sI6trfJ0Xa6ia14e5+A7q8uzLYkGVLZARpGnDDeo8L5wqdnwcXEVtrRWh1o0F97z