}} On 1 August 1927, the CCP launched an
uprising in Nanchang against the Nationalist government in
Wuhan. This conflict led to the creation of the
Red Army. On 4 August, the main forces of the Red Army left Nanchang and headed southwards for an assault on Guangdong. Nationalist forces quickly reoccupied Nanchang while the remaining members of the CCP in Nanchang went into hiding. Borodin then returned to the Soviet Union in October via Mongolia. In November, Chiang Kai-shek went to Shanghai and invited Wang to join him. On 11 December, the CCP started the
Guangzhou Uprising, establishing a soviet there the next day, but lost the city by 13 December to a counter-attack under the orders of General
Zhang Fakui. On 16 December, Wang Jingwei fled to France. There were now three capitals in China: the internationally recognized republic capital in
Beijing, the CCP and
left-wing KMT at Wuhan and the right-wing KMT regime at
Nanjing, which would remain the KMT capital for the next decade. This marked the beginning of a ten-year armed struggle, known in mainland China as the "Ten-Year Civil War" (十年内战) which ended with the
Xi'an Incident, when Chiang Kai-shek was forced to form the
Second United Front against invading forces from the
Empire of Japan. In 1930, the
Central Plains War broke out as an internal conflict of the KMT; launched by
Feng Yuxiang,
Yan Xishan, and Wang Jingwei. The attention was turned to root out remaining pockets of CCP activity in a series of five
encirclement campaigns. The
first and
second campaigns failed, and the
third was aborted due to the
Mukden Incident. The
fourth campaign (1932–1933) achieved some early successes, but Chiang's armies were badly mauled when they tried to penetrate into the heart of Mao's
Soviet Chinese Republic. During these campaigns, KMT columns struck swiftly into CCP areas, but were easily engulfed by the vast countryside and were not able to consolidate their foothold. Finally, in late 1934, Chiang launched a
fifth campaign that involved the systematic encirclement of the
Jiangxi Soviet region with fortified
blockhouses. The blockhouse strategy was devised and implemented in part by newly hired
Nazi advisors. Unlike previous campaigns in which they penetrated deeply in a single strike, this time the KMT troops patiently built blockhouses, each separated by about , to surround the Communist areas and cut off their supplies and food sources. This military retreat was undertaken by the Chinese Communist Party, led by Mao Zedong, to evade the pursuit or attack of the Kuomintang army. It consisted of a series of marches, during which numerous Communist armies in the south escaped to the north and west. Over the course of the march from Jiangxi the First Front Army, led by an inexperienced military commission, was on the brink of annihilation by Chiang Kai-Shek's troops as their stronghold was in Jiangxi. The Communists, under the command of Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, "escaped in a circling retreat to the west and north, which reportedly traversed over over 370 days." The route passed through some of the most difficult terrain of western China by traveling west, and then northwards towards Shaanxi. "In November 1935, shortly after settling in northern Shaanxi, Mao officially took over Zhou Enlai's leading position in the Red Army. Following a major reshuffling of official roles, Mao became the chairman of the Military Commission, with Zhou and Deng Xiaoping as vice-chairmen." This marked Mao's position as the preeminent leader of the CCP, with Zhou in second position to him. The march ended when the CCP reached the interior of
Shaanxi.
Zhang Guotao's army (Red 4th Front Army), which took a different route through northwest China, was largely destroyed by the forces of Chiang Kai-shek and his
Chinese Muslim allies, the
Ma clique. Along the way, the Communist army confiscated property and weapons from local warlords and landlords, while recruiting peasants and the poor, solidifying its appeal to the masses. Of the 90,000–100,000 people who began the Long March from the Soviet Chinese Republic, only around 7,000–8,000 made it to Shaanxi. The remnants of Zhang's forces eventually joined Mao in Shaanxi, but with his army destroyed, Zhang, even as a founding member of the CCP, was never able to challenge Mao's authority. Essentially, the great retreat made Mao the undisputed leader of the Chinese Communist Party. The Kuomintang used
Khampa troopswho were former banditsto battle the Communist Red Army as it advanced and to undermine local warlords who often refused to fight Communist forces to conserve their own strength. The KMT enlisted 300 "Khampa bandits" into its Consolatory Commission military in Sichuan, where they were part of the effort of the central government to penetrate and destabilize local Han warlords such as
Liu Wenhui. The government was seeking to exert full control over frontier areas against the warlords. Liu had refused to battle the Communists in order to conserve his army. The Consolatory Commission forces were used to battle the Red Army, but they were defeated when their religious leader was captured by the Communists. File:Nationalist China 1929 - 1937.PNG|The situation in China in 1929: After the
Northern Expedition, the KMT had direct control over east and central China, while the rest of China proper as well as Manchuria was under the control of warlords loyal to the Nationalist government. File:China Soviet Zones.png|Map showing the communist-controlled Soviet Zones of China during and after the encirclement campaigns File:The Long March 1934 - 1935.PNG|Route(s) taken by Communist forces during the Long March File:Long-march.jpg|A Communist leader addressing survivors of the Long March File:Chiang1926.jpg|
Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, Commander-in-Chief of the
National Revolutionary Army, emerged from the
Northern Expedition as the leader of the
Republic of China File:National Revolutionary Army troops.png|NRA soldiers marching File:National Revolutionary Army artillery.png|NRA troops firing artillery at Communist forces
Japanese expansionism and united front negotiations In 1931, the
Empire of Japan invaded Manchuria. Although the Japanese expansionism in China posed a clear threat to both sides of the civil war, at first it did not lead to a cessation of hostilities. Rather, Chiang believed that "The Japanese are a disease of the skin. The Communists are a disease of the heart." He ordered his general in Manchuria not to resist the Japanese advance and instead focused on continuing the encirclement campaigns in the south. He called this policy "first internal pacification, then external resistance." The CCP in turn reacted with disdain to Chiang's policy of nonresistance, viewing him as a pawn of the Japanese. They saw fighting the Nationalist government as an essential part of resistance to Japan and called for "Resisting Japan and Opposing Chiang". Nonetheless, prosecuting the civil war while also resisting Japan became increasingly impractical for the CCP in particular. Already by late 1932, Communist guerilla groups in Manchuria had begun to cooperate with Nationalist guerillas against the Japanese occupiers. The CCP also began to come under pressure from the
Soviet Union to negotiate an end to the civil war. The USSR was concerned with events in Europe—especially
Hitler's rise to power—and wanted Communist parties to form
united fronts with moderates to resist fascist aggression. This policy was formally adopted by the
7th World Congress of the Comintern in the summer of 1935. The CCP delegation at the Congress, headed by
Wang Ming, published the "
August 1 Declaration" describing how a united front could be created in China. They recommended a
government of national defense including all parties in China that wanted to resist Japanese imperialism. Importantly, because they still considered Chiang to be a "running dog" of the Japanese, they did not extend this offer to the
Nationalist government. The CCP itself was in the middle of the Long March during the Comintern Congress and was cut off from radio communication with Moscow. Its leaders learned of the Congress's decisions in November 1935. The following month, they held a conference at
Wayaobu to discuss the implications of this new Comintern policy. The
Wayaobu Manifesto that they published was a significant retreat from the hardline positions they had held during the early civil war. It called for "the most broad national united front" to resist Japan, and announced that the CCP was willing to suspend class conflict in the interests of cross-class collaboration. However, they did not intend for the
Chinese Red Army to surrender or submit to the Nationalists. On the contrary, their plan to resist the Japanese centered on expanding the Red Army to 1 million men and dramatically increasing the land area covered by the
Chinese Soviet Republic. In late 1935 relations between Nanjing and Tokyo took a sharp downturn as Japan stepped up its expansionist policies in
north China. Chiang Kai-shek feared that a full-scale invasion of China was imminent, and wanted to secure the material and diplomatic support of the Soviet Union. He also faced growing public pressure to actively resist Japan; on 9 December 1935, for example,
a major student protest broke out in Beiping. In January, Chiang Kai-shek sent emissaries to Moscow to negotiate a military mutual assistance treaty. However, as a precondition for a treaty, Chiang wanted the Soviet Union to order the CCP to submit to the Nationalist Government. The Soviet ambassador told Chiang that while the USSR hoped the CCP would agree to a unified command under the Nationalists, Chiang would have to negotiate directly with the CCP. This upset Chiang, who worried that if the USSR was unwilling to order the CCP to stop, they might be willing to support further revolutionary actions by the CCP if a ceasefire broke down. Progress halted, and after news leaked to the press that Chiang was contemplating a treaty with the USSR, he called off negotiations. : Meanwhile, the CCP opened up separate negotiations with the Nationalist forces besieging them in northwest China. They managed to sign secret ceasefire agreements with
Zhang Xueliang, leader of the
Northeastern Army, and
Yang Hucheng, leader of the Northwestern Army. These generals were frustrated that Chiang' was prioritizing civil war over resistance to Japan. Yan Xishan, another neighboring warlord, also signed a secret agreement with the Communists, although he was not as closely aligned with them as Zhang or Yang. The members of this northwestern alliance were united by their desire to resist Japan, but they differed over the details of how this could best be accomplished. The Communists supported a plan to use Soviet support to take over
Shaanxi,
Gansu,
Ningxia,
Qinghai, and
Xinjiang and turn northwest China into a base under Zhang's command to resist Japan and oppose Chiang. Zhang, Yang, and Yan were still committed to convincing Chiang to lead the anti-Japanese resistance. As they continued to negotiate, they kept their alliance secret and even staged fake military battles to allay the suspicions of the Nanjing government. Negotiations between Chiang and the CCP began in earnest in late 1936. Chiang continued to try to resolve the civil war militarily; he continued to consider a negotiated settlement with the CCP to be a last resort. He was encouraged by the results of the Ningxia campaign in mid-to-late October. In that campaign, the Second and Fourth Corps of the Red Army marched north to pick up supplies dropped in Mongolia by the Soviet Union, but found themselves trapped on the wrong side of the Yellow River. They were cut to pieces by the
Hui cavalry allied with the Nationalists. Chiang began making preparations for a sixth encirclement campaign, and instructed Zhang and Yang to participate. In early November, Chen Lifu presented Pan Hannian with a set of extremely harsh conditions for a deal. Pan balked, calling them "conditions for surrender". In late November, Chiang ordered the Northeastern Army and forces from the central Nationalist Army,
Hu Zongnan's Right Route Army, to attack towards the Communist capital at
Bao'an. At the resulting Battle of Shanchengbao, the Northeastern Army withheld most of its forces from the attack. This allowed the Red Army to ambush and nearly wipe out Hu's 78th regiment. This reversed the diplomatic situation: Chen Lifu moderated his conditions, but the CCP recalled Pan Hannian from Nanjing on December 10. In late 1936, Zhang Xueliang decided that his repeated attempts to persuade Chiang to create a united front with the Communists were not going to be enough. To Zhang, Chiang appeared dead-set on continuing the civil war even as the threat of Japanese invasion loomed ever larger. Following Yang Hucheng's advice, he decided to resort to drastic measures. On 12 December 1936, the disgruntled Zhang and Yang conspired to kidnap Chiang and force him into a truce with the CCP. The incident became known as the
Xi'an Incident. Both parties suspended fighting to form a
Second United Front to focus their energies and fight the Japanese. == Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) ==