Fifth Encirclement Campaign against Jiangxi Soviet

Fifth Encirclement Campaign
	Part of the Chinese Civil War
	; Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek in 1933
Date	September 25, 1933 - October 10, 1934
Location	Jiangxi province
Result	Nationalist victory Jiangxi Soviet eliminated; Red Army forced onto Long March ;
Belligerents
National Revolutionary Army	Chinese Red Army
Commanders and leaders
Chiang Kai-shek ; Chen Jitang ; Chen Cheng ; Xue Yue ; Gu Zhutong ; Tang Enbo	Wang Ming ; Zhou Enlai ; Bo Gu ; Li De ; Lin Biao ; Peng Dehuai
Strength
500,000 under Chiang Kai-shek ; 300,000 under Chen Jitang ; 200,000 from various; Manchuria ; Sichuan ; Hunan ; Fujian ; Guangxi. 1,000,000 total mobilized	130,000
Casualties and losses
Unknown	40,000+

Last updated July 28, 2019

The Fifth Encirclement Campaign against Jiangxi Soviet was a series of battles fought during the Chinese Civil War from 25 September 1933, to October 1934 between Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang (nationalist) and the Chinese communists. During this campaign, the Kuomintang successfully overran the communist Chinese Soviet Republic and forced the communists on the run, an event later known as the Long March. Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang termed this campaign as the Fifth Encirclement Campaign (Chinese :第五次圍剿), whilst the Chinese communists termed it as the Fifth Counter Encirclement Campaign at the Central Soviet (Chinese :中央苏区第五次反围剿), also known as the Fifth Counter-Encirclement Campaign at the Central Revolutionary Base (Chinese :中央革命根据地第五次反围剿) or Fifth Extermination Campaign.

Chinese Civil War 1927–1950 civil war in China

The Chinese Civil War was a civil war in China fought between the Kuomintang (KMT)-led government of the Republic of China and the Communist Party of China (CPC) lasting intermittently between 1927 and 1949. Although particular attention is paid to the four years of fighting from 1945 to 1949, the war actually started in August 1927, after the KMT-CPC Alliance collapsed during the Northern Expedition. The conflict took place in two stages, the first between 1927 and 1937, and the second from 1946 to 1950; the Second Sino-Japanese War from 1937 to 1945 was an interlude in which the two sides were united against the forces of Japan. The Civil War resulted in a major revolution in China, with the Communists gaining control of mainland China and establishing the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, forcing the Republic of China (ROC) to retreat to Taiwan. A lasting political and military standoff between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait ensued, with the ROC in Taiwan and the PRC in mainland China both officially claiming to be the legitimate government of all China.

Chiang Kai-shek, also known as Generalissimo Chiang or Chiang Chungcheng and romanized as Chiang Chieh-shih or Jiang Jieshi, was a Chinese nationalist politician, revolutionary and military leader who served as the leader of the Republic of China between 1928 and 1975, first in mainland China until 1949 and then in Taiwan until his death.

The Kuomintang of China, also spelled as Guomindang and often alternatively translated as the Nationalist Party of China (NPC) or the Chinese Nationalist Party (CNP), is a major political party in the Republic of China based in Taipei that was founded in 1911. The KMT is currently an opposition political party in the Legislative Yuan.

Prelude

After the failure of the 4th encirclement campaign in the spring of 1933, Chiang Kai-shek immediately mobilized troops for the next campaign. Nationalist troops eventually totaled more than one million, mostly forces under various regional warlords, of which the largest part were men from the Guangdong warlord Chen Jitang's army of 300,000+ (or 30% of the total nationalist force). Chen Jitang's troops were mobilized to blockade the southern border of the Jiangxi Soviet. However, most of the warlords were somewhat half-hearted towards the campaign, due to a mixture of only wanting to keep their own power and having already seen four previous campaigns fail. In the end, the majority of warlord troops only participated as block-troops and occupiers of the captured communist regions. Chiang Kai-shek's own Kuomintang troops carried out the majority of the fighting.

Guangdong is a province in South China on the South Sea coast. Its capital of the province is Guangzhou. With a population of 113.46 million across a total area of about 179,800 km² (69,400 sq mi), Guangdong is the most populous province of China and the 15th-largest by area. Its economy is larger than that of any other province in the nation and the 6th largest sub-national economy in the world with a GDP size of 1.47 trillion US dollars in 2018. The Pearl River Delta Economic Zone, a Chinese megalopolis, is a core for high technology, manufacturing and foreign trade. Located in this zone, are two of the four top Chinese cities, and the top two Chinese prefecture-level cities by GDP; Guangzhou, the capital of the province, and Shenzhen, the first special economic zone of the Country. These two are among the most populous and important cities in China, and have now become two of the world's most populous megacities.

Chen Jitang, also spelled Chen Chi-tang, was born into a Hakka Chinese family in Fangcheng, Guangxi. He joined the Chinese Revolutionary Alliance in 1908 and began serving in the Guangdong Army in 1920, rising from battalion to brigade commander. He was designated commander of the 11th Division within the 4th Army in 1925 and took up the garrison of Qinzhou City in Guangxi in 1926, thus staying in the south during the Northern Expedition. In 1928 he was made Commander of the 4th Route Army.

The Jiangxi–Fujian Soviet was the largest component territory of the Chinese Soviet Republic, an unrecognized state established in November 1931 by Mao Zedong and Zhu De during the Chinese civil war. Geographically, the Jiangxi–Fujian Soviet occupied the mountainous parts of Jiangxi and Fujian provinces of China and was home to the town of Ruijin, the county seat and headquarters of the Chinese Soviet government.

location of Jiangxi Soviet China-Jiangxi.png — location of Jiangxi Soviet

As the commander-in-chief of the Nationalist forces, Chiang Kai-shek established his headquarters in Nanchang. In addition to mobilizing the warlords' troops, Chiang also adopted the strategy given to him by his German advisers' (Hans von Seeckt and Alexander von Falkenhausen), which involved the systematic encirclement of the Jiangxi Soviet region with fortified blockhouses. This method proved to be very effective. In an effort to break the blockade, the Red Army—under the orders of a three-man committee consisting of Bo Gu, Zhou Enlai and Li De (Otto Braun)—besieged the forts many times, but suffered heavy casualties with little success. The Jiangxi Soviet shrunk significantly due to the Chinese Red Army's disastrous loss of manpower and material throughout the year, and by the end only a handful of towns and cities remained in Communist hands.

Nanchang is the capital of Jiangxi Province in southeastern China. Nanchang is the largest city in Jiangxi Province. Nanchang is located in the central part of Jiangxi Province, with a history of more than 2,200 years. It was called “Yuzhang” during the Han dynasty, and “Hongdu” and “Hongcheng” from the Tang to Song dynasties. It is located in the hinterland of Yuzhang Plain.

Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central and Western Europe, lying between the Baltic and North Seas to the north and the Alps, Lake Constance and the High Rhine to the south. It borders Denmark to the north, Poland and the Czech Republic to the east, Austria and Switzerland to the south, France to the southwest, and Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands to the west.

Johannes "Hans" Friedrich Leopold von Seeckt was a German military officer who served as Chief of Staff to August von Mackensen and was a central figure in planning the victories Mackensen achieved for Germany in the east during the First World War.

First Phase

The campaign officially began on 25 September 1933, when the first Kuomintang assault on Communist positions was launched. Three days later the Communists lost Lichuan (黎川). Although their force managed to stop the Nationalist advance on the southwest of Lichuan (黎川), further operations ended in failure: when the 24th division of the Chinese Red Army attempted to take Xiaoshi (硝石) on 9 October 1933, not only did the city remain firmly in Nationalist hands, but the communists were forced to withdraw over the next few days while suffering heavy casualties. Witnessing this success, Chiang Kai-shek issued a new order on 17 October 1933, requiring troops to follow the principle of tactical defense, strategic offense in order to perfect his German advisers' blockhouse strategy. In contrast, the Communist leadership refused to adjust their tactics and stubbornly continued futile attacks on Kuomintang blockhouses. Between September 25, 1933, and mid-November 1933, the Chinese Red Army failed to achieve any major victories and suffered serious losses, not only in battle but from defection and disease.

A division is a large military unit or formation, usually consisting of between 10,000 and 20,000 soldiers. Infantry divisions during the World Wars ranged between 8,000 and 30,000 in nominal strength.

Second Phase

On 11 December 1933, a total of eight columns of Kuomintang troops ventured out of their fortifications and started the second offensive. The Communist leadership decided to face the numerically and technically superior Nationalist army in open battle. As a result, Communist forces suffered badly. By the end of January 1934, warlord forces began to participate, and men from the Fujian warlord armies struck from the east in coordination with Nationalists from the north and south.

Column (formation) formation of soldiers marching together

A military column is a formation of soldiers marching together in one or more files in which the file is significantly longer than the width of ranks in the formation. The column formation allowed the unit rapid movement and a very effective charge, and it could quickly form square to resist cavalry attacks, but by its nature only a fraction of its muskets would be able to open fire.

Fujian is a province on the southeast coast of mainland China. Fujian is bordered by Zhejiang to the north, Jiangxi to the west, Guangdong to the south, and the Taiwan Strait to the east. Its capital is Fuzhou, while its largest city by population is Xiamen, both located near the coast of the Taiwan Strait in the east of the province. The name Fujian came from the combination of Fuzhou and Jianzhou, a city in Fujian, during the Tang dynasty.

Third Phase

On April 10, 1934, eleven divisions of the National Revolutionary Army began their attack on Guangchang (广昌), and the communists decided to concentrate a total of nine divisions in its defense. Due to overwhelming Nationalist superiority, Communist strongholds at Ganzhu (甘竹), Great Luo Mountain (大罗山) and Yanfuzhang (延福嶂) fell. On the dawn of 19 April 1934, the Communists launched a counterattack against the Nationalist force at the Great Luo Mountain, only to be driven off. On 27 April 1934, the Nationalists launched their final assault on Guangchang, succeeding in taking it by the evening and inflicting over 5,500 casualties on its Communist defenders. Remnants of the shattered Communist defense fled to the south and west under the cover of darkness.

Guangchang County lies in the municipal region of Fuzhou (抚州), Jiangxi. It is the southernmost and most remote of Fuzhou's ten counties, being bordered by counties in Ganzhou to the south and west and, to the east and over the watershed and provincial border, by Jianning and Ninghua Counties, Sanming, Fujian. It is the birthplace of he second largest river in Jiangxi: Fuhe. This county built in the Southern Song Dynasty Shaoxing eight years (1138), because the rich white lotus, known as "the hometown of Chinese White Lotus." County has width of 45 km (28 mi) from west to east, 55 km (34 mi) long from north to south. The total area is 1,612 km² (622 sq mi), with a population of 240,000 in 2003.

Final phase

The three-man committee of the communist leadership divided their force into six different groups in early July 1934. On 5 August 1934, nine Nationalist divisions ventured out of their forts, taking areas north of Yiqian (驿前) and adjacent regions. By the late September 1934, the Chinese Soviet Republic was left with only Ruijin, Huichang, Xingguo, Ningdu, Shicheng, Ninghua and Changting.

It was at this point that Zhou Enlai's spy network within Chiang Kai-shek's headquarter in Nanchang passed intelligence to the Communists revealing that Chiang was massing for a final push. The decision was made to abandon the Jiangxi Salient, resulting in the beginning of the Long March. As a result of the Communist failure to defeat the Fifth Encirclement, the largest Communist base in China was lost.

Conclusion

Communist failures were mainly due to the policies of the Communist leadership:

The Fifth Encirclement Campaign was a war of attrition, and the Communists were unable to replace lost troops and material. Unlike Mao, the new leadership believed the era of guerrilla warfare and mobile warfare was over, and tried to engage in regular warfare.
Hostility towards all Nationalist troops. Under Mao's direction, warlord forces had been distinguished from Central Army units of Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist government, sometimes allowing for a tenuous neutrality with the warlords. As a result, only 50,000 of Chiang Kai-shek's own troops were available in the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and - to a great degree - 4th Encirclement Campaigns. When the new leadership took over, all Nationalist troops and those fighting with them were regarded as enemies of equal danger. Instead of having to fight an enemy force much smaller than it was on paper, the Communists had to fight a much larger enemy.
Static defense: in addition to head-on clashes, the Red Army was also ordered to emulate the Nationalist static defense. Unlike the Nationalist's concrete fortifications, which were immune to virtually all Communist bombardments, Communist bunkers were built with wood and mud and were susceptible not only to Nationalist artillery but even to heavy rain and wind. These hastily, and badly constructed, bunkers only served to aid the Nationalists by becoming death traps for Communist defenders.
Poor use of intelligence. The Communist leadership lacked serious interest in intelligence collection or use. While the Communists had already broken the Nationalist codes in the previous Counter Encirclement Campaigns, greatly helping in earlier successes, the new leadership did not trust the cryptography enough to make or alter plans according to new intelligence. This problem continued until the Long March, when Mao finally returned to power and began utilizing both cryptographic and human intelligence collection as a major part of their campaigns.
Increased nationalist strength. In previous campaigns, Nationalist forces had insufficient troops to occupy newly conquered regions or act as rearguards, so soldiers were only stationed in urban areas or fixed fortifications. Large gaps were left between these garrisons, which Communists were able to use to harry defences and penetrate deep into the heart of Nationalist-controlled regions. During the Fifth Encirclement Campaign, Chiang had ten times the number of troops at his disposal than in previous campaigns, with a total of half a million. As a result, the encirclement was far more effective, with gaps between garrisons eliminated and conquered regions more easily consolidated.

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