Born in Pingxiang County,Jiangxi,Zhang was involved in revolutionary activities during his youth. Zhang studied Marxist thought under Li Dazhao while attending Peking University in 1916. After his active role in the May Fourth Movement in 1919,Zhang became one of the most prominent student leaders and later joined the early organization of the CCP in October 1920. At the same time,Mao Zedong was a librarian working at Peking University;the two knew each other. [2] [3] Zhang acted as the CCP's top party official at the first National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921 [2] and was elected a member of the Central Bureau of the CCP in charge of organizing the work of Professional revolutionaries. After the congress,Zhang held the position of Director of Secretariat of the China Labor Union and Chief Editor of Labor Weekly,from which he became an expert in labor unions and mobilization. He led several major strikes of railway and textile workers, [2] which made him a pioneer of the labor movement in China along with such figures as Liu Shaoqi and Li Lisan.
In 1924 Zhang attended the First National Congress of the Kuomintang (KMT) during the policy of alliance between the Communists and the Kuomintang and was elected as Substitute Commissioner of Central Executive Committee. This was despite the fact that Zhang had opposed the alliance with Kuomintang in the Third National Congress of the CCP and had been reprimanded. In 1925 in the Fourth National Congress of the CCP,Zhang was elected Commissioner of Central Committee of CCP and Director of Labor &Peasant Work Department. In 1926 Zhang was the General Secretary of Hubei Division of CCP,and in 1927 he was Commissioner of Interim Central Committee of the CCP after the failure of the CCP uprising. Zhang with Li Lisan and Qu Qiubai were the acting leaders of the CCP. At that time Mao only led a small number of troops in Jiangxi and Hunan. In 1928 Zhang went to Moscow for the second time. He opposed Wang Ming and the rest of the "28 Bolsheviks",a group of Chinese students in Moscow. [4] Nonetheless,Zhang was elected as a member of the politburo of the CCP in the Sixth National Congress held in Soviet Union,and then as a delegate of the CCP in Comintern.[ citation needed ] Zhang and the 28 Bolsheviks were mostly reconciled by 1930,however,and Zhang returned to China. [4]
In Zhang's absence,Li Lisan had become de facto leader of the CCP. His "Li Lisan line" called for the rural soviets to launch immediate attacks on major cities,which had ended in disastrous failure. [5] In the winter of 1930-1931,Zhang and the 28 Bolsheviks ousted Li from power and set about bringing the far-flung rural soviets under more centralized control. Zhang was sent to the Eyuwan Soviet on the border of Hubei,Henan,and Anhui provinces. [4] Zhang came into immediate conflict with the leaders of the Fourth Red Army. [6] Xu Jishen and the other commanders wanted to seize the breadbasket counties in eastern Hubei to fix Eyuwan's chronic food shortages. Zhang compared the plan to Li Lisan's "adventurism",and when they disobeyed his orders and took the land anyways,he got permission from the Central Committee to make Chen Changhao political commissar of the Fourth Red Army. [7] [8] Zhang and Chen accused the Fourth Red Army was acting like a "warlord-bandit" force,pillaging the countryside and rejecting proper discipline. [9] Zhang and Chen then purged the army of hundreds of alleged traitors,including Xu. [10] [11]
Zhang's purges expanded during the second half of 1931. Thousands or tens of thousands of party members were arrested and accused of being part of the Reorganizationists,the Anti-Bolshevik League,or the Third Party. [8] In some counties,Zhang even set up secret police. Zhang's main justification for the purge was that the local party was too strongly intertwined with local gentry and the traditional rural power structure. [12] He argued that this had prevented the party from carrying out land reform properly,and land reform under Zhang went much further than it had in previous years. [13] Zhang appointed a Red Army officer named Gao Jingting to chairman of the Eyuwan Soviet. Gao had a reputation for brutality against rich peasants and landlords. [14] In order to "comb out" rich peasants,any Red army soldiers who were literate were dismissed. [15] The purges led to opposition against Zhang from wide sections of the party and peasantry. They eventually came to an end during the latter half of 1932. [14] Soldiers who had been purged for their literacy but had stayed with the Red Army were allowed to rejoin and in some instances promoted. [16] The overall impact and scale of the purges are disputed. Reasonable estimates of the number arrested and killed range from the low thousands to 10,000. Historian William Rowe argues that this "meant... the near final extinction of the Party's base of indigenous supporters" in Eyuwan,but most other historians disagree. [17] Benton points out that almost all of the purged cadres were replaced with other local supporters since there were very few non-native Communists in the region. [6] Tony Saich argues that the Red Army's continued success showed that the purges had not affected the army's fighting capacity. In early 1932,the Fourth Red Army had helped defeat the Third Encirclement Campaign and reached 30,000 soldiers. [10]
In 1932,the Nationalists' fourth encirclement campaign finally broke the Fourth Red Army and Zhang was forced to lead a retreat westwards. [18] The main force lost half of its troops during the fighting and subsequent retreat,being reduced to 15,000 men. [19] [20] In the border region between Shaanxi and Sichuan provinces he decided to set up a new base. Slowly he turned it into a prosperous autonomous region by way of land reform and enlisting the support of locals,establishing the Northwest Chinese Soviet Federation. However,once the prosperity was in reach,Zhang launched another series of purges. As a result,he and the Red Army lost the popular support,[ citation needed ] and was driven from the Red base.[ citation needed ] In 1935 Zhang and his army of more than 80,000 reunited with Mao's 10,000 troops during the Long March. [2] It was not long before Mao and Zhang were locked in disagreements over issues of strategy and tactics,causing a split in the Red Army. The main disagreement was Zhang's insistence on moving southward to establish a new base in the region of Sichuan that was populated by ethnic minorities. Mao pointed out the flaws of such a move,pointing out the difficulties to establish any communist base in regions where the general populace was hostile,and insisted on moving northward to reach the communist base in Shaanxi. Zhang tried to have Mao and his followers arrested and killed if needed,[ citation needed ] but his plan was foiled by his own staff members Ye Jianying and Yang Shangkun,who fled to Mao's headquarters to inform Mao about Zhang's plot,taking all of the codebooks and maps with them. As a result,Mao immediately moved his troop northward and thus escaped arrest and possible death.[ citation needed ]
Zhang decided to carry out his plan on his own,with disastrous results:over 75% of his original 80,000 + troops were lost in his adventure. Zhang was forced to admit defeat and retreat to the communist base in Shaanxi. More disastrous than losing most of his troops,the failure discredited Zhang among his own followers,who turned to Mao. Furthermore,because all of the codebooks were obtained by Mao,Zhang lost contact with Comintern while Mao was able to establish the link,this coupled with the fact of Zhang's disastrous defeat,discredited Zhang within Comintern,which begun to give greater support for Mao.
Zhang's remaining troops of 21,800 were later annihilated in 1936 by the superior force of more than 100,000 combined troops of warlords Ma Bufang,Ma Hongbin and Ma Zhongying during efforts to cross the Yellow River and conquer Ma's territory. Zhang lost the power and influence to be able to challenge Mao and had to accept his failure as a result of the disaster which only left him 427 surviving troops from the original 21,800.[ citation needed ]
In 2006,the writer and producer,Sun Shuyun,provided an account of the Long March that took exception to various ways in which the event has been propagandized. Although critical of Zhang Guotao,she argued that there was no evidence of a so-called "secret telegram" that had been intercepted by Mao in which Zhang intended to use force against the Central Committee. Moreover,she shows that the official History of the Chinese Communist Party was revised in 2002 to say that Zhang Guotao did not order the Western Legion into Gansu in order to build up his own power base. Rather,all orders originated from the Central Committee . [21]
When Zhang reached the new CCP base at Yan'an,he had fallen from power and became an easy target for Mao. Zhang kept the now figurehead position of Chairman of Yan'an Frontier Area and was frequently subjected to humiliation by Mao and his allies. Zhang was too proud to ally with Wang Ming,who had recently come back from Moscow and was acting as the Comintern's representative in China. Zhang's popularity in the Comintern might have given him another chance of returning to power if he had allied with Wang.[ citation needed ] Another reason why Zhang did not ally with Wang was that Wang boasted that it was under his order that five senior CCP leaders (Yu Xiusong,Huang Chao,Li Te and two others—all opponents of Wang) had been arrested,and now worked for warlord Sheng Shicai in Xinjiang under the direction of the CCP. All five were tortured and executed in a prison under the control of Sheng Shicai,having been labeled as Trotskyists. However,Sheng Shicai was acting under direction from the CCP under Wang Ming. After that incident,Zhang despised Wang and would never consider supporting him.
Without any supporters,Zhang was purged in 1937 at the Extended Meeting of the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party,after which he defected to the Kuomintang in 1938.[ citation needed ] But without any power,resources,and support,Zhang never held any important positions afterward and only did research on the CCP for Dai Li.[ citation needed ] After the defeat of the Kuomintang in 1949 he went into exile in Hong Kong. He emigrated to Canada with his wife Tzi Li Young in 1968 to join their two sons who were already living in Toronto. [2]
He gave his only interview in 1974,when he told a Canadian Press reporter,"I have washed my hands of politics". In 1978,he converted to Christianity under the influence of a Chinese scholar,Zhang Li Sang. After suffering several strokes,he died in a Scarborough,Ontario,nursing home on December 3,1979,at the age of 82. He is buried in the Pine Hills Cemetery in Scarborough. [2]
Zhang was highly critical of the proceedings of the first PRC Police leader Luo Ruiqing during the Chinese Civil War. [22]
The Long March was a military retreat by the Chinese Red Army from advancing Nationalist forces during the Chinese Civil War in 1934 through to 1936.
Xu Xiangqian was a Marshal of the People's Republic of China (PRC). He was the son of a wealthy landowner,but joined the Kuomintang's (KMT) National Revolutionary Army (NRA),against his parents' wishes,in 1924. When the Chinese Civil War started in 1927,Xu joined the Eyuwan Soviet led by Zhang Guotao;Xu became commander of the Eyuwan-based Fourth Red Army. Zhang and Xu retreated to northern Sichuan after being defeated by a KMT encirclement campaign. Xu politically survived Zhang's defection to the KMT in the late-1930s;he rejoined the Red Army in a less senior position under the leadership of Mao Zedong.
Kang Sheng was a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) official,best known for having overseen the work of the CCP's internal security and intelligence apparatus during the early 1940s and again at the height of the Cultural Revolution in the late 1960s and early 1970s. A member of the CCP from the early 1920s,he spent time in Moscow during the early 1930s,where he learned the methods of the Soviet NKVD and became a supporter of Wang Ming for leadership of the CCP. After returning to China in the late 1930s,Kang Sheng switched his allegiance to Mao Zedong and became a close associate of Mao during the Second Sino-Japanese War,the Chinese Civil War,and after. He remained at or near the pinnacle of power in the People's Republic of China from its establishment in 1949 until his death in 1975. After the death of Mao and the subsequent arrest of the Gang of Four,Kang Sheng was accused of sharing responsibility with the Gang for the excesses of the Cultural Revolution and in 1980 he was expelled posthumously from the CCP.
Li Lisan was a Chinese politician,member of the Politburo,and later a member of the Central Committee.
The 28 Bolsheviks were a faction in the early Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The faction was formed among Chinese Communists studying at the Sun Yat-sen University in Moscow during the late 1920s and early 1930s. They received their nickname because of their strong support for the orthodox political positions advocated by Joseph Stalin and Pavel Mif. The leaders of the faction included Wang Ming,Bo Gu,Luo Fu,He Zishu,Wang Jiaxiang,and Shen Zemin. Sun Yat-sen University closed in 1930 and the students made their way back to China.
Wang Ming was a senior leader of the early Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the mastermind of the famous 28 Bolsheviks group. Wang was also a major political rival of Mao Zedong during the 1930s,opposing what he saw as Mao's nationalist deviation from the Comintern and orthodox Marxist–Leninist lines. According to Mao on the other hand,Wang epitomized the intellectualism and foreign dogmatism Mao criticized in his essays "On Practice" and "On Contradiction". The competition between Wang and Mao was a reflection of the power struggle between the Soviet Union,through the vehicle of the Comintern,and the CCP to control both the direction and future of the Chinese Communist Revolution.
The Zunyi Conference was a meeting of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in January 1935 during the Long March. This meeting involved a power struggle between the leadership of Bo Gu and Otto Braun and the opposition led by Mao Zedong. The result was that Mao left the meeting in position to take over military command and become the leader of the Communist Party. The conference was completely unacknowledged until the 1950s and still no detailed descriptions were available until the fiftieth anniversary in 1985.
He Long was a Chinese Communist revolutionary and a Marshal of the People's Republic of China. He was from a poor rural family in Hunan,and his family was not able to provide him with any formal education. He began his revolutionary career after avenging the death of his uncle,when he fled to become an outlaw and attracted a small personal army around him. Later his forces joined the Kuomintang,and he participated in the Northern Expedition.
Qin Bangxian better known by his alias Bo Gu,14 May 1907 –8 April 1946) was a Chinese senior leader of the Chinese Communist Party and a member of the 28 Bolsheviks.
The Guangzhou Uprising,Canton Uprising or Canton Riots of 1927 was a failed communist uprising in the city of Guangzhou (Canton) in southern China.
Wang Jiaxiang was one of the senior leaders of the Chinese Communist Party in its early stage and a member of the 28 Bolsheviks. Wang held a variety of high-level posts in the Party:during the Civil War he was the director of the Red Army's General Office,upon the founding of the People's Republic of China he was the first ambassador to the Soviet Union,and then became the first head of the Party's International Department.
Xiang Zhongfa was a Chinese socialist who was one of the early senior leaders of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
The Yan'an Rectification Movement was a political mass movement led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from 1942 to 1945. The movement took place in the Yan'an Soviet,a revolutionary base area centered on the remote city of Yan'an. Although it was during the Second Sino-Japanese War,the CCP was experiencing a time of relative peace when they could focus on internal affairs.
The 6th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party was in session from 1928 to 1945,during most of the Chinese Civil War,and during the Second Sino-Japanese War. It held seven plenary sessions in this period. It was formally preceded by the 5th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. It was the first central committee to have Mao Zedong as a high-ranking member. It was succeeded by the 7th Central Committee.
The history of the Chinese Communist Party began with its establishment in July 1921. A study group led by Peking University professors Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao to discuss Marxism,led to intellectuals officially founding the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in July 1921. In 1923,Sun Yat-sen invited the CCP to form a United Front,and to join his Nationalist Party (GMD) in Canton for training under representatives of the Communist International,the Soviet Union's international organization. The Soviet representatives reorganized both parties into Leninist parties. Rather than the loose organization that characterized the two parties until then,the Leninist party operated on the principle of democratic centralism,in which the collective leadership set standards for membership and an all-powerful Central Committee determined the party line,which all members must follow.
The Little Long March was a 600-kilometre (370 mi),two-month withdrawal by left-wing members of the Kuomintang and the National Revolutionary Army up the Gan River and down to the coast,subsequent to the successful mutiny and insurrection at Nanchang on August 1,1927.
Chen Changhao(simplified Chinese:陈昌浩;traditional Chinese:陳昌浩;pinyin:Chén Chānghào;18 September 1906 –30 July 1967) was a member of the 28 Bolsheviks and an important military figure of Zhang Guotao's 4th Red Army from Hanyang,Wuhan. Chen had also been known as Cangmu.
Zhang Qinqiu was a Chinese Communist revolutionary,military commander,and politician. She was one of the first female members of the Chinese Communist Party,and one of the 28 Bolsheviks trained in Moscow. A high-ranking commander of the Fourth Front Army of the Chinese Red Army during the Long March,she is often considered the only woman general of the Red Army. After the founding of the People's Republic of China,she served as Deputy Minister of Textile Industry. She was persecuted during the Cultural Revolution and committed suicide in 1968.
The Wuhan Nationalist government,also known as the Wuhan government,Wuhan regime,or Hankow government,was a government dominated by the left-wing of the Nationalist or Kuomintang (KMT) Party of China that was based in Wuhan from 5 December 1926 to 21 September 1927,led first by Eugene Chen,and later by Wang Jingwei.
The Eyuwan Soviet was a short-lived soviet government established in March 1930 by the Chinese Communist Party in the Dabie Mountains border region between Hubei,Henan,and Anhui provinces. At its height in 1931 and early 1932,the Eyuwan Soviet was the second-largest Chinese Soviet after the Central Soviet in Jiangxi. It improved the rights of women and redistributed land to poor and landless peasants. It was famously led by Zhang Guotao,a rival of Mao Zedong,who attempted to consolidate his control over Eyuwan with a series of purges. The Fourth Nationalist Encirclement Campaign defeated Eyuwan's Fourth Red Army in late 1932 and forced it to retreat westwards towards Sichuan and Shaanxi. The Soviet government ceased to function and the Communists retreated into the mountains. Despite several extermination campaigns intended to flush them out,the region remained a hotbed of Communist guerrilla activity until a truce was established in the Chinese Civil War.
International | |
---|---|
National | |
Academics | |
Other |