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+

Nationalist victory

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.

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.

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