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Long March

Long March
Overview map of the route of the Long March
Overview map of the route of the Long March
Light red areas show Communist enclaves. Areas marked by a blue "X" were overrun by Kuomintang forces during the Fourth Encirclement Campaign, forcing the Fourth Red Army (north) and the Second Red Army (south) to retreat to more western enclaves (dotted lines). The dashed line is the route of the First Red Army from Jiangxi. The withdrawal of all three Red Armies ends in the northeast enclave of Shaanxi.
Date 16 October 1934 – 22 October 1935
Location China. from Jiangxi to Shaanxi
Result Armies of the Communist Party of China evade the Chinese Nationalist Party armies
Belligerents
Chinese Nationalist Party and allied warlords Communist Party of China
Commanders and leaders
Chiang Kai-shek
Xue Yue
Hans von Seeckt
Bai Chongxi
Mao Zedong
Zhu De
Zhou Enlai
Peng Dehuai
Lin Biao
Strength
over 300,000 First Front Red Army: 86,000 (October 1934)
7,000 (October 1935)
Long March
Traditional Chinese 長征
Simplified Chinese 长征

The Long March (October 1934 – October 1935) was a military retreat undertaken by the Red Army of the Communist Party of China, the forerunner of the People's Liberation Army, to evade the pursuit of the Kuomintang (KMT or Chinese Nationalist Party) army. There was not one Long March, but a series of marches, as various Communist armies in the south escaped to the north and west. The best known is the march from Jiangxi province which began in October 1934. The First Front Army of the Chinese Soviet Republic, led by an inexperienced military commission, was on the brink of annihilation by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's troops in their stronghold in Jiangxi province. The Communists, under the eventual command of Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, escaped in a circling retreat to the west and north, which reportedly traversed over 9,000 kilometers (5600 miles) over 370 days. The route passed through some of the most difficult terrain of western China by traveling west, then north, to Shaanxi.

The Long March began Mao Zedong's ascent to power, whose leadership during the retreat gained him the support of the members of the party. The bitter struggles of the Long March, which was completed by only about one-tenth of the force that left Jiangxi, would come to represent a significant episode in the history of the Communist Party of China, and would seal the personal prestige of Mao and his supporters as the new leaders of the party in the following decades.

Although the literal translation of the Chinese Cháng Zhēng is “Long March”, official publications of the People's Republic of China refer to it as "The Long March of the Red Army" (Chinese traditional: 紅軍長征, Chinese simplified: 红军长征, pinyin: Hóngjūn Chángzhēng). The Long March most commonly refers to the transfer of the main group of the First (or Central) Red Army, which included the leaders of the Communist Party of China, from Yudu in the province of Jiangxi to Yan'an in Shaanxi. In this sense, the Long March lasted from October 16, 1934 to October 19, 1935. In a broader view, the Long March included two other forces retreating under pressure from the Kuomintang: the Second Red Army and the Fourth Red Army. The retreat of all the Red Armies was not complete until October 22, 1935, when the three forces linked up in Shaanxi.


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Wikipedia

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