The Long March

The Long March, was in fact a series of simultaneous marches in which the Chinese Communists' Red Army enacted a large-scale military retreat from their strongholds in the Jiangxi Province. They were on the brink of total defeat by the Nationalist Kuomintang army, and proceeded to march some 8000 miles to regroup in the more remote Shaanxi Province to the north. Although the various divisions of the Red Army faced huge privation and stiff military resistance they succeeded in fleeing and regrouping, although they faced huge casualties along the way.

• Nationalists: Unknown
• Communists: ~93,000

The marches cost the Communists a huge percentage of their armed forces, from desertion as well as death due to hunger, fatigue, exposure, or military action. But ultimately, the Long March proved to be a strategic success in that the Communists successfully regrouped in more remote regions of northern China. More importantly it was a huge ideological success, the dedication of the Red Army winning over the hearts of the peasants whose lands it passed through.

• 1927: April 12, Chiang Kai-shek orders the "April 12 Anti-revolutionary Coup"

• 1931: November 7, The Chinese Soviet Republic is founded by Mao Zedong

• 1933: September 25, Chiang Kai-shek initiates the Fifth Encirclement Campaign

• 1934: July, The Twenty-eight Bolsheviks replace Mao Zedong with Zhou Enlai

• 1934: October 16, 130,000 soldiers in the People's Liberation Army, under the leadership of Bo Gu attempt to break through the Kuomintang blockade

• 1935: January 15-17, The Communist Party of China reconvened in Guizhou at the Zunyi Conference

• 1935: May 8, The First Red Army, led by Mao Zedong finally crosses the Yangtze River

• 1936: October 22, The "Union of the Three Armies" takes place in Shaanxi province

• 1935-1948: Yan'an serves as an important, isolated, center for the Communist Party

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