// Workers AI · dad joke modeWhat did the Zunyi Conference say to the map? You're always re-routing history.
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| Zunyi Conference | |||||||||||
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 Site of the meeting in Zunyi | |||||||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 遵義會議 | ||||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 遵义会议 | ||||||||||
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The Zunyi Conference (simplified Chinese: 遵义会议; traditional Chinese: 遵義會議; pinyin: Zūnyì huìyì) 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.
Background
[edit]In August 1934, with the Red Army depleted by the prolonged Chinese Civil War, a spy (Mo Xiong) placed by Zhou Enlai in the KMT army headquarters in Nanchang brought news that Chiang Kai-shek was preparing a major offensive against the Chinese Soviet Republic's capital, Ruijin. The Communist leadership decided on a strategic retreat to regroup with other Communist units, and to avoid annihilation. The original plan was for the First Red Army to link up with the Second Red Army commanded by He Long, thought to be in Hubei to the west and north. Communications between divided groups of the Red Army had been disrupted by the Kuomintang campaign, and during the planning to evacuate Jiangxi, the First Red Army was unaware that these other Communist forces were also retreating westward.
Initially the First Red Army, with its baggage of top communist officials, records, currency reserves and other trapping of the exiled Chinese Soviet Republic, fought through several lightly defended Kuomintang checkpoints, crossing the Xinfeng River and through the province of Guangdong, south of Hunan and into Guangxi. At the Xiang river, Chiang Kai-shek had reinforced the KMT defenses. In two days of bloody fighting, 30 November to 1 December 1934, the Red Army lost more than 40,000 troops and all of the civilian porters, and there were strongly defended Nationalist defensive lines ahead. Personnel and material losses after the battle of the Xiang river affected the morale of the troops and desertions began. By a 12 December 1934 meeting of Party leaders in Tongdao, discontent with Bo Gu and Otto Braun appeared. Under these conditions, the Communists met in Zunyi to reshuffle the Party politburo.
Meeting
[edit]In January 1935, after the Red Army took over the city of Zunyi, a town of military importance in Guizhou, Southwest China, an enlarged meeting of the politburo of the CCP was held. For nearly fifty years, it was commonly thought to have been held from January 7–9, as related by a senior leader. Fei Peiru, a historian and former museum curator of Zunyi, is credited with establishing the currently accepted dates of January 15–17.[1]
The names and numbers of participants in the conference have always been disputed. These details are of importance to the largely Soviet view that elected members of the party were outvoted by non-members. Those who are most strongly agreed to have attended by all are Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Zhu De, Chen Yun, Liu Shaoqi, Zhang Wentian, Bo Gu, Liu Bocheng, Li Fuchun, Lin Biao, and Peng Dehuai. Chinese sources which show that non-members could not have outvoted members have the following participants:
- Politburo members: Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Zhu De, Chen Yun, Zhang Wentian, Bo Gu.
- Alternate politburo members: Wang Jiaxiang; Liu Shaoqi; Deng Fa, the notorious boss of the secret police for the CCP; Kai Feng, aka He Kequan), leader of CY.
- Generals: Liu Bocheng, Chief of Staff of Red Army; Li Fuchun, acting director of political department of Red Army (acting General Commissar); Lin Biao, and commander of 1st Field Army; Peng Dehuai, commander of 3rd Field Army; Nie Rongzhen, Lin's commissar; Yang Shangkun, Peng's commissar and another member of 28 Bolsheviks; and Li Zhuoran.
- Secretariat and chief editor of the CCP newspaper, the Red Star, Deng Xiaoping.
- Otto Braun and his interpreter Wu Xiuquan.
Various scholars dispute the attendance of Chen Yun, Liu Shaoqi, Wang Jiaxiang, He Kequan, Deng Fa, Nie Rongzhen, and Deng Xiaoping. On the other hand, Liang Botai, Wu Liangping, Teng Daiyuan, Li Weihan, Wang Shoudao, and Yang Shangkun are also held to have attended by some sources.[who?][citation needed]
Conference agenda and speeches
[edit]The main agenda of this conference was to examine the Party's failure in the Jiangxi region and to look at the options now available to them.
Bo Gu presented the main report arguing that the loss of the central Red base area and the military disasters that followed during the fifth anti-encirclement campaign were due not only to faulty policy, but to the overwhelming strength of the enemy and the support given by Western powers to the Nationalists. Zhou Enlai spoke next, acknowledging his own errors but refused to concede that the policy had been wrong. Zhang Wentian then presented his case for a change in strategy.[2]
Mao Zedong then made his case, pointing out that the cause for their defeat in the fifth anti-encirclement campaign was not the strength of the Nationalist's forces but rather the Party's deviation from "basic strategic and tactical principles with which the Red Army [had in the past] won victories", which was a reference to his "flexible guerrilla strategy" which he and Zhu De developed. Mao criticized Braun's order to fight a defensive, positional war in order to preserve "every inch of Chinese Soviet territory" while abandoning mobile warfare. Mao argued that surrendering territory on a temporary basis could be justified while jeopardizing the Red Army's strength was not, as it was the army's strength that territory can be regained. He then laid the blame on Otto Braun, who had imposed "wrong tactics" on the army and his "rude method of leadership" had led to "extremely abnormal phenomena" within the Military Council and Bo Gu, whom Mao declared had failed to exert leadership and allowed errors in the military line to go unchecked. After Mao's speech, Wang Jiaxiang then launched a series of tirades against Braun's strategy. Peng Dehuai likened Braun to a "prodigal son who had squandered his father's goods", a reference to the loss of the base area.[3]
Not all those who were present agreed with Mao's accusation. Chen Yi, for example, found Mao's attack to be "one-sided". Braun defended himself, arguing that he was merely an advisor, while the Chinese leadership were responsible for the policies that followed, which rested fully on Zhou Enlai. According to Mao's biographer Philip Short, Mao's real target was Zhou but could not attack him directly as a power struggle would surely tear the leadership apart and instead attacked Braun and Bo Gu in order to leave Zhou a face-saving way out of the crisis, to which Zhou accepted in a self-criticism that the military line had been "fundamentally incorrect".[4]
Mao's supporters gained momentum during the meeting and Zhou Enlai eventually moved to back Mao. Under the principle of democracy for majority, the secretariat of the Central Committee and Central Revolution & Military Committee of CCP were reelected. The resolution drawn up afterwards condemned the "elephantine" supply columns which had slowed the advance caused by "leaders of the policy of pure defense" and castigated Bo and Braun for their "extremely bad leadership", with Braun accused of "treating war as a game", "monopolizing the work of the Military Council" and using punishment rather than reason to suppress "by all available means" views which differed from his own and Bo was accused of having committed "serious political mistakes". Bo and Braun were demoted while Zhou maintained his position now sharing military command with Zhu De, making him the final decision maker with regards to military affairs, even though he was responsible for the military debacle. Zhang Wentian took Bo's previous position, and Mao once again joined the Politburo Central Committee and Zhou's chief military advisor.[5]
The Zunyi Conference confirmed that the CCP should turn away from the 28 Bolsheviks and towards Mao. The Red Army regained its military power, survived in Yan'an and ultimately defeated the KMT using a guerrilla strategy, and later through conventional warfare as it gained mass peasant support. It could be seen as a victory for those old CCP members who had their roots in China and, on the contrary, was a great loss for those CCP members such as the 28 Bolsheviks who had studied in Moscow and had been trained by the Comintern and the Soviet Union and could be regarded as protégés or agents of Comintern accordingly. After the Zunyi Conference, the influence and involvement of the Comintern in CCP affairs was greatly reduced.[6]
See also
[edit]- Yangliujie Catholic Church, where the Red Army housed its political directorate during the Zunyi Conference
- Ningdu Conference (1932)
References
[edit]- ↑ Sun, Shuyun (2008). "Starting Afresh". The Long March. ISBN 978-0-307-48765-0.
- ↑ Short, Philip (2016). Mao: The Man Who Made China. London: I.B. Tauris. ISBN 1-784-53463-3.
- ↑ Short, Philip (2016). Mao: The Man Who Made China. London: I.B. Tauris. ISBN 1-784-53463-3.
- ↑ Short, Philip (2016). Mao: The Man Who Made China. London: I.B. Tauris. ISBN 1-784-53463-3.
- ↑ Short, Philip (2016). Mao: The Man Who Made China. London: I.B. Tauris. ISBN 1-784-53463-3.
- ↑ Short, Philip (2016). Mao: The Man Who Made China. London: I.B. Tauris. ISBN 1-784-53463-3.
External links
[edit]- F. S. Litten: The Myth of the 'Turning-Point' - Towards a New Understanding of the Long March (article in 'Bochumer Jahrbuch zur Ostasienforschung', 2001)
