In the
summer of 1934, Chiang Kai-shek was poised to rid
China of the Communist scourge. His fifth encircling
campaign was succeeding. Planned by German military
advisers and supported by the Americans, Chiang threw
in 400,000 troops to encircle the Communist base in
the mountains of Jiangxi bordering Fujian.
The Red
Army, comprising some 100,000 men plus a few hundred
women faced extermination. They decided to escape
westward and the Long March began. It was a Communist
retreat.
The
Communists were pursued by Chiang's armies and bombed
and strafed by his air force. At one stage, in the
province of Guishou, deep in the interior of
China, Chiang flew in to take personal charge of 200,000
special troops deployed to stop the Red Army. The
Communists eluded him and pushed deeper into the
interior with Chiang's forces in pursuit.
The Long
March lasted one year. Only 10 percent of those who
started at Jiangxi made it to Yanan in northwest
China where they set up a new power base. By 1947, 70%
of the peasants in north China supported the
Communists. On 1 October 1949, at Tienanmen Square in
Beijing, Mao proclaimed the People's Republic of
China. Chiang fled to Taiwan.
The Long
March was for China what the Exodus was for Israel.
Imagine, the calibre of the men involved in leading
100,000 men in retreat, in groups, stretching some 50
miles long, pursued by a hostile army, bombed and
strafed by enemy planes. The Communists covered a
distance of 9,600 kilometres, equivalent to
travelling from New York to San Francisco and back to
New York again. The marchers crossed twenty-four
rivers and eighteen mountain ranges, plodded through
mosquito-infested marshes, humid tropical grasslands
and traversed cold frigid highlands. By comparison,
Hannibal's crossing of the Alps with his elephant
appears like an afternoon stroll in the park.
The LONG MARCH