Summary
Highlights
The Long March, a military retreat, was transformed by Mao's propaganda into a heroic victory, emphasizing the Red Army's resilience. Mao used 'eight points for attention' to gain peasant support and pushed for a peasant-led revolution due to China's limited industrialization. This period solidified Mao's leadership within the CCP, despite facing rivals who favored Western-style democracy or a Soviet-style proletarian revolution.
The CCP established Yan'an as its headquarters (1936-1948), creating the Yan'an Soviet. They implemented land reform, confiscating landlord land for redistribution and providing services like healthcare and education, which boosted their popularity among peasants. Foreign visitors' positive reports, curated by the CCP, reinforced an image of an ideal society. Mao then launched the rectification movement (1941-1944) to consolidate his power, purging critics and ensuring undisputed leadership through a campaign that involved accusations, torture, and forced suicides.
The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937) led to a temporary truce and second united front between the KMT and CCP. The KMT bore the brunt of initial resistance, suffering major losses and atrocities like the Nanking Massacre. The CCP used KMT's failures in protecting the populace as propaganda, exaggerating their own guerrilla successes and portraying themselves as true nationalist forces, thereby attracting more recruits and expanding control in rural areas.
The KMT's initial support eroded due to unfulfilled reform promises, poor implementation of policies, and widespread corruption, including government involvement in the opium trade. Land remained concentrated among the wealthy, leaving many peasants landless. The KMT was perceived as serving only the wealthy, and its propaganda was ineffective. Increased censorship and repression, influenced by European fascism, further alienated the populace. The KMT's inability to defend against Japan provided the CCP with further propaganda opportunities, highlighting the CCP's mass mobilization efforts against the KMT's reliance on military power and suppression of civil liberties. By 1945, China faced devastation and the imminent civil war between the KMT and CCP.