Autumn harvest riot
The Autumn Harvest Uprising ( Chinese 秋收 起义 , Pinyin Qiushou qiyi ) refers to a series of armed uprisings of the Chinese Civil War in the provinces of Hunan and Jiangxi , which were carried out by peasant troops led by Mao Zedong and on the instructions of the Comintern after the breakup of the first united front between Kuomintang (KMT) and the CCP . After the suppression of the union and communist movement in Shanghai by the KMT on April 12, 1927, Mao's goal was the establishment of a communist government in the form of a Chinese Soviet in order to bring further areas of China under his control. The establishment of a Hunan Soviet could, however, be prevented by the troops of the National Revolutionary Army .
After the end of the united front in April 1927, the communists tried to take power in the cities of Nanchang , Guangzhou and Changsha, among others . However, they were unsuccessful against the KMT and lost their base in the cities. In August of the same year, the Party's Central Committee formulated a plan for an uprising from the rural areas. For this, Mao Zedong was appointed secretary of a special committee in South Hunan which was to organize the uprising. The actual plan was an uprising with locally recruited guerrillas. Mao Zedong won the support of regular communist fighting groups. From these he formed an association of around 5,000 soldiers, which formally operated as a division.
On September 11, 1927, the communist troops began fighting against the KMT and attacking large landowners. However, the KMT managed to beat the communists with its own forces and militias set up locally by the landowners. A lack of armament, experience and desertions on the communist side played into the hands of the KMT. At the end of September Mao Zedong's insurgents had melted down to around 1,000 men and Mao and his remaining fighters withdrew to the Jinggang Mountains.
The uprising marked a major shift in their strategy, which prior to the uprising had focused on the cities. Mao and the founders of the Red Army Zhu De began to develop based on the rural population strategy, which focused on guerrilla tactics and so paved the way for the Long March of 1934 . After the fall harvest uprising, many miners from the Jinggang Mountains also joined the Red Army.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Yutong Yang: Autumn Harvest Uprising (1927) , in Xiaobing Li (ed.): China at War - An Encyclopedia , Santa Barbara, 2012 p. 15f
Wenjiashi Memorial (Hunan)
The site of the union of troops in Wenjiashi during the Autumn Harvest Uprising ( Chinese 秋收 起义 文 家 市 会师 旧址 - Qiushou qiyi Wenjia shi huishi jiuzhi ), about 50 kilometers southeast of Liuyang , Hunan , has been on the list of monuments of the People's Republic of China since 1961 (1-14) .