General Policy of Agrarian Revolution and Armed Struggle

On August 7, 1927, the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the CPC held an emergency meeting in Hankou, Hubei Province (namely, the August 7th Meeting), and adopted a resolution titled the “General Guidelines for Implementing the Policy of Agrarian Revolution and Armed Rebellion against the KMT Reactionaries”.

On the agrarian revolution, the Meeting clearly pointed out that the agrarian revolution was the central issue of China's bourgeois civil rights revolution and the main social and economic content in the new stage of China's revolution. The meeting pointed out that the main purpose of the present was to solve the land problem by means of "civilian type" revolution, confiscate the land of the big landlords and the middle landlords, confiscate all the land such as ancestral temples of so-called public property, and distribute them to tenants or landless farmers, and also rent should have been reduced for small landowners. The decision made at the Meeting not only reflected the fundamental requirements of the Chinese revolution and was conducive to solving the problem of farmers' land, but also met the needs of the actual struggle, and enabled the revolutionary struggle led by the Party to be supported and participated by the vast majority of the peasants. With regard to armed struggle, the Meeting clearly pointed out that the most important task of the Party's reality was to prepare for the general uprising of peasants in the vast area systematically and as far as possible. The Meeting also held that the main force of the peasant movement was the poor peasants.

The Meeting decided to dispatch the most active, strong and experienced comrades to the major provinces and autonomous regions to launch and lead peasant riots, organize the revolutionary army of workers and peasants, establish the revolutionary regime of workers and peasants, and solve the land problem of peasants. At the same time, the Meeting emphasized that the workers’ movement must have been combined with the peasants' armed insurrection, that the Party should have paid attention to the military training of the armed workers and the street fighting, that be ready to respond to the peasants' insurrection immediately, and that the working class should have always been ready to lead and participate in the armed insurrection. The decision made at the meeting to fight against the massacre policy of the KMT reactionaries was the correct conclusion drawn by the Party after paying a heavy price, which reflected a great progress in the understanding of the Chinese revolution by the Chinese Communists.

The general policy of carrying out agrarian revolution and armed resistance to the massacre policy of KMT reactionaries was the correct policy formulated by the Communist Party of China to continue the revolutionary struggle under the serious crisis of the Chinese revolution, which made great contributions to saving the Party and the revolution.