Armed Independent Regime of Workers and Peasants

Under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, the basic agenda of the armed independent regime of workers and peasants was to carry out the democratic revolutionary struggle against imperialism and feudalism with the armed struggle of peasants as the main form, the agrarian revolution as the main content and the rural revolutionary base as the main position. It was put forward by Mao Zedong based on summing up the experience of peasants' armed struggle from 1927 to 1930.

In 1928, Mao Zedong wrote “Why is it that Red Political Power can Exist in China?”, “The Struggle in the Jinggang Mountains”, and other works, and expounded the reasons and conditions for the establishment and development of the rural revolutionary base under the encirclement of the reactionary regime. These reasons and conditions are as follows: (1) China was an economically backward semi-colonial and country under indirect imperialist rule. The semi-feudal localized agricultural economy and the imperialist policy of marking off spheres of influence in order to divide and exploit led to prolonged splits and wars within the reactionary ruling group. (2) The influence of the first civil revolutionary war. (3) The forward development of the national revolutionary situation. (4) The existence of a regular Red Army of adequate strength. (5) The strength of the CPC and the correctness of its policies.

Mao Zedong pointed out that the idea of establishing the independent regime of the workers and the peasants by armed force was an important one which must have been fully grasped by the Communist Party and by the masses of workers and peasants in areas under the independent regime.

The idea of armed independent regime of workers and peasants laid an important foundation for Mao Zedong’s theory of revolutionary path of encircling cities from the countryside and seizing power by armed forces.