The Path of Encircling Cities with Rural Areas and Seizing of Power by Armed Forces

The path of encircling cities from the countryside and seizing power by armed forces was a great creation made by Mao Zedong by combining the general principles of Marxism-Leninism with the reality of the Chinese revolution. Mao Zedong's Chinese style armed way of seizing power, characterized by encircling cities from the countryside, was also an important part of the CPC's theory of New-Democratic Revolution.

Its basic content was: In the democratic revolution led by the Communist Party of China, the main form of struggle was to launch a revolutionary war. During the great revolution, the Communist Party of China cooperated with the KMT and launched the Northern Expedition to overthrow the feudal warlords in Guangzhou. After the failure of the Great Revolution in 1927, the KMT became the main target of the Chinese revolution.

After the KMT established a political power representing the interests of the big landlords and the big bourgeoisie in Nanjing, the revolution led by the CPC should, first of all, launched armed riots among the peasants, established the people's army, carried out guerrilla war and agrarian revolution in the countryside, established the rural revolutionary base, and turned the backward countryside into an advanced and consolidated base. In the long-term struggle in the countryside, the CPC gradually exercised, accumulated and developed revolutionary forces, weakened the enemy's power, changed the situation of the enemy from being stronger and bigger to weaker and smaller, and finally seized the central cities and won the victory of the national power and the national revolution.

The theory of encircling cities from the countryside and seizing power by armed forces was a scientific summary of the struggle experience of the Red Army and base areas led by the CPC after the failure of the Great Revolution in 1927. It came into being on the basis of a resolute struggle between the Chinese Communists represented by Mao Zedong and the erroneous tendency prevailing in the party at that time to dogmatize Marxism and to sanctify the resolutions of the Communist International and the experience of the Soviet Union.

After the failure of the Great Revolution in 1927, Mao Zedong led the Autumn Harvest Uprising along the Hunan-Jiangxi border, and later established a rural revolutionary base in Jinggang Mountain area.

In October 1928, at the Second Congress of the Party in the Hunan-Jiangxi border, Mao Zedong demonstrated the reasons and conditions for the existence and development of the Red Regime in China at that time, and he pointed out that the policy of split exploitation between the local agricultural economy and imperialism divided the power scope of China, which resulted in the contradiction between the old and the new warlords of all factions, and as a result of the continuous war, "one or more small areas under Red political power have emerged in the midst of a White regime which encircles them."

In the spring of 1929, Mao Zedong, Zhu De and Chen Yi led the main forces of the Fourth Red Army to southern Jiangxi and western Fujian to develop the Red Army and establish a central revolutionary base area. At the same time, Northeast Jiangxi, West Hunan, Hubei, Henan and Anhui and other rural revolutionary base areas also got a foothold in the constant smashing of the KMT army's attack and achieved preliminary development.

In January 1930, Mao Zedong profoundly expounded the great significance of establishing a Red Regime in China in “A Single Spark Can Start a Prairie Fire” by pointing out that the establishment and expansion of the Red Army, the guerrilla forces and the Red Areas was the highest form of peasant struggle under the leadership of the proletariat, the inevitable outcome of the growth of the semi-colonial peasant struggle, and undoubtedly the most important factor in accelerating the revolutionary high tide throughout the country.

Obviously, this actually put forward the idea that the focus of the CPC's work should have been rural struggle. To this end, it was needed to call for the implementation of the "the policy of establishing base areas, of systematically setting up political power, of deepening the agrarian revolution, and of expanding the people's armed forces.”

In October 1938, at the Sixth Plenary Session of the Sixth Central Committee of the CPC of China, Mao Zedong summed up the experience of the "armed independent regime of workers and peasants” during the agrarian revolution and expounded systematically the theory of the path of encircling the cities in the countryside and finally winning the national victory.

Mao Zedong pointed out that the seizure of power by arms is the revolutionary principle of Marxism-Leninism, but the way to implement this revolutionary principle in countries with different conditions would vary.

In independent capitalist countries, the task of the proletarian parties was to enter the armed uprising and war through long-term legal struggle, occupy the cities first, and then attack the countryside. However, in a semi-colonial and semi-feudal China without democracy and national independence, powerful imperialism and its reactionary allies in China had always occupied the central cities of China for a long time, while the vast countryside was the weak link of their rule. Therefore, the task of the CPC was "basically not to enter the uprising and war through long-term legal struggle, nor to occupy the city first and then the countryside, but to take the opposite road."

During the Anti-Japanese War, Mao Zedong used this theory to lead the anti-Japanese guerrilla war in North China, Central China and South China, established 19 anti-Japanese democratic bases, controlled the vast rural areas, and made them a strategic base for the Anti-Japanese National War.

At the beginning of the War of Liberation (1946-1949), the CPC adopted the strategic policy of "withdrawing from main road and main railway areas, striving to maintain certain position in the Northeast, as well as striving to control the major cities along the Changchun Road and in the Northeast, plus striving to control the vast countryside, small and medium-sized cities and secondary railways in Eastern, Southern, Northern and Western Manchuria.” With this strategic policy, CPC and PLA established a solid rural revolutionary base in Northeast China. In Northwest China, North China, East China and Central China, the CPC also developed a large number of Liberated Areas, which became the basic foundation of nation-wide victory.

In March 1949, when the National Revolution was approaching overall victory, Mao Zedong declared at the Second Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee of the Party that since 1927, the Party gathered strength in the villages, used the villages in order to surround the cities and then to take the cities, this period ended, and the period of from the city to the village begun.

Practice proved that the theory of Chinese Communists represented by Mao Zedong on the road of encircling the cities from the countryside and finally winning the nation-wide victory not only combines the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism with the specific reality of the Chinese revolution, revealed the objective law of the development of China’s revolution after the failure of the 1927 revolution, led the revolution to victory, and it added new content to the triumph and to the treasure house of Marxist-Leninist theory.