Revolutionary Bases in Rural Areas

During the New-Democratic Revolution, the CPC led the People's Army to establish Red Regimes and carried out armed struggles in rural areas. Rural revolutionary base areas were gradually established after the failure of the Great Revolution in 1927. At that time, the Chinese revolution entered a low ebb, and the counter-revolutionary forces greatly exceeded the revolutionary forces led by the CPC, and the CPC was faced with the danger of being disintegrated and eliminated by the enemy, and faced with two fundamental problems, namely, whether to dare to revolution and how to persist in revolution. Facing the test of life and death, the Chinese communists independently raised the revolutionary banner and made arduous exploration of the Chinese revolutionary path in practice.

In July 1927, the Standing Committee of the Provisional Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee decided on three major events: to concentrate the troops led and influenced by the CPC to Nanchang and prepare to launch an armed uprising; to organize the peasants in the four provinces of Hunan, Hubei, Jiangxi and Guangdong to launch an Autumn Harvest Uprising; to call an emergency meeting of the CPC Central Committee to discuss and decide on new policies after the failure of the Great Revolution.

On August 1, 1927, under the leadership of the former CPC Central Committee under the secretary of Zhou Enlai, more than 20,000 troops under the control and influence of the Party held the Nanchang Uprising, which launched the first shot of armed resistance against the reactionaries of the KMT. It marked the beginning of the CPC's independent leadership of the revolutionary war, the establishment of the people's army and the armed seizure of power.

On the sixth day after the Nanchang Uprising, the Central Committee of the CPC held an emergency meeting in Hankou, Hubei Province (the August 7th Meeting), which determined the policy of carrying out the agrarian revolution and armed uprising, and put forward the task of reorganizing the troops, correcting mistakes, and "finding a new road".

After the August 7th Meeting, Mao Zedong, as a special commissioner of the Central Committee, came to Hunan to convey the spirit of the August 7th Meeting, reorganized the Provincial Party Committee and led the Autumn Harvest Uprising. On September 9, 1927, he launched the Autumn Harvest Uprising along the Hunan-Jiangxi border and began to attack Changsha, the central city. After the setback of the uprising, he retreated to Wenjia City in Liuyang to concentrate.

On September 19, Mao Zedong chaired a meeting of the Committee of the Hunan Provincial Committee of the CPC, and he negated the idea of "taking Liuyang to attack Changsha directly" and decided to transfer the revolutionary army southward to the rural and mountainous areas where the ruling power was weak in order to find a foothold so as to preserve the revolutionary power and further develop it.

On September 29, when the revolutionary army arrived at Sanwan Village, Yongxin County, Jiangxi Province, they were reorganized under the leadership of Mao Zedong, and their spiritual outlook was renewed.

In early October, Mao Zedong led in early October, Mao Zedong commanded the uprising army to Ninggang County, the northern foot of Jinggang Mountain, and began the struggle to establish the Jinggang Mountain revolutionary base and carry out the armed independent regime of workers and peasants.

In April 1928, Zhu De, Chen Yi, the rest of the Nanchang Uprising and the southern Hunan Peasant Army arrived at Jinggang Mountain and joined forces led by Mao Zedong to form the Fourth Army of the Chinese Workers’ and Peasants Revolutionary Army (later renamed "the Fourth Army of the Red Army").

In December, Peng Dehuai and Teng Daiyuan led the main forces of the Fifth Red Army after the Pingjiang Uprising to join the Fourth Red Army in Jinggang Mountain. The Red Army smashed the enemy's "advance and suppression" many times, and the Jinggang Mountain revolutionary base continued to expand. Jinggang Mountain Revolutionary Base Area was the first rural revolutionary base under the leadership of the CPC.

In January 1929, Mao Zedong and Zhu De led the main forces of the Red Fourth Army to leave the Jinggang Mountain Revolutionary Base Area and turn to southern Jiangxi and western Fujian, and with the cooperation of the existing small red independent areas and local workers and peasants, they successively opened up the revolutionary base areas in southern Jiangxi and Western Fujian.

In September 1930, the Third Plenary Session of the Sixth Central Committee of the CPC decided to establish the Central Bureau in the rural revolutionary base areas and decided that the Central Bureau of the Soviet Area and the Central Government of the Soviets should have been located in the revolutionary base areas of southern Jiangxi and Western Fujian, which were the largest base areas in the country. Since then, the southern Jiangxi and Western Fujian base areas were also called the central base areas or the central Soviet areas.

During the Agrarian Revolutionary War, in addition to the central base areas, there were also rural revolutionary base areas such as Hubei-Henan-Anhui, Hunan-Western Hubei, Northeast Jiangxi, Hunan-Jiangxi, Hunan-Hubei-Jiangxi, Youjiang in Guangxi, Dongjiang in Guangdong, Hainan, and the Shaanxi-Gansu base areas developed from the Shaanxi-Gansu border base areas and the northern Shaanxi base areas (also known as the "Northwest Base Area."). These bases were created by the Red Army under the leadership of the CPC during the arduous struggle against the enemy's "encirclement and suppression".

With the establishment and development of the Red Army and the rural revolutionary base areas, the agrarian revolution and all aspects of the construction of the base areas were widely carried out, and the base areas showed a vibrant scene and became the embryonic form of the new-democratic republic. But later, due to the serious harm of “Left” dogmatism, the main base areas except Shaanxi and Gansu were lost and the Party's organizations in the KMT ruled areas were seriously damaged.

During the Anti-Japanese War of the whole nation, the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army led by the Communist Party of China went deep into the enemy's rear area to mobilize the masses and carry out anti-Japanese guerrilla war, and they successively opened up Anti-Japanese base areas in North China, such as Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei, Northwest Shanxi and Daqing Mountain, Shanxi-Hebei-Henan, Southwest Shanxi and Shandong, and established anti-Japanese base areas in Central China. The strategic frontline of the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army was the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region.

Since the Anti-Japanese base areas behind the enemy lines were mainly liberated from Japanese aggression, they were also called Liberated Areas. The establishment and development of the anti-Japanese base areas behind the enemy showed that under the conditions of the new anti-Japanese national liberation war, the CPC focused its work on the countryside behind the enemy's lines and continued to take the road of encircling the cities from the countryside and seizing power by armed forces.

During the War of Liberation, with the victory of the People's Liberation Army, the Liberated Areas led by the CPC expanded rapidly. After the land reform, the vast number of peasants who turned over joined the revolutionary army and supported the front line, so that the People's Liberation War obtained a continuous human and material support sufficient to ensure the final victory.

The Second Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee of the Party, held in March 1949, discussed the shift of the focus of the Party's work from the countryside to the city, and pointed out that the period of encircling the city with the countryside ended, and from now on, the period from the city to the countryside and the city leading the countryside begun. So far, as the strategic base of Chinese revolution, the rural revolutionary bases had completed their historical missions.