Zunyi Conference

The enlarged conference of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee held in Zunyi, Guizhou Province from January 15 to 17, 1935, during the Long March of the Red Army. It is known as the "Zunyi Conference". The Conference was convened to sum up the lessons learned from the Fifth Anti-Encirclement Battle and was based on the decision of the Political Bureau meeting in Liping, with the efforts of Mao Zedong, Zhang Wentian, Wang Jiaxiang and other leading comrades. The members and alternate members of the Political Bureau who attended the meeting were: Mao Zedong, Zhu De, Zhou Enlai, Wang Jiaxiang, Zhang Wentian, Chen Yun, Liu Shaoqi, Qin Bangxian, Deng Fa, He Kequan; also attending the meeting were: Liu Bocheng, Nie Rongzhen, Lin Biao, Li Fuchun, Peng Dehuai, Yang Shangkun, Li Zhuoran, Deng Xiaoping, Li De (German military advisor to the Communist International, Otto Braun), Wu Xiuquan (interpreter).

The Conference was presided over by Bo Gu, who first gave a summary report on the Fifth Anti-Encirclement. In his report, he vigorously defended the left-leaning adventurist mistakes. And Zhou Enlai made a side report and took some responsibility. Then, the Conference started a discussion on the failure of the Fifth Anti-Encirclement. Mao Zedong made a long speech, focusing on the most pressing military issues at that time, analyzing and criticizing the mistakes of Bo Gu and Li De (Otto Braun) in military command.

The Zunyi Conference focused on solving the decisive military and organizational issues of the time. After heated debates, most people agreed with the correct view represented by Mao Zedong and criticized the mistakes of Bo Gu and Li De in the Fifth Anti-Encirclement. The Conference co-opted Mao Zedong as a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau and entrusted Zhang Wentian to draft the “Resolution of the Central Committee on the Summary of the Opposition to the Fifth Encirclement" (i.e., the Zunyi Conference Resolution). Soon after the Conference, the division of labor among the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, based on Mao Zedong's proposal, decided that Zhang Wentian would take the overall responsibility instead of Bo Gu; Bo Gu became the acting director of the General Political Department of the Red Army; a new three-member group consisting of Zhou Enlai, Mao Zedong and Wang Jiaxiang was established to take full responsibility for the military operations of the Red Army.

The Zunyi Conference put an end to Wang Ming's "left-leaning" dogmatism in the Party Central Committee, effectively establishing Mao Zedong as the leader of the Party Central Committee and the Red Army, thus saving the CPC, the Red Army and the Chinese Revolution in an extremely critical situation and becoming a life-or-death turning point in the history of the CPC. It was the first meeting where the CPC independently applied the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism to settle its own line, guidelines and policies, marking the beginning of the CPC's political maturity.