Autumn Harvest Uprising at Hunan-Jiangxi Border

In September 1927, the Communist Party of China led an armed peasant uprising at the borders of Hunan and Jiangxi. It was another famous armed uprising led by the Communist Party of China after the Nanchang Uprising. Together with the Nanchang Uprising and the Guangzhou Uprising held in the same year, they are known as the three major uprisings in the history of the Communist Party of China and the Chinese People's Liberation Army.

On August 7, 1927, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China held an emergency meeting in Hankou (i.e., the August 7 Conference), which corrected Chen Duxiu's right-leaning opportunist line and determined the general policy of agrarian revolution and armed resistance against the massacre policy of the KMT reactionaries.

Mao Zedong said at the meeting that “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun”. After the August 7 Conference, Mao Zedong was assigned by the CPC Central Committee to go to Changsha as a special representative of the CPC Central Committee to lead the Autumn Harvest Uprising in the Hunan-Jiangxi Border Region.

The troops participating in the uprising mainly included the Guard Corps of the Second Front Army General Headquarters of the National Revolutionary Army, the Anyuan Workers' Armed Forces, and the peasant armies from Liuyang and Pingjiang, which were incorporated into the First Division of the First Army of the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army, with a total of more than 5,000 troops. Mao Zedong served as the political secretary of the “Joint Front Committee”, and Lu Deming became the general commander of this uprising army. On September 9, the rebels attacked Changsha from Xiushui, Anyuan, Tonggu, and other places.

However, due to the strength of the enemy and weakness of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Revolutionary Army, the uprising army was defeated.

On September 19, Mao Zedong held a meeting of the Joint Front Committee in Wenjia City, Liuyang, Hunan Province. Decided to change the original plan of taking Liuyang directly and attacking Changsha, and to march to Jinggang Mountain, where the enemy's ruling force was weak.

On September 29, they were already less than a thousand people. The uprising troops arrived at Sanwan Village in Yongxin County, Jiangxi Province for reorganization. After the reorganization, the insurgent army was reorganized from a division to a regiment. The Party established organizations at all levels in the army, especially building branches on companies, strengthening the Party's leadership of the army, which was an important beginning in building the revolutionary army of workers and peasants into a new type of people's army led by the proletariat. Then, the uprising forces were divided into two routes and transferred to Jiangxi via Hunan, arriving at Jinggang Mountains Area in October and paved the way for the Jinggang Mountains Area revolutionary base. The outbreak of the Autumn Harvest Uprising on the Hunan-Jiangxi Border Region was of great historical significance. With this as the starting point, the first rural revolutionary base under the leadership of the Communist Party of China was established.

The Chinese Communists, represented by Mao Zedong, accumulated experience in the struggle and gradually opened ground. The correct path of the Chinese revolution was to “surround the cities from the countryside and seize power with arms.”