The Establishment of the Jinggang Mountains Revolutionary Base Region

The establishment of the Jinggang Mountains Revolutionary Base Region is the establishment of the first rural revolutionary base of the Communist Party of China. Jinggang Mountains Revolutionary Base Region was the first rural revolutionary base area created by the Chinese Communists led by Mao Zedong during the Agrarian Revolutionary War in the middle part of the Luoxiao Mountains on the border between Hunan and Jiangxi provinces.

From October 1927 to February 1928, the Front Enemy Committee, with Mao Zedong as secretary, led the soldiers and people of Jinggang Mountains Area to take advantage of the war between the new KMT warlords and the enemy's empty strength in the Jinggang Mountains Area to adopt an active development approach. It established and restored the CPC organizations in Ninggang, Yongxin, Chaling, and Suichuan counties; received and transformed the local Yuan Wencai and Wang Zuo peasant armies and incorporated them into the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army; led the peasants to fight the landlords and distributed the land, established revolutionary power and the Red Guards. Mao also summarized the experience of the troops in mass work and laid down the “Three Rules of Discipline and Eight Points for Attention.”

In February 1928, the new city of Ninggang County was conquered, and the whole county became a revolutionary zone, initially forming a revolutionary base in Jinggang Mountain with Ninggang as the center, including parts of Suichuan, Yongxin, Ling County, and Chaling counties.

In April 1928, Zhu De and Chen Yi led the remnants of the Nanchang Uprising and the Xiangnan Peasant Army to Jinggang Mountain, where they met with the forces led by Mao Zedong in the town of Longshi in Ninggang County and merged into the Fourth Army of the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army (later renamed as the Fourth Army of the Red Army), with Zhu De as its commander and Mao Zedong as its party representative and secretary of the Military Committee. The reunion of Zhu-Mao's Red Army strengthened the power of the Workers' and Peasants' Army in the Jinggang Mountains Area and created conditions for further expansion of the revolutionary base.

In October and November, Mao Zedong summed up the experience of the struggle in Jinggang Mountain and wrote two articles, “Why Is It That Red Political Power Can Exist in China?” and “The Struggle in the Jinggang Mountains”, analyzing the reasons for the emergence and existence of red power in China, pointing out the significance and experience of this “Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Base”, and answering the question raised by some people within the Party and the Red Army: “How long can the Red Flag be fought?”

In December, Peng Dehuai and Teng Daiyuan led the main force of the Fifth Red Army to Jinggang Mountains Base Region, and to join the Fourth Red Army. Since then, the Red Army crushed the enemy's many “invasions”, Jinggang Mountains Base Region has been expanding, in its heyday, including Ninggang, Yongxin, Lotus three counties, Ji'an, Anfu two counties, Suichuan County, the northern part of the area.

After the defeat of the Revolution, the Jinggang Mountains Base Region, as a rural revolutionary base area with great influence established by the workers and peasants under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, not only set an example and provided a more complete experience for the various uprising armies led by the Communist Party of China, but also kindled a new hope among the revolutionaries in general. The creation of the Jinggang Mountains Revolutionary Base Region ignited the spark of the “Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Base”, which actually marked the great strategic shift of the heart of the Chinese revolution from the cities to the countryside and the new revolutionary path of “surround the cities from the countryside and seize power with arms”.