October 5, 1928


I. The Internal Political Situation

II. Reasons for the Emergence and Survival of Red Political
    Power in China
III. The Independent Regime in the Hunan-Kiangsi Border Area
    and the August Defeat
IV. The Role of the Independent Regime of the Hunan-Kiangsi
    Border Area in Hunan, Hupeh and Kiangsi
V. Economic Problems
VI. The Problem of Military Bases

[This article was part of the resolution, originally entitled "The Political
Problems and the Tasks of the Border Area Party Organization", which was
drafted by Comrade Mao Tse-tung for the Second Party Congress of the
Hunan-Kiangsi Border Area.]


## I. THE INTERNAL POLITICAL SITUATION


The present regime of the new warlords of the Kuomintang remains a regime
of the comprador class in the cities and the landlord class in the countryside;
it is a regime which has capitulated to imperialism in its foreign relations
and which at home has replaced the old warlords with new ones, subjecting
the working class and the peasantry to an even more ruthless economic
exploitation and political oppression. The bourgeois-democratic revolution
which started in Kwangtung Province had gone only halfway when the comprador
and landlord classes usurped the leadership and immediately shifted it on
to the road of counter-revolution; throughout the country the workers, the
peasants, the other sections of the common people, and even the bourgeoisie,
[1] have remained under counter-revolutionary rule and
obtained not the slightest particle of political or economic emancipation.

Before their capture of Peking and Tientsin, the four cliques of the new
Kuomintang warlords, Chiang Kai-shek, the Kwangsi warlords, Feng Yu-hsiang
and Yen Hsi-shan, [2] formed a temporary alliance against
Chang Tso-lin. [3] As soon as these cities were captured,
this alliance broke up, giving way to bitter struggle among the four cliques,
and now a war is brewing between the Chiang and the Kwangsi cliques. The
contradictions and struggles among the cliques of warlords in China reflect
the contradictions and struggles among the imperialist powers. Hence, as
long as China is divided among the imperialist powers, the various cliques
of warlords cannot under any circumstances come to terms, and whatever
compromises they may reach will only be temporary. A temporary compromise
today engenders a bigger war tomorrow.

China is in urgent need of a bourgeois-democratic revolution, and this revolution
can be completed only under the leadership of the proletariat. Because the
proletariat failed to exercise firm leadership in the revolution of 1926-27
which started from Kwangtung and spread towards the Yangtze River, leadership
was seized by the comprador and landlord classes and the revolution was replaced
by counterrevolution. The bourgeois-democratic revolution thus met with a
temporary defeat. This defeat was a heavy blow to the Chinese proletariat
and peasantry and also a blow to the Chinese bourgeoisie (but not to the
comprador and landlord classes). Yet in the last few months, both in the
north and in the south, there has been a growth of organized strikes by the
workers in the cities and of insurrections by the peasants in the countryside
under the leadership of the Communist Party. Hunger and cold are creating
great unrest among the soldiers of the warlord armies. Meanwhile, urged on
by the clique headed by Wang Ching-wei and Chen Kung-po, the bourgeoisie
is promoting a reform movement of considerable proportions
[4] in the coastal areas and along the Yangtze River. This
is a new development.

According to the directives of the Communist International and the Central
Committee of our Party, the content of China's democratic revolution consists
in overthrowing the rule of imperialism and its warlord tools in China so
as to complete the national revolution, and in carrying out the agrarian
revolution so as to eliminate the feudal exploitation of the peasants by
the landlord class. Such a revolutionary movement has been growing day by
day since the Tsinan Massacre [5] in May 1928

## II. REASONS FOR THE EMERGENCE AND SURVIVAL OF RED POLITICAL
  POWER IN CHINA [6]


The long-term survival inside a country of one or more small areas under
Red political power completely encircled by a White regime is a phenomenon
that has never occurred anywhere else in the world. There are special reasons
for this unusual phenomenon. It can exist and develop only
under certain conditions.

First, it cannot occur in any imperialist country or in any colony under
direct imperialist rule, [7] but can only occur in China
which is economically backward, and which is semi-colonial and under indirect
imperialist rule. For this unusual phenomenon can occur only in conjunction
with another unusual phenomenon, namely, war within the White regime. It
is a feature of semicolonial China that, since the first year of the Republic
[1912] the various cliques of old and new warlords have waged incessant wars
against one another, supported by imperialism from abroad and by the comprador
and landlord classes at home. Such a phenomenon is to be found in none of
the imperialist countries nor for that matter in any colony under direct
imperialist rule, but only in a country like China which is under indirect
imperialist rule. Two things account for its occurrence, namely, a localized
agricultural economy (not a unified capitalist economy) and the imperialist
policy of marking off spheres of influence in order to divide and exploit.
The prolonged splits and wars within the White regime provide a condition
for the emergence and persistence of one or more small Red areas under the
leadership of the Communist Party amidst the encirclement of the White regime.
The independent regime carved out on the borders of Hunan and Kiangsi Provinces
is one of many such small areas. In difficult or critical times some comrades
often have doubts about the survival of Red political power and become
pessimistic The reason is that they have not found the correct explanation
for its emergence and survival. If only we realize that splits and wars will
never cease within the White regime in China, we shall have no doubts about
the emergence, survival and daily growth of Red political power.

Second, the regions where China's Red political power has first emerged and
is able to last for a long time have not been those unaffected by the democratic
revolution, such as Szechuan, Kweichow, Yunnan and the northern provinces,
but regions such as the provinces of Hunan, Kwangtung, Hupoh and Kiangsi,
where the masses of workers, peasants and soldiers rose in great numbers
in the course of the bourgeois-democratic revolution of 1926 and 1927. In
many parts of these provinces trade unions and peasant associations were
formed on a wide scale, and many economic and political struggles were waged
by the working class and the peasantry against the landlord class and the
bourgeoisie. This is why the people held political power for three days in
the city of Canton and why independent regimes of peasants emerged in Haifeng
and Lufeng, in eastern and southern Hunan, in the Hunan-Kiangsi border area
and in Huangan, Hupeh Province. [8] As for the present
Red Army, it is a split-off from the National Revolutionary Army which underwent
democratic political training and came under the influence of the masses
of workers and peasants. The elements that make up the Red Army cannot possibly
come from armies like those of Yen Hsi-shan and Chang Tso-lin, which have
not received any democratic political training or come under the influence
of the workers and peasants.

Third, whether it is possible for the people's political power in small areas
to last depends on whether the nation-wide revolutionary situation continues
to develop. If it does, then the small Red areas will undoubtedly last for
a long time, and will, moreover, inevitably become one of the many forces
for winning nation-wide political power. If the nation-wide revolutionary
situation does not continue to develop but stagnates for a fairly long time,
then it will be impossible for the small Red areas to last long. Actually,
the revolutionary situation in China is continuing to develop with the continuous
splits and wars within the ranks of the comprador and landlord classes and
of the international bourgeoisie. Therefore the small Red areas will undoubtedly
last for a long time, and will also continue to expand and gradually approach
the goal of seizing political power throughout the country.

Fourth, the existence of a regular Red Army of adequate strength is a necessary
condition for the existence of Red political power. If we have local Red
Guards [9] only but no regular Red Army, then we cannot
cope with the regular White forces, but only with the landlords' levies.
Therefore, even when the masses of workers and peasants are active, it is
definitely impossible to create an independent regime, let alone an independent
regime which is durable and grows daily, unless we have regular forces of
adequate strength. It follows that the idea of "establishing independent
regimes of the workers and the peasants by armed force" is an important one
which must be fully grasped by the Communist Party and by the masses of workers
and peasants in areas under the independent regime.

Fifth another important condition in addition to the above is required for
the prolonged existence and development of Red political power, namely, that
the Communist Party organization should be strong and its policy correct.

## III. THE INDEPENDENT REGIME IN THE HUNAN KIANGSI BORDER AREA
  AND THE AUGUST DEFEAT


Splits and wars among the warlords weaken the power of the White regime.
Thus opportunities are provided for the rise of Red political power in small
areas. But fighting among the warlords does not go on every day. Whenever
the White regime in one or more provinces enjoys temporary stability, the
ruling classes there inevitably combine and do their utmost to destroy Red
political power. In areas where all the necessary conditions for its
establishment and persistence are not fulfilled, Red political power is in
danger of being overthrown by the enemy. This is the reason why many Red
regimes emerging at favourable moments before last April in places like Canton,
Haifeng and Lufeng, the Hunan-Kiangsi border area, southern Hunan, Liling
and Huangan were crushed one after another by the White regime. From April
onward the independent regime in the Hunan-Kiangsi border area was confronted
with a temporarily stable ruling power in the south, and Hunan and Kiangsi
would usually dispatch eight, nine or more regiments--sometimes as many as
eighteen--to "suppress" us. Yet with a force of less than four regiments
we fought the enemy for four long months, daily enlarging the territory under
our independent regime, deepening the agrarian revolution, extending the
organizations of the people's political power, and expanding the Red Army
and the Red Guards. This was possible because the policies of the Communist
Party organizations (local and army) in the Hunan-Kiangsi border area were
correct. The policies of the Border Area Special Committee and the Army Committee
of the Party were then as follows:

Struggle resolutely against the enemy, set up political power in the middle
section of the Lohsiao mountain range, [10] and oppose
flightism.

Deepen the agrarian revolution in areas under the independent regime.

Promote the development of the local Party organization with the help of
the army Party organization and promote the development of the local armed
forces with the help of the regular army.

Concentrate the Red Army units in order to fight the enemy confronting them
when the time is opportune, and oppose the division of forces so as to avoid
being destroyed one by one.

Adopt the policy of advancing in a series of waves to expand the area under
the independent regime, and oppose the policy of expansion by adventurist
advance.

Thanks to these proper tactics, to a terrain favourable to our struggle,
and to the inadequate co-ordination between the troops invading from Hunan
and those invading from Kiangsi, we were able to win a number of victories
in the four months from April to July. Although several times stronger than
we, the enemy was unable to prevent the constant expansion of our regime,
let alone to destroy it, and our regime tended to exert an ever-growing influence
on Hunan and Kiangsi. The sole reason for the August defeat was that, failing
to realize that the period was one of temporary stability for the ruling
classes, some comrades adopted a strategy suited to a period of political
splits within the ruling classes and divided our forces for an adventurous
advance, thus causing defeat both in the border area and in southern Hunan.
Comrade Tu Hsiu-ching, the representative of the Hunan Provincial Committee,
failed to grasp the actual situation and disregarded the resolutions of the
joint meeting of the Special Committee, the Army Committee and the Yunghsin
County Committee of the Party; he just mechanically enforced the order of
the Hunan Provincial Committee and echoed the views of the Red Army's 28th
Regiment which wanted to evade struggle and return home, and his mistake
was exceedingly grave. The situation arising from this defeat was salvaged
as a result of the corrective measures taken by the Special Committee and
the Army Committee of the Party after September.

## IV. THE ROLE OF THE INDEPENDENT REGIME OF THE HUNAN- KIANGSI
  BORDER AREA IN HUNAN, HUPEH AND KIANGSI


The significance of the armed independent regime of workers and peasants
in the Hunan-Kiangsi border area, with Ningkang as its centre, is definitely
not confined to the few counties in the border area; this regime will play
an immense role in the process of the seizure of political power in Hunan,
Hupeh and Kiangsi through the insurrection of the workers and peasants in
these three provinces. The following are tasks of great importance for the
Party in the border area in connection with the insurrections unfolding in
Hunan, Hupeh and Kiangsi: Extend the influence of the agrarian revolution
and of the people's political power in the border area to the lower reaches
of the rivers in Hunan and Kiangsi and as far as Hupeh; constantly expand
the Red Army and enhance its quality through struggle so that it can fulfil
its mission in the coming general insurrection of the three provinces; enlarge
the local armed forces in the counties, that is, the Red Guards and the workers'
and peasants' insurrection detachments, and enhance their quality so that
they are able to fight the landlords' levies and small armed units now and
safeguard the political power of the border area in the future; gradually
reduce the extent to which local work is dependent on the assistance of the
Red Army personnel, so that the border area will have its own personnel to
take charge of the work and even provide personnel for the Red Army and the
expanded territory of the independent regime.

## V. ECONOMIC PROBLEMS


The shortage of necessities and cash has become a very big problem for the
army and the people inside the White encirclement. Because of the tight enemy
blockade, necessities such as salt, cloth and medicines have been very scarce
and dear all through the past year in the independent border area, which
has upset, sometimes to an acute degree, the lives of the masses of the workers,
peasants and petty bourgeoisie, [11] as well as of the
soldiers of the Red Army. The Red Army has to fight the enemy and to provision
itself at one and the same time. It even lacks funds to pay the daily food
allowance of five cents per person, which is provided in addition to grain;
the soldiers are undernourished, many are ill, and the wounded in the hospitals
are worse off. Such difficulties are of course unavoidable before the nation-wide
seizure of political power; yet there is a pressing need to overcome them
to some extent, to make life somewhat easier, and especially to secure more
adequate supplies for the Red Army. Unless the Party in the border area can
find proper ways to deal with economic problems, the independent regime will
have great difficulties during the comparatively long period in which the
enemy's rule will remain stable. An adequate solution of these economic problems
undoubtedly merits the attention of every Party member.

## VI. THE PROBLEM OF MILITARY BASES


The Party in the border area has another task, namely, the consolidation
of the military bases at Five Wells [12] and Chiulung.
The Five Wells mountain area at the juncture of Yunghsin, Linghsien, Ningkang
and Suichuan Counties, and the Chiulung mountain area at the juncture of
Yunghsin, Ningkang, Chaling and Lienhua Counties, both of which have
topographical advantages, are important military bases not only for the border
area at present, but also for insurrections in Hunan, Hupeh and Kiangsi in
the future, and this is particularly true of Five Wells, where we have the
support of the people as well as a terrain that is especially difficult and
strategically important. The way to consolidate these bases is, first, to
construct adequate defences, second, to store sufficient grain and, third,
to set up comparatively good Red Army hospitals. The Party in the border
area must strive to perform these three tasks effectively.

## Notes

[1] By the term "bourgeoisie", Comrade Mao Tse-tung means
the national bourgeoisie. For his detailed account of the distinction between
this class and the big comprador bourgeoisie, see "On Tactics
Against Japanese Imperialism" (December 1955) and "The Chinese Revolution
and the Chinese Communist Party" (December 1939).

[2] These four cliques of warlords fought together against
Chang Tso-lin and occupied Peking and Tientsin in June 1928.

[3] Chang Tso-lin, who headed the Fengtien clique of warlords,
became the most powerful warlord in northern China after defeating Wu Pei-fu
in the second Chihli-Fengtien War in 1924. In 1926, with Wu Pei-fu as his
ally, he marched on and occupied Peking. In June 1928, while retreating to
the Northeast by rail, he was killed en route by a bomb planted by the Japanese
imperialists whose tool he had been.

[4] This reform movement arose after the Japanese invaders
occupied Tsinan on May 3, 1928, and after Chiang Kai-shek openly and brazenly
compromised with Japan.
Within the national bourgeoisie which had identified itself with the
counter-revolutionary coup d'état of 1927, a section acting in its
own interests gradually began to form an opposition to the Chiang Kai-shek
regime. The careerist counter-revolutionary group of Wang Ching-wei, Chen
Kung-po and others which was active in this movement formed what became known
as the "Reorganization Clique" in the Kuomintang.

[5] In 1928 Chiang Kai-shek, backed by British and U.S.
imperialism, drove north to attack Chang Tso-lin. The Japanese imperialists
then occupied Tsinan, the provincial capital of Shantung, and cut the
Tientsin-Pukow railway line to check the northward spread of British and
American influence. On May 3 the invading Japanese troops slaughtered large
numbers of Chinese in Tsinan. This became known as the Tsinan Massacre.

[6] The organizational form of China's Red political power
was similar to that of Soviet political power. A Soviet is a representative
council, a political institution created by the Russian working class during
the 1905 Revolution. Lenin and Stalin, on the basis of Marxist theory, drew
the conclusion that a Soviet republic is the most suitable form of social
and political organization for the transition from capitalism to socialism.
Under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party of Lenin and Stalin, the Russian
October Socialist Revolution in 1917 brought into being for the first time
in world history such a socialist Soviet republic, a dictatorship of the
proletariat. After the defeat of the 1927 revolution in China, the representative
council was adopted as the form of people's political power in various places
in the mass revolutionary uprisings led by the Chinese Communist Party and,
first and foremost, by Comrade Mao Tse-tung. In its nature political power
at that stage of the Chinese revolution was a people's democratic dictatorship
of the anti-imperialist, anti-feudal, new-democratic revolution led by the
proletariat, which was different from the proletarian dictatorship in the
Soviet Union.

[7] During World War II, many colonial countries in the East
formerly under the imperialist rule of Britain, the United States, France
and the Netherlands were occupied by the Japanese imperialists. Led by their
Communist Parties, the masses of workers, peasants and urban petty bourgeoisie
and members of the national bourgeoisie in these countries took advantage
of the contradictions between the British, U.S., French and Dutch imperialists
on the one hand and the Japanese imperialists on the other, organized a broad
united from against fascist aggression, built anti-Japanese base areas and
waged bitter guerrilla warfare against the Japanese. Thus the political situation
existing prior to World War II began to change. When the Japanese imperialists
were driven out of these countries at the end of World War II, the imperialists
of the United States, Britain, France and the Netherlands attempted to restore
their colonial rule, but, having built up armed forces of considerable strength
during the anti-Japanese war, these colonial peoples refused to return to
the old way of life. Moreover, the imperialist system all over the world
was profoundly shaken because the Soviet Union had become strong, because
all the imperialist powers, except the United States, had either been overthrown
or weakened in the war, and finally because the imperialist front was breached
in China by the victorious Chinese revolution. Thus, much as in China, it
has become possible for the peoples of all, or at least some, of the colonial
countries in the East to maintain big and small revolutionary base areas
and revolutionary regimes over a long period of time, and to carry on long-term
revolutionary wars in which to surround the cities from the countryside,
and then gradually to advance to take the cities and win nation-wide victory.
The view held by Comrade Mao Tse-tung in 1928 on the question of establishing
independent regimes in colonies under direct imperialist rule has changed
as a result of the changes in the situation.

[8] These were the first counter-attacks which the people
under Communist leadership launched in various places against the forces
of the counter-revolution after Chiang Kai-shek and Wang Ching-wei successively
turned traitor to the revolution in 1927 On December 11, 1927, the workers
and revolutionary soldiers of Canton united to stage an uprising, and set
up the people's political power. They fought fiercely against the
counter-revolutionary forces, which were directly supported by imperialism'
but failed because the disparity in strength was too great. Peasants in Haifeng
and Luteng on the eastern coast of Kwangtung Province had started a powerful
revolutionary movement during 1923-25 under the leadership of Comrade Peng
Pai, a member of the Communist Party, and this movement contributed greatly
to the victory of the two eastern campaigns launched from Canton by the National
Revolutionary Army against the counter-revolutionary clique headed by Chen
Chiung-ming. After Chiang Kai-shek's betrayal of the revolution on April
l2, 1927, these peasants staged three uprisings in April, September and October,
and established a revolutionary regime which held out until April 1928. In
eastern Hunan Province, insurrectionary peasants captured an area embracing
Linyang, Pingkiang, Liling and Chuchow in September 1927. At about the same
time, tens of thousands of peasants staged an armed uprising in Hsiaokan,
Macheng and Huangan in northeastern Hupeh Province and occupied the county
town of Huangan for over thirty days. In southern Hunan, peasants in the
counties of Yichang, Chenchow, Leiyang, Yungheing and Tzehsing rose in arms
in January 1928 and set up a revolutionary regime, which lasted for three
months.

[9] The Red Guards were armed units of the masses in the
revolutionary base areas, whose members carried on their regular productive
work.

[10] The Lohsiao mountain range is a large range running
along the borders of Kiangsi and Hunan Provinces. The Chingkang Mountains
are in its middle section.

[11] By the term "petty bourgeoisie" Comrade Mao Tse-tung
means those elements other than the peasants--handicraftsmen, small merchants,
professional people of various kinds and petty-bourgeois intellectuals. In
China they mostly live in cities but there are quite a number in the countryside.

[12] Five Wells designates the villages of Big Well, Small
Well, Upper Well, Middle Well and Lower Well, in the Chingkang Mountains,
which are situated between Yunghsin, Ningkang and Suichuan in western Kiangsi
and Linghsien County in eastern Hunan.

Transcription by the Maoist Documentation Project.