A History of the Modern Chinese Army

2. The Formative Years

  2  The Formative Years THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY organized its independent armed force following the white terror of 1927, the worst period in party history. The military became absolutely necessary for the CCP’s survival. The party and the army established an interdependent relationship before WWII to create a center in rural areas for revolutionary authorities. The party mobilized peasants, trained officers, and received instructions and aid from the Soviet Union. The army protected the Communist base areas and eventually seized state power for the party by defeating the Nationalist Army on the mainland. Mao described this relationship on August 7, 1927: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”1 This was the beginning of the CCP’s second revolution (dierci geming zhanzheng), the revolutionary war for land (tudi geming zhanzheng). In late 1927, Mao led his small troop into a remote, mountainous area and became the “king of the mountain mobs” (shandawang) by grouping with the local bandits. When Zhu De joined forces with Mao at the Jinggang (Chingkang) Mountains in 1928, they reorganized their troops into the Red Army and created a military base for the Communist revolution. Of their ten thousand men, 82 percent were peasants.2 In 1931, Mao made his base region a government center for all CCP Soviets when he was elected chairman of the Executive Committee of the Chinese Soviet Republic. Mao’s strategy and tactics became the basis for the Communist military revo-   A History of the Modern Chinese Army lution. By 1936, the Red Army maintained a contingency of approximately forty-five thousand troops.3 The Communist forces experienced significant development through the second CCP-GMD coalition during WWII. The Red Army became the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army in 1937. Zhu became the commander of the Eighth Route Army. By the end of WWII, when the CCP and GMD ended their cooperation and resumed civil war in 1946, the Communist military forces had grown to 1 million regular troops, augmented by 2 million militia.4 In 1948, the CCP renamed its armed forces the People’s Liberation Army of China. In 1949, when the PLA defeated Jiang Jieshi’s Nationalist Army in the civil war and gained control of mainland China except Tibet, it totaled 5.5 million regular troops.5 Mao became president of the People ’s Republic of China in 1949, with Zhu as the commander in chief of the PLA. This chapter examines the Red Army’s origins, recruitment and organization, strategic doctrine, and operational tactics from 1927 to 1949. It explains why Communist ideologies, Soviet support, and a rural-centered military revolution attracted many poor peasants who had no hope of owning land under the ROC government. The stories of Marshal Zhu, Zhang Guotao (Chang Kuo-t’ao), Minister Ma Zhaoxiang , General Li Zhen, Jiang Shangqing, and Wan Qing show the characteristics of the first generation of Chinese Communist military officers. Leaving an old system that held little hope for their future, they became fearless revolutionaries and forged a peasant army under CCP leadership in 1927–34. Although tensions and even military coups surfaced from time to time, like the Zhang Guotao incident during the Long March of 1934–35, the party retained control of the army—an army that was different from the warlord and GMD armies it defeated. The chapter also outlines the Red Army’s organizational changes and campaign experience in the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937–45 and the civil war in 1946–49. King of the Mountain Mobs The leadership of the CCP learned that the Communist movement in China needed its own armed forces when the first CCP-GMD coalition ended in April 1927. The CCP Central Committee began its The Formative Years   efforts to create a new revolutionary army of workers and peasants. But after Jiang’s Nationalist government had announced that the CCP was illegal, antigovernment, and a capital crime, most of the party members had either been killed or left the CCP.6 The Central Committee had hope in the CCP members of the Nationalist Army who had survived the white terror. In mid-July 1927, the Central Committee held an emergency meeting to terminate the leadership of Chen Duxiu and set up a five-member standing committee to save the party. To save the CCP-controlled troops in the Nationalist Army, the committee planned an uprising within...