Chair of the founding congress who split with Mao on the Long March and defected to the Nationalists
At the 1935 Long March reunion he insisted on turning south to Sichuan rather than north to Shaanxi. Losing over 75% of his 80,000 troops discredited him in his army and Comintern.
A Peking University student leader in May Fourth, he chaired the party’s founding congress in 1921. After years of labour organising he went to the Eyuwan Soviet in 1931 and became political leader of the Fourth Front Army, which met Mao’s Central Red Army in Sichuan on the Long March in 1935. Clashing with Mao over marching north or west, he set up a rival “centre” and turned south, lost much of his army, and rejoined at Yan’an in 1936. Criticised in 1937, he fled to the Nationalist zone in 1938 and was expelled; he later wrote his memoirs in Hong Kong and Canada and died in Toronto.
Career Timeline
- 1921Chairman of the First Party Congress
- 1931–1935Leader of the Eyuwan Soviet and the Fourth Front Army
Related historical events
- 1915–1921May Fourth and the founding of the Chinese Communist PartyMay Fourth student leader and congress chairmanLed the Peking University students and chaired the First Congress.
- 1927–1936From Jinggangshan to Yan’an: the soviet bases and the Long MarchFourth Front Army leader who split with MaoSet up a rival “centre” in 1935, went south and rejoined in 1936.