This Date in History: The Zunyi Conference of 1935 and the rise of Mao

How did Mao come to power? Out of the rough and tumble scrum of early CCP politics, how did a rich peasant’s son from Hunan emerge as “The Chairman,” the bright red sun of a nation’s heart? It’s a tough question. Traditional PRC historiography usually describes Mao’s final ascension to power as the outcome of the Zunyi Conference, which began this date in 1935.

My handy desktop copy of 历史的今天 (This Date in History) reports that a conference held in Zunyi, Guizhou during the Long March, “ended the Leftism of Wang Ming, and established Comrade Mao Zedong as head of the military. Thus at this critical juncture, both the army and the party were saved.”

However, the events at Zunyi and the means by which Mao eventually attained and consolidated his control over the CCP, are still disputed among historians. The problem of course is that we really don’t have the kind of materials necessary to say for sure. Most accounts are based on memoirs, interviews with people who might have been on the Long March but didn’t actually attend the meeting, and on documents released later, many of which were composed and edited after the fact. There are also, of course, political issues to consider. Obviously any story relating to the coming to power of China’s leaders, especially Mao, has over the years accreted layers of mythology and revision in service of politics.

I should also mention that while I do write a bit here on the 20th century, and in fact teach a course on 20th Century Chinese history, my main field is the Qing Dynasty. I’m a little more familiar with 19th-century court politics than I am with the byzantine twists and turns of CCP political intrigue, so I welcome any additions, corrections, or alternative viewpoints.

Okay then, so what do we know?

In the 1920s, the CCP had established a soviet in the mountains of Jiangxi Province. It was a base used by Mao Zedong and others to organize guerilla attacks against the KMT and to experiment with the revolutionary potential of the peasants. But while Mao was in the countryside, the CCP leadership at the time, influenced by the Comintern, the Comintern’s man in China, Otto Braun, and a group of pro-Soviet cadres trained in Moscow, notably Wang Ming, focused on urban areas and in organizing proletarian workers in the cities. For a variety of reasons, this strategy failed to take hold. Soon, CCP power was limited to a handful of rural soviets, one of which was Mao’s outpost in Jiangxi. As the leadership filtered out of the cities and into the Jiangxi redoubt, Mao found his power increasingly squeezed by higher ranking and more influential cadres. While never completely out of power, Mao was nevertheless forced into a role of ‘opposition spokesman’ against the urban orientation of the CCP leadership at the time.

In some ways, it was a blessing in disguise. The Jiangxi soviet was in a tenous military position, and Mao’s removal from active leadership meant that when it eventually fell, he was in an ideal spot to play Monday morning quarterback.

Early military successes holding off KMT attacks (the KMT it should be noted was pretty busy in those years with warlords and the Japanese Army) seemed to validate the military leadership of those in command, such as Bo Gu, the Comintern agent Otto Braun, and Zhou Enlai. When the KMT got serious, the CCP could not hold their position, and in October 1934, dire circumstances forced the pell-mell retreat that became the Long March.

By January, the ranks of Long Marchers had shrank from 86,000 to 30,000 in just a few short months. Not suprisingly, some started questioning the strategic thinking of the leadership. Discontent was rife, the rank and file was riled, and when Communists get riled, they generally respond by holding a meeting and purging somebody.

When the Long Marchers arrived in Zunyi, a conference was convened. After Bo Gu and Zhou Enlai both gave their reports, the floor was opened to commentary. Mao took the podium and gave a prepared and impassioned criticism of the leadership’s military strategy and what he saw as the ideological errors of Bo Gu and Otto Braun. Several key leaders supported Mao’s analysis, including Zhang Wentian, Wang Jiaxiang, Zhu De, and Zhou Enlai. Their support was more an indictment of the leadership rather than support for Mao, but the final result was the demotion of Bo Gu and Braun.

So, where did that leave Mao? Well, as the conference ended, he was made a member of the standing committee of the politburo and had to an extent succeeded in fostering the impression that he was the only one who saw it all coming, and thus had been a beacon of ideological correctness in the wilderness. Literally.

But his position was still only one among equals, if that. In March 1935, Zhang Wentian was named as Party ‘general secretary,’ and Mao joined Wang Jiaxiang and Zhou Enlai in a reformed military command triumvirate, nominally as Zhou Enlai’s assistant. But over the next year, Mao used his political skills to increase his authority in the military and the party. It helped that the competition during the difficult months of the Long March was weak. Wang Jiaxiang had been wounded, and was physically unable to perform most of his duties. Zhou Enlai, hobbled politically by his association with the failures of 1934, gradually deferred to Mao, and concentrated on diplomacy. It was Zhou’s skills as a diplomat, in dealing both with the KMT and the foreign powers, as well as his obvious strengths as an administrator, that made him invaluable in this period, dodging the winds of political change as he would throughout his career. Zhang Wentian did not prove to be a very strong leader, and by the time the Long March reached Yan’an, Mao had the support of the army, an important base of power as he progressively sought to strengthen his position.

When discussing the rise of Mao, however, it’s important not to buy into the teleology. It may be convenient to look back at Zunyi and say, “Aha! It starts here,” but throughout the 1930s and into the 1940s, Mao’s eventual place as the undisputed leader of the Party was not as certain as CCP historiography would suggest. As the de facto head military strategist, he faced questions during the Long March, mainly variations of every parent’s favorite on long trips: Are we there, yet? Once in Yan’an, influential leaders such as Chen Yun, Kang Sheng and, yes, Wang Ming, presented rival centers of influence in the CCP. The rectification campaigns of the late-1930s suggest the power struggles at play. It was not until 1945 that Mao was officially made chairman of the Central Committee.

After Zunyi, was Mao a man on his way up? Absolutely. Was it a foregone conclusion that he would be the one to emerge as the leader of the Party and ultimately all of China after 1949? Not necessarily. History is a funny thing, full of contingencies, accidents, and roads not taken. In some ways that’s what makes it so fun to study, and at the same time means there is a rarely a simple explanation to why things turned out the way they did.

I’m leaving the final word, for this post, but certainly not on the topic, to Thomas Kampen, a historian who has studied Mao’s rise to power, in particular the years before and after the Zunyi Conference of 1935:

“It cannot be denied that the Zunyi Conference was an important event in the history of the CCP, but it was just one step in Mao Zedong’s long march to power. It should be admitted that the turning-point in the history of the Chinese revolution quickly became an embarrassment for nearly everybody involved: For Qin Bangxian (Bo Gu) and Otto Braun because they lost their position and influence, for Wang Ming and the Comintern, because their reputation and the image of the organization in China suffered a serious setback, for Zhou Enlai, because he had been partly responsible for the previous disasters and never regained his dominant position in the military leadership; for Zhang Wentian, because the “general secretary” never became the Party’s leader; for Mao Zedong, because his rise was never as dramatic and final as he and his supporters would have liked; and for Chinese historians, because they cannot write an accurate account of the Conference and for Western historians, because they have published so many inaccurate accounts of this historic events.” [1]

——————–
[1] Thomas Kampen, “The Zunyi Conference and Further Steps in Mao’s Rise to Power”, p. 134.

Image top right: Number 80, Huangqi Road, Zunyi, Guizhou, site of the conference. From Stefan Landsberger’s Chinese Propaganda Posters Pages. Zunyi would later become an important stop in Red Guard “revolutionary networking” during the 1960s.

Sources:

Jerome Ch’en, “Resolutions of the The Tsunyi Conference,” The China Quarterly, No. 40. (Oct. – Dec., 1969), pp. 1-38.

Immanuel Hsü, The Rise of Modern China. 6th Edition. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000)

Thomas Kampen, “The Zunyi Conference and Further Steps in Mao’s Rise to Power”, The China Quarterly, No. 117. (Mar., 1989), p. 134.

——, Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai and the Communist Party Leadership. (NIAS, 1999)

Maurice Meisner, Mao’s China and After: A History of the People’s Republic. 3rd Edition. (New York: The Free Press, 2000)

Jonathan Spence, The Search for Modern China. (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1991), pp. 645-649.

Benjamin Yang, “The Zunyi Conference as One Step in Mao’s Rise to Power: A Survey of Historical Studies of the Chinese Communist Party”, The China Quarterly, No. 106. (Jun., 1986), pp. 235-271.

From the archives

• June 28, 2010 -- Another CIA/NSC Archive Film: “China: The Roots of Madness” (1967)
• October 10, 2011 -- The Wire Guide to the 1911 Revolution, Part I
• July 1, 2011 -- It’s a Mad Mad 90th Anniversary