The Long March and Yenan

In the early 1930s the Communists (CCP) held a base in Jiangxi, encircled by Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist (GMD) armies. In October 1934 they broke out and began the Long March — a retreat of thousands of miles that ended, a year later, in the far north-west.

• Most of those who set out did not arrive; the survivors reached the base at Yenan (Yan'an).
• At the Zunyi conference (1935), during the march, Mao Zedong emerged as the party's leader.
• At Yenan the CCP built discipline, trained cadres, ran land reform for the peasants, and made itself the champion of resistance to Japan.

Why it mattered: militarily the Long March was a defeat. Politically it was a foundation myth — it made Mao leader, forged a hardened core of veterans, and won the CCP a reputation for endurance and for treating peasants decently.

The importance of Yenan

Civil war and the victory of 1949

The war against Japan (from 1937) weakened the Nationalists far more than the Communists.

• The GMD bore the brunt of conventional fighting, lost its best troops, and became notorious for corruption, hyperinflation and harsh conscription. Its support drained away.
• The CCP fought a guerrilla war, grew its territory, and enforced strict discipline towards peasants — in stark contrast to Nationalist troops.
• Full civil war resumed in 1946. Despite American aid to Chiang, the Communists won, and on 1 October 1949 Mao proclaimed the People's Republic of China. Chiang and the Nationalists retreated to Taiwan.

Why did the Communists win?

Land reform, social change and the Five-Year Plans

Between 1949 and the mid-1950s the CCP transformed China:

• Land reform — landlords were denounced at mass meetings, many were killed, and land was redistributed to peasants. Later, land was pooled into cooperatives and then collectives.
• The Marriage Law (1950) banned arranged marriage and concubinage and allowed women to divorce — a major legal advance, though custom changed more slowly.
• Campaigns against corruption, opium and "counter-revolutionaries" tightened party control.
• The First Five-Year Plan (1953–57), on the Soviet model, prioritised heavy industry — coal, steel, machinery — and delivered real growth.
• The Hundred Flowers campaign (1956–57) invited criticism, then punished those who gave it.

Sort the Maoist campaigns

Tap a policy, then tap the campaign it belongs to.

The Great Leap Forward, 1958–62

Impatient with Soviet-style planning, Mao launched the Great Leap Forward in 1958. Peasants were organised into giant people's communes; villages built backyard furnaces to make steel; officials reported wildly exaggerated harvests to please the leadership.

• The backyard steel was largely useless.
• Labour was pulled away from farming, and false figures meant the state took grain that villages could not spare.
• The result was famine from about 1959 to 1962, in which millions died. It is one of the worst famines in recorded history.

Consequence: Mao stepped back from day-to-day government, and more pragmatic leaders (Liu Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping) restored private plots and incentives — which Mao would later attack them for.

When was the People's Republic proclaimed?

The Cultural Revolution, 1966–76

In 1966 Mao launched the Cultural Revolution to renew the revolution and destroy his critics.

• Red Guards — students mobilised to attack the "four olds" (old ideas, culture, customs and habits) and to denounce teachers, officials and "capitalist roaders".
• Mao's Little Red Book of quotations became a badge of loyalty; the cult of Mao reached its height.
• Schools and universities closed; temples, books and artworks were destroyed; millions were humiliated, beaten, imprisoned or sent to the countryside. Liu Shaoqi died in detention.
• The army eventually restored order, but the upheaval ran on until Mao's death in 1976; the Gang of Four were then arrested.

Match the term to its meaning

Tap a term on the left, then its meaning on the right.

China and the world

Communist China's international position shifted dramatically:

• Korea (1950–53): Chinese forces intervened when UN troops approached the Chinese border — costly, but it established the PRC as a power to be reckoned with.
• The Sino-Soviet split (from around 1960): ideological rivalry and distrust broke the alliance with Moscow; Soviet advisers were withdrawn, and border clashes followed later in the decade.
• Rapprochement with the USA: hostility to the USSR pushed China towards Washington. The PRC took China's UN seat in 1971, and President Nixon visited China in February 1972.
• Taiwan remained a central and unresolved dispute.

Why improve relations with the USA?

Deng Xiaoping and the reform era

After Mao's death, Deng Xiaoping became the dominant leader from 1978 and reversed much of Maoist economics:

• Agriculture: the household responsibility system let families farm land and sell surpluses — output rose sharply.
• Industry and trade: the Four Modernisations (agriculture, industry, defence, science and technology) and Special Economic Zones opened China to foreign investment.
• Politics did not follow. Demands for democracy were rejected: protests in Tiananmen Square were crushed by the army in June 1989.

The core judgement: Deng delivered economic liberalisation without political liberalisation — "socialism with Chinese characteristics". Living standards rose; one-party rule remained.

The Great Leap Forward

Weighing change and continuity

Questions here ask "how far had Communist rule changed China?" Structure it:

• Big changes: land redistribution, the end of landlordism, legal rights for women, literacy and basic healthcare, rapid heavy industry, national unity after decades of war.
• Costs and continuities: famine, purges, the destruction of the Cultural Revolution, and the survival of one-party authoritarian rule.
• Reach a judgement and back it with dated evidence.

When did the Cultural Revolution begin?

The Long March

The big ideas to know

That is the China depth study. Press Finish to see your score.