Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
reminders of the Communist Party's rise to power at Tian'anmen Square
Amid the mess, in 1921 the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) found its feet. Its founding
members included Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai. The party's rise to supreme power,
however, would be slow and painful, not truly taking the lead position for another 28 years.
Before that, the country was still to be ruled first by the warlords of the Beiyang regime,
and then by Sun Yat-sen's successor, Chiang Kai-shek, and his Nationalist party. When Kai-
shek did seize power in 1928, he moved the capital back to Nanjing, and poor Beijing, yet
again, took back the name of Beiping and was relegated to simply being the capital city of
Hebei province. Consequently, it was suddenly deprived of the funds for development that
it had enjoyed under the Beiyang leadership.
The CCP and the Nationalists had joined forces to successfully defeat the Beiyang war-
lords, but at this point, the Communists had a change of heart and decided to turn on the
Nationalists. This was a bad move. Chiang Kai-shek and his forces viciously suppressed
their opponents. Thousands were killed, including Mao's second wife, Yang Kaihui, and
Chiang went into full-scale attack mode against the Communists.
The Communist Red Army at that time was predominantly stationed in Fujian and Ji-
angxi provinces in the south, and it was these latter troops that met with particular trouble.
Chiang's soldiers' initial tactic was to corner and starve them. At first, the Communists put
