rapidly equip itself for simple self-preservation. The CCP’s military arm, which
later became known as the PLA, officially dates its founding as 1 August 1927.
Whatever the precise circumstances and timing of its inception, the origins of the
Chinese Communist armed forces were humble. Faced with a daunting predica-
ment, Mao and other military thinkers formulated a strategy that became known
as people’s war. They made a virtue out of necessity to become a rural insurgency,
focusing on gaining the support of the peasantry in rugged, inaccessible moun-
tainous areas that promised a good measure of protection against the superior
military capabilities of the movement’s enemies. The primary adversary was the
KMT. The Communists and the Nationalists forged a marriage of convenience in
the mid-1920s. But following the success of the Northern Expedition of 1926–7,
which succeeded at least nominally in unifying China, the KMT quickly turned
on its erstwhile ally. The Nationalist Party under Chiang Kai-shek soon estab-
lished itself as the dominant political power with the strongest military force in
the country controlling the major cities and surrounding areas.
People’s war in opposition
During the late 1920s, Mao began to sketch out a long-term strategy of protracted
struggle with three phases to evolve as the movement became stronger and
more capable militarily. The first phase was one of strategic defence in which
the Communists would concentrate on building up their military strength. The
second phase was strategic stalemate as the two sides reached roughly comparable
strength and neither side clearly dominated the other. The third phase was
envisioned as one of strategic counter-attack once the Communists had built
up sufficient superior military power to fight and defeat the enemy in conven-
tional warfare. 15
The first phase lasted almost twenty years as military forces waged a mostly
guerrilla war against the more powerful conventional forces of the KMT (1927–45)
and Japan (in the years between 1937 and 1945). While hostilities between the CCP
and the KMTwere interrupted by extended periods of limited cooperation against
Japanese invaders in the late 1930s and early 1940s, as well as short and uneasy
ceasefires in the mid-1940s, the conflict was of a protracted nature. The most
notable event of this period was the so-called Long March of 1934–5 in which the
main force of Communist fighters in south-eastern China conducted a strategic
withdrawal along a circuitous route across thousands of miles of hostile territory
from its base area on the border between Jiangxi and Hunan Provinces to a new
base area in Shaanxi Province in north-western China. The retreat has taken on
mythical status in the military annals of Chinese Communism. The episode
proved to be a turning point for the movement politically because it allowed
Mao Zedong to establish himself as its foremost leader and the CCP to rejuvenate
itself organizationally; moreover, the Long March earned the Communists a
strategic pause, allowing the movement the opportunity to rebuild itself militarily,
well inland and away from the invading Japanese imperial army, which succeeded
198 The Evolution of Operational Art