The Zunyi Conference was a three day meeting of the Communist Party of China (CPC) that ended on this day in 1935, resulting in Mao Zedong's leadership within the party and a decreased influence from the Communist International. The Conference took place during the Long March (a military retreat of CPC forces from attacks by the Nationalists).

The Zunyi Conference involved a power struggle between the leadership of Bo Gu and the opposition, led by Mao Zedong. The result was in Mao's favor, and the conference concluded with Mao in position to take over military command and become the leader of the Communist Party.

The Red Army had been fleeing their overwhelmed base of operations at Jiangxi-Fujian for several months by this point in the Long March, and this conference involved the debate/accountability of CPC leadership for various tactical and strategic failures. The CPC went on to achieve a new base of operations in Shaanxi Province and continued its revolutionary activity from there.

Background

In August 1934, with the Red Army depleted by the prolonged Chinese Civil War, a spy (Mo Xiong) placed by Zhou Enlai in the KMT army headquarters in Nanchang brought news that Chiang Kai-shek was preparing a major offensive against the Chinese Soviet Republic's capital, Ruijin. The Communist leadership decided on a strategic retreat to regroup with other Communist units, and to avoid annihilation. The original plan was for the First Red Army to link up with the Second Red Army commanded by He Long, thought to be in Hubei to the west and north. Communications between divided groups of the Red Army had been disrupted by the Kuomintang campaign, and during the planning to evacuate Jiangxi, the First Red Army was unaware that these other Communist forces were also retreating westward.

Initially the First Red Army, with its baggage of top communist officials, records, currency reserves and other trapping of the exiled Chinese Soviet Republic, fought through several lightly defended Kuomintang checkpoints, crossing the Xinfeng River and through the province of Guangdong, south of Hunan and into Guangxi. At the Xiang river, Chiang Kai-shek had reinforced the KMT defenses. In two days of bloody fighting, 30 November to 1 December 1934, the Red Army lost more than 40,000 troops and all of the civilian porters, and there were strongly defended Nationalist defensive lines ahead. Personnel and material losses after the battle of the Xiang river affected the morale of the troops and desertions began. By a 12 December 1934 meeting of Party leaders in Tongdao, discontent with Bo Gu and Otto Braun appeared. Under these conditions, the Communists met in Zunyi to reshuffle the Party politburo.

In January 1935, after the Red Army took over the city of Zunyi, a town of military importance in Guizhou, Southwest China, an enlarged meeting of the politburo of the CPC was held.

The Conference

The main agenda of this conference was to examine the Party's failure in the Jiangxi region and to look at the options now available to them. Bo Gu was the first to speak with a general report. He acknowledged that the strategy used in Jiangxi had failed, without taking any blame. He claimed the lack of success was not due to poor planning. Next Zhou gave a report on the military situation in an apologetic style. In contrast to Bo, he admitted mistakes had been made. Then Zhang Wentian condemned the leaders for the debacle in Jiangxi in a long, critical oration. This was supported by Mao and Wang. Mao's comparative distance from power over the past two years had left him blameless of the recent failures and in a strong position to attack the leadership.

Mao insisted that Bo Gu and Otto Braun had made fundamental military mistakes by using tactics of pure defense rather than initiating a more mobile war. Mao's supporters gained momentum during the meeting and Zhou Enlai eventually moved to back Mao. Under the principle of democracy for majority, the secretariat of the Central Committee and Central Revolution & Military Committee of CPC were reelected. Bo and Braun were demoted while Zhou maintained his position now sharing military command with Zhu De. Zhang Wentian took Bo's previous position while Mao once again joined the Central Committee.

The Zunyi Conference confirmed that the CPC should turn away from the 28 Bolsheviks and towards Mao. The Red Army regained its military power, survived in Yan'an and ultimately defeated the KMT using a guerrilla strategy, and later through conventional warfare as it gained mass peasant support. It could be seen as a victory for those old CPC members who had their roots in China and, on the contrary, it was a great loss for those CPC members such as the 28 Bolsheviks who had studied in Moscow and had been trained by the Comintern and the Soviet Union and could be regarded as proteges or agents of Comintern accordingly. After the Zunyi Conference, the influence and involvement of the Comintern in CPC affairs was greatly reduced.

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