One of historyâ??s great journeys began in October 1934 and ended a year later after covering a distance variously estimated at between 3,000 and 8,000 miles across China. Figures for the numbers involved vary hugely, but fewer than one in ten of those who started the trek apparently reached the end of it. The Long March made the survival of the imperilled Chinese Communist Party possible, gave Mao Zedong a secure grasp on its leadership and ultimately led to the creation of the Peopleâ??s Republic of China. As a remarkable feat of determination and endurance it became a bulwark of Chinese pride and patriotism, skilfully exploited as such by Mao and his circle. Recently, however, the Maoist version of events has come under fierce attack.
The Chinese Communist Party was founded in 1921 and ten years later set up a Chinese Soviet Republic in the Jiangxi province of southern China, some way north of Canton. The Communists fell out with the Nationalist Party, the Guomindang, which established a national government under General Chiang Kai-shek. The Guomindang army made repeated attacks on the Communists and blockaded them so effectively that by the middle of 1934 their position was becoming impossible. They decided to retreat north to find a base where they would be safe. To go straight north would have taken them into Guomindang territory, so they took a circuitous route, starting westwards and then turning north.
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