Now let us discuss the situation in the camp of China's national revolution.

　　First, the Red Army. As you know, comrades, for almost a year and a half the three main contingents of the Chinese Red Army have carried out great shifts of position. The Sixth Corps led by Jen Pi-shih¹⁸ and other comrades began to shift to Comrade Ho Lung's area¹⁹ in August last year, and in October we ourselves started to shift position²⁰. In March this year the Red Army in the Szechuan-Shensi border area²¹ began its shift. All three Red Army contingents have abandoned their old positions and moved to new regions. These great shifts have turned the old areas into guerrilla zones. The Red Army has been considerably weakened in the process. From this aspect of the over-all situation, we can see that the enemy has won a temporary and partial victory, while we have suffered a temporary and partial defeat. Is this statement correct? I think it is. For it is a statement of fact. However, some people (Chang Kuo-tao²² for instance) say that the Central Red Army²³ has failed. Is that correct? No. For it is not a statement of fact. In approaching a problem a Marxist should see the whole as well as the parts. A frog in a well says, "The sky is no bigger than the mouth of the well." That is untrue, for the sky is not just the size of the mouth of the well. If it said, "A part of the sky is the size of the mouth of a well", that would be true, for it tallies with the facts. What we say is that in one respect the Red Army has failed (i.e., failed to maintain its original positions), but in another respect it has won a victory (i.e ., in executing the plan of the Long March). In one respect the enemy won a victory (i.e., in occupying our original positions), but in another respect he has failed (i.e., failed to execute his plan of "encirclement and suppression" and of "pursuit and suppression"). That is the only appropriate formulation, for we have completed the Long March.

　　Speaking of the Long March, one may ask, "What is its significance?" We answer that the Long March is the first of its kind in the annals of history, that it is a manifesto, a propaganda force, a seeding-machine. Since Pan Ku divided the heaven from the earth and the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors²⁴ reigned, has history ever witnessed a long march such as ours? For twelve months we were under daily reconnaissance and bombing from the skies by scores of plans, while on land we were encircled and pursued, obstructed and intercepted by a huge force of several hundred thousand men, and we encountered untold difficulties and dangers on the way; yet by using our two legs we swept across a distance of more than twenty thousand li through the length and breadth of eleven provinces. Let us ask, has history ever known a long march to equal ours? No, never. The Long March is a manifesto. It has proclaimed to the world that the Red Army is an army of heroes, while the imperialists and their running dogs, Chiang Kai-shek and his like, are impotent. It has proclaimed their utter failure to encircle, pursue, obstruct and intercept us. The Long March is also a propaganda force. It has announced to some 200 million people in eleven provinces that the road of the Red Army is their only road to liberation. Without the Long March, how could the broad masses have learned so quickly about the existence of the great truth which the Red Army embodies? The Long March is also a seeding-machine. In the eleven provinces it has sown many seeds which will sprout, leaf, blossom, and bear fruit, and will yield a harvest in the future. In a word, the Long March has ended with a victory for us and defeat for the enemy. Who brought the Long March to victory? The Communist Party. Without the Communist Party, a long march of this kind would have been inconceivable. The Chinese Communist Party, its leadership, its cadres and its members fear no difficulties or hardships. Whoever questions our ability to lead the revolutionary war will fall into the morass of opportunism. A new situation arose as soon as the Long March was over. In the battle of Chihlochen the Central Red Army and the Northwestern Red Army, fighting in fraternal solidarity, shattered the traitor Chiang Kai-shek's campaign of "encirclement and suppression" against the Shensi-Kansu border area²⁵ and thus laid the cornerstone for the task undertaken by the Central Committee of the Party, the task of setting up the national headquarters of the revolution in northwestern China.

　　(Excerpted from ON TACTICS AGAINST JAPANESE IMPERIALISM written by Comrade Mao Zedong on December 27, 1935.)

Notes

　　18. Comrade Jen Pi-shih was a veteran member of the Chinese Communist Party and one of its first organizers. He was member of the Party's Central Committee from its Fifth National Congress in 1927 onwards. He was elected to the Political Bureau at the Fourth Plenary Session of the Sixth Central Committee in 1931. In 1933 he served as secretary of the Provincial Party Committee of the Hunan-Kiangsi Border Area and concurrently as political commissar of the Sixth Army Group of the Red Army. When the Sixth and Second Army Groups joined forces and formed the Second Front Army, he was appointed its political commissar. He was Director of the General Political Department of the Eighth Route Army in the first years of the War of Resistance. In 1940 he began to serve in the Secretariat of the Party's Central Committee. At the First Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee in 1945 he was elected a member of the Political Bureau and of the Secretariat. Comrade Jen Pi-shih died in Peking on October 27, 1950.

　　19. The Sixth Army Group of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, originally stationed in the Hunan-Kiangsi borders area, broke through the enemy's siege and shifted its position in August 1934 on the orders of the Party's Central Committee. In October it joined forces with the Second Army Group led by Comrade Ho Lung in eastern Kweichow, and together they formed the Second Front Army of the Red Army and created the Hunan-Hupeh-Szechuan-Kweichow revolutionary base area.

　　20. In October 1934 the First, Third and Fifth Army Groups of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (that is, the First Front Army of the Red Army, also known as the Central Red Army) set out from Changting and Ninghua in western Fukien and from Juichin, Yutu and other places in southern Kiangsi and started a major strategic movement. In traversing the eleven provinces of Fukien, Kiangsi, Kwangtung, Hunan, Kwangsi, Kweichow, Szechuan, Yunnan, Sikang, Kansu and Shensi, crossing perpetually snow-capped mountains and trackless grass-lands, sustaining untold hardships and frustrating the enemy's repeated encirclements, pursuits, obstructions and interceptions, the Red Army covered 25,000 li (12,500 kilometers) on this march and finally arrived triumphantly at the revolutionary base area in northern Shensi in October 1935.

　　21. The Red Army in the Szechuan-Shensi border area was the Fourth Front Army of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army. In March 1935, it shifted from its base in the Szechuan-Shensi border area to the borders of Szechuan and Sikang Provinces. In June, it joined forces with the First Front Army in Mukung in western Szechuan and advanced northward by two routes, a right route and a left route. But on arriving in the Maoerhkai area near Hsungpan in September, Chang Kuo-tao of the Fourth Front Army led the troops on the left route in a southward direction, in defiance of the Central Committee's orders, thus causing a disruption in the Red Army. The Second Front Army, which had broken through the enemy's siege and left the Hunan-Hupeh-Szechuan-Kweichow border area, arrived at Kantse, Sikang Province, in June 1936 via Hunan, Kweichow and Yunnan, and there it joined forces with the Fourth Front Army. Acting against Chang Kuo-tao's wishes, the comrades in the Fourth Front Army resumed the shift northward together with the Second Front Army. In October, the entire Second Front Army and a part of the Fourth Front Army arrived in northern Shensi and succeeded in joining forces with First Front Army.

　　22. Chang Kuo-tao was a traitor to the Chinese revolution. Speculating on the revolution, he joined the Chinese Communist Party in his youth. In the Party he made many mistakes and ended by committing grave crimes. Most notoriously, in 1935 he opposed the Red Army's northward march, advocating a defeatist and liquidationist withdrawal by the Red Army to the minority-nationality areas on the Szechuan-Sikang border, and he engaged in openly traitorous activities against the Party and the Central Committee, established his own bogus central committee, disrupted the unity of the Party and the Red Army, and caused heavy losses to its Fourth Front Army. Thanks to patient education by Comrade Mao Tse-tung and the Central Committee, the Fourth Front Army and its numerous cadres soon came back under the correct leadership of the Central Committee and played an honorable part in subsequent struggles. Chang Kuo-tao, however, proved incorrigible, escaped by himself from the Shensi-Kansu-Ningsia Border Region in the spring of 1938 and joined the Kuomintang secret police.

　　23. The Central Red Army, or the First Front Army, refers to the Red Army that was built up in the Kiangsi-Fukien area directly under the leadership of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party.

　　24. Pan Ku, according to Chinese mythology, was the creator of the world and the first ruler of mankind. The Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors were legendary rulers in ancient China.