Painting History: China’s Revolution in a Global Context By Jiawe ...

Zhang Guotao as chief commissar, and Liu Bocheng²⁷ as chief-of-staff—was unable to proceed because of floods. Zhang Guotao decided to head south. The Central Committee commanding the right force as well as the first corps and third corps of the First Front Army continued north, and there they found the Red Army led by Liu Zhidan in northern Shaanxi. With their remaining 9000 soldiers, they went to join Liu, and created a new base at Bao’an.

Zhang Hao²⁸ was sent by the Comintern in early 1936 to resolve differences between Zhang Guotao and the Central Committee. At the same time the Second Front Army, under the command of Ren Bishi,²⁹ marched from Hunan Province to Chuankang (i.e., the area of West Sichuan and East Tibet) to join forces with the Fourth Front Army (including the fifth and ninth corps of the First Front Army) and then continued north. In October 1936, they reached Ningxia to meet with the First Front Army, thus ending the Long March. The Central Military Commission then ordered the original left force to reorganize into the Western Route Army and, led by Chen Changhao, to cross the Yellow River into Gansu to open a corridor into Soviet Russia. However, by the spring of 1937 the Western Route Army had been decimated, with only several hundred soldiers breaking the blockade to reach Xinjiang. Mao and some other members of the Central Committee resented Zhang Guotao and, attributing the disaster to the bankruptcy of the “Zhang Guotao line,” Mao took control of what remained of the Fourth Front Army.

At the time, Zhang Xueliang,³⁰ deputy commander-in-chief of the KMT forces, together with Yang Hucheng,³¹ instigated the Xi’an Incident by kidnapping Chiang Kai-shek.³² The Comintern prevailed upon the CPC and Zhang Xueliang to form an alliance with Chiang Kai-shek to fight the Japanese. Zhang Xueliang agreed to be held prisoner for the rest of his life to end the civil war between the CPC and the KMT. The War of Resistance against the Japanese was declared in the summer of 1937, the CPC became a legitimate political party, and China was united in the war against Japan.