Commemorating the 90th Anniversary of the Victory of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army's Long March | Seeking the "Way" at Tongdao

Seeking the "Way" at Tongdao

■ Qian Zongyang

[Group sculpture of the Tongdao Troop Diversion (figures from left to right: Zhang Wentian, Zhu De, Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Wang Jiaxiang; the sculpture stands in the main plaza of the Tongdao Troop Diversion Memorial Hall)]

Created by He Renhuai

"Most Extremely Urgent (万万火急)"——

A handwritten Red Army telegraph draft, its paper yellowed and its edges slightly curled, is displayed at Gongcheng Academy in Tongdao Dong Autonomous County—the most complete surviving ancient Dong-ethnic academy in China.

The date on the telegram: December 12. Signed: Military Commission.

Red Army telegrams were classified into five levels of urgency: routine, urgent, fire-urgent, extremely urgent, and most extremely urgent (万万火急).

"Most Extremely Urgent" was the highest-level telegram issued in the name of the Central Revolutionary Military Commission (中革军委) during the Long March.

The following day, the march route indicated in the telegram guided the exhausted Red Army officers and soldiers to turn westward, leaving behind the blockhouse fortification lines the enemy had just finished setting up.

The passage to victory was thus opened.

I

At dawn, Luomeng Mountain slowly emerged from the white mist. At its foot, a cluster of Dong-ethnic buildings of blue brick and grey tile received the day's first visitors.

Gongcheng Academy, first built during the Northern Song dynasty, stands like a weathered elder, recounting to later generations a breathtaking chapter of history.

In the cold and rainy winter of 1934, after the bitter fighting at the Xiang River, more than 30,000 Red Army officers and soldiers crossed the steep and treacherous Laoshanjie Mountain and entered Tongdao County.

Lu Dingyi's prose essay "Laoshanjie" describes the steepest section of the mountain as "a nearly ninety-degree vertical stone stairway, only a foot or so wide, with a sheer cliff on one side."

Bitter fighting, followed by grueling marches, had pushed the troops' exhaustion to its limit. Yet the pursuing enemy was closing in, leaving no room for delay. The Central Red Army, standing at the crossroads of its fate, had to decide its destination as quickly as possible.

In a small room at Gongcheng Academy, several dark-brown wooden tables and chairs recreate the scene of the meeting held there that year.

The meeting was convened hastily. It left behind no original records or written materials of any kind. Everything was preserved only in the memories of the seven participants. So much so that for many years after the victory of the Long March, few people knew of this meeting, and some even doubted whether the Tongdao Conference had ever actually taken place.

In 1971, when Deng Yingchao visited the Museum of the Chinese Revolution (now incorporated into the National Museum of China) to review the Party history exhibition, she specifically answered a question from the staff: "The question you raised last time—I went back and asked Comrade Enlai about it… Comrade Enlai said yes, there were meetings, both the Liping Conference and the Tongdao Conference were held."

And it was Li De (Otto Braun)—who had nearly led the Chinese revolution into a "dead end"—who first provided a detailed account of the meeting's proceedings in his memoirs.

The meeting opened quickly and ended quickly; Li De called it a "flying meeting" (飞行会议). At Tongdao, the participants stayed only one day before hurrying on.

The military situation was truly urgent.

II

As night fell, a bonfire was lit. The leaping firelight cast a red glow on three gaunt figures.

Two of the three were on stretchers: one had not yet fully recovered from a severe bout of malaria; the other had a large wound in his abdomen torn open by a bomb dropped from an enemy aircraft, a wound not yet healed.

Despite their physical weakness and the exhaustion of the march, the three men grew more and more animated as they talked.

These three men were Mao Zedong, Zhang Wentian, and Wang Jiaxiang. What they were discussing was the series of defeats suffered by the Red Army since the Fifth Counter-Encirclement Campaign.

When the Central Red Army set out from Ruijin in Jiangxi, its main force numbered more than 86,000. After the bloody battle at the Xiang River, only some 30,000 remained after crossing the river. Mao Zedong firmly declared: "We must discuss the reasons for this defeat!"

The great defeat triggered a great upheaval. The enormous sacrifices caused the foundations of trust in Bo Gu and Li De within the Red Army to totter. The rage that had been building since the failure of the Fifth Counter-Encirclement Campaign burned fiercely in the hearts of the Red Army's officers and soldiers.

Nie Rongzhen recalled: "The crossing of the Xiang River further exposed the political and military command errors of escapism (逃跑主义) committed by the dogmatist-sectarian clique, prompting people to fundamentally reconsider the Party's line and the question of leadership."

The conversations on the stretchers became the foreshadowing of a change in history. All along the march, Mao Zedong analyzed in detail with Zhang Wentian and Wang Jiaxiang the reasons for the Red Army's repeated defeats since the Fifth Counter-Encirclement Campaign, and reviewed the heavy losses caused by "escapism" (逃跑主义) and "moving-house-ism" (搬家主义) since the start of the Long March.

For the young Chinese Communists, breaking free from the shackles of dogmatism was not something that could be accomplished overnight. Practice was the most demanding teacher.

Wang Jiaxiang had once agreed with Wang Ming that "Marxism-Leninism cannot come out of mountain gullies." But after coming to the Central Soviet Area to participate in the leadership of the Party and the Red Army, far from Moscow's bread and butter, walking himself along the narrow mountain paths through towering peaks, breathing in the gunpowder smoke of the counter-encirclement campaigns, he gradually came to recognize the correctness of Mao Zedong's leadership.

At the Ningdu Conference in October 1932, the theme was criticism of Mao Zedong's "right opportunism," and the discussion centered on whether to keep Mao Zedong at the front to command military operations and whether to remove him from his post as General Political Commissar of the First Front Army. Wang Jiaxiang spoke up forthrightly in support of Mao Zedong: "With a powerful enemy before us, we must not change commanders; this heavy responsibility of command belongs to no one but him!"

Like Wang Jiaxiang, Zhang Wentian also gradually came through practice to recognize that the erroneous command of Li De and others could no longer continue.

In April 1934, by adopting a strategy of "regular warfare" (正规战)—concentration against concentration, blockhouse against blockhouse, position against position—the Central Red Army suffered more than 5,000 casualties in just eighteen days during the Battle of Guangchang, and still failed to hold Guangchang. At the battle review meeting, Zhang Wentian had a fierce argument with Bo Gu, saying bluntly that China's affairs "cannot rely entirely on Li De; we ourselves must have some ideas."

The exchanges along the Long March route made Zhang Wentian even more certain of his views. He later recalled: "After the Long March set out, I lived together with Comrades Mao Zedong and Wang Jiaxiang. Comrade Mao Zedong began explaining to us the errors in the Central Committee's past military leadership during the Fifth Counter-Encirclement Campaign. I quickly accepted his views and began the struggle against Li De and Bo Gu within the Politburo, continuing all the way to the Zunyi Conference."

After the Ningdu Conference, Mao Zedong lost command of the Red Army and focused on the work of the Soviet government, but he never ceased his concern for the Red Army's fate. The string of defeats caused by dogmatism made him all the more anxious about the survival of this force.

As his health gradually recovered, Mao Zedong spoke with more and more people along the march about his ideas. Li De was greatly angered by Mao Zedong's "disregard for march discipline," believing that he "would be with one army corps for a while, then with another, with no purpose other than to persuade the commanders and political commissars of army corps and divisions to accept his thinking."

At that moment, Li De had not yet realized—correct thinking cannot be stopped.

III

After the Battle of the Xiang River, a self-satisfied Chiang Kai-shek sat in Nanchang listening to reports from reconnaissance aircraft over northeastern Guangxi.

On December 12, he received a telegram: "Yesterday morning, the bandits at Chang'an Camp turned toward Tongdao…"

The Red Army had finally emerged from the mountains. On December 10, the 5th Regiment of the 2nd Division of the Red Army's 1st Army Corps captured Tongdao County seat.

Tongdao—a county at the southwestern tip of Hunan, situated at the junction of Guangxi, Hunan, and Guizhou provinces. It was indeed like a "corridor" (通道): northward lay Hunan, westward lay Guizhou, and southward one could retreat into the mountains of Guangxi.

The land offered different options. Could the Red Army make the right choice?

While the Red Army was making its arduous way through the deep mountains, Chiang Kai-shek was busy deploying troops at his Nanchang field headquarters, massing fifteen divisions and 200,000 men, anchored on clusters of blockhouses, arrayed and ready, with a net spread and waiting.

Wu Xiuquan, who at the time served as Li De's interpreter, recalled: "When the troops advanced to the Tongdao area of western Hunan, intelligence was received that Chiang Kai-shek had learned of our intention to link up with the 2nd and 6th Army Corps and had deployed a force five times our strength in our direction of advance, forming a large bag for us to walk into."

If the original plan to continue northward were followed and the Red Army entered Chiang Kai-shek's "bag," it was very likely that the entire army would be annihilated.

"The iron-walled encirclement is hard to break through; at dusk we bid farewell to the Red Capital. We forced the Xiang River crossing as blood flowed like a torrent; where shall the three armies march today?" The bewilderment came from the agonizing losses, and even more from the incompetence of the commanders. According to Wu Xiuquan's recollections, "After crossing the Xiang River, we had lost two-thirds of our strength; some units had already disintegrated and scattered, while the enemy was blocking our front and pursuing our rear, with heavy forces encircling us. At this critical juncture, Li De was at a complete loss and could only lose his temper and curse people. Bo Gu was also at his wit's end, capable only of sighing and lamenting…"

At this critical juncture, under the strong insistence of Mao Zedong, Wang Jiaxiang, and Zhang Wentian, Bo Gu and Li De reluctantly agreed to convene the first emergency military conference since the Long March had set out.

According to Kang Keqing's recollections, under the strong clamor of the rank and file and with the support of Zhu De and Zhou Enlai, the conference made an exception and invited Mao Zedong to attend.

More than two years after losing military command authority, Mao Zedong had his first opportunity to participate in military decision-making. He sat in a corner of the meeting room, in an inconspicuous position; yet his proposals became the focal point of the conference's debate.

Luomeng Mountain stood silent. More than ninety years ago, in that cold winter, the mountain listened just as silently to the arguments inside the room.

IV

History always contains inevitability within contingency, and contingency within inevitability.

Before the Long March set out, the Shanghai Central Bureau of the Chinese Communist Party was destroyed by Nationalist secret agents, severing telegraphic communications between the Communist International (Comintern) and the CCP Central Committee from that point on.

The debate was no longer subject to interference from Comintern "imperial edicts," and it was no longer possible to use "Comintern instructions" to terminate all dissenting opinions. Thus, correct opinions had the possibility of being discussed on equal terms.

The Comintern, thousands of kilometers away, did not know that the Red Army had already begun its arduous expedition, much less where Tongdao—surrounded by mountains—actually was. Tongdao was simply too small, too small to have its location and name marked on any globe of that era.

The Chinese Communists and the Red Army had "penetrated deep into China's interior," where conditions were entirely different from the bustling Shanghai Bund. British biographer Dick Wilson argued that there, the former leaders trained abroad and possessing only urban experience were ill-suited. They needed a man from among the people, a brilliant peasant leader to lead them.

Such an assessment is by no means conjecture. Without understanding China's national conditions, one would be out of one's element on this ancient land.

During the Fifth Counter-Encirclement Campaign, Bo Gu handed military command of the Red Army to Li De. This foreign adviser, who had studied for three years at the Frunze Military Academy in the Soviet Union and had experience only in street and barricade fighting, disregarded China's national conditions and the realities of the war, relying solely on the rules and formulas in his textbooks, sitting indoors and directing battles by map—leading to the Red Army being forced to abandon the Central Soviet Area and embark on the heroic and tragic Long March.

A true leader can always steady a capsizing vessel in the most turbulent current. At the Tongdao Conference, Mao Zedong stepped forward.

Where should the Red Army go? Mao Zedong spoke first: "Why don't we avoid the strong and strike at the weak (避实就虚), shake off the powerful enemy before us, and go to Guizhou where the enemy's forces are thin? Why must we walk into the bag? The road is wide open—each goes his own way!"

There are no fixed tactics, and there are no fixed plans. The principle of moving with the times and adapting to circumstances is not difficult to understand, but dogmatists find it very hard to grasp.

Before the Long March set out, Mao Zedong was living in an ancient temple at Yunshi Mountain in Gawei Township, Ruijin. He spent nearly a month writing a text of approximately 30,000 characters titled "Guerrilla Warfare" (《游击战争》). Later, this work was distributed to counties and districts.

Clearly, Li De and Bo Gu were unable to understand the essential ideas of this work. At the Tongdao Conference, disregarding the objective circumstances that had already changed, they still insisted on going to western Hunan to link up with the 2nd and 6th Army Corps, arguing that this was a plan approved and reported to the Comintern.

Starting from reality, Mao Zedong patiently explained the stakes, insisting that the Red Army should immediately turn west and open up a new base area in Guizhou, where enemy forces were weak.

"It is said that of all the mountains under heaven, half are in the green of Qianzhong." Guizhou's thousand peaks and ten thousand ravines, range upon range of hills, form a complex terrain like "a vast sea of dark mountains." This had once been the "kingdom" of local warlord Wang Jialie. The Guizhou Army (黔军) under his command was poorly equipped, lax in discipline, and riven by factional strife—mockingly called the "double-gun soldiers" (双枪兵) (note: meaning soldiers carrying both rifles and opium pipes).

Mao Zedong argued that advancing westward into Guizhou was the only way to seize the initiative.

The calm, analytical proposal was like a bolt of lightning splitting the dark night.

Wang Jiaxiang and Zhang Wentian spoke in turn to support Mao Zedong's position; Zhu De and Zhou Enlai also agreed with Mao Zedong's view. But the obstinate Li De flatly refused to agree, and seeing that most of those present supported Mao Zedong, he left the meeting in a sulk before it concluded.

At the moment that would decide the Red Army's fate, the conference, in accordance with the views of the majority, decided to adjust the march route and abandon the plan to advance directly northward through Tongdao.

At 7:30 that evening, the Central Revolutionary Military Commission issued that "Most Extremely Urgent" order, commanding the 2nd Division of the 1st Army Corps and the 9th Army Corps to advance to the Xinchang, Yanyingpo, and Rongdong areas, dispatch security forces toward Jing County, and continue dispatching reconnaissance units in the direction of Baima (Baimalu) Pass and Liping; if the 1st Division of the 1st Army Corps had already reached Hongzhousi that day, it was to seize the opportunity to occupy Liping; the main force of the 3rd Army Corps was to advance to the Yatunbu, Tuantou, and Tousuo areas and rapidly disengage from the Guangxi enemy forces…

History quietly turned a corner. Tongdao—this small town that had once stood on the corridor marking the boundary between Chu and Yue—thus became the place where the Party and the Red Army's "fortunes turned" (转运之地).

Proceeding from reality in all things (一切从实际出发)—this simple truth saved the Red Army at the moment of life and death.

V

Today, traveling west from Tongdao via the Ningjing Expressway and the Jianli Expressway, one can reach Liping in Guizhou in under two hours by car.

More than ninety years ago, the Central Red Army advanced rapidly on foot, crossing mountains and ridges, and captured Liping three days after the Tongdao Conference.

In the county seat, a towering German Lutheran-style church became the headquarters of the Central Revolutionary Military Commission. To the right of the church, a row of single-story buildings with white walls and grey tiles became Zhou Enlai's residence. This building was later permanently inscribed in history.

On December 18, the CCP Central Politburo Conference was convened here to continue deliberating on the question of the Red Army's operational policy—known to history as the "Liping Conference."

Li De was unable to attend due to illness, but his position was brought to the meeting by Bo Gu. They continued to insist that the plan to link up must be carried out to the letter. Mao Zedong argued for continuing to advance northwest into Guizhou. His remarks were grounded in facts, each sentence piercing through the walls of dogmatism. Zhou Enlai, who presided over the conference, later recalled: "From Laoshanjie to Liping, the argument at Liping was especially fierce."

Light once again shone through the wooden lattice windows to illuminate the meeting room. Consensus was finally born, with difficulty, out of fierce collision.

The Liping Conference accepted Mao Zedong's correct position. Afterward, Zhou Enlai showed Li De a translation of the conference's decisions. Li De flew into a rage. Fan Jinbiao, Zhou Enlai's bodyguard, recalled: "The Premier criticized Li De… The Premier slapped the table, and the oil lamp sitting on the table jumped up and went out; we immediately relit it."

Although Bo Gu's views had been rejected by the conference, he submitted to the decision. When he learned that Zhou Enlai and Li De had quarreled, he said to Zhou Enlai: "Don't bother with him."

During the Fifth Counter-Encirclement Campaign, Liu Bocheng, unable to tolerate Li De's erroneous command any longer, had argued with him. Li De flew into a fury and berated Liu Bocheng: "You went to the Frunze Military Academy for nothing—your tactical level is not even up to that of a staff officer. What kind of chief of staff are you!"

Because of this argument, Liu Bocheng was stripped of his position as Chief of the General Staff by Bo Gu on the grounds of "offending the military adviser."

After the Liping Conference, Liu Bocheng returned to his position as Chief of the General Staff of the Red Army and concurrently served as Commander of the Central Column.

Liping—the City of Dawn (黎明之城). The decisions of the Liping Conference were swiftly translated into the Central Red Army's advance toward northern Guizhou and Zunyi. The Red Army captured seven county seats in succession, reversing the passive situation of being "encircled, pursued, obstructed, and intercepted" (围追堵截) by enemy forces since the start of the Long March, and Chiang Kai-shek's plan to annihilate the Central Red Army in the western Hunan region collapsed entirely.

Liu Bocheng later wrote in "Recollections of the Long March" (《回顾长征》): "At that time, if Chairman Mao had not firmly insisted on changing the operational policy, the fate of the remaining 30,000-plus Red Army soldiers would have been nothing but destruction."

A single telegraphic order changed the Red Army's direction of march; a single change of course opened the great turning point of the Long March.

The courage and wisdom of that choice, traversing more than ninety years of time, still resonate at the foot of Luomeng Mountain. Tongdao, Liping… they are not merely place names; they are also a metaphor—

Where there seems to be no way forward, a passage (通道) can still be found; when the night seems darkest, one can still believe in the dawn (黎明).

Victory belongs only to those who dare to confront the facts and make a change.

Layout design: Fang Han

Academic support: Chu Yin