The Long March was a massive
military retreat undertaken by the Red Armies of the
Communist Party of China (CPC), the forerunner of the
People's Liberation Army, to evade the pursuit of the
Kuomintang (KMT or Nationalist Party) army. There was not one Long March, but several, as various Communist armies in the south escaped to the north and west. The most well known is the march from
Jiangxi province which began in October 1934. The First Front Army of the
Chinese Soviet Republic, led by an inexperienced military commission, was on the brink of complete annihilation by
Chiang Kai-shek's troops in their stronghold in Jiangxi province. The Communists, under the eventual command of
Mao Zedong and
Zhou Enlai, escaped in a circling retreat to the west and north, which reportedly traversed some 12,500 kilometers (8,000 miles) over 370 days. The route passed through some of the most difficult terrain of western
China by traveling west, then north, to
Shaanxi.
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