Civil War
After the massacre of 1927, the Communists were divided between
an insurrectionary policy of targeting large urban centers and one of
basing its rebellion in the countryside. After costly defeats in Nanchang
and Changsha, the tide of opinion started to shift towards Mao Zedong,
who, along with Zhu De, had established his forces in the Jinggangshan
Mountains on the border between Jiangxi and Hunan and who advocated rural-based
revolt.
Communist-led uprisings in other parts of the country met with some success.
However, the Communist armies were still small and hampered by limited
resources. They adopted a strategy of guerrilla warfare emphasizing mobility
and deployment of forces for short attacks on the enemy, followed by swift
separation once the attack was over. Pitched battles were avoided except
where their force was overwhelmingly superior. The strategy was summed
up in a four-line slogan:
The enemy advances, we retreat;
The enemy camps, we harass;
The enemy tires, we attack;
The enemy retreats, we pursue.
By 1930, the Communist Party of China had had an army of perhaps more
than 100,000 that presented such a serious challenge to the Kuomintang
that Chiang had to wage a number of extermination campaigns against them.
He was defeated each time, and the Communist army continued to expand
its territory.