Oct. 22 marked the 90th anniversary of the victory of the Long March of the Chinese Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army. A major turning point in modern Chinese history, the Long March has drawn growing attention from international scholars. CSST recently spoke with Rana Mitter, former director of the China Centre at the University of Oxford and S. T. Lee professor at Harvard Kennedy School, and Richard Overy, a professor of history at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom. Drawing on their respective expertise in the Chinese People’s War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression and global history, the two scholars discussed the Long March’s strategic legacy, spiritual value, and global significance.

Testing the CPC’s military capabilities

Mitter and Overy offered different perspectives on the Long March’s significance for the CPC, yet reached a common conclusion: The Long March provided an indispensable organizational and strategic foundation for the Party’s participation in the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression.

Mitter observed that the Long March tested a whole range of the CPC’s military capacities. “First, it enabled the party to understand how to deal with a complex combination of long-term planning and adjustment to contingency. During the course of the Long March, the major commanders had to improvise against the tactics used by the Kuomintang, and find new ways to regroup and strengthen.” During this process, Mao Zedong further developed his strategic thinking on guerrilla warfare. These ideas were further systematized during the War of Resistance and informed the key arguments set out in On Protracted War.

Overy told CSST that the Long March enabled the Chinese Communists to join the resistance against Japanese aggression and open a new front behind enemy lines, complementing the Kuomintang-commanded center stage battlefield. The Long March, Overy said, not only saved Chinese communism, as Mao intended, but also positioned the Communists geographically in an area where they could confront the Japanese. This laid the groundwork for the CPC to take the lead in advocating and promoting the establishment of a national united front against Japanese aggression.

Viewing the Long March as a case study in nation building, Mitter noted that “there was no guarantee of success. This was a crucial moment—if the Party had failed to reestablish itself, it might have been years or decades before they could recover.” He emphasized, however, that a crucial factor in the immediate context was the growing likelihood of war with Japan during the 1930s.

In 1935, the CPC issued the “August 1 Declaration,” calling for an end to the civil war and for united resistance against Japanese aggression, and took the lead in advocating the establishment of a national united front. Mitter identified 1937 as a turning point: After the Lugou Bridge Incident, a nationwide groundswell of resistance helped bring the Kuomintang and the CPC together in a national united front against Japanese aggression. This gave the Communists greater space to regroup and rethink their strategy. The military and strategic decision-making capabilities honed during the Long March would have a lasting impact on the War of Resistance and the War of Liberation that followed.

An enduring spiritual legacy

Life Millennium: The 100 Most Important Events and People of the Past 1,000 Years, published by Time Inc., included the Long March among the events that profoundly shaped human civilization—a recognition of its military achievements and its power to inspire. Mitter said that the Long March demanded extraordinary conviction. Those who completed it needed a deep commitment to their cause to sustain them throughout the journey.

This conviction, Mitter noted, “did not simply happen by chance.” Since its founding in the 1920s, the CPC had made ideological study central to its working methods, a practice further reinforced by the extreme hardships of the Long March. In Mitter’s view, rigorous study of the Party’s political thought offers historians the best starting point for understanding the convictions that sustained the march.

In 1937, American journalist Edgar Snow published Red Star over China, a work of reportage based on his interviews in the Soviet areas of northern Shaanxi Province, to widespread international attention. As the Long March’s 90th anniversary draws attention to its legacy, its place in international historical memory remains an open question.

Mitter said that international awareness of the Long March has grown in recent years. “First, high school curricula in the West have a lot more coverage of Chinese history than would have been the case even twenty or thirty years ago. There is also a great deal of popular history on podcasts and on platforms such as YouTube that also provide different views on the Long March and other related parts of Chinese history. However, the Long March still has some way to go in terms of being an event that people automatically think of as part of the global history of the 20th century.”

Overy identified Snow as a key source of Western knowledge about the Long March, particularly in the United States, where public familiarity with Asia was greater than in Europe. However, the Long March has yet to find its place in global history. Western historians have largely viewed it as a struggle for political survival, giving less attention to its military significance. “Clearly, it ought to matter more since here we have the roots of the modern Chinese superpower,” Overy stressed. “Much work needs to be done, not least on trying to link Chinese historical discourse with broader global history.”

Mitter suggested placing the Long March within the history of global communism in the early 20th century. “For instance, one could contrast the influence of the USSR on Chinese communism as part of the global story, and stress the Long March as a story of how the Party used its own resources to assess and recover its own position. Both elements are important, as the Long March is both part of a wider global interwar history and a key element of modern Chinese history.”