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Autumn Harvest Uprising
Part of Chinese Civil War
Planned insurrection locations by the August Seventh Conference.
Date September 7, 1927 Location Hunan, Jiangxi and Hubei. Result Uprising crushed, Communists forced to retreat to the Jinggang Mountains
Belligerents
Nationalist government Kuomintang National Revolutionary Army	Soviet Zone Communist Party Chinese Red Army
Commanders and leaders
	Mao Zedong Li Zhen
Casualties and losses
About 390,000 Hunanese civilians were killed

The Autumn Harvest Uprising was an insurrection that took place in Hunan and Jiangxi provinces of China, on September 7, 1927, led by Mao Zedong, who established a short-lived Hunan Soviet.

After initial success, the uprising was brutally put down by Kuomintang forces. Mao continued to believe in the rural strategy but concluded that it would be necessary to form a party army.

Background

In support of the Northern Expedition, Mao was sent to survey peasant conditions in his home province of Hunan. His Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan urged support for rural revolution.

The uprising

Initially, Mao struggled to garner forces for an uprising, but Li Zhen rallied the peasantry and members of her local communist troop to join. Mao then led a small peasant army against the Kuomintang and the landlords of Hunan, successfully establishing a Soviet government. The uprising was eventually defeated by Kuomintang forces within two months after the Soviet was established. Mao and the others were forced to retreat to the Jinggang Mountains on the border between Hunan and Jiangxi provinces, where he encountered an army of miners which would help him in later battles. This was one of the early armed uprisings by the Communists, and it marked a significant change in their strategy. Mao and Red Army founder Zhu De went on to develop a rural-based strategy that centered on guerrilla tactics. This paved the way for the Long March of 1934.

Reasons for the uprising's failure

The uprising shows the overwhelming importance of an organized military force to the success or failure of an insurrection, the failure reveals that the role and question of military force was given different emphasis by operatives of different levels in the communist party and came to be a topic of serious contention and disagreement which led to the disorganization. An obvious lack of appreciation for rudimentary pre-insurrectionary military organization hints that Mao was more "putschist" (to a point) than his Chinese or Russian superiors.

Mass killings against Hunanese civilians

Nationalist anti-communist mass killings were directed against all Hunanese civilians. About 80,000 Hunanese were killed in Hunan's Liling and about 300,000 Hunanese were killed in Hunan's Chaling County, Leiyang, Liuyang and Pingjiang.

See also

• Outline of the Chinese Civil War

References

Citations

1. Short, Philip (18 December 2016). Mao: The Man Who Made China. Bloomsbury. ISBN 9781786730152.
2. Li, Xiaobing. China at War: An Encyclopedia (ABC-CLIO, 2012) pp 5–8.
3. Hofheinz, Jr. (1977).
4. Wu 吴, Zhife 志菲 (2003). "Li Zhen: cong tongyangxi dao kaiguo jiangjun 李贞：从童养媳到开国将军". Renmin Wang. Archived from the original on 8 July 2015. Retrieved 27 November 2011.
5. Hofheinz, Roy (1967). "The Autumn Harvest Insurrection". The China Quarterly. 32 (32): 37–87. doi:10.1017/S0305741000047214. ISSN 0305-7410. JSTOR 651405. S2CID 154891728.
6. Short, Philip (18 December 2016). Mao: The Man Who Made China. Bloomsbury. ISBN 9781786730152.

Bibliography

• Hofheinz, Jr., Roy (1977). The Broken Wave: The Chinese Communist Peasant Movement, 1922-1928. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674083912. Reprinted: De Gruyter, 2014 eBook Archived 2018-06-09 at the Wayback Machine
• Li, Xiaobing. China at War: An Encyclopedia (ABC-CLIO, 2012) pp 15–16.

v t e Chinese Civil War
Principal belligerents and campaigns Nationalist Party / National Government ( National Revolutionary Army) → Constitutional ROC Government (ROC Armed Forces) → Republic of China on Taiwan Communist Party / Soviet Republic ( Red Army) → Liberated Area ( 8th Route Army, New Fourth Army, etc. → People's Liberation Army) →  People's Republic of China
Pre-1945 Post-1945 1923 Sun–Joffe Manifesto 1924 First United Front 1926 Canton Coup 1927–1949 Chinese Communist Revolution 1927 Nanking incident Shanghai Commune Shanghai massacre Nanjing–Wuhan split 715 Incident Little Long March Nanchang uprising Autumn Harvest Uprising Guangzhou Uprising 1930–1934 Encirclement campaigns 1931–1934 Chinese Soviet Republic 1933–1934 Fujian People's Government 1934–1936 Long March 1936 Xi'an Incident 1937–1946 Second United Front (Wartime perception of the Chinese Communists) 1941 New Fourth Army incident 1944 Dixie Mission 1945 Chongqing Negotiations Double Tenth Agreement Retrocession of Taiwan 1946 Jiaochangkou Incident Peiping rape case 1945–1947 Marshall Mission 1945–1949 Operation Beleaguer 1947 Yu Zisan Incident 1948 SS Kiangya incident Liaoshen campaign 1948–1949 Huaihai campaign Pingjin campaign 1949 Taiping Steamer Incident Yangtze River Crossing campaign Amethyst Incident ROC Government retreat to Taiwan PRC incorporation of Xinjiang 1949–1953 Bombing of Shanghai 1950 Hainan Island campaign Wanshan Archipelago Campaign 1950–1958 Kuomintang Islamic insurgency 1961–1972 Project National Glory

• Conflicts in 1927
• 1927 protests
• September 1927 events
• Military operations of the Chinese Civil War
• 1927 in China
• Military history of Hunan
• Military history of Jiangxi
• Chinese Communist Revolution
• Massacres committed by China
• Anti-communist terrorism
• 20th-century mass murder in China