The Long March (长征 Cháng zhēng), 1934 – 1935 (Introduction)

The Long March, a traditional Chinese painting by Guan Shanyue.
The painting depicts Red Army soldiers climbing snow-covered mountains. Winding compositions, vigorous brushwork and vivid colours convey the scale of their journey and their determination to overcome adversity.

After recently celebrating the 77th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China on October the 1st, 2026, the Chinese people are now celebrating the 90th anniversary of the Red Army’s Long March military expedition.

The Chinese Civil War saw two ideologies, that of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and its Red Army, and that of the Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang (KMT), between 1927 and 1949 fight, cooperate, and fight again to impart their vision for the future of China. After a number of years into this war the KMT had failed in four attempts to fully encircle the CPC and establish a foothold in the countryside. By 1934, the KMT was having more success with a fifth attempt at encirclement which led, in October 1934, to the CPC and Red Army making a gruelling tactical retreat which would become known famously as “The Long March”.

The route took the Red Army soldiers from Jiangxi Province in the South, as well as various places along the way, across 14 provinces, over 18 mountain ranges and across 24 major rivers to Shaanxi and Gansu Provinces in the North. Up to 100,000 soldiers slogged through swamplands, traversed snow-covered peaks, and covered a distance of 12,500 kilometres (roughly 8,000 miles) mostly on foot.

Overview of the Long March Route

Detailed View of The Long March Route

The Ministry of National Defence of China has just completed a series of X posts which present The Long March in all its detail, struggles, and triumphs.

The links below point to each of these posts in turn – and each post contains the links to each of the other 11 posts, or parts. Thus, we can follow the historical Long March of the Chinese Workers, Peasants, and Red Army, from October 1934 when the CPC and the First Front Red Army forces broke through their encirclement by the KMT in Jiangxi Province, to its victorious conclusion on October 22, 1936, when the Second Front Army arrived in Gansu Province and joined forces with the First and Fourth Front Armies to mark the defeat of the Kuomintang forces.

Part 1     Part 2     Part 3     Part 4     Part 5     Part 6     Part 7     Part 8     Part 9     Part 10     Part 11