page_title: Deng Xiaoping
section_title: Long March
hierarchical_section_title: Deng Xiaoping / Political rise / Long March
caption_attribution_description: English: 1937 Deng Xiaoping in NRA uniform. 1937年，任八路军总部政治部副主任的邓小平。
context_page_description: Deng Xiaoping was a Chinese politician who was the paramount leader of the People's Republic of China from 1978 until 1989. After Chairman Mao Zedong's death in 1976, Deng gradually rose to power and led China through a series of far-reaching market-economy reforms, which earned him the reputation as the "Architect of Modern China".
  Born into an educated land-owning family in Sichuan province, Deng studied and worked in France in the 1920s, where he became a follower of Marxism–Leninism. He joined the Communist Party of China in 1923. Upon returning to China, Deng joined the party organization in Shanghai, becoming a political commissar for the Red Army in rural regions. In 1931, he was demoted within the party due to his support of Mao Zedong, but was promoted again during the 1935 Zunyi Conference. By the late 1930s, Deng was considered a "revolutionary veteran" because he participated in the Long March. Following the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Deng worked in Tibet as well as in southwest China to consolidate Communist control.
context_section_description: Surrounded by the more powerful army of the Republic of China, the Communists fled Jiangxi in October 1934. Thus began the epic movement that would mark a turning point in the development of Chinese communism. The evacuation was difficult because the Army of the Republic had taken positions in all areas occupied by the Communists. Advancing through remote and mountainous terrain, some 100,000 men managed to escape Jiangxi, starting a long strategic retreat through the interior of China, which ended one year later when between 8,000 and 9,000 survivors reached the northern province of Shaanxi.
  During the Zunyi Conference at the beginning of the Long March, the so-called 28 Bolsheviks, led by Bo Gu and Wang Ming, were ousted from power and Mao Zedong, to the dismay of the Soviet Union, had become the new leader of the Communist Party of China. The pro-Soviet Communist Party of China had ended and a new rural-inspired party emerged under the leadership of Mao. Deng had once again become a leading figure in the party when the north ended up winning the civil war against the Kuomintang.
  The confrontation between the two parties was temporarily interrupted, however, by the Japanese invasion, forcing the Kuomintang to form an alliance for the second time with the Communists to defend the nation against external aggression.
caption: Deng Xiaoping in NRA uniform, 1937
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