Why had being Mao Zedong emerged as the unchallenged leader of the CCP by 1945?
Mao Zedong became a Marxist while studying and working as a library assistant at Beijing University in 1919. He believed that, ‘all power grows out of the barrel of the gun’ and that violence was the only way to make an effective change in China. He helped organize strikes and took part in the May 4th protest movement in 1919 against the granting of Germany’s old territory in China to Japan. The Russian Comintern was established in 1919 to help spread Marxism beyond Russia and this helped with the formation of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1921. Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao led the party, but Mao was one of the 12 delegates who attended the first meeting of the party in July 1921
CCP members were ordered by the Comintern to join the GMD to bring out Chinese unity Mao worked as a GMD political organizer in shanghai and he was elected to the Central Committee of the CCP and the GMD in 1924. Mao developed his own brand of communism in 1927 when Jiang Jieshi broke the alliance with the CCP. He believed that communism had to be established among peasants as well for it to succeed. He attempted a revolt of peasants in 1927. He then led his followers to remote mountains where he formed his own Communist Red Army. He built a reliable and disciplined army that believed that even generals and leaders had to share the hardships of the ordinary men, and that even though the ranks were different the people were treated as equals. By 1928 the Red Army had 12,000 men
The army was poorly equipped and relied more on bamboo spikes than on guns, which led the army to develop guerilla tactics. Small parts of the Red army would hide amongst the civilian population in order to attack larger enemy forces when they least expected it. In 1929 Mao’s army moved to more fertile land in the Jiangxi province around Ruijin where a base was established. Mao referred to the area as the, ‘Chinese...