A decade of relentless warfare waged by Chiang Kai-shek’s KMT had all but dashed the Communist Party’s hopes of seizing power. By 1935 the retreat from their mountain hideaway in the south ended and the communists, now firmly under Mao Tse-tung’s leadership, were trapped in the arid canyons of Shaanxi, their manpower and weapons almost depleted.
Further territorial expansion was futile since the KMT, with the support of its German advisors, controlled the outlying cities and had an air force to quash the Red Army’s movements. An enduring myth fostered by the Communist Party decades later was the unfailing support of the rural farmers in these hard years. While it is true that fresh recruits flocked to the remote territory they held, until the 1950s the Communist Party was full of what Mao Tse-tung described as “bourgeoisie” ideologues who attended university and came from merchant families. The founders of the Communist Party were subversive intellectuals determined to restore China’s prestige, and those in Mao’s inner circle such as Zhou Enlai were known for their broad erudition and urbane manners. Mao himself was a dilettante and part-time lecturer in his youth whose true lifelong passion was classic Chinese literature.