Autumn Harvest Uprising

In support of the Northern Expedition, Mao was sent to survey conditions in his home province of Hunan. His Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan urged support for rural revolution.[2]

Initially, Mao struggled to garner forces for an uprising, but Li Zhen rallied the peasantry and members of her local communist troop to join.[3] Mao then led a small peasant army against the Kuomintang and the landlords of Hunan. The Soviet government he established there lasted two months. The uprising was eventually defeated by Kuomintang forces within two months after the Soviet was established and Mao and the others were forced to retreat to the Jinggang Mountains on the border between Hunan and Jiangxi provinces, where emerged 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 (the first Long March in 1918 not accountable).

• 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
• Li, Xiaobing. China at War: An Encyclopedia (ABC-CLIO, 2012) pp 15–16.