"Encircling the Cities from the Countryside"

"Encircling the cities from the countryside" was a strategy developed through arduous efforts by the CPC in its leadership over Red Army battles and building the revolutionary base areas. Mao Zedong made an outstanding contribution to the strategy.

In September 1927, the Front Committee of the Autumn Harvest Uprising troops under Mao Zedong's command met in a school at Wenjiashi, a town in Hunan Province. As the enemy was strong and the Red Army was weak, Mao proposed changing the original plan of attacking the city of Changsha, and instead shifting the focus from cities to the countryside where the enemy's forces were relatively weak. Most of the people attending the meeting agreed with him and supported the idea of marching to the middle section of the Luoxiao Mountains Range. After the meeting, the troops entered the Jinggang Mountains, where they helped the peasants overthrow local tyrants and redistribute their land. They established revolutionary authority, waged guerrilla warfare, and set up independent regimes of armed workers and peasants centering on Ninggang.

In his article "The Struggle in the Jinggang Mountains" written in 1928, Mao Zedong observed, "A special characteristic of the revolution in China, a country with a predominantly agricultural economy, is the use of military action to develop insurrection." In "A Single Spark Can Start a Prairie Fire," which he wrote in January 1930, he advocated shifting the Party's focus from cities to rural areas, to wage guerrilla warfare, conduct the agrarian revolution, establish and develop Red political power, and wait till the conditions became ripe for seizing national political power. 

In May 1930, Mao wrote "On Investigation Work" (the title was later changed to "Oppose Book Worship"), in which he further discussed the strategy of encircling the cities from the countryside. He repeated this subject in other articles he wrote from December 1936 to December 1939, such as "Problems of Strategy in China's Revolutionary War," "Introducing The Communist," "On the New Stage," and "The Chinese Revolution and the Chinese Communist Party."

“農村包圍城市”的革命道路

“農村包圍城市”的革命新道路，是中國共產黨在領導紅軍戰爭和根據地建設的過程中，通過艱難探索開辟出來的。在這個過程中，毛澤東作出了最卓越的貢獻。

1927年9月，毛澤東率領起義部隊在文家市里仁學校召開前委會議。他分析了敵大我小、敵強我弱的形勢，主張改變原來攻打長沙的計劃，把革命的中心由城市轉向敵人統治比較薄弱的農村中去。與會大多數人接受了毛澤東的意見，支持向羅霄山脈中段進軍的正確主張。會后，起義部隊進至井岡山，打土豪分田地，建立革命政權，開展游擊戰，創造了以寧岡為中心的“工農武裝割據”局面。

1928年，毛澤東在《井岡山的斗爭》中明確指出“以農業為主要經濟的中國的革命，以軍事發展暴動，是一種特征”。1930年1月，毛澤東寫了《星星之火，可以燎原》，提出把黨的工作重心由城市轉移到農村，在農村地區開展游擊戰爭，深入進行土地革命，建立和發展紅色政權，待條件成熟后再奪取全國政權的關于中國革命新道路的思想，標志著中國特色革命道路理論的基本形成。1930年5月，毛澤東又寫了《反對本本主義》一文，從思想路線的高度為開創農村包圍城市的道路指明了方向。從1936年12月到1939年12月，毛澤東先后發表了《中國革命戰爭的戰略問題》《〈共產黨人〉發刊詞》《論新階段》《中國革命和中國共產黨》等文章，標志著農村包圍城市道路理論發展成為完備的理論形態。