Zhang Guotao - Communist Party Career

Communist Party Career

In 1924 Zhang attended the First National Congress of the Kuomintang (KMT) during the policy of alliance between the Communists and the Kuomintang and was elected as Substitute Commissioner of Central Executive Committee. This was despite the fact that Zhang had opposed the alliance with Kuomintang in the Third National Congress of the CCP and had been reprimanded. In 1925 in the Fourth National Congress of the CCP, Zhang was elected Commissioner of Central Committee of CCP and Director of Labor & Peasant Work Department. In 1926 Zhang was the General Secretary of Hubei Division of CCP, and in 1927 he was Commissioner of Interim Central Committee of the CCP after the failure of the CCP uprising. Zhang with Li Lisan and Qu Qiubai were the acting leaders of the CCP. At that time Mao only led a small number of troops in Jiangxi and Hunan. In 1928 Zhang was elected as a member of the politburo of the CCP in the Sixth National Congress held in Soviet Union, and then as delegate of the CCP in Comintern. But because of his disagreements with the Soviet Union and Comintern policies on the Chinese revolution, in the 1920s Zhang was taken into custody and punished in order to correct his mistakes. However, due to his fame and popularity in the communist world, he wasn't exiled like other dissidents were at that time.

In 1931 Zhang expressed his repentance and was sent back to China by the Comintern to clean up the mess left by the power struggle between the 28 Bolsheviks, Li Lisan, and other old CCP members. Zhang used his fame and popularity to correct their extremism and appeased the old CCP members. But the damage done by the power struggle was so great that it was too difficult for the CCP to survive in the cities governed by the Kuomintang. Therefore, Zhang and other acting CCP leaders decided to move their groups to bases in the countryside. Zhang was assigned to lead the daily operation of E-Yu-Wan Revolutionary Base at the border of Hubei, Henan, and Anhui provinces as General Secretary and chairman of the military committee, and then Vice Chairman of the Interim Central Government of the Chinese Soviet Republic when Mao was the chairman. Possibly influenced by life in Stalin's Soviet Union, Zhang carried out cruel cleansings to persecute dissidents which resulted in his defeat and evacuation in 1932.