Zhang Guotao
张国焘
1897–1979
- CPC Co-founder
- Fourth Front Army Commander
Biography
Early Life and CPC Co-founding
Zhang Guotao was born in 1897 in Pingxiang, Jiangxi Province. An early Marxist activist, he was one of only thirteen delegates at the First National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party held in Shanghai in July 1921, making him a founding member of the CPC. Through the 1920s he rose to become one of the Party's most powerful figures, overseeing labour organising and military affairs.
The Fourth Front Army
During the Nationalist–Communist civil war, Zhang built a powerful independent base in the border regions of Sichuan, Shaanxi, and Gansu. By the time of the Long March, his Fourth Front Army numbered approximately 80,000 soldiers — the largest Red Army formation — making him in material terms the most powerful military figure in the CPC.
The Split at Maogong and the Rival Central Committee
When the exhausted First Front Army arrived at Maogong in June 1935 with fewer than 10,000 men, Zhang demanded unified command over both armies. Mao's faction refused. In September 1935, Mao secretly moved north; Zhang responded by establishing a rival CCP Central Committee at Zhuokezhi and leading his forces south and west into the high-altitude plateaus of western Sichuan and Qinghai. The campaign proved catastrophic: his forces suffered devastating losses from cold, disease, and hostile terrain. In 1936, the surviving troops rejoined the main Red Army in northern Shaanxi.
Defection and Exile
In April 1938, Zhang Guotao defected to the Nationalist government — a severe blow to CCP prestige, coming from a Party co-founder and former commander of its largest army. He subsequently lived in Taiwan, then Hong Kong, and eventually emigrated to Canada, where he died in Toronto in December 1979.
Historical Significance
Zhang left behind two volumes of memoirs, The Rise of the Chinese Communist Party (University Press of Kansas, 1971–72), providing an unparalleled insider account of the CPC's early years, internal power struggles, and the Long March from the perspective of a participant who later broke with the Party. In PRC historiography, he is invariably cast as a traitor; outside mainland China, his memoirs are valued as a corrective to official narratives that suppress the factional conflicts of the Yan'an period.