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Conflict1 August 1927

Nanchang Uprising

Also called: August 1st Uprising, Army Day

On 1 August 1927, after the Shanghai coup and the collapse of the United Front, some 20,000 Communist-led troops of the National Revolutionary Army rose in Nanchang, Jiangxi. They gave up the city within days and were scattered in the south, but the uprising is commemorated as the birth of the Communists’ own army.

Monument to the August 1st Nanchang Uprising on Bayi Square, Nanchang, 2023
Monument to the August 1st Nanchang Uprising on Bayi Square, Nanchang, 2023

沈澄心 · CC0 · Source

After Chiang Kai-shek’s Shanghai coup in April 1927 and the break with the left-wing Nationalists in Wuhan in July, the Communists resolved to take up arms. Under a front committee headed by Zhou Enlai, units commanded by He Long, Ye Ting, Zhu De, Liu Bocheng and others disarmed the Nationalist garrison of Nanchang before dawn on 1 August and took the city.

Facing Nationalist counter-attacks, the rebels left Nanchang in early August and marched into Guangdong, where they were badly defeated around Chaozhou and Shantou and dispersed. Part of the survivors, led by Zhu De, joined Mao Zedong’s force at Jinggangshan in 1928. Mao’s own Autumn Harvest Uprising in Hunan that September also failed, and the party turned from the cities to the countryside.

The People’s Republic marks 1 August as the founding day of the People’s Liberation Army, and the characters “八一” (“eight-one”) appear on its flag and insignia.

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States at the time
Republic of China
Places
Nanchang

People

  • Zhou Enlai1898 – 1976

    key figure · First premier of the People’s Republic of China (1949–1976), long in charge of diplomacy, who arranged Nixon’s 1972 visit

  • Zhu De1886 – 1976

    commander · Commander-in-chief of the Red Army and the People’s Liberation Army; he joined Mao Zedong at Jinggangshan in 1928 (“Zhu–Mao”) and was made a marshal in 1955

Before and after

Earlier
1927 Shanghai Coup and the Nanjing National Government
Later
1927 Jinggangshan and the Jiangxi Soviet

Themes that include this event

  • From the Chinese Civil War to the Cultural Revolution1927 – 1976

    From the collapse of the United Front in 1927, through rural bases, the Long March and Yan’an, to the Communists’ victory in the civil war and the founding of the People’s Republic — then land reform, the Great Leap Forward and famine, the Sino-Soviet split and the Cultural Revolution, up to Mao’s death and the arrest of the Gang of Four in 1976, while the Nationalist government withdrew to Taiwan