"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."
“农村包围城市”的革命道路
“农村包围城市”的革命新道路，是中国共产党在领导红军战争和根据地建设的过程中，通过艰难探索开辟出来的。在这个过程中，毛泽东作出了最卓越的贡献。
1927年9月，毛泽东率领起义部队在文家市里仁学校召开前委会议。他分析了敌大我小、敌强我弱的形势，主张改变原来攻打长沙的计划，把革命的中心由城市转向敌人统治比较薄弱的农村中去。与会大多数人接受了毛泽东的意见，支持向罗霄山脉中段进军的正确主张。会后，起义部队进至井冈山，打土豪分田地，建立革命政权，开展游击战，创造了以宁冈为中心的“工农武装割据”局面。
1928年，毛泽东在《井冈山的斗争》中明确指出“以农业为主要经济的中国的革命，以军事发展暴动，是一种特征”。1930年1月，毛泽东写了《星星之火，可以燎原》，提出把党的工作重心由城市转移到农村，在农村地区开展游击战争，深入进行土地革命，建立和发展红色政权，待条件成熟后再夺取全国政权的关于中国革命新道路的思想，标志着中国特色革命道路理论的基本形成。1930年5月，毛泽东又写了《反对本本主义》一文，从思想路线的高度为开创农村包围城市的道路指明了方向。从1936年12月到1939年12月，毛泽东先后发表了《中国革命战争的战略问题》《〈共产党人〉发刊词》《论新阶段》《中国革命和中国共产党》等文章，标志着农村包围城市道路理论发展成为完备的理论形态。
