ABSTRACT
The Party Congress of the Border Area, held at Maoping on 20 May 1928, elected Mao Tse-tung as secretary of the local party organisation, and party representative in the Fourth Red Army which totalled 10,000 men. Efforts were made to educate the army to serve the people. This was the effort of the Red Army to become not only a military but a productive force. While the Red Army began to create a favourable impression on the poor peasants, economic conditions in the Chingkang Mountains deteriorated. Mao attached great importance to such democratic education since it was in changes in the consciousness of the poor peasant soldiers, which would make them feel they could control their destiny that the future of the revolution laid. A land reform programme must arise from the needs of the local poor people. A hundred poor peasants taken captive were asked to join the Red Army.
