Baise Uprising

The Baise Uprising was a short-lived uprising organized by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in northwestern Guangxi around the city of Baise. It officially began on December 11, 1929, and lasted until late 1931. The uprising established the Seventh Red Army and a soviet over a number of counties in the You River valley. It drew support from a pre-existing movement of Zhuang peasants led by Wei Baqun, and focused on land redistribution in the area it controlled. After a brief but costly attempt to capture Guangxi's major cities, the soviet was suppressed and surviving soldiers made their way to Jiangxi. Today, it is most famous for the role played by Deng Xiaoping, who was the CCP Central Committee's leading representative in Guangxi during the Uprising. Deng was strongly criticized, both during the Cultural Revolution and by modern historians, for the uprising's swift defeat and his decision to abandon the retreating Seventh Red Army.