# Mao leads the Autumn Harvest Uprising and the Jinggangshan base violence that followed

Date: 1927

## The fact

On 9 September 1927 [Mao Zedong](/people/mao-zedong) led the Autumn Harvest Uprising in Hunan and Jiangxi after Chiang Kai-shek’s anti-Communist massacres. The rising failed as a city-seizure. Mao then moved surviving units toward Jinggangshan, where the new base practiced confiscation and killing of designated landlords and ‘bad gentry’ as revolutionary order. Later museums, competitions, UNESCO lists, and translations are not this Fact. The CCP, State Council, PLA, and local cadres may share the file; they do not erase a documented decision, and they are not a licence to treat every local killing as his handwriting.

## Context

The United Front had collapsed. The CCP’s 7 August 1927 emergency conference had already called for armed risings. Zhu De later joined the Jinggang force. Peasant associations in Hunan had used violence before September; Mao’s March 1927 report praised it. Later museums, competitions, UNESCO lists, and translations are not this Fact. The CCP, State Council, PLA, and local cadres may share the file; they do not erase a documented decision, and they are not a licence to treat every local killing as his handwriting.

If a number is not in the two records named above, it is not supplied here.

## Evidence and sources

Britannica dates the Autumn Harvest Uprising to September 1927. The Hunan report is Mao’s own published text. Independent military histories reconstruct Jinggang as a small, coercive base. No original death total is invented here. Wilson Center files for this year are thin; the row does not fake an archive. Later museums, competitions, UNESCO lists, and translations are not this Fact. The CCP, State Council, PLA, and local cadres may share the file; they do not erase a documented decision, and they are not a licence to treat every local killing as his handwriting.

Official or archival record: Mao, Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan (March 1927) (https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_2.htm; Marxists Internet Archive).

## Significance

Worsening [humanitarian-access](/drivers/humanitarian-access) path: a party commander made rural killing a method of base-building. Confidence is medium on scale, high on his command role. Later land-reform deaths are a separate Fact. Later museums, competitions, UNESCO lists, and translations are not this Fact. The CCP, State Council, PLA, and local cadres may share the file; they do not erase a documented decision, and they are not a licence to treat every local killing as his handwriting.

Later competitions, monuments, translations, UNESCO listings, museums, and adaptations are not converted into extra lifetime acts.

## What is established and what is not

Established: Mao led the September 1927 rising and the Jinggang base that followed. Not established: a Factrail census of 1927 victims, or that Jinggang already was a state. Later museums, competitions, UNESCO lists, and translations are not this Fact. The CCP, State Council, PLA, and local cadres may share the file; they do not erase a documented decision, and they are not a licence to treat every local killing as his handwriting.

The contribution type is direct. The attached driver is humanitarian-access. The welfare reading used in this dossier is worsening. That reading is an impact-path choice, not a property stored on the Fact itself.

Confidence is stated on the impact path, not hidden in adjectives. Do not split Jinggang into a second Fact. Do not treat the Hunan report as a body count. Mixed effects of Mao leads the Autumn Harvest Uprising and the Jinggangshan base violence that followed are separate paths.

Shared responsibility is part of Mao leads the Autumn Harvest Uprising and the Jinggangshan base violence that followed. Naming Mao Zedong does not delete co-authors, institutions, or later transmitters. The lag from 1927-09-09 to any measured indicator is not treated as zero. Alternative explanations — weather, other armies, later statutes, or independent cultural change — remain live where the sources do not close them.

## People

- Mao Zedong: https://factrail.ai/people/mao-zedong

## Drivers

- Humanitarian Access: https://factrail.ai/drivers/humanitarian-access

## Sources

- https://www.britannica.com/event/Autumn-Harvest-Uprising
- https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_2.htm

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/cn-mao-autumn-harvest-jinggang-1927