The 6th National Congress

Date: June 18-July 11, 1928

Place: Moscow

Number of delegates: 84 (plus 34 alternate delegates)

Party membership: More than 40,000

The major tasks of the congress were to sum up the experiences learnt after the failure of the First Great Revolution (June 1923-July 1927), analyze the nature of the revolution and the political situation, work out the lines, guiding principles and policies of the Party during a new period, to unite the whole Party in thought and develop revolutionary forces.

The congress affirmed that Chinese society remained in nature a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society, and that the "Chinese revolution at the present stage is by nature a bourgeois democratic revolution". It formulated 10 programs of the democratic revolution. It pointed out that the political situation in China at that time was one between two revolutionary high tides, and that the general task of the Party was, therefore, not to attack and organize uprisings but to win over the masses and prepare for insurrections.

The congress criticized both "Right" and "Left" opportunism, especially putschist mistakes.

The congress elected the Sixth Central Committee composed of 23 members and 13 alternate members, which elected Xiang Zhongfa, Zhou Enlai, Su Zhaozheng, Xiang Ying, Qu Qiubai, Zhang Guotao and Cai Hesen into its Political Bureau, with Xiang Zhongfa serving as the general secretary.

After the failure of the 1927 revolution, the new KMT warlords began their atrocious rule in China. Facing the new situation, the CPC independently held high the banner of revolution by adopting the general principle of agrarian revolution and armed struggle. The Chinese Communists, represented by Mao Zedong, accumulated experience in the struggle and gradually shifted the focus of the Party's work from the cities to the countryside.

While in the countryside, the Communist Party mobilized the masses of peasants and established base areas, thus opening up a road of encircling the cities from the rural areas and seizing political power by armed force. Under the leadership of the Party, people in base areas overthrew the landlords and shared out the land. Revolutionary armed forces and workers' and peasants' governments were established. The Communist forces defeated, one after the other, the "encirclement and suppression" campaigns launched by Kuomintang armies. The base areas became scenes of vigorous revolutionary activity.