Communist-controlled China (1927–1949)

On 1 February 1932, the National Bank of the Chinese Soviet Republic was established with Mao Zemin, the brother of Mao Zedong, as its president. The CSR Central Mint issued three kinds of currency, including the paper bill, the copper coin, and the silver dollar.

One-yuan bill with Vladimir Lenin's image in the centre.

The Central Mint briefly issued both the paper bills and copper coins, but neither circulated for long, primarily because the currency could not be used in the rest of China.

The paper bill had "Chinese Soviet Republic" (中華蘇維埃共和國) printed on the bill in traditional Chinese characters, with a picture of Vladimir Lenin.

Like the paper bill, the copper coins issued by the Central Mint also had "Chinese Soviet Republic" (中華蘇維埃共和國) in traditional Chinese characters engraved, and due to the fact that coins last longer than paper bills, these coins were issued and circulated in much greater numbers. However, these coins are currently rarer than the paper bill, mainly because the copper used was in need of cartridges, so these copper coins were recalled and replaced by silver dollars.

The largest and most predominant currency produced by the Central Mint was the silver dollar. Unlike the paper bills and the copper coins, the silver dollars had no Communist symbols and instead, they were the direct copy of other silver dollars produced by other mints in China, including the most popular Chinese silver dollar with Yuan Shikai's head engraved, and the eagle silver dollar of the Mexican peso. This and the fact that the coin was made of the precious metal silver, enabled them to be circulated in the rest of China and thus was the trade currency of choice.

When the Chinese Red Army's First Front began their Long March in October 1934, the Communist bank was part of the retreating force, with 14 bank employees, over a hundred coolies and a company of soldiers escorting them while they carried all of the money and mint machinery. One of the important tasks of the bank during the Long March whenever the Chinese Red Army stayed in a place for longer than a day was to tell the local population to exchange any Communist paper bills and copper coins to goods and currency used in nationalist controlled regions, so that the local population would not be persecuted by the pursuing nationalists after the Communists had left. After the Zunyi Conference, it was decided that carrying the entire bank on the march was not practical, so on 29 January 1935, at Earth Town (Tucheng, 土城), the bank employees burned all Communist paper bills and mint machinery under order. By the time the Long March had concluded in October 1935, only 8 out of the 14 original employees survived; the other 6 had died along the way.

The CCP seemed to have been doomed under the crushing blows of the Nationalists. However, Zhou Enlai had previously achieved a brilliant intelligence success by planting more than a dozen moles in Chiang Kai-shek's inner circle, including at the general headquarters for the nationalist forces at Nanchang. Surprisingly, the most important of the agents, Mo Xiong, was actually never a communist, but his contribution eventually saved the CCP and the Chinese Red Army.

Under the recommendation of Chiang Kai-shek's secretary-general Yang Yongtai, who was unaware of Mo's communist activities, Mo Xiong steadily excelled in Chiang Kai-shek's regime, eventually becoming an important member within Chiang Kai-shek's general headquarters in the early 1930s. In January 1934, Chiang Kai-shek named him as the administrator and commander-in-chief of the Fourth Special District in northern Jiangxi. Mo used his position to plant more than a dozen communist agents within Chiang's general headquarters, including Liu Yafo (劉亞佛),the communist who first introduced to the CCP, Xiang Yunian his communist handler, whom he hired as his secretary, and Lu Zhiying, the communist agent who was the acting head of the spy ring, which was directly under the command of Zhou Enlai.

After successfully besieging the adjacent regions of Ruijin, the capital of the Jiangxi Soviet, and occupying most of Jiangxi Soviet itself, Chiang was confident that he would finish off the communists in a final decisive strike. In late September 1934, Chiang distributed his top secret plan named "Iron Bucket Plan" to everyone in his general headquarter at Lushan (the alternative summer site to Nanchang), which detailed the final push to totally annihilate the communist forces. The plan was to build 30 blockade lines supported by 30 barbed wire fences, most of them electric, in the region 150 km around Ruijin, to starve the communists. In addition, more than 1,000 trucks were to be mobilized to form a rapid reaction force in order to prevent any communist breakout. Realizing the certain annihilation of the communists, Mo Xiong handed the document weighing several kilograms to his communist handler Xiang Yunian the same night he received it, risking not only his own life, but that of his entire family.

With the help of Liu Yafo and Lu Zhiying, the communist agents copied the important intelligence onto four dictionaries and Xiang Yunian was tasked to take the intelligence personally to the Jiangxi Soviet. The trip was hazardous, as the nationalist force would arrest and even execute anyone who attempted to cross the blockade. Xiang Yunian was forced to hide in the mountains for a while, and then used rocks to knock out 4 of his own teeth, resulting in swollen face. Disguised as a beggar, he tore off the covers of the four dictionaries and hid them at the bottom of his bag with rotten food, then successfully crossed several lines of the blockade and reached Ruijin on 7 October 1934. The valuable intelligence provided by Mo Xiong finally convinced the communists in Jiangxi Soviet to abandon its base and started a general retreat before Chiang could complete the building of his blockade lines with supporting barbed wire fences, and mobilizing trucks and troops, thus saving themselves from total annihilation.

Map of the CCP Soviets and the route of the Long March

The portion of the First Front Red Army engaged in the so-called mobile warfare was actually the bulk of the communist force making a general retreat, but this force was only much diminished from its peak of more than 140,000 men army. With most of its equipment lost, many of the surviving members of the Chinese Red Army were forced to arm themselves with ancient weaponry. According to the Statistical Chart of the Field Army Personnel, Weaponry, Ammunition, and Supply completed by the Chinese Red Army on 8 October 1934, two days before the Long March begun, the Communist Long March force consisted of:

• 5 combat corps totaling 72,313 combatants:
  • The 1st Corps (The largest of the five, with 19,880 combatants)
  • The 3rd Corps
  • The 5th Corps
  • The 8th Corps (the newest and smallest of the five, with 10,922 combatants)
  • The 9th Corps
• 2 columns
  • Central Committee 1st Column
  • Central Committee 2nd Column
• The 5 corps and the 2 columns had a total of 86,859 combatants.

The Statistical Chart of Field Army Personnel, Weaponry, Ammunition, and Supply (currently kept at the People's Liberation Army Archives) also provided the weaponry and provisions prepared for the Long March, and the weapons deployed included:

• Artillery: 39 total
  • Mortar: 38
  • Mountain gun: 1 (originally not included, but was added later on)
• Breech-loading firearms: 33,244 total (with 1,858,156 rounds of munition), and of these, a total of 29,016 were distributed to the 5 corps, including:
  • Rifles: 25,317
  • Heavy machine guns: 333
  • Light machine guns: 285
  • Submachine guns: 28
  • Handguns: 2,804
• Other weapons included:
  • Lance: 6,101
  • Chinese saber: 882
• Various weapons were also deployed but their numbers were not counted, and these included:
• Muzzle-loading rifled muskets and smoothbore muskets
  • Flintlock and snaphance guns
  • Matchlock and wheellock guns
  • Spears and rakes (though later during the Long March, spears were most useful as canes)
  • Axes and poles (though later during the Long March, poles were most useful as building material such as that for stretchers)
  • daggers and knives
• Provision
  • Winter clothing: 83,100 sets
  • Horses: 338
  • Herbal medicine: 35,700 kg
  • Salt: 17,413 kg
  • Money: 1.642 million dollars of the Soviet Republic.