The Chinese communist party was founded in 1921 by informal study groups in Shanghai. The founders were a group of Chinese intellectuals who had been influenced by the Marxism and anarchism ideas of the west. The founders’ goals were to reform and strengthen China in to a modernized republican country. At the time of its foundation, china was a divided and backward country, ruled by a number of local warlords, who imposed unequal treaties that gave foreign powers special economic and political privileges over the Chinese territory. The party emerged as a revolutionary movement led by two professors, Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao who were inspired by the aftermath of the May fourth movement of 1919. The party looked up to the USSR as a model and believed that a Marxist-Leninist ideology would transform China. In its initial years, the party consisted of intellectuals and urban workers many of whom had been educated and trained overseas in Japan, France and USSR and therefore shared the communist ideology. With guidance and funding from the Soviet Union and the Comintern, the party began challenging the traditional Confucian Chinese ideas and advocated for its replacement with Marxism. The rise of the CCP from a soviet implanted party into a nationalist political party in the period from 1921-1949 was aided by four major events: the first united front (1922-1927), the Chinese soviet republic (1928-1937), second united front (1938-1945) and the civil revolution (1946-1949). During the First United Front, the CCP strategized to infiltrate the then leading powerful revolutionary party, the Chinese Nationalist Party, from within. CCP contribution in the united front was felt significantly during the Northern Expedition of 1926-1928 when the CCP not only provided troops but also marshaled boycotts and strikes to sabotage the operations of the warlords. In the aftermath of the United Fronts victory against the warlords, the CCP emerged as a party of vital significance with the approval of many. Soon after the defeat of the warlords, the relations between CCP and the GMP soured leading to the collapse of the united front. The 1927 split from the United Front played a key role in reshaping the CCP revolutionary from a Marxist- Leninist ideological strategy to a war lord strategy. Hostility from the GDP caused the CCP to shift its bases from the urban areas to the rural communities. In the period between 1928 and 1937, the CCP regrouped, shifting its base from Shanghai to rural Jiangxi. With support from the Soviet Union and the Comintern, it was able to organize its own military force, consisting majority of Chinese workers and Peasants, to repel the persecution by the nationalist GMP government and establish armed separatist regimes in the countryside, a development that would endure throughout the party’s struggle to power. At the height of the civil war another key event in the evolution of the CCP happened. Under intense assault from the central government and facing the threat of complete decimation, the CCP was forced to retreat from its bases. The military retreat, often referred to as the Long March, lasted from October 1934 to October 1935, saw the CCP armies shift their bases northwards from Jiangxi to Shaanxi province. At the same time, the party broke free of the Soviet and Comintern leadership, which they blamed for their defeat; and the local Chinese communists, Mao Zedong and Zhu De rose to power (Schwartz, 1958). The re-localization of the CCP in the north gave the party time to recuperate and re-strategize. Facing marginalization from the mainstream Chinese politics, the party was forced to forge relationships with the local communities of the North. The party adopted a policy of land