The Imprints of the CCP's 15 Year Struggle to Power

One of the lessons was that you have to keep purging. They were purging themselves at Mao's behest throughout the revolution, starting in earnest in 1931 with the so called futien incident. The path was set for him to displace his enemies through further purges that just continued and continued until 1944. It paused for a bit when Mao is displaced just before the long march. But of course during the long march at the Zuni conference in late 1934 things changed because the consensus was that the military strategy up to that point had failed are being slaughtered.