office to Chiang. Cai Yuanpei took a more combative approach, founding the China League for Civil Rights which openly criticized Chiang's government for abuse of power and political repression, though he soon retired from public view after the league's co-founder was murdered in front of the organization's offices in Shanghai. Insurgent communism and the rise of Maoism Following the suppression of the anarchist movement and the capitulation of the left-wing nationalists in the Kuomintang, the Chinese Communist Party became the de facto leader of the left-wing opposition to the Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek. The Communists themselves had been driven underground and forced to flee to the countryside by nationalist persecution, leading them to begin building a base among the rural peasantry. To fight back against the Nationalists, the Communists established the Chinese Red Army, launching their first uprising against the government in Nanchang and beginning the Chinese Civil War. Initially successful, the Red Army was forced to retreat by a nationalist counter-offensive, withdrawing to the mountains of south-western Jiangxi. Another uprising in Changsha, but this was defeated and the survivors retreated to the Jinggang Mountains, where Mao Zedong established a base, uniting five villages into a self-governing territory and implementing a policy of confiscating lands from rich landowners. It was here that Mao began to advocate for a peasant-based revolution, contrary to the Communist Party's favor towards urban cadres, in order to overthrow the "four systems of authority" (state, clan, religion and patriarchy). However, after a number of KMT attacks against their base, Mao's forces were eventually forced to evacuate south. Despite coming into conflict with the new leadership of the CCP for his agrarianist position, initiating a purge of dissenters and repressing a rebellion against him, Mao was able to establish the Chinese Soviet Republic with the Jiangxi–Fujian Soviet as his revolutionary base area and was able to defeat both the first and second encirclement campaigns against it through the use of guerrilla tactics. The KMT was eventually forced to retreat in order to deal with Japanese incursions into China, which allowed the Soviet Republic to expand its influence, with Mao initiating a wide-ranging program of land reform, education and increased gender equality. However, the KMT eventually returned to Jiangxi, viewing the Communists as a greater threat than the Japanese, and initiated a fifth encirclement campaign, bringing about the dissolution of the Jiangxi Soviet and forcing the Red