Protracted people's war

Protracted people's war, also known simply as people's war, is a military theory which first emerged in the course of the Chinese revolution led by Mao Zedong. The strategy which Mao developed for this revolution was very distinctive, and a great departure from the basic strategy used in the Russian Revolution, and other earlier proletarian-led revolutions. Instead of a long period of preparation and then more or less simultaneous insurrection by the working class in the major cities, Mao’s people’s war in China involved mobilizing the peasantry in the countryside using the method of the mass line, building up first small-scale guerrilla warfare arising from the masses and strongly supported by them, establishing and then expanding liberated areas, gradually developing guerrilla warfare into ever larger-scale mobile warfare, then positional warfare and the countryside surrounding the cities, and then finally capturing the cities primarily by attack from the outside. This basic strategy worked with great success in China and also in some other countries such as Vietnam.

In the modern day, Marxist–Leninist-Maoists debate the extent to which the people's war can be utilized in modern circumstances. Followers of the Communist Party of Peru generally argue that people's war represents a universal military doctrine, even in industrial countries. In the modern times, there are multiple ongoing people's wars in countries such as India and the Philippines.

See also

• Chinese Revolution
• Peruvian Revolution