More than eighty years ago, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) carried out a sweeping purge that claimed the lives of at least 100,000 soldiers. Known as the “Anti-AB Campaign,” it reached its most shocking climax in the Futian Incident, when troops of the Red 20th Army openly shouted a forbidden slogan for the first time: “Down with Mao Zedong.”
The punishment was swift and merciless. Army commander Xiao Dapeng, political commissar Zeng Bingchun, regimental commissar Liu Di, and seven to eight hundred officers above platoon level were executed. The Red 20th Army ceased to exist.
Internal conflict was hardly new within the CCP, but what drove the Party—still young and fragile—to such extreme brutality? To understand the Futian Incident, the story must return to the political fault lines of the late 1920s.
Mao’s rise in the Jiangxi Soviet
In 1927, after the Kuomintang purged Communists from its ranks, the CCP launched a series of uprisings. That same year, Mao Zedong led the Hunan uprising and established the Party’s first rural revolutionary base at Jinggangshan in Jiangxi. His status within the CCP rose quickly.
The Central Committee appointed him General Political Commissar of the Red First Front Army and Chairman of the General Front Committee, effectively making Mao the highest authority in the Jiangxi Soviet. Orders from Shanghai had to pass through him before reaching the local leadership.
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But Mao’s elevated position did not translate into secure authority.
His habit of presenting his own preferences as Central Committee directives triggered resentment among local leaders and troops. And the differences between Mao—who came from Hunan—and Jiangxi’s native leadership in land policy and governance deepened the divide.
Consolidating power became his most urgent priority.
The invention of an enemy: The ‘AB Group’
Mao found his opportunity in a fabricated threat: the so-called “AB Group.”
The AB Group—short for “Anti-Bolshevik”—was a right-wing Kuomintang organization formed in early 1927 to target Communists. It dissolved only months later and was never revived.
Despite this, Mao used the accusation of “AB spies” hiding within the Red Army to eliminate those who opposed him. Beginning in 1930, the purge expanded, and thousands of innocent soldiers were killed.
The purge arrives in Futian
In November 1930, as the Nationalist government launched a military offensive against the Jiangxi Soviet, Mao took Red Army units into battle. Internal purges, however, continued behind the lines. Mao entrusted the work in Futian—the base of the Soviet government—to Li Shaojiu, Secretary-General of the Red First Front Army’s General Political Department and head of the Purge Committee.
Within days, members of the Red 20th Army and local Soviet officials were detained:
- around 120 arrests,
- 17 executions.
December 1930: A battalion revolts
On Dec. 12, the 1st Battalion of the 174th Regiment, led by commissar Liu Di, staged a revolt. The rebels seized Futian County, freed all detainees, and arrested local Soviet officials, including Li Shaojiu.
This was the Futian Incident—an armed uprising within the Red Army.
That night, the leaders of the revolt convened urgently and concluded that Li had acted under Mao’s orders. The following day, soldiers gathered in the central square of Futian, where the freed prisoners described their torture and displayed their wounds.
The square erupted with a cry unheard until then:
“Down with Mao Zedong! Support Zhu De, Peng Dehuai, and Huang Gonglue!”
Beijing intervenes; Mao is vindicated
Although the revolt’s leaders later admitted fault to the CCP Central Committee, Xiang Ying—the acting head of the Soviet Central Bureau—initially proposed resolving the matter through education and discussion.
But on Jan. 28, 1931, the Politburo issued a formal resolution.
It fully supported Mao’s position, declared the Futian uprising a “counterrevolutionary revolt led by the AB Group,” removed Xiang Ying from office, and transferred his responsibilities to Mao.
The killings that followed
What happened next was grimly predictable.
- Liu Di and seven to eight hundred officers of the Red 20th Army were executed.
- With ammunition scarce, many were killed by bludgeoning, hacking, or burial alive.
- The Red 20th Army’s designation was abolished, and surviving soldiers absorbed by other units.
The Futian Incident launched the Anti-AB purge into an even bloodier phase.
Over the next two to three years, the CCP executed:
- more than 70,000 soldiers labeled AB Group members,
- over 20,000 labeled members of the “Reorganization Faction,”
- over 6,200 labeled “Social Democrats.”
In total, 100,000 deaths. The purge secured Mao’s authority.
A memory that has never been cleared
Huang Kecheng, then director of the Political Department of the Red Fifth Army, later wrote in his memoir: “If old accounts were settled carefully, even one life of mine would not be enough to repay the debt.”
Subsequent historical research confirmed that no “AB Group” ever existed within the CCP. Yet the wrongful accusations have never been overturned.
Perhaps it was the shout of “Down with Mao Zedong” that ensured the memory of the Futian Incident would remain buried for more than eighty years.
And in the history of the CCP, it was far from the only injustice.
