 The first battles of the ten-year Chinese Civil War began with armed Communist insurrections in Changsha, Shantou, Nanchang and Guangzhou.During the Nanchang Uprising in August Communist troops under Zhu De were defeated but escaped from Kuomintang forces by withdrawing to the mountains of western Jiangxi.In September Mao Zedong led a small peasant army in what has come to be called the Autumn Harvest Uprising in Hunan province.