In May 1928, he launched the Weihua Uprising (in modern Weinan) with several thousand men and established the National People's Army of the Northwest.

[4] In the spring of 1934 and fall of 1935, he defeated two large suppression campaigns by Nationalist forces and managed to merge the two base areas, controlling 22 counties.

[4] But shortly thereafter, Liu Zhidan fell victim to a vicious purge at the hands of commissars sent from Shanghai, then headquarters of the Communists.

He was about to be executed when Mao Zedong and the Long Marchers arrived in the Northwest, halted the rectification campaign and had Liu and his comrades released.

[4] Liu Zhidan was hailed as martyr at the time of his death and remembered as such until 1962 when a biographical novel about his life was criticized by Kang Sheng as an anti-party conspiracy because one of the characters in the novel alluded to purged former leader Gao Gang.