[citation needed] In October 1934, at the beginning of the Long March, Xiang stayed behind to fight a rearguard action that would allow the marchers to get out of the ring of surrounding Nationalist forces.

The marchers, with Mao Zedong as their leader, went on to Yan'an, while Xiang remained in the Jiangxi region, coordinating guerrilla operations to harass Nationalist forces.

In 1952, Liu was identified by Huang Yifan, deputy director of the Xinyu County Public Security Bureau and former guard in the New Fourth Army.

[citation needed] The incident was a result of either mistrust or disobedience, or both, between the two parties that would lead to the resumption of full-scale civil war once the Japanese began a full retreat out of China's interior in the summer of 1945, prior to their surrender later that year.

Mao's supporters argued that Xiang's misunderstanding of the potential threats posed by the Nationalists, along with his own ambitions, led to his demise.