The politics of the Anti-Japanese United Front (1935-45) : Ch'en Shao-yü versus Mao Tse-tung
Date
1979
Authors
Shum, Kui-Kwong
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Abstract
In late 1934, the Chinese Communists were forced to evacuate
the Kiangsi Soviet by the Nationalists' Fifth Encirclement Campaign. The
defeat, as the Chinese Communists perceived, was not due to the failure
of the land revolution in capturing the support of the peasant masses, but
to their isolation from the bourgeois strata in the nation at large.
Consequently, in the summer of 1935 Ch'en Shao-yli put forward
the anti-imperialist united front tactics at the Seventh Comintern Congress,
shifting the relative emphasis of the Party from the land revolution to
the anti-imperialist struggle. The new tactics called for a relaxation of
the struggle against rich peasants, small landlords and the national
bourgeoisie, so as to facilitate the united front "from above" with other
political groups and armies against Japan and Chiang Kai-shek. Ch'en's
proposals were adopted by the CCP's Wayaopao Conference of December 1935.
From 1936 onwards, both the Comintern and the CCP gradually
realized the desirability of bringing Chiang Kai-shek into the alliance,
and repeated overtures were made to Chiang. The CCP's peace efforts,
however, obtained no results until the Sian Incident of December 1936.
In the ensuing negotiation with the KMT, the CCP agreed to cease confiscating
the landlords' land as a condition for the formation of the
Anti-Japanese United Front. Following the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in July 1937,
Conflicts developed between Ch'en Shao-yü and Mao over the proper strategies
for the expansion of the Party. Ch'en's approach was based on Lenin's
formula of the united front, which stressed the utilization of legal and
democratic channels for the expansion of the Party's influence amongst the
masses. Mao's strategy was premised on the construction of rural guerrilla
bases under the protection of the united front. For a brief period, Ch'en's
strategy gained notable successes but the KMT reacted by clamping down the
CCP's mass organizations in Wuhan. At the Sixth Plenum of October 1938,
Mao privately discredited Ch'en's approach as inappropriate for China. With the rapid deterioration in KMT-CCP relations and the
changes in the international situation which demanded the CCP to rely
exclusively on its own effort to sustain the Resistance, Mao’s rural
strategy gained ascendancy in the Party. Nevertheless, Mao retained
the united front policy for the purposes of forestalling full-scale
Nationalist attack on the CCP and of securing the cooperation of the
landlord-capitalist elites, so as to stabilize the Communist base areas
and isolate the KMT. This dualistic approach remained the CCP’s policy
even after the New Fourth Army Incident of 1941, and laid the foundation
of the CCP’s ultimate victory which was based on the support of
the lower masses as well as the national and petty bourgeoisie.
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