During 1936 Chiang was under pressure to resist the Japanese advances from Nationalist troops, particularly those in the north east who were most threatened. These troops had engaged the Japanese forces on a number of occasions, and were vigorously opposed to Chiang’s continuous retreat and his refusal to fight. By the end of 1936 a de facto truce existed between local generals and the Red Army to the extent that the Red Army was given uniforms and weapons and the CCP allowed access via Yenan to Communist groups in Nationalist China.[24] On 12 December 1936, Chiang flew to Sian (Xi’an, capital of Shensi province) to personally remonstrate with General Chang Hsueh-liang the local commander, and induce him to begin an offensive against the Soviet area. In an astounding turn of events, the younger officers seized Chiang and refused to release him unless he agreed to a bold anti-Japanese programme. The rank and file soldiers threatened a ‘people’s trial’ and there is no doubt that initially Mao also supported this proposal.
Moscow intervened strongly; on 14 December a Pravda editorial, and on 15 December an article in Investia, condemned the action, calling the rebellious generals Japanese puppets. Within days, Dimitrov dispatched a telegram to the CCP calling for it to effect Chiang’s release. Mao is said to have stamped his feet in rage at this proposal but it was confirmation that he was not the undisputed leader of the CCP when Po Ku and Zhou Enlai immediately accepted the ECCI’s directive, and Zhou Enlai stepped in to meet with Chiang, to save his life, reinstate him as leader of the KMT, and send him back as national leader to Nanjing. With his life on the line, Chiang agreed to Zhou’s proposals which were so mild they were not so difficult to swallow.[25]
One reason for the CCP’s sensitivity to Stalin’s wishes was the material aid being received from Moscow. In 1936 the Comintern subsidy to the CCP was about US$2,000,000 (about half the annual budget of the Yenan Soviet).[26,27] This level of support would continue until the defeat of Japan in 1945.
It was at this time that the HQ of the Red Army moved into the walled town of Yenan which contained some hundreds of decent enough houses, some even with small gardens. Agnes Smedley who was in Sian at the time and reached Yenan shortly after the take-over, describes how the Red Army entered Yenan without a fight, extended the area controlled by the Soviet by many thousands of square kilometres and about one million people without firing a shot because the local troops were fed up with offering no resistance to the Japanese.[28] By the end of 1938, Yenan was reduced largely to rubble by Japanese bombing raids and the population moved to the surrounding hills where they again lived in caves.
A short time after his return to Nanjing, Chiang called a meeting of the CEC of the KMT to consider the CCP proposals for a Popular Front. During February 1937, Zhou negotiated with the KMT. The CEC insisted that it remained determined to uproot Chinese Communism but would accept the CCP proposal subject to four conditions: (1) Suspension of the class struggle, (2) Cessation of all Communist propaganda, (3) Dissolution of the Soviet Republic and the appointment of KMT officials to take charge of the local areas, and (4) Abolition of the Red Army and its incorporation into the Government armies under the direct control of the Military Affairs Commission – but it must not number more than 3,000 and officers above division commander must go abroad.[29]
The CCP replied on 15 March 1937, and declared that it had already voluntarily met the first two conditions; confiscation of the land of the landlords had ceased and the Communist Party would no longer promote class struggle. To show goodwill a Communist youth congress held in Yenan in April elected Chiang Kai-shek to its presidium alongside Mao Zedong. These actions by the CCP helped save Chiang who was facing an officer corps on the verge of revolt.
In May 1937, the CCP called a National Conference to assess its work, address the confusion within its ranks, approve the line proposed by the ECCI and discuss its practical implementation. The conference was a rubber stamp and, just as in the USSR, attendees were appointed. In Yenan no elections were ever held for delegates to CCP conferences.[30]
Lo Fu described as “Secretary of the CC of the CCP” was interviewed by Nym Wales (wife of Edgar Snow) on 14 July 1937.[31] Lo gave a very positive picture of the block within, maintaining it had been “a united front against imperialism and feudal forces” and that “in July 1927 the CCP and the KMT finally split.” After a decade the Stalinists still refused to admit that the Chinese bourgeoisie had massacred peasants, workers and Communists in a bloody counter-revolution. Lo dated the Soviet programme of the CCP as continuing up to the Sian incident after which “it continued only pending completion of negotiations with the KMT” and Lo referred to Yenan as the “ex-Soviet capital”. Lo maintained, “To continue with the Soviet slogan would be to demand the overthrow of the KMT, which would mean civil war and make it impossible to realise the anti-Japanese struggle.”
On 15 July 1937, the CC of the CCP announced the basis of its co-operation with the KMT.[32]
- “The CCP CC finds it necessary to proclaim its sincere devotion to the cause of national liberation. Therefore, it once again solemnly declares to the whole nation:
- that since Dr Sun Yat-sen’s Three Principles of the People are what China needs today, our party is ready to fight for their complete realization;
- that we shall give up our policy of encouraging insurrection to overthrow the KMT regime, call off the sovietization movement, and discontinue the policy of forcible confiscation of the land of the landlords;
- that we shall abolish the present soviet governments and call for the practice of democracy in the hope that state power will be unified throughout the country; and
- that the Red Army will give up its present name and designation, that it will be reorganized as part of the National Revolutionary Army and placed under the Military Council of the national government, and that it will be ready for orders to march to the anti-Japanese front and do its duty.”
From here on, Yenan surrendered the designation of Soviet becoming a special administrative region, the Shensi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region, of the Chinese Republic, and renounced all revolutionary claims. However, the only noticeable change (apart from the name changes and disappearance of the red stars from buildings) was the discontinuation of circulation of the CCP’s own currency; post offices, schools and all local services remained very strictly under local control.
However, against KMT demands, the CCP insisted that the old Soviet area would not be divided and there would not be new local government elections. The CCP did agree that the Red Army would be nominally integrated into the NRA as the 8th Route Army (the New 4th Army was added in October 1937), re-organised into three divisions and placed under nominal KMT control. However, against KMT demands, the CCP insisted its command personnel would not change and each division would number 15,000.
Discussions failed to resolve the differences. What decided the matter for Chiang was that the Japanese army marched into the Beijing-Tienjin area in July 1937 and Japanese gunships shelled Shanghai in August. Chiang had no choice but to accept the status quo vis a vis the CCP and no doubt, the promise of arms from the Soviet Union sweetened the pill.
The Japanese were determined to take all of north China and every important port on the coast. After crawling for six years before the Japanese, the KMT was finally compelled to offer resistance because Japanese aggression now threatened to extinguish the Chinese bourgeoisie altogether. Chiang could retreat no further without widespread revolt amongst his own troops. Within a year the invading Japanese armies held all the main centres of the north, almost all the principal seaports, and all but two of the principal railways. “Patriotism throughout history has been inseparably bound up with power and property. In the face of danger the ruling classes (the so-called ‘national’ bourgeoisie) have never stopped short of dismembering their own country so long as they could preserve their own power over part of it,”[33] but that was no longer an option in China.
As part of Stalin’s Popular Front strategy, Communist Parties worldwide pressurised their governments to form an alliance with Russia against Germany and/or Japan, in return for which the CP would attempt to suspend the class struggle. The CCP occupied a key place in these machinations as a pawn of Russian diplomacy with the goal of preventing the KMT Government from joining Japan in an anti-Soviet pact. The Red Army and the Communist Party insisted that they no longer struggled for either an agrarian or proletarian revolution, but for bourgeois democracy.
-
van Slyke, L. The United Front in China, Jnl. of Contemporary History, 1970, 5(3)119-135.
-
Braun, O. A Communist Agent in China 1932-1939, Hurst & Co. Ltd., 1982, p187.
-
Pantsov, A. How Stalin Helped Mao Zedong … Issues & Studies, 2005, 41(3)181-207.
-
Snow, E. Red Star Over China, Gollanz, 1968, p231.
-
Smedley, A. Battle Hymn of China, Da Capo Press, 1975.
-
Li Fu-jen, End of the Chinese Soviets, New International, Jan 1938 pp16-20, MIA.
-
Braun, Op. cit. p195-197.
-
Wales, N. Why the Chinese Communists Support the United Front: An Interview with Lo Fu, Pacific Affairs, 1938, 11(3)311-322.
-
Saich, T. The Rise to Power of the CCP, Sharp, 1994, p771-3.
-
Trotsky, L. Revolution and War in China Jan 1938 w.m.com.