The Line of All-Out War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression

The CPC's policy of all-out war of resistance against Japanese aggressors, also known as the "People's War line."

After the outbreak of the nation-wide war of resistance against Japan in July 1937, the CPC put forward the line of all-out resistance, that is, the People's War line. Its basic connotation was that the Anti-Japanese War should be a complete national revolutionary war carried out by fully mobilizing the Chinese people. Such line represented the interests of the Chinese nation and the overwhelming majority of the Chinese people and was the only correct guiding line for the victory in the Anti-Japanese War.

The September 18 Incident of 1931 had intensified the contradiction between Japanese imperialism and the Chinese nation as the main contradiction, which stipulated and influenced the existence and development of other contradictions.

After the July 7th Incident in 1937, the Chinese troops deployed at the Marco Polo bridge near Beijing initiated the resistance against the attack of Japanese troops. Thus, China's Anti-Japanese War has entered a new period of nation-wide Anti-Japanese War. Since then, the main problem facing the whole Chinese people was not whether or not to fight against Japan, but how to carry out the war of resistance and how to win victory. Faced with this situation, on the second day of the July 7th Incident, the CPC Central Committee issued a telegram declaring “A war of resistance in which the whole nation takes part is the only way out.”

On July 23, Mao Zedong put forward "the Eight-Point Program of implementing national mobilization and uniting the people, the government and the army to fight against Japan in an all-round way" and in his article "The Period of the Anti-Japanese War—Policies, Measures and Perspectives for Resisting the Japanese Invasion", and advocated that the whole army and the people should be mobilized to fight against Japan in an all-round way, so as to drive Japanese aggressors out of China and achieve the future freedom and liberation of China.

From August 22 to 25, the CPC Central Committee held an enlarged meeting of the Political Bureau in Luochuan, Northern Shaanxi. The meeting analyzed the new situation after the beginning of the national Anti-Japanese War and the protracted character of the war and pointed out that the key to winning the war was to implement an all-out national anti-Japanese line. “Ten-Point National Salvation Programme of the CPC for Resisting Japan and Saving the Nation”, adopted at the meeting, concretely expounded the all-out war line of the CPC's national Anti-Japanese War.

The CPC's all-out Anti-Japanese War line was manifested in its general strategic policy, that is, to rely on the full mobilization of masses of people and carry out the general strategic policy of a protracted war. In order to carry out the all-out war line of national Anti-Japanese War and the general strategic policy of protracted war, the CPC gradually established the military strategic policy of the PLA according to the realistic situation that the number of the people's army was small and its weaponry and equipment were backward, the target of struggle was no more the KMT army, but the Japanese army and its puppet army, thus the KMT army had become an ally, different from the former situation.

At the Luochuan Conference, Mao Zedong proposed that the People's Army should carry out independent and autonomous guerrilla war in the mountainous areas, this meant first creating bases in the mountainous areas and then developing guerrilla warfare toward the plains, the guerrilla war included scattering in order to mobilize the masses and to concentrate in order to annihilate the enemy.

Among the three stages of the Anti-Japanese War, the first stage was the strategic defense stage, in which guerrilla warfare would be supplemented by mobile warfare. The second stage was the strategic stalemate stage, in which guerrilla warfare would rise to a dominant position, supplemented by mobile warfare. The third stage was the strategic counter-offensive stage, in which guerrilla warfare would again provide strategic support by supplementing mobile and positional warfare. Mao Zedong said: in the first and second stages, carry out “offensive fighting for campaigns and combat within a strategic defense, rapid fighting for campaigns and combat within a protracted strategy, and operations along the outer lines for campaigns and combats within strategic inner lines.” Guerrilla warfare in China's War of Resistance against Japan was by no means indispensable, and it had an important strategic position.

In a word, the essence of the all-out war line to resist Japan advocated by the CPC was that in order to win the final victory of China's Anti-Japanese War, an all-out People's War should be launched. This strategy was sharply in contrast with the partial resistance line against Japan aggressors practiced by the KMT ruling clique, which did not dare to mobilize the masses extensively, but only relied on the government, the army and the foreign support. The fundamental difference between the KMT and the CPC's Anti-Japanese War line was that the latter’s strategy was based on trusting and relying to the greatest extent on the masses, propagating, organizing and arming the masses of the people, especially relying closely on the peasants as the main force of the Chinese revolution, so as to lead the War of Resistance to victory.