New-Democratic Constitutional Government

Mao Zedong's political proposition in his speech at the Yan’an Association for the Promotion of Constitutional Government.

In September 1939, the National Political Assembly held the Fourth Session of the First Congress, which adopted the "Request the Government to Convene the National Assembly Regularly and Implement Constitutional Government". Later, the democratic parties set up the Association for the Promotion of Constitutional Government, and the KMT die-hards also declared that they were ready to implement constitutionalism. On October 2 and December 1 of the same year, the CPC Central Committee twice issued instructions to the whole Party on the constitutional movement.

Yan’an Association for the Promotion of Constitutional Government was formally established in Yan'an on February 20, 1940.

Mao Zedong delivered a speech entitled “New-Democratic Constitutional Government”. He said that under the oppression of imperialism and feudalism, China had become a colonial, semi-colonial and semi-feudal country, and the principal demands of the nation today were for independence and democracy. "Combining independence and democracy means a resistance to Japan on the basis of democracy, or democracy in the service of resistance against Japan. Without democracy, resistance will fail. Without democracy, resistance against Japan cannot be maintained.” Constitutional government was a democratic government. "What we need today is … the New-Democratic government, the constitutional government of New-Democracy. Not the old, outmoded, European-American type of so-called democracy which is bourgeois dictatorship, nor as yet the Soviet type of democracy which is the dictatorship of the proletariat.”

Mao Zedong pointed out that what the die-hards really wanted was a single-party fascist dictatorship, while the national bourgeoisie wanted a Western-style constitutional government, but if they did not come, the people would not welcome it. The kind of democratic government China needed was a New-Democracy which was suited to the conditions of present-day China, and the constitutional government to be promoted was a New-Democratic constitutional government.

New-Democratic constitutional government was the joint dictatorship of several revolutionary classes over the traitors and reactionaries. Such constitutionalism was the form which a constitutional government of the anti-Japanese united front should be. This constitutional movement was targeted against the KMT's autocratic "political training" policy, that is, the KMT's one-party dictatorship representing the interests of the big landlords and the big bourgeoisie, and it was also a struggle to enlighten the people's consciousness by promoting constitutionalism and to demand democracy and freedom from Chiang Kai-shek.