The Second Cooperation between KMT and CPC

The second cooperation was established between the Communist Party of China and the KMT during the Anti-Japanese War. After the September 18 Incident in 1931 (Mukden Incident), the Sino-Japanese national conflict gradually rose to the main position. The Communist Party of China took the lead in raising the banner of armed resistance to Japan.

The Communist Party directly led and established anti-Japanese guerrillas one after another and gradually became the main anti-Japanese armed force in Northeast China. After the North China Incident, the national crisis deepened sharply. To mobilize the whole nation against Japan, the Communist Party of China delegation to the Communist International was drafted in August 1935. The “Message of the Central Government of the Chinese Soviet Union and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China to all Compatriots on Resistance against Japanese and National Salvation”, or the “August 1 Declaration”.

Calling on all strata, parties, groups, and armies in the country to unite and fight for the sacred cause of anti-Japanese resistance. At the meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, the Wayaobu Conference, in December of the same year, the CPC formally put forward the new policy of the Anti-Japanese National United Front. After the Xi'an Incident and the Third Plenary Meeting of the Fifth Central Committee of the KMT, the cooperation of the Communist Party against Japan had become an irreversible trend of the era.

In 1937, the Lugou Bridge Incident (Marco Polo Bridge Incident) broke out and Japan launched a full-scale war of aggression against China. In response to the promotion of the Communist Party of China and the critical situation of the national war of resistance, the two parties reached an agreement to reorganize the main forces of the Red Army as the Eighth Route Army and the southern guerrilla forces as the New Fourth Army in August.

On September 22, the Central News Agency of the KMT published the “Declaration of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China for the Announcement of the Nationalist-Communist Cooperation”; on the 23rd, Chiang Kai-shek issued a statement recognizing the legal status of the Communist Party, and thus the Anti-Japanese National United Front was formally formed and the Second KMT-Communist Cooperation began.

During the Second KMT-Communist Cooperation, the CPC always adhered to the strategy of both unity and struggle, resolutely struggling against the anti-communist nature of the KMT while maintaining, consolidating, and expanding the Anti-Japanese National United Front. CPC actively developed progressive forces, winning over intermediate elements and isolating recalcitrant elements, and becoming the mainstay of the Anti-Japanese War. The Second KMT-Communist Cooperation laid the foundation of the Anti-Japanese National United Front, fostered unprecedented national unity, greatly promoted the national war of resistance, and created favorable conditions for the victory of the Anti-Japanese War.