Northeast China and the Origins of the Anti-Japanese United Front

The anti-Japanese united front was proclaimed to the world at the Seventh World Congress of the Comintem in 1935. However, the united front did not originate at the Comintem but was developed gradually in Northeast China (Manchuria). Important components such as an anti-Japanese united army, joint headquarters with nonCommunist forces, and a government of national defence (guofang zhengfu) were first put forward in the Northeast and were based on local experience. The Comintern made Northeast China an example of the united front in action both to reinforce its advocacy of an anti-Japanese united front for the whole of China and to promote the popular front policy of the Seventh World Congress. In doing so it went over the heads of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The Declaration of 1 August 1935 announcing the united front committed the Red Army to becoming part of an anti-Japanese united army; however, the Central Committee knew nothing beforehand of this change of policy. This article traces the development of the policy in Northeast China. Between 1931, when the Japanese invasion began, and 1935, social policies such as agrarian revolution and sovietisation were abandoned in the Northeast while continuing elsewhere. With the backing of the Comintern, the Chinese Delegation to the Comintern made policy and organisational changes to support the development of a broadly based resistance movement, which some Communists were promoting in defiance of official Party policy. As far as is known, there is no other instance of such intervention in CCP history.