On July 7, 1937, the Japanese North China Army provoked the Marco Polo Bridge Incident.  Facing an expansion of Japan’s aggressive war against China, CCP leaders no longer repeated as they had in the past that Japanese aggression against China was preparation for an attack against the Soviet Union.  They stated that the anti-Soviet atmosphere whipped up prior to the Japanese attack against the Beiping-Tianjin area and the war provocations against the Soviet Union “were merely attempts to curry the favor of the imperialist countries by pretending to be preparing for war against the USSR.[1]  Japan’s objective was to attempt to swallow up China.  Therefore, the party’s current main task was to prevent Japan from rapidly subjugating the entire country.

After the Japanese attack on the Beiping-Tianjin area, the Central Committee noted that a new high tide of the national salvation movement had begun and that the Nationalist government “was manifesting an unprecedented toughness.”  Nevertheless, GMD-CCP cooperation had not yet been achieved, and an anti-Japanese domestic national united front not yet been formed.  Also, the attitudes of the U.S., Britain, and France were not yet clear.  Therefore, Chinese politics might still develop in one of two directions.  Either the entire country would explode in anti-Japanese resistance or the Guomindang would compromise with Japan under the influence of various domestic and international factors.[2]  In order to bring about the first of these outcomes, the Central Committee reemphasized the main task.  First was to seek close cooperation between the Nationalists and the Communists to establish a firm anti-Japanese united front.  Second was to “promptly implement an activist anti-Japanese foreign policy” by seeking to form an anti-Japanese alliance with the U.S., Britain, France, and the Soviet Union.[3] 

In proposing to implement an activist, anti-Japanese foreign policy and form an anti-Japanese alliance with these countries, the Central Committee was actually pursuing two objectives.  First, the obvious objective of the attempt to ally with the Great Powers was to create more favorable international conditions for China’s War of Resistance and secure more support and assistance.  The second objective was to influence and encourage the Great Powers to adopt more clear-cut and active policies toward China’s War of Resistance.  At a deeper level, the Central Committee’s foreign policy proposals and the party’s anti-Japanese national united front policy were closely linked by an inner logic.  From the start of GMD-CCP cooperation, the united front was the core of the CCP’s political tactics and policies.  Similarly, the CCP’s foreign policy and the relations between the Chinese Communists and international political forces necessarily revolved around the main themes of initiating and developing the united front.  In reality, during China’s descent to the status of a semi-feudal and semi-colonial country, particularly since the failure of the 1911 revolution, China had virtually disintegrated.  Chinese parties and political forces had formed close and complex relations with large and powerful countries in both East and West.  Directly or indirectly, these countries could utilize these relations to influence the political situation inside China.  Until China established a genuinely independent and unified government, the Powers would inevitably continue to control China’s political situation by taking advantage of political maneuvering among various Chinese political forces.  GMD-CCP cooperation and the formation of an anti-Japanese national united front in China were hardly the same thing as the creation of a unified political situation in China nor did it mean that the basic contradictions between the Nationalists and the Communists had been resolved. 

The sudden outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War induced the Nationalists and Communists to join hands in a common defense against foreign aggression.  But protracted negotiations failed to eliminate the existing differences between them.  The result was that the two parties, each with its own government and army, initiated cooperation but without a common program or a unified organizational form.  This alone is enough to explain the profound difference between the two sides.  The Communists believed that only by consolidating and developing the anti-Japanese national united front would it be possible to sustain long-term resistance, preserve and develop the party’s strength, and eventually combine victory in the anti-Japanese national liberation war with the victory of the Chinese revolution.  In reality, the Guomindang never stopped scheming to attack, eliminate, and even to exterminate the CCP. 

The Great Powers of East and West continued to exert enormous influence on China’s domestic political situation, but within the united front GMD-CCP relations were also extremely complicated.  Therefore, in making judgments about international political forces, the Communists were bound to weigh their attitude toward contradictions in the united front as well as GMD-CCP relations.  Once GMD-CCP cooperation had begun, one of the key objectives of Communist foreign policy was to take advantage of international forces to stimulate active Nationalist resistance against Japan and to restrain the Guomindang’s anti-communist policies that aimed at isolating the CCP.

At the beginning of the anti-Japanese War, the Central Committee did not believe that the Great Powers would actively assist China.  It thought that Britain did not support China’s all-out war against Japanese aggression, and that the United States had adopted a wait-and-see attitude.  Meanwhile, the Soviet Union had focused its attention on its defensive position in the Far East.[4]  Moreover, the ambivalent attitude of the Great Powers with respect to helping China’s resistance to Japanese aggression could have a negative impact on China’s domestic political situation.   The course of events justified the CCP’s anxieties.  By November, the policies of the Great Powers had become clarified.  The western countries were still trying to implement the suggestions of the nine-power Brussels Conference.  They refused to give China substantive assistance, and limited themselves to making some useless statements.  Among the Great Powers only the Soviet Union adopted a much more helpful attitude.  The Soviet Union quickly signed a mutual non-aggression treaty with China.  In addition, the Soviet Union provided China with financial and military assistance.  It also sent military advisers to China.  However, the Soviet Union could not pursue a China policy that ventured too far from the bounds of its concept of collective security.  The unwillingness of other countries to match Soviet assistance to China was inevitably reflected in limitations Moscow placed on its own aid to China.  During the Brussels Conference in November, the U.S. and Britain expressed their opposition to the idea of punishing Japan.  The Soviet Union, which had been invited to participate in the conference, said that the USSR would refuse to take any measures that might lead to direct involvement in the war.  The Soviet Union provided China with an explanation of this decision.

Just then new developments occurred in China’s political situation.  In November 1937, first Shanghai and then Taiyuan fell to the Japanese.   The Chinese army’s formal, large-scale resistance in North China basically ended, and resistance in central China also began to ebb.  The Chinese army and people had gone through three months of bloody battles, but there were no encouraging developments in Far Eastern international relations.