The Communist Party of China and the Wartime Coalition Against Japan

Third September 2025 marks the 80th anniversary of the victory of the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War. The Communist Party of China’s role in building a wartime coalition against Japan in 1937 was a masterclass in strategic adaptation that needs to be studied today. Faced with existential threats from both the bourgeois nationalists and Japanese imperialism, the Communists leveraged ideology, diplomacy, and geopolitical pressure to forge an alliance that would reshape China’s future.

- BY VINOD MOONESINGHE

By the mid-1930s, nearly a century of imperialist depredations and civil war had left China a fractured nation. The Nationalist Party, the Kuomintang (KMT), led by Chiang Kai-shek, held nominal control over the central government. Its principal opponent, the Communist Party of China (CPC), battered by years of civil war and encirclement campaigns, had retreated to the remote northwest after the Long March.

Meanwhile, Japan intensified its imperial ambitions. Tokyo signalled its intention to dominate China by invading Manchuria in 1931 and establishing the puppet state of Manchukuo. Unfortunately, Chiang remained focused on internal consolidation, prioritising “internal pacification before external resistance.”

This policy of targeting Communists while avoiding confrontation with Japan became increasingly unpopular.

Intellectuals and students began calling for a united front against Japanese aggression. The CPC, recognising both the moral imperative and strategic opportunity, began advocating for a national coalition to resist Japan.

The CPC’s transformation from a beleaguered revolutionary force to a central player in national resistance was neither accidental nor purely ideological. It was a calculated shift rooted in survival and long-term vision.

The CPC recognised Japanese imperialism as a colonial threat to all Chinese people, not just Communists. Moscow, through the Communist International, urged the CPC to prioritise antifascist unity. This external influence reinforced the CPC’s domestic pivot toward coalition-building. As early as 1935, the CPC began calling for a “national united front” against Japan. This was not merely a slogan — it was a strategic reorientation that sought alliances with intellectuals, factions within the KMT, and even warlords. This broadened their appeal beyond class struggle to national salvation.