United Front

United Front (China) The second coalition between the Guomindang (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as well as other nationalist groups, 1937–45. After an earlier period of cooperation had broken down in 1927, Chiang Kai-shek had formed the National Government, one of whose most important goals had been the destruction of the Communists. Now, following the Xi'an Incident the two foes joined forces in order to focus on the common foreign enemy, the Japanese. The CCP pledged to cooperate fully in the Sino-Japanese War, and sent delegates led by Mao Zedong to a newly formed People's Political Council. However, the alliance was extremely fragile, as both sides continued to mistrust each other deeply, for good reasons. Mao summed up the Communist goal during the United Front as: ‘70 per cent expansion, 20 per cent dealing with the Guomindang, and 10 per cent resisting Japan’. Indeed, most of the open warfare was borne by the KMT's National Revolutionary Army, while Mao's policy of internal reform and expansion of Communist control proved extremely successful. The United Front effectively broke down in 1943, when communication between the two partners all but stopped. It ended officially with the Japanese surrender in World War II in 1945. By this time, the Communists had strengthened sufficiently to renew the fight with their former enemies in the Chinese Civil War, this time successfully.

Yan'an