In January 2017, we changed the term "eight-year war of resistance" in the Chinese people's anti-Japanese struggle to "fourteen years of resistance", that is, the history of the war of resistance should be calculated from the "918 Incident" in 1931 to the surrender of Japan in 1945, rather than the previous "July 7 Incident" in 1937 to 1945.
As early as April 1945, at the Seventh National Congress of the Communist Party of China, Mao Zedong made a famous report entitled "On coalition government". Although the report also has the words "eight years" and "eight years", it clearly states that the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, which Chinese the people, developed on a tortuous road. The war began in 1931.
Why was the War of Resistance fourteen years instead of eight years? Because in the northeast there is a northeast anti-Japanese coalition army. The Northeast Anti-Japanese Coalition Army, which traveled between the White Mountains and the Black Water, waged an indomitable struggle for fourteen years and opened up china's earliest and longest-lasting anti-Japanese battlefield.
After the September 18 Incident in 1931, the people of Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang provinces organized guerrilla groups to unite with the Northeast Anti-Japanese Volunteer Army to carry out guerrilla warfare in Changbai Mountain, Sanjiang Plain, Xiaoxing'anling and other places against the Japanese Kwantung Army. The Manchurian Provincial Party Committee sent cadres to the localities to pull up troops to open up armed struggle. Yang Jingyu went to the Rock Guerrillas in Southern Manchuria; Zhou Baozhong went to Wang Detaibu's Volunteer Army in Jidong; Li Zhaolin was transferred from Liaoyang by the Manchurian Provincial Party Committee to the Central County Committee of zhuhe to form a guerrilla group; Zhao Shangzhi went to ZhangJiazhou's Bayan guerrillas; Cui Yongjian went to Baoqing, Hulin, Raohe and other places in Jidong to develop party organizations and form guerrilla groups (later the 7th Army of the Anti-Japanese Coalition); and Feng Zhongyun went to Tangyuan as an inspector of the Manchurian Provincial Party Committee to form a guerrilla group.
The Northeast Volunteer Army was nominally a Chinese anti-Japanese armed force, but the Nationalist government was afraid that open support for the Northeast Volunteer Army would give Japan the excuse of war, so it refused to recognize its legitimate status and only gave verbal and moral support. These armed forces do not have unified leadership and organization, and each of them is quite independent; military expenditure depends on self-financing or donations from the people of the whole country; and they mainly use light weapons and even large knives and spears to strike at the enemy with guerrilla warfare as the main form of combat. The volunteer army held high the banners of "swearing to die to resist Japan and save the country" and "returning our rivers and mountains" and waged a heroic armed struggle against the Japanese invading army under extremely difficult conditions. After the establishment of Manchukuo on March 10, 1932, the Japanese Empire continued to "crusade" against the volunteer army in order to stabilize its colonial rule. The volunteer army took the initiative to attack, and the troops grew rapidly, reaching their peak in the summer and autumn of that year, with a total number of about 300,000. In 1932, the Japanese Kwantung Army, with the cooperation of the Manchukuo Army, mobilized hundreds of thousands of troops to launch a large-scale attack, and a large-scale offensive and defensive war broke out between the two sides, and the Northeast Rebel Army inflicted heavy losses on the Kwantung Army, but its own losses were huge, and some of them retreated into the Soviet Union and partly remained in the northeast. More than 40,000 volunteers who retreated into the Soviet Union were disarmed by the Soviet Union and escorted to Xinjiang according to the agreement reached between the Soviet Union and the Nationalist government, and more than 10,000 people froze to death on the way back due to the harsh environment. Those who remain continued to fight, insisting on armed struggle.
After the collapse of the large troops of the Northeast Volunteer Army, in January 1933, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China instructed the Manchurian Provincial Party Committee to strengthen the leadership of the Party, overcome the "Left" trend of closing the door, establish an anti-Japanese united front, expand guerrilla warfare, and form the Northeast People's Revolutionary Army on the basis of guerrilla units.
In February 1936, the Northeast People's Revolutionary Army was reorganized into the Northeast Anti-Japanese Coalition Army. By 1937, the Northeast Anti-Japanese Coalition Army had been organized into 11 armies, numbering 25,000 to 30,000 people. Among them, the 1st to 7th Armies are the armed forces directly led by the CPC organization, and the 8th, 9th, 10th and 11th Armies are non-party anti-Japanese armed forces of a united front nature.
In the protracted War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the Northeast Anti-Japanese Coalition was isolated behind enemy lines, had rudimentary weapons, lacked clothing and food, was starved by cold and starvation, and faced with the harshest conditions and the most brutal environment of struggle that challenged the limits of mankind, fought to the death against hundreds of thousands of enemies in the deep mountains, wild forests, ice and snow, and a large number of national heroes emerged, such as Yang Jingyu, Zhao Shangzhi, and Zhao Yiman. After the July 7 Incident, the Northeast Anti-Japanese Coalition Army actively cooperated with the military and civilians in Guannei in the War of Resistance. However, due to the lack of supplies, the Japanese army gathered to encircle and suppress and adopted the good citizen certificate system and the relocation of the people to implement isolation, and the troops suffered great losses. By 1940, the scope and personnel of the Anti-Japanese Coalition had been greatly reduced, and the first unit of the Anti-Japanese Coalition had entered the Far East and reorganized its troops into the Independent 88th Infantry Brigade of the Soviet Far Eastern Front, while the troops who remained in the country were scattered and lurking, collecting intelligence, building arms, and publicizing anti-Japanese work.
During the fourteen-year War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression in the White Mountains and Black Waters, the Northeast Anti-Japanese Coalition Army annihilated more than 170,000 Japanese troops and contained 760,000 Japanese troops, making indelible contributions to the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japan.
Therefore, changing the historical concept of "eight-year War of Resistance" to "Fourteen-Year War of Resistance" will not only help restore the historical truth, but also enable those heroes of the War of Resistance to receive due respect and recognition, and at the same time help the people of the world to remember the lessons of history and consolidate the current hard-won peace situation.