On Protracted War is a speech delivered by Mao Zedong at the Yan'an Anti-Japanese War Research Conference from May 26 to June 3, 1938, and is a military and political work on the policy of China's War of Resistance Against Japan, first published in July 1938.
On the basis of summing up the early experience of the War of Resistance Against Japan, Mao Zedong systematically expounded China's strategy of carrying out protracted war to win victory against Japan in view of the "theory of China's inevitable death" and the "theory of China's quick victory" of some people in the Chinese Kuomintang and the tendency of some people in the Communist Party of China to despise guerrilla warfare.
On protracted warfare
"On Protracted War" scientifically expounded the law of development of the War of Resistance, expounded the road for winning victory in the War of Resistance, criticized all kinds of erroneous understandings of the War of Resistance, ideologically armed the whole Party, the whole army, and the masses of the people, strengthened the confidence of the Chinese people in winning the victory of the War of Resistance, and was the theoretical program guiding the nationwide War of Resistance.
Has the Japanese army ever read such an open theory? The answer is that I have not only read it, but even studied it in depth, and at one point plotted against the Japanese personnel.
The Japanese invasion of China
The intelligence agencies of the Japanese army have been very systematically collecting a series of intelligence related to the Chinese War of Resistance, and as soon as "On Protracted War" was published, it immediately attracted great attention from the Japanese army. It has long been a must-read for desks in various headquarters and intelligence departments of the Japanese army. For example, Saito Kunio, an invading Japanese soldier, mentioned in his memoirs The Story of the Army Infantry Ramblings that he read On Protracted War and other communist works.
The Japanese army still attaches great importance to "On Protracted War", but the fanatical militants are still the majority, they do not think they will lose, and they have formulated targeted coping strategies. That is, "using war to feed the war" and "using China to control China." For "China's official organs, land, buildings, etc., all of which are accepted by our side and used." Every time the Japanese occupied a place, they seized and froze all assets related to the Chinese government as enemy property, and confiscated them as trophies of war.
Chairman Mao Publishes "On Protracted War" in Yan'an
The Japanese army's policy of using war to feed the war plundered a large amount of materials from China, but in the end it did not save the Japanese aggressors, and the fundamental reason was that under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, the people of the Chinese carried out an extremely arduous anti-Japanese struggle behind enemy lines with "On Protracted War" as the guiding ideology.
Extensive opening up of anti-Japanese base areas behind enemy lines and large-scale armed struggle of the masses of the people behind enemy lines have curbed Japan's predatory practices such as grain requisition in the occupied areas, and the extensive development of guerrilla warfare has seriously damaged road traffic, making it completely impossible for the Japanese to integrate and effectively utilize resources, nor to carry out effective rule.
Mao Zedong Publishes "On Protracted War"
In the later stages of the war, when the Japanese were extremely short of manpower, the Japanese army could not control the form of the occupied area at all, and a small number of Japanese troops could only shrink in the cities, and the policy of feeding the war with war was completely defeated.
Therefore, the power of "On Protracted War" is that it is completely a conspiracy, and if it dares to publish it directly in the newspaper, it will not be afraid to let the Japanese army invade China see it. The more you look at it, the more effective it is. It's about telling you what you're going to do next, what I'm going to do, and you're going to have to do what I say, go through my script, and finally end up with what I wrote.