An exhibition themed "Commemorating the 80th anniversary of the victory of the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War" is being held in Beijing, China, August 16, 2025. /CFP
Editor's note: Song Yuehong, a special commentator on current affairs for CGTN, is deputy director and research fellow at the Institute of Contemporary China Studies of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily those of CGTN.
The Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression was a great undertaking of the Chinese nation and an epic of earthshaking significance. Confronted with a Japanese imperialist invasion and fascist atrocities, the Communist Party of China (CPC) upheld the Chinese united front against Japanese aggression, pursued a protracted war, and opened up vast battlefields behind enemy lines while establishing antiJapanese base areas.
In doing so, it fully demonstrated the formidable strength of a people's war under the Party's leadership. The CPC's leadership became the pillar of strength in the whole-of-nation resistance against Japanese aggression until final victory was won in the War of Resistance.
For national independence and people's liberation, the CPC made a resolute strategic shift, moving from the Long March to the front lines of the War of Resistance and sounding the clarion call for a national awakening and struggle.
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, as Japanese imperialists stepped up aggression against China, the Chinese nation faced an unprecedented crisis, and the contradiction between the Chinese nation and Japanese imperialism became the principal contradiction in Chinese society. The Kuomintang government at that time pursued a policy of "internal pacification before resistance to external aggression." In sharp contrast, at this critical juncture bearing on China's future, the CPC, which placed the nation above all else and upholding the larger national interest, took the lead in raising the banner of armed resistance against the Japanese imperialist invasion. It spurred the Chinese people to rise in defiance in the Northeast, marking the starting point of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and, at the same time, ushering in the opening chapter of the World Anti-Fascist War.
The Lugou Bridge Incident in 1937 marked the beginning of China's whole-nation resistance against the Japanese invaders, thereby opening the main Eastern battlefield of the global war against fascism. The CPC united all the sons and daughters of the Chinese nation in a common cause: standing shoulder to shoulder with unyielding resolve, fighting with blood and toil and carrying out the whole nation's movements to save the nation and resist the enemy.
With the firm will to fight to the end and the indomitable strength of nationwide resistance, the Chinese people, under the CPC's leadership, inscribed a majestic chapter of patriotism and defense of world peace in the history of both the Chinese People's War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War.
Students visit an exhibition themed "For National Liberation and World Peace" in Beijing, capital of China, July 7, 2025. /Xinhua
The CPC stood on the right side of history, developed keen insights into the inner logic and defining features of the War of Resistance, set the direction of China's resistance and made relentless efforts in inspiring and mobilizing the Chinese people to strive for victory. The CPC not only promoted the formation of the national united front against Japanese aggression, bringing together a powerful force for unity and common resistance, but also sought to ensure that every Party member could give their utmost in the war effort.
In particular, Mao Zedong published On Protracted War. In response to the then-rampant theses of either "China's doomed to perish" or "China will win quickly," he made clear that the Sino-Japanese war was no ordinary conflict, but a life-and-death struggle in the 1930s between semi-colonial, semi-feudal China and imperialist Japan. To win, China had to be unrelenting in resistance, upholding a united front and waging a protracted war; the CPC was the reliable force leading the people's resistance.
Through rational assessment, the CPC concluded that the war would be protracted and that final victory would belong to China. It foresaw the broad trajectory of the conflict in three stages, namely strategic defense, strategic stalemate and strategic counteroffensive, and put forward corresponding strategies and tactics. The long nationwide War of Resistance was a multi-front struggle in which the resistance efforts in military, political, economic and cultural domains were interwoven.
With its correct understanding and deep insights into the war, the CPC planned, formulated and implemented the right strategies and tactics, strengthened the people's confidence in gaining victory and led the nationwide resistance steadily toward triumph.
The CPC upheld the policy of a Chinese united front against Japanese aggression, mobilized the broad masses and opened up vast battlefields and base areas behind enemy lines. The War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression was undertaken by the Chinese nation in a struggle for self-liberation. It was a special form of liberation war waged by a big semi-colonial country in the 1930s and 1940s.
Focusing on the central task of building a united front and defeating Japanese imperialism, the CPC led the Eighth Route Army, the New Fourth Army, the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army, and other people's armed forces in heroic combat, promoting close coordination between the main fronts and the battlefields behind enemy lines.
Within the national united front against Japanese aggression, in the face of the Kuomintang authorities' passive resistance to Japan and active anti-communism, the CPC upheld unity in resistance and safeguarded the united front through principled struggle. It opposed compromise and capitulation, pressed for democracy, developed progressive forces, won over the middle forces and isolated the die-hard elements in the process of waging a series of struggles that were justified, to its advantage, and carried out with restraint.
By uniting all forces that could be united, the CPC led the Chinese people to throw themselves consciously into a multi-front war of resistance, plunging the Japanese aggressors into the vast ocean of a people's war. All sons and daughters of China, regardless of political affiliation, ethnicity, class or region, defended national sovereignty and dignity with their blood and their lives.
The CPC's role as the pillar of strength in the War of Resistance also left many non-affiliated personages and centrist groups deeply disillusioned with the Kuomintang; recognizing the need for democracy and unity against civil war, they gradually moved closer to the CPC's leadership.
The victory in the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression was a great triumph achieved with the CPC as the pillar of strength and the entire nation united in will and courage.
