Page 159 - SELECTED WORKS OF MAO TSE-TUNG Volume I.indd

ON TACTICS AGAINST JAPANESE IMPERIALISM

December 27, 1935

THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PRESENT
POLITICAL SITUATION

Comrades! A great change has now taken place in the political
situation. Our Party has defined its tasks in the light of this changed
situation.
What is the present situation?
Its main characteristic is that Japanese imperialism wants to turn
China into a colony.
As we all know, for nearly a hundred years China has been a
semi-colonial country jointly dominated by several imperialist powers.
Owing to the Chinese people’s struggle against imperialism and to
conflicts among the imperialist powers, China has been able to retain
a semi-independent status. For a time World War I gave Japanese
imperialism the opportunity of dominating China exclusively. But the
1
treaty surrendering China to Japan, the Twenty-one Demands signed
2
by Yuan Shih-kai, the arch-traitor of that time, was inevitably ren-
dered null and void as a result of the Chinese people’s fight against
Japanese imperialism and of the intervention by other imperialist
powers. In 1922 at the Washington Nine-Power Conference called by
3
the United States, a treaty was signed which once again placed China

This report was given by Comrade Mao Tse-tung at the conference of Party
activists which was held at Wayaopao, northern Shensi, after the Wayaopao meeting
of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee in December 1935. This meeting,
one of the most important ever called by the Central Committee of the Communist
Party of China, criticized the mistaken view in the Party that the Chinese national
bourgeoisie could not be an ally of the workers and peasants in the common fight
against Japan, and it decided on the tactics of a national united front. On the
basis of the Political Bureau’s decisions, Comrade Mao Tse-tung explained in
detail the possibility and the importance of re-establishing a united front with the
national bourgeoisie on the condition that there must be resistance to Japan. He
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