On Protracted War

“On Protracted War”, A Legacy For China’s Past, Present and Future

Wang Ziren  

A0116224U

China is one of the world oldest civilizations with five thousand years of rich history and independence (BBC, 2014). However, in the turbulent 20th century, the nation had almost been subjugated by the foreign colonizers. To defend its land from the aggressors, China was embroiled in an eight-year war against Japan from 1937 to 1945. In 1938, when China was on the verge of collapse, Mao Zedong, the Chairman of China’s Communist Party, delivered “On Protracted War” (1938) at Yenan, the headquarter of the party. His address is widely regarded as one of the most important speeches that formed China’s military strategy during the wartime and led to China’s final victory against the invaders. This speech clearly analyzed China’s situation, accurately compared China’s strengths and weaknesses with those of Japan, wisely pointed out the military strategies that China should adopt and realistically predicted three stages of the war. In this article, I will analyze this speech in terms of its structure and language to show how this speech had a great impact on Chinese people during the war and how this address is still influencing the mindsets of the Chinese leaders who make policies to overcome the new challenges in the 21st century.

One of the most significant features of Mao’s speech was his clear and logical arrangement of the structure that effectively helped him to convince his audience. At the beginning of the speech, instead of imparting his idea of protracted war, Mao obtained audience’s attention and interest by addressing the hottest topic that was being discussed among many Chinese. During the wartime, a lot of Chinese were debating about the country’s destiny. On the one hand, China’s military strength was much weaker than that of Japan. The Japanese troops had quickly occupied a lot of major cities including Beijing, Shanghai and Nanjing, so China’s failure on the battlefield seemed unavoidable. On the other hand, there were several recent victories causing a large number of Japanese casualties, therefore many Chinese believed China could win this war very soon. Both theories had a great number of supporters, but Mao started his speech by criticizing both prevailing theories and proved their invalidity. For example,

“ 抗战十个月以来，一切经验都证明下述两种观点的不对：一种是中国必亡论，一种是中国速胜论。前者产生妥协倾向，后者产生轻敌倾向。他们看问题的方法都是主观的和片面的，一句话，非科学的。” （Mao, 1938)

“All the experience of the ten months of war proves the error both of the theory of China's inevitable subjugation and of the theory of China's quick victory. The former gives rise to the tendency to compromise and the latter to the tendency to underestimate the enemy. Both approaches to the problem are subjective and one-sided, or, in a word, unscientific.” (Translated by Marxists.org, 2004)

Mao’s strong criticism surprised many of his audience, but also led them to think pragmatically and attracted them to listen to his following speech. After rebutting the two existing theories, Mao summarized four characteristics of China’s political, social and economic situation and compared that with Japan’s situation. His detailed analysis further strengthened his argument that protracted war was the optimal and only feasible solution to save the nation from collapse. After emphasizing the necessity of protracted war, Mao then provided a specific plan on how to allocate resources and fight the protracted war. This part of the speech gave people a clear direction on what they should do. During that time, most of the Chinese people had senses of patriotism and were willing to defend the motherland. However, due to incoordination and remoteness of the central government, people, especially farmers, were unsure about what they could really do to save the nation. That resulted in a huge amount of human and economic resources being underutilized. Mao’s speech specifically pointed out the important role of the famers, who represented over 80% of the Chinese population. That differentiated Mao from Chiang Kai-shek, China’s official top leader, who only emphasized on the importance of government troops, not the ordinary people. The famous Chinese history scholar Qin XingHong agreed with Mao’s vision in his historical research paper, “the Chinese farmers were the most important anti-Japanese force. Without their cooperation and extensive participation, China could not win this war” (Qin, 2005). At the last part of the speech, Mao continued to reinforce his argument by dividing the war into three strategic stages, from “strategic defensive”, to “strategic stalemate”, then to “strategic counter-offensive”. He enabled people to foresee the challenges and process of the war through a comprehensive picture. Under these three phases, final destination of victory became reachable and realistic. In conclusion, structure of Mao’s speech followed a very clear flow of logic. From beginning to the end, Mao built his argument step-by-step and particularly appealed to the needs of the audience, who were mostly ordinary people and wanted to defend the motherland with a clear strategy. The structural arrangement of his speech effectively helped Mao convinced the audience and guided them to follow his strategies.