Wang Jianwei: The "Chinese National Liberation Pioneers" Before and After the Outbreak of the National War of Resistance
After the outbreak of the September 18th Incident [1], the Japanese army’s aggression into Northeast and North China deepened step by step. Entering 1935, the Japanese military repeatedly provoked incidents in places such as Tianjin and Zhangjiakou, proposing the so-called "Specialization of North China" [2] in an attempt to detach North China from the country under the guise of "autonomy." At that time, the ancient capital of Beiping (Beijing) stood on the front lines of the Sino-Japanese confrontation, and young students were among the most active anti-Japanese groups. In December 1935, under the organization of the Beiping Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the Beiping Federation of Anti-Japanese Salvation Student Unions of Universities and Middle Schools, the December 9th Movement [3] broke out. The "Chinese Nation Liberation Vanguard" (CNLV) was born amidst the flames of the December 9th Movement. Taking the CNLV as a basic organizational form, the CPC gradually reversed the unfavorable situation in youth work that had existed since the failure of the Great Revolution [4]. It fully leveraged the role of youth as a fresh force and vanguard, playing a positive role in expanding the Party organization and mobilizing the broad masses of youth to devote themselves to the tide of the national War of Resistance.
I
As the climax of the December 9th Movement gradually receded, and in the face of suppression and internal subversion by the Nanjing Nationalist Government [5] and Beiping local authorities, Party leaders in the Beiping underground and the Beiping Student Federation—including Huang Jing, Jiang Nanxiang, and Yao Yilin—sought to sustain the "sparks of revolution." Based on the students of Beiping and Tianjin, they organized the "Beiping-Tianjin Student Southward Expansion Propaganda Corps" to travel deep into villages and towns to conduct propaganda activities, implementing a great union of students and peasants. In early January 1936, the propaganda corps departed from Beiping and Tianjin, marching on foot toward Gu'an and other areas in Hebei. During the southward march, the First and Second Regiments established the "Nation Liberation Vanguard," while the Third Regiment established the "Chinese Youth Salvation Vanguard." In mid-to-late January, the propaganda corps was forced to return to Beiping due to obstruction by local military and police. To preserve the gains of the December 9th Movement, these two groups merged to form the "Nation Liberation Vanguard" (known from 1937 onward as the "Chinese Nation Liberation Vanguard," hereafter referred to as the "Minxian").
In February 1936, the Minxian held its founding congress at Beiping Normal University, adopting a founding declaration, a program of struggle, and an outline of work. The Minxian’s political platform was very clear: to unite all people unwilling to become "slaves of a lost nation" and form a united front for anti-Japanese national salvation, launching a national revolutionary war against Japanese aggression and traitors. Its organizational system was divided into four levels: general headquarters (总队 zǒngduì), regional branches (区队 qūduì), battalions (大队 dàduì), and squads (小队 xiǎoduì). Initially, there were only two local headquarters in Beiping and Tianjin, totaling about 300 members, with the Beiping local headquarters acting on behalf of the general headquarters. The first Captain-General was Ao Baifeng (Gao Jinming).
The primary task facing the Minxian after its establishment was training, propaganda, and organizational development. Training focused mainly on military training; recognizing the proximity of armed resistance, they attached great importance to members' study of military theory and technical training. The Work Outline of the Chinese Nation Liberation Vanguard stated: "Only by responding to the Imperialist Japanese war of aggression with a national revolutionary war can we reclaim our freedom." Therefore, "military techniques and theory are the weapons we urgently need to master." Li Chang, who served as Captain-General of the Minxian, recalled: "From the day of its birth, the Minxian emphasized launching a national war of resistance and mastering military technology. The main force of the Minxian was on the North China national defense front; they knew deeply that one cannot drive out Japanese imperialism and achieve national independence and liberation by holding only a pen and not a gun." To strengthen military training, the Minxian general headquarters established an Armed Forces Department, and the Beiping Municipal Committee specially hired military instructors for the organization. In the spring of 1936, the Tsinghua and Yenching battalions held several marches and guerrilla exercises in the Western Hills. These exercises were also a form of comprehensive collective activity aimed at organizing youth scattered across various schools. By unifying wake-up times, grooming, meals, discussions, and singing, they standardized the "organized" life of the members. This had a "quasi-military" character and produced obvious mobilization effects. Every exercise resulted in the recruitment of a new batch of Minxian members. Wang Rumei (Huang Hua), a Minxian member and president of the Yenching University Student Union, once joined fellow members in "borrowing" a batch of weapons—including rifles, light machine guns, and grenades—from Northeastern University to organize students for live-fire combat exercises.
Regarding theoretical study, the Minxian mainly educated its members on ideology and theory through the secret organization of reading circles and social science research societies in schools, circulating progressive books, and conducting collective readings and discussions. The Minxian general headquarters also published irregular official organs such as National Liberation and Our Ranks.
The summer vacation of 1936 was a critical period for the Minxian’s growth. The general headquarters issued a special "Summer Work Outline," making detailed arrangements for various tasks, including political theory study and military training; establishing choirs, drama troupes, hiking teams, travel groups, and investigation teams; and holding campsites, marches, mountain climbing, and seminars on guerrilla tactics. In July of that year, the Minxian general headquarters held two consecutive summer camps near the Sleeping Buddha Temple in Beiping’s Western Hills, each lasting seven days. The main content included political theory, quasi-military training, and cultural galas. Participants were mostly from major universities in Beiping, the majority being Minxian members or CPC student members. The summer camps implemented quasi-military management, with the goal of tempering members through collective life. Daily life was packed: mountain climbing often replaced morning calisthenics; after breakfast, there were lecture sessions where renowned scholars like Yang Xiufeng, Zhang Shenfu, Huang Songling, and Shi Fuliang taught current affairs and political science; analyze the situation of the war; and Captain-General and military instructor Bai Yihua lectured on military theory and strategy. Afternoons were devoted to military training, with participants divided into "enemy" and "friendly" forces to conduct various types of maneuvers such as guerrilla warfare, ambushes, offensive/defensive operations, and encounter battles. In the evenings, campers held political theory discussions and rehearsed national salvation dramas, while also printing the Marching Daily.
The Minxian general headquarters also required members to use the summer vacation to return to their hometowns and develop local branches. Members staying in Beiping were to use their social connections for salvation propaganda and to expand the ranks. Returning members established Minxian organizations locally, either directly or through correspondence. Before the start of the autumn semester, Minxian branches were established in succession in Shanghai, Wuhan, Xi'an, Guangzhou, Nanjing, Chengdu, Jinan, and Tangshan; "Minxian" members even appeared in Paris and Tokyo. Some youth salvation groups from other cities also came to Beiping seeking to establish contact with the general headquarters.
II
The Minxian was established with the participation of Beiping underground Party members and members of the Communist Youth League, and it accepted the leadership of the Communist Party of China. The Beiping Municipal Committee established a Party group (党团 dǎngtuán) within the Minxian, with Huang Jing serving as the person in charge. In addition to following the leadership of superior organizations, Minxian units at all levels had to accept the leadership of the corresponding level of the Party organization; the election of cadres above the squad level was conducted under the leadership of Party branches. Our Party identified activists within the Minxian and, after observation, developed them into Party members. In the Kuomintang-controlled areas [6] of the time, the Minxian could not openly state its close ties with the CPC. Therefore, it always declared itself to the public as a non-partisan anti-Japanese national salvation organization, downplaying its partisan character.
Entering the second half of 1936, the Minxian organization had expanded from Beiping and Tianjin to more than a dozen provinces. This development prompted our Party to seriously consider its role, work model, and direction. At that time, the CPC's Youth League had suffered repeated destruction in Kuomintang-controlled areas, and the number of members had plummeted. After its establishment, the Minxian largely assumed the functions of the Youth League. Consequently, in August 1936, the Secretariat of the Central Committee instructed the Northern Bureau to ensure that the League organization became as "youth-oriented and mass-oriented" as possible, using "names like the Nation Liberation Vanguard to obtain a public or semi-public existence, in order to absorb the broad masses influenced by various strata and parties" (Instruction Letter from the Secretariat of the Central Committee to the Northern Bureau and the Hebei Provincial Committee). Simultaneously, Zhang Wentian, who was presiding over the work of the Central Committee, wrote to Liu Shaoqi, Secretary of the Northern Bureau: "We must now use various public names to organize the young masses. Organizations like the Beiping Nation Liberation Vanguard are essentially of this nature" (Letter to Liu Shaoqi, Collected Works of Zhang Wentian, Vol. 2). Liu Shaoqi and other comrades subsequently organized the relevant work. Shortly thereafter, the Northern Bureau issued the Decision on the Youth League, requiring a group of youth organizations, represented by the Minxian, to participate extensively in the national liberation movement, and for young Party members to actively join these groups and take leadership positions to exert their influence. The Northern Bureau's plan provided a foundational reference for the Central Committee, which soon formed the Decision on Youth Work, clarifying that CPC organizations at all levels should use the Minxian as a vehicle to actively penetrate various strata of the youth population, thereby achieving the great task of national liberation.
By the end of 1936, the Minxian had established "salvation organizations from major metropolises to remote mountain villages." In Beiping alone, it grew from 300 to over 2,300 members, and the conditions for establishing a national Minxian organization were increasingly ripe. On February 6, 1937, the Minxian General Headquarters held its First National Congress in Beiping. Twenty-four representatives from 18 local branches attended, representing approximately 6,000 Minxian members nationwide. The congress decided to prefix "Nation Liberation Vanguard" with "Chinese," officially establishing the "Chinese Nation Liberation Vanguard." The Organizing Law of the Chinese Nation Liberation Vanguard stipulated that the organization was a "vanguard group for the people's salvation" and a "semi-military force implementing high-level democratic centralism."
III
In July 1937, the day after the Japanese military manufactured the Lugou Bridge Incident [7], the Minxian keenly realized: "The significance of this conflict is very grave. The Japanese side is clearly manufacturing small conflicts to expand them into a major incident, to occupy Beiping and Tianjin, and to occupy the North. Today in 1937, we have another 'September 18th'!" They therefore called upon all members to implement a general mobilization immediately: "We must meet the war with the greatest courage and the greatest composure. Do not panic, do not be afraid, do not waste even the smallest amount of time, do not give up even the smallest opportunity; in the face of great disaster, we must act as a model for a true national vanguard" (Emergency Circular for General Mobilization of the Nation Liberation Vanguard). At the end of July, Beiping and Tianjin fell. The general headquarters issued a notice to all members: "Go to the front! Go into the army! Go to military schools! Go to aviation schools!" (Three Years of the Minxian). In September, the general headquarters moved from Beiping to Taiyuan; after the fall of Taiyuan, it withdrew to Linfen, and then to Xi'an.
After the full outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Minxian members rushed to various battlefields, merging with the worker-peasant masses, the Eighth Route Army, and the New Fourth Army. Members from Beiping and Tianjin were divided into two main parts. One part remained in North China to join local anti-Japanese guerrilla forces; the other part rushed to all parts of the country to continue carrying the sparks of the December 9th Movement’s salvation struggle. In Hebei, Yang Xiufeng led a group of exiled students from Beiping, Tianjin, and Baoding to form an anti-Japanese guerrilla force to fight in the Taihang Mountains. In Shanxi, there was the New Army and the Sacrifice and National Salvation Federation led by Bo Yibo; Taiyuan became an important transit point for North Chinese students heading to the anti-Japanese front. In Shandong, some members who had moved south joined with students in Jinan to form the Shandong Column, which later joined with the Eighth Route Army's eastward-moving troops to establish the Northwest Shandong Anti-Japanese Base Area. Many youth salvation groups and anti-Japanese vanguards in the south were also led by Minxian backbones. On April 1, 1938, the Minxian headquarters held a National Provisional Representative Congress in Xi'an, with registered members from various places reaching over 30,000.
The emergence, development, and expansion of the Minxian were closely related to the process of Japanese aggression, the development of CPC-Kuomintang relations, and the overall trend of the War of Resistance. As the war gradually entered the stage of stalemate, the youth movement led by the CPC gradually shifted from Kuomintang-controlled areas to the various Anti-Japanese Base Areas. In November 1938, in accordance with the developing situation, the Central Committee made the decision to dissolve the Minxian and focus all efforts on developing Youth Salvation Federations in various regions. The Minxian gradually exited the stage of history.
The Chinese Nation Liberation Vanguard was an important product and a continuation of the December 9th Movement. Its establishment preserved the fruits of the December 9th Movement’s struggle in a relatively stable organizational form. It was both a new attempt by Beiping and Tianjin students to promote national salvation in North China and an exploration and adjustment aimed at the previous "looseness" displayed by student movements. After the outbreak of the national War of Resistance, members who had been tempered by the December 9th Movement went deep into various Anti-Japanese Base Areas to carry out armed struggle, truly realizing the identity shift from "holding a pen" to "holding a gun." This forged and tempered a high-quality cadre force, providing fresh blood and talented support for the war behind enemy lines and the expansion of the Party organization.