Quick questions on The Yan'an period and Communist mass mobilisation 1937-1947: HSC Modern History National Study China

4short Q&A pairs drawn directly from our worked dot-point answer. For full context and worked exam questions, read the parent dot-point page.

What are the wartime base areas?

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The Shaan-Gan-Ning Border Region (Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia, around 90,000 square kilometres, 1.5 million people) was the CCP capital base. Behind Japanese lines the Eighth Route Army (Lin Biao, He Long, Liu Bocheng) created the Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Border Region (Jin-Cha-Ji) by January 1938; further bases followed in Shanxi-Suiyuan, Shanxi-Hebei-Shandong-Henan, and across north China.

What are mass Line politics?

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Mao's "Some Questions Concerning Methods of Leadership" (June 1943) codified the Mass Line: "From the masses, to the masses. To take ideas of the masses (scattered and unsystematic) and concentrate them (through study turn them into concentrated and systematic ideas), then go to the masses and propagate and explain these ideas until the masses embrace them as their own."

What is the Three-Thirds system?

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The October 1940 directive on the "Three-Thirds system" required base-area government bodies to be one-third CCP, one-third non-CCP "progressives" (left-leaning peasants and intellectuals), and one-third "enlightened gentry" (landlords and businessmen willing to cooperate). The system extended the United Front into local government and reassured non-Communist Chinese.

What is the Rectification Movement (Zhengfeng) 1942-1944?

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The Rectification Movement was both an ideological campaign and a factional purge.

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