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How and why was the Second United Front formed in 1937, and why did it break down well before the end of the war?

The Second United Front 1937 to 1945, including the Xi'an Incident, the New Fourth Army Incident, and the deterioration of KMT-CCP relations during the war with Japan

A focused answer on the Second United Front (1937-1945), the Xi'an Incident (December 1936), the formal CCP-KMT alliance, the New Fourth Army Incident (January 1941), and the long deterioration of relations. Covers the limited operational cooperation, the political competition for legitimacy, and the historiography of Lloyd Eastman, Lyman Van Slyke, and Odd Arne Westad.

Generated by Claude Opus 4.89 min answerUpdated 2026-06-27

Reviewed by: AI editorial process; not yet individually human-reviewed

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What this dot point is asking

NESA expects you to explain how the Xi'an Incident forced the Second United Front, what the alliance meant operationally and politically, how the New Fourth Army Incident showed its breakdown, and how the CCP used the wartime years to grow. Strong answers integrate KMT calculation, CCP strategy, Stalin's directives, and the New Fourth Army Incident.

In plain English

By the mid-1930s China had two enemies fighting each other - Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist government (the KMT) and Mao's Communists (the CCP) - while a third, much more dangerous enemy, Japan, was steadily eating the country. Chiang kept insisting on wiping out the Communists first. His own generals thought that was mad, so in December 1936 one of them simply arrested Chiang and refused to let him go until he agreed to stop the civil war and fight Japan instead. That is the Xi'an Incident, and it forced the two sides into a wartime team-up called the Second United Front.

Think of two rival gangs in a town who hate each other but suddenly face an outside invader. They shake hands and say they will fight together - but neither trusts the other, so each keeps secretly building up its own strength, grabbing turf, and recruiting, ready for the moment the invader leaves. That is exactly what happened. They barely fought side by side; in January 1941 they even ambushed each other (the New Fourth Army Incident). The Communists were the cleverer players: the eight years of "alliance" let them grow from a hunted band of about 40,000 into a mass movement of over a million - the platform from which they would win the whole country by 1949.

The answer

The Xi'an Incident

By late 1936 Mao's CCP had reached Yan'an after the Long March. Chiang had moved Zhang Xueliang's Manchurian Northeastern Army (around 130,000 men) to Shaanxi to lead a Sixth Encirclement Campaign. Zhang's men resented fighting Communists rather than reclaiming their Japanese-occupied homeland. CCP propaganda (the "August First Declaration" of 1935) explicitly courted them.

Zhang met Zhou Enlai secretly in April 1936 and agreed in principle to a cease-fire. Chiang flew to Xi'an on 4 December 1936 to override Zhang's resistance and force a renewed campaign. On 12 December 1936 Zhang's troops surrounded Chiang's compound at Huaqing, captured the Generalissimo, and demanded a cease-fire with the CCP and a war of national resistance.

The Comintern wanted Chiang alive. Stalin saw a unified anti-Japanese front as essential to relieve pressure on the Soviet Far East. He ordered the CCP to negotiate Chiang's release. Zhou Enlai flew to Xi'an. After thirteen days of negotiation Chiang was released on 25 December 1936; the agreement was nominally oral but extensive. Zhang Xueliang voluntarily returned to Nanjing with Chiang as a gesture of good faith and spent the next 55 years under house arrest (released 1991, in Taiwan).

Formal United Front terms

The CCP and KMT signed the formal Second United Front agreement in September 1937 after war with Japan had begun.

CCP concessions:

The Chinese Soviet Republic became the Shaan-Gan-Ning Border Region under KMT nominal authority.
The Red Army was redesignated the National Revolutionary Army's Eighth Route Army (around 45,000 men) and New Fourth Army (around 12,000 men in central China).
The CCP nominally abandoned land confiscation, replaced by rent reduction.

KMT concessions:

Legal recognition of the CCP.
Cessation of the "bandit suppression" campaigns.
Modest subsidies to the Eighth Route Army.

Operational cooperation

Joint operations were limited. The Battle of Pingxingguan (25 September 1937), where Lin Biao's 115th Division ambushed a Japanese convoy in Shanxi and killed around 1,000 Japanese, was the showpiece of CCP-KMT military cooperation. CCP propaganda from 1945 onward used Pingxingguan to claim the CCP had been the main resistance force.

The Hundred Regiments Offensive (August-December 1940) was the only major CCP conventional operation of the war. Around 400,000 troops under Peng Dehuai attacked Japanese railways and strongpoints in north China. CCP claims of around 40,000 Japanese casualties were inflated; real losses were smaller, and Japanese punitive sweeps in 1941-1942 cost the CCP perhaps 100,000 dead.

Political competition

Most cooperation was political theatre. Both parties used the Front to compete for legitimacy with intellectuals, students, and overseas Chinese. The CCP's Yan'an became a destination for thousands of Chinese youth and Western journalists. KMT Chongqing was simultaneously the official wartime capital and the focus of corruption charges.

KMT pressure on the CCP

From 1939 Chiang tightened the screws. The KMT instituted an economic blockade of the Shaan-Gan-Ning Border Region from late 1939, with around 400,000 troops cordoning the area. The CCP responded with the "production movement" (1942 onward), including the Nanniwan reclamation project, to achieve self-sufficiency.

The Communications Conference in Nanyue (January 1940) produced KMT plans to limit CCP base-area expansion. CCP plans, in turn, accelerated expansion through "anti-Japanese democratic regimes" in counties on the Yellow Plain.

The New Fourth Army Incident

The New Fourth Army operated in central China south of the Yangtze. The KMT high command ordered it north of the Yellow River in 1940; the CCP delayed compliance. On 5 January 1941, KMT forces under General Gu Zhutong attacked the New Fourth Army headquarters column of around 9,000 men in southern Anhui. Fighting lasted until 13 January.

Around 9,000 CCP troops were killed, wounded, or captured. Commander Ye Ting was captured and imprisoned (released 1946, killed in a plane crash). Political commissar Xiang Ying was killed by a deserter. The KMT formally dissolved the New Fourth Army; the CCP recreated it within weeks under Chen Yi and Liu Shaoqi and continued operating.

Diplomatic protests followed. The United States, in particular, pressured Chiang to stop attacking his nominal ally. The CCP recovered politically.

Yan'an Rectification

From 1942 to 1944 Mao consolidated his ideological control over the CCP through the "Yan'an Rectification Movement" (Zhengfeng). Studied texts included Mao's own writings ("Reform Our Study," "Oppose Stereotyped Party Writing"). The movement crushed Wang Ming's Comintern faction and Kang Sheng's secret-police operations against alleged spies escalated; perhaps several thousand were killed or driven to suicide.

The Seventh Party Congress (April-June 1945) formally enshrined "Mao Zedong Thought" as Party doctrine. Mao became Chairman of the Politburo and of the Central Committee; Liu Shaoqi became second-ranking.

The Front's formal end

The Second United Front formally lasted until the Japanese surrender. Real cooperation had ended at the New Fourth Army Incident. Marshall Mission talks (December 1945 to January 1947) tried to revive a national coalition after the war but failed.

Timeline 1936-1945

Date	Event	Significance
12 Dec 1936	Xi'an Incident begins	Chiang captured by Zhang Xueliang
25 Dec 1936	Chiang released	United Front agreed in principle
Sept 1937	Formal United Front	CCP redesignated as 8RA/N4A
25 Sept 1937	Battle of Pingxingguan	CCP propaganda victory
Dec 1939	KMT blockade of Shaan-Gan-Ning	Economic pressure on Yan'an
Aug-Dec 1940	Hundred Regiments Offensive	CCP conventional operation
5-13 Jan 1941	New Fourth Army Incident	Front dead operationally
1942-1944	Yan'an Rectification	Mao consolidates control
April-June 1945	Seventh Party Congress	Mao Zedong Thought formalised
2 Sept 1945	Japanese surrender	Front formally ends

Historiography

Lyman Van Slyke (Enemies and Friends: The United Front in Chinese Communist History, 1967) is the standard analytical study.

Lloyd Eastman (Seeds of Destruction: Nationalist China in War and Revolution, 1937-1949, 1984) frames the wartime erosion of the KMT.

Odd Arne Westad (Decisive Encounters: The Chinese Civil War 1946-1950, 2003) treats the wartime years as setting the conditions for the civil war.

Chen Yung-fa (Making Revolution, 1986) is rigorous on CCP base-area work.

Rana Mitter (China's War with Japan, 2013) is balanced on KMT and CCP roles.

How to read a source on this topic

Sources include the Xi'an Incident broadcasts, the September 1937 manifesto, Mao's "On New Democracy" (January 1940), KMT denunciations of the New Fourth Army, and Stilwell's diaries. Three reading habits.

First, separate the rhetoric from the operations. Both sides spoke of unity while planning each other's containment.

Second, follow the Comintern angle on Xi'an. Stalin's veto of executing Chiang is one of the most consequential foreign interventions in modern Chinese history.

Third, watch what the CCP did with the legitimacy. The Front gave the CCP eight years to grow without KMT military pressure. The 1937 baseline (40,000 members, 92,000 troops) and the 1945 figure (1.2 million members, 1.2 million regulars, 2.6 million militia) tell the story.

Model exam responses

A. Source response (5 marks). Source: a September 1937 CCP manifesto declaring the Party's loyal support for the national government and the war of resistance, and its readiness to abolish the soviet government and place the Red Army under central command. Assess the usefulness of this source for a historian studying the Second United Front.

The manifesto is an official CCP document issued at the moment the Front was formalised, so its purpose is political: to perform loyalty, win legal recognition and reassure the KMT and foreign opinion. That makes it highly useful as evidence of how the CCP wished to be seen at the outset - patriotic, subordinate, willing to drop the soviet model for rent reduction. It is far less useful as a guide to what followed: the same Party that "placed" its forces under central command ran an independent guerrilla war, expanded its base areas, and within four years fought the KMT outright at the New Fourth Army Incident (January 1941). Read critically, the source is strong evidence for the instrumental, performative character of the alliance in 1937 and weak - indeed misleading - on the rivalry that defined it thereafter.

Marker's note: a top response states origin and purpose, separates what the source is useful FOR (the 1937 performance of unity) from what it conceals (the coming friction), anchors this in dated own knowledge, and ends in a judgement rather than paraphrasing the manifesto.

B. Essay paragraph (from a 25-mark response on whether the Front benefited the CCP more than the KMT).

The New Fourth Army Incident exposes how completely the supposed alliance had become a contest the CCP was better placed to win. By January 1941 the KMT had already blockaded the Shaan-Gan-Ning Border Region with some 400,000 troops; when the New Fourth Army delayed an order to move north of the Yangtze, KMT forces under Gu Zhutong ambushed its headquarters column in southern Anhui, killing, wounding or capturing around 9,000 men and imprisoning its commander Ye Ting. Yet the attack rebounded on Chiang. The United States pressed him to stop fighting his nominal ally, the CCP recreated the New Fourth Army within weeks under Chen Yi, and the Party reaped a propaganda windfall as the victim of Nationalist treachery. As Hans van de Ven argues, the rivalry between the two parties was never genuinely suspended; Lyman Van Slyke shows why the Front nonetheless survived on paper - its formal existence served both sides, but only the CCP turned the wartime years into the membership and territory that made 1949 possible.

Marker's note: the paragraph argues a single proposition (the Front as a contest the CCP won), supports it with dated specifics (the blockade, the casualty figure, Ye Ting, US pressure), and sets two historians in genuine tension rather than name-dropping. Sustained argument plus historiography is what lifts a paragraph into Band 6.

Command words and weaving historiography

Read the verb first. "Assess the significance" and "Account for" want factors weighed and ranked, not a story; "To what extent / Evaluate" want a JUDGEMENT defending a thesis; "Assess the usefulness/reliability" of a source wants ORIGIN, MOTIVE and PERSPECTIVE, then a verdict. For source questions run O-M-P-U: Origin, Motive, Perspective, then Usefulness/limitation - and with United Front sources always ask whether you are reading the staged unity (the 1937 manifestos) or the underlying rivalry (the blockade and the New Fourth Army Incident). Weave historians as a clash, not a list: pit the rivalry-never-suspended reading (Hans van de Ven) against the instrumental-but-real-gain reading (Lyman Van Slyke) and the balanced view that genuine anti-Japanese resistance occurred (Rana Mitter), then say which carries more weight and why. One historian used in genuine tension beats five name-dropped.

Examples in context

Example 1. The Xi'an Incident (12 to 25 December 1936). Zhang Xueliang (the Young Marshal) arrested Chiang Kai-shek to force the end of internal pacification first and the formation of an anti-Japanese front. Zhou Enlai mediated and secured the United Front in late December. Frederica Saagardi (Mao's Road to Power volume V, 1995) provides primary documents. Rana Mitter (China's War with Japan, 2013) integrates Chinese, Soviet, and Japanese sources.

Example 2. The New Fourth Army Incident (January 1941). KMT forces ambushed CCP New Fourth Army units south of the Yangtze, killing around 9,000. Lyman Van Slyke ("The Chinese Communist Movement," in Cambridge History of China vol 13, 1986) and Mitter treat the incident as the effective collapse of military cooperation. The CCP continued nominal participation but operated independently from 1941 onward.

Exam-style practice questions

Practice questions written in the style of NESA exam questions on this dot point, with worked answer explainers. The year tag is the paper they imitate, not the source.

Practice (NESA)10 marksAssess the significance of the Second United Front in the development of the Chinese Civil War.

Show worked answer →

A 10-mark "assess" needs a judgement and developed factors.

Thesis: The Second United Front gave the CCP eight years of breathing space and legitimacy as a national patriotic force, allowing the Party to grow from around 40,000 members and 92,000 troops (1937) to 1.2 million members and 1.2 million regulars (1945). The Front made the 1945-1949 victory possible.
Origins: The Xi'an Incident (12-25 December 1936) saw Zhang Xueliang kidnap Chiang and force agreement to end the civil war and resist Japan. Formal terms followed in September 1937. The CCP's Red Army was redesignated the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army under nominal KMT command.
Operational reality: Cooperation was thin. CCP forces fought their own guerrilla war in north China; KMT forces fought the conventional war from Chongqing. Joint operations were rare; the Battle of Pingxingguan (25 September 1937) was a propaganda showpiece.
Deterioration: From 1938 the KMT tried to limit CCP base-area expansion. The KMT economic blockade of Shaan-Gan-Ning (from 1939) tried to starve Yan'an. CCP land reform and mass mobilisation continued unimpeded.
The New Fourth Army Incident (5-13 January 1941): KMT forces in southern Anhui ambushed the CCP New Fourth Army headquarters; around 9,000 CCP troops were killed or captured. Commander Ye Ting was imprisoned; political commissar Xiang Ying killed. The Front was effectively dead operationally; its survival on paper served both sides.
CCP gains: The Hundred Regiments Offensive (August-December 1940), the only major CCP conventional operation, demonstrated CCP capability. Yan'an Rectification (1942-1944) consolidated Mao's leadership. CCP membership grew from 800,000 (1940) to 1.2 million (1945).
Historiography: Van Slyke (1967), Eastman (1984), Westad (2003). Markers reward Xi'an, the New Fourth Army Incident, and the CCP growth figures.

Practice (NESA)5 marksExplain the significance of the Xi'an Incident (December 1936) for Chinese politics.

Show worked answer →

A 5-mark "explain" needs three developed points.

The event: On 12 December 1936 Chiang Kai-shek flew to Xi'an to pressure Zhang Xueliang to launch a Sixth Encirclement against the CCP base in Shaanxi. Zhang's Manchurian troops had no appetite for fighting Communists while Japan held their homeland. They mutinied, captured Chiang, and demanded a national resistance front.
The resolution: Zhou Enlai flew to Xi'an as CCP mediator. Stalin, fearing a Japanese-KMT settlement against the USSR, ordered the CCP to spare Chiang. Chiang was released on 25 December after agreeing in principle to end the civil war and form a united front. Zhang Xueliang flew back with Chiang and was placed under house arrest, which lasted until 1991.
The consequences: The Second United Front was formalised in September 1937 after the war with Japan began. The CCP gained legitimacy, the legal right to exist, and access to a new pool of recruits. The "internal pacification first" strategy of 1931-1936 was reversed under duress. China entered the Sino-Japanese War with at least the appearance of unity.

Markers reward the dates, Zhou Enlai's role, and the link to the September 1937 United Front.

Practice questions

Original practice questions graded from foundation to exam level, each with a full worked solution. Try them before revealing the solution.

foundation3 marksOutline the role of the Xi'an Incident (December 1936) in the formation of the Second United Front.

Show worked solution →

A 3-mark "outline" wants three distinct, correctly dated points.

The capture: On 12 December 1936 Zhang Xueliang's Manchurian troops mutinied and captured Chiang Kai-shek at Xi'an, demanding an end to the civil war and resistance to Japan.
The mediation: Zhou Enlai negotiated for the CCP; Stalin, fearing a Japan-KMT deal against the USSR, ordered the Communists to spare Chiang.
The outcome: Chiang was released on 25 December 1936 having agreed in principle to a united front; the alliance was formalised in September 1937 after war with Japan began.
Marking criteria: 1 mark each for three distinct, correctly dated points; do not narrate the whole war - keep to the formation of the Front.

foundation4 marksExplain how the formal terms of September 1937 changed the position of the CCP.

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A 4-mark "explain" needs a cause-and-effect chain with specific detail.

Legal recognition: The KMT recognised the CCP and ended the "bandit suppression" campaigns, giving the Party a legal right to exist for the first time since 1927.
Military redesignation: The Red Army became the Eighth Route Army (around 45,000) and the New Fourth Army (around 12,000) under nominal KMT command, with modest KMT subsidies.
Policy concession: The Chinese Soviet Republic became the Shaan-Gan-Ning Border Region; the CCP nominally dropped land confiscation for rent reduction.
The effect: Legitimacy as a national patriotic force let the CCP recruit openly and grow free of KMT military pressure - the foundation of its wartime expansion.
Marking criteria: 1 mark for legal recognition; 1 mark for the army redesignation with figures; 1 mark for the land/border-region concession; 1 mark for linking these to CCP growth.

core5 marksSource A (paraphrased, owned): A wartime CCP directive instructs cadres to "develop the base areas, expand the armed forces and win over the masses" under the cover of the united front, while avoiding any clash that the Party is not yet strong enough to win. Using Source A and your own knowledge, explain how the CCP used the Second United Front to strengthen its position. [5 marks]

Show worked solution →

A 5-mark "explain ... using the source" wants the source decoded, then linked to own knowledge.

Decode the source: The directive shows the Front was, for the CCP, a protective shell: legality and a national-resistance label under which to "develop, expand and win over" while postponing open conflict with the KMT.
Own knowledge - expansion: Behind the Front the CCP ran its own guerrilla war in north China, built "anti-Japanese democratic regimes" in counties on the Yellow Plain, and grew from around 40,000 members (1937) to 1.2 million (1945).
Own knowledge - consolidation: Land reform (rent reduction), mass mobilisation, the production movement answering the Shaan-Gan-Ning blockade, and the Yan'an Rectification (1942-1944) hardened the Party under Mao.
The outcome: The Front bought eight years of growth that made the 1945-1949 victory possible - exactly the calculation the source reveals.
Marking criteria: 1 mark for reading the source as cover for expansion; 1-2 marks for own-knowledge expansion (base areas, membership figures); 1 mark for consolidation (land reform, Rectification); 1 mark for linking to the later victory.

core6 marksSource B (paraphrased, owned): A later historian argues that the so-called united front was never a genuine partnership but a suspended civil war - two armies sharing one enemy while each manoeuvred to be stronger when the Japanese were gone. Assess the usefulness of this interpretation for understanding KMT-CCP relations from 1937 to 1945. Use Source B and your own knowledge. [6 marks]

Show worked solution →

A 6-mark "assess the usefulness" rewards perspective plus corroboration and limitation, ending in a judgement.

Perspective: Source B is a revisionist reading (close to Hans van de Ven's position) that treats the Front as a "suspended civil war" - useful because it corrects the propaganda image of patriotic unity.
Corroboration from own knowledge: The record fits: joint operations were rare (Pingxingguan in 1937 was a showpiece); the KMT blockaded Shaan-Gan-Ning from 1939 with around 400,000 troops; and the New Fourth Army Incident (January 1941) - around 9,000 CCP casualties - showed the two "allies" fighting each other while Japan still occupied China.
Limitation: By stressing the rivalry it can understate the early period (1937-1938), when the alliance had real propaganda and diplomatic value, and the genuine, if limited, anti-Japanese fighting both sides did.
Judgement: Highly useful for explaining the deterioration and the 1945-1949 outcome, but it should be read alongside Van Slyke, who shows the Front did shift the CCP from outlaw to legitimate national force - a real gain, not just a pause.
Marking criteria: 1 mark for the revisionist perspective; 1-2 marks for own-knowledge corroboration (blockade, New Fourth Army Incident); 1 mark for a limitation; 1-2 marks for a judgement on usefulness.

exam25 marksEvaluate the extent to which the Second United Front benefited the CCP more than the KMT in the period 1937 to 1945.

Show worked solution →

This is an extended-response/essay. Markers reward a sustained, evidence-based argument that addresses the comparison directly and weaves in historiography - not a narrative.

Band-6 PLAN

Thesis. The Front benefited the CCP decisively more than the KMT: it converted a hunted remnant into a legitimate national force with eight years to grow, while the KMT bore the conventional war against Japan that exhausted its best armies and finances. The KMT gained a nominal national unity and a junior partner under control on paper; the CCP gained the conditions for victory.
Argument 1 - CCP gains (the decisive benefit). Legality and legitimacy from September 1937 let the CCP recruit openly; behind the Front it expanded base areas, ran land reform and mass mobilisation, and consolidated under Mao through the Yan'an Rectification. Evidence: membership from around 40,000 (1937) to 1.2 million (1945); troops from around 92,000 to 1.2 million regulars plus 2.6 million militia.
Argument 2 - KMT costs (why it benefited less). Chiang carried the conventional war from Chongqing, taking the heaviest Japanese blows; his German- and US-trained divisions bled while the CCP fought a cheaper guerrilla war. The KMT's wartime inflation, corruption and demoralisation - the "seeds of destruction" - took root in these years.
Argument 3 - The KMT's real but limited gains. The Front gave Chiang national legitimacy as wartime leader, Allied recognition, and a CCP held nominally under his command; the blockade of Shaan-Gan-Ning and the New Fourth Army Incident (1941) show he could still constrain the CCP. But containment was not victory, and the CCP recovered politically from each clash.
Historiography. Lyman Van Slyke (1967) treats the Front analytically as a mutually instrumental alliance that the CCP exploited more skilfully. Lloyd Eastman (1984) frames the war as the period in which KMT structural rot set in. Hans van de Ven stresses that KMT-CCP rivalry was never truly suspended; Rana Mitter (2013) is more balanced, crediting genuine KMT resistance. Odd Arne Westad (2003) reads the wartime years as setting the conditions for the civil war the CCP then won.
Judgement. Weigh Van Slyke and Westad (CCP the strategic winner) against Mitter (real KMT sacrifice): both sides used the Front instrumentally, but the asymmetry of outcome - a CCP transformed, a KMT exhausted - makes the Communist benefit decisive.

MODEL PARAGRAPH (Argument 1)

The clearest measure of who gained from the Front is what the CCP did with the legitimacy it bought. The September 1937 terms turned a hunted Party - some 40,000 members and 92,000 troops after the Long March - into a recognised national force with the legal right to exist, modest subsidies, and a patriotic banner to recruit under. Behind that banner the Communists ran their own war: guerrilla expansion across north China, "anti-Japanese democratic regimes" in counties on the Yellow Plain, rent-reduction land reform that won the peasantry, and the production movement that broke the KMT's Shaan-Gan-Ning blockade. Internally, the Yan'an Rectification (1942-1944) crushed the Comintern faction and welded the Party to Mao, whose "Mao Zedong Thought" was enshrined at the Seventh Party Congress in 1945. By the Japanese surrender the CCP fielded around 1.2 million members and 1.2 million regulars. As Lyman Van Slyke argues, the united front was an instrument both parties used, but only one used it to transform itself; Odd Arne Westad reads precisely these wartime gains as the foundation of the CCP's 1949 victory.

Marker's note. A band-6 response sustains the comparison throughout (always weighing CCP gains against KMT costs and gains), anchors every claim in dated, specific evidence (the membership and troop figures, the blockade, the New Fourth Army Incident), sets historians in genuine tension (CCP the strategic winner vs genuine KMT sacrifice), and reaches a judgement rather than listing benefits. Narrating the Front chronologically without ranking who gained more caps the response in the middle bands.

exam25 marksAssess the view that the deterioration of KMT-CCP relations, rather than their cooperation, was the defining feature of the Second United Front.

Show worked solution →

This is an extended-response/essay. Markers reward a sustained, evidence-based argument that addresses the question directly and weaves in historiography - not a narrative.

Band-6 PLAN

Thesis. Deterioration, not cooperation, was the defining feature: genuine collaboration was thin and brief (1937-1938), while friction, containment and open clashes dominated from 1939 and decided the post-war balance. But "deterioration" must be read as managed rivalry - both sides kept the Front formally alive because its collapse suited neither.
Argument 1 - Cooperation was thin from the start. The armies fought separate wars (CCP guerrilla in the north, KMT conventional from Chongqing); joint operations were rare and showpieces. Evidence: Pingxingguan (1937) was propaganda; the Hundred Regiments Offensive (1940) was a solo CCP operation that drew Japanese reprisals.
Argument 2 - Deterioration was the dominant dynamic. From 1939 the KMT blockaded Shaan-Gan-Ning (around 400,000 troops); the New Fourth Army Incident (5-13 January 1941) killed or captured around 9,000 CCP troops and ended operational cooperation. Each side planned the other's containment while resisting Japan.
Argument 3 - Why the Front nonetheless survived to 1945. Formal survival served both: Chiang needed Allied legitimacy and feared US pressure (the US protested the New Fourth Army Incident); the CCP needed the legal cover to keep growing. So "deterioration" coexisted with a deliberately preserved shell.
Historiography. Hans van de Ven argues the rivalry was never suspended - supporting the thesis. Lyman Van Slyke (1967) shows the instrumental logic that kept the Front alive despite friction. Rana Mitter (2013) cautions that genuine anti-Japanese effort occurred on both sides. Lloyd Eastman (1984) and Odd Arne Westad (2003) read the wartime friction as setting up the civil war.
Judgement. Van de Ven and the New Fourth Army Incident carry the argument: deterioration defined the Front's substance, even as instrumental calculation (Van Slyke) preserved its form to 1945.

MODEL PARAGRAPH (Argument 2)

The event that fixes deterioration as the Front's defining feature is the New Fourth Army Incident of January 1941. By then the alliance was already hollow: from late 1939 the KMT had thrown a blockade of around 400,000 troops around the Shaan-Gan-Ning Border Region, trying to starve Yan'an while both armies nominally fought Japan. When the New Fourth Army delayed an order to move north of the Yangtze, KMT forces under Gu Zhutong ambushed its headquarters column in southern Anhui between 5 and 13 January 1941, killing, wounding or capturing around 9,000 men; Commander Ye Ting was imprisoned and the commissar Xiang Ying killed. Two "allies" had fought a pitched battle while the Japanese still held eastern China. The KMT formally dissolved the New Fourth Army; the CCP recreated it within weeks under Chen Yi and recovered politically, helped by US pressure on Chiang to stop attacking his nominal partner. As Hans van de Ven argues, the rivalry between the parties was never genuinely suspended - the Front was a suspended civil war, and after January 1941 the suspension was barely a fiction.

Marker's note. A band-6 response keeps "rather than their cooperation" in view throughout - ranking deterioration against the genuine cooperation rather than just describing the breakdown - anchors each claim in dated evidence (the blockade, the New Fourth Army Incident dates and casualties), sets at least two historians in genuine tension (rivalry never suspended vs instrumental survival vs real resistance), and reaches a graded judgement. Listing friction without weighing it against cooperation caps the response in the middle bands.