NOTES
1. The year 1935 witnessed a new upsurge in the popular
patriotic movement throughout the country. Students in Peking, under the
leadership of the Communist Party of China, held a patriotic demonstration on
December 9, putting forward such slogans as "Stop the civil war and unite
to resist foreign aggression" and "Down with Japanese
imperialism". This movement broke through the long reign of terror imposed
by the Kuomintang government in league with the Japanese invaders and very
quickly won the people's support throughout the country. It is known as the
"December 8th Movement". The outcome was that new changes manifested
themselves in the relations among the various classes in the country, and the
Anti-Japanese National United Front proposed by the Communist Party of China
became the openly advocated policy of all patriotic people. The Chiang Kai-shek
government with its traitorous policy became very isolated.
2. See the introductory note to "Policies, Measures and
Perspectives for Resisting the Japanese Invasion", pp. 13-14 of this
volume.
3. See History of the Communist Party of the Soviet
Union (Bolsheviks), Short Course, Eng. ed., FLPH, Moscow, 1951, pp.
347-81.
4. The defence of Madrid, starting in October 1936, lasted
for two years and five months. In 1936, fascist Germany and Italy made use of
the Spanish fascist warlord Franco to launch a war of aggression against Spain.
The Spanish people, led by the Popular Front Government, heroically defended
democracy against aggression. The battle of Madrid, the capital of Spain, was
the bitterest in the whole war. Madrid fell in March 1939 because Britain,
France and other imperialist countries assisted the aggressors by their
hypocritical policy of "non-intervention" and because divisions arose
within the Popular Front.
5. The Three People's Principles were the principles and the
programme put forward by Sun Yat-sen on the questions of nationalism, democracy
and people's livelihood in China's bourgeois-democratic revolution. In the
manifesto adopted by the Kuomintang at its First National Congress in 1924 Sun
Yat-sen restated the Three People's Principles. Nationalism was interpreted as
opposition to imperialism and active support was expressed for the movements of
the workers and peasants. Thus the old Three People's Principles were
transformed into the new Three People's Principles characterized by the Three
Great Policies, that is, alliance with Russia, co-operation with the Communist
Party, and assistance to the peasants and workers. The new Three People's
Principles provided the political basis for the co-operation between the
Communist Party of China and the Kuomintang during the First Revolutionary
Civil War period.
