Behind the Scenes of the Xi'an Incident: The Case of the Lixingshe

Abstract

The year 1936 was a fateful one in the annals of modern China. Japan's steady encroachment, dating back to the 1931 Mukden Incident, had begun to spill over beyond the Great Wall. A sense of national crisis pervaded the country and calls for unity against Japanese aggression were heard even within the ruling Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) of Chiang Kai-shek, whose policy insisted on first eliminating its arch-rival the Communist Party. As for the Communist Party, the successful arrival of its Central Red Army in northern Shaanxi province in late 1935 following the epochal Long March had enabled it to claim readiness to take on the Japanese threat directly, and its persistent demands for a National United Front in which the Communist Party would be included were meeting with approval from a wide segment of the population.