There Is No Strategic Offensive in the War of Resistance Against Japan,
Only Counter-Offensives at the Campaign and Strategic Levels[1]

(May 28, 1938)

In the War of Resistance Against Japan, there is of course no strategic offensive, only counter-offensives at the campaign and strategic levels, which constitute the active part of the overall strategic defence. It is by this part that we shall defeat Japan. In popular parlance, it is of course also permissible to call it an offensive.

Mao

The 28th

[1] In 1938, while directing the compilation of the *War of Resistance Against Japan Series*, Mao Zedong instructed comrades in the Secretariat of the Central Military Commission of the CPC Central Committee to study the strategic issues of the War of Resistance Against Japan. This is his reply to a comrade in the Secretariat.

Our source for this text is Mao Zedong junshi wenji, Vol. 2, p. 229, where it is reproduced
from Mao’s handwritten manuscript preserved in the Central Archives.
1. Mao wrote this letter in his capacity as chief editor of the series Kang-Ri zhanzheng
congshu (Collected Writings on the Anti-Japanese War), in reply to Guo Huaruo, one of the
authors of Kangri youji zhanzheng de yiban wenti (All the Problems of the Anti-Japanese
Guerrilla War). Regarding this latter work, see below, Mao’s “Problems of Strategy in the
Anti-Japanese Guerrilla War.”