Central Europe Germany Italy Spain (Spanish Civil War) Albania Austria Baltic states Belgium Bulgaria Burma China Czechia Denmark France Germany Greece Italy Japan Jewish Luxembourg Netherlands Norway Poland Romania Slovakia Spain Soviet Union Yugoslavia Germany Italy Netherlands Portugal Spain Sweden Switzerland United Kingdom United States The Second United Front (traditional Chinese: 第二次國共合作; simplified Chinese: 第二次国共合作; pinyin: dì èr cì guógòng hézuò; lit.

In 1927 the Chinese Communists retaliated against Kuomintang following a betrayal of its members in Shanghai by National Revolutionary Army commander Chiang Kai-shek, which marked the end of the KMT's four-year alliance with the Soviet Union and its cooperation with the CCP during the Northern Expedition (aka First United Front) to defeat warlords and unify China.

Therefore, he "pursued a strategy of appeasing Japan while struggling for real national unity and over time sufficient strength to confront the Imperial army.

[citation needed] On 12 December 1936, a deeply disgruntled Zhang Xueliang kidnapped Chiang Kai-shek in Xi'an to force an end to the conflict between KMT and CCP.

[10] In the midst of the Second United Front, the CCP and the Kuomintang were still vying for territorial advantage in "Free China" (i.e. those areas not occupied by the Japanese or ruled by puppet governments).

The uneasy alliance began to break down by late 1938 as a result of CCP efforts to expand their military strength through absorbing Chinese guerrilla forces behind enemy lines.

The CCP under the leadership of Mao Zedong also began to focus most of their energy on building up their sphere of influence wherever opportunities were presented, mainly through rural mass organizations, administrative, land and tax reform measures favoring poor peasants; while the KMT allocated many divisions of its regular army to carry out military blockade of the CCP areas in an attempt to neutralize the spread of their influence until the end of the Second Sino-Japanese War.