Mao Zedong, Kangri Youji Zhanzheng De Yiban Wenti [Common Problems in the Anti-Japanese Guerrilla War], signed, and Lun Chi Jiu Zhan / On Protracted War, Yan'an, 1938

Collection of Jack Woddis (1914-1980), prior to February 1950.

Hammersmith bookshop, London.

The present lot is a very rare copy of the earliest single volume edition of two of Mao Zedong’s most important early military treatises, both printed in Yan’an during the height of the Second Sino-Japanese War. Kangri youji zhanzheng de yiban wenti [Common Problems in the Anti-Japanese Guerrilla War], here in a rare signed copy, and Lun chi jiu zhan / On Protracted War, together represent Mao’s foundational military thinking—texts that would shape both the trajectory of the Chinese Communist Revolution and global insurgent warfare theory in the decades to follow.

Common Problems in the Anti-Japanese Guerrilla War aimed at countering the tendency—both within and outside the Chinese Communist Party—to underestimate the value of guerrilla warfare during the early stages of the War of Resistance Against Japan, the work systematically elevates guerrilla warfare from a tactical necessity to a strategic imperative, particularly within the context of China as a "large but weak" nation. The present lot, published by the Jiefang Chubanshe (Liberation Press) in 1938, is emblematic of the period when the CCP was still a rural insurgency based in Yan’an. Signed copies of Mao’s early works, especially from this wartime period, are of exceptional rarity.

On Protracted War, written in response to the fall of Wuhan in 1938, continues Mao’s analysis by rejecting both defeatism and fantasies of swift victory. Instead, Mao predicted a drawn-out war of attrition, rooted in the mobilization of China's vast human and geographic resources. This work served not only as a rallying cry for resistance against Japan but also as a philosophical blueprint for how the CCP would eventually prevail over the Nationalists.