Initially called the
China National Youth Corps, the YCP acquired its current name during its fourth national convention in September 1929. During the
Northern Expedition, the party supported the northern warlords because they opposed the
Communists within the
First United Front. After the anti-communist purge, they still resisted the KMT because of its
one-party state.
The party was banned after the Nationalists came to power in 1928 and the YCP refused
Chiang Kai-shek's offer to merge the two parties. The Nationalists denounced them as a warlord party due to their early failed attempts to recruit
Wu Peifu and their opposition to the Northern Expedition. The Communists called them
fascists because their leaders had ties to a French fascist and their strident anti-communism. The YCP considered itself to be a
conservative parliamentary democratic party.
They were based in
Manchuria under the protection of Zhang Xueliang. After the
Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931, the YCP called for an immediate
declaration of war, in contrast with the Nationalist government's resistance to a formal war declaration and initiating hostilities. The YCP joined the anti-Japanese United Front in 1937 to support the national government. After the initiation of the full-scale war, the YCP cooperated closely with the
Kuomintang (KMT) in fighting Japanese military aggression. It joined the
China Democratic League, an umbrella group of small democratic parties. In the early years of the war, the Youth Party became the third largest party, after the GMD and the CCP, yet one informed historian called the party organization "extremely weak." The members were either personal friends of
Zhang Junmai, many of whom had been followers of
Liang Qichao, or his former students.