March of the Volunteers
national anthem of the People's Republic of China
The "March of the Volunteers" is the national anthem of the People's Republic of China. Unlike previous Chinese state anthems, it was written entirely in vernacular Chinese, rather than in Classical Chinese.
The Japanese invasion of Manchuria saw a boom of nationalistic arts and literature in China. This song had its lyrics written first by the communist playwright Tian Han in 1934, then set to melody by Nie Er and arranged by Aaron Avshalomov for the communist-aligned film Children of Troubled Times (1935). It became a famous military song during the Second Sino-Japanese War beyond the Chinese Communist Party, most notably the Nationalist general Dai Anlan designated it to be the anthem of the 200th Division, who fought in Burma. It was adopted as the PRC's provisional anthem in 1949 in place of the "Three Principles of the People" of the Republic of China and the Communist "Internationale".
During the Cultural Revolution, Tian Han was criticized and placed in prison, where he died in 1968. The song was briefly and unofficially replaced by "The East Is Red", then reinstated but played without lyrics, restored to official status in 1978 with altered lyrics, before the original version was fully restored in 1982. In 2004, the March of the Volunteers was enshrined as the national anthem in the constitution. In 2017, the Law of the People's Republic of China on the National Anthem was adopted.
“March of the Volunteers” enters the record as national anthem of the People's Republic of China. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what March, Volunteers and national can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“March of the Volunteers” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, March, Volunteers and national provides the most credible route into that argument.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q156136. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1934, 1935, 1949 and 1968.
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This entry incorporates text from “March of the Volunteers” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.