The development of class struggle in the world shows the sharpening
of all its fundamental contradictions, starting from the principal
contradiction between imperialist superpowers and powers, on the one
hand, and oppressed countries on the other.
Two phenomena of the concrete reality make us see the principal
contradiction and its interaction with the other contradictions: (1) the
war of aggression that Yankee imperialism and its Zionist lackey Israel
are carrying out against Iran
following an axis that goes as far as Palestine; and (2) the uprising
under way of the proletariat and the popular masses in Europe, mainly in
France. These facts or phenomena show the relationship between the
development of the principal contradiction and the development of the
bourgeoisie-proletariat contradiction in the imperialist countries.
While collusion and contest between the imperialist countries,
superpowers and powers, sharpen.
Today, we will center on these two cases, but then we will go to
other burning points of the international context that also illustrate
the problem, that show what the key or task is that has to be addressed
to impose Maoism as the sole command and guide of the world revolution.
In relation to the key question that the current situation presents
us with and in order to try to serve its better comprehension, we will
place in your hand the study of the document On Coalition Government
by Chairman Mao. If the key problem or question is not firmly grasped,
one falls into a series of other problems and errors, not only in the
appraisal of the present international situation but also in the urgent
tasks that correspond to the Maoists of the world at the international
level and in their own countries.
The masses make world history, but the Communist Party leads them.
Chairman Mao warns us: possibility and reality; apparent, false
possibility (that the wars of resistance in the Greater Middle East
would be taking “forms of people’s war” or the “shift of the center of
the world revolution to Palestine” on October 7, 2023); real
possibility, in perspective, reconstitution or constitution of the
Communist Parties of Iran, Palestine, etc. to convert those wars of
resistance into people’s war to develop the democratic revolution and
pass to socialist revolution. The revolution does not come from the
action of the reactionaries but from the revolutionaries’ own action.
PROBLEM, REALITY, AND PERSPECTIVE IN THE CURRENT STRUGGLES:
Powerful revolutionary storm that develops as an expression of
the development of the new great wave of the world proletarian
revolution, which demands for its victorious development proletarian
direction through its Communist Party.
The key to the problem that the development of the objective
situation presents in the two cases mentioned is the problem of the
Communist Party to assume the direction of the masses in struggle.
Necessity of a Communist Party to lead the revolution that corresponds
to each type of country.
Therefore, the main overdue strategic task that it falls to the
communists to fulfill at the current moment in the midst of wars or
struggles of every type is to take advantage of those favorable
conditions and strain all forces to fulfill the overdue strategic task
that the revolution demands of us: constitute or reconstitute the
Communist Party, as a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist party of a new type,
militarized to transform all those struggles into democratic or
socialist revolution through people’s war.
The world anti-imperialist front, to sweep imperialism and
reaction off the face of the earth through people’s war, is made up of
the two forces: the national liberation movement and the international
proletarian movement, both led by their Communist Parties. Although for
the communists the slogan is “Proletarians of all countries, unite!,”
the slogan that must guide the struggle of the two forces must be
“Proletarians of all countries and peoples of the world, unite!”
The anti-imperialist front in our oppressed countries is the
democratic revolution’s front based on the worker-peasant alliance led
by the Communist Party. Marxist-Leninist-Maoists do not separate the
struggle against imperialism from the struggle against semi-feudalism
and bureaucrat-capitalism.
STUDY OF THE DOCUMENT ON COALITION GOVERNMENT
The experience of the three periods of the revolution, and especially
that of the War of Resistance Against Japan, has convinced us and the
whole Chinese people that without the efforts of the Chinese Communist
Party, without the Chinese Communists as the mainstay of the Chinese
people, China can never achieve independence or liberation, or
industrialization and the modernization of her agriculture.
— “This was the political report made by Comrade Mao Tse-tung to the
Seventh National Congress of the Communist Party of China,” published
under the title On Coalition Government
In this report, Chairman Mao makes a concrete analysis of the eight
years of the war of resistance; it is a summing-up of closing and of
opening to a new stage of the new-democratic revolution with the
presentation of the general program of the democratic revolution and of
the concrete program for the realization of the fundamental demands.
It is necessary to study this work by the Chairman, On Coalition Government,
carefully, in order, taking this experience of the Chinese Revolution,
to be able to see where the key to the problems of Iran’s war of
resistance and of the other wars or struggles of resistance, of national
liberation, etc. is. With the purpose noted above, we have highlighted
the most appropriate quotations for this.
It is important to comprehend the key to the problems that present
themselves in these wars of resistance upholding, defending, and
applying Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, principally Maoism. For only thus,
armed with our all-powerful scientific ideology of the class, will we be
in conditions to combat the rightism or “leftism” that are expressed
around this question of main importance for the world revolution.
We consider just and correct our policy of support for the war of
resistance of the Iranian people, who are the ones making the greatest
efforts and sacrifices in the war of resistance against the
Yankee-Zionist imperialist war of aggression. It is the people of Iran
who have to confront both the external enemy and the internal repression
of the regime that heads the Iranian State. A regime that is opposed to
the fundamental demands of the people and for which reason persists in
its line of unilateral resistance. A regime that, despite its class
nature of big bourgeois and landlords, at the service of Russian
imperialism mainly, has a revolutionary aspect or element, which is to
oppose the Yankee imperialist war of aggression and, therefore, to head a
just war, a war of national resistance.
We are certain that the proletariat and the Iranian people will
continue making the greatest efforts and sacrifices in the war of
resistance against the imperialist-Zionist war of aggression and will
continue the struggle for their fundamental demands and that they will
finally embody Maoism and reconstitute their Communist Party,
Marxist-Leninist-Maoist; with this they will pass to developing people’s
war and will attain the country’s independence and liberation, will
carry their democratic revolution to its end, and will pass to the
socialist revolution.
Now yes, let us pass to the document:
PERU PEOPLE’S MOVEMENT
OCTOBER 2026
Mao Tse-tung
ON COALITION GOVERNMENT
From the
Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung
Foreign Languages Press
Peking 1967
First Edition 1965
Second Printing 1967
Vol. III, pages 205-270
April 24, 1945
THE FUNDAMENTAL DEMANDS OF THE CHINESE PEOPLE
Our congress is being held in the following circumstances. A
new situation has emerged after nearly eight years of resolute, heroic
and indomitable struggle waged by the Chinese people with countless
sacrifices and amid untold hardships against the Japanese aggressors; in
the world as a whole, decisive victory has been gained in the just and
sacred war against the fascist aggressors and the moment is near when
the Japanese aggressors will be defeated by the Chinese people in
co-ordination with the allied countries. But China remains disunited and
is still confronted with a grave crisis. In these circumstances, what
ought we to do? Beyond all doubt, the urgent need is to unite
representatives of all political parties and groups and of people
without any party affiliation and establish a provisional democratic coalition government for the purpose of instituting democratic reforms, surmounting the present crisis, mobilizing and unifying all the anti-Japanese forces in the country
to fight in effective co-ordination with the allied countries for the
defeat of the Japanese aggressors, and thus enabling the Chinese people
to liberate themselves from the latter’s clutches. After that it will be
necessary to convene a national assembly on a broad democratic basis
and set up a formally constituted democratic government, which will also
be in the nature of a coalition and will have a still wider
representation of people from all parties and groups or without any
party affiliation, and which will lead the liberated people of the whole
country in building an independent, free, democratic, united,
prosperous and powerful new China. In short, we must take the line of unity and democracy, defeat the aggressors and build a new China.
We believe that this alone can give expression to the fundamental demands of the Chinese people.
Therefore, my report will deal mainly with these demands. Whether or
not a democratic coalition government should be set up has become a
matter of deep concern for the Chinese people and for democratic public
opinion in the allied countries. My report will therefore lay particular
stress on elucidating this question.
In the eight years of the War of Resistance Against Japan, the
Communist Party of China has overcome many difficulties and achieved
great successes, but as things stand serious difficulties still confront
our Party and people. The present situation demands that our Party should work still more solidly and intensively and that it should continue to overcome the difficulties and strive to fulfil the fundamental demands of the Chinese people.
THE INTERNATIONAL AND THE DOMESTIC SITUATION
Can the Chinese people translate these basic demands into
reality? This will depend on the level of their political consciousness,
their unity and their efforts. At the same time, the present
international and domestic situation offers extremely favourable
opportunities. If the Chinese people can make good use of these
opportunities and continue to fight on staunchly, vigorously and
persistently, they will undoubtedly defeat the aggressors and build a
new China. They must redouble their efforts in their struggle to
accomplish their sacred tasks.
What is the present international situation?
The present military situation is that the Soviet Army is
attacking Berlin, and the allied forces of Britain, the United States
and France are attacking the Hitlerite remnants in co-ordination with
this offensive, while the Italian people are launching uprisings. All
this will eliminate Hitler once and for all. After Hitler is wiped out,
the defeat of the Japanese aggressors will not be far distant. Contrary
to the predictions of the Chinese and foreign reactionaries, the forces
of fascist aggression will undoubtedly be overthrown and the people’s
democratic forces will undoubtedly triumph. The world will
unquestionably take the road of progress and not the road of reaction.
Of course, we must remain very much on the alert and reckon with the
possibility of certain temporary or perhaps even serious twists and
turns in the course of events; in many countries there are still strong
reactionary forces which begrudge the people at home and abroad their
unity, progress and liberation. Anyone who loses sight of this
possibility will make political mistakes. The general trend of history,
however, is already clearly decided and will not change. This is bad
only for the fascists and for the reactionaries of all countries who are
in fact their helpers, but it is a blessing for the people and for the
organized democratic forces in all countries. The people, and the people alone, are the motive force of world history.
The Soviet people have built up great strength and become the main
force in the defeat of fascism. It is their efforts, plus those of the
people in the other anti-fascist allied countries, which are making the
destruction of fascism possible. War has educated the people and it is
the people who will win the war, win the peace and win progress.
This new situation is very different from that in World War I.
The Soviet Union was not yet in existence then and the people were not
politically awakened as they are in many countries today. The two world
wars represent two entirely different epochs.
This does not mean that there will be no more struggles after
the defeat of the fascist aggressor countries, the end of World War II
and the establishment of international peace. The remnant forces of
fascism which are still widespread will certainly continue to make
trouble, while within the camp now fighting fascist aggression there are
forces which oppose democracy and oppress other nations, and they will
continue to oppress the people in various countries and in the colonies
and semi-colonies. Therefore, after international peace is established,
there will still be numerous struggles over the greater part of the
world—between the anti-fascist masses and the remnants of fascism,
between democracy and anti-democracy, between national liberation and
national oppression. The people will achieve the most extensive
victory only through long and sustained efforts, when the remaining
forces of fascism, the anti-democratic forces and all the imperialist
forces are overcome. To be sure, that day will not come very quickly or
easily, but come it surely will. Victory in the anti-fascist Second
World War will pave the way for the victory of the people in their
post-war struggles. A stable and lasting peace will be ensured only when
victory is won in these struggles.
What is the present domestic situation?
China’s protracted war has exacted and will continue to
exact great sacrifices from the Chinese people, but at the same time
this very war has tempered them. It has awakened and united the Chinese people to a greater degree than all their great struggles in the last hundred years. The
Chinese people face not only a formidable national enemy but also
powerful domestic reactionary forces which are in fact helping the enemy this is one
side of the picture. But the other side is that the Chinese people are
not only more politically conscious than ever before but have built
powerful Liberated Areas and a nation-wide democratic movement that is
growing day by day. These constitute favourable domestic conditions. If
the defeats and setbacks in the Chinese people’s struggles of the last
hundred years were due to the absence of certain necessary international
and domestic conditions, then today the situation is different—all the
necessary conditions are present. There is every possibility of
avoiding defeat and winning victory. We shall be victorious if we can
unite the whole people in resolute struggle and give them
proper leadership.
The Chinese people now have much greater confidence that they
can unite to defeat the aggressors and build a new China. The time has
come for them to conquer all difficulties and achieve their fundamental demands, their great historic aspirations. Is there any doubt about it? I think not.
Such is the general international and domestic situation today.
TWO LINES IN THE ANTI-JAPANESE WAR
THE KEY TO CHINA’S PROBLEMS
In speaking of the domestic situation, we have also to make a specific analysis of China’s War of Resistance.
China is one of the five biggest countries taking part in the
war against fascism and it is the principal country fighting the
Japanese aggressors on the continent of Asia. Not only have the Chinese
people played a very great role in the war against Japan, but they will
also play a very great role in safeguarding peace in the post-war world
and the decisive one in safeguarding peace in the East. China has
made very great efforts to liberate herself and to help the allied
countries during the eight years of the War of Resistance Against Japan.
These efforts have been made primarily by the people of China. Vast
numbers of officers and men in China’s armies have fought and shed
their blood at the front; the workers, peasants, intellectuals and
industrialists of China have worked hard in the rear; the Chinese
overseas have made donations to support the war; and all the anti-Japanese political parties, except for such of their members as are opposed to the people,
have played their part in the war. In short, with their blood and
sweat, the Chinese people have heroically fought the Japanese aggressors
for eight long years. But for a number of years the Chinese
reactionaries have been spreading rumours and misleading public opinion
in order to prevent the world from knowing the truth about the role
played by the Chinese people in the war. Besides, there has as yet
been no comprehensive summing-up of the varied experience gained by
China during these eight years of war. Therefore, this congress should
make a proper summing-up of all this experience in order to educate the
people and provide our Party with a basis for the formulation of policy.
When it comes to such summing up, it is plain to all that
there are two different guiding lines in China. One leads to the defeat
of the Japanese aggressors, while the other not only makes their defeat
impossible but in some respects actually helps them and undermines our
War of Resistance.
The Kuomintang government’s policy of passive resistance to
Japan and its reactionary domestic policy of active repression of the
people have resulted in military setbacks, enormous territorial losses,
financial and economic crisis, oppression and hardship for the people
and the disruption of national unity. This reactionary policy has been
an obstruction to mobilizing and uniting all the anti-Japanese forces of
the Chinese people for the effective prosecution of the war, and has
hindered the awakening and unity of the people. Yet this political
awakening and this unity have never ceased to develop, but have moved
forward along a tortuous course, under the twofold repression of the
Japanese aggressors and the Kuomintang government. Clearly, there have
been two lines in China for a long time, the Kuomintang government’s
line of oppression of the people and of passive resistance, and the
Chinese people’s line of enhancing their own consciousness and unity for
the waging of a people’s war. Herein lies the key to all
China’s problems.
HISTORY FOLLOWS A TORTUOUS COURSE
To help people understand why this question of the two lines
is the key to all of China’s problems, it is necessary to trace the
history of our War of Resistance Against Japan.
The Chinese people’s War of Resistance has followed a tortuous
course. It began as far back as 1931. On September 18 of that year, the
Japanese aggressors occupied Shenyang, and within a few months they
seized the three northeastern provinces. The Kuomintang government
adopted a policy of non-resistance. But against the will of the
Kuomintang government and led or assisted by the Chinese Communist
Party, the people and a patriotic section of the troops of these
provinces organized the Anti-Japanese Volunteers and the Anti-Japanese
United Army and engaged in heroic guerrilla warfare. At one time this
heroic guerrilla warfare grew to great dimensions and, despite many
difficulties and setbacks, it has never been put down by the enemy. When
the Japanese aggressors attacked Shanghai in 1932, a group of patriots
in the Kuomintang once again defied the will of the Kuomintang
government and led the 19th Route Army in resisting the Japanese
aggressors. In 1933 the Japanese aggressors invaded Jehol and Chahar
Provinces, and for the third time a group of patriots in the Kuomintang
defied the will of the Kuomintang government and co-operated with the
Communist Party in organizing the Anti-Japanese Allied Army to resist
the enemy. But in all this fighting against Japan support came entirely
from the Chinese people, the Chinese Communist Party, other democratic
groups and the patriotic Chinese overseas, while the Kuomintang
government with its policy of non-resistance contributed nothing. On the
contrary, the anti-Japanese actions in Shanghai and Chahar were both
wrecked by the Kuomintang government itself. In 1933 it also destroyed
the people’s government which had been established in Fukien by the 19th
Route Army.
Why did the Kuomintang government of that day adopt a policy of
non-resistance? The main reason was that it had wrecked
Kuomintang-Communist co-operation and the unity of the Chinese people
in 1927.
In 1924 Dr. Sun Yat-sen, accepting the proposals of the Chinese
Communist Party, called the First National Congress of the Kuomintang
in which Communists took part, adopted the Three Great Policies of
alliance with Russia, co-operation with the Communist Party and
assistance to the peasants and workers, established the Whampoa Military
Academy and formed the national united front of the Kuomintang, the
Communist Party and all sections of the people. As a result, the
reactionary forces in Kwangtung Province were destroyed in 1924-25, the
triumphant Northern Expedition was carried out during 1926-27, most of
the areas along the Yangtse and Yellow Rivers were taken over, the
Northern warlord government was defeated, and the people’s struggle for
liberation was unfolded on a scale never before seen in Chinese history.
But at a critical moment in the progress of the Northern Expedition, in
the late spring and early summer of 1927, the treacherous and
reactionary policies of “party purge” and massacre adopted by the
Kuomintang authorities wrecked this national united front—the united
front of the Kuomintang, the Communist Party and all sections of the
people, which embodied the Chinese people’s cause of liberation—and all
its revolutionary policies. Yesterday’s allies, the Chinese Communist
Party and the Chinese people, were now regarded as enemies, and
yesterday’s enemies, the imperialists and feudalists, were now regarded
as allies. So it came about that a sudden attack was perfidiously
launched against the Chinese Communist Party and the people, and the
great, dynamic and vigorous revolution was crushed. Thereupon unity was
replaced by civil war, democracy by dictatorship, and a China full of
brightness by a China covered in darkness. But the Chinese Communist
Party and the Chinese people were neither cowed nor conquered nor
exterminated. They picked themselves up, wiped off the blood, buried
their fallen comrades and went into battle again. Holding high the great
standard of revolution, they rose in armed resistance and over a vast
territory in China they set up people’s governments, carried out land
reform, built up a people’s army—the Chinese Red Army—and preserved
and expanded the revolutionary forces of the Chinese people. Dr. Sun
Yat-sen’s revolutionary Three People’s Principles, which the Kuomintang
reactionaries had discarded, were carried forward by the people, the
Communist Party and other democrats.
After the invasion of the three northeastern provinces by the Japanese aggressors, the Chinese Communist Party in 1933 proposed to all the Kuomintang forces then attacking the revolutionary base areas and the Red Army that an armistice agreement be concluded to facilitate united resistance to Japan; this
proposal was made with three conditions—that the attacks should stop,
that the people should be granted democratic rights, and that the people
should be armed. But the Kuomintang authorities rejected it.
From then on the Kuomintang government’s policy of civil war
became increasingly vicious, while the voice of the Chinese people grew
increasingly powerful in its demand for an end to civil war and for
united resistance to Japan. All kinds of popular patriotic organizations
were formed in Shanghai and many other places. Between 1934 and 1936,
under the leadership of the Central Committee of our Party, the main
forces of the Red Army north and south of the Yangtse River went through
untold hardships and moved to northwestern China, joining forces with
the Red Army units there. It was in those two years that the Chinese
Communist Party decided on, and carried out, a new and comprehensive
political line in keeping with the new situation—the line of the
National United Front Against Japan, with united resistance to Japan and
the establishment of a new-democratic republic as the goal of struggle.
On December 9, 1935, the student masses in Peiping launched a heroic
patriotic movement under our Party’s leadership; they formed the Chinese
National Liberation Vanguard Corps
and spread this movement to all the big cities in China. On December
12, 1936, two patriotic Kuomintang groups which favoured resistance to
Japan, the Northeastern Army and the 17th Route Army, together staged
the famous Sian Incident in courageous opposition to the
reactionary Kuomintang policy of compromising with Japan and massacring
the people at home. Other patriots in the Kuomintang were likewise
dissatisfied with the policy of the Kuomintang authorities at the
time. These were the circumstances in which the Kuomintang authorities
were forced to abandon their policy of civil war and to acknowledge the
demands of the people. The peaceful settlement of the Sian Incident
became the turning point; under the new circumstances internal
co-operation took shape and the nation-wide War of Resistance Against
Japan began. In May 1937, shortly before the Lukouchiao Incident,
our Party called the historic national conference at which the new
political line followed by the Central Committee of the Party since 1935
was endorsed.
From the Lukouchiao Incident of July 7, 1937 to the fall of
Wuhan in October 1938, the Kuomintang government was relatively active
in the war against Japan. During that period the large-scale
Japanese attacks and the mounting patriotic indignation of the whole
people compelled the Kuomintang government to make resistance to the
Japanese aggressors the centre of gravity of its policy, which made
it easier to bring about an upsurge in the struggle of the whole army
and people against Japan, and for a time there was a new and dynamic
atmosphere. All the people, including the Communists and other
democrats, earnestly hoped that the Kuomintang government would
seize the opportunity, at a time when the nation was in peril and the
people were filled with enthusiasm, to institute democratic reforms and
put Dr. Sun Yat-sen’s revolutionary Three People’s Principles into
practice. But their hopes came to nought. Even in those two years of
relatively active resistance, the Kuomintang authorities continued to
oppose the mobilization of the masses for a people’s war and to place
restrictions on the people’s spontaneous efforts to unite for
anti-Japanese and democratic action. While the Kuomintang government had
somewhat changed its previous attitude to the Chinese Communist Party
and the other anti-Japanese parties, it continued to deny them equal
status and restrict their activities in many ways. Patriotic political
prisoners were still kept in jail in large numbers. Above all, the
Kuomintang government still maintained the oligarchic dictatorship it
had established after launching the civil war in 1927, so that it was
impossible to set up a democratic coalition government representing the
unanimous will of the nation.
At the very beginning of this period we Communists pointed
out that there were two alternative lines for China’s War of Resistance
Against Japan, an all-embracing people’s war leading to victory, or a
partial war in which the people remained oppressed, leading to defeat.
We also pointed out that the war would be protracted and would
inevitably involve many obstacles and hardships, but that by their
exertions the Chinese people were sure to win the final victory.
THE PEOPLE’S WAR
During the same period the main forces of the Communist-led
Red Army, which had moved to northwestern China, were redesignated as
the Eighth Route Army of the Chinese National Revolutionary Army, while
the Chinese Red Army’s guerrilla units, which had remained in various
places on both sides of the Yangtse River, were redesignated as the New
Fourth Army of the Chinese National Revolutionary Army. The former went
to fight on the northern China front and the latter on the central China
front. During the civil war period, the Chinese Red Army, which had
preserved and developed the democratic tradition of the Whampoa Military
Academy and of the National Revolutionary Army of the Northern
Expedition days, had at one time grown to several hundred thousand men.
But by the beginning of the War of Resistance Against Japan it had been
reduced to a few tens of thousands as a result of the ruthless
destruction wrought in our southern base areas by the Kuomintang
government, our losses during the Long March, and other causes.
Consequently there were some who looked down on this army and thought
that the main reliance for resistance to Japan should be placed on the
Kuomintang. But the people are the best judges. The people knew that
despite their small number at the time, the Eighth Route and New Fourth
Armies were of high quality, that they alone could wage a real people’s
war and that boundless prospects would open up before them once they
reached the anti-Japanese fronts and joined with the broad masses there.
And the people were right. By now, as I make this report, our army has
already expanded to 910,000 men, and the number of our rural militia,
who are not withdrawn from normal productive work, has grown to more
than 2,200,000. Despite the fact that our regular army is still
numerically much smaller than that of the Kuomintang (counting the
Kuomintang units under local as well as central control), it has
already become the main force in China’s War of Resistance, judging by
the number of Japanese and puppet forces it is engaging and the extent
of its battle fronts, by its combat effectiveness, by the mass support
it enjoys in its operations, and by its political quality, cohesion
and unity.
This army is powerful because all its members have a
discipline based on political consciousness; they have come together and
they fight not for the private interests of a few individuals or a
narrow clique, but for the interests of the broad masses and of the
whole nation. The sole purpose of this army is to stand firmly with the
Chinese people and to serve them whole-heartedly.
Guided by this purpose, this army has an indomitable spirit
and is determined to vanquish all enemies and never to yield. No matter
what the difficulties and hardships, so long as a single man remains, he
will fight on.
Guided by this purpose, this army has achieved remarkable
unity in its own ranks and with those outside its ranks. Internally,
there is unity between officers and men, between the higher and lower
ranks, and between military work, political work and rear service work;
and externally, there is unity between the army and the people, between
the army and government organizations, and between our army and the
friendly armies. It is imperative to overcome anything that impairs
this unity.
Guided by this purpose, this army has a correct policy for
winning over enemy officers and men and for dealing with prisoners of
war. Without exception all members of the enemy forces who surrender,
who come over to our side or who, after laying down their arms, wish to
join in fighting the common foe, are welcomed and given proper
education. It is forbidden to kill, maltreat or insult any prisoner
of war.
Guided by this purpose, this army has built up a system of
strategy and tactics which is essential for the people’s war. It is
skilled in flexible guerrilla warfare conducted in accordance with the
changing concrete conditions and is also skilled in mobile warfare.
Guided by this purpose, this army has built up a system of
political work which is essential for the people’s war and is aimed at
promoting unity in its own ranks, unity with the friendly armies and
unity with the people, and at disintegrating the enemy forces and
ensuring victory in battle.
Guided by this purpose, the entire army, operating under
conditions of guerrilla warfare, is able to utilize, and has in fact
utilized, the intervals between battles and between training periods to
produce grain and other necessities, thus becoming wholly, half or at
least partly self-supporting, so that economic difficulties are
overcome, living conditions improved and the burden on the people
lightened. Every possibility has been exploited to establish a number of
small-scale armament works in various military base areas.
Furthermore, this army is powerful because it has the
people’s self-defence corps and the militia—the vast armed
organizations of the masses—fighting in co-ordination with it. In the
Liberated Areas of China all men and women, from youth to middle age,
are organized in the people’s anti-Japanese self-defence corps on a
voluntary and democratic basis and without giving up their work in
production. The cream of the self-defence corps, except for those who
join the army or the guerrilla units, is brought into the militia.
Without the co-operation of these armed forces of the masses it would be
impossible to defeat the enemy.
Finally, this army is powerful because of its division into
two parts, the main forces and the regional forces, with the former
available for operations in any region whenever necessary and the latter
concentrating on defending their own localities and attacking the enemy
there in co-operation with the local militia and the self-defence
corps. This division of labour has won the whole-hearted support of the
people. Without this correct division of labour—if, for example,
attention were paid only to the role of the main forces while that of
the regional forces were neglected—it would likewise be impossible to
defeat the enemy in the conditions obtaining in China’s Liberated Areas.
Under the regional forces, numerous armed working teams have been
organized, which are well trained and hence better qualified for
military, political and mass work; they penetrate into the rearmost
areas behind the enemy lines, strike at the enemy and arouse the masses
to anti-Japanese struggle, thus giving support to the frontal military
operations of the various Liberated Areas. In all this they have
achieved great success.
Under the leadership of their democratic governments, all
the anti-Japanese people in the Liberated Areas of China are called upon
to join organizations of workers, peasants, youth and women, and
cultural, professional and other organizations, which will
whole-heartedly perform various tasks in support of the armed forces.
These tasks are not limited to rallying the people to join the army,
transporting grain for it, caring for soldiers’ families and helping the
troops in meeting their material needs. They also include mobilizing
the guerrilla units, militia and self-defence corps to make widespread
raids and lay land mines against the enemy, gather intelligence about
him, comb out traitors and spies, transport and protect the wounded and
take direct part in the army’s operations. At the same time, the people
in all the Liberated Areas are enthusiastically taking up various kinds
of political, economic, cultural and health work. The most important
thing in this connection is to mobilize everybody for the production of
grain and other necessities and to ensure that all government
institutions and schools, except in special cases, devote their free
time to production for their own support in order to supplement the
self-sufficiency production campaigns of the army and the people and
thus help to create a great upsurge of production to sustain the
protracted War of Resistance. In China’s Liberated Areas, the enemy has
wrought great havoc, and floods, droughts and damage by insect pests
have been frequent. However, the democratic governments there have been
leading the people in overcoming these difficulties in an organized way,
and unprecedented results have been achieved by the great mass
campaigns for pest extermination, flood control and disaster relief,
thus making it possible to persevere in the protracted War of
Resistance. In a word, everything for the front, everything for the
defeat of the Japanese aggressors and for the liberation of the Chinese
people—this is the general slogan, the general policy for the whole
army and the whole people in the Liberated Areas of China.
Such is a real people’s war. Only by waging such a people’s
war can we defeat the national enemy. The Kuomintang has failed
precisely because of its desperate opposition to a people’s war.
Once it is equipped with modern weapons, the army of China’s
Liberated Areas will become still more powerful and will be able to
accomplish the final defeat of the Japanese aggressors.
TWO BATTLE FRONTS
From the very beginning there have been two fronts in
China’s War of Resistance, the Kuomintang front and the front of the
Liberated Areas.
After the fall of Wuhan in October 1938, the Japanese
aggressors stopped their strategic offensive against the Kuomintang
front and gradually shifted their main forces to the front of the
Liberated Areas; at the same time, taking advantage of the defeatist
sentiments of the Kuomintang government, they declared their willingness
to arrive at a compromise peace with it, and, adopting a policy
designed to deceive the Chinese nation, they induced the traitor Wang
Ching-wei to leave Chungking and establish a puppet government in
Nanking. The Kuomintang government then began to change its policy,
gradually shifting the emphasis from resistance to Japan to opposition
to the Communist Party and the people. This shift first made itself
apparent in the military sphere. To conserve its own military
strength, the Kuomintang government adopted the policy of passive
resistance to Japan; it threw the burden of fighting onto the front of
the Liberated Areas by letting the Japanese invaders attack the
Liberated Areas in force, while itself “sitting on top of the mountain
to watch the tigers fight”.
In 1939, the Kuomintang government adopted the reactionary
“Measures for Restricting the Activities of Alien Parties” and
completely deprived the people and the anti-Japanese parties of whatever
rights they had won during the early period of the War of Resistance.
From then on, in the Kuomintang areas, all the democratic parties, and
first and foremost the Communist Party of China, have been driven
underground by the Kuomintang government. In every province in these
areas the prisons and concentration camps are packed with Communists,
young patriots and other fighters for democracy. In the five years from
1939 to the autumn of 1943, the Kuomintang government launched three
large-scale anti-Communist onslaughts
to split national unity, and thus created serious danger of civil war.
It was in this period that the “disbanding” of the New Fourth Army was
ordered and more than nine thousand of its troops in southern Anhwei
were annihilated—an event which shocked the world. To this very moment
the attacks by Kuomintang troops on the forces of the Liberated Areas
have not ceased, nor is there any sign that they will. At the same time,
the Kuomintang reactionaries have been pouring out slanders and
calumnies of all sorts. It is they who have fabricated such labels and
expressions as “traitor party”, “traitor army”, “traitor areas”, and
“sabotaging the War of Resistance and endangering the state”, for the
purpose of maligning the Communist Party, the Eighth Route and New
Fourth Armies and the Liberated Areas. To meet the crisis, on July 7,
1939 the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party issued a
manifesto setting forth the following slogans, “Persist in resistance
and oppose capitulation! Persist in unity and oppose a split! Persist
in progress and oppose retrogression!” In these five years, our Party,
acting on these timely slogans, vigorously repulsed the three
reactionary and anti-popular anti-Communist onslaughts and overcame the
crisis on each occasion.
There was actually no serious fighting on the Kuomintang front
during those years. The sword-edge of Japanese aggression was mainly
directed against the Liberated Areas. By 1943, the army and the people
of the Liberated Areas were pinning down 64 per cent of the Japanese
forces invading China and 95 per cent of the puppet troops, while the
Kuomintang front faced only 36 per cent of the former and 5 per cent of
the latter.
In 1944 the Japanese aggressors launched operations to force China’s north-south trunk railways open for through traffic;
panic-stricken, the Kuomintang forces were totally incapable of
offering resistance. Within a few months extensive areas in Honan,
Hunan, Kwangsi and Kwangtung Provinces had fallen into the enemy’s
hands. It was not until then that some change took place in the
proportion of enemy forces engaged on the two fronts. Even so, at the
moment of making this report, of the 40 divisions comprising 580,000
Japanese soldiers in China (not counting those in the three northeastern
provinces), 22½ divisions, comprising 320,000 men or 56 per cent of the
total forces, are engaged on the front of the Liberated Areas, and no
more than 17½ divisions, comprising 260,000 men or 44 per cent, are
engaged on the Kuomintang front. As for the puppet troops engaged on the
two fronts, the ratio has not changed at all.
It should also be pointed out that the puppet troops, numbering
more than 800,000 men (in both the regular and the local forces), are
chiefly composed either of units that surrendered under their Kuomintang
commanders or of units organized by the Kuomintang officers after their
surrender. The Kuomintang reactionaries have furnished these puppet
troops in advance with a false and traitorous theory, namely, “saving
the nation by a devious path”, and have given them moral and
organizational support since their surrender, directing them to attack
the Chinese people’s Liberated Areas in co-ordination with the Japanese
aggressors. These reactionaries have also mustered large forces,
totalling no less than 797,000 men, to blockade and attack the
Shensi-Kansu-Ningsia Border Region and other Liberated Areas. This grave
situation is being kept from the knowledge of many Chinese and
foreigners by the Kuomintang government’s policy of suppressing news.
CHINA’S LIBERATED AREAS
China’s Liberated Areas, led by the Communist Party, now
have a population of 95,500,000. They exist from Inner Mongolia in the
north to Hainan Island in the south; almost everywhere the enemy goes,
he finds the Eighth Route Army, the New Fourth Army or some other
people’s forces in operation. This vast liberated territory consists of
nineteen major Liberated Areas, covering greater or lesser parts of
the provinces of Liaoning, Jehol, Chahar, Suiyuan, Shensi, Kansu,
Ningsia, Shansi, Hopei, Honan, Shantung, Kiangsu, Chekiang, Anhwei,
Kiangsi, Hupeh, Hunan, Kwangtung and Fukien. Yenan is the centre from
which guidance is given to all these Liberated Areas. The
Shensi-Kansu-Ningsia Border Region west of the Yellow River, with a
population of only 1,500,000, is but one of the nineteen areas forming
this vast liberated part of China and, indeed, the smallest in
population except for one in eastern Chekiang Province and another on
Hainan Island. Unaware of this, some people think China’s liberated
territory consists chiefly of the Shensi-Kansu-Ningsia Border Region.
This misconception arises from the Kuomintang government’s blockade. In
every one of the Liberated Areas, all the requisite policies of the
Anti-Japanese National United Front have been put into practice, and
popularly elected governments, that is, local coalition governments,
have been or are being set up, in which Communists and representative
personalities of other anti-Japanese parties or without any party
affiliation are co-operating. The entire strength of the people has been
mobilized in the Liberated Areas. As a result, despite the
formidable pressure of the enemy, the Kuomintang’s military blockade and
attacks and the complete absence of outside help, China’s Liberated
Areas have stood firm and have grown steadily, reducing the territory
occupied by the enemy and extending their own; they have become the
model for a democratic China and the main force driving out the Japanese
aggressors and liberating the Chinese people in military co-operation
with the allied countries. The armed forces of China’s Liberated Areas,
the Eighth Route Army, the New Fourth Army and the other armed forces of
the people, have not only set a heroic example in fighting Japan, but
have also set an example in carrying out the democratic policies of the
Anti-Japanese National United Front. The declaration issued by the
Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on September 22, 1937
affirming that “Dr. Sun Yat-sen’s Three People’s Principles being what
China needs today, our Party is ready to fight for their complete
realization”, has been completely carried into effect in China’s
Liberated Areas.
THE KUOMINTANG AREAS
Persisting in its dictatorial rule, the chief ruling clique
of the Kuomintang has followed a policy of passive resistance to Japan
and a domestic policy directed against the people. In consequence,
its armed forces have shrunk to less than half their original size and
most of them have virtually lost their combat effectiveness; there is
a profound rift between this clique and the broad masses and a grave
crisis of mass impoverishment, seething discontent and widespread
revolt; not only has its role in the war been sharply reduced, but it
has also become an obstacle to the mobilization and unity of all the
anti-Japanese forces of the Chinese people.
Why has such a grave situation arisen under the leadership of the Kuomintang’s chief ruling clique? It
has arisen because that clique represents the interests of China’s big
landlords, big bankers and big compradors. The handful of people forming
this reactionary stratum monopolize all the important military,
political, economic and cultural organizations under the Kuomintang
government. They place the safeguarding of their own interests above
resistance to Japan. They too say “the nation above all”, but their
actions do not accord with the demands of the great majority of the
nation. They too say “the state above all”, but what they mean is the
feudal-fascist dictatorship of the big landlords, big bankers and big
compradors, and not a democratic state of the people. Therefore they are
afraid of the rise of the people, afraid of the democratic movement and
afraid of full mass mobilization for war against Japan. Herein lies the
root cause of their policy of passive resistance to Japan and their
reactionary domestic policy against the people, democracy and the
Communist Party. They have a double-faced policy in everything. For
instance, on the one hand they are resisting Japan but on the other they
are pursuing a passive war policy, and moreover they are the constant
target of Japanese inducements to surrender. They talk about developing
China’s economy, but in fact they build up their own bureaucrat-capital,
i.e., the capital of the big landlords, bankers and compradors,
and monopolize the lifelines of China’s economy, ruthlessly oppressing
the peasants, the workers, the petty bourgeoisie and the non-monopoly
bourgeoisie. They talk about putting “democracy” into practice and
“handing state power back to the people”, yet they ruthlessly suppress
the people’s movement for democracy and refuse to introduce the mildest
democratic reform. They say that “the Communist problem is a political
one and should be solved politically”, yet they ruthlessly suppress the
Chinese Communist Party militarily, politically and economically,
regarding it as “enemy No. 1” and the Japanese aggressors as only “enemy
No. 2”, and day in and day out they busy themselves with preparations
for a civil war and plots to annihilate the Communist Party. They say
they will establish a “modern state”, yet they work desperately to
maintain the feudal-fascist dictatorship of the big landlords, bankers
and compradors. While maintaining formal diplomatic relations with
the Soviet Union, they are in fact hostile to it. They chant “Asia
before Europe” in chorus with the U.S. isolationists in order to prolong
the life of fascist Germany, which amounts to prolonging the life of
fascists everywhere, including their own fascist rule over the Chinese
people, yet at the same time they indulge in diplomatic manoeuvres,
masquerading as anti-fascist heroes. If you look for the root of
these contradictory double-faced policies, you will find they all stem
from the social stratum of the big landlords, bankers and compradors.
Nevertheless, the Kuomintang is not a homogeneous political
party. Though it is controlled and led by the reactionary clique
representing the stratum of the big landlords, bankers and compradors,
it must not be entirely identified with this clique. Some Kuomintang
leaders do not belong to this clique by which they are even slighted,
pushed aside or attacked. Many of its cadres and rank and file and many
members of the Three People’s Principles Youth League are dissatisfied
with the leadership of this clique, and some even oppose it. The same is
true of all the Kuomintang armies, government organs and economic and
cultural institutions which this reactionary clique controls. There are
quite a number of democratic elements in all of them. Moreover, the
reactionary clique itself, divided as it is into several contending
factions, is not a close-knit body. Undoubtedly it is wrong to regard
the Kuomintang as a homogeneous body of reactionaries.
A CONTRAST
The Chinese people have come to see the sharp contrast between the Liberated Areas and the Kuomintang areas.
Are not the facts clear enough? Here are two lines, the line
of a people’s war and the line of passive resistance, which is against a
people’s war; one leads to victory even in the difficult conditions in
China’s Liberated Areas with their total lack of outside aid, and the
other leads to defeat even in the extremely favourable conditions in the
Kuomintang areas with foreign aid available.
The Kuomintang government attributes its failures to lack of arms.
Yet one may ask, which of the two are short of arms, the
Kuomintang troops or the troops of the Liberated Areas? Of all China’s
forces, those of the Liberated Areas lack arms most acutely, their only
weapons being those they capture from the enemy or manufacture under the
most adverse conditions.
Is it not true that the forces directly under the Kuomintang
central government are far better armed than the provincial troops? Yet
in combat effectiveness most of the central forces are inferior to the
provincial troops.
The Kuomintang commands vast reserves of manpower, yet its
wrong recruiting policy makes manpower replenishment very difficult.
Though cut off from each other by the enemy and engaged in constant
fighting, China’s Liberated Areas are able to mobilize inexhaustible
manpower because the militia and self-defence corps system, which is
well-adapted to the needs of the people, is applied everywhere, and
because misuse and waste of manpower are avoided.
Although the Kuomintang controls vast areas abounding in grain
and the people supply it with 70-100 million tan annually, its army is
always short of food and its soldiers are emaciated because the greater
part of the grain is embezzled by those through whose hands it passes.
But although most of China’s Liberated Areas, which are located in the
enemy rear, have been devastated by the enemy’s policy of “burn all,
kill all, loot all”, and although some regions like northern Shensi are
very arid, we have successfully solved the grain problem through our own
efforts by increasing agricultural production.
The Kuomintang areas are facing a very grave economic crisis;
most industries are bankrupt, and even such necessities as cloth have to
be imported from the United States. But China’s Liberated Areas are
able to meet their own needs in cloth and other necessities through the
development of industry.
In the Kuomintang areas, the workers, peasants, shop
assistants, government employees, intellectuals and cultural workers
live in extreme misery. In the Liberated Areas all the people have food,
clothing and work.
It is characteristic of the Kuomintang areas that,
exploiting the national crisis for profiteering purposes, officials have
concurrently become traders and habitual grafters without any sense of
shame or decency. It is characteristic of China’s Liberated Areas that,
setting an example of plain living and hard work, the cadres take part
in production in addition to their regular duties; honesty is held in
high esteem while graft is strictly prohibited.
In the Kuomintang areas the people have no freedom at all. In China’s Liberated Areas the people have full freedom.
Who is to blame for all the anomalies which confront the
Kuomintang rulers? Are others to blame, or they themselves? Are foreign
countries to blame for not giving them enough aid, or are the Kuomintang
government’s dictatorial rule, corruption and incompetence to blame?
Isn’t the answer obvious?
WHO IS “SABOTAGING THE WAR OF RESISTANCE AND ENDANGERING THE STATE”?
In the light of the indisputable evidence, is it not the
Kuomintang government itself that has been sabotaging the Chinese
people’s War of Resistance and endangering our country? For fully ten
years that government devoted itself wholly to civil war, turning the
edge of its sword against the people while utterly neglecting national
defence, and by its policy of non-resistance it gave away the four
northeastern provinces. When the Japanese aggressors drove south of the
Great Wall, it put up a flurry of resistance and then retreated from
Lukouchiao all the way to the province of Kweichow. Yet the Kuomintang
alleges that “the Communist Party is sabotaging the War of Resistance
and endangering the state” (see resolutions of the Eleventh Plenary
Session of the Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang, held in
September 1943). Its only evidence is that the Communist Party has
united with all sections of the people to create the Liberated Areas
which are heroically resisting Japan. The logic of the Kuomintang is so
different from that of the Chinese people that the failure to arrive at a
common language on many problems is not to be wondered at.
Here are two questions.
First, what exactly has made the Kuomintang government abandon
so vast and so well populated a territory, stretching from Heilungkiang
Province to Lukouchiao and from Lukouchiao to Kweichow? Can it be
anything other than its policy first of non-resistance and then of
passive resistance to Japan, and its domestic policy of opposing
the people?
Second, what exactly has enabled China’s Liberated Areas to
smash the ruthless and prolonged attacks of the Japanese and puppet
forces, to recover such vast territories and liberate such an immense
population from the grip of the national enemy? Can it be anything other
than our correct line, the line of a people’s war?
“DISOBEDIENCE TO GOVERNMENTAL AND MILITARY ORDERS”
The Kuomintang government also constantly accuses the Chinese
Communist Party of “disobedience to governmental and military orders”.
All we need say is that fortunately the Chinese Communists, sharing the
common sense of the Chinese people, have not obeyed such “governmental
and military orders” as in fact would have meant handing over to the
Japanese aggressors the Liberated Areas which the Chinese people had
recaptured from them amid great difficulties and hardships. Some
examples are the “Measures for Restricting the Activities of Alien
Parties” in 1939, the orders for the “disbandment of the New Fourth
Army” and for its “withdrawal north of the old course of the Yellow
River” in 1941, the order for the “dissolution of the Communist Party of
China” in 1943, the order for us to “disband all the troops except for
ten divisions within a definite time limit” in 1944, and the proposal
which the Kuomintang government called “a concession” in the recent
talks with us and which would require us to hand over our armed forces
and local governments in exchange for a few posts in its dictatorial
government, but without the formation of a coalition government.
Fortunately we have not submitted to this sort of thing and have thus
preserved an undefiled stretch of soil and a heroic anti-Japanese army
for the Chinese people. Should not the Chinese people congratulate
themselves on such “disobedience”? Does not the Kuomintang government
feel it has done enough after presenting the Japanese aggressors with
the vast populated area from Heilungkiang to Kweichow through its own
fascist government decrees and defeatist military orders? The Japanese
aggressors and the reactionaries welcome these “governmental and
military orders”, but can such things be welcomed by any upright Chinese
patriot? Unless there is a coalition government, not in form but in
fact, not a fascist dictatorship but a democratic government, is it
conceivable that the Chinese people would permit the Chinese Communists
to hand over the Liberated Areas where the people have won freedom as
well as the people’s armies that have performed signal service in the
War of Resistance to the present Kuomintang government, which is defeatist, fascist and dictatorial?
Without the Liberated Areas and the people’s army, could the
anti-Japanese cause of the Chinese people be what it is today? And can
one possibly conceive what the future of the Chinese nation would be?
THE DANGER OF CIVIL WAR
To this day the chief ruling clique in the Kuomintang is persisting in its reactionary policy of dictatorship and civil war.
There are many signs that it has long been making, and is now stepping
up, preparations to unleash civil war as soon as the forces of a certain
allied country have cleared a considerable part of the Chinese mainland
of the Japanese aggressors. It also hopes that the generals of certain
allied countries will do the same job in China as the British General
Scobie
has been doing in Greece. It applauds the butchery perpetrated by
Scobie and the reactionary Greek government. It is planning to plunge
China once again into the maelstrom of civil war, as in 1927-37. Behind the smokescreen of “convening the national assembly” and “political settlement”, it is secretly preparing civil war.
If our fellow-countrymen fail to take note, fail to expose its schemes
and put a stop to these preparations, then one fine morning they will
hear the cannonade of civil war.
NEGOTIATIONS
After obtaining the consent of other democratic parties, the Communist Party of China put forward the demand at the People’s Political Council in September 1944 that the Kuomintang one-party dictatorship be abolished immediately and a democratic coalition government be formed
for the purpose of defeating the Japanese aggressors, building a new
China and preventing civil war. This was undoubtedly a timely demand,
and in the space of a few months it has won the warm response of the
broad masses.
We have had many rounds of negotiations with the Kuomintang
government on the question of abolishing the one-party dictatorship,
forming a coalition government and instituting essential democratic
reforms, but it has rejected all our proposals. Not only is the
Kuomintang unwilling to abolish the one-party dictatorship and form a
coalition government, it is unwilling to introduce a single one of the
urgently needed democratic reforms, such as the abolition of the secret
police, the annulment of the reactionary laws and decrees that suppress
the people’s freedom, the release of political prisoners, recognition of
the legal status of the political parties, recognition of the Liberated
Areas and the withdrawal of the armies blockading and attacking them.
Consequently political relations in China have become very strained.
TWO PROSPECTS
In the light of the situation as a whole and of the above
analysis of the actual international and domestic state of affairs, I
would ask everyone here to be on the alert and not to expect that our
cause will proceed smoothly and easily. No, it will not. Actually there
are two possibilities, two prospects, one good and one bad. One
possibility or prospect is that the fascist dictatorship will continue
and democratic reforms will not be allowed, that the stress will be on
opposing the people instead of the Japanese aggressors, and even that
civil war may break out after the Japanese aggressors are defeated,
dragging China back into her old miserable state, without independence,
freedom, democracy, unity, prosperity or strength. This possibility or
prospect is still there, and it has not ceased to exist or has not
automatically vanished simply because of the favourable international
situation and the increased political consciousness and organized
strength of our people. Those who hope that this possibility or
prospect will become a reality in China are the reactionary clique
within the Kuomintang at home and the imperialist-minded reactionaries
abroad. This is one aspect which must be taken into account.
But there is another aspect and, again in the light of the
situation as a whole and the foregoing analysis of the international and
domestic state of affairs, we can gain added confidence and courage in
striving for the second possibility or prospect. It is that of
overcoming all difficulties, uniting the whole people, abolishing the
Kuomintang’s fascist dictatorship, carrying out democratic reforms,
consolidating and expanding the anti-Japanese forces, thoroughly
defeating the Japanese aggressors and building an independent, free,
democratic, united, prosperous and powerful new China. Those who hope
that this possibility or prospect will become a reality in China are the
masses, the Communist Party and the other democratic parties at home,
and all the nations that treat us as equals and the progressives and the
masses abroad.
We know full well that we Communists together with the whole
Chinese people still face great difficulties and many obstacles and have
a long and tortuous road to travel. But we know equally well that,
together with the whole Chinese people, we shall overcome all the
difficulties and obstacles and accomplish the task which history has
entrusted China. The great task for us and for the whole people is to
avert the first possibility or prospect and work for the second with
every ounce of our energy. Essentially the international and domestic
situation favours us Communists together with the Chinese people as a
whole. This I have already made quite clear. We hope that the Kuomintang
authorities will have the courage to change their present wrong
policies in view of the general world trend and the popular feeling in
China, so that the war can be won, the sufferings of the Chinese people
can be reduced and a new China can soon be brought into being. It
must be understood that, however tortuous the road, the Chinese people
will certainly accomplish the task of achieving independence and
liberation, and that the time has come for them to do so. It falls to
our generation to fulfil the great aspirations cherished by countless
martyrs in the past century, and any attempt to stop us will undoubtedly
end in failure.
THE POLICY OF THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY
I have analysed the two lines in China’s War of Resistance.
Such an analysis is absolutely necessary. For up to this very moment
many Chinese people still do not know what is really going on in this
war. Many people in the Kuomintang areas and in foreign countries are
being kept in the dark by the Kuomintang government’s policy of
blockade. They knew practically nothing about China’s Liberated Areas
until a group of Chinese and foreign correspondents came here in 1944 on
a tour of observation. As soon as this group returned, the Kuomintang
government, which was very much afraid of the true situation in the
Liberated Areas becoming known outside, bolted the door and refused to
let any other correspondent come here. Similarly it has suppressed the
truth about the Kuomintang areas. Therefore I feel that we have the duty
to give the public as much of the true picture of “the two areas” as
possible. Only when people see the whole situation in China clearly
will they understand why there is such a difference in policy between
the Communist Party and the Kuomintang, the two biggest political
parties in China, and why there is such a struggle between the two
lines. Only then will people understand that the dispute between the two
parties is not an unnecessary or unimportant or merely captious
dispute, as some have alleged, but is one of principle on which the
lives of hundreds of millions of people depend.
In China’s present grave situation, the people, the democrats
and democratic parties at home and the people in other countries who are
concerned about the Chinese situation all hope that unity will replace
disunity and that democratic reforms will be introduced, and they all
want to know what the policy of the Chinese Communist Party is for
solving the many vital problems of today. The members of our Party, of
course, have a still deeper interest in these matters.
Our policies of the Anti-Japanese National United Front in the
war have always been clear and definite, and they have been tested in
the eight years of war. Our congress should draw conclusions from them
as a guide for our future struggles.
Here I shall explain a number of the definite conclusions
arrived at by our Party concerning the major policies for solving
China’s problems.
OUR GENERAL PROGRAMME
An agreed common programme is urgently needed by the Chinese
people, the Chinese Communist Party and all the anti-Japanese democratic
parties for the purpose of mobilizing and uniting all the anti-Japanese
forces of the Chinese people, completely wiping out the Japanese
aggressors and building a new China that is independent, free,
democratic, united, prosperous and powerful.
Such a common programme may be divided into two parts, the general and the specific. Let us consider first the general and then the specific programme.
On the major premise that the Japanese aggressors must be completely destroyed and a new China must be built, we Communists and the overwhelming majority of the population are agreed on the following fundamental propositions
at the present stage of China’s development. First, China should not
have a feudal, fascist and anti-popular state system under the
dictatorship of the big landlords and big bourgeoisie, because eighteen
years of government by the chief ruling clique of the Kuomintang have
already proved its complete bankruptcy. Second, China cannot possibly
establish the old type of democratic dictatorship—a purely
national-bourgeois state—and therefore should not attempt to do so,
because on the one hand the Chinese national bourgeoisie has proved
itself very flabby economically and politically, and on the other, for a
long time now a new factor has been present, namely, the awakened
Chinese proletariat with its leader, the Chinese Communist Party, which
has demonstrated great capacity in the political arena and assumed
leadership of the peasant masses, the urban petty bourgeoisie, the
intelligentsia and other democratic forces. Third, it is likewise
impossible for the Chinese people to institute a socialist state system
at the present stage when it is still their task to fight foreign and
feudal oppression and the necessary social and economic conditions for a
socialist state are still lacking.
What then do we propose? We propose the establishment, after
the thorough defeat of the Japanese aggressors, of a state system which
we call New Democracy, namely, a united-front democratic alliance based
on the overwhelming majority of the people, under the leadership of the
working class.
It is this kind of state system that truly meets the demands of
the overwhelming majority of the Chinese population, because it can win
and indeed has been winning the approval, first, of millions of
industrial workers and tens of millions of handicraftsmen and farm
labourers, second, of the peasantry, which constitutes 80 per cent of
China’s population, i.e., 360 million out of a population of 450
million, and third, of the large numbers of the urban petty bourgeoisie
as well as the national bourgeoisie, the enlightened gentry and
other patriots.
Of course, there are still contradictions among these classes,
notably the contradiction between labour and capital, and consequently
each has its own particular demands. It would be hypocritical and wrong
to deny the existence of these contradictions and differing demands. But
throughout the stage of New Democracy, these contradictions, these
differing demands, will not grow and transcend the demands which all
have in common and should not be allowed to do so; they can be adjusted.
Given such adjustment, these classes can together accomplish the
political, economic and cultural tasks of the new-democratic state.
The politics of New Democracy which we advocate consists in the
overthrow of external oppression and of internal feudal and fascist
oppression, and then the setting up not of the old type of democracy but
of a political system which is a united front of all the democratic
classes. These views of ours are completely in accord with the
revolutionary views of Dr. Sun Yat-sen. In the Manifesto of the First
National Congress of the Kuomintang, Dr. Sun wrote:
The so-called democratic system in modern states is usually
monopolized by the bourgeoisie and has become simply an instrument for
oppressing the common people. On the other hand, the Kuomintang’s
Principle of Democracy means a democratic system shared by all the
common people and not privately owned by the few.
This is a great political injunction of Dr. Sun’s. The Chinese
people, the Chinese Communist Party and all other democrats must respect
it, firmly put it into practice and wage a determined fight against all
individuals and groups that violate or oppose it, and so defend and
develop this perfectly correct political principle of New Democracy.
The organizational principle of the new-democratic state
should be democratic centralism, with the people’s congresses
determining the major policies and electing the governments at the
various levels. It is at once democratic and centralized, that is,
centralized on the basis of democracy and democratic under centralized
guidance. This is the only system that can give full expression to
democracy with full powers vested in the people’s congresses at all
levels and, at the same time, guarantee centralized administration with
the governments at each level exercising centralized management of all
the affairs entrusted to them by the people’s congresses at the
corresponding level and safeguarding whatever is essential to the
democratic life of the people.
The army and the other armed forces constitute an important
part of the apparatus of the new-democratic state power, without which
the state cannot be defended. As with all other organs of power, the
armed forces of the new-democratic state belong to the people and
protect the people; they have nothing in common with the army, police,
etc. of the old type which belong to the few and oppress the people.
The economy of New Democracy which we advocate is likewise in
accord with Dr. Sun’s principles. On the land question, Dr. Sun
championed “land to the tiller”. On the question of industry and
commerce, Dr. Sun stated in the Manifesto quoted above:
Enterprises, such as banks, railways and airlines, whether
Chinese-owned or foreign-owned, which are either monopolistic in
character or too big for private management, shall be operated and
administered by the state, so that private capital cannot dominate the
livelihood of the people: this is the main principle of the regulation
of capital.
In the present stage, we fully agree with these views of Dr. Sun’s on economic questions.
Some people suspect that the Chinese Communists are opposed to
the development of individual initiative, the growth of private capital
and the protection of private property, but they are mistaken. It is
foreign oppression and feudal oppression that cruelly fetter the
development of the individual initiative of the Chinese people, hamper
the growth of private capital and destroy the property of the people. It
is the very task of the New Democracy we advocate to remove these
fetters and stop this destruction, to guarantee that the people can
freely develop their individuality within the framework of society and
freely develop such private capitalist economy as will benefit and not
“dominate the livelihood of the people”, and to protect all appropriate
forms of private property.
In accordance with Dr. Sun’s principles and the experience of
the Chinese revolution, China’s national economy at the present stage
should be composed of the state sector, the private sector and the
co-operative sector. But the state here must certainly not be one
“privately owned by the few”, but a new-democratic state “shared by all
the common people” under the leadership of the proletariat.
The culture of New Democracy should likewise be “shared by
all the common people”, that is, it should be a national, scientific and
mass culture, and must under no circumstances be a culture “privately
owned by the few”.
Such is the general or fundamental programme which we
Communists advocate for the present stage, the entire stage of the
bourgeois-democratic revolution. This is our minimum programme as
against our future or maximum programme of socialism and communism. Its
realization will carry the Chinese state and Chinese society a step
forward, from a colonial, semi-colonial and semi-feudal to a
new-democratic state and society.
The political leadership of the proletariat and the
proletarian-led state and co-operative sectors of the economy required
by our programme are socialist factors. Yet the fulfilment of this
programme will not turn China into a socialist society.
We Communists do not conceal our political views. Definitely
and beyond all doubt, our future or maximum programme is to carry China
forward to socialism and communism. Both the name of our Party and our
Marxist world outlook unequivocally point to this supreme ideal of the
future, a future of incomparable brightness and splendour. On joining
the Party, every Communist has two clearly-defined objectives at heart,
the new-democratic revolution now and socialism and communism in the
future, and for these he will fight despite the animosity of the enemies
of communism and their vulgar and ignorant calumny, abuse and ridicule,
which we must firmly combat. As for the well-meaning sceptics, we
should explain things to them with goodwill and patience and not attack
them. All this is very clear, definite and unequivocal.
But all Communists and sympathizers with communism in China
must struggle to achieve the objective of the present stage; they must
struggle against foreign and feudal oppression to deliver the Chinese
people from their miserable colonial, semi-colonial and semi-feudal
plight and establish a proletarian-led new-democratic China whose main
task is the liberation of the peasantry, a China of the revolutionary
Three People’s Principles of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, a China which is
independent, free, democratic, united, prosperous and powerful. This is
what we have actually been doing. Together with the masses of the
Chinese people, we Communists have been fighting heroically for this
objective for the past twenty-four years.
If any Communist or Communist sympathizer talks about
socialism and communism but fails to fight for this objective, if he
belittles this bourgeois-democratic revolution, relaxes or slows down
ever so slightly and shows the least disloyalty and coolness or is
reluctant to shed his blood or give his life for it, then wittingly or
unwittingly, such a person is betraying socialism and communism to a
greater or lesser extent and is certainly not a politically conscious
and staunch fighter for communism. It is a law of Marxism that socialism
can be attained only via the stage of democracy. And in China the fight for democracy is a protracted one. It would be a sheer illusion to try to build a socialist society
on the ruins of the colonial, semi-colonial and semi-feudal order
without a united new-democratic state, without the development of the
state sector of the new-democratic economy, of the private capitalist
and the co-operative sectors, and of a national, scientific and mass
culture, i.e., a new-democratic culture, and without the
liberation and the development of the individuality of hundreds of
millions of people—in short, without a thoroughgoing bourgeois-democratic revolution of a new type led by the Communist Party.
Some people fail to understand why, so far from fearing
capitalism, Communists should advocate its development in certain given
conditions. Our answer is simple. The substitution of a certain degree
of capitalist development for the oppression of foreign imperialism and
domestic feudalism is not only an advance but an unavoidable process. It
benefits the proletariat as well as the bourgeoisie, and the former
perhaps more. It is not domestic capitalism but foreign imperialism and
domestic feudalism which are superfluous in China today; indeed, we have
too little of capitalism. Strangely enough, some spokesmen of the
Chinese bourgeoisie fight shy of openly advocating the development of
capitalism, but refer to it obliquely. There are other people who flatly
deny that China should permit a necessary degree of capitalist
development and who talk about reaching socialism in one stride and
“accomplishing at one stroke” the tasks of the Three People’s Principles
and socialism. Obviously, these opinions either reflect the weakness of
the Chinese national bourgeoisie or are a demagogic trick on the part
of the big landlords and the big bourgeoisie. From our knowledge of the
Marxist laws of social development, we Communists clearly understand
that under the state system of New Democracy in China it will be
necessary in the interests of social progress to facilitate the
development of the private capitalist sector of the economy (provided it
does not dominate the livelihood of the people) besides the development
of the state sector and of the individual and co-operative sectors run
by the labouring people. We Communists will not let empty talk or deceitful tricks befuddle us.
There are some people who doubt whether we Communists are
sincere when we declare that “the Three People’s Principles being what
China needs today, our Party is ready to fight for their complete
realization”. This is the result of their failure to understand that the
basic tenets of the Three People’s Principles, which Dr. Sun Yat-sen
enunciated in the Manifesto of the First National Congress of the
Kuomintang in 1924 and which we have accepted, coincide with certain
basic tenets of our Party’s programme for the present stage, that is, of
our minimum programme. It should be pointed out that these Three
People’s Principles of Dr. Sun Yat-sen coincide with our Party’s
programme for the present stage only in certain basic tenets and not in
everything. Our Party’s programme of New Democracy is of course much
more comprehensive than Dr. Sun’s principles, particularly as our
Party’s theory, programme and practice of New Democracy have greatly
developed with the development of the Chinese revolution in the twenty
years since Dr. Sun’s death, and will develop still further. In
essence, however, these Three People’s Principles are a programme of New
Democracy, as distinguished from the previous, old Three People’s
Principles; naturally they are “what China needs today” and naturally
“our Party is ready to fight for their complete realization”. To us
Chinese Communists, the struggle for our Party’s minimum programme and
the struggle for Dr. Sun’s revolutionary, or new, Three People’s
Principles are basically (though not in every respect) one and the same
thing. Therefore, as in the past and the present, the Chinese Communists
will prove to be the most sincere and thoroughgoing executors of the
revolutionary Three People’s Principles in the future as well.
Some people are suspicious and think that once in power, the
Communist Party will follow Russia’s example and establish the
dictatorship of the proletariat and a one-party system. Our answer is
that a new-democratic state based on an alliance of the democratic
classes is different in principle from a socialist state under the
dictatorship of the proletariat. Beyond all doubt, our system of New
Democracy will be built under the leadership of the proletariat and of
the Communist Party, but throughout the stage of New Democracy China
cannot possibly have a one-class dictatorship and one-party government
and therefore should not attempt it. We have no reason for refusing
to co-operate with all political parties, social groups and individuals,
provided their attitude to the Communist Party is co-operative and not
hostile. The Russian system has been shaped by Russian history; in
Russia the exploitation of man by man has been abolished as a social
system, the political, economic and cultural system of the newest type
of democracy, i.e., socialism, has been put into effect, and the
people support the Bolshevik Party alone, having discarded all the
anti-socialist parties. All this has shaped the Russian system, which is
perfectly necessary and reasonable there. But even in Russia, where the
Bolshevik Party is the sole political party, the system practised in
the organs of state power is still one of an alliance of workers,
peasants and intellectuals and an alliance of Party members and
non-Party people, and not a system in which the working class and the
Bolsheviks alone may work in the organs of government. The Chinese
system for the present stage is being shaped by the present stage of
Chinese history, and for a long time to come there will exist a
special form of state and political power, a form that is distinguished
from the Russian system but is perfectly necessary and reasonable for
us, namely, the new-democratic form of state and political power based
on the alliance of the democratic classes.
OUR SPECIFIC PROGRAMME
Our Party must also have a specific programme for each period based on this general programme. Our general programme of New Democracy will remain unchanged throughout the stage of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, that is, for several decades. But
from phase to phase during this stage, conditions have changed or are
changing and it is only natural that we have to change our specific
programme accordingly. For example, our general programme of New
Democracy has remained the same throughout the periods of the Northern
Expedition, the Agrarian Revolutionary War and the War of Resistance
Against Japan, but there have been changes in our specific programme,
because our friends and enemies have not remained the same in the
three periods.
The Chinese people now find themselves in the following situation:
(1) the Japanese aggressors have not yet been defeated; (2) the Chinese
people urgently need to work together for a democratic change in order
to achieve national unity, rapidly mobilize and unite all anti-Japanese
forces, and defeat the Japanese aggressors in co-operation with the
allies; and (3) the Kuomintang government is disrupting national unity
and obstructing such a democratic change.
What is our specific programme in the circumstances or, in other words, what are the immediate demands of the people?
We consider the following to be appropriate and minimum demands:
Mobilize all available forces for the thorough defeat of
the Japanese aggressors and the establishment of international peace in
co-operation with the allies;
Abolish the Kuomintang one-party dictatorship and establish a democratic coalition government and a joint supreme command;
Punish the pro-Japanese elements, fascists and defeatists
who are opposing the people and disrupting national unity, and so help
to build national unity;
Punish the reactionaries who are creating the danger of civil war, and so help to ensure internal peace;
Punish the traitors, take punitive action against officers who surrender to the enemy, and punish the agents of the Japanese;
Liquidate the reactionary secret service and all its repressive activities and abolish the concentration camps;
Revoke all reactionary laws and decrees aimed at
suppressing the people’s freedom of speech, press, assembly,
association, political conviction and religious belief and freedom of
the person, and guarantee full civil rights to the people;
Recognize the legal status of all democratic parties and groups;
Release all patriotic political prisoners;
Withdraw all troops encircling and attacking China’s Liberated Areas and dispatch them to the anti-Japanese front;
Recognize the anti-Japanese armed forces and popularly elected governments of China’s Liberated Areas;
Consolidate and expand the Liberated Areas and their armed forces, and recover all lost territory;
Help the people in the Japanese-occupied areas to organize underground armed forces for armed uprisings;
Allow the Chinese people to arm themselves and defend their homes and their country;
Bring about the political and military transformation of
those armies directly under the Kuomintang supreme command, which
constantly lose battles, oppress the people and discriminate against
armies not directly under it, and punish the commanders who are
responsible for disastrous defeats;
Improve the recruiting system and the living conditions of the officers and men;
Give preferential treatment to the families of the
soldiers fighting in the anti-Japanese war, so that the officers and men
at the front are free from domestic worries;
Provide preferential treatment for disabled soldiers and
for the families of the soldiers who give their lives for the country,
and help demobilized soldiers to settle down and earn a living;
Develop war industries to facilitate the prosecution of the war;
Distribute the military and financial aid received from
the allies impartially to all the armies fighting in the War
of Resistance;
Punish corrupt officials and institute clean government;
Improve the pay of the middle and lower grade government employees;
Give the Chinese people democratic rights;
Abolish the oppressive pao-chia system;
Provide the war refugees and the victims of natural disasters with relief;
Appropriate substantial funds after the recovery of
China’s lost territory for the extensive relief of people who have
suffered under enemy occupation;
Abolish exorbitant taxes and miscellaneous levies and establish a consolidated progressive tax;
Introduce rural reforms, reduce rent and interest,
provide suitable safeguards for the rights of tenants, grant
low-interest loans to impoverished peasants and help the peasants to
organize, in order to facilitate the expansion of
agricultural production;
Outlaw bureaucrat-capital;
Abolish the present policy of economic controls;
Check the unbridled inflation and rocketing prices;
Assist private industry and provide it with facilities for obtaining loans, purchasing raw materials and marketing its products;
Improve the livelihood of the workers, provide relief for
the unemployed and help the workers to organize, in order to facilitate
the expansion of industrial production;
Abolish Kuomintang indoctrination in education and promote a national, scientific and mass culture and education;
Guarantee the livelihood of the teachers and other staff members of educational institutions and guarantee academic freedom;
Protect the interests of the youth, women and
children—provide assistance to young student refugees, help the youth
and women to organize in order to participate on an equal footing in all
work useful to the war effort and to social progress, ensure freedom of
marriage and equality as between men and women, and give young people
and children a useful education;
Give the minority nationalities in China better treatment and grant them autonomous rights;
Protect the interests of the overseas Chinese and assist those who have returned to the motherland;
Protect foreign nationals who have fled to China from the
Japanese oppression and support their struggle against the
Japanese aggressors;
Improve Sino-Soviet relations.
To achieve these demands, the most important thing is the
immediate abolition of the Kuomintang one-party dictatorship and the
establishment of a democratic provisional central government, a
coalition government enjoying nation-wide support and including
representatives of all the anti-Japanese parties and people without
party affiliation. Without this prerequisite it is impossible to make
any genuine change in the Kuomintang areas, and therefore in the country
as a whole.
These demands voice the desires of the Chinese masses and also
of broad sections of democratic public opinion in the allied countries.
A minimum specific programme which is agreed upon by all the
anti-Japanese democratic parties is absolutely indispensable, and we are
prepared to consult with them on the basis of the programme outlined
above. Different parties may have different demands, but all should
reach agreement on a common programme.
As far as the Kuomintang areas are concerned, such a programme
is still at the stage of being a demand of the people; as far as the
Japanese-occupied areas are concerned, it is a programme whose
fulfilment must await their recovery, except for the item on the
organization of underground forces for armed uprisings; as far as the
Liberated Areas are concerned, it is a programme which has already been,
is being and should continue to be, put into practice.
The immediate demands or specific programme of the Chinese
people outlined above involve many vital war-time and post-war problems
which require further elucidation. In explaining these problems below we
shall criticize some of the wrong viewpoints held by the chief ruling
clique of the Kuomintang and at the same time answer some questions
raised by other people.
Destroy the Japanese Aggressors Completely, Allow No Compromise Halfway
The Cairo conference
rightly decided that the Japanese aggressors must be made to surrender
unconditionally. But the Japanese aggressors are now working behind the
scenes for a compromise peace, while the pro-Japanese elements in the
Kuomintang government are hitching up with Japan’s secret emissaries
through the Nanking puppet government, and no stop has been put to this.
Hence the danger of a halfway compromise is not yet entirely over. The
Cairo conference made another good decision, namely, that the four
northeastern provinces, Taiwan and the Penghu Islands should be returned
to China. But, given its present policies, the Kuomintang government
cannot possibly be relied upon to fight all the way to the Yalu River
and recover all our lost territory. What should the Chinese people do in
these circumstances? They should demand that the Kuomintang government
should destroy the Japanese aggressors completely and allow no
compromise halfway. All intrigues for a compromise must immediately be
stopped. The Chinese people should demand that the Kuomintang government
should change its present policy of passive resistance and employ all
its military strength in active warfare against Japan. They should
expand their own armed forces—the Eighth Route Army, the New Fourth
Army and the other armed units of the people—and on their own
initiative develop anti-Japanese armed forces on an extensive scale
wherever the enemy has reached, and they should prepare to recover all
the lost territory by fighting in direct co-operation with the allies;
under no circumstances must they place their reliance solely on the
Kuomintang. It is the sacred right of the Chinese people to defeat the
Japanese aggressors. If the reactionaries try to deprive them of this
right, suppress their anti-Japanese activities or undermine their
strength, then the Chinese people should firmly strike back in
self-defence if persuasion proves unavailing. For such acts of national
treachery on the part of the Chinese reactionaries only aid and abet the
Japanese aggressors.
Abolish the Kuomintang One-Party Dictatorship, Establish a Democratic Coalition Government
To wipe out the Japanese aggressors it is necessary to effect
democratic reforms throughout the country. Yet this will be impossible
unless the one-party dictatorship of the Kuomintang is abolished and a
democratic coalition government is established.
The one-party dictatorship of the Kuomintang is in reality the
dictatorship of the anti-popular clique within the Kuomintang, and this
dictatorship is the disruptor of China’s national unity, the author of
the defeats on the Kuomintang front in the war, and the basic obstacle
to the mobilization and unification of the anti-Japanese forces of the
Chinese people. The Chinese people have become fully aware of the evils
of this dictatorship through eight years of bitter experience in the War
of Resistance, and they naturally demand its immediate abolition. This
reactionary dictatorship is also the breeder of civil war and, unless it
is immediately abolished, it will again bring the calamity of civil war
upon them.
So widespread and resounding is the outcry of the Chinese
people for the abolition of the anti-popular dictatorship that the
Kuomintang authorities themselves have been forced to agree publicly to
the “earlier termination of political tutelage”, which shows how far
this “political tutelage” or one-party dictatorship has forfeited
popular support and prestige. There is not a single person in China who
still dares to assert that “political tutelage” or one-party
dictatorship is any good or that it should not be abolished or
“terminated”, and that marks a great change in the situation.
It is definite and beyond all doubt that it should be
“terminated”. But opinions differ as to how to do it. Some say,
terminate it at once and establish a provisional democratic coalition
government. Others say, wait a bit, convene the “national assembly”, and
“hand state power back to the people” and not to a
coalition government.
What does this mean?
It means there are two ways of doing things, the honest way and the dishonest way.
First, the honest way. The honest way is immediately to
proclaim the abolition of the Kuomintang one-party dictatorship, to
establish a provisional central government composed of representatives
of the Kuomintang, the Communist Party, the Democratic League and people
with no party affiliation, and to promulgate a democratic programme of
political action such as the immediate demands of the Chinese people
which we have set forth above, with the aim of restoring national unity
and defeating the Japanese aggressors. A roundtable conference of the
representatives of the various parties and people with no party
affiliation should be convened to discuss and reach agreement on these
matters, and action should then be taken accordingly. This is the road
of unity, which the Chinese people will firmly support.
Second, the dishonest way. The dishonest way is to disregard
the demands of the masses and of all the democratic parties and to
insist on convening a so-called national assembly stage-managed by the
anti-popular clique in the Kuomintang and have it adopt a “constitution”
which in practice will be anti-democratic and will buttress the
dictatorship of this clique, for the purpose of providing a cloak of
legality for an illegal “National Government“—a government formed
privately through the appointment of a few dozen Kuomintang members,
imposed on the people and utterly devoid of any foundation in the
popular will—thus making a pretence of “handing state power back to the
people” while actually “handing it back” to the selfsame reactionary
clique within the Kuomintang. Whoever disapproves will be accused of
sabotaging “democracy” and “unity”, which will then be a “reason” for
ordering punitive action against him. This is the road of disruption,
which the Chinese people will firmly oppose.
The steps our reactionary heroes are preparing to take in line
with this splitting policy will probably lead them to destruction. They
are putting a noose round their own necks and fastening it there, and
this noose is the “national assembly”. Their intention is to use the
“national assembly” as a magic weapon, first, to prevent the formation
of a coalition government, second, to maintain their dictatorship, and
third, to prepare a justification of civil war. However, the logic of
history runs counter to their wishes, and they will be “lifting a rock
only to drop it on their own toes”. For it is now obvious to all that
the people in the Kuomintang areas have no freedom and the people in the
Japanese-occupied areas cannot take part in elections, while the
Liberated Areas which have freedom are not recognized by the Kuomintang
government. Such being the case, how can there be national delegates?
How can there be a “national assembly”? The national assembly they are
clamouring for is the one the Kuomintang dictatorship rigged up in every
detail eight years ago during the civil war period. If such an assembly
is convened, the whole nation will inevitably rise up against it, and
how, it may be asked, will our reactionary heroes get out of that
predicament? All in all, the convening of the bogus national assembly
will only lead them to destruction.
We Communists propose two steps for the termination of the
Kuomintang one-party dictatorship. First, at the present stage, to
establish a provisional coalition government through common agreement
among representatives of all parties and people with no party
affiliation. Second, in the next stage, to convene a national assembly
after free and unrestricted elections and form a regular coalition
government. In both cases there will be a coalition government in which
the representatives of all classes and political parties willing to take
part are united on a democratic common programme in the fight against
Japan today and for national construction tomorrow.
This is the only course China can take, whatever the intentions
of the Kuomintang or other parties, groups or individuals, whether they
like it or not, and whether or not they are conscious of it. This is a
historical law, an inexorable trend which no force can reverse.
On this and all other problems of democratic reform, we
Communists declare that although the Kuomintang authorities are still
stubbornly persisting in their wrong policies and using negotiations to
play for time and allay public opinion, we are ready to resume
negotiations with them the moment they show willingness to renounce
their present wrong policies and agree to democratic reforms. But the
negotiations must be based on the general principle of resistance, unity
and democracy, and we will not agree to any so-called measures, plans
or empty pronouncements that depart from this general principle, however
pleasing they may sound.
Freedom for the People
At present the Chinese people’s struggle for freedom is
primarily directed against the Japanese aggressors. But the Kuomintang
government is preventing them from fighting the Japanese aggressors by
depriving them of their freedom and binding them hand and foot. Unless
this problem is solved, it will be impossible to mobilize and unify all
the anti-Japanese forces of the nation. It is precisely to untie the
people’s bonds so that they can have the freedom to resist Japan, to
unite and to win democracy that our programme puts forward such demands
as the abolition of the one-party dictatorship; the establishment of a
coalition government; the liquidation of the secret police; the
revocation of repressive laws and decrees; the punishment of traitors,
spies, pro-Japanese elements, fascists and corrupt officials; the
release of political prisoners; the recognition of the legal status of
all the democratic parties; the withdrawal of troops encircling or
attacking the Liberated Areas; the recognition of the Liberated Areas;
the abolition of the pao-chia system; and the many other demands relating to the economy, culture and the mass movement.
Freedom is won by the people through struggle, it is not
bestowed by anyone as a favour. The people in China’s Liberated Areas
have already won freedom, and the people can and must win freedom in the
other areas too. The greater the freedom of the Chinese people and the
stronger their organized democratic forces, the greater the possibility
of forming a provisional and unified coalition government. Once formed,
this coalition government will in its turn provide full freedom for the
people and so consolidate its own foundations. Only then will it be
possible to hold free and unrestricted elections throughout the land
after the overthrow of the Japanese aggressors, to create a democratic
national assembly and to establish a regular and unified coalition
government. Unless the people have freedom, there can be no national
assembly or government genuinely elected by the people. Is this not
clear enough?
Freedom of speech, press, assembly, association, political
conviction and religious belief and freedom of the person are the
people’s most important freedoms. In China only the Liberated Areas have
given full effect to these freedoms.
In 1925 Dr. Sun Yat-sen declared in his deathbed Testament:
For forty years I have devoted myself to the cause of the
national revolution with the aim of winning freedom and equality for
China. My experience during these forty years has firmly convinced me
that to achieve this aim we must arouse the masses of the people and
unite in a common fight with those nations of the world who treat us
as equals.
The unworthy successors of Dr. Sun, who have betrayed him,
oppress the masses of the people instead of arousing them, and deprive
them of all their freedom of speech, press, assembly, association,
political conviction and religious belief and freedom of the person.
They attach the labels “traitor party”, “traitor army”, and “traitor
areas” to the Communist Party, the Eighth Route and New Fourth Armies
and the Liberated Areas, which are all genuinely arousing the masses of
the people and protecting their freedoms and rights. We hope that there
will soon be an end to this reversal of right and wrong. If it lasts
much longer, the Chinese people will lose all patience.
Unity of the People
It is imperative to turn a divided China into a united China in
order to destroy the Japanese aggressors, prevent civil war and build a
new China; such is the historical task of the Chinese people.
But how is China to be united? Through autocratic unification
by a dictator or democratic unification by the people? From the time of
Yuan Shih-kai
the Northern warlords concentrated on autocratic unification. But what
was the result? Contrary to their desires, what they obtained was not
unification but division, and finally they tumbled from power. Following
in Yuan Shih-kai’s footsteps, the anti-popular clique of the Kuomintang
sought autocratic unification and waged civil war for fully ten years,
only to let in the Japanese aggressors while they themselves withdrew to
Mount Omei.
And now from their mountain top they are again shouting about their
theory of autocratic unification. To whom are they shouting? Will any
upright patriotic Chinese listen to them? Having lived through sixteen
years of Northern warlord rule and eighteen years of dictatorial
Kuomintang rule, the people have acquired ample experience and
discerning eyes. They want democratic unification by the masses and not
autocratic unification by a dictator. As early as 1935, we Communists
put forward the policy of the Anti-Japanese National United Front, and
we have fought for it ever since. In 1939, when the Kuomintang was
enforcing its reactionary “Measures for Restricting the Activities of
Alien Parties”, thus creating the imminent danger of capitulation, split
and retrogression, and when it was shouting about its theory of
autocratic unification, we again declared: There must be unification
based on resistance and not on capitulation, on unity and not on
splitting, on progress and not on retrogression. Only unification based
on resistance, unity and progress is genuine and any other kind would be
a sham. Six years have passed, but the issue remains the same.
Can there be unity if the people have no freedom or democracy?
There will be unity as soon as they have both. The Chinese people’s
movement for freedom, democracy and a coalition government is at the
same time a movement for unity. When we put forward many demands for
freedom, democracy and a coalition government in our specific programme,
we are at the same time aiming at unity. It is plain common sense that
unless the dictatorship of the anti-popular Kuomintang clique is
abolished and a democratic coalition government is formed, not only will
it be impossible to carry out any democratic reform in the Kuomintang
areas or to mobilize the armies and the people there for the defeat of
the Japanese aggressors, but the calamity of civil war will ensue. Why
do so many democrats, with and without party affiliation, including many
in the Kuomintang, unanimously demand a coalition government? Because
they are clearly aware of the present crisis and realize that there is
no other way to overcome it and achieve both unity against the enemy and
unity for national construction.
The People’s Army
Without an army standing on the people’s side, it is
impossible for the Chinese people to win freedom and unification,
establish a coalition government, thoroughly defeat the Japanese
aggressors and build a new China. At present the only armed forces
that stand wholly on the people’s side are the Liberated Areas’ Eighth
Route and New Fourth Armies, which are not very large; they are far from
sufficient. Yet the Kuomintang group which opposes the people is
ceaselessly intriguing to undermine and destroy the armies of the
Liberated Areas. In 1944 the Kuomintang government presented a so-called
memorandum demanding that the Communist Party should “disband, within a
definite time limit”, four-fifths of the armed forces of the Liberated
Areas. In 1945, during the most recent negotiations, it has further
demanded the handing over of all the armed forces of the Liberated Areas
by the Communist Party, after which it would grant the Communist Party
“legal status”.
These people tell the Communists, “Hand over your troops and we
will grant you freedom.” According to their theory, a political party
that does not have any army should enjoy freedom. Yet whatever freedom
the Chinese Communist Party enjoyed during 1924-27, when it had only a
small armed force, vanished with the Kuomintang government’s policies of
“party purge” and massacre. And today, the China Democratic League and
the democrats within the Kuomintang, who have no armed forces, have no
freedom either. Let us take the workers, peasants and students and the
progressively inclined people in cultural, educational and industrial
circles under the Kuomintang regime—for the last eighteen years none of
them have had any armed forces, and none of them have had any freedom.
Can it be that all these democratic parties and people have been denied
freedom because they organized armies, perpetrated “feudal separatism”,
created “traitor areas” and violated “governmental and military orders”?
Not in the least. On the contrary, they have been denied freedom
precisely because they have done none of these things.
“The army belongs to the state“—that is perfectly true, and
there is not an army in the world that does not belong to a state. But
what kind of state? A state under the feudal and fascist dictatorship of
the big landlords, big bankers and big compradors, or a new-democratic
state of the broad masses of the people? The only kind of state for
China to establish is a new-democratic state and, on this basis, she
should establish a new-democratic coalition government; all the armed
forces of China must belong to such a government of such a state so that
they may safeguard the people’s freedom and effectively fight foreign
aggressors. The moment a new-democratic coalition government comes into
being in China, the Liberated Areas of China will hand their armed
forces over to it. But all the Kuomintang armed forces will have to be
handed over to it at the same time.
In 1924 Dr. Sun Yat-sen said, “Today should mark the beginning
of a new epoch in the national revolution. . . . The first step is to
unite the armed forces with the people, and the next step is to turn
them into the armed forces of the people.”
It is because they have applied this policy that the Eighth Route and
New Fourth Armies have become “the armed forces of the people”, that is,
the people’s army, and have been able to win victories. During the
earlier period of the Northern Expedition, the Kuomintang armies took
Dr. Sun’s “first step”, and hence won victories. In the latter period of
the Northern Expedition they abandoned even the “first step”, took a
stand against the people, and hence from that time right down to the
present they have become more and more corrupt and degenerate; in their
element when fighting internal war, they cannot but be out of their
element when it comes to fighting external war. Every patriotic officer
in the Kuomintang army who has a conscience should set about reviving
the Sun Yat-sen spirit and transforming his troops.
In the work of transforming the old armies, a suitable
education should be given to all officers who are capable of being
reeducated to help them to get rid of their obsolete outlook and acquire
a correct outlook, so that they can remain and serve in the
people’s army.
It is the duty of the whole nation to struggle for the
creation of the army of the Chinese people. Without a people’s army the
people have nothing. On this question there must be no empty
theorizing whatsoever.
We Communists are ready to give our support to the task of
transforming the Chinese army. All those military forces which are
willing to unite with the people and to oppose the Japanese aggressors
instead of opposing the armed forces of the Chinese Liberated Areas
should be regarded as friendly troops and be given proper assistance by
the Eighth Route and New Fourth Armies.
The Land Problem
To wipe out the Japanese aggressors and build a new China,
it is imperative to reform the land system and emancipate the peasants. Dr. Sun Yat-sen’s thesis of “land to the tiller” is correct for the present period of our revolution, which is bourgeois-democratic in nature.
Why do we say our revolution in the present period is
bourgeois-democratic in nature? We mean that the target of this
revolution is not the bourgeoisie in general but national and feudal
oppression, that the measures taken in this revolution are in general
directed not at abolishing but at protecting private property, and that
as a result of this revolution the working class will be able to build
up the strength to lead China in the direction of socialism, though
capitalism will still be enabled to grow to an appropriate extent for a
fairly long period. “Land to the tiller” means transferring the land
from the feudal exploiters to the peasants, turning the private property
of the feudal landlords into the private property of the peasants and
emancipating them from feudal agrarian relations, thereby making
possible the transformation of an agricultural country into an
industrial country. Thus, “land to the tiller” is in the nature of a
bourgeois-democratic and not a proletarian-socialist demand; it is the
demand of all revolutionary democrats and not the demand of us
Communists alone. The difference is that, in China’s circumstances, we
Communists alone treat this demand with special seriousness, and do not
just talk about it but put it into practice. Who are the revolutionary
democrats? Apart from the proletariat who are the most thoroughgoing of
the revolutionary democrats, the peasants form by far the largest group.
The overwhelming majority of the peasants, that is, all except the rich
peasants who have a feudal tail, actively demand “land to the tiller”.
The urban petty bourgeoisie are also revolutionary democrats and “land
to the tiller” will prove to be to their advantage as well, for it will
help to develop the productive forces in agriculture. The national
bourgeoisie are a vacillating class—they also approve of “land to the
tiller” because they need markets, but many of them are afraid of it
because for the most part they have ties with landed property.
Dr. Sun Yat-sen was the earliest revolutionary democrat in China.
Representing the revolutionary section of the national bourgeoisie as
well as the urban petty bourgeoisie and the peasants, he carried out an
armed revolution and put forward his thesis of “equalization of
landownership” and “land to the tiller”. But unfortunately he did not
take the initiative and reform the land system when he was in power. And
when the anti-popular clique of the Kuomintang took power, it
completely betrayed what he stood for. It is this clique that is now
stubbornly opposing “land to the tiller” because it represents the
stratum of big landlords, bankers and compradors. As China has no
political party exclusively representing the peasants and the political
parties of the national bourgeoisie have no thoroughgoing land
programme, the Chinese Communist Party has become the leader of the
peasants and all the other revolutionary democrats, being the only party
that has formulated and carried out a thoroughgoing land programme,
fought earnestly for the peasants’ interests and therefore won the
overwhelming majority of the peasants as its great ally.
From 1927 to 1936, the Chinese Communist Party adopted various
measures for the thorough reform of the land system and put Dr. Sun’s
“land to the tiller” into effect. It was precisely the reactionary
clique of the Kuomintang, that gang of unworthy followers of Dr. Sun
Yat-sen, who bared their teeth, showed their claws and fought against
“land to the tiller” in ten years of war against the people.
The Communist Party has made a major concession in the
anti-Japanese war period by changing the policy of “land to the tiller”
to one of reducing rent and interest. This concession is a correct
one, for it helped to bring the Kuomintang into the war against Japan
and lessened the resistance of the landlords in the Liberated Areas to
our mobilization of the peasants for the war. If no special obstacle
arises, we are prepared to continue this policy after the war, first
extending rent and interest reduction to the whole country and then
taking proper measures for the gradual achievement of “land to
the tiller”.
However, those who have betrayed Dr. Sun oppose the reduction
of rent and interest, let alone “land to the tiller”. The Kuomintang
government has not carried out the decree for a “25 per cent reduction
in rent” and similar decrees which it has promulgated itself; only we in
the Liberated Areas have enforced them, and for this crime the
Liberated Areas have been labelled “traitor areas”.
In the course of the anti-Japanese war a so-called theory of
two stages, a stage of “national revolution” and a stage of “revolution
for democracy and the people’s livelihood”, has made its appearance.
This theory is wrong.
“Faced with a formidable enemy, we should not raise the
question of democratic reforms or the people’s livelihood; better wait
until the Japanese are gone“—such is the absurd theory put forward by
the reactionary clique of the Kuomintang for the purpose of preventing
complete victory in the war. Yet there are people who have been echoing
this theory and have become its servile adherents.
“Faced with a formidable enemy, it is impossible for us to
build up bases against the Japanese and resist their attacks unless we
settle the question of democracy and the people’s livelihood“—this is
what the Chinese Communist Party has been advocating and, moreover, has
already put into practice with excellent results.
In the period of the anti-Japanese war, reduction of rent and
interest and the other democratic reforms all serve the war. In order to
lessen the landlords’ resistance to the war effort we have abstained
from abolishing their ownership of land and have only reduced rent and
interest; at the same time, we have encouraged them to transfer their
assets to industry and given the enlightened gentry the opportunity to
take part in public activities for the war and in the work of government
alongside other representatives of the people. As for the rich
peasants, we have encouraged them to develop production. All this is
part of the resolute line of democratic reforms in the rural areas and
is absolutely necessary.
There are two lines. Either stubbornly oppose the Chinese
peasants’ endeavour to settle the problem of democracy and the people’s
livelihood, and become corrupt, ineffectual and utterly incapable of
fighting Japan; or firmly support the Chinese peasants in their
endeavour, and gain the greatest of allies, constituting 80 per cent of
the population, thereby forging tremendous fighting strength. The former
is the line of the Kuomintang government, the latter is the line of
China’s Liberated Areas.
The line of the opportunists is to vacillate between the two,
to profess support for the peasants and yet lack the resolve to reduce
rent and interest, arm the peasants or establish democratic political
power in the rural areas.
Using all the forces at its command, the anti-popular clique of
the Kuomintang has directed every kind of vicious attack, open and
secret, military and political, both with bloodshed and without, against
the Chinese Communist Party. Taken in its social setting, the dispute
between the two parties is essentially over this issue of agrarian
relations. Where exactly did we give offence to the Kuomintang
reactionary clique? Is it not on this score? Has it not been precisely
by rendering the Japanese aggressors great help on this score that this
clique has won favour and encouragement from them? Have not all the
charges against the Chinese Communist Party—“sabotaging the War of
Resistance and endangering the state”, “traitor party”, “traitor army”,
“traitor areas”, and “disobedience to governmental and military
orders“—been levelled precisely because it has done conscientious work
in the true interests of the nation in this sphere?
It is the peasants who are the source of China’s industrial
workers. In the future, additional tens of millions of peasants will go
to the cities and enter factories. If China is to build up powerful
national industries and many large modern cities, there will have to be a
long process of transformation of rural into urban inhabitants.
It is the peasants who constitute the main market for
China’s industry. Only they can supply foodstuffs and raw materials in
great abundance and absorb manufactured goods in great quantities.
It is the peasants who are the source of the Chinese army.
The soldiers are peasants in military uniform, the mortal enemies of the
Japanese aggressors.
It is the peasants who are the main political force for
democracy in China at the present stage. Chinese democrats will achieve
nothing unless they rely on the support of the 360 million peasants.
It is the peasants who are the chief concern of China’s
cultural movement at the present stage. If the 360 million peasants are
left out, do not the “elimination of illiteracy”, “popularization of
education”, “literature and art for the masses” and “public health”
become largely empty talk?
In saying this, I am of course not ignoring the political,
economic and cultural importance of the rest of the people numbering
about 90 million, and in particular am not ignoring the working class,
which is politically the most conscious and therefore qualified to lead
the whole revolutionary movement. Let there be no misunderstanding.
It is absolutely necessary not only for Communists but for every democrat in China to grasp these points.
When there is reform of the land system—even such an
elementary reform as reduction of rent and interest—the peasants become
more interested in production. Then as the peasants are helped to
organize farming and other co-operatives step by step on a voluntary
basis, the productive forces will grow. The farming co-operatives at
present can only be collective, mutual-aid labour organizations based on
an individual peasant economy (i.e., on private ownership by the
peasants), such as labour-exchange teams, mutual-aid teams and
work-exchange groups; even so the increase in labour productivity and
output is already astonishing. Such organizations have been widely
developed in China’s Liberated Areas and from now on should be spread as
much as possible.
It might be mentioned that co-operative organization of the
labour-exchange team type has existed among the peasants for a long
time, but in the past it was only a means by which they tried to
alleviate their wretchedness. Today the labour-exchange teams in China’s
Liberated Areas are different both in form and in content; they have
become a means by which the peasant masses increase production and
strive for a better life.
In the last analysis, the impact, good or bad, great or small,
of the policy and the practice of any Chinese political party upon the
people depends on whether and how much it helps to develop their
productive forces, and on whether it fetters or liberates these forces. The
social productive forces of China can be liberated only by destroying
the Japanese aggressors, carrying out land reform, emancipating the
peasants, developing modern industry and establishing an independent,
free, democratic, united, prosperous and powerful new China—and this
will win the approbation of the Chinese people.
It should be pointed out further that it is not easy for city
intellectuals who come to work in the countryside to understand the
characteristics of the rural areas, i.e., that they are still
based on a scattered and backward, individual economy, and that,
moreover, the Liberated Areas are temporarily cut off from one another
by the enemy and involved in a guerrilla war. Failing to understand
these characteristics, they often inappropriately approach and handle
rural problems and rural work from the viewpoint of life and work in the
cities, and so divorce themselves from the realities of the countryside
and fail to identify themselves with the peasants. It is necessary to
overcome this by education.
China’s numerous revolutionary intellectuals must awaken to
the necessity of becoming one with the peasants. The peasants need them
and await their help. They should go to the countryside
enthusiastically, doff their student garb and put on rough clothing, and
willingly start with any work however trivial; they should learn what
the peasants want and help to arouse and organize them in the struggle
to accomplish the democratic revolution in the countryside, which is one
of the most important tasks in China’s democratic revolution.
After the Japanese aggressors are wiped out, we should
confiscate the land usurped by them and the chief traitors and
distribute it among those peasants who have little or no land.
The Problem of Industry
In order to defeat the Japanese aggressors and build a new
China it is necessary to develop industry. But under the Kuomintang
government there is dependence on foreign countries for everything, and
its financial and economic policy is ruining the entire economic life of
the people. A few small industrial enterprises are all that is to be
found in the Kuomintang areas, and in most cases they have been unable
to avoid bankruptcy. In the absence of political reforms all the
productive forces are being ruined, and this is true both of agriculture
and of industry.
By and large, it will be impossible to develop industry
unless China is independent, free, democratic and united. To wipe out
the Japanese aggressors is to seek independence. To abolish the
Kuomintang’s one-party dictatorship, establish a democratic and united
coalition government, transform all China’s troops into a people’s armed
force, carry out land reform and emancipate the peasants is to seek
freedom, democracy and unity. Without independence, freedom, democracy
and unity it is impossible to build industry on a really large scale.
Without industry there can be no solid national defence, no well-being
for the people, no prosperity or strength for the nation. The history of the 105 years since the Opium War of 1840,
and especially of the eighteen years since the Kuomintang came to
power, has brought this important point home to the Chinese people. A
China that is not poor and weak but prosperous and strong implies a
China that is not colonial or semi-colonial but independent, not
semi-feudal but free and democratic, not divided but united. In
semi-colonial, semi-feudal and divided China, many people have for years
dreamed of developing industry, building up national defence, and
bringing well-being to the people and prosperity and power to the
nation, but all their dreams have been shattered. Many well-intentioned
educators, scientists and students have buried themselves in their own
work or studies and paid no attention to politics in the belief that
they could serve the country with their knowledge, but this too has
turned out to be a dream, a dream that has been shattered. This indeed
is a good sign, for the shattering of these childish dreams marks a
starting-point on China’s road towards prosperity and strength. The
Chinese people have learned many things in the war; they know that after
the defeat of the Japanese aggressors they must build a new-democratic
China enjoying independence, freedom, democracy, unity, prosperity and
strength, all of which are interrelated and indispensable. If they do
so, then a bright future lies before China. The productive forces of the
Chinese people will be released and given every possibility to develop
only when the political system of New Democracy obtains in all parts of
China. More and more people are coming to understand this point
every day.
When the political system of New Democracy is won, the Chinese
people and their government will have to adopt practical measures in
order to build heavy and light industry step by step over a number of
years and transform China from an agricultural into an industrial
country. The new-democratic state cannot be consolidated unless it has a
solid economy as its base, a much more advanced agriculture than at
present, and a large-scale industry occupying a predominant position in
the national economy, with communications, trade and finance to match.
We Communists are ready to fight for this objective in
co-operation with all the democratic parties and industrial circles
throughout the country. The Chinese working class will play a great role
in this undertaking.
Ever since World War I, the Chinese working class has
consciously fought for the independence and liberation of China. The
year 1921 witnessed the birth of the Communist Party of China, the
vanguard of the working class, and China’s struggle for liberation then
entered a new stage. During the ensuing three periods, the Northern
Expedition, the Agrarian Revolutionary War and the War of Resistance
Against Japan, the working class and Communist Party of China have
worked extremely hard and made an invaluable contribution to the cause
of the liberation of the Chinese people. In the struggle for the
final defeat of the Japanese aggressors, and especially for the recovery
of the big cities and important lines of communications, the Chinese
working class will play a very great role. And it can be predicted that
after the anti-Japanese war, the effort and contribution of the Chinese
working class will be even greater. The task of the Chinese working
class is to struggle not only for the establishment of a new-democratic
state but also for China’s industrialization and the modernization of
her agriculture.
The policy of adjusting the interests of labour and capital
will be adopted under the new-democratic state system. On the one hand,
it will protect the interests of the workers, institute an eight- to
ten-hour working day according to circumstances, provide suitable
unemployment relief and social insurance and safeguard trade union
rights; on the other hand, it will guarantee legitimate profits to
properly managed state, private and co-operative enterprises—so that
both the public and the private sectors and both labour and capital will
work together to develop industrial production.
The enterprises and property in China of the Japanese
aggressors and of the chief traitors will be confiscated and placed at
the disposal of the government when Japan is defeated.
The Problem of Culture, Education and the Intellectuals
The calamities brought upon the Chinese people by foreign
and feudal oppression also affect our national culture. The progressive
cultural and educational institutions and progressive cultural workers
and educators have particularly suffered. To sweep away foreign and
feudal oppression and build a new-democratic China, we need large
numbers of educators and teachers for the people, and also people’s
scientists, engineers, technicians, doctors, journalists, writers, men
of letters, artists and rank-and-file cultural workers. They must be
imbued with the spirit of serving the people and must work hard.
Provided they serve the people creditably, all intellectuals should be
esteemed and regarded as valuable national and social assets. The
problem of the intellectuals becomes particularly important in China
because the country is culturally backward as a result of foreign and
feudal oppression and because intellectuals are urgently needed in the
people’s struggle for liberation. The numerous revolutionary
intellectuals have played a very great role in the people’s struggle for
liberation in the past half-century, and especially since the May 4th
Movement of 1919 and in the eight years of the anti-Japanese war. They
will play an even greater role in the struggles to come. Therefore, the
task of a people’s government is systematically to develop all kinds of
intellectually equipped cadres from among the ranks of the people and at
the same time take care to unite with and re-educate all the useful
intellectuals already available.
The elimination of illiteracy among 80 per cent of the population is a vital task for the new China.
Proper and firm steps should be taken to eliminate all enslaving feudal and fascist culture and education.
Vigorous action should be taken to prevent and cure endemic and
other diseases among the people and to expand the people’s medical and
health services.
The old type of cultural and educational workers and doctors
should be given suitable re-education so that they can acquire a new
outlook and new methods to serve the people.
The Chinese people’s culture and education should be
new-democratic, that is to say, China should establish her own new
national, scientific and mass culture and education.
As for foreign culture, it would be a wrong policy to shut
it out, rather we should as far as possible draw on what is progressive
in it for use in the development of China’s new culture; it would also
be wrong to copy it blindly, rather we should draw on it critically to
meet the actual needs of the Chinese people. The new culture created in
the Soviet Union should be a model for us in building our people’s
culture. Similarly, ancient Chinese culture should neither be totally
rejected nor blindly copied, but should be accepted discriminatingly so
as to help the progress of China’s new culture.
The Problem of the Minority Nationalities
The anti-popular clique of the Kuomintang denies that many
nationalities exist in China, and labels all excepting the Han
nationality as “tribes”. It has taken over the reactionary policy of the
governments of the Ching Dynasty and of the Northern warlords in relation to the minority nationalities, oppressing and exploiting them in every possible way.
Clear cases in point are the massacre of Mongolians of the Ikhchao
League in 1943, the armed suppression of the minority nationalities in
Sinkiang since 1944 and the massacres of the Hui people in Kansu
Province in recent years. These are manifestations of a wrong Han-chauvinistic ideology and policy.
In 1924 Dr. Sun Yat-sen wrote in the Manifesto of the First
National Congress of the Kuomintang that “the Kuomintang’s Principle of
Nationalism has a twofold meaning, first, the liberation of the Chinese nation, and second, the equality of all the nationalities in China” and that “the Kuomintang solemnly declares that it recognizes the right to self-determination of all the nationalities
in China and that a free and united republic of China (a free union of
all the nationalities) will be established when the anti-imperialist and
anti-warlord revolution is victorious”.
The Communist Party of China is in full agreement with Dr. Sun’s policy on nationalities as stated here. Communists
must actively help the people of all the minority nationalities to
fight for it, and help them, including all their leaders who have ties
with the masses, to fight for their political, economic and cultural
emancipation and development and to establish their own armies which
will safeguard the people’s interests. Their spoken and written
languages, their manners and customs and their religious beliefs must
be respected.
The attitude which the Shensi-Kansu-Ningsia Border Region and
the Liberated Areas in northern China have for years adopted towards the
Mongolian and Hui nationalities is correct, and the work they have done
has been fruitful.
The Problem of Foreign Policy
The Communist Party of China agrees with the Atlantic Charter
and with the decisions of the international conferences of Moscow,
Cairo, Teheran and the Crimea, because these decisions all contribute to the defeat of the fascist aggressors and the maintenance of world peace.
The fundamental principle of the foreign policy advocated by
the Chinese Communist Party is as follows: China shall establish and
strengthen diplomatic relations with all countries and settle all
questions of common concern, such as co-ordination of military
operations in the war, peace conferences, trade and investment, on the
basic conditions that the Japanese aggressors must be completely
defeated and world peace maintained, that there must be mutual respect
for national independence and equality, and that there must be promotion
of mutual interests and friendship between states and between peoples.
The Chinese Communist Party fully agrees with the proposals of
the Dumbarton Oaks conference and the decisions of the Crimea conference
on the establishment of an organization to safeguard international
peace and security after the war. It welcomes the United Nations
Conference on International Organization in San Francisco. It has
appointed its own representative on China’s delegation to this
conference in order to express the will of the Chinese people.
We hold that the Kuomintang government must cease its hostility
towards the Soviet Union and speedily improve Sino-Soviet relations.
The Soviet Union was the first country to renounce the unequal treaties
and sign new, equal treaties with China. At the time of the Kuomintang’s
First National Congress called by Dr. Sun Yat-sen in 1924 and the
subsequent Northern Expedition, the Soviet Union was the only country to
help China’s war of liberation. When the anti-Japanese war broke out in
1937, the Soviet Union was again the first country to help China
against the Japanese aggressors. The Chinese people are grateful to the
Soviet government and people for this help. We believe that no final and
thorough settlement of the problems of the Pacific is possible without
the participation of the Soviet Union.
We ask the governments of all the allied countries, and of the
United States and Britain in the first place, to pay serious attention
to the voice of the Chinese people and not to impair friendship with
them by pursuing foreign policies that run counter to their will. We
maintain that if any foreign government helps the Chinese reactionaries
and opposes the Chinese people’s democratic cause, it will be committing
a gross mistake.
The Chinese people welcome the steps taken by many foreign
governments in renouncing their unequal treaties and concluding new,
equal treaties with China. However, we maintain that the conclusion of
equal treaties does not in itself mean that China has actually won
genuine equality. Genuine and actual equality is never the gift of
foreign governments, but must be won mainly by the Chinese people
through their own efforts, and the way to win it is to build a
new-democratic China politically, economically and culturally; otherwise
there will be only nominal and not actual independence and equality.
That is to say, China can never win genuine independence and equality by
following the present policy of the Kuomintang government.
We consider that, after the defeat and unconditional surrender
of the Japanese aggressors, it will be necessary to help all the
democratic forces of the Japanese people to establish their own
democratic system so that Japanese fascism and militarism may be
thoroughly wiped out, together with their political, economic and social
roots. Unless the Japanese people have a democratic system, it will be
impossible thoroughly to wipe out Japanese fascism and militarism and
impossible to ensure peace in the Pacific.
We consider the decision of the Cairo conference regarding the
independence of Korea to be correct. The Chinese people should help the
Korean people to win liberation.
We hope that India will attain independence. For an independent
and democratic India is not only needed by the Indian people but is
essential for world peace.
As regards the Southeast Asian countries—Burma, Malaya,
Indonesia, Viet Nam and the Philippines—we hope that after the defeat
of the Japanese aggressors their people will exercise their right to
establish independent and democratic states of their own. As for
Thailand, she should be treated like the fascist satellite states
in Europe.
So much for the major points of our specific programme.
To repeat, none of the points in this specific programme can
be successfully carried out on a nation-wide scale without a democratic
coalition government enjoying the support of the entire nation.
By its twenty-four years of struggle for the cause of the
liberation of the Chinese people, the Communist Party of China has
attained a position such that any political party or social group or any
Chinese or foreigner ignoring its opinion on questions concerning China
will be making a serious mistake and courting certain failure.
There were, and still are, people who try to ignore our opinions and to
follow their own bigoted course, but they have all ended in a blind
alley. Why? Simply because our opinions conform to the interests of the
Chinese masses. The Chinese Communist Party is the most faithful
spokesman of the Chinese people, and whoever fails to respect it in fact
fails to respect the Chinese masses and is doomed to defeat.
THE TASKS IN THE KUOMINTANG AREAS
I have now given a detailed explanation of our Party’s general
and specific programmes. There is no doubt that these programmes will
eventually be put into effect throughout China; this is the vista that
the international and domestic situation as a whole has opened up for
the Chinese people. However, at the moment conditions in the Kuomintang
areas, the enemy-occupied areas and the Liberated Areas differ from each
other, making it necessary for us to distinguish between them in implementing our programme. Different conditions give rise to different tasks. Some of these tasks I have already explained above, while others still need elaboration.
In the Kuomintang areas, the people are not free to engage
in patriotic activity, and democratic movements are considered illegal,
and yet various social strata, democratic parties and individuals are
becoming increasingly active. The China Democratic League issued a
manifesto in January this year demanding the termination of the
Kuomintang’s one-party dictatorship and the establishment of a coalition
government. Many sections of the people have made similar declarations.
Within the Kuomintang, too, many people are showing increasing doubt
and discontent over the policies of the leading bodies of their own
party, are becoming increasingly aware of the danger of their party’s
isolation from the people, and are therefore demanding democratic
reforms suited to the times. In Chungking and other places democratic
movements are growing among the workers, the peasants, cultural circles,
the students, educational circles, women, industrial and commercial
circles, government employees and even among some of the soldiers and
officers. These facts indicate that the democratic movements of all the
oppressed strata are gradually converging on a common objective. One
weakness of the present movements is that the basic sections of society
have not yet joined it on a wide scale and that the most important
forces, namely, the peasants, workers, soldiers and the lower-ranking
government employees and teachers, who are all suffering so bitterly,
are not yet organized. Another weakness is that many of the democratic
personalities in the movement are still unclear and hesitant about the
fundamental policy, namely, that a change in the situation must be
sought through the waging of struggle on a democratic mass basis. However,
the objective situation is compelling all the oppressed strata,
political parties and social groups gradually to awaken and unite. No
suppression by the Kuomintang government can stop the advance of
this movement.
All the oppressed strata, political parties and social
groups in the Kuomintang areas must extend their democratic movement on a
broad scale and gradually weld their scattered forces together in order
to fight for national unity, the establishment of a coalition
government, the defeat of the Japanese aggressors and the building of a
new China. The Communist Party of China and the people of the Liberated
Areas should give them every possible help.
In the Kuomintang areas the Communists should continue to pursue the policy of a broad National United Front Against Japan. In
the fight for common objectives, we should co-operate with anyone who
does not oppose us today, even though he might have done so yesterday.
THE TASKS IN THE JAPANESE-OCCUPIED AREAS
In the occupied areas, Communists should call on all who oppose
Japan to follow the French and Italian examples and form organizations
and underground forces to prepare armed uprisings, so that when the time
comes they can act from the inside in co-ordination with the armies
attacking from the outside and so wipe out the Japanese aggressors. The
atrocities, plunder, rape and humiliation suffered by our brothers and
sisters in the occupied areas at the hands of the Japanese aggressors
and their servile lackeys have aroused the burning wrath of all Chinese,
and the hour of revenge is fast approaching. The victories in the
European theatre of war and the victories of our Eighth Route and New
Fourth Armies have stimulated and heightened the anti-Japanese spirit of
the people in the occupied areas. They urgently want to become
organized so as to achieve liberation as quickly as possible. Therefore,
we must raise our work in the occupied areas to the same level of
importance as that in the Liberated Areas. Large numbers of our working
personnel must be sent to work there. Large numbers of activists among
the people there must be trained and promoted and must take part in
local work. We must intensify our underground work in the four
northeastern provinces which have been occupied longer than any other
region and which form a key industrial and troop concentration area for
the Japanese aggressors. With a view to the recovery of these lost
territories, we should strengthen our solidarity with the people who
have fled south from the Northeast.
Communists should pursue the broadest united front policy in
all the occupied areas. For the overthrow of the common enemy they must
unite with anyone who is opposed to the Japanese aggressors and their
servile lackeys.
We should warn all the puppet armies, the puppet police and
others who are helping the enemy and opposing their countrymen that they
must quickly recognize the criminal nature of their actions, repent in
time and atone for their crimes by helping their countrymen against the
enemy. Otherwise the nation will certainly call them to account the day
the enemy collapses.
Communists should direct persuasive propaganda at all puppet
organizations with a mass following so as to win the masses who have
been misled over to our side against the national enemy. At the same
time, evidence should be collected about those impenitent collaborators
who have committed the most heinous crimes, so that they can be brought
to justice when the lost territories are recovered.
Those Kuomintang reactionaries who have betrayed the nation by
organizing open collaborators to fight the Chinese people, the Communist
Party, the Eighth Route Army, the New Fourth Army and other armed
forces of the people must be warned to repent in time. Otherwise, when
the lost territories are recovered, they will certainly be punished for
their crimes along with the collaborators with Japan and will be shown
no mercy.
THE TASKS IN THE LIBERATED AREAS
Our Party has put its whole new-democratic programme into
practice in the Liberated Areas with striking results, and so built up
tremendous anti-Japanese strength, and from now on this strength should
be developed and consolidated in every way.
In the prevailing circumstances, the troops of the Liberated
Areas should launch extensive attacks on all places that can be captured
from the Japanese and puppets in order to expand the Liberated Areas
and reduce the occupied areas.
But at the same time it should be borne in mind that the enemy
is still strong and may launch further attacks on the Liberated Areas.
The army and the people of our areas must be ready at all times to smash
his attacks and must work in every way to consolidate these areas.
We must expand the armies, the guerrilla units, the people’s
militia and the self-defence corps of the Liberated Areas, and increase
their combat effectiveness by speeding up their training and
consolidation in order to build up adequate strength for the final
defeat of the aggressors.
The army in the Liberated Areas must support the government and
cherish the people, while the democratic governments must lead the
people in the work of supporting the army and taking good care of the
families of soldiers fighting Japan. In this way relations between the
army and the people will become still better.
In the work of the local coalition governments and mass
organizations, Communists should continue to co-operate closely with all
anti-Japanese democrats on the basis of the new-democratic programme.
Similarly in military work, Communists should co-operate
closely with all anti-Japanese democrats who are willing to co-operate
with us, whether or not they are members of the armies of the
Liberated Areas.
To increase the enthusiasm of the masses of the workers,
peasants and other working people for the war and for production, we
must thoroughly apply the policy of reducing rent and interest and of
increasing the pay of workers and office staff. The cadres of the
Liberated Areas must diligently learn to do economic work. All available
forces must be mobilized for the extensive development of agriculture,
industry and trade and the improvement of the livelihood of the soldiers
and the people. For this purpose there must be labour emulation
campaigns, and rewards should be given to labour heroes and model
workers. When the Japanese aggressors are driven out of the cities, our
personnel must rapidly learn how to do urban economic work.
Our cultural and educational work must be developed in order to
raise the level of political consciousness of the people in the
Liberated Areas and, above all, of the masses of the workers, peasants
and soldiers, and in order to train large numbers of cadres. In carrying
forward this work, those engaged in it should adopt forms and select
contents suited to the existing rural conditions and to the needs and
wishes of the people in the countryside.
In all our work in the Liberated Areas, manpower and material
resources must be used most sparingly, and in every field long-term
plans must be made, and misuse and waste must be avoided. This is needed
both for defeating the Japanese aggressors and for building up the
new China.
In all our work in the Liberated Areas, we must take great care
to help the local people administer local affairs and to cultivate many
local cadres from among the best local people. It will be impossible to
accomplish the great task of the democratic revolution in the rural
areas unless comrades who come from other places identify themselves
with the local people and help the local cadres whole-heartedly,
painstakingly and in ways that fit the actual conditions, and unless
they cherish them like their own brothers and sisters.
When a unit of the Eighth Route Army, the New Fourth Army or
any other armed force of the people arrives at a place, it should
immediately help the local people to organize forces led by the local
cadres, including not only militia and self-defence corps but also local
troops and regional forces. This will make possible the eventual
creation of regular forces and regular army formations led by local
people. This is an extremely important task. Unless it is accomplished,
we can neither build stable anti-Japanese base areas nor expand the
people’s army.
Of course the local people for their part should warmly welcome
and help the revolutionary workers and people’s forces coming from
other areas.
Everybody should be alerted on the question of dealing with
covert wreckers. For it is easy to spot and handle overt enemies and
wreckers of the national cause, but not those who work under cover.
Therefore we should take up this matter in all seriousness and at the
same time be very careful in dealing with such people.
All religions are permitted in China’s Liberated Areas, in
accordance with the principle of freedom of religious belief. All
believers in Protestantism, Catholicism, Islamism, Buddhism and other
faiths enjoy the protection of the people’s government so long as they
are abiding by its laws. Everyone is free to believe or not to believe;
neither compulsion nor discrimination is permitted.
Our congress should propose to the people of the Liberated Areas that a people’s conference of the Chinese Liberated Areas
be held in Yenan as soon as possible to discuss the questions of
co-ordinating the activities of the various Liberated Areas,
strengthening their work in the War of Resistance, helping the people’s
anti-Japanese democratic movement in the Kuomintang areas, helping the
underground armed forces of the people in the occupied areas, and
promoting national unity and the formation of a coalition government.
Now that China’s Liberated Areas have become the centre of gravity in
the nation-wide people’s struggle to resist Japan and save the country,
the broad masses throughout the country pin their hopes on us and it is
our duty not to disappoint them. Such a conference would give great
impetus to the Chinese people’s cause of national liberation.
LET THE WHOLE PARTY UNITE AND FIGHT TO ACCOMPLISH ITS TASKS!
Comrades! Now that we understand our tasks and the policies for
accomplishing them, what should be our attitude in carrying out these
policies and performing these tasks?
The present international and domestic situation opens up
bright prospects and provides unprecedentedly favourable conditions for
us and the Chinese people as a whole; this is evident and beyond doubt.
But at the same time there are still serious difficulties. Anyone who
sees only the bright side but not the difficulties cannot fight
effectively for the accomplishment of the Party’s tasks.
Together with the Chinese people, our Party has built up
immense strength for the Chinese nation in the twenty-four years of the
Party’s history, including the eight years of the War of Resistance
Against Japan; the success of our work is obvious and beyond doubt. But
at the same time there are still defects in our work. Anyone who sees
only the successful side but not the defects likewise cannot fight
effectively for the accomplishment of the Party’s tasks.
In the twenty-four years since its birth in 1921, the
Communist Party of China has gone through three great struggles—the
Northern Expedition, the Agrarian Revolutionary War and the War of
Resistance Against Japan which is still going on. From its very
beginning our Party has based itself on the theory of Marxism-Leninism,
for Marxism-Leninism is the crystallization of the most correct and most
revolutionary scientific thought of the world proletariat. When the
universal truth of Marxism-Leninism began to be integrated with the
concrete practice of the Chinese revolution, the Chinese revolution took
on an entirely new complexion and the entire historical stage of New
Democracy emerged. Armed with Marxist-Leninist theory, the Communist
Party of China has brought a new style of work to the Chinese people, a
style of work which essentially entails integrating theory with
practice, forging close links with the masses and
practising self-criticism.
The universal truth of Marxism-Leninism, which reflects the
practice of proletarian struggle throughout the world, becomes an
invincible weapon for the Chinese people when it is integrated with the
concrete practice of the revolutionary struggle of the Chinese
proletariat and people. This the Communist Party of China has achieved. Our
Party has grown and advanced through staunch struggle against every
manifestation of dogmatism and empiricism, which runs counter to this
principle. Dogmatism is divorced from concrete practice, while
empiricism mistakes fragmentary experience for universal truth; both
kinds of opportunist thinking run counter to Marxism. In the course of
its twenty-four years of struggle our Party has successfully fought such
wrong thinking and it is still doing so, thus greatly consolidating
itself ideologically. Our Party now has 1,210,000 members. The
overwhelming majority have joined during the War of Resistance, and
there are various impurities in their ideology. The same is true of some
of the members who joined the Party before the war. The work of
rectification in the last few years has been most successful and has
gone a long way towards removing these impurities. This work should be
continued and ideological education within the Party should be developed
still more extensively in the spirit of “learning from past mistakes to
avoid future ones” and “curing the sickness to save the patient”. We must enable the Party’s leading cadres at all levels to understand that close integration of theory and practice is a hallmark distinguishing our Party from all other political parties.
Therefore ideological education is the key link to be grasped in
uniting the whole Party for great political struggles. Unless this is
done, the Party cannot accomplish any of its political tasks.
Another hallmark distinguishing our Party from all other
political parties is that we have very close ties with the broadest
masses of the people. Our point of departure is to serve the people
whole-heartedly and never for a moment divorce ourselves from the
masses, to proceed in all cases from the interests of the people and not
from the interests of individuals or groups, and to understand the
identity of our responsibility to the people and our responsibility to
the leading organs of the Party. Communists must be ready at all times to stand
up for the truth, because truth is in the interests of the people;
Communists must be ready at all times to correct their mistakes, because
mistakes are against the interests of the people. Twenty-four years
of experience tell us that the right task, policy and style of work
invariably conform with the demands of the masses at a given time and
place and invariably strengthen our ties with the masses, and the wrong
task, policy and style of work invariably disagree with the demands of
the masses at a given time and place and invariably alienate us from the
masses. The reason why such evils as dogmatism, empiricism,
commandism, tailism, sectarianism, bureaucracy and an arrogant attitude
in work are definitely harmful and intolerable, and why anyone suffering
from these maladies must overcome them, is that they alienate us from
the masses. Our congress should call upon the whole Party to be
vigilant and to see that no comrade at any post is divorced from the
masses. It should teach every comrade to love the people and listen
attentively to the voice of the masses; to identify himself with the
masses wherever he goes and, instead of standing above them, to immerse
himself among them; and, according to their present level, to awaken
them or raise their political consciousness and help them gradually to
organize themselves voluntarily and to set going all essential struggles
permitted by the internal and external circumstances of the given time
and place. Commandism is wrong in any type of work, because in
overstepping the level of political consciousness of the masses and
violating the principle of voluntary mass action it reflects the disease
of impetuosity. Our comrades must not assume that everything they
themselves understand is understood by the masses. Whether the masses
understand it and are ready to take action can be discovered only by
going into their midst and making investigations. If we do so, we can
avoid commandism. Tailism in any type of work is also wrong, because in
falling below the level of political consciousness of the masses and
violating the principle of leading the masses forward it reflects the
disease of dilatoriness. Our comrades must not assume that the masses
have no understanding of what they themselves do not yet understand. It
often happens that the masses outstrip us and are eager to advance a
step when our comrades are still tailing behind certain backward
elements, for instead of acting as leaders of the masses such comrades
reflect the views of these backward elements and, moreover, mistake them
for those of the broad masses. In a word, every comrade must be
brought to understand that the supreme test of the words and deeds of a
Communist is whether they conform with the highest interests and enjoy
the support of the overwhelming majority of the people. Every
comrade must be helped to understand that as long as we rely on the
people, believe firmly in the inexhaustible creative power of the masses
and hence trust and identify ourselves with them, no enemy can crush us
while we can crush every enemy and overcome every difficulty.
Conscientious practice of self-criticism is still another
hallmark distinguishing our Party from all other political parties. As
we say, dust will accumulate if a room is not cleaned regularly, our
faces will get dirty if they are not washed regularly. Our comrades’
minds and our Party’s work may also collect dust, and also need sweeping
and washing. The proverb “Running water is never stale and a door-hinge
is never worm-eaten” means that constant motion prevents the inroads of
germs and other organisms. To check up regularly on our work and in the
process develop a democratic style of work, to fear neither criticism
nor self-criticism, and to apply such good popular Chinese maxims as
“Say all you know and say it without reserve”, “Blame not the speaker
but be warned by his words” and “Correct mistakes if you have committed
them and guard against them if you have not“—this is the only effective
way to prevent all kinds of political dust and germs from contaminating
the minds of our comrades and the body of our Party. The reason for the
great effectiveness of the rectification movement, the purpose of which
was “to learn from past mistakes to avoid future ones and to cure the
sickness to save the patient”, was that the criticism and self-criticism
we carried out were honest and conscientious, and not perfunctory and
distorted. As we Chinese Communists, who base all our actions on the
highest interests of the broadest masses of the Chinese people and who
are fully convinced of the justice of our cause, never balk at any
personal sacrifice and are ready at all times to give our lives for the
cause, can we be reluctant to discard any idea, viewpoint, opinion or
method which is not suited to the needs of the people? Can we be willing
to allow political dust and germs to dirty our clean faces or eat into
our healthy organism? Countless revolutionary martyrs have laid down
their lives in the interests of the people, and our hearts are filled
with pain as we the living think of them—can there be any personal
interest, then, that we would not sacrifice or any error that we would
not discard?
Comrades! When this congress is over, we shall go to the front
and, guided by its resolutions, fight to bring about the final defeat of
the Japanese aggressors and to build a new China. To achieve this aim,
we shall unite with all the people of our country. Let me repeat: We
shall unite with any class, any party, any group or individual if they
are for the defeat of the Japanese aggressors and the building of a new
China. To achieve this aim, we shall solidly unite all the forces of
our Party on democratic centralist principles of organization and
discipline. We shall unite with any comrade if he abides by the Party’s
Programme, Constitution and decisions. In the period of the Northern
Expedition our Party had a membership of less than 60,000, most of whom
were later dispersed by the enemy; in the period of the Agrarian
Revolutionary War we had a membership of less than 300,000, most of whom
were likewise dispersed by the enemy. Now we have more than 1,200,000
members; this time we must in no circumstances allow ourselves to be
dispersed by the enemy. If we can profit from the experience of these
three periods, if we are modest and guard against conceit and are able
to strengthen unity among all comrades inside the Party and with all the
people outside the Party, we can rest assured that, far from being
dispersed by the enemy, we shall destroy the Japanese aggressors and
their servile running dogs resolutely, thoroughly, wholly and
completely, and thereafter build a new-democratic China.
The experience of the three periods of the revolution, and
especially that of the War of Resistance Against Japan, has convinced us
and the whole Chinese people that without the efforts of the Chinese
Communist Party, without the Chinese Communists as the mainstay of the
Chinese people, China can never achieve independence or liberation, or
industrialization and the modernization of her agriculture.
Comrades! I firmly believe that with the Communist Party of
China armed with the experience of the three revolutions, we can
accomplish our great political task.
Thousands upon thousands of martyrs have heroically laid down
their lives for the people; let us hold their banner high and march
ahead along the path crimson with their blood!
A new-democratic China will soon be born. Let us hail that great day!
