Enemy of the People Jiang Jieshi Calls for Civil War

#PUBLICATION NOTE

This edition of Enemy of the People Jiang Jieshi Calls for Civil War has been prepared and revised for digital publication by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism under the Central Committee of the Communist Party in Switzerland on the basis of the following editions:

• On a Statement by Chiang Kai-shek's Spokesman, in the Selected Works of Mao Zedong, First English Edition, Vol. 4, Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, 1965.
• Chiang Kaishek, the Enemy of the People, Has Sent Out a Signal for Civil War, in Mao's Road to Power, First English Edition, Vol. 9, Routledge, New York and London, 2023.

#INTRODUCTION NOTE

This is a comment written by Comrade Mao Zedong for the New China News Agency in Yan'an, Shaanxi, China. It was first published on the 16th of August, 1945.

#Workers and oppressed people of the world, unite!

#ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE JIANG JIESHI CALLS FOR CIVIL WAR

#COMMENT ON A STATEMENT BY JIANG JIESHI'S SPOKESPERSON

#Mao Zedong

#Before the 16th of August, 1945

#★

A spokesperson for Jiang Jieshi, commenting on the alleged violation by the Communist Party of Generalissimo Jiang Jieshi's order to Commander-in-Chief Zhu De, said at a press conference in Chongqing on the afternoon of the 15th of August:

The orders of the Generalissimo must be obeyed. [...] Those who violate them are enemies of the people, and they will be punished according to military discipline.

This is an open signal by Jiang Jieshi for all-out civil war. On the 11th of August, at the critical moment when the Japanese invaders were being finally wiped out, Jiang Jieshi issued an order of national betrayal forbidding the Eighth Route Army, the New Fourth Army, and all the other armed forces of the people to fight the Japanese and the puppet troops. Of course, this order absolutely cannot and should not be accepted. Soon afterward, Jiang Jieshi, through his spokesperson, proclaimed the armed forces of the Chinese people to be «enemies of the people», and proclaimed that they would be «punished according to military discipline». This shows that Jiang Jieshi has declared civil war against the Chinese people. Jiang Jieshi's plotting of civil war did not of course begin with his order of the 11th of August; it has been his consistent plan throughout the eight years of the War of Resistance. During those eight years, Jiang Jieshi launched three large-scale anti-Communist onslaughts, in 1940, '41, and '43,¹ each time attempting to develop the attack into a countrywide civil war, and only the opposition of the Chinese people and of public figures in the Allied countries prevented its occurrence, much to Jiang's regret. Thus, he was forced to postpone the countrywide civil war until the end of the War of Resistance Against Japan, and so came the order of the 11th of August and the statement of the 15th of August. For the purpose of unleashing civil war, Jiang Jieshi had already invented many terms, such as «alien political party», «traitor party», «traitor army», «rebel army», «traitor areas», «bandit areas», «disobedience to military and government orders», «feudal separatism», «undermining the War of Resistance», and «endangering the State»; and he had alleged that, since in the past, there had been only «suppression of Communists» in China and not «civil war», there would be no «civil war» in the future either, and so on and so forth. The slight difference this time is the addition of a new term, «enemy of the people». But people will perceive that this is a foolish invention. For whenever the term, «enemy of the people», is used in China, everyone knows who is meant. There is a person in China who betrayed Sun Yixian's «Three People's Principles»² and the Great Revolution of 1927. He plunged the Chinese people into the bloodbath of ten years of civil war and thereby invited aggression by Japanese imperialism. Then, scared out of his wits, he took to his heels and led a flock of people in a flight all the way from Heilongjiang to Guizhou Province. He became an onlooker and sat around waiting with folded arms for victory to come. Now that victory has come, he tells the people's armies to «stay where they are, pending further orders», and tells the enemy and the traitors to «maintain order», so that he can swagger back to Nanjing. One need only mention these facts for the Chinese people to know that this person is Jiang Jieshi. After all he has done, can there be any dispute as to whether Jiang Jieshi is an enemy of the people? Dispute there is. The people say yes. The enemy of the people says no. And that is the only dispute. Among the people, it is becoming less and less a matter of dispute. The problem now is that this enemy of the people wants to start a civil war. What are the people to do?

The policy of the Communist Party of China in regard to Jiang Jieshi's launching a civil war is clear and consistent, namely, to oppose it. As far back as the time when Japanese imperialism began to invade China, the Communist Party of China demanded an end to civil war and unity against foreign aggression. In 1936-37, the Party made tremendous efforts, forced Jiang Jieshi to accept its proposal, and so carried out the War of Resistance Against Japan. During the eight years of resistance, the Communist Party of China never once relaxed its efforts to alert the people to check the danger of civil war. Since last year, the Communist Party has time and again called the people's attention to the huge plot being hatched by Jiang Jieshi to unleash a countrywide civil war as soon as the War of Resistance ended. The Communist Party, like the rest of the Chinese people and all the people in the world concerned for peace in China, holds that a new civil war would be a calamity. But the Communist Party maintains that civil war can still be prevented and must be prevented. It is in order to prevent civil war that the Communist Party has advocated the formation of a coalition government. Now, Jiang Jieshi has rejected this proposal, and so civil war is touch-and-go. But there is definitely a way of checking this move of Jiang Jieshi's. The people's democratic forces must strive to expand resolutely and rapidly; the people must liberate the big cities under enemy occupation and disarm the enemy and puppet troops; and if an autocrat and traitor to the people dares to attack them, the people must act in self-defence and resolutely strike back to frustrate the designs of the instigator of civil war. That is the way, the only way.

I call on the whole nation and the whole world to repudiate the utterly hypocritical and shameless lie which asserts that, on the contrary, civil war in China can be averted if Jiang Jieshi forbids the Chinese people to liberate the enemy-occupied big cities, forbids them to disarm enemy and puppet forces, and forbids them to establish democracy, and if he himself goes to these big cities to «inherit» (not to smash) the enemy and puppet regimes. This is a lie, and this lie obviously runs counter to the national and democratic interests of the Chinese people, and also flies in the face of all the facts of modern Chinese history. It must always be remembered that it was not because the big cities were in the hands of the Communist Party rather than in his own hands that Jiang Jieshi waged the ten-year civil war from 1927 to '37; on the contrary, since 1927, none of the big cities has been in the hands of the Communist Party, but all have been in Jiang's hands or have been yielded by him to the Japanese and the traitors, and this is the very reason why the civil war lasted for ten years on a countrywide scale and has continued on a local scale to this day. It must always be remembered that the ten-year civil war was stopped and that the three large-scale anti-Communist onslaughts and countless other provocations during the War of Resistance were checked (up to and including Jiang Jieshi's recent invasion of the southern part of the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region³), not because Jiang Jieshi was strong, but on the contrary, because Jiang was relatively not strong enough, while the Communist Party and the people were relatively strong. The ten-year civil war was stopped, not by the appeals of public figures throughout the country who desired peace and feared war (such as those of the former «League for Banning Civil War»⁴ and similar bodies), but by the armed demand of the Communist Party of China and the armed demands of the North-Eastern Army under Zhang Xueliang and the North-Western Army under Yang Hucheng.⁵ The three large-scale anti-Communist onslaughts and countless other provocations were not beaten back by unlimited concessions and submission by the Communist Party; they were beaten back by the Communist Party's persistence in a just, stern attitude of self-defence: «We will not attack unless we are attacked; if we are attacked, we will certainly counter-attack.»⁶ If the Communist Party had been utterly powerless and spineless and had not fought to the finish for the interests of the nation and the people, how could the ten-year civil war have been ended? How could the War of Resistance Against Japan have started? And even though started, how could it have been carried on resolutely until victory today? How else could Jiang Jieshi and his ilk be alive now, issuing orders and making statements from a mountain retreat so far from the front lines? The Communist Party of China is firmly opposed to civil war. The Council Union, the United States, and Britain declared in Crimea, «establish conditions of internal peace» and «form interim governmental authorities broadly representative of all democratic elements in the population and pledged to the earliest possible establishment through free elections of governments responsive to the will of the people».⁷ That is exactly what the Communist Party of China has persistently advocated — the formation of a «coalition government». The carrying out of this proposal can prevent civil war. But there is one precondition — strength. If all the people unite and increase their strength, civil war can be prevented.