On the Danger of the Hurley Policy
#PUBLICATION NOTE
This edition of On the Danger of the Hurley Policy 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 the Danger of the Hurley Policy, in the Selected Works of Mao Zedong, First English Edition, Vol. 3, Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, 1965.
- New China News Agency Reporter Comments on the Danger of the Hurley Policy, in Mao's Road to Power, First English Edition, Vol. 8, Routledge, New York and London, 2015.
#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 12th of July, 1945.
#Workers and oppressed people of the world, unite!
#ON THE DANGER OF THE HURLEY POLICY
#Mao Zedong
#Before the 12th of July, 1945
#★
It has become increasingly obvious that the policy of the United States toward China as represented by its ambassador Patrick J. Hurley is creating a civil war crisis in China. This is really a crisis for the peoples of both China and the United States, which can be overcome only by careful consideration of the overall and long-term interests of both the Chinese and American peoples. Sticking to its reactionary policies of passive resistance to Japan and suppression of the people's democratic movement, the Nationalist government has lived on civil war ever since it was set up 18 years ago; only at the time of the Xi'an Incident in 1936 and of the Japanese invasion south of the Great Wall in 1937 was it forced to abandon its nationwide civil war for a time. Since 1939, however, civil war on a local scale has again been waged without interruption. «Fight the Communists first!» is the mobilization slogan used by the Nationalist government among its own people, while it relegates resistance to Japan to a secondary place. At present, all its military dispositions are focused, not on resisting the Japanese aggressors, but on «recovering lost territory» from China's Liberated Areas and on wiping out the Communist Party of China. This situation must be taken into serious account in our struggle both for victory in the War of Resistance and for peaceful construction after the war. The late President Roosevelt did take it into account and consequently, in the interests of the United States, refrained from adopting a policy of helping the Nationalist Party to undertake armed attacks on the Communist Party of China.
When Hurley visited Yan'an as Roosevelt's personal representative in November 1944, he expressed agreement with the Communist Party of China's plan for the abolition of the Nationalist one-party dictatorship and the establishment of a democratic coalition government, having not forgotten President Roosevelt's wish not to discriminate in favour of the Nationalist Party. But later he changed his tune and went back on what he had said in Yan'an. This change was crudely revealed in his statement in Washington on the 2nd of April. In the interim, according to the selfsame Hurley, the Nationalist government represented by Jiang Jieshi seems to have turned into the Beauty and the Communist Party of China into the Beast, and he flatly declared that the United States would cooperate with Jiang Jieshi only and not with the Communist Party of China. This, of course, is not just Hurley's personal view, but that of a whole group of people of Hurley's generation in the US government. It is a wrong and dangerous view that turns its back on Roosevelt's policy. At this juncture, Roosevelt died, and Hurley returned to the US embassy in Chongqing in high spirits. The danger of the China policy of the United States as represented by Hurley is that it is encouraging the Nationalist government to be still more reactionary and aggravating the civil war crisis. If the Hurley policy continues, then not only will the necessary result be a long-term disaster for the Chinese people, but the US government will have placed a crushing burden on its own back, namely, it will fall irretrievably into the deep stinking cesspool of Chinese reaction; it will put itself in the position of antagonizing the hundreds of millions of awakened and awakening Chinese people and will become a hindrance to the War of Resistance in the present and to world peace in the future. Isn't it clear that this would be the inevitable result? A big faction of US public opinion, including in the government and military, is worried about the China policy of the Hurley type with its dangers and wants it changed, because as far as China's future is concerned, it sees clearly that the forces of the Chinese people which demand independence, democracy, freedom, and unity are irresistible and are bound to burst forth and supplant foreign and feudal oppression. We cannot yet say whether or when the US policy will be changed. But one thing is certain. If the Hurley policy of aiding and abetting the reactionary forces in China and antagonizing the Chinese people with their immense numbers continues unchanged, it will place a crushing burden on the government and people of the United States and plunge them into endless trouble. This point must be brought home to the people of the United States.