THE MOST THE RIGHTISTS CAN DO

20 December 1925

[Text] The 3 December editorial of the rightist Shanghai MIN-KUO JIH-PAO stated: "There are only warlords who fear the revolutionary party, but not a revolutionary party which fears warlords." With this as the rationale, the editorial opposed the following passage in the telegram sent by Wang Ching-wei [3076 4737 5898] and others: "A plenary session of the Central Committee is open by nature. Should it meet in Peking, there would be pressure from warlords from without, and reactionaries from within using warlords to create problems." MIN-KUO JIH-PAO thus alleged that it would be a show of courage and of disregard of warlords for the plenary session of the Central Committee to meet in Peking.

What is the mistake of MIN-KUO JIH-PAO? The mistake lies in ignorance of the fact that there is a difference between the overt and covert activities of a revolutionary party. Operating under the enemy influence, a truly revolutionary party would maintain complete secrecy with regard to its party organizations and meetings, but would openly advocate its proposals and conduct propaganda. Under the enemy influence, it is necessary to obtain prior enemy understanding in order to make public the party organizations and meetings. In other words, there would be at least a few fruits benefiting the enemy before the enemy would grant consent or even possibly protection. However, what would the party be then? It would become a friend of the enemy, instead of a revolutionary party aimed at against the enemy. Tuan Chi-jui [3008 4388 2976] permitted the rightists to hold their conference in Peking. Would he also allow Wang Ching-wei, Tan Yen-kai [6223 1693 0418], and others to publicly go to Peking to attend the conference?

The newspaper also claimed that Premier Sun visited Peking last year without fearing Tuan Chi-jui. It ignored the two reasons which made it possible for Premier Sun to visit Peking last year: One, Tuan Chi-jui was then new in power and had neither consolidated his regime nor adopted the policy to oppress the Kuomintang. Two, control of the police in Peking was then in the hands of Feng Yu-hsiang [7458 3768 4382], who was sympathetic

to the Kuomintang. Without these two reasons, it would have been impossible for Mr Sun to openly go to Peking. If Mr Sun lived today, Tuan Chi-jui certainly would not tolerate his open revolutionary activities in Peking. He must maintain secrecy, or go elsewhere.

In Peking and other areas throughout the country where warlords are in control, there are Kuomintang organizations, and party headquarters have organizations everywhere. Party members and comrade cadres have meetings at all times, as they also bravely engage in events striving to eliminate the enemy influence. All this, however, is secret. In these organizations and activities, only the leftists are waging incessant struggle, while the rightist party members invariably are seized by fear and dare not to move. The wrong doing of "rightists" is that they can talk, and recite such slogans as "Down with imperialism" and "Down with warlords" without resorting to party resolutions. Once they learn about realistic methods and actions, they immediately lose heart. The rightists have only their mouth, but not hands or feet. They have courage to hold a conference in front of Tuan Chi-jui, but would not dare to attend a conference in Canton, because they fear the revolutionary air of Canton. They have decided to hold their so-called Second National Congress in March next year in either Shanghai or Peking, as observation is (they even if they can call the meeting (regardless of the number of those attending), they may not dare to hold it in Peking, since the court of Tuan is unstable. They probably would meet in Shanghai. In the old text of imperialism, they would openly hold the Kuomintang National Conference in front of foreign lords of various foreign consulates and police forces, and thus show off their "courage." The most the rightists can do is to openly hold conferences in front of warlords and imperialists. The leftists can never match that!

0 CHENG-CHIH CHOU-PAO, No 3, Canton, Cheng-chih Chou-pao Press, 20 December 1925