Manifesto of the Communist Party
(January 1929)1

At present, the Chinese revolution remains at the stage of democratic revolution.
The democratic revolution aims at overthrowing the two biggest enemies,
namely, foreign imperialism and the domestic landlord class. For several decades, China has suffered the invasion of various imperialist countries such as
Britain, the United States, France, and Japan. They bring foreign goods into
China and ship Chinese agricultural products overseas, causing the Chinese
peasants to suffer great losses; they open factories, exploiting Chinese workers;
they operate banks, absorbing Chinese capital; they manage the customs, dominating China's lifeline; they establish churches, rearing running dogs for themselves; using the concessions as bases, they deploy their gunboats around the
important coastal and river ports Shanghai, Hankou, Tianjin, and Guangzhou and station their armies in Beijing, Tianjin, and Shanghai. They have quite
simply turned China into their colony. Given such oppression by the imperialists,
the hundreds of millions of Chinese workers, peasants, soldiers, and petty bourgeois have no choice but to rise up and resist. Still less does the Communist
Party have any alternative but to stand in front of the masses and lead them in
courageous battle. Moreover, the Guomindang, which represents the despotic
gentry and the capitalist class, has turned traitor halfway. Not only has it abolished the slogan "Down With the Imperialists" but it has colluded with the
imperialists, betraying the country and fawning on foreign powers in the manner
of Wu Peifu and Sun Chuanfang. Since the bourgeois Guomindang has turned
against the revolution, the workers, peasants, soldiers, and petty bourgeoisie
have no choice but to shoulder the responsibility of overthrowing imperialism.
Only when imperialism is overthrown can China be unified, industry be expanded, and the whole Chinese people be liberated. This is the number one
responsibility of the Chinese Communist Party. China's present system of land
ownership is a semifeudal system. The peasants are exploited by high rents, high

Our source for this text is Mao Zedong ji. Bujuan, Vol. 3, pp. 13-15, which has taken it
from two documentary collections published in China, one in 1979 and one in 1982. No
earlier version is known to exist.
1. As noted in the Introduction to this volume, the decisions of the Sixth Congress of
the Chinese Communist Party of June 1928 had reached the base area only at the beginning of January 1929. This manifesto, drafted by Mao around January 10, was intended to
convey the line of the Sixth Congress, as Mao and his comrades understood it.