An Official Fund-Raising Letter
(February 13, 1929)1

The Red Army is an army that strives for the well-being of the workers and
peasants. It also makes every effort to protect the merchants. It exercises strict
discipline and does not encroach upon anyone. Because of the current shortage
of food supplies, we are writing to you now to request that you kindly collect on
our behalf 5,000 big foreign dollars for the soldiers' pay, 7,000 pairs of straw
sandals and 7,000 pairs of socks, 300 bolts of white cloth, and 200 laborers. It is
urgent that these be delivered to our headquarters before eight o'clock this evening. We hope that you will do as we request without delay. If you ignore our
requests, it will be proof that the Ningdu merchants are collaborating with the
reactionaries and are out to make things difficult for the Red Army. In that case
we will be obliged to burn down all the reactionary shops in Ningdu as a warning
against your treachery. Do not say that we have not forewarned you. The above
message is communicated to all the gentlemen in charge of the Ningdu Xian Reception Center.

Fourth Red Army
Zhu De, Commander-in-Chief
Mao Zedong, Party Representative

We have translated this document from a brief article by Xue Feng in Wenwu tiandi, no. 3,
1983, p. 4, which includes a barely legible reproduction of the original manuscript. The
article transcribes verbatim the greater part of the text, and explains the circumstances in
which the letter was written. The version which appears in Mao Zedong ji. Bujuan, Vol. 9,
p. 325, has been excerpted from this source.

--- Notes

1. In Xue Feng's article, the text of the letter is introduced by the following passage:
In mid-January 1929, Comrades Mao Zedong, Zhu De and Chen Yi led the main forces of the
Fourth Red Army in its march from the Jinggangshan to southern Jiangxi. They reached the
Ningdu xian capital on February 13. The local people welcomed the arrival of the Red Army
enthusiastically, and even the bigwigs of the chamber of commerce had set up a "Ningdu
Reception Center."
That afternoon, the Political Department of the Fourth Red Army delivered an official
fund-raising letter to the Ningdu Reception Center. Its contents were as follows:

2. The last sentence of the text of the letter, the signatures, and the date have been
added on the basis of the facsimile of the handwritten original which accompanies the
article in Wenwu tiandi. After transcribing the letter, Xue Feng adds: "Before eight
o'clock in the evening, the staff of the Reception Center delivered the funds and laborers
to the military supply section of the Fourth Red Army Headquarters. This fund-raising
task was thereby successfully completed." The author also notes that beginning in 1931,
when the soviet areas were better established, contributions were replaced by taxation as
the method for obtaining funds from merchants.