Fourth Army of the Communist Party Red Army
                                A Letter to Our Brother Soldiers
                                        Throughout the Country
                                        (March 16, 1929)

Dear Brother Soldiers All Over China:

We have seven things to tell you. Please think them over carefully after you have
read them.
    First, soldiers come from poor worker and peasant families. Who among us
soldiers is not of worker or peasant origin? Where can we find a soldier who is
the son of a landlord or a capitalist? Back home, if we were tillers, we had no
land to till, and if we were workers, we had no work to do. Even if we did have
land to till, the harvest wasn’t enough for us to pay rent to the landlords and
taxes to the officials. So we had to borrow money, but with interest added to
interest, we were unable to pay back our debts. No longer able to live at home,
then, we had no choice but to become soldiers. Some of us were workers fired by
factory owners or shopowners. Unable to make a living, and with nowhere to
turn, we had to sell our own lives for a few dollars a month.
    Second, to be a soldier in the White army is to undergo extreme misery and
suffer much oppression. We didn’t know at first what life would be like in the
army. We just followed the rich and the powerful, only thinking to join the army
to become soldiers and be able to pick up a gun and kill to our hearts’ content
and wreak vengeance on our enemies. We didn’t know that we had gone wrong
and had walked into the camp of this thing called the National Revolutionary
Army. The primary target of their revolution seems to be us soldiers. Haven’t
they treated us harshly, severely cursed us, beat us up, and even shot some of us?
If we make even a minor mistake, we are rewarded with blows from truncheons
or whips, slaps in the face, or kicks. This has become commonplace. As for pay,
they just say they have no money, and sometimes we go for seven or eight
months without pay. Every so often they get generous and give us a little money,
with some government bonds thrown in. But as for the regimental and divisional
commanders, if you looked into it you would find that they have at least a few
thousand, or tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of silver dollars in the

Our source for this letter is Mao Zedong ji, Bujuan, Vol. 3, pp. 21–25, which has taken it
from two documentary collections, one published in 1979 and the other in 1982. No
contemporary text appears to be available.
bank. What about the new warlord, Chiang Kaishek? He has even more. The money he has sent to the United States alone amounts to tens of millions of yuan. He has his Western-style house built in the concessions. According to the newspapers, it cost his wife, Song Meiling, 30,000 yuan to have a coat tailor-made by a big company in Shanghai. But what about us? What kind of housing are we living in and what kind of clothing do we wear? Even among those regimental and divisional commanders, does any of them lack a Western-style house in which to live? You live in either thatched huts or dilapidated houses. How about the officers’ clothes compared with your ragged military uniforms? They enjoy feasts and choice foods at western restaurants. How about your food? Don’t you get six dollars’ worth of food each month? Don’t you only have one dish at each meal? After several years of fighting, many officers have been promoted and accumulated great wealth. How about you? Many of our brother soldiers have been killed in strange places thousands of miles from home, and alas, some of their mothers and wives haven’t even been told of their deaths. Some of them hadn’t even been able to get married!

Third, we soldiers ought to be clear about who are our friends and brothers and who are our foes and enemies. We should not help our foes and enemies to kill our friends and brothers. Let’s all take a look. Are the local bullies and bad gentry, landlords, and capitalists truly our “friends”? Absolutely not. They are our mortal foes and archenemies. How about the workers who make tools and build houses, and the peasants who provide us with food and clothing? Are they our enemies? Absolutely not. They are our friends and brethren. Among the workers and peasants, many are actually our own fathers, uncles, brothers, and relatives. Can we kill our own relatives and friends at the command of our enemies? No, we cannot and we should not. But many of our brother soldiers have not realized this. They have been deceived by the new warlord Guomindang, and go around killing their own friends and brothers for the local bullies and bad gentry, landlords, and capitalists. How distressing this is! Do you not believe it? Chiang Kaishek claims to be most “revolutionary,” but during the first Northern Expedition, when he arrived in Jiangxi he killed the head of the General Workers’ Union in Ganzhou; when he went to Shanghai, he disarmed the workers’ inspection corps, which had opened Shanghai to him and helped him to force Sun Chuanfang out, and he shot to death a large number of workers. The number of workers and peasants killed by Xu Kexiang in Hunan, He Jian in Hubei, and Li Jishen in Guangdong totaled several hundreds of thousands. Don’t they all talk about “making revolution”? Upon whose lives are they actually making revolution? Those of the workers and peasants. But aren’t we ourselves, the soldiers, the ones who have been deceived and used by them to kill the workers and peasants? So many soldiers were killed during the two Eastern Campaigns and two Northern Expeditions and the war between Chiang Kaishek and the Guangxi faction! The result was a new emperor, Chiang Kaishek. How much blood have we soldiers shed only to fatten these man-eating beasts? How many of our soldiers’ corpses have been cast aside only to build a throne for the new warlord? Enough! We’ve had enough deception from them! Brother soldiers in the Guomindang armies! Come to your senses right now! You ought to know for sure who our enemies are. Don’t be deceived by them any more! They have deceived you with [the slogan] “No fear of death and no need for money,” but they hide themselves in the rear, raking in piles and piles of money. You are the only ones who end up dead! They “love the country and love the people,” but sold the Ji’nan Massacre to Japan¹ and aviation rights to the United States. Hundreds of thousands of slaughtered workers and peasants have been “loved” by them this way. All the nation’s rights have been sold out because of their love. Who can deny it? Brother soldiers, wake up!

Fourth, let’s ask ourselves, what have we got after several years of fighting? Ever since Chiang Kaishek betrayed the revolution, the warlords have been fighting against one another for territories and privileges. As far as they are concerned, no matter who wins and who loses, they can still be promoted and get rich. All we can do is scale mountains and ford streams, endure the hardships of arduous journeys, and be sent to the battlefields to die. Even the small amount of compensation has gone into the officers’ pockets. Those who didn’t die are disabled and can no longer run around for the warlord, so they are laid off in batches and sent off to repair roads. Those who cannot work on the roads have no recourse but to beg. Across numerous mountains and countless rivers, without any money to their names, how can any of them make it home? And, because of incessant fighting between the warlords, taxes and levies have grown heavier and the rents and interest exacted by the local tyrants have steadily increased so that our parents, wives, and brothers are dying of hunger and exposure. In short, the soldiers fight for the warlords, the warlords keep getting promoted and getting rich, and the soldiers who don’t get killed end up being dismissed!

Fifth, the Red Army soldiers fight for their own liberation. Brother soldiers! If you want to find a way out, to make a living, to avoid suffering, to be rescued from slavery, to gain benefits for your families, the only way is to come to your senses, to unite and kill the counterrevolutionary warlord officers, to replace them with officers elected among yourselves, to set up a Soldiers’ Committee to take part in managing the armies, to unite with the workers and peasants to overthrow the local bullies and bad gentry who have oppressed us, to confiscate the land from the landlord class and distribute it among the peasants. Only then can we be assured of a bright future. Only when we have overthrown the Guomindang government and established our own government of the councils of worker-peasant-soldier deputies will we have true and long-lasting happiness. Our Red Army is our soldiers’ own army and the workers’ and peasants’ army. It is also an army led by the Communist Party. It is not subject to oppression and

1. Regarding the Ji’nan Massacre, see above, the relevant note to the text of October 5,
1928.
exploitation by officers; officers and soldiers receive equal pay; they wear the same clothes and eat the same food, and the army is managed by the Soldiers' Committee. It is authorized also to shoot counterrevolutionary officers, to wipe out local tyrants and distribute their land, to overthrow the Guomindang govern-ment, to eliminate the warlords, and to expel imperialist forces from China. This is a true revolutionary army.

Sixth, the Fourth Red Army has struggled with the counterrevolutionaries for several years now and has eliminated many despotic gentry and warlords. On August 1 two years ago, Chiang Kaishek had defected to imperialism and started protecting local bullies, bad gentry and capitalists; workers and peasants were being killed, and he wanted us to protect our enemies and kill our own brothers, the workers and peasants. At that time, therefore, we of the Fourth Red Army did not forget the revolution and would not be deceived by him into killing our own brothers and friends. Under the leadership of the Communist Party, an insurrec-tion erupted in Nanchang, and we started fighting against the counterrevolution-ary warlords. For the last two years, we have been moving and fighting in Hunan, Jiangxi, Fujian, and Guangdong provinces and have overthrown many local bullies and bad gentry, eliminated many new warlords, and set up many worker-peasant-soldier governments.

Seventh, soldiers in the Red Army welcome White army soldiers to join the Red Army and take part in the revolution. Brother soldiers, let us all unite and jointly attack our class enemies! Wake up! We welcome you. Brothers, arise. Let us raise the bright Red banner and loudly shout, “Comrades! Come quickly and build our working people's Republic. The working class must be the masters of the world, only then will mankind enter into the Great Harmony. We are the revolutionary vanguard of the workers and the peasants. We are the revolution-ary vanguard of the workers and the peasants.” Finally, let us loudly shout:

1. Brother soldiers all over the country, turn your guns around and kill the counterrevolutionary officers!
2. Let soldiers throughout the land rise up in rebellion and eliminate the new and old warlords!
3. Let soldiers throughout the land rise up to organize their own Red Army!
4. Workers, peasants, and soldiers, unite!
5. Strike at the local bullies and distribute the land!
6. Overthrow the Guomindang government.
7. Down with imperialism.
8. Establish a worker-peasant-soldier government.
9. Long live the success of the Chinese revolution.
10. Long live the success of the world revolution.

Soldiers' Committee, Fourth Red Army

Letter from the Fourth Red
Army Front Committee to the
Central Committee
(March 20, 1929)

To the Fujian Provincial Committee, and to be forwarded to the Central Committee:

1) We (the Fourth Red Army) captured Tingzhou on March 14.1 Guo Fengming (commander of the Second Fujian Brigade) was killed, and his body exposed in Ting City for three days.2 We have captured about five hundred rifles (the single-shot ones and nine-shot ones are of no use to the soviet Red Army), seven or eight carbines, three mortars, and several hun-dred rounds of shells. The remnants of Guo's brigade retreated toward Shang-hai and Hangzhou.
2) The Tingzhou masses are excellent. After we had distributed the grain and property of the local bullies and the reactionaries and carried out extensive propaganda, the workers, and the peasants from the vicinity of the town, rose up in a big way. In the ensuing days we have been carrying out basic organizing work for peasant associations and workers' unions (both underground and open). Within a day or two a provisional organ of political power, the revolutionary committee, will be set up. For the present,3 the political department will replace the organ of political power.
3) In view of developments in the current situation (we have read the March 3 Shanghai newspaper, the March 13 . . . , and the Zhangzhou and Chaozhou newspapers), as for western Fujian and southern Jiangxi, we hope that the Cen-

Our source for this document is Mao Zedong junshi wenji, Vol. 1, pp. 53–57, which cites a handwritten copy in the Party archives. This report also appears in Mao Zedong ji. Bujuan, Vol. 3, pp. 31–35, where it has been taken from a documentary collection pub-lished in 1982. No earlier text appears to be available.
1. Tingzhou (now known as Changting) is located in southwestern Fujian, just across the border from Ruijin in Jiangxi.
2. Guo Fengming (1892–1929), a native of Fujian, had been commander of the Sec-ond Fujian Brigade since 1928. As indicated by Mao, he was killed in battle on March 14, 1929.
3. Taking zixia to be a typographical error for muxia.