The counterrevolutionary Nationalist government’s capitulation to imperialism and its betrayal of national interests are being carried out with ever greater shamelessness and brazenness. On May 5, the Nationalist government concluded a so‑called armistice agreement with Japan and all other imperialist powers. This agreement constitutes a complete sellout of Shanghai, the very heart of China’s proletariat. It permits Japan to maintain indefinitely vast concentrations of naval, land, and air forces in Shanghai, while barring the stationing of any Chinese troops in the surrounding areas. In effect, it infinitely expands the international concession zones in Shanghai and represents a concrete step toward transforming the city into an internationally administered free port under joint control. Such ignominious surrender and open‑door treason have yet more clearly exposed the Nationalist government as an internal agent of imperialist partition of China and as the scavenger clearing the way for imperialist aggression.

At the same time, under imperialist direction, the Nationalist regime is marshaling all its resources to attack the Soviet areas that have already been liberated and freed from imperialist bondage, seeking to obstruct and halt the anti‑imperialist national revolutionary war waged by the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army. The negotiations in Shanghai and the signing of the armistice agreement have further laid bare the League of Nations as the chief architect of China’s partition, and they have shown that all imperialist powers are equally accomplices of Japanese imperialism and principal instigators of the division of China.



The Provisional Central Government of the Soviets hereby declares before the working masses throughout China: It, representing the laboring people of the entire country, repudiates the negotiations and secret pacts between the counterrevolutionary Nationalist government, Japan, and all other imperialist powers; it likewise rejects the May 5 armistice agreement signed by the traitorous Nationalist regime. It calls upon the toiling masses of all China to rise up resolutely and launch a revolutionary national war against Japanese imperialism and all other imperialist forces, against the imperialists’ lackeys and scavengers—the Nationalist government—in order to safeguard China’s territorial integrity and secure her full independence and liberation.  The Provisional Central Government of the Soviets urges the working people of all China to take up the struggle, to arm themselves, and to support the victorious offensives of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army; to overthrow the counterrevolutionary Nationalist government; and, under the banner of the Soviets, to conduct the national revolutionary war with unwavering resolve and to the bitter end, fighting for the liberation and independence of the Chinese nation—and for an independent, free Soviet China!

Mao Zedong, Chairman of the Provisional Central Government of the Chinese Soviet Republic; Zhang Guotao, Vice Chairman Jiang Xiangxi.  Ruijin, Jiangxi, May 9.