CIRCULAR TELEGRAM AGAINST THE KUOMINTANG SIGNING AN AGREEMENT TO SELL WOOSUNG-SHANGHAI

9 May 1932

Text The capitulation of the counterrevolutionary Kuomintang government before imperialism and its betrayal of the national interests are being carried on even more unabashedly and openly. On 5 May, the Kuomintang government signed a so-called cease-fire agreement with Japan and all other imperialist countries. This agreement is the outright selling of Shanghai, center of the proletariat of China. In the agreement, Japan is allowed to amass great numbers of its naval, army, and air forces in Shanghai on a long-term basis, while Chinese troops can never be stationed in the surrounding areas of Shanghai. In actual fact, this is an unlimited expansion of the area of Shanghai's International Settlement and a concrete step to bring about the conversion of Shanghai into a free city under international control.

This kind of shameless capitulation and overt act of betrayal show up even more clearly the Kuomintang government as traitors in the partition of China by imperialist countries and as "trail blazers" in the invasion of China by the imperialists. And yet, at the same time, the Kuomintang government, under the direction of the imperialists, has concentrated all its strength to attack the Soviet area, which has long gained liberation and extricated itself from the fetters of the imperialists, and by preventing the Workers and Peasants' Red Army from carrying on its anti-imperialist national revolutionary war. In the course of the Shanghai negotiations and signing of the agreement, it has been exposed even more thoroughly that the League of Nations is the organ of the partition of China and that all imperialist countries alike are cooperators of Japanese imperialism and proponents of the partition of China.

The Soviet Provisional Central Government hereby proclaims before the toiling masses of China that as representative of the toiling masses all over the country: it renounces the negotiations and secret agreements entered into by the counterrevolutionary Kuomintang government with Japan and all other imperialist countries and the May 5th cease-fire agreement signed by the traitorous Kuomintang government; it calls upon the toiling masses

throughout the country to rise resolutely to wage a revolutionary national war against Japanese imperialism and all other imperialist countries, and oppose the running dogs and "trail blazers" of the imperialists--the Kuomintang government--in order to maintain China's territorial integrity and seek the complete independence and liberation of China.

The Soviet Provisional Central Government calls upon the toiling masses all over the country to rise in struggle, arm themselves, and support the victorious assaults of the Chinese Workers and Peasants' Red Army to overthrow the counterrevolutionary government of the Kuomintang, and under the Soviet banner, carry out resolutely and thoroughly a national revolutionary war. Struggle for the liberation and independence of the Chinese nation! Struggle for a free and independent Soviet China!

Provisional Central Government of the Chinese Soviet Republic

Chairman: Mao Tse-tung
Vice-chairmen: Hsiang Ying Chang Kuo-tao

Jui-chin, Kiangsi
9 May 1932

*"Soviet China," Soviet Research Institute, China Bookstore (Shanghai), November 1932
**"Soviet China," Soviet Foreign Workers Publishing House (Moscow), 1933