Directive Letter from the Central Executive
Committee to the Presidium of the
Fujian Provincial Soviet
(October 31, 1932)
The Presidium of the Fujian Provincial Soviet:
Having heard Comrade Deng Fa's report on his attendance at the meeting of the
presidium of your provincial soviet,1 the Central Executive Committee believes
that, since the enlarged meeting, you have continued to make the previous mistakes of formalism in terms of leadership style and actual work. You continue to
fail to grasp the current political situation and treat war mobilization as the
central priority, which is to be used to plan all our tasks and concretely guide and
advance the work of subordinate governments. Therefore, you have achieved
only very minor results in terms of carrying out the resolutions of the enlarged
meeting and changing your actual work (only Shanghangxian has made changes
in its work); moreover, such results are very insignificant. This situation is,
indeed, the most serious problem now for the provincial soviet. We hope that you
will use the utmost efforts and determination to change this style immediately. You
must absolutely not merely cry change or write a lot about change in resolutions
while continuing the old ways in carrying out the actual work. If you are unable to
make thorough changes in your actual work, it will greatly endanger the implementation of the tasks of the Soviet itself and the work of actively mobilizing for
victory in the revolutionary war. You must regard leading war mobilization as the
pivot of all tasks. You must follow the Central Executive Committee's instructions
on emergency mobilization; you must fully execute the work specified by the Committee on Labor and War in its plans of emergency war mobilization. Grasp each
Our source for this text is Hongse Zhonghua, no. 40, November 14, 1932. The same
editors have left a number of characters blank because they could not decipher what was
apparently a rather illegible photocopy. The 1982 Beijing reprint of the newspaper that we
have used is not always clear either, but we have been able to restore some of the missing
characters and correct a few wrong readings.
I. This was presumably the meeting attended by Deng Fa and Xiang Ying which
caused a delay in the convening of the Ningdu Conference referred to above; see "Opinions Regarding the Operations of the Front Army," September 26, 1932. Accounts of the
Western fujian revolutionary movement mention a provincial soviet government meeting
on September 26-28 attended by Xiang Ying (though no mention is made of Deng Fa).
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OCTOBER I932
3l3
and every actual operation and specify concrete methods to guide and supervise
subordinate governments in carrying them out. This is to guide the work of governments at all levels toward practical [results], so that governments at all levels may be
made better able to shoulder the current great tasks of struggle and safeguard the
complete victory of the revolutionary war.
In the resolution by this joint conference of the military departments of the
districts of Changting, it is resolved to form a garrison company each in Tongfang
and Liuyuan, with the exclusive task of defending against the militia bandits and
providing security for the governments in those areas. This solution will only help
the growth of conservative ideas, and cannot mobilize the masses actively to use
the offensive line to develop and strengthen the Soviet Area. Such duties should
be performed by model battalions and model teams of the Young Pioneers.
You should immediately correct this method of theirs. At the same lime, it is
written in the resolution that three units of Red Guards will be formed before the
October Revolution holiday. This decision is possible in tenns of the work of
fully mobilizing the masses. But any decision must be conditioned upon realistic
possibilities. Otherwise, resolutions become empty words. The most serious
problem in the province of Fujian as a whole is writing wonderful things into
resolutions that cannot be accomplished in reality. The result is that a resolution
is a resolution, while the work remains the same. Therefore, our view is that, in
order to fit work to reality, you should continue to comply with Directive No. 15 and
form a model division in one army first. [Forming] a division requires, however, the
real mobilization of the masses. It is to be formed to full strength before the October
Revolution holiday; it is to be trained intensely and kept ready to be transferred at all
times later. This is one of the most important tasks for strengthening southeastern
Changting and developing outward, and it must not be neglected in the slightest
For now you should devote your utmost efforts to the task of winning over
and establishing (power in] Liancheng. You must select a large number of cadres
and send them to liancheng to redistribute land, form a government, and win
over the local masses under the banner of the Soviet in order to consolidate the
local government. In particular, your province must devote a great deal of energy
to the consolidation of southeastern Changting. This is the most important task in
terms of actually smashing the enemy's Fourth Encirclement Campaign.
The Central Executive Committee has not yet received the full texts of individual resolutions reached at the enlarged meeting of your provincial executive
committee, so we are unable to respond right away. When we receive the full
texts in the future and bring them up for review at our meetings, we will give you
detailed instructions. We hope you will immediately send us all the resolutions
of the enlarged meeting. A salute for war mobilization!
Chairman
Vice Chairmen
Mao Zedong
Xiang Ying
Zhang Guotao

version is reproduced in Mao Zedong ji. Blljuan, Vol. 4, pP. 8H9, but the Japanese