A New Situation and New Tasks
(July 29, 1933)

Relying on the correct offensive line of the Party and on the active leadership of
the soviets, relying on the heroic struggle of the Workers' and Peasants' Red
Army and on the warm support of the masses, relying on the daily struggles by
the worker and peasant masses in the White areas and on the unprecedentedly
vigorous development of the mass movement against imperialism and the
Guomindang, we have basically broken up the enemy's Fourth "Encirclement
and Suppression" after the campaigns at Dongpi and Huangpi.¹ During the
Dongpi and Huangpi campaigns, the brave Red Army achieved an unprecedentedly glorious and great victory and delivered a fatal blow to the strongest pillar of
the landlords and the bourgeoisie—Chiang Kaishek, the chief of the Guomindang
warlords. In his tearful and distraught handwritten instruction, Chiang Kaishek
sadly admitted that this corresponded to the "secret anguish that had haunted them
all their lives" (Chiang Kaishek's letter to Chen Cheng). This is an unprecedentedly disastrous defeat and collapse of their troops, so now that they have suffered
this grave defeat, the Guomindang troops have finally become powerless, although they have since made several attempts to launch counterattacks.

The reasons why the Guomindang warlords suffered this disastrous defeat and
are incapable of launching counterattacks are as follows: First, the Chinese
Workers' and Peasants' Red Army is becoming increasingly staunch and strong
and brave and skillful in battle. In the course of the great victory of the Huangpi
and Dongpi campaigns, the Red Army also gained many replacements and further strengthened itself. The Soviet Area has been greatly consolidated and expanded. The morale of most of the Guomindang soldiers is fundamentally
shaken and they are unwilling to attack the Red Army. Even many of the counterrevolutionary officers of the Guomindang are scared out of their wits. When

This article first appeared in Hongse Zhonghua, no. 97, July 29, 1933, where it carries the
signature of Mao Zedong, and we have dated it accordingly. We have translated the article
from Mao Zedong ji, Vol. 3, pp. 299–301, which reproduces this version.
1. The reference is to the battles at Huangpi in February 1933 and at Dongpi in March
1933. The opening phrase regarding the Party's correct line must be seen either as ironic,
or as a reflection of Mao's weakened position in the summer of 1933. In fact, the Red
Army, at that time still under the control of Mao's ally Zhu De, supported to some extent
by Zhou Enlai, had achieved the victories at Huangpi and Dongpi in large measure by
going against the so-called "Forward and Offensive Line" of the Moscow-imposed leadership, though there is some dispute about this point. See the Introduction to this volume.


they speak of the Red Army, it is a matter of "changing color when talking about
the tiger." Therefore, although Chiang Kaishek has several times sought to
launch counterattacks, in the end he has been powerless to do so. Second,
China's national crisis continues to deepen and intensify. At a time when the
Japanese imperialists are occupying Rehe and the area east of the Luan [River]²
and pressing on toward Beiping and Tianjin, and the Guomindang is continuing
its shameless capitulation, the anti-imperialist and anti-Guomindang tide of revolution by the toiling popular masses of all China has risen to its highest point.
This has forced the Guomindang on the one hand to sign a treaty of capitulation
with Japanese imperialism, finally selling out North China, Beiping, and Tianjin,
and on the other hand to enforce rigorously an unprecedented White terror in
order to suppress the revolutionary masses, who are roaring with anger and
opposing imperialism and the Guomindang. Third, because of the overall collapse of the national economy, thousands upon thousands of workers and peasants all over the country have sunk into an unprecedented great calamity. Their
living standard is declining from that of animals and slaves right down to starvation level. Suffering death, destitution, and homelessness, they are sunk in a
sea of misery. As a result, strikes by the workers all over the country and
peasant uprisings have burst out on a great scale. Their struggles have developed from that for improvement of daily life to anti-imperialist and anti-Guomindang political struggles. These revolutionary struggles have tied up
our enemies to a very great extent, causing them to fall into a state of fear
and panic. Meanwhile, because of the decline in customs revenue and the fact
that the worker and peasant masses in the broad soviet areas throughout the
country have been removed from the scope of their exploitation, the
Guomindang is becoming financially bankrupt!
Facing this serious defeat, and in a situation where there is no way out, the
only "strategem" of the Guomindang warlords is to capitulate to the imperialists
even more despicably and shamelessly, and to seek large amounts of loans and
arms from the international imperialists in order to organize a Fifth "Encirclement and Suppression" against the Soviet Area and the Red Army. The signing
of the North China Truce Agreement and the visits by Song Ziwen³ to Europe

2. The Luan River, mentioned above in a note to the circular telegram of July 1933
opposing the Dalian Conference, corresponds roughly to the western boundary of the buffer
zone established by the Tanggu Truce. Thus "east of the Luan" refers to the area between the
river and the Great Wall. In this particular instance, the original text in Hongse Zhonghua has
the character "Luo" instead of "Luan," which it closely resembles. This is clearly a printer's
error, for in similar references below, the character "Luan" once more appears.

3. Song Ziwen (1894-1972), better known as T. V. Soong, was born in Shanghai into the
well-known Soong family; two of his sisters married Chiang Kaishek and Sun Yatsen. T. V.
Soong specialized in economic affairs, and served for many years in Chiang Kaishek's government as finance minister and in other finance-related posts. Soong spent most of the spring and
summer of 1933 in London, Geneva and the U.S., attending conferences, obtaining loans for
China, and trying to encourage foreign support for China against Japan.

and America are means for carrying out their sinister scheme. Now a new deal
has been made between the Guomindang and the imperialists in which the
Guomindang has presented more than 4,000,000 square kilometers of Chinese
territory and many other unannounced gifts to the imperialists in exchange for
millions in loans and large amounts of arms. Taking advantage of these loans
and supplies of arms, and acting as commanded and organized by the various
imperialists, the Guomindang is now assembling its troops in North China and
many newly recruited soldiers are being trained to produce and use gas shells!
They are concentrating all their forces to organize a Fifth "Encirclement and
Suppression" and madly launch a desperate attack which is doomed to fail
against the Red Army in the Soviet Area.
We are, therefore, facing a new revolutionary situation. Our task in the face of
this situation is to mobilize and concentrate all our forces to smash the imperialist Guomindang's Fifth "Encirclement and Suppression." This is a great historical turning point. The two régimes—the soviet régime of the workers and
peasants and the Guomindang régime of the landlords and the bourgeoisie—will
come to see, in an imminent war on an even larger scale, only one future: the
ever more victorious development of our soviet régime and the increasing doom
and collapse of the Guomindang régime.
In order to achieve a great victory, leading to the complete smashing of the
enemy's Fifth "Encirclement and Suppression," we must first of all increase our
own strength, concentrate all our forces, increase our confidence in victory, and
contribute everything we have to the war! Here we must first ensure that the
number of Red Army soldiers will continue to grow. During the three months of
August, September, and October of this year, we must first see to it that the Red
Army is expanded by fifty thousand. At the same time, the political education
and military techniques of the Red soldiers must be greatly enhanced, and the
organizations of Red Guards and Young Pioneers must be expanded and
strengthened. Secondly, adequate provisions for the Red Army and the supply of
daily necessities for the masses must be guaranteed. Here our main fighting
tasks at the moment are as follows: Carry out a broad Land Investigation
Movement to deepen class struggle in the countryside and in the cities, and
consolidate soviet political power resolutely; develop the national economy
in a planned way, set up mass cooperatives everywhere, issue economic construction bonds, coordinate the supply of grain and expand external trade,
break up the economic blockade by the enemy, and create the material conditions for the revolutionary war.
Finally, in order to carry out urgent war mobilization smoothly and to smash
the Fifth "Encirclement and Suppression" by the enemy completely, we must
oppose all tendencies to underestimate the current new revolutionary situation,
and we must oppose all the psychological war weariness. We must particularly
oppose those opportunists who are panic-stricken and who favor retreat and
flight in face of the Fifth "Encirclement and Suppression" by the enemy. But

at the same time, we must also oppose those leftists who indulge in empty talk
and have a fatalistic belief in victory. These right and left opportunists are the
most ferocious enemies of our war mobilization, for they are actually helping our
class enemy.
Worker and peasant masses throughout the soviet areas and Red fighters!
Comrades! At present, we stand before a new revolutionary situation. We must
be prepared to make every sacrifice and take on a great historical mission!
Comrades! The Fifth Campaign, even crueler and fiercer, lies ahead of us. When
we completely smash this Fifth "Encirclement and Suppression," initial victory
of the revolution in Jiangxi and several neighboring provinces will be just ahead!