DECLARATION TO THE TOILING WORKER-PEASANT MASSES OF THE WORLD

6 September 1933

[Text] Dear Brothers, Sisters, Comrades, Friends!

We are China's workers, peasants, urban and rural poor and revolutionary soldiers and intellectuals.  We are unwilling to remain forever the slaves of imperialism and domestic landlords and capitalists.  We are creating our own new life of freedom.  We are in the process of leading the 450 million people of China to wage a struggle of liberation.  On one-sixth of China's soil (in many areas in the provinces of Kiangsi, Fukien, Hupeh, Hunan, Szechwan, Anhwei, Honan and Shensi), we have, by our own efforts, begun to create the one and only true people's political power--the Soviet political power and the one and only true people's army--the Worker-Peasant Red Army.  China's Soviet government and Red Army struggle for the fundamental improvement of the political and economic conditions of China's toiling worker-peasant masses.  China's Soviet government and Red Army wish to attain this point right from the beginning--to let the workers, peasants, poor people and revolutionary soldiers and intellectuals do what they want to do freely and decide on their own destiny.  We want to enable those who are without food, clothing, housing and jobs; who are illiterate and live as beasts of burden to have food, clothing, housing and jobs; be able to read and to live human lives.  In order to achieve this, the Soviet government has given them land, houses and jobs; opened many free schools, literacy classes, libraries and clubs for the adults and children; and started many free hospitals and sanatoriums for the sick and the old.

Yet, the small group of parasites controlling China--foreign imperialists and Chinese warlords, bureaucrats, landlords, capitalists, usurers--are always unwilling for us to live a human life.

Precisely because we have begun to create our own new life of freedom, because we only work 8 hours a day at higher wages, because those of us with little or no land now have land and because our women have gained liberation, Chiang Kai-shek, Wang Ching-wei and all the Kuomintang peasant revilers act as "Red bandits" and "communists bandits" and continually launch "encirclement and suppression" against us.

When Japanese imperialism wildly slaughtered our compatriots and occupied China's Northeast and northern territory province by province, and when American, British and French imperialists actively divided China, we declared to the people and troops of the entire nation, time and again:  The imperialists want to divide up China completely.  All the people of China must rise up as a man to defend the nation!

We have openly proposed over and over to all the troops--any troops, as long as they support our three simple conditions--they may sign battle agreements with us, in order to arm ourselves and resist Japan and other imperialists, defend our national existence and strive for national liberation.  The necessary conditions to truly organize and arm the people for the sacred national defense against Japan and other imperialists are:  (1) Immediately cease attacks on Soviet areas; (2) give the people the minimum democratic rights--the freedoms of speech, publication, meeting, association, demonstration and strike; and (3) permit the people to organize and arm the anti-Japanese volunteer army.

Chiang Kai-shek, Wang Ching-wei and all the Kuomintang traitors always reply to us in the same way:  Intensify and expand the cruel attack of the Soviet areas!

The Kuomintang has now begun its sixth "encirclement and suppression" against our free Soviet China!  For this "encirclement and suppression," just around our central Soviet area alone (Kiangsi, Fukien, Hunan and Kwangtung), over 442,000 Nanking and Kwangtung troops are assembled.  These troops are equipped with new model superior weapons, including artillery, tanks, planes and poison gas.

Where did the Kuomintang warlords and politicians acquire so many new weapons and large sums of money for their troops?  They acquired them from the American, British, Japanese, French and German imperialists.

These imperialists utilize the weapons manufactured by you and the money extracted from you to destroy the people of China who are struggling for their own national and social liberation!

You and we still remember clearly that, not long ago, the troops of England, America and Japan shelled our Canton Commune and Ch'ang-sha Soviet, and the planes of French bombed our Lung-chou Soviet in Kwangsi!

In the Kuomintang's sixth "encirclement and suppression," the role of the imperialists is clearly revealed.  Besides the 50-million dollars of so-called "cotton and wheat loans" and the 40-million dollars of so-called "aviation loans" to the Nanking government, American imperialism got the Nanking troops 150 military planes and artillery, tanks, machine guns, chemical poisons and ammunition loaded in several dozen ships and sent several hundred pilots and all kinds of military and technical experts.  The British ambassador to China (Lampson) personally went on an inspection trip to

Szechwan and gave Liu Hsiang 20 million English pounds to attack our Red 4th Army there.  Though the British, American and Japanese imperialists vigorously compete against one another in the division of China, they take unanimous action against Soviet China.  They order their own running dogs--the warlords of the Nanking, Kwangtung and northern factions--to conduct a common "encirclement and suppression" of the liberated people in our Soviet area.  The German fascist government sent 70 military experts (including the former National Defense Chief (Sai-k'o-t'o) to Nanking.  Chiang Kai-shek organized them into a special unit in the Nanch'ang General Headquarters, in order to direct the combat activities against the Red Army.  The so-called "technical Committee" sent by the League of Nations to Nanking precisely at this time actually is to help Chiang Kai-shek plan and attack China's Soviet and the Red Army.

Brothers, Sisters, Comrades, Friends!

Look!  The pilots and the military and technical experts of the so-called "democratic" America and other nations are, under the direction of Germany's fascist general and China's Kuomintang warlords, carrying out the cruelest air and chemical warfare with American, British, French and German planes, poison gas, tanks and artillery in the territory of the Soviet China and slaughtering large numbers of workers, peasants, soldiers, poor people and intellectuals, in order to eliminate the free Chinese Soviet Republic and Worker-Peasant Red Army.

Brothers, Sisters, Comrades, Friends!

In order to defend their own Soviet Republic, thousands and tens of thousands of men and women, old and young, did not hesitate to use their own flesh and blood, brains and lives to repel courageously the five successive "encirclement and suppressions" of the Kuomintang, superior in number and weaponry.  Today, this young Chinese Soviet Republic faces a grave crisis.

At this critical point, we request you

To help us resist the executioners who want us to relive the dark inhuman life and slaughter us!

To make us relive the dark life of slavery of the past, the international imperialists are determined to drown China's soviet revolution in a sea of blood.  The British, American, Japanese and French imperialist bandits are concentrating warships, airplanes and marines around Soviet China and all its large cities and coastal ports.  They want to massacre us first before proceeding with a new imperialist world war, causing gigantic sacrifices and misery to mankind in the whole world!

The Central Executive Committee, the supreme organ of the Soviet Republic of China, solemnly appeals to you to join us in a courageous mass struggle:

Resist imperialist intervention in the Soviet China!

Resist imperialist division of China! Resist imperialist preparation of a new imperialist world war while massacring the people of China!

Resist the massacre of the toiling people of Soviet China by the imperialists with poison gas, planes, tanks and artillery!  Oppose the shipping of all arms to China!  Demand the immediate recall of American pilots and military experts and German generals and staff!

Demand the immediate withdrawal of American, British, Japanese, French and Italian navies, infantry and air force;

Long live the international sympathy of the proletariat and oppressed people of the whole world!

Mao Tse-tung, Chairman of the Central
Executive Committee of the Soviet Republic
of China

Hsiang Ying, Vice Chairman

Chang Kuo-t'ao, Vice Chairman

Chu Teh, Chairman of the Revolutionary
Military Affairs Committee of the Soviet
Republic of China and Commander in Chief
of the Worker-Peasant Red Army

6 September 1933, Jui-chin, Kiangsi

     "Soviet China," Soviet Union Foreign Workers' Publishing House (Moscow),

(The introduction to "Soviet China" was written by Wang Ming.  In it, Wang Ming quoted the entire text of this article with the following prefix:  "...We wish to reprint in the introduction the Declaration of the Central Government of the Soviet Republic of China to the Toiling Worker-Peasant Masses of the World which we receive from China 3 days ago.  The text of the said declaration is as follows...)