Fujian Provincial Soviet Presidium: After the Central Committee heard Comrade Deng Fa’s report on the proceedings of your provincial presidium meeting, it concluded that, since the expanded plenary session, you have yet to overcome the old formalist errors in both your leadership style and the practical conduct of work. You have still failed to seize upon the current political situation and to place war mobilization at the very center of all your activities—using it as the guiding principle for organizing every task and for issuing concrete directives to, and pressing forward with, the work of lower-level governments. Consequently, with regard to implementing the resolutions of the expanded plenary session and effecting a genuine transformation in your practical work, only very modest progress has been made. (The sole area in which any change has occurred pertains to one particular item of work; moreover, this change is by no means widespread, and remains among the most serious problems confronting the provincial Soviet.)  Therefore, you must redouble your efforts and resolve to bring about an immediate and thorough overhaul of your methods. Under no circumstances should you confine yourselves to mere verbal declarations of “transformation” or to grandiose pronouncements to that effect in your resolutions, while continuing to carry out your actual work in precisely the same manner as before. Should you fail to achieve a radical transformation in your practical work, the very fulfillment of the Soviet’s own tasks—and the vigorous mobilization required to secure victory in the revolutionary war—will suffer grievous harm. It is imperative that you make war mobilization the central focus of all your activities. In accordance with the Central Committee’s Emergency Mobilization Order and with all the tasks stipulated by the Labor-Red Army Commission in the various emergency mobilization plans for the war, you must ensure the full, one-hundred-percent implementation of every item. You should take firm hold of each concrete task, lay down specific measures, and issue clear instructions and strict supervision to the lower-level governments to see that they are carried out. Only in this way can you effectively steer the work of governments at all levels onto a truly practical course, enabling them to shoulder more resolutely the momentous combat responsibilities now before them and thereby guarantee the complete victory of the revolutionary war.  The resolution adopted at the recent joint meeting of the military departments of the various districts of Changting calls for the establishment, in each of the townships of Fangyuan, of a guard detachment specifically charged with repelling attacks by the 12th Enemy Corps and with safeguarding the local soviet authority. Such an approach merely fosters conservatism and inertia; it does not serve to actively mobilize the masses or to advance and consolidate the soviet areas through offensive action. This kind of work ought instead to be undertaken by model youth detachments. You must immediately rectify this practice. Furthermore, the resolution provides for the formation, prior to the anniversary of the October Revolution, of three Red Guard regiments. While this decision may appear commendable on paper—as a gesture intended to galvanize mass participation—it lacks real substance and cannot be regarded as a binding directive. Indeed, unless concrete steps are taken without delay to implement it, the resolution will amount to little more than empty rhetoric. To ensure that our work throughout the province remains firmly grounded in reality, we insist that, in accordance with Instruction No. 15, a model division be established forthwith. This division must engage in very practical mobilization of the masses: it should be fully staffed and promptly trained well ahead of the October Revolution anniversary, kept in a state of constant readiness for deployment. This constitutes one of the most crucial measures for consolidating the southeastern sector of Changting and for expanding outward; it must not be overlooked in the slightest. At present, you should devote your greatest energy to securing and developing the Liancheng region: select a large contingent of cadres to be dispatched there to distribute land, set up local soviet organs, and rally the local peasant and worker masses under the banner of the Soviet, thereby strengthening the soviet authority in that area. In particular, the consolidation of southeastern Changting must be your top priority; it is among the most important tasks directly involved in smashing the enemy’s fourth encirclement campaign.  With regard to the resolutions passed at your provincial executive committee’s expanded plenary session, the Central Committee has not yet received the full texts of those resolutions and is therefore unable to respond immediately. Once these documents are forthcoming, they will be submitted to a meeting for discussion and review, at which detailed instructions will be issued. We urge you to transmit the complete set of resolutions from the expanded plenary session without delay.  Respectfully submitted, in the spirit of war mobilization.
October 31, 1932, Issue 4 of Red China. Central Executive Committee Directive to the Fujian Provincial Soviet Presidium, Document No. 9