DECLARATION OF CENTRAL GOVERNMENT ON 1 MAY LABOR DAY

April 1934

[Text] Workers and Peasants of the Entire Soviet Areas!

This year's "May Day" falls on a day when we are carrying out a merciless and decisive campaign against the fifth "encirclement and suppression" of the imperialist Kuomintang!

Two-thirds of the regular Kuomintang troops throughout the country, the main force of Chiang Kai-shek, the bandit chieftain of all fascist imperialists, comprised of 66 divisions, 8 independent brigades, constituting more than 700,000 White troops, are attacking our central Soviet areas!

On all the battle lines of the front, Kuomintang planes and artillery are bombarding us, their machine guns and rifles are mortifying us with fire, their blockhouses are blockading us and they are carrying out inhuman burning and killings. They want to drown our worker-peasant Soviet regime in a sea of blood!

However, this type of frenzied and hopeless attacks launched by the imperialist Kuomintang cannot frighten the courageous Red Army on the front lines and make the worker-peasant masses in the entire Soviet areas lose hope. On the contrary, it further increases the anger and heightened the determination of every Red fighter and every worker and peasant to struggle on. Tens of thousands of worker-peasant masses have been engulfed in the flood of participation in the war, pledging to fight to the very end in defense of the Soviet regime.

The fifth campaign is an even more merciless and prolonged campaign than any others. It is a war determining the survival or death of the Kuomintang landlord bourgeoisie or the political power of the worker and peasants. It is possible to achieve final victory only by mobilizing all of the worker-peasant masses in the entire Soviet areas and vigorously participate in this campaign!

On May Day of this year the Central Government of the Chinese Soviet Republic calls upon every one of the workers and peasants in the entire Soviet areas to arm themselves and join the Red Army! Join the Red Guards, the Young Pioneers, Model Red Youth Units and guerrilla units! Wage a decisive war with the enemy attacking us.

Comrades of the members of the model Red youth units who took part in the armed review made during Red May have enlisted in the Red Army by entire battalions and regiments to struggle to the end and smash the enemy's fifth encirclement and suppression campaign!

Defend every inch of our Soviet areas by launching guerrilla warfare on a massive scale so as to confuse him, encircle him, tire him out, strike at him and destroy him thereby helping our Red Army and in coordination with them win a decisive victory! Only victory through armed struggle--primarily by destroying the main force of the bandit chieftain Chiang Kai-shek--can we be assured of the freedom of land possession, the labour work system, and all revolutionary rights given to us by the Soviet revolution. Only through victory attained by armed struggle can we ultimately overthrow the rule of imperialist Kuomintang and establish a nationwide Chinese soviet regime and finally be emancipated from under the iron heels of the landlord bourgeoisie!

Worker-peasant masses in the rear areas! Let's pool all our resources in order to assure the ration supply of our Red Army. Let every worker and peasant save 3 sheng of rice to help the Red Army, plant more vegetables and raise more pigs for the Red fighters fighting on the fronts! Let us complete as speedily as possible the selling of construction bonds, protect and transport our rations where they are needed, economize on all expenditures in the rear areas, save every penny and struggle for victory on the front lines!

The masses of workers and peasants in all the areas of the soviets! We are facing a battle to the death! Let us smash the fifth "encirclement and suppression" of the imperialist Kuomintang with our iron fists as the unified and powerful will of the worker-peasant masses to win victory throughout Soviet China! The soviet road is the only pathway leading to liberation for all exploited people and oppressed nations.

Long Live "May 1" Labor Day!

Long Live the Soviet New China!

(Signed) Mao Tse-tung, chairman, Central Executive Committee of the Soviet Republic of China
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° "Red China," Vol 179, 24 April 1934.