To all the people of China: China now stands at a critical juncture of national annihilation and racial extinction. The Japanese imperialist bandits’ aggression against China is rapidly accelerating. Following the Chahar Incident, the five provinces of North China—Hebei, Shandong, Shanxi, Chahar, and Suiyuan—are, in effect, already under Japanese imperialist rule. Yet this does not satisfy their insatiable greed; a new offensive, on an even larger scale, has begun. Consider their recent eight-point demands:  (1) Complete political and economic independence for the five North China provinces.  (2) Withdrawal of all Nationalist troops from Shaanxi and the other northwestern provinces.  (3) Conversion of the coastal provinces of Guangdong, Fujian, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, and Shandong into completely demilitarized zones.  (4) China’s withdrawal from the League of Nations and abandonment of all British and American aid.  (5) Recognition of “Manchukuo” and close cooperation among China, Japan, and Manchukuo to establish a Far Eastern political and economic bloc.  (6) Cessation of all anti-Japanese movements throughout China.  (7) Concentration of the combined forces of China and Japan on the suppression of the Chinese Soviet revolution, particularly in the northwest, targeting the soviets and the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army.  (8) The right of Japanese representatives to attend the Nationalist Party congress to assess China’s sincerity in pursuing Sino-Japanese amity.  Clearly, these demands by the Japanese imperialist bandits seek not only to swallow up all of North China but also to reduce the entire country to a colony of Japanese imperialism! Any Chinese with a shred of conscience, faced with the peril of national ruin and racial extinction, would never accept such terms and become willing slaves or compliant subjects of Japanese imperialism. However, the Nationalist government, with Chiang Kai-shek as its chief culprit, calmly and shamelessly acceded to these Japanese demands, casually selling out all of North China—and indeed the whole of China! This is an unprecedented act of treason, a profound disgrace for the Chinese nation. Once again, Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalist Party have proven themselves to be the greatest traitors in Chinese history.

The crimes of this traitorous leader are too numerous to count. He has brutally suppressed revolutionary movements across the country, massacring revolutionary fighters. Time and again, he has launched savage “encirclement and suppression” campaigns against the soviets and the Red Army. He has abolished all freedoms of speech, association, assembly, and strike. He has organized fascist thugs to crush revolutionary organizations and social groups, beating and murdering his opponents. Employing every conceivable plot and stratagem, he has eliminated dissidents, disarmed rival factions, and built a monolithic dictatorship—all in order to clear the way for Japanese imperialist aggression and serve as its reactionary pillar in China.

People of all China! In this hour of national emergency, our only path forward is to rise up in armed resistance, to launch a national revolutionary war against Japanese imperialist aggression and to overthrow the traitorous Nationalist regime led by Chiang Kai-shek—so as to defend North China and safeguard the whole of China, and to achieve the ultimate liberation of the Chinese nation. Without resisting Japanese imperialism, we cannot defeat the Chiang Kai-shek clique; without toppling that clique, we cannot halt Japanese aggression or overthrow Japanese rule in China. Anti-Japanese, anti-Chiang resistance is the sole means by which the Chinese people can save their country and ensure its survival. All notions of “you can’t resist Japan unless you first oust Chiang,” or “first oust Chiang, then resist Japan,” are nothing more than counterrevolutionary propaganda designed solely to justify Japanese aggression.

The main force of the Chinese Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army, under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, dispatched the Northern Expeditionary Force to Resist Japan in July 1934 in order to directly lead and organize the anti-Japanese national revolutionary war. In October of the same year, it began its Long March northward. Despite Chiang Kai-shek’s mobilization of all available forces to pursue, intercept, and block our advance along the way, thereby aiding Japanese imperialism in its attempt to prevent the Red Army from marching north to fight the enemy, the Chinese Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army, under the Party’s leadership, nevertheless overcame unprecedented hardships, destroyed countless enemy blocking forces, and traversed more than fifteen thousand li across eleven provinces. After more than a year of arduous, unyielding struggle, it finally reached northwestern China, joined forces with the Shaanxi–Gansu base area, routed and annihilated the non-resistant traitor General Zhang Xueliang’s troops, consolidated and expanded the Shaanxi–Gansu soviet region, and established a new center of Soviet revolutionary activity and leadership in the northwest. This great victory of the Red Army is, without question, a victory for the anti-Japanese, anti-Chiang resistance! The Red Army’s arrival in the northwest threw Japanese imperialism into disarray, hastening its drive to annex North China and the rest of China, while simultaneously ushering in a new historical phase of the national revolutionary war with the Red Army as its principal force.

Chiang Kai-shek and Zhang Xueliang, as loyal lackeys of Japanese imperialism, will certainly not relent. They will undoubtedly continue to marshal their main forces to attack us, assisting and coordinating direct armed intervention by Japanese imperialism. This makes the national revolutionary war against Japanese imperialism and the revolutionary struggle to overthrow the Chiang Kai-shek clique inseparable tasks, two sides of the same coin.

The Chinese Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army now stands at the forefront of the national revolutionary war. It firmly believes that it is capable of successfully shouldering this glorious historic mission.

People of all China! Let us mobilize en masse, arm ourselves, organize, and rally behind and join the anti-Japanese, anti-Chiang resistance led by the Communist Party of China! Only through nationwide mass mobilization and resolute armed struggle can we achieve final victory in this cause. All Chinese patriots and armed units—regardless of their party affiliation, religious belief, gender, occupation, or age—must unite as one and fight to the death to defeat Japanese imperialism and the Chiang Kai-shek clique. We must employ every form of struggle—workers’ strikes, peasant uprisings, soldiers’ mutinies, merchants’ boycotts, police and military stand-downs, mass demonstrations and marches, guerrilla warfare, and any other anti-Chiang operations—to combat both Japanese imperialism and the traitorous ringleader, Chiang Kai-shek.

The Chinese Soviet government and the Red Army are prepared to enter into operational agreements with any armed force engaged in the anti-Japanese, anti-Chiang struggle and to provide practical assistance to all efforts aimed at organizing such resistance.

People of all China: Oppose Japanese imperialist aggression; denounce Chiang Kai-shek, the greatest traitor in Chinese history; support the courageous anti-Japanese, anti-Chiang struggle of the Chinese Soviet government and the Red Army; uphold the Communist Party of China’s single correct course for saving the nation and ensuring its survival! Down with Japanese imperialism’s annexation of North China and the whole of China! Down with the traitorous Chiang Kai-shek clique! Long live the national revolutionary war! Long live the Chinese Soviet revolution!