Order of the Central Executive Committee of
the Chinese Soviet Republic
(August 15, 1934)


Kong Hechong, a member of the Central Executive Committee, former commander of the Sixteenth Army of the Red Army, working in the Hunan-HubeiJiangxi Soviet Area, has violated the orders of the Central Revolutionary
Military Commission many times. Stricken with panic and wavering in the face
of enemy attacks, he has led the Red Army to retreat and flee; tolerated counterrevolutionary, liquidationist elements within the army; and caused the Sixteenth
Army and the masses of the Hunan-Hubei-Jiangxi Soviet Area to suffer severely.
He was repeatedly criticized and educated, without producing any change at all.
Last October, he was stripped of his position as commander of the Sixteenth
Army, but since it was hoped that he could be reeducated, he was ordered to
come to the Center and enter the Red Army University to study. Not only did he
fail to make the slightest progress, but he even went from wavering to open
counterrevolution. In July this year, when he was sent to work in the supplementary division, he took the opportunity to defect to the enemy. Kong Hechong, as
a member of the Central Executive Committee, has had a rather long history of
struggles. Just at the time when our valiant Red Army and the broad masses are
engaged in the final, decisive battle against the enemy's Fifth Encirclement and
Suppression, he has not only failed to recognize the victorious future of the
revolution, but has engaged in the most shameful acts of betrayal. Besides expelling him from the Central Executive Committee, we are issuing this general
order to all Red Army forces throughout the country, to all local troops, and to
soviet governments at all levels, and are calling upon all revolutionary bodies, as
well as the worker-peasant masses in the soviet areas and the White areas. If you
encounter the said Kong Hechong, he should immediately be arrested and killed,
as a warning to all those who waver and betray. It is so ordered.


Chairman
Vice-Chairmen
Mao Zedong
XiangYing
Zhang Guotao


This order was first published in Hongse Zhonghua, no. 228, August 30, 1934. We have
translated it from Mao Zedongji, Vol. 4, pp. 377-78, where it is reproduced from that source.