To all the people of China! The heinous Japanese imperialist bandits seized yesterday Manchuria, Rehe, eastern Chahar, the demilitarized zones in Hebei and Shanghai, invaded Fujian, and advanced deep into Guangdong and Guangxi. Today they are occupying Beiping, Tianjin, Chahar, and the entire North China region (north of the Huai River). Tomorrow they will annex all of China! They seek to turn the whole country into a Japanese colony, to have forty million Chinese compatriots slaughtered, raped, and brutally oppressed by Japanese imperialism—reduced forever to the status of enslaved subjects of a conquered nation! The most zealous vanguard of Japan’s drive to swallow up China is none other than the traitor Chiang Kai-shek and his Blue Shirt Society thugs. For years, Chiang and his cohorts have, in practice, been acting as proxies for Japanese imperialism, suppressing the anti-Japanese movement and the boycott of Japanese goods; disarming the Volunteer Armies; oppressing, dissolving, and massacring the workers of Shanghai who fought against Japan, along with the soldiers of the 19th Route Army; arresting and slaughtering countless anti-Japanese leaders and masses; using aircraft and artillery donated by the national populace to bomb those very same people and their own forces—the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army; and dispatching hundreds of thousands of troops from Northeast and North China southward to “encircle” and “pursue” the only anti-imperialist, anti-Japanese force, the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army! At the same time, Chiang and his gang have been lavishly propagandizing about “national rejuvenation,” “propriety, righteousness, integrity, and shame,” and “the futility of resisting Japan,” as well as “Sino-Japanese amity,” in order to conceal their treasonous nature and to delude the people into becoming passive, unarmed slaves of Japanese imperialism. The sheer extent of the territory Chiang has betrayed, the enormity of the slaughter he has perpetrated, and the cunning with which he has deceived the people have already shattered every record in world history! Chiang Kai-shek stands as the greatest traitor in the annals of human civilization. We hereby declare the Tanggu Truce and all secret Sino-Japanese agreements null and void; we enter into a state of war against Japan; we call upon the land, sea, and air forces of all China to conclude combat agreements and, together with the Red Army, to engage Japanese imperialism directly in battle; we endorse the Six-Point Basic Platform for War Against Japan; we dispatch a Northern Advance Detachment of the Red Army to lead the struggle against Japan; and we pledge our manpower and resources to aid the People’s Revolutionary Army—the Anti-Japanese Volunteers—in Manchuria, where they are locked in hand-to-hand combat with the Japanese puppet forces.

Chiang and his cronies have slandered the Soviet Red Army as “murderous, arsonist bandits” and “mere puppets of Manchukuo.” Yet now they have literally handed over to Japanese imperialism an area of China roughly half the size of Europe, while simultaneously mobilizing a million White Army troops to block the Red Army’s northward advance, intent on annihilating the anti-Japanese Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army. All these irrefutable facts clearly demonstrate: Who, then, are the traitorous bandits? And who are the government and the armed forces that will liberate the Chinese nation and its forty million people?

Workers, peasants, and all intellectuals: Your unemployment, hunger, death, and displacement—all stem, in large part, from the fact that Chiang and his Blue Shirt Society thugs have surrendered China’s national interests to Japan and other imperialist powers, thereby reducing every sector of the Chinese economy to ruins at the hands of Japanese imperialism.

Brothers in the land, sea, and air forces: You have long gone unpaid. Not only does Chiang demand that you take up arms to massacre your own countrymen, but he also forces you to perform grueling, uncompensated labor. This is because he betrays the nation and embezzles your pay. Japanese imperialism, along with Chiang and his Blue Shirt Society, are your sworn enemies—your principal public foes!

The Soviet government now renews its declaration of war against Japan, calling upon all Chinese military personnel to join forces with the Red Army and march north together to fight the Japanese aggressors. We likewise urge the entire population to rise up, seize the weapons stored in Chiang’s arsenals and those imported from abroad, arm themselves, cease all payments of principal and interest on Japanese indemnities and loans, confiscate Japanese-owned enterprises in China and the property of all traitors to replenish funds for the resistance, and mobilize every segment of the Chinese people to form anti-Japanese committees, volunteer units, commodity-seizure teams, transport detachments, medical aid squads, and propaganda brigades, so that all may participate in this sacred war against Japan!

The Chinese Soviet Republic hereby sentences the traitor Chiang Kai-shek to death and calls upon the entire nation to eliminate this disgraceful lackey of Japanese imperialism—Chiang Kai-shek. Every one of China’s forty million citizens has the right to capture him alive and execute him on the spot! At the same time, the Soviet government declares that any White Army comrades who were previously misled by Chiang, but who now awaken and turn against him, are our dear friends.

The sole means of saving China at present lies in uniting all anti-Japanese, anti-Chiang forces on a single front to overthrow our common enemy: Japanese imperialism, Chiang Kai-shek, and the Blue Shirt Society bandits.

The Chinese Soviet Republic calls upon workers, peasants, military personnel, students, teachers, merchants, journalists, physicians, nurses, lawyers, engineers, and all patriotic patriots and revolutionary-minded individuals to rise up in strike—striking work, striking classes, striking markets—to protest Japan’s occupation of North China, to denounce Chiang’s treachery, to resolve firmly to wage war against Japan, to reclaim all lost territories, to drive Japanese imperialism out of China, to shoot Chiang Kai-shek, and to destroy the Blue Shirt Society bandits.

In the past, the workers of Shanghai, the soldiers of the 19th Route Army, and the People’s Revolutionary Army in Manchuria repeatedly defeated the Japanese puppet forces. Under the direct leadership of Chiang—and backed by Japan and other imperialist powers—over a million White Army troops have launched attacks against the numerically inferior and technically less equipped Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army. Yet far from destroying the Red Army, it has instead expanded its base areas to include Jiangxi, Guangdong, Fujian, Zhejiang, Anhui, Henan, Hubei, Hunan, Sichuan, Guizhou, Xikang, Yunnan, Shaanxi, Gansu, Shanxi, Behe, Liaoning, Jilin, and Heilongjiang—nineteen provinces in total. News of the Red Army’s victories has spread throughout the world, proving that the Red Army, under the correct leadership of the Communist Party and with the ardent support of tens of millions, even hundreds of millions, of the people, is an invincible force. We indeed possess the strength to overthrow Japanese imperialism, the traitor Chiang Kai-shek, and the Blue Shirt Society bandits! Final victory shall be ours!

Chairman of the Central Government of the Chinese Soviet Republic: Mao Zedong Vice-Chairman: Zhang Guotao Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Committee of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army: Zhu De Vice-Chairmen: Zhou Enlai and Wang Jiaxi June 15, 1935