A Letter from the Chinese Communist Party
to the Chinese Guomindang
(August 25, 1936)
For the inspection of all the gentlemen of the Central Committee of the Chinese
Guomindang, and to be transmitted to all members of the Chinese Guomindang:


More than a year has passed since our Party, together with the Soviet Government and the Red Army, issued the proclamation on fighting Japan and national
salvation.¹ Although the proposal, formulated by our Party together with the
Soviet Government and the Red Army, to organize a national united front joining all parties, factions, and sectors throughout the country to fight together
against Japan has won the support of all patriotic leaders and patriotic people
nationwide, because your honorable party and the government of your honorable
party have hesitated and refused to adopt it, the sacred national war of self-defense
has not yet been launched even to this day. The Japanese bandits, on the other
hand, have already seized on this weakness and come right in, and having been
given an inch are going for the mile; the terrible disaster of falling into subjugation looms right before our eyes. The whole nation is in a state of panic, a truly
desperate situation. This most grievous threat to the whole country and the whole
nation has been brought on wholly by the erroneous policies of your honorable
party and its government. We are now at a crucial moment in which we face the
ruin of our state and the extinction of our race, so our Party cannot but once more
urgently and forcefully call out to your honorable party: immediately stop the
civil war, organize a national anti-Japanese united front, launch a sacred war of
national self-defense, resist the Japanese imperialist attacks, defend and recover
China's territorial sovereignty, and save the people of the whole country from an
abyss of misery. If you insist on continuing the internal struggle, do not turn your
guns from an inward direction to an outward direction, do not shift from accommodation policies to a war of resistance, do not change the situation of fragmentation into one of unity, and do not turn the situation of dispersion into one of
integration, then the disasters that strike will be utterly unimaginable, and all of


Our source for this letter is Mao Zedong wenji, Vol. 1, pp. 424-34, where it is reproduced
from a mimeographed copy in the Central Archives. The editors of the Mao Zedong wenji
indicate that it was drafted by Mao.
1. Refers to the August 1, 1935, "Notice to All Compatriots on Fighting Japan and
National Salvation," issued in the name of the Central Committee of the Chinese
Communist Party and the Central Government of the Chinese Soviet Republic, known as
the "August First Proclamation."