January 7, 1937: The following are the guidelines for our propaganda campaign concerning the Xi’an Incident: (1) The Xi’an Incident is an internal matter of the Nationalist government in Nanjing; our Party has never been involved.
However, immediately after its outbreak, we issued a telegram advocating a peaceful resolution. (2) Our Party uniformly opposes all actions that might provoke civil war.
Accordingly, we have opposed Nanjing’s policy of suppressing the Communists through military force, while at the same time we have never endorsed the course taken by Zhang Xueliang and Yang Hucheng, since they might still have found better means to realize their anti-Japanese stance. (3) The release of Chiang Kai-shek, Zhang Xueliang’s trip to Nanjing, and the manner in which the Nanjing government handles this affair are, in our view, also internal issues for Nanjing.
Standing on a position of impartiality, we support any measures that can lead to a peaceful settlement of the incident and oppose those that would turn it into a source of strife, thereby playing into the hands of Japanese imperialism. (4) In order to achieve lasting peace and national unity in China and to ensure that all stand together in resisting foreign aggression, our Party urges the Nanjing government, once a special amnesty has been granted to Zhang Xueliang, to order him to return to Shaanxi, take command of the Northeast Army and all other forces in the Northwest, and lead them to the front lines of the War of Resistance, thus putting into practice the joint call by Chiang Kai-shek and Zhang Xueliang to save the nation. (5) Should the Nanjing government, disregarding the overall interests of the country and the Chinese people, continue to keep Zhang Xueliang under house arrest in Nanjing even after the issuance of the amnesty, and order the troops that had already been withdrawn to redeploy, seeking to resolve the issue of the Northeast and Northwest Armies by force, then the calamity of civil war will inevitably follow.
Such a civil war would be entirely the responsibility of the Nanjing government. (6) Our Party will continue to strive for the fundamental policy of ending civil war and uniting to resist Japan, opposing the conspiracies of the Japanese aggressors and the pro-Japanese faction to stir up civil war and divide China.
Although these positions of ours enjoy the support of the entire Chinese people, they are consistently opposed by the Japanese aggressors and the pro-Japanese elements.
Consequently, we have become the target of their attacks, which they exploit as justification for concluding the “Anti-Communist Pact” aimed at bringing about the destruction of China.