The Current Stage of Sino-Japanese Relations*
(March 28, 1937)

Question: What is Your Excellency’s understanding of the current stage?
Answer: Owing to the progressive understanding by those in power in the Kuomintang of the importance of nationwide unity and the gravity of the national calamity, and to the firm advocacy by the people throughout the country and the Chinese Soviet Red Army of a cessation of the civil war, internal peace has now begun to be realized, and thus commences an extraordinary period in which the Chinese nation, united as one, jointly prepares for the War of Resistance against Japan. In this extraordinary period, all people in the country should deeply understand the importance of their own responsibility to save the nation, should further seek to consolidate unity, must on no account fall prey to the enemy’s divisive schemes, and still less should they be deluded by the enemy’s honeyed words. They should earnestly understand every offensive step taken by the enemy and strive hard for the genuine realization of the people’s democratic rights, so as to strengthen the national power.
Question: A small number of people are rather prone to illusions about Sato’s so-called “peace diplomacy.” What is Your Excellency’s opinion?
Answer: As for Sato’s so-called “new policy” and the like, any clear-sighted person will naturally have no difficulty in seeing through its venomous and insidious substance. Even many major newspapers in Tianjin and Shanghai have not hesitated to directly describe it as sugar-coated poison—a description which is, in fact, quite apt. That a small number of people today are still deluded by it may perhaps be due to various complex reasons, but to sum it up in one phrase, the main reason lies precisely in the inability of these people to subordinate their various misgivings to the overall interests of the Chinese nation; hence they cannot help fearing the War of Resistance, and the enemy’s honeyed words thus seize the opportunity to take effect. Although Sato has already blatantly declared that the new policy is nothing but a change of tactics for carrying out the Three Principles, its outer coating of syrup can still easily exert a seductive force upon those of weak will. We must fully understand its dangerous nature.