Letter to Lei Jingtian
(October 10, 1937)
Comrade Lei Jingtian:

I have received both your letter and Huang Kegong’s. Huang Kegong’s past record of struggle was glorious, and both I and my comrades in the Party Central Committee deeply regret his execution. However, he committed a crime that admits of no pardon. As a Communist Party member and a Red Army officer, to behave in such a despicable, cruel, and utterly disloyal manner—disloyal to the Party, to the revolution, and to humanity—it would be impossible, if he were spared, to educate the Party, the Red Army, revolutionary fighters, or even an ordinary person. Therefore, the Central Committee and the Military Commission had no choice but to impose the death penalty upon him, based on his criminal acts and in accordance with the discipline of the Party and the Red Army. Precisely because Huang Kegong was no ordinary man—because he had been a Communist Party member for many years and a veteran of the Red Army—it was essential that he be dealt with in this way. The Communist Party and the Red Army must maintain standards of discipline far stricter than those applied to the general populace. At a time when the nation is in peril and the revolution is at a critical juncture, Huang Kegong’s conduct has reached a level of baseness, shamelessness, cruelty, and selfishness that makes his execution an inevitable consequence of his own actions. All Communist Party members, all officers and soldiers of the Red Army, and all revolutionaries should

[1] Lei Jingtian (1904–1959), from Nanning, Guangxi. At that time he served as President of the High People’s Court of the Shaan-Gan-Ning Border Region and was the presiding judge in the trial of the Huang Kegong case.
[2] Huang Kegong joined the Red Army in his youth and participated in the struggles on Jinggang Mountain as well as the Long March. He was then the captain of the Sixth Detachment of the Anti-Japanese Military and Political University. In October 1937, he attempted to force Liu Qian, a female student at the Northern Shaanxi Public School, into marriage; when she refused, he shot and killed her. Following a trial by the High People’s Court of the Shaan-Gan-Ning Border Region, Huang Kegong was sentenced to death.