Reply to Chen Shaoyu, Zhou Enlai, and Others
(May 12, 1938)

We must first acknowledge that the Three People's Principles Youth Corps is the Kuomintang Youth Corps, an organization of a probationary member nature for the Kuomintang. Our objectives are: 1. To make the Three People's Principles Youth Corps essentially a national union of broad revolutionary youth from all classes and all parties; 2. To reform the Kuomintang through the Three People's Principles Youth Corps—on the one hand, using the strength of the Youth Corps to push the Kuomintang forward, and on the other hand, through it enabling large numbers of revolutionary youth to join the Kuomintang, thereby developing and consolidating the revolutionary forces within the Kuomintang.

--- Notes

[1] This is the main content of Mao Zedong's reply to Chen Shaoyu, Zhou Enlai, and others, along with Zhang Wentian, Kang Sheng, Chen Yun, and Liu Shaoqi, regarding the nature of the Three People's Principles Youth Corps and the policy toward it. The Provisional National Congress of the Kuomintang, held from late March to early April 1938, decided to establish the Three People's Principles Youth Corps. The Fifth Plenary Session of the Fourth Central Committee of the Kuomintang, held in April of the same year, adopted the "Organizational Guidelines of the Three People's Principles Youth Corps." On May 6 of the same year, Chen Shaoyu, Zhou Enlai, and others telegraphed the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, stating that the issue of the Three People's Principles Youth Corps was becoming increasingly concrete, that prolonged silence on this matter was inadvisable, and that unconditional support was even less appropriate.