The Question of Independence and Autonomy
Within the United Front¹
(November 5, 1938)
Help and Concessions Should Be Positive, Not Negative
For the sake of long-term cooperation, it is necessary for all political parties and
groups in the united front to help each other and make mutual concessions, but
such help and concessions should be positive, not negative. We must consolidate
and expand our own Party and army and, at the same time, should assist friendly
parties and armies to consolidate and expand; the people want the government to
satisfy their political and economic demands, and, at the same time, give the government every possible help to prosecute the War of Resistance; the factory workers demand better conditions from the owners, and, at the same time, work hard in
the interests of resistance to Japan; for the sake of unity against foreign aggression, the landlords should reduce rent and interest, and, at the same time, the peasants should pay rent and interest. All these are principles and policies of mutual
assistance; they are positive, not negative or one-sided. The same holds true for
mutual concessions. Each side refrains from undermining the other and from organizing secret [party] branches within the other's party, government, and army.
For our part, we organize no secret [party] branches inside the Guomindang and
its government or army, thereby setting the Guomindang's mind at rest, to the
advantage of the resistance to Japan. The saying "Refrain from doing some things
in order to be able to do other things" exactly meets the case.² A national war of
resistance against Japan would have been impossible without the reorganization
of the Red Army, the change in the administrative system in the Red areas, and the
abandonment of the policy of armed insurrection. By giving way on the latter we
have achieved the former; negative measures have yielded positive results. "To
Our source for this letter is Mao Zedong shuxin xuanji, pp. 130-31, where it is reproduced
from the manuscript.
1. Liu Yi (1913-), a native of Zhejiang, was at this time a clerical worker in political
instruction in the First Detachment of the Sixth Brigade of the Anti-Japanese Military and
Political University.
2. The reference is to Zhang Jichun (1900-1968), a native of Hunan, who at this time
was head of the Political Department at the Anti-Japanese Military and Political University.

Our source for this document is the 1991 revised edition of Mao Zedong xuanji, Vol. 2, pp.
537-40. No contemporary text is available.
1. This is an extract from Mao Zedong's concluding remarks at the Sixth Plenum.
2. This is a slightly modified citation of a line from Mencius, IV, II, III, 8 (Legge, Vol. 2,
p. 321). Legge renders the original: "Mencius said, 'Men must be decided on what they will
not do, and then they are able to act with vigour in what they ought to do.'"