(December 27, 1939)

(Special report to this newspaper) This newspaper has learned that the military headquarters in a certain combat district issued a circular stating: "It is reported that Mao Zedong has
returned to Yan'an from Xinjiang. In his talk to responsible persons among his subordinates
on the fifth of this month, he told them that Li Lisan,¹ leading 730 people, some of whom
are Russians, accompanied by a number of airplanes from the Soviet Union, will, taking
advantage of our counterattack against the enemy, capture political power at the Center and
make Lanzhou China's Moscow." Seeking confirmation of the report, our correspondent
interviewed Comrade Mao Zedong, who had the following to say in reply:

This news was manufactured by the Japanese; how come it was spread by a Chinese military headquarters in a war zone? This is truly strange. It says that I "have
returned to Yan'an from Xinjiang," but as yet I have made no plans for a visit to
Xinjiang. As for Li Lisan, shortly after his arrival in the Soviet Union, he was
arrested because he had joined the reactionary Trotskyist clique, so I don't see how
he could have come back. All those who want to separate the Guomindang from
the Communist Party and prepare to capitulate to the Japanese bandits have manufactured thousands of items of intelligence, but this one is the clumsiest. If there
are people who believe even this, they are truly foolish. "To capture political power

This document was first published in Xin Zhonghua bao on December 27, 1939. We
have translated it from Mao Zedong ji. Bujuan, Vol. 6, pp. 137-38, where that version is
reproduced.
1. Li Lisan (1899–1967) was a native of Hunan. He had been acquainted with Mao
Zedong since their student days in Changsha, but, as Mao later remarked to Edgar Snow,
their friendship "never developed." During the period from late 1928 to the fall of 1930,
when Li, although he never formally assumed the office of secretary general, was the dominant figure in the Chinese Communist Party, he and Mao were frequently in sharp conflict
over the policies which should be pursued. For a discussion of the issues involved, see the
Introduction to Volume IV, passim, especially pp. liv-lviii. In December 1930, Li Lisan had
been summoned to Moscow for a "trial" conducted by the Executive Committee of the
Communist International, where he was denounced both for what were viewed as his
"Trotskyite" tendencies and for his "extreme localism," in other words, for his emphasis on
the role of China in the world revolution. Thereafter, he remained in the Soviet Union,
returning to China only in the spring of 1946. The rumor that Mao is refuting in this document was thus manifestly absurd, since even if Stalin had endorsed such a hare-brained
scheme as that described, he would never have trusted Li Lisan to carry it out.

at the Center," what an idea! The fact is the capture of the Border Region. Xunyi,
in the Border Region, was snatched in July of this year, and two more towns,
Zhengyuan and Ningxian, have recently been seized, and with airplanes and big
guns too. It is said that they also want to seize Qingyang, Heshui, Chunyao, and
Luxian in the border region, so as to provide a basis for the capture of Yan'an.² At
the front, the Japanese are conquering large portions of China's territory, while, in
the rear, it is the Chinese who are seizing a small piece of land in the border region.
Altogether, there are only twenty-three xian in the border region, of which only
twenty remain. Even if they were all captured, these xian would not amount to
one-ten-millionth of what the Japanese have seized. Nevertheless, these gentlemen can be called brave. Your newspaper should write an article, exhorting these
brave gentlemen to place more restraint on themselves and stop playing the tyrant.
If they are truly brave, they should demonstrate it by going to confront the Japanese. Our past experience has already taught us that to swagger around at home
will, in the end, lead nowhere.

² The places named here are xian and districts in the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border
Region, against which Nationalist forces were exerting military pressure, as part of their
effort to regain lost ground.