and organizations;
The people have the right to freedom of speech, publication, assembly, and
association in order to resist Japan and save the nation;
Develop the movement of the popular masses, and bring about reduction in
rents, interest, and taxes, and improvement of workers' lives;
Consolidate the anti-Japanese base areas; combat the plot of the Chinese traitors, anti-Communists, and diehards to sabotage them;
Support the troops with a fine record of service in resistance against Japan, and
give ample material assistance to the front;
Develop a culture of the War of Resistance Against Japan, protect progressive
youth, and suppress the expression of opinion by Chinese traitors;
Long live the liberation of the Chinese nation!
Telegram from the Mass Meeting of the
Popular Masses in Yan'an Denouncing
Wang [Jingwei] and Supporting
Chiang [Kaishek]¹

(February 1, 1940)

To President Lin, Chairman Chiang, the various yuan, ministries, and associations of the National Government in Chongqing, the Central Committee and all
departments of the Military Commission of the Chinese Guomindang, the People's
Political Council, the Anti-Aggression Grand Alliance, the Sino-Soviet Cultural
Association, the frontline party and government committees, the Shenghuo Bookstore, the Commercial Press, the China Publishing House, the Young Journalists'
Association, the Resist the Enemy Association of Cultural Circles, the Central News
Agency, the National News Agency, the Dagong Bao, the New China Daily News,
the Saodang Bao, the Central Daily News, the Three People's Principles Youth
League, all provincial governments, assemblies, party headquarters, associations
of logistic support of the resistance against the enemy, provincial press associations and major newspapers, various universities in Sichuan, Yunnan, and
Hanzhong,² garrisons in Xi'an and Zhulin, commanders of all war zones, commanders-in-chief of all army corps, officers and soldiers in the whole country, and
anti-Japanese compatriots:

This mass rally against Wang Jingwei and for Chiang Kaishek, held in Yan'an on
February 1, unanimously resolves, in righteous indignation, to denounce his treason and capitulation and to support Chairman Chiang in waging the War of Resistance Against Japan to the very end. To overcome the present crisis and ensure
victory in the War of Resistance, we hereby submit ten major points for saving the
country, in the hope that our National Government, all political parties and groups,
all officers and men fighting in the War of Resistance, and all our fellow-countrymen will accept them and act upon them.

This document was first published in Jiefang, no. 98/99, February 20, 1940. We have translated it from Mao Zedong ji, Vol. 7, pp. 223-29, which reproduces that source.
1. Telegram from the Mass Meeting of the Popular Masses in Yan'an Denouncing Wang
and Supporting Chiang → Ten Demands Addressed to the Guomindang

1. Let the whole country denounce Wang. Now that Traitor Wang has gathered
his gang together, betrayed his country to the enemy, and signed the secret pact
selling out the country, playing the jackal to the tiger, all our countrymen demand
his death. But this only takes care of the open Wang Jingweis, and leaves out the
undercover ones. The latter are either craftily seizing key posts and swaggering
about, or working obscurely and worming their way deeply into society. In effect,
the corrupt officials are part of the Wang Jingwei gang, and all the friction-mongers
are its underlings. Unless there is a nationwide campaign to denounce the Wang
Jingweis, a campaign in town and country and from top to bottom in which everyone is mobilized, including all political parties, government organs, armed forces,
civilian bodies, the press, and the educational institutions, the Wang Jingwei gang
will never be eradicated but will persist in its nefarious activities, doing incalculable damage by opening the door to the enemy from without and by subversion
from within. The government should issue a decree calling on the whole people to
repudiate Wang. Wherever the decree is not carried out, the officials should be
called to account. The Wang Jingwei gang must be extirpated, and thrown to the
jackals and tigers. This the first point which we urge you to accept and act upon.
2. Strengthen unity. Nowadays, some people talk not of unity but of unification,
and the implication is that unification means nothing short of liquidating the Communist Party, disbanding the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army, abolishing the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region, and demolishing the
anti-Japanese forces everywhere. What this kind of talk ignores is the fact that the
Communist Party, the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army, and the
Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region are the staunchest advocates of unification in all China. Was it not they who recommended the peaceful settlement of the
Xi'an Incident? Is it not they who have initiated the Anti-Japanese National United
Front, proposed a unified democratic republic, and worked really hard for both? Is
it not they who are standing at the forefront of the nation's defenses, resisting
seventeen enemy divisions, shielding the Central Plains and the Northwest, defending northern China and the regions south of the lower Yangzi, and resolutely
applying the Three People's Principles and the Program of Armed Resistance and
National Reconstruction? Yet the moment Wang Jingwei openly came out against
the Communists and sided with the Japanese, sorcerers like Zhang Junmai and Ye
Qing³ chimed in with tendentious articles, and the anti-Communist and diehard
cliques joined in by stirring up friction. Autocratic rule has been imposed in the
name of unification. The principle of unity has been discarded and the thin end of
the wedge of disruption driven in. This Sima Zhao trick is obvious to every man
in the street.4 The Communist Party, the Eighth Route Army and New Fourth

Army, and the border region stand firmly for genuine and against sham unification, for rational and against irrational unification, and for unification in substance
and against unification in form. They advocate unification for resistance and not
for capitulation, for unity and not division, for progress and not for retrogression.
Unification on the basis of these three-resistance, unity, and progress is genuine, rational, and real unification. To seek unification on any other basis, whatever
intrigues or tricks are used, is like "going south by driving the chariot north"; with
that we beg to disagree. All the local anti-Japanese forces should be looked after
equally well, without discriminating against some and favoring others; all of them
should be trusted, provisioned, supported, and encouraged with rewards. There
should be sincerity and not hypocrisy, large-mindedness and not pettiness, in dealing with people. If things are really done in this way, all except those with ulterior
motives will unite and take the road of national unification. It is an unalterable
truth that unification must be based on unity and unity in its turn must be based on
progress, and that only progress can bring unity and only unity can bring unification. This is the second point which we urge you to accept and act upon.
3. Put constitutional government into effect. The long years of political tutelages have yielded nothing. Things turn into their opposites when they reach the
extreme; hence constitutional government is now on the order of the day. But there
is still no freedom of speech, the ban on political parties has not been lifted, and
actions contrary to constitutional government are constantly taken. If the constitution is drawn up on these lines, it will be a mere scrap of official paper. Such
constitutional government will be no different from one-party dictatorship. Now
that there is a profound national crisis, with the Japanese and Wang Jingwei harassing us from without and the traitors disrupting us from within, our existence as
a nation and people will be placed in jeopardy unless there is a change of policy.
Our government should immediately lift the ban on political parties, and encourage freedom of opinion, as a manifestation of sincere support for constitutional
government. Nothing is more urgent than this in order to win the full confidence of
the people, and shape the destiny of the nation anew. This is the third point which
we urge you to accept and act upon.
4. Put an end to friction. Since the so-called "Measures for Restricting the Activities of Alien Parties" were introduced in February last year, the clamor for
"restricting," "corroding," and "combating" the Communist Party has reverberated throughout the country, there has been one tragic incident after another, and

1. Let the whole country denounce Wang. Now that Traitor Wang has gathered
his gang together, betrayed his country to the enemy, and signed the secret pact
selling out the country, playing the jackal to the tiger, all our countrymen demand
his death. But this only takes care of the open Wang Jingweis, and leaves out the
undercover ones. The latter are either craftily seizing key posts and swaggering
about, or working obscurely and worming their way deeply into society. In effect,
the corrupt officials are part of the Wang Jingwei gang, and all the friction-mongers
are its underlings. Unless there is a nationwide campaign to denounce the Wang
Jingweis, a campaign in town and country and from top to bottom in which everyone is mobilized, including all political parties, government organs, armed forces,
civilian bodies, the press, and the educational institutions, the Wang Jingwei gang
will never be eradicated but will persist in its nefarious activities, doing incalculable damage by opening the door to the enemy from without and by subversion
from within. The government should issue a decree calling on the whole people to
repudiate Wang. Wherever the decree is not carried out, the officials should be
called to account. The Wang Jingwei gang must be extirpated, and thrown to the
jackals and tigers. This the first point which we urge you to accept and act upon.
2. Strengthen unity. Nowadays, some people talk not of unity but of unification,
and the implication is that unification means nothing short of liquidating the Communist Party, disbanding the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army, abolishing the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region, and demolishing the
anti-Japanese forces everywhere. What this kind of talk ignores is the fact that the
Communist Party, the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army, and the
Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region are the staunchest advocates of unification in all China. Was it not they who recommended the peaceful settlement of the
Xi'an Incident? Is it not they who have initiated the Anti-Japanese National United
Front, proposed a unified democratic republic, and worked really hard for both? Is
it not they who are standing at the forefront of the nation's defenses, resisting
seventeen enemy divisions, shielding the Central Plains and the Northwest, defending northern China and the regions south of the lower Yangzi, and resolutely
applying the Three People's Principles and the Program of Armed Resistance and
National Reconstruction? Yet the moment Wang Jingwei openly came out against
the Communists and sided with the Japanese, sorcerers like Zhang Junmai and Ye
Qing³ chimed in with tendentious articles, and the anti-Communist and diehard
cliques joined in by stirring up friction. Autocratic rule has been imposed in the
name of unification. The principle of unity has been discarded and the thin end of
the wedge of disruption driven in. This Sima Zhao trick is obvious to every man
in the street.4 The Communist Party, the Eighth Route Army and New Fourth

3. Zhang Junmai (1887-1969), better known in America as Carson Chang, was at this
time principal of the Institute of National Culture, founded in 1939 with the backing of the
Guomindang government. Regarding Ren Zhouxuan, alternative name of the Ye Qing, see
above, note 43 on page 128.
4. During the period of the Three Kingdoms Sima Zhao, the prime minister of Wei,
aspired to the throne. The emperor remarked, "Sima Zhao's intention is obvious to every
man in the street."

Army, and the border region stand firmly for genuine and against sham unification, for rational and against irrational unification, and for unification in substance
and against unification in form. They advocate unification for resistance and not
for capitulation, for unity and not division, for progress and not for retrogression.
Unification on the basis of these three-resistance, unity, and progress is genuine, rational, and real unification. To seek unification on any other basis, whatever
intrigues or tricks are used, is like "going south by driving the chariot north"; with
that we beg to disagree. All the local anti-Japanese forces should be looked after
equally well, without discriminating against some and favoring others; all of them
should be trusted, provisioned, supported, and encouraged with rewards. There
should be sincerity and not hypocrisy, large-mindedness and not pettiness, in dealing with people. If things are really done in this way, all except those with ulterior
motives will unite and take the road of national unification. It is an unalterable
truth that unification must be based on unity and unity in its turn must be based on
progress, and that only progress can bring unity and only unity can bring unification. This is the second point which we urge you to accept and act upon.
3. Put constitutional government into effect. The long years of political tutelages have yielded nothing. Things turn into their opposites when they reach the
extreme; hence constitutional government is now on the order of the day. But there
is still no freedom of speech, the ban on political parties has not been lifted, and
actions contrary to constitutional government are constantly taken. If the constitution is drawn up on these lines, it will be a mere scrap of official paper. Such
constitutional government will be no different from one-party dictatorship. Now
that there is a profound national crisis, with the Japanese and Wang Jingwei harassing us from without and the traitors disrupting us from within, our existence as
a nation and people will be placed in jeopardy unless there is a change of policy.
Our government should immediately lift the ban on political parties, and encourage freedom of opinion, as a manifestation of sincere support for constitutional
government. Nothing is more urgent than this in order to win the full confidence of
the people, and shape the destiny of the nation anew. This is the third point which
we urge you to accept and act upon.
4. Put an end to friction. Since the so-called "Measures for Restricting the Activities of Alien Parties" were introduced in February last year, the clamor for
"restricting," "corroding," and "combating" the Communist Party has reverberated throughout the country, there has been one tragic incident after another, and

5. "Political tutelage" (xunzheng) was the second of the three periods in China's progress
toward democracy laid down by Sun Yatsen, immediately preceding constitutional government. In his interview of September 16, 1939, translated above, Mao had argued that Sun
himself had changed his views toward the end of his life, and that the immediate establishment of constitutional government was now on the order of the day.
6. Our government → The government
7. February → March


blood has flown freely. As if this were not enough, the so-called "Measures for
Dealing with the Alien Party Problem" were introduced in October last year. Then
there are the "Directives for Dealing with the Alien Party Problem" in the Northwest, in North China, and in Central China. People have been saying, and quite
justifiably, that political restriction of the Communist Party has been succeeded by
military restriction. In fact, restricting Communism equals anticommunism. And
anticommunism is the cunning and pernicious scheme used by the Japanese and
Wang Jingwei for subjugating China. That is why the people are suspicious and
shocked and are telling one another about it, and are afraid that the bitter tragedy
of a decade ago is being reenacted. Matters have gone far enough, with the Pingjiang
massacre in Hunan, the Queshan massacre in Henan, the attack on the Eighth
Route Army by Zhang Yinwu in Hebei, the attack on the guerrillas by Qin Qirong
in Shandong, the ruthless slaughter of between five and six hundred Communists
by Cheng Ruhuai in eastern Hubei, the large-scale assaults on the garrison forces
of the Eighth Route Army by the Central Army in eastern Gansu, and more recently the tragedy in Shanxi, where the old army attacked the new army and invaded positions held by the Eighth Route Army. If such incidents are not
immediately prohibited, both sides will be doomed, and what hope will there be
then of victory over Japan? For the sake of unity in the War of Resistance, the
government should order the punishment of all the perpetrators of these massacres, and announce to the whole nation that no such incident will be allowed to
recur. This is the fourth point which we urge you to accept and act upon.

5. Protect young people. Concentration camps have recently been set up near
Xi'an, and people have been horrified to learn that more than seven hundred progressive young people from various provinces in the Northwest and in the Central
Plains have already been interned there, subjected to mental and physical bondage,
and treated like convicts. What crime have they committed to deserve such cruelty?
Young people are the cream of the nation, and the progressive ones in particular are
our most precious asset in the War of Resistance. Everyone should enjoy freedom
of belief; ideas can never be suppressed by force of arms. The crime of the ten
years of cultural suppression is known to everyone; why should anyone desire to
repeat it today? The government should immediately issue a nationwide order for
the protection of youth, for the abolition of the concentration camps near Xi'an,
and for the strict prohibition of the outrageous attacks on young people in various
places. This is the fifth point which we urge you to accept and act upon.

6. Support the front. Troops who are fighting Japan in the very frontline and
have scored successes, such as the Eighth Route Army, the New Fourth Army, and
other units, are receiving the worst treatment; they are thinly clad, badly fed, and
kept short of ammunition and medicines. Yet unscrupulous traitors are allowed to
slander them. There is a deafening din of countless absurd slanders against them.
Merit goes unrewarded and distinguished service uncited, while false charges and
malicious plots become more and more brazen. This fantastic state of affairs
dampens the ardor of our officers and men and wins applause only from the enFEBRUARY 1940 403
emy; on no account must it be allowed to continue. To lift up the hearts of the
troops and serve the war effort, the government should adequately provision the
frontline troops who have good service records, and at the same time strictly prohibit the treacherous slanders and accusations against them. This is the sixth point
which we urge you to accept and act upon.

7. Proscribe the secret service organs. People are comparing the secret service
agents to Zhou Xing and Lai Junchen of the Tang dynasty and Wei Zhongxian and
Liu Jin of the Ming dynasty, because of their lawlessness and violence. Ignoring
the enemy and concentrating on our own countrymen, they are committing innumerable murders and insatiably taking bribes; in fact the secret service is the headquarters of the rumor-mongers and a breeding ground of treason and evil. Ordinary
people everywhere recoil and turn away in fear from these fiendish brutes of agents.
To preserve its own prestige, the government should immediately proscribe these
activities of the secret service and reorganize it, defining its duties as exclusively
directed against the enemy and the traitors, so that the people's confidence may be
restored and the foundations of the state strengthened. This is the seventh point
which we urge you to accept and act upon.

8. Dismiss corrupt officials. Since the beginning of the War of Resistance, there
have been cases of officials netting up to 100 million yuan out of the national crisis
and taking as many as eight or nine concubines. Conscription, government bonds,
economic control, famine relief, and war relief, all without exception have become money-making opportunities for corrupt officials. With such a pack of wolves
running wild, no wonder the country's affairs are in chaos. The people are seething
with discontent and anger, yet none dare expose the ruthlessness of these officials.
To save the country from collapse, drastic and effective steps should immediately
be taken to clear out all corrupt officials. This is the eighth point which we urge
you to accept and act upon.

9. Put the Testament of the Director General into effect. The Testament says:
"For forty years I have devoted myself to the cause of the national revolution, with
the aim of winning freedom and equality for China. My experiences during these
forty years have firmly convinced me that to achieve this aim we must arouse the
masses of the people...." What great words these are. We, the 450 million people
of China, are all familiar with them. But the Testament is more often chanted than
carried out. 10 Desecrators of the Testament are rewarded, while those who honor
it in their acts are punished. What could be more preposterous? The government
should decree that anyone who dares to violate the Testament and who tramples

--- Notes

# Telegram from the Mass Meeting of the Popular Masses in Yan'an Denouncing Wang [Jingwei] and Supporting Chiang [Kaishek]
# Date: 1940-02-01
# Source: en:MRP
Support the national policy of carrying out the War of Resistance to the end,
and oppose Wang Jingwei's traitorous agreement;
People of the whole nation, unite to support Chairman Chiang and bring down
the Chinese traitor Wang Jingwei;
Support the National Government and bring down Wang Jingwei's puppet Central Committee;
Support Guomindang-Communist cooperation, down with Wang Jingwei's policy
of anticommunism;
Anticommunism is Wang Jingwei's plot to split the united front; down with all
anti-Communist Chinese traitors;
Strengthen national unity; eliminate internal friction;
Reform domestic affairs, carry forward the constitutional movement, and establish democratic politics;
Liberalize bans on parties, and legalize the existence of anti-Japanese parties

2. Hanzhong was a prefecture in the extreme southwest corner of Shaanxi.

3. Zhang Junmai (1887-1969), better known in America as Carson Chang, was at this
time principal of the Institute of National Culture, founded in 1939 with the backing of the
Guomindang government. Regarding Ren Zhouxuan, alternative name of the Ye Qing, see
above, note 43 on page 128.

4. During the period of the Three Kingdoms Sima Zhao, the prime minister of Wei,
aspired to the throne. The emperor remarked, "Sima Zhao's intention is obvious to every
man in the street."


5. "Political tutelage" (xunzheng) was the second of the three periods in China's progress
toward democracy laid down by Sun Yatsen, immediately preceding constitutional government. In his interview of September 16, 1939, translated above, Mao had argued that Sun
himself had changed his views toward the end of his life, and that the immediate establishment of constitutional government was now on the order of the day.

6. Our government → The government

7. February → March

8. Zhou Xing and Lai Junchen were notoriously cruel inquisitors of the Tang dynasty.
Liu Jin and Wei Zhongxian were eunuchs of the Ming dynasty who controlled large secret
services that tortured and murdered their opponents.

9. Sun Yatsen.

10. Since Sun's death, his Testament had been read out at the beginning of every meeting of a Guomindang organ at whatever level.