To Zhou Enlai, on the Arrangement of
Various Tasks Following the Sending Out of the
Telegram of the 9th¹

(November 9, 1940)

1. The wording of the "telegram of the 9th" was finally fixed today, and it has
already been sent for encoding. Tomorrow it can be sent to your office simultaneously by the war report station and by telegraph, and your office can turn it over
to He and Bai. We have not sent it directly, so when you receive it please correct
any mistaken characters.
2. A distinction should be clearly made between the military units north and
south of the Yangzi River. It has been decided that the main forces south of the
Yangzi are to move north as a demonstration of concession, and it has been decided to request that the forces north of the Yangzi not be redeployed for the time
being. Using the words "for the time being" is so as to give Chiang [Kaishek] face,
and phrasing it "not be redeployed" is so as to quash Chiang's illusions. In your
office's external propaganda, please stress the various reasons against redeployment (the telegram has already listed them: first, the ancestors' tombs; second, it is
certainly not wrong to go along with Chiang's "Letter to Fellow Countrymen in
the Occupied Areas"; third, there would be no protection for the families; fourth,
the five calamities of North China).² Also, the telegram of the 9th, in your heartfelt
words, hints that if the other side attacks our side will have to defend itself, putting
it in terms of the saying about the snipe and the clam and the fisherman.³ Please
also publicize this externally, in the hopes of stopping their attacks.

Our source for this telegram is *Mao Zedong ji. Bujuan*, Vol. 6, pp. 201-2, where it is reproduced from *Wannan shibian*.
1. As in the case of the telegram dated October 19 from He Yingqin and Bai Chongxi,
often referred to in the texts translated above as the "hao telegram," the reply sent to the
Guomindang on November 9 is here called in the Chinese text the "jia telegram." The use of
these characters to designate respectively the 19th and the 9th of the month is purely conventional, and we have therefore not translated or transcribed them here.
2. The five calamities are listed in the telegram from Zhu De and others, also dated
November 9, which follows.
3. The reference is to a Chinese saying frequently quoted by Mao, to the effect that when
the snipe grapples with the clam, only the fisherman benefits. See above, the texts of June
10 and September 28, 1939.