To Xiao Xiangrong¹
(1940)

Comrade Xiangrong:

The textbook for soldiers is very well written. I have read lessons 1, 2, and 4, and
they can be printed. I hope you will send me lesson 3, so that I can have a look at
it. Some revisions should be made. You should add the distinctions between the
big bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie, between the pro-Japanese big bourgeoisie and the big bourgeoisie that is not pro-Japanese (i.e., the British and American factions), and between the big landlords and the middle and small landlords
and enlightened gentry. In a book that is just now being printed by the Propaganda
Department, I have already revised the part of chapter 2 of "The Chinese Revolution and the Chinese Communist Party" that deals with this.² Please ask Comrade
Luo Mai³ to let you read it. In lesson 3, you should speak mainly of the attitude of
each class toward the anti-Japanese war, for only then will it have real meaning.
Please take note of this too.

Mao Zedong

Our source for this letter is Mao Zedong shuxin xuanji, pp. 161-62. There it is dated simply
1940, and we have been unable to find any other references to it indicating the day or even
the month when it was sent. Mao must have written it between March 11, 1940, when he
made the report mentioned in his postscript, and September 5, 1940, the date of the letter
which appears immediately after this one in Shuxin xuanji, and probably earlier rather than
later, because the edition of "The Chinese Revolution and the Chinese Communist Party" in
book form, published later in 1940, was still at the proof stage. We have therefore placed it,
quite arbitrarily, in May.

1. Xiao Xiangrong (1910-1976), a native of Guangdong, joined the Chinese Communist Party in 1927. During the Jiangxi period, he occupied various important posts in the
Political Department of the Red Army, and he participated in the Long March. At this time,
he was head of the Propaganda Department of the Eighth Route Army's General Political
Department and editor-in-chief of the Military-Political Magazine.
2. Regarding these modifications, see above the relevant note to "The Chinese Revolution and the Chinese Communist Party," which appears under the date of December 15,
1939.
3. Luo Mai was the pseudonym of Li Weihan, whose biography can be found above, in
the relevant note to the text of May 20, 1939. At this time, he was deputy head of the
Propaganda Department of the Central Committee and would therefore have been involved
in the publication of a work such as this.

I'll show you lesson 25 in a few days.
Chapter 2 of "The Chinese Revolution and the Chinese Communist Party" was
written in December of last year, at the time of the first few months of the first anti-Communist high tide, when it was still not clear whether there would be any difference in attitude between the national bourgeoisie and enlightened gentry as
compared to the big bourgeoisie and big landlords. By March of this year this
could be seen. Please refer to my "Problems of Tactics in the United Front" of
March 11.⁴

4. See above, the translation of this text.