Speech at a Meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China[1]

(February 23, 1941)

There is still no major change in the current situation. Zhou Enlai has already delivered the twelve demands to Wang Shijie, Secretary-General of the Political Consultative Council, and the Kuomintang is extremely anxious. During the Southern Anhui Incident, the Kuomintang was very tough. After Chiang issued his statement[2], they narrowed the scope and gradually softened, because they fear the middle factions will sympathize with us, and also fear vacillation among the military. Hu Zongnan, Chen Cheng[3], Wei Lihuang, and others have all indicated they are unwilling to start a civil war immediately, and they fear international pressure even more. Therefore, when Zhou handed the official letter to Wang Shijie, Wang requested its return and a two-day delay in its release. Song Meiling said that Chiang yields to soft tactics but not to hard ones; in fact, Chiang bullies the soft and yields to the hard in dealing with us. Our Party currently has only two attitudes: one is to temporize, and the other is to adopt a political offensive, like the attitude in the telegram replying to Zhou Enlai that I drafted and the telegram from Ye Jianying replying to Zhang Chong.

[1] This consists of the main content of Mao Zedong's explanation, at a meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, of the telegram drafted for the Secretariat of the Central Committee on the current situation in reply to Zhou Enlai.

[2] This refers to Chiang Kai-shek's speech at the Central Memorial Week of the Kuomintang in Chongqing on January 27.

[3] Chen Cheng was then serving as Commander of the Sixth War Zone of the Kuomintang Army.