The Chinese Communist Party’s Comments on the Manifesto of the Eighth Plenary Session of the Kuomintang Central Executive Committee and Chiang Kai-shek’s Speech (April 5, 1941)

In his speech at this session, Chiang Kai-shek said the following: “Now there are people criticizing us and ridiculing us, saying that our Party’s work is slack, too indolent, and even that we are corrupt and decrepit. We must admit and accept all such criticisms. We observe that over the past three years and eight months, and especially in the last half year, our spirit of struggle has indeed been declining day by day. From the Party to the government, from our Central Committee to all Party affairs, political, military, and economic undertakings, there is no new spirit, and there is a lack of new vitality. I believe this point represents an immense crisis, one that should shock us to the core.” These words of Chiang Kai-shek confirm an indisputable fact, namely, that the various criticisms of the Kuomintang authorities long voiced by the Chinese Communist Party and compatriots at home and abroad have been entirely correct. However, it must be acknowledged that whoever speaks the truth about all these issues has always been considered guilty. “To guard against the people’s mouths is more dangerous than to guard against a river bursting its banks”—this truth is not yet understood by the current ruling authorities of the Kuomintang. Up to the present, the people’s freedoms of thought, speech, and publication have been almost completely stripped away, and there is even a trend of intensifying severity. But the calculations and various practices of the Kuomintang ruling authorities are all mistaken. The people’s indignation is growing day by day along with the political oppression and economic extortion by the big bourgeoisie, and the crisis of division caused by the criminal act of attacking the New Fourth Army has further deepened the people’s dissatisfaction with the Kuomintang authorities. This has compelled Chiang to reveal the truth about his own ruling crisis this time. Chiang wants the Kuomintang members to engage in self-reflection, but he does not

intend to resolve the real crux of this crisis. What is this crux? In a word: the absence of democracy. As long as the fact that Kuomintang rule runs counter to the interests of the people persists for a single day, the crisis will also persist for a single day. And if the Kuomintang is to draw close to the people, there is no other path apart from democracy. Chiang’s speech did not mention democratic politics at all. The so-called “becoming one with the people” is merely empty talk, or perhaps it means strengthening the secret service work of rule among the people. As for the Plenary Session’s manifesto, it even more clearly declares that the implementation of constitutional government is postponed until “the day the war ends.” The constitutional government that the people of the whole nation and all parties and groups have been calling for over the past two years, in an attempt to strengthen national unity in the War of Resistance, has once again been cast aside. Secondly, as an oppressed nation rising to resist a powerful enemy, we cannot win the final victory without universally arming the people. Now the Kuomintang authorities, under the pretext of so-called “military orders and military discipline,” seek to eliminate the genuine arming of the people, using military orders and military discipline as a tool to exclude dissidents. Acts such as the attack on and cancellation of the New Fourth Army are crimes against the War of Resistance. The Plenary Session’s manifesto did not correct this; instead, it emphasized this unprincipled so-called “military orders and military discipline” used in the conspiracy to eliminate anti-Japanese forces. This cannot but be called an error in understanding. Regarding “economic construction,” the Plenary Session’s manifesto, on the one hand, denies the improvement of the people’s livelihood, labeling it with the crime of so-called “inciting class struggle.” On the other hand, it continues the so-called economic control, riddled with abuses and practiced by a small minority of big bourgeoisie elements engaging in extortion, denying the free development of the economy in order to strike at the national industrial and commercial bourgeoisie and the broad petty bourgeoisie. If such an erroneous economic policy is not changed, it is very obvious that the developing economic crisis of today cannot be overcome. However, changing this erroneous economic policy is only possible under democratic politics. In summary, we hope the Kuomintang will turn for the better, because a Kuomintang turning for the better is a boon for the national War of Resistance. But if the Kuomintang ruling figures do not fundamentally examine their own errors and the real crux of the Kuomintang’s decrepitude and corruption, and only seek out minor details, there will absolutely be no results. If the Kuomintang truly wishes to make improvements, it can only accept the twelve-point remedial measures proposed by the Communist Party and earnestly implement them. Without a change in fundamental policy, methods that treat the head when the head aches and treat the foot when the foot aches will be of no avail.