Chiang Kai-shek, the enemy of the people, has signaled the start of a civil war.
# Date: 1943-07
# Source: en:auto-trans
# Translated from: zh/1943/1943-07_ren_min_gong_di_jiang_jie_shi_fa_chu_le_nei_zhan_xin_hao.txt



(Yan’an, Xinhua, 16th) At a press conference in Chongqing on the afternoon of the 15th, Chiang Kai-shek’s spokesman, addressing the so-called Communist Party’s alleged disregard for Chairman Chiang’s orders to Commander-in-Chief Zhu De, stated: “The Chairman’s orders must be obeyed. To ignore them will be regarded as an act against the people and shall be dealt with under military discipline.” A Xinhua reporter commented: This is Chiang Kai-shek’s public signal for all-out civil war. On the 11th, Chiang issued a treacherous order—at the very moment when the Japanese aggressors were on the verge of total defeat—that forbade the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army, like all other people’s armed forces, from continuing to fight the Japanese and their puppet troops. Such an order is, of course, absolutely unacceptable—and should never be accepted. Subsequently, through his spokesman, Chiang went even further, declaring the Chinese people’s own armies “enemies of the people” and threatening to subject them to “military disciplinary action.” In doing so, he effectively declared civil war upon the Chinese people. Chiang’s plot for civil war, however, did not begin with that order of the 11th; it has been his consistent plan throughout the eight-year War of Resistance. Over those eight years, he launched three major anti-Communist offensives—in February 1940, February 1941, and February 1943—each time preparing to escalate them into nationwide civil war. Only the opposition of the Chinese people and our Allied partners prevented these plans from being carried out, a fact that Chiang has long resented. Consequently, he was forced to postpone the outbreak of all-out civil war until after the war’s end—hence the order of the 11th of this month and the remarks of the 15th. To justify the coming conflagration, Chiang has concocted a host of euphemisms: terms such as “alien party,” “traitorous party,” “traitorous army,” “rebel army,” “traitorous zone,” “bandit zone,” “disobedience to military and political orders,” “feudal separatism,” “undermining the resistance, harming the nation,” and so forth. He also insists that China has known only “suppression of the Communists,” never “civil war,” and therefore “there will be no civil war.” What is somewhat new this time is the addition of a single phrase: “enemy of the people.” Yet anyone can see how absurd this invention is. For in China, whenever the term “enemy of the people” is invoked, everyone knows exactly whom it refers to. There is one such person who betrayed Sun Yat-sen’s Three Principles of the People and the Great Revolution of 1917. He plunged the Chinese people into a decade of civil war, drenched in blood, thereby inviting the aggression of Japanese imperialism. Then, bereft of any sense of responsibility, he fled headlong, leading a small band of followers from Heilongjiang all the way to Sichuan Province, sitting idly by and waiting for victory to fall into his lap. And when victory finally came, he ordered the people’s armed forces to stand down and remain on standby, while instructing the enemy collaborators to “maintain law and order,” so that he could swagger back to Nanjing. The mere mention of these facts makes it perfectly clear: Chiang Kai-shek is the enemy of the people. Is there still any debate about whether he deserves that designation? Indeed there is—but the debate itself is growing increasingly rare among the masses. What now matters is that this “enemy of the people” is about to unleash civil war. What, then, shall the people do? A Xinhua reporter notes that the Chinese Communist Party’s stance on Chiang’s attempt to ignite civil war has always been clear and consistent: from the very first instance of foreign invasion of China, the Party has called for an end to civil war, asserting that no tyrant or national traitor has the right to invade the people and wage war against them. Between 1936 and 1937, through extraordinary efforts, the Party compelled Chiang Kai-shek to accept its position, thus paving the way for the War of Resistance Against Japan. Throughout those eight years, the CPC never ceased to warn the people of the grave danger of civil war. Since last year, the Party has repeatedly drawn attention to Chiang’s long-prepared scheme to launch a nationwide civil war at the conclusion of the war, underscoring the catastrophic consequences such a conflict would entail. Like all peace-loving people around the world, the CPC regards a new civil war as a disaster. Nevertheless, it maintains that civil war can and must be stopped. The Party advocates the formation of a united government as the means to achieve this goal. Chiang has rejected this proposal, bringing civil war to the brink of eruption. However, there are effective ways to counter his machinations. By resolutely and swiftly strengthening the democratic forces of the people, by liberating occupied cities through popular uprising, by disarming enemy collaborators and puppet troops, and by adopting a firm defensive posture—meeting aggression with decisive counterattack—so that those who seek to provoke civil war have no chance to succeed: this is the only viable approach. The Xinhua reporter calls upon the entire Chinese nation and the international community to rise up against this most hypocritical and shameless lie: namely, the claim that Chiang has forbidden the Chinese people from liberating occupied cities, disarming enemy collaborators, and establishing democratic rule, while he himself intends to go to those cities to “inherit” (rather than destroy) the puppet regime, thereby averting civil war. The Xinhua reporter asserts that this is a blatant falsehood, not only in direct violation of the Chinese people’s national and democratic interests, but also of every factual detail of modern Chinese history. It must never be forgotten that the ten-year civil war initiated by Chiang Kai-shek between 1917 and 1937 was not caused by the fact that major cities were in Communist hands rather than in Chiang’s; on the contrary, from 1917 to the present, those cities have consistently remained either under Chiang’s control or under the control of Japanese forces and their Chinese collaborators. It was precisely this situation that allowed the civil war to rage across the country for a full decade and to continue sporadically to this day. Nor should it be overlooked that the cessation of that civil war, as well as the suppression of three major anti-Communist offensives and countless other challenges—including the recent incursion by Chiang’s forces into southern Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region—were not due to Chiang’s superior strength. On the contrary, they were made possible because the Communist forces, by contrast, possessed a greater popular base and a stronger fighting capacity. The ten-year civil war was brought to an end not by appeals from pacifists and peace-seeking elements throughout the country—for example, the former “Great Alliance to Abolish Civil War”—but by the armed demands of the CPC and by the resolve of Generals Zhang Xueliang and Yang Hucheng, who led the Northeastern and Northwestern Armies to stand firm. Similarly, the three anti-Communist offensives and the myriad other challenges were not subdued through the Communists’ unlimited concessions and capitulation, but rather through their steadfast adherence to the principle of self-defense: “If they do not attack us, we shall not attack them; if they do attack us, we shall strike back with equal force.” Were the Communists devoid of strength and backbone, had they failed to fight to the bitter end in defense of the nation and the people, how could the ten-year civil war ever have ended? How could the War of Resistance have begun? And even if it had begun, how could it have endured until today’s victory? How could figures like Chiang Kai-shek still enjoy unscathed survival to this day, issuing orders and making pronouncements from remote mountain retreats far removed from the front lines? The Chinese Communist Party stands firmly opposed to civil war. “Establishing domestic peace and stability in all countries and organizing provisional governing bodies that broadly represent all democratic elements of the population and guarantee the earliest possible free elections to form a government that implements the will of the people”—this was stated in Crimea. It is precisely this position—the call for a “united government”—that the CPC continues to uphold as the key to preventing civil war. The sole prerequisite is strength: only by uniting and consolidating their collective power can the people bring civil war to a halt.