Speech at a Meeting of the Presidium of the Seventh Plenary Session of the Sixth CPC Central Committee[1]

(February 3, 1945)

The proposal put forward last September for the establishment of a coalition government was correct. This represents a shift in principle. Previously, it was your government, and I wanted the people; after September, it became a matter of reorganizing the government, in which we could participate. The coalition government would still be Chiang Kai-shek’s government, but with us holding a stake, creating certain conditions. For the sake of the overall situation, we may still need to exercise some patience. Prudent steps must be taken to avoid surrendering our arms. However, we must be aware that the future involves bloody struggle; there can be absolutely no peeling away layer by layer—it is impossible to peel away layer by layer—and we must oppose the danger of right-leaning tendencies. The party conference is of a preparatory nature, a roundtable conference, not one where the minority submits to the majority. Regarding the conditions we have proposed, the Kuomintang must first implement several of them before a national affairs conference can be convened. If Chiang Kai-shek proposes convening a national assembly, we must resist it.

[1] This is part of Mao Zedong’s speech at a meeting of the Presidium of the Seventh Plenary Session of the Sixth CPC Central Committee during discussions on telegrams from Zhou Enlai dated January 31 and February 2 concerning negotiations with the Kuomintang and the issue of the party conference.