Commander-in-Chief Zhu [De] Sends a
Telegram Demanding That Chiang Kaishek
End the Civil War1
 (August 16, 1945)
(Xinhua News Agency dispatch, Yan’an, August 17) The Commander-in-Chief of
the Anti-Japanese Army of China’s Liberated Areas, General Zhu De, has sent a
telegram to Chiang Kaishek regarding six points demanded by the country. The
text is as follows:
For the perusal of Honorable Chairman Chiang Kaishek in Chongqing:
At a time when our common enemy, the Japanese government, has accepted
the terms of the Potsdam Declaration and announced its surrender but has not
yet actually surrendered, I hereby present to you the following statement and
demands on behalf of all the anti-Japanese armed forces and all 260 million people in China’s Liberated Areas and the Japanese-occupied areas.
With the War of Resistance Against Japan coming to a victorious close, I call
your attention to the fact that in the China war theater today, namely, in the vast
occupied areas abandoned by you and seized by the enemy and the puppets we
have, against your will and through our eight years of bitter fighting, recaptured
nearly 1,000,000 square kilometers of territory; liberated more than 100,000,000
people; organized more than 1,000,000 regular troops and more than 2,200,000
people’s militia; established nineteen large Liberated Areas in the nineteen provinces of Liaoning, Rehe, Chahar, Suiyuan, Hebei, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Gansu, Ningxia,
Henan, Shandong, Jiangsu, Anhui, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, Zhejiang, Fujian, and
Guangdong; and encircled most of the cities and towns, vital communication lines,
and sections of the seacoast seized by the enemy and the puppets since the July 7th

Incident of 1937,2 except for a few areas. In addition, in China’s Japanese-occupied
areas (with a population of 160 million) we have organized extensive underground
forces to strike at the enemy and the puppets. In the fighting, we continue to resist
and encircle 69 percent of the Japanese troops invading China (not counting those
in the Northeast) and 95 percent of the puppet troops. Your government and armed
forces, in contrast, have all along followed a policy of looking on with folded arms,
sitting around and waiting for victory, conserving your forces and preparing for a
civil war, and you have not only refused recognition and supplies to our Liberated
Areas and armies, but you have encircled and attacked us with a huge force of
940,000 men. Although all the troops and civilians in China’s Liberated Areas have
suffered enough from being attacked by the enemy and the puppet forces on the
one side and by your troops on the other, we have never in the least weakened in
our determination to persevere in unity and democracy in the War of Resistance.
The people of China’s Liberated Areas and the Chinese Communist Party have
many times proposed to you and your government that a conference of all parties
be convened and that a nationwide democratic coalition government be formed in
order to end the internal strife, mobilize and unite the people’s anti-Japanese forces
throughout China, lead the War of Resistance to victory, and ensure peace after the
war. But our proposals have invariably been rejected by you and your government.
We are extremely dissatisfied with all of this.
The enemy nation will soon sign its surrender, but you and your government
have continued to ignore our opinions, issuing a most outrageous order to me
on August 11, and ordering your troops to press against the Liberated Areas on
a massive scale under the pretext of disarming the enemy; the danger of a civil
war is therefore more serious than ever, thus compelling us to make the following
demands on you and your government:
	 1.	 I demand that you consult with us so that we may reach common views before
you, your government, and your Supreme Command accept the surrender of
the Japanese and the puppets and conclude any post-surrender agreements
or treaties. You and your government have aroused the dissatisfaction of the
people and cannot represent the broad masses or any of the people’s antiJapanese armed forces in China’s Liberated Areas and Japanese-occupied
areas. We reserve our right to speak out if the agreements or treaties include,
without our prior consent, anything that concerns the people’s anti-Japanese
armed forces in China’s Liberated Areas and the Japanese-occupied areas.
	 2.	 All of the people’s anti-Japanese armed forces in China’s Liberated Areas and
Japanese-occupied areas have the right, in accordance with the Potsdam
Declaration and the measures laid down by the Allies for accepting the enemy’s surrender, to accept the surrender of the Japanese and the puppet troops encircled by us, to take over their arms and materiel, and to assume responsibility for carrying out all stipulations laid down by the Allies after Japan’s surrender has been accepted. On August 10, I ordered the armed forces of China’s
Liberated Areas to make an all-out effort to attack the enemy troops and to
be prepared to accept their surrender. On August 15, I ordered the enemy
commander-in-chief, Yasuji Okamura, to surrender with his troops; this order,
however, applied only to the sphere of operations of the armed forces in the
Liberated Areas, and not to any other area. I consider my orders very reasonable and very much in the common interest of China and the Allies.
	 3.	 The broad masses and all the anti-Japanese armed forces in China’s Liberated
Areas and the Japanese-occupied areas have the right to send representatives
to participate in the Allies’ acceptance of the enemy surrender and in the
work of dealing with the enemy nation after its surrender.
	 4.	 China’s Liberated Areas and all the anti-Japanese armed forces have the
right to select their own delegation to participate in the future peace conference and any meetings of the United Nations concerning Japan.
	 5.	 I ask you to prevent a civil war. The way to do this is for the armed forces
of the Liberated Areas to accept the surrender of the enemy and the puppet
troops that they have encircled, while your armed forces accept the surrender
of the enemy and the puppet troops that you have encircled. Not only is this
an established practice in all wars, it is particularly imperative in order to
avert a civil war. If you act otherwise, it will lead to adverse consequences. I
am now giving you a serious warning about this matter and I ask that you not
treat this warning casually.
	 6.	 I ask that you immediately abolish the one-party dictatorship, call a conference of all parties to set up a democratic coalition government, dismiss
corrupt officials and all reactionaries from their posts, punish traitors, abolish the secret services, recognize the legal status of the various parties (the
Chinese Communist Party and all democratic parties that up to now you
and your government have regarded as illegal), annul all reactionary laws
and decrees that suppress the liberties of the people, recognize the popularly
elected government and the anti-Japanese armed forces of China’s Liberated
Areas, withdraw your troops encircling the Liberated Areas, release the
political prisoners, and carry out economic and other democratic reforms.
Apart from this, I sent you a telegram on August 13 in reply to your order to
me of August 11, and presumably you have received it. I now declare again
that your order was completely wrong. On August 11, you ordered my troops to
“stay where they are, pending further orders” and no longer to attack the enemy.
However, not only was it true on August 11 but it is equally true even today
(August 16)3 that the Japanese government has surrendered only in words and not in deeds; no instrument of surrender has been signed and no actual surrender has
taken place. My view is completely in accord with that of the Allies, Britain, the
United States, and the Soviet Union. On August 11, the very day you issued your
order to me, the British Army Command on the Burma front announced that the
war with Japan was still in progress. [Chester W.] Nimitz [1895–1966], the commander of the U.S. forces, declared that not only did a state of war continue but
a war with all its devastating consequences must be carried on. The Far Eastern
Command of the Red Army of the Soviet Union announced, “The enemy must be
ruthlessly smashed.” On August 15, Colonel-General [Aleksei] Antonov,4 chief-of-the-General Staff of the Red Army, made the following statement:
The message concerning Japan’s surrender issued by the Japanese
Emperor on August 14 is only a general declaration concerning unconditional surrender. An order to the armed forces to cease hostilities has not
yet been issued and the Japanese troops are continuing their resistance.
Hence there is still no actual surrender by the armed forces of Japan.
The surrender of the armed forces of Japan can be considered to have
taken place only from the moment the Japanese Emperor orders that his
armed forces discontinue hostilities and lay down their arms and when
this order is carried out in practice. In view of the above, the armed
forces of the Soviet Union in the Far East will continue their offensive
operations against Japan.
It can be seen that you alone, of all the high commanders of the Allied forces,
have given an absolutely erroneous order. I consider that your error stems from
self-interest and is of an extremely serious nature; that is to say, your order serves
the interests of the enemy.
Therefore, taking my stand regarding the common interests of China and the
Allies, I shall firmly and completely oppose your order as long as you do not
openly admit your error and countermand this erroneous order. At present, I am
still ordering the armed units under my command to carry out determined attacks
on the enemy in coordination with the armed forces of Britain, the United States,
and the Soviet Union5 until the enemy actually ends hostilities and surrenders its
arms and all the territory of the motherland has been fully recovered. I declare to
you that as a patriotic soldier, I cannot act otherwise.
With regard to the above, I request your early reply.
Zhu De

---

Notes

Our source for this text is Mao Zedong ji. Bujuan, Vol. 8, pp. 55–59, where it is reproduced from Jiefang ribao, August 14–17, 1945. Nianpu, Vol. 3, p. 6, confirms that Mao
drafted this telegram. As in the case of the telegram of August 13, the variants as compared
to Xuanji are not extensive or important, but we have noted one or two of the more significant variants.
1.  Commander-in-Chief Zhu [De] Sends a Telegram Demanding that Chiang Kaishek
End the Civil War → Telegram from the Commander-in-Chief of the Eighteenth Army
Group to Chiang Kaishek. Like the telegram of August 13, this telegram was drafted on
behalf of Zhu De by Mao Zedong.
DOI:  10.4324/9781315719511-17

--- Notes


2.  That is, the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, generally considered the start of the Second
Sino-Japanese War.

3.  August 16 → August 17

4.  Colonel-General Aleksei Antonov (1896–1962) was appointed chief of the General
Staff of the Soviet army in February 1945.

5.  Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union → The Soviet Union, the United
States, and Britain