Chairman Mao’s Statement on Arriving in
Chongqing1
 (August 28, 1945)
(Xinhua News Agency dispatch, Yan’an, August 30) Comrade Mao Zedong,
Chairman of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, arrived in
Chongqing on the 28th. After disembarking from the plane, he made the following statement:
I have come to Chongqing on this occasion at the invitation of the Chairman
of the Nationalist Government, Mr. Chiang Kaishek, to discuss the great plan for
national reconstruction. Now that the Anti-Japanese War has ended in victory,
China is entering a period of peaceful reconstruction. This is a crucially important
moment. At present, the most urgent tasks are to guarantee internal peace, carry
out democratic politics, and consolidate national unity. The various outstanding
problems in the country’s political and military affairs should be solved in a reasonable way on the basis of peace, democracy, and unity, in the hope that we can
realize national unification and build an independent, free, rich, and powerful new
China. I hope that all anti-Japanese political parties and noble-minded patriots in
China will unite and strive to accomplish the above tasks together. I would like to
express my gratitude to Mr. Chiang Kaishek for the invitation.
Our source for this text is Mao Zedong ji, Vol. 9, p. 325, where it is reproduced from
Jiefang ribao, August 30, 1945.
DOI:  10.4324/9781315719511-28