Directive of the Central Committee on the
Current Situation and Tasks
(February 1, 1946)
To the heads of all bureaus, district Party committees, and columns:
	 1.	 After heated debates, the Political Consultative Conference in Chongqing
has achieved important results. It has decided to reform the government
and it passed the governmental program and the draft principles for the
Constitution. It also decided to convene a national constitutional assembly,
reorganize the national army, and implement the division of the military and
the Party, a cabinet system, separation of the military and civilian administrations, a military-civilian divide and a parliamentary system, a cabinet system, local autonomy, and popular election of provincial governors. Adoption
of these resolutions and their adaptation mark the beginning of the destruction of the Guomindang’s one-party dictatorship and of the democratization
of the state on a nationwide scale. This will consolidate domestic peace and
will open the way to the legalization of our Party as well as of our Party’s
army and the Liberated Areas created by our Party. This is a great victory for
the Chinese National Revolution. Henceforth, China will embark on a new
stage of peaceful democratic construction. Although many tortuous roads
certainly lie ahead, this new stage has already arrived. The various resolutions of the Political Consultative Conference have already been made public
in succession. It is expected that in all localities, especially in every large
city, wide-ranging and appropriate propaganda will be carried out inside and
outside the Party, and that celebratory meetings will be held to send telegrams of congratulations, demanding that the government immediately carry
out the resolutions. For our part, we should prepare to strive with determination for the realization of these resolutions.
	 2.	 The achievement of significant agreements in Chongqing at this time is the
result of the decisions of the three-country conference in Moscow and the
intervention in China (represented by [George] Marshall [1880–1959, born
in Uniontown, PA]). The strong presence of our Party and its resolute struggle of self-defense during the past four months, the resolute opposition of
all Chinese people to the civil war and to the one-party dictatorship, and
the domestic difficulties under the Guomindang are forcing Chiang Kaishek
and the Guomindang to begin to abandon their one-party dictatorship and
to begin the democratization of the state. To be sure, all the resolutions still
have to be carried out, and even if they are carried out, a thorough democratization of the entire country will still be far away. Nevertheless, as long as
all parties and factions are legalized throughout the country and people have
elementary political freedoms, the democratic movement will be able to
develop step by step and become an irresistible force, destroying the feudal
autocracy and promoting the continued democratization of the state. China’s
prospects for continued democratization is guaranteed by the support of the
Soviet Union, the United States, and Britain, the cooperation of the three
major domestic political parties (the Guomindang, the Communist Party, and
the Democratic League), and the demands of the three main strata (the laboring people, the middle class, and a section of the big bourgeoisie), including in particular the powerful Soviet Union, the Communist Party, and the
awakened working people. It should be pointed out that internal and external
anti-democratic forces are still very strong and the current beginnings of
democratic reforms by Chiang Kaishek’s Guomindang, like its past resistance to Japan, are very passive. Therefore, the road to China’s democratization will still be long and tortuous. Moreover, there are still many among the
American and British big bourgeoisie and the Chinese big bourgeoisie who
are conspiring to turn China into an anti-Soviet base. The difficulties facing
our Party and the Chinese people are still very great. Nevertheless, all these
difficulties can and must be gradually overcome. At present, the main form
of struggle in the Chinese Revolution has shifted from armed struggle to
unarmed mass and parliamentary struggles. Domestic issues should be settled by political means. All Party work should adapt to this new situation.
	 3.	 Our Party will participate in the government and in the future all parties and
groups will come to the Liberated Areas to participate in all kinds of social
activities and even to join the government of the Liberated Areas. Our army
will soon be reorganized as part of the regular national army, the local security forces, the self-defense forces, and so forth. After reorganization, the
political commissars and Party branches and committees in the army will be
abolished. The Party will no longer issue direct orders to the army (this will
begin to be applied after a few months). As a result, the relationship between
our Party and the army will be the same as that between the Guomindang and
its armies. All Party members in the army will, however, retain their Party

membership, and all military and political cadres will remain in and will
serve their original units. Political work must be strengthened. Comrades in
the entire Party must understand that this change is completely necessary.
At present, the army created by the Party can only obtain legal status by
adopting this form; it can only be preserved by recognition of all parties and
groups at home and recognition of the governments of all nations. This will
be done in exchange for the legalization of the Party throughout the entire
country and the democratization of the country and in exchange for the separation of the Guomindang troops from the control of the Guomindang and
private or factional groups. Such concessions are therefore compatible with
the interests of the people of the whole country. They will in no way change
the nature of our army as the army of the people. On the contrary, they will
further reform the armies of the whole country, gradually democratize them,
and finally turn them into a people’s army. In the future, Party members in
our army must change their work methods so as to adapt to the new situation.
After being shifted from the Party’s direct command, organization, and leadership, they can only learn about the Party’s positions and the direction of
the Party’s activities from the Party’s general calls and general policies and
through other indirect means. Thus, in the future they will have to rely more
on their own initiative and creativity to carry out their work. They should be
more united than before, more disciplined, and more zealous in their study
of Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought and in enhancing political
work in order to maintain and improve their own character as vanguard fighters of the proletariat and to preserve and improve the character of our army
as the people’s army. During eighteen years of arduous struggle, the army
and the great majority of its cadres were tempered under the direct leadership
and instructions of the Party Center and Comrade Mao Zedong. After victory in the Second World War and after Party rectification and the Seventh
[Party] Congress, although some people tried to destroy this people’s army
of ours, we must strictly guard against this; it is the Central Committee’s
firm belief that our army will not degenerate, disintegrate, or betray the people because of suspension of Party organization activities within it. (It may
be necessary to guard against such behavior by a few individuals.) On the
contrary, our comrades in the army will temper themselves and become more
mature because of this change. If the Guomindang troops can be removed
from the direct leadership of the Guomindang, we should be confident that
our troops can also be separated from the direct leadership of our Party.
	 4.	 Apart from a few areas where the Guomindang may still attack us militarily
and toward which we should increase our vigilance, armed struggles have
generally ended. To safeguard domestic peace, all localities should use the
present opportune moment to train troops for three months in a big way and
be prepared for, and not be afraid of, a possible breakdown of the peace.
During this period, it is essential to prepare for the reorganization of the
army, and better troops and simpler administration. First, psychological

preparations should be made for this; the matter should be considered carefully, and orders awaited. The current improvement in the troops and the
simplification of administration must avoid the shortcomings that appeared
during the previous campaign with that name.1 At the same time, the masses
should be energetically mobilized for six to ten months (currently, the main
danger is the excessive caution of many cadres who dare not mobilize
boldly) to complete the reduction of land rent in the old and Newly Liberated
Areas. In order to consolidate our Party’s mass bases in the Liberated Areas,
we must firmly grasp the leadership of the production movement in order
to speedily overcome the financial difficulties. Troop training, reduction of
rent, and production are the three central tasks of the Liberated Areas at
present. Moreover, we must also prepare to shift the focus of the work of the
whole Party to unarmed mass and parliamentary struggles, diligently study
and organize legal struggles, and coordinate the work of the united front
from above and the united front from below. We should extend the scale
of the Party’s work to the whole country and to all large cities. We should
participate broadly in the economic construction and industrialization of the
whole country. Only mobilizing and organizing the broad masses to carry
out these struggles and this work throughout the country will guarantee the
democratization of China and the application of all agreements. Our Party’s
continued development and the continued improvement of its political position in the country, the preservation and further achievement of positional
gains, and the future of the Chinese Revolution all depend on our Party’s
skill in organizing and leading the broad masses to carry out these struggles and this work. The more swiftly and skillfully our Party can adopt new
forms of struggle and organization, the more it will be able to seize the initiative. During the eight years of the War of Resistance Against Japan, our
Party accomplished great achievements in these respects. As far as making
use of these new forms, our Party should be relatively more skillful than
the Guomindang. But we still have many shortcomings, and these must be
quickly overcome.
	 5.	 Thus, we must point out that the most dangerous deviation in the Party at
present is the narrow closed-door mentality of some comrades. Because of
the Guomindang’s counterrevolutionary policies and the eighteen years of
intense struggle between the two parties, many people, both inside and outside our Party, do not believe that the civil war can really come to an end and
that peace can be truly realized. They do not believe that Chiang Kaishek
and the Guomindang, which exercises coercion in all sectors, will carry out
democratic reform or that they will continue to cooperate with our Party in
national construction. They do not believe that the peaceful new democratic
stage has already arrived, and consequently they remain suspicious. With
regard to many types of work, they are unwilling to genuinely change their
attitude, or to diligently study the parliamentary form of struggle and that of
the unarmed masses. Thus, all local Party committees must explain in detail
the current new situation and tasks, and fully overcome these erroneous tendencies. Some non-Party people are even more leftist than the Party members, so we must succeed in persuading them. Because of the development
of the political situation as a whole, the Central Committee is persuaded that
such erroneous tendencies will not be difficult to overcome. In the ensuing period, however, with the consolidation of the nation’s peaceful new
democratic stage, when the broad masses see things clearly and when the
Guomindang has carried out some major reforms, rightist sentiments may
increase. Moreover, this might become the most dangerous tendency. At that
time, we will have to pay attention to overcoming such rightist sentiments.
Today, however, we must pay attention to overcoming the leftist closed-door
mentality of some of our comrades.
The Central Committee

--- Notes

1. Our source for this text is Zhonggong zhongyang wenjian xuanji, Vol. 16, pp. 62–67.
Although in Zhonggong zhongyang wenjian xuanji it is not attributed to Mao Zedong,
from it extensively. The translation that follows is adapted from that in Saich, Rise to
DOI:  10.4324/9781315719511-93

1.  The reference is to the Crack Troop and Simple Administration Campaign in
1942–1943, in the context of the Yan’an Rectification Movement. See the editorial written
by Mao, dated September 7, 1942, in Volume VIII, pp. 154–57.


Nianpu, Vol. 3, p. 55, states that Mao revised it and put it into its final form, and he quotes
Power, pp. 1277–80.