Authoritative Person in Yan’an Declares
Opposition to the Byrnes Bill to Assist Chiang
Kaishek
(June 16, 1946)
(Xinhua News Agency, Yan’an, June 16) Ignoring appeals from the Chinese
people and all the democratic parties to stop nurturing the Chinese Civil War,
certain American authorities are determined to continue providing military support to the initiator of the Chinese Civil War—the Chiang Kaishek government.
According to a June 14 telegram from an American news bureau in Washington,
“Today (the 14th) U.S. Secretary of State, [James S.] Byrnes [1882–1972] submitted a bill to the Senate, requesting approval of assistance to China in the form
of military training and technology. In a related letter, Byrnes pointed out that it is
extremely important that military assistance to China continue unabated. Byrnes
stated that China had requested that the United States send to China a military
diplomatic mission, like the American military delegations to Latin America. This
bill authorizing implementation of military aid to China was drawn up jointly by
the Army, the Navy, and the State Department. [Byrnes said] he firmly believes
that [U.S.] national interests (including the country’s interest in rebuilding and
maintaining peace and security in Asia) require that America assist China in
organizing and maintaining a certain number of modern military forces, so that
China can contribute to peace and security in that region.” People here think that
at a time when representatives of the Chinese Communist Party in Nanjing are
negotiating through [George] Marshall with the Guomindang government to try
to achieve a comprehensive and permanent peace in China and the Guomindang
is openly calling for an all-out and protracted civil war, the U.S. government’s
proposal for a bill that encourages civil war in China is indeed an unfriendly
expression toward the Chinese people’s wish for peace. The facts are absolutely
the opposite of what Mr. Byrnes has asserted. If this bill is passed, China will
sink into a serious lack of peace and security, and the interests of the American
people and America’s national reputation will suffer great damage. As Chinese
public opinion and public opinion around the world have repeatedly made clear,
Our source for this document is Mao Zedong ji, Vol. 10, pp. 43–44, which reproduces a
June 17, 1946, Jiefang ribao article.
DOI:  10.4324/9781315719511-173

the huge military assistance of the United States to the warlike dictatorial government of China’s Guomindang is the one fundamental condition underlying the
occurrence and expansion of the civil war in China today and of the difficulties in
ending it. The Chinese people cannot understand what right the U.S. government
has to impose civil war and dictatorship upon China, or to demand that, like Latin
America, China should fall within the American sphere of influence or be part of
the scope of U.S. “national interests.” Nor can the Chinese people understand
what right the American government has to violate President Truman’s declaration last December that America “will not influence the course of any Chinese
internal struggle through military interference” or the principles of the “communiqué of the Moscow Conference of the Three Foreign Ministers” last December.
An authoritative source in Yan’an said that peace and democracy in China are the
sacred rights of the Chinese people and no one can interfere with them or take
them away. If the Chinese reactionaries, relying on foreign assistance, persist in
civil war and dictatorship, openly and directly change the  present Guomindang
government with a Qin Hui, Zhang Bangchang, or Liu Yu1 government, and turn
the present chairman of the Guomindang government into a puppet emperor who
submits to foreign nations, then it is certain that the Chinese people will resist to
the very last drop of blood.
1.  Qin Hui (1091–1155, native of present-day Jiangsu), Zhang Bangchang (1081–
1127, native of present-day Yunnan), and Liu Yu (1073–1146, native of present-day Hebei)
were Song dynasty figures who were regarded as traitors.