Statement Opposing the U.S. Bill to Provide
Military Assistance to Chiang Kaishek1
 (June 22, 1946)
The bill for continued military assistance to China put forward on the 14th of
this month by the U.S. Department of State for deliberation by Congress has
an extremely negative impact on peace, security, independence, and democracy in China. Therefore, the Chinese Communist Party firmly opposes this bill.
Furthermore, this view of the Chinese Communist Party enjoys the support of a
large number of democratic personages in China. During the War of Resistance
Against Japan, the United States extended military assistance to China and sent
American soldiers to fight together with us on Chinese soil for the purpose of
defeating the common enemy of China and America—Japanese imperialism. At
that time, however, because the United States made the mistake of only assisting
the Guomindang warlords, this assistance did not, in fact, effectively strengthen
China’s resistance. On the contrary, it was used by the Guomindang warlords, who
were actively resisting Japan, to strengthen their attacks and blockades against
the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese Liberated Areas. After Japan surrendered, the United States did not halt its various types of military assistance to
the Chinese Guomindang government; rather, it increased it greatly, and for this
purpose in fact it sent a huge military force and stationed it on Chinese soil and in
Chinese waters. These actions have been proven to be the fundamental reason for
the outbreak of the large-scale civil war in China and for its continued expansion.
It is only when the U.S. government announced that it would carry out the articles on the China question in the communiqué of the Moscow Conference of the
Three Foreign Ministers in December 1945, and when the Chinese Guomindang
declared a cessation of the civil war and announced that it would carry out the
This statement first appeared in Jiefang ribao on June 23, 1946. We have translated it
from Mao Zedong wenji, Vol. 4, pp. 123–24, which reproduces the text.
1.  Mao Zedong delivered this declaration as the chairman of the Central Committee of
the Chinese Communist Party. On the same day (June 22, 1946), Mao drafted a telegram on
behalf of the Central Committee to Zhou Enlai, who was in Nanjing for negotiations. The
telegram states, “Today, as chairman of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist
Party, I issued a statement protesting the American bill to provide China with military aid.
After receiving this, immediately formally present this letter to Marshall and request that
he pass it on to the American government.”
DOI:  10.4324/9781315719511-178

resolution on national democratization taken at the Chinese Political Consultative
Conference that the Chinese Communist Party did not oppose the U.S. extension
of certain kinds of military assistance to China. But now these prerequisites have
all been seriously compromised, as a result of which the so-called military assistance provided by the United States is in fact nothing short of armed interference
in China’s internal affairs; nothing short of forcibly supporting the Guomindang’s
totalitarian government as it continues to plunge China into civil war, fragmentation, chaos, terror, and poverty; nothing short of making it impossible for China
to achieve a reorganization and demobilization of its armed forces and to fulfill its
obligations to the United Nations; nothing short of endangering China’s national
security, independence, and territorial sovereignty; and this will only sabotage
the glorious friendship between the two great nations of China and the United
States and the prospects for the development of trade between these two countries. What the Chinese people urgently need today is not American guns and
artillery or for American troops to be stationed on Chinese soil; on the contrary,
the Chinese people feel strongly that the United States has already shipped too
many armaments to China, that there are already too many American troops stationed in China, and that they have already become a grave and enormous threat
to China’s peace and stability and to the survival and freedom of the Chinese people. Under such actual circumstances, the Chinese Communist Party cannot but
firmly oppose the American government’s continued supply of arms to China’s
autocratic Guomindang government by means of sales, loans, gifts, or transfers;
firmly oppose the sending of military advisory delegations from the United States
to China; resolutely demand that the United States immediately halt and take
back all so-called military assistance to China, and immediately withdraw the
American troops stationed in China.