The Chiang Kai-shek Government Is Sinking into Oblivion[1]

(November 14, 1948)

[14 November, Xinhua News Agency dispatch from northern Shaanxi] The Chiang Kai-shek government, China’s last autocratic dynasty, is sinking into history like a wrecked ship. Although completely desperate, Chiang Kai-shek has still decided to fight to the finish. By fighting to the finish, he means he is unwilling to surrender and would rather have the more than two million troops he still has left completely wiped out. Even so, the day is not far off when the People’s Liberation Army will wipe out the entire reactionary army. In the first four months of the third year of the war, the Kuomintang has already lost one million troops, of whom about half a million were lost in October. Some four hundred thousand were lost in the Northeast. The November toll will be no lighter than October’s. The collapse on the Xuzhou battlefield and the destruction of several hundred thousand troops are now awaiting the Kuomintang. And what is more important, the loss of Xuzhou means the loss of the whole territory north of the Yangtze River and the loss of the last backbone of the Kuomintang army. Hence the Kuomintang is struggling desperately. When Chiang Kai-shek pretended to be magnanimous in handing over the command in northern China to Fu Zuoyi and the command in Wuhan and Xuzhou to Bai Chongxi, he saw that everything north of the Yangtze River was already lost and planned to withdraw his own trusted forces south of the Yangtze. But it is already too late to carry out his plan. Chiang Kai-shek no longer has any complete battle line either on the southern or on the northern front. On the northern front, Taiyuan, Baoding, Chengde, Datong and Guisui have long been isolated from each other. The links between Beiping, Tianjin, Tangshan and Zhangjiakou are also frequently disrupted. The same is true on the southern front, where the three major centres, Xuzhou, Hankou and Xi’an, no longer form any kind of battle line. They are merely three

[1] This is a commentary by the Xinhua News Agency. The parts printed in boldface type were added or revised by Mao Zedong.

strongpoints with three heaps of troops placed around them, and of course they do not constitute any kind of battle line.
South of the Yangtze, the Kuomintang has not yet established any battle line, nor will it be able to do so. In face of this situation, not only those around Chiang Kai-shek but even Chiang Kai-shek himself are all extremely pessimistic. It is reported that when Chiang Kai-shek returned to Beiping from Shenyang and learned of the fall of Jinzhou, he was overcome with grief, and he convened a military conference to seek a way to “snatch life from the jaws of death”. Other reports say that after the complete annihilation of Liao Yaoxiang’s army in western Liaoning, Chiang Kai-shek vomited blood in Beiping and did so again and again after his return to Nanjing. Upon his return to Nanjing, Chiang Kai-shek was confronted on the one hand with the critical situation in Xuzhou and on the other with the critical situation on the economic front, especially with regard to grain, after the collapse of the gold yuan notes and the price ceilings. Within one week the price of rice in Shanghai soared from 80 gold yuan to 1,800 gold yuan per picul, and the rice famine in Nanjing led to the looting of one hundred rice shops in a single day on the 10th of the month. Since Weng Wenhao’s resignation, no one in Nanjing has dared to accept the post of President of the Executive Yuan. One after another, the dignitaries in Nanjing are preparing to flee to Guangdong, Guangxi and Taiwan and are discussing the question of moving the capital to Guangzhou. Li Zongren, He Yingqin, Bai Chongxi and others are busily engaged in activities to force Chiang Kai-shek to “retire”. In order to prepare for the next step and to seize the leadership in the “anti-Chiang” campaign, certain elements among Chiang Kai-shek’s own trusted followers have also joined in these activities. Liu Butong, a secret agent and “member of the Legislative Yuan” who is known as an official oppositionist, has openly published an article advocating that Chiang Kai-shek go abroad and “restore peace”. Their aim is to preserve some strength for the reactionaries by “peaceful” methods. Therefore, contrary to what has happened to those engaged in the people’s struggle against the reactionary civil war, their activities have not been banned. But for the time being Chiang Kai-shek is still unwilling to accept their proposals. In a speech on the 8th, Chiang Kai-shek said, “My personal attitude in doing things throughout my life has been this: if I do not start something, then I leave it alone, but once I start it I definitely demand its success; I do not lightly accept any duty, but once I accept it I am determined to see it through to the end.” This is to say, you want me to step down, but I don’t want to. Chiang Kai-shek consoled his subordinates by saying, “Although we have suffered defeat in the Northeast in this campaign, our political, economic and military foundations in the interior have not been shaken in the slightest. Compared with the actual strength of the Communist bandits, we still hold the advantage.” This is nothing but a lie. Chiang Kai-shek’s political, economic and military foundations are fundamentally collapsing, and his so-called “advantage” no longer exists.

A page from Mao Zedong’s manuscript of his revisions to the Xinhua News Agency commentary, “The Chiang Kai-shek Government Is Sinking into Oblivion”.