January 28, 1949


The Central News Agency of the reactionary Nanking Kuomintang government
reported in a dispatch dated January 26:

  A Government spokesman made the following statement. In the past month the
  Government has taken various measures and steps for an early conclusion of
  the war in order to alleviate the sufferings of the people. Furthermore,
  on the 22nd of this month, the Government formally appointed a delegation
  [1] to the peace negotiations. During the last
  few days, the Government has only been waiting for the Communist Party of
  China to appoint its delegation and agree on a meeting place so that the
  negotiations may proceed. But in the statement broadcast from northern Shensi
  by the Hsinhua News Agency on the 25th,
  [2] a spokesman for the Communist Party of China,
  while indicating willingness to negotiate a peaceful settlement with the
  Government, resorted to unbridled insults and vilification and used absurd
  and offensive language. He also said that the place for the negotiations
  could not be fixed until Peiping was completely liberated. We should like
  to ask, if the Communist Party of China, on the pretext of awaiting the so-called
  complete liberation of Peiping, does not immediately appoint its delegation
  and agree on a meeting place and furthermore does not stop military operations,
  is it not stalling for time and prolonging the disaster of war? One should
  know that the hope of the people of the whole country to put an end to the
  disaster of war brooks no delay. To demonstrate its profound sincerity, the
  Government once again expresses the wish that the Communist Party of China
  will clearly realize that the salvation of the people should be the primary
  consideration today and that it will therefore appoint a delegation to the
  negotiations as soon as possible, so that peace can be realized at an early
  date.


In another dispatch dated January 26, Nanking's Central News Agency reported
from Shanghai:

  Following a review of his case on the 26th by the National Defence Ministry's
  Military Court for the Trial of War Criminals, the Japanese war criminal
  General Yasuji Okamura, former Commander-in-Chief of the Japanese Expeditionary
  Forces in China, was declared not guilty at 4 o'clock this afternoon by Shih
  Mei-yu, the president of the court. The atmosphere in the courtroom was tense.
  Okamura, standing at attention, smiled a little on hearing the verdict.


In view of the above, the spokesman for the Communist Party of China makes
the following statement:

1. The Communist Party of China and the General Headquarters of the Chinese
People's Liberation Army declare that it is impermissible for the Military
Court for the Trial of War Criminals set up by the reactionary Nanking Kuomintang
government to return a verdict of "not guilty" on the Japanese war criminal
General Yasuji Okamura, former Commander-in-Chief of the Japanese Expeditionary
Forces in China and the arch-criminal among all war criminals in the Japanese
Expeditionary Forces of aggression against
China.[3] The Chinese people, after untold human
and material sacrifices during the eight years of the War of Resistance Against
Japan, finally won victory and captured this war criminal, and they will
never allow the reactionary Nanking Kuomintang government arbitrarily to
declare him not guilty. The people of the whole country, all the democratic
parties and people's organizations and also the patriots in the reactionary
Nanking Kuomintang governmental system must rise at once to oppose the criminal
act of that government in betraying the national interests and collaborating
with the Japanese fascist militarists. We hereby give a serious warning to
the gentlemen of the reactionary Nanking government. You must re-arrest Yasuji
Okamura immediately and return him to prison without fail. This matter is
closely related to your request for negotiations with us. We hold that all
your present actions are an attempt to use fake peace negotiations to cover
up your new preparations for war, which include your conspiracy to induce
Japanese reactionaries to come to China and join you in massacring the Chinese
people; it is exactly for this purpose that you have set Yasuji Okamura free.
Therefore, we absolutely will not permit you to do it. We have the right
to order you to re-arrest Yasuji Okamura and be responsible for turning him
over to the People's Liberation Army at a time and place to be specified
by us. As to the other Japanese war criminals, they are to be in your temporary
custody, pending further instructions, and you must not take it upon yourselves
to release any of them or let any escape; those of you who disobey will be
severely punished.

2. We have learned from the January 26 statement of the spokesman for the
reactionary Nanking Kuomintang government that you gentlemen of Nanking are
all so very tense, eager, solicitous and anxious about peace negotiations,
all, it is said, for the sake of "shortening the duration of the war",
"alleviating the sufferings of the people" and "treating the salvation of
the people as the primary consideration"; we have also learned that you feel
that the Communist Party of China is so very untense, uneager, unsolicitous
and unanxious in its response to your wish and "furthermore does not stop
military operations" and is in reality "stalling for time and prolonging
the disaster of war". We tell you gentlemen of Nanking frankly: you are war
criminals, you will be brought to trial. We have no faith in your mouthings
about "peace" or "the will of the people". You relied on the power of the
United States, violated the will of the people, tore up the truce agreement
and the resolutions of the Political Consultative Conference and launched
this most ruthless, anti-popular, anti-democratic, counter-revolutionary
civil war. You were then so tense, eager, solicitous and anxious that you
would not listen to advice from anybody. And when you convened a bogus National
Assembly, drew up a bogus constitution, elected a bogus president and promulgated
a bogus decree of "mobilization for putting down the rebellion", you were
again so tense, eager, solicitous and anxious about it all that again you
would not listen to advice from anybody. At that time in Shanghai, Nanking
and other major cities, the so-called consultative councils, chambers of
commerce, trade unions, peasant associations, women's organizations and cultural
organizations, all of which are either run by your government or serve as
your tools, kicked up such a fuss about "supporting the mobilization for
putting down the rebellion" and "annihilating the Communist bandits" and
once again were so tense, eager, solicitous and anxious about it all that
they would not listen to advice from anybody. Two and a half years have now
passed, and during this period the number of people slaughtered by you has
run into many millions, and the villages burned down, the women raped and
the wealth plundered by you, as well as the lives and property destroyed
by your air force, are beyond count; you have committed heinous crimes, and
we must settle accounts with you. We hear that you are quite opposed to the
struggle for settling accounts. But this time there is good cause for the
struggle to settle accounts, there must be an accounting, there must be a
settlement, there must be a fight, there must be a struggle. You are defeated.
You have enraged the people. And the people have all risen against you in
a life-and-death struggle. The people do not like you, the people condemn
you, the people have risen, and you are isolated; that is why you have been
defeated. You proposed five terms [4] for peace
negotiations and we proposed eight; [5] the people
at once gave their support to our eight terms, not to your five. You don't
dare to rebut our eight terms or insist upon your five. You declare that
you are willing to take our eight terms as the basis for the negotiations.
Isn't that fine? Then why not hurry up and negotiate? So it seems that you
are very tense, eager, solicitous and anxious and that you are very much
for "unconditional cessation of hostilities", for "shortening the duration
of the war", for "alleviating the sufferings of the people" and for "treating
the salvation of the people as the primary consideration". And we? We, obviously,
are not tense, not eager, not solicitous nor anxious and we are "stalling
for time and prolonging the disaster of war". But wait a moment, gentlemen
of Nanking. We are going to be tense, eager, solicitous and anxious; the
duration of the war will surely be shortened; and the sufferings of the people
will surely be alleviated. Since you have already agreed to our eight terms
as the basis for the negotiations, you and we are both going to be busy.
The carrying out of these eight terms will keep you, us, all the democratic
parties, people's organizations and people in all walks of life throughout
the country busy for several months, half a year, a whole year, or several
years -- perhaps even then we shall not have finished the job! Listen, gentlemen
of Nanking! The eight terms are not abstract items, they must have concrete
content; during the present short period it is important for everybody to
do some thinking, and the people will forgive us a little delay. To speak
frankly, the opinion of the people is that we should prepare well for these
negotiations. There will certainly be negotiations, and it absolutely will
not be permitted that anyone break them off in the middle and refuse to
negotiate. Therefore your delegates must get ready to come. But we still
need some time to complete our preparations and we will not allow war criminals
to set the date of the negotiations for us. We and the people of Peiping
are now doing an important job; we are working out a peaceful settlement
of the Peiping question on the basis of the eight terms. Your men in Peiping,
such as General Fu Tso-yi, are also participating in this work, which you
admitted to be proper in the communiqué of your news
agency.[6] This will not only provide a place for
the peace negotiations, but will set an example of peaceful settlement for
Nanking, Shanghai, Wuhan, Sian, Taiyuan, Kueisui, Lanchow, Tihua, Chengtu,
Kunming, Changsha, Nanchang, Hangchow, Foochow, Canton, Taiwan, Hainan Island,
etc. This work is therefore praiseworthy, and you gentlemen of Nanking should
not adopt a casual attitude towards it. We are now discussing with the democratic
parties, people's organizations and the democrats without party affiliation
in both our areas and yours the problem of drawing up a list of war criminals
and working out the concrete details of the first of our eight terms. It
will probably not be long before this list is officially issued. Gentlemen
of Nanking, as you know, we have not yet had time to discuss such a list
with the democratic parties and people's organizations and officially publish
it. For this we beg your pardon. The reason for the delay is that your request
for peace negotiations came a little late. Had it come earlier, our preparations
might have been completed by now. But this does not mean you have nothing
to do. Besides arresting the Japanese war criminal Yasuji Okamura, you must
at once set about arresting a batch of civil war criminals and, first of
all, those in Nanking, Shanghai, Fenghua and Taiwan who were among the
forty-three war criminals listed in the statement by an authoritative person
in the Communist Party of China on December 25, 1948. The most important
among them are Chiang Kai-shek, T. V. Soong, Chen Cheng, Ho Ying-chin, Ku
Chu-tung, Chen Li-fu, Chen Kuo-fu, Chu Chia-hua, Wang Shih-chieh, Wu Kuo-chen,
Tai Chuan-hsien, Tang En-po, Chou Chih-jou, Wang Shu-ming and Kuei Yung-ching.
[7] Of particular importance is Chiang Kai-shek,
who has now fled to Fenghua [8] and will very likely
flee abroad and seek the protection of U.S. or British imperialism; therefore,
you must quickly arrest this criminal and not let him escape. You shall assume
full responsibility for this matter. Should there be any escapes, you shall
be punished for the crime of setting bandits free, and no leniency whatsoever
shall be shown. Let no one say he has not been warned. We hold that only
by arresting these war criminals will one do a serious job in shortening
the duration of the war and alleviating the people's sufferings. As long
as the war criminals are at large, the duration of the war will be lengthened
and the sufferings of the people will be aggravated.

3. We demand that the reactionary Nanking government reply to the above two
points.

4. Nanking will be notified at another time concerning the preparations both
sides should make in connection with the remainder of the eight terms.


NOTES


1. The delegation appointed by the reactionary Kuomintang
government for the peace negotiations consisted of Shao Li-tse, Chang Chih-chung,
Huang Shao-hung, Peng Chao-hsien and Chung Tien-hsin.

2. On January 25, 1949, a spokesman for the Chinese Communist
Party pointed out in his statement concerning the peace negotiations: "We
have permitted the reactionary Nanking government to send a delegation for
peace negotiations with us not because we recognize that government as still
qualified to represent the Chinese people, but because it still has some
remnants of the reactionary armed forces. If that government feels that it
has completely forfeited the people's confidence and that the remnants of
its reactionary armed forces are unable to resist the powerful People's
Liberation Army and if that government is willing to accept the eight terms
for peace proposed by the Chinese Communist Party, then it is of course
preferable and beneficial to the cause of the liberation of the people to
settle the matter by negotiations, so as to lessen the people's sufferings."
As to the meeting place, the statement said, "It can be decided only after
the complete liberation of Peiping and will probably be Peiping." As to the
Nanking delegates, it stated, "Pen" Chao-hsien is one of the key figures
of the Kuomintang CC clique, which has been most vehemently clamouring for
war, and people consider him a war criminal; the Chinese Communist Party
cannot receive such a delegate."

3. Yasuji Okamura was one of the Japanese war criminals
with the longest and blackest record of crimes of aggression against China.
From 1925 to 1927, he was military adviser to Sun Chuan-fang, one of the
Northern warlords. In 1928, as commanding officer of a Japanese infantry
regiment, he took part in the war in which Japan attacked and seized Tsinan
and was the butcher in the Tsinan Massacre. In 1932 he served as deputy chief
of staff of the Japanese Expeditionary Forces which attacked and occupied
Shanghai. In 1933 he represented the Japanese government at the signing of
the "Tangku Agreement" with the traitorous Kuomintang government. From 1937
to 1945, he was successively the Commander of Japan's 11th Corps, Northern
China Front Army and 6th Front Army and the Commander-in-Chief of the Japanese
Expeditionary Forces in China. He enforced the extremely brutal policy of
"burn all, kill all, loot all" in China. He was among the chief Japanese
war criminals on the list published at Yenan in August 1945. During the People's
War of Liberation he was Chiang Kai-shek's secret military adviser and planned
Chiang's attacks on the Liberated Areas. In January 1949 he was declared
not guilty and set free by the reactionary Kuomintang government and returned
to Japan. In 1950 he accepted Chiang Kai-shek's offer of the post of senior
training officer in the so-called Research Institute of Revolutionary Practice.
Since 1955 he has organized ex-servicemen of the Japanese army and navy into
the "League of Comrades in Arms" (later called the League of Retired Comrades
in Arms) and has played a vigorous role in the reactionary activities to
revive Japanese militarism.

4. The "five terms" proposed by the reactionary Kuomintang
government for the peace negotiations were put forward in Chiang Kai-shek's
statement on New Year's Day, 1949. They were: 1. The peace negotiations "should
not impair the country's independence and integrity". 2. The peace negotiations
"should help the rehabilitation of the people". 3. "The sacred constitution
should not be violated by my action and democratic constitutionalism should
not be thereby undermined; the form of government of the Republic of China
should be guaranteed and the legally constituted authority of the Republic
of China should not be interrupted". 4. "The armed forces should be definitely
preserved". 5. "The people should be allowed to continue their free way of
life and maintain their present minimum standard of living". Comrade Mao
Tse-tung promptly and sternly refuted these five terms. See "On the War
Criminal's Suing for Peace", pp. 309-13 of this volume.

5. The "eight terms" proposed by the Communist Party of
China for the peace negotiations were put forward in Comrade Mao Tse-tung's
statement of January 14, 1949, on the current situation. See "Statement on
the Present Situation by Mao Tse-tung, Chairman of the Central Committee
of the Communist Party of China", pp. 315-19 of this volume.

6. According to a Kuomintang Central News Agency dispatch
dated January 27, 1949, the Ministry of National Defence of the Nanking
government stated: "In northern China, in order to shorten the war, secure
peace and thereby preserve the foundations of the ancient capital, Peiping,
and its cultural objects and historic monuments, Commander-in-Chief Fu Tso-yi
issued a proclamation on January 22 to the effect that hostilities were to
cease as from 10 o'clock that day. On orders from General Headquarters, the
bulk of our troops in Peiping have withdrawn from the city limits to certain
designated areas." It further stated, "Cessation of hostilities will be effected
also in Suiyuan and Tatung."

7. T. V. Soong, a plutocrat of the Kuomintang regime, had
served as minister of finance, president of the Executive Yuan, minister
of foreign affairs and special emissary of the Kuomintang government in the
United States. Chen Cheng, formerly chief of the general staff, was then
the Kuomintang governor of Taiwan Province. Ho Ying-chin had been the
Kuomintang's chief of the general staff and minister of national defence.
Ku Chu-tung was then chief of the general staff of the Kuomintang army. Chen
Li-fu, Chen Kuo-fu and Chu Chia-hua were all chieftains of the Kuomintang
CC clique. Wang Shih-chieh had been Kuomintang minister of foreign affairs.
Wu Kuo-chen was the Kuomintang mayor of Shanghai. Tai Chuan-hsien, also known
as Tai Chi-tao, had long been a member of Chiang Kai-shek's "brain trust"
and was then a member of the Standing Committee of the Kuomintang Central
Executive Committee. Tang En-po was commander-in-chief of the Kuomintang
garrison forces in the Nanking-Shanghai-Hangchow area. Chou Chih-jou was
commander-in-chief of the Kuomintang's air force. Wang Shu-ming was deputy
commander-in-chief and chief of staff of the air force. Kuei Yung-ching was
commander-in-chief of the Kuomintang navy.

8. A county in Chekiang Province, the birthplace of Chiang
Kai-shek.

Transcription by the Maoist Documentation Project.