February 15, 1949

The speed of the collapse of the reactionary Kuomintang forces has been faster than people expected.
It is now only a little over four months since the People's Liberation Army captured Jinan and a little over three months since it captured Shenyang, yet all the remaining Kuomintang forces in the military, political, economic, and cultural-propaganda spheres have already fallen into an irremediable state of disintegration and collapse.
The general collapse of the Kuomintang began during the Huaihai campaign on the southern front and the Beiping-Tianjin campaign on the northern front.
In these two campaigns, over a period of less than four months from early last November to late this January, the Kuomintang lost approximately 1,050,000 men, including 105 whole divisions of its regular army.
The general collapse of the Kuomintang is the inevitable outcome of the great victories of the Chinese People's War of Liberation and the Chinese people's revolutionary movement, but the "peace" fraud of the Kuomintang and its U.S. master has played a considerable role in accelerating the process of the Kuomintang's collapse.
The reactionary Kuomintang clique, beginning on January 1 of this year, started to heave a rock called the "peace offensive," originally intending to use it to strike the Chinese people, but now it has dropped on its own feet—or, to put it more precisely, has smashed the Kuomintang itself from head to foot.
Apart from the fact that General Fu Zuoyi has assisted in the peaceful settlement of the Beiping issue, and that a number of local issues have been resolved through peaceful means, the various factions within the Kuomintang, under the rule of Chiang Kai-shek, Li Zongren, Sun Ke, Bai Chongxi, Zhang Qun, Zhang Zhizhong, and others, as well as their U.S. masters, have been hanging out the signboard of "peace" and engaging in internal strife.
After Chiang Kai-shek issued his so-called New Year's Day message, he told a Central News Agency reporter that it was "something I have personally striven for all along."
According to the United Press, the reporter lost his job for publishing this "unpublishable" remark.
The Chiang Kai-shek clique long dared not accept this order from the Americans, the reason for which was clearly stated in a directive issued by the Kuomintang Central Propaganda Department on November 17 last year: "If we cannot fight, we cannot negotiate peace either.
If we can fight, then talking peace will only demoralize the troops and dishearten the people.
Therefore, whether we can fight or not, talking peace brings a hundred harms and not a single benefit."
The Kuomintang issued this directive at that time because other factions within the Kuomintang were already advocating peace talks.
On November 25 last year, Bai Chongxi and the Hubei Provincial Assembly under his direction raised the issue of a peaceful settlement with Chiang Kai-shek, forcing Chiang to issue a statement on January 1 this year on conducting peace negotiations under five conditions.
Chiang Kai-shek hoped to wrest the initiative for the peace offensive from Bai Chongxi and continue his old rule under a new label.
On January 8, Chiang sent Zhang Qun to Hankou to demand Bai Chongxi's support for the new scheme, and on the same day appealed to the governments of the United States, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union to intervene in China's internal conflict.
But all these steps failed.
The statement issued by Chairman Mao Zedong of the Communist Party of China on January 14 dealt a fatal blow to Chiang Kai-shek's sham peace scheme, forcing him to "retire" behind the scenes a week later.
Although Chiang Kai-shek, Li Zongren, and the Americans had made various arrangements for this move, hoping to stage a somewhat presentable double act, the result was contrary to their expectations—not only did the audience below the stage dwindle steadily, but even the actors on stage successively vanished.
Chiang Kai-shek, from his "position out of office" in Fenghua, continues to command his remaining forces, but he has lost his legal status, and fewer and fewer people believe in him.
Sun Ke's "Executive Yuan" automatically announced the "removal of the government to Guangzhou."
This illegitimate "government," on the one hand, broke away from its "President" and "Acting President," and on the other hand, broke away from its "Legislative Yuan" and "Control Yuan."
Only 57 members reported to the "Legislative Yuan" in Guangzhou, whereas according to the organic law of the bogus Legislative Yuan, a quorum of more than one-third is required to convene a meeting.
The Central Standing Committee of the Kuomintang, though it has announced its meeting in Guangzhou, has only a few members of the party's Central Standing Committee present there.
Sun Ke's "Executive Yuan" calls for war, but its actual activities are entirely aimed at spreading peace and continuing peace.
The hardline war faction and the peace faction within the Kuomintang are now locked in a struggle.
On February 5, Sun Ke's "Executive Yuan" overthrew the peace statement issued by Li Zongren on January 22, and on February 9, Deng Wenyi, director of the Political Work Bureau of the bogus Ministry of National Defense, issued a statement demanding the so-called "equal peace and comprehensive peace," which in reality means canceling the eight peace terms as the basis for negotiations and demanding the so-called "equal peace and comprehensive peace," otherwise "they will not hesitate to sacrifice everything and fight the Communist Party to the end."
But Deng Wenyi did not say with whom his side should negotiate "peace" today.
When asked by a reporter whether Li Zongren agreed with the four opinions expressed by Director Deng, Deng replied, "I am speaking from the standpoint of the Ministry of National Defense.
The four opinions expressed today were not submitted to Acting President Li for review beforehand."
Here, Deng Wenyi not only created a partial standpoint of the bogus Ministry of National Defense to distinguish it from the overall standpoint of the Kuomintang, but in fact also created a small partial standpoint of the Political Work Bureau of the bogus Ministry of National Defense to distinguish it from the larger partial standpoint of the bogus Ministry of National Defense.
For Deng Wenyi openly opposed and slandered the partial peace in Beiping, whereas the bogus Ministry of National Defense, on January 27, praised the partial peace in Beiping as being "for the purpose of shortening the war and achieving peace, thereby preserving the ancient capital of Beiping and its cultural relics and historic sites," and stated that other places, such as Datong and Suiyuan, would also "implement a truce" by the same method.
From this, it can be seen that the reactionaries who shout loudest for comprehensive peace are precisely the ones most lacking in it.
These reactionaries are the greatest obstacle to the realization of peace in China today.
They dream of advocating total war under the slogan of comprehensive peace, that is, the so-called "if war, then total war; if peace, then comprehensive peace."
But in fact, they have neither the strength to carry out comprehensive peace nor the strength to carry out total war.
The comprehensive strength lies with the Chinese people, the Chinese People's Liberation Army, the Communist Party of China, and the other democratic parties, not with the disintegrating and collapsing Kuomintang.
On the one hand, there is comprehensive strength; on the other, a miserable state of disintegration and collapse.
This situation is the result of the long-term struggle of the Chinese people and the long-term misdeeds of the Kuomintang.
No serious-minded person can ignore this basic fact in China's political situation today.