Telegram to the General Front Committee and Others
(April 22, 1949)

[1]
(1) I am hereby forwarding to you a letter from Mr. Bao Shidun, British Consul-General in Beiping; (2) The British side requests that our army facilitate the rescue of the crew of the damaged British warship (HMS Amethyst) by two British warships. Our opinion is that such rescue may be facilitated provided that the British warships do not hinder our army’s river-crossing operations; (3) Regarding the British request that, after the rescue is completed, the said two warships should still proceed to Nanjing to protect their nationals, we cannot agree. The two British warships should be ordered to sail downstream. However, if the two British warships disregard this advice and still proceed to Nanjing, you should not attack them as long as they do not fire upon our army and do not hamper our army’s crossing of the river.

[1] On the 22nd, after learning from a letter from British Consul-General in Beiping Bao Shidun to Commander-in-Chief Zhu De that all the warships that had intruded into the People’s Liberation Army’s defense zone on the Yangtze River were British warships, Mao Zedong drafted this telegram for the Central Military Commission of the CPC at 3 a.m., addressed to the General Front Committee, Su Yu and Zhang Zhen, Liu Bocheng, Zhang Jichun, and Li Da. This is the main content of that telegram.