Celebrate the Liberation of Shanghai
[1]
(May 29, 1949)

The liberation of Shanghai has evoked cheers from the entire Chinese people and from progressive humanity the world over. This is because, first, Shanghai is the largest economic centre of China, and its liberation signifies that the Chinese people have defeated their enemy, the Guomindang reactionaries, militarily, politically, and economically; second, Shanghai is the principal base of imperialist aggression in China, and its liberation signifies that the Chinese people have established the foundation of national independence. These two circumstances give the liberation of Shanghai special significance in the cause of the Chinese people’s liberation.

The fate of Shanghai is in fact the epitome of modern Chinese history. On the one hand, the imperialist adventurers once regarded Shanghai as their paradise and committed every kind of crime there—robbing, massacring, insulting, and befooling the Chinese people. Chiang Kai-shek, the last big running dog of imperialism in China, the last tyrant of Chinese feudalism, and the epitome of bureaucratic capitalism, started his career from the underworld organizations of Shanghai, won the applause of the reactionary forces at home and abroad by causing the great bloodshed of Shanghai’s workers, built his twenty-two-year dark rule on the basis of Shanghai’s comprador economy, and even at the very end bade farewell to the people of Shanghai with massacres and destruction. On the other hand, Shanghai is also the cradle of light in modern China. Shanghai is the headquarters of China’s working class and the birthplace of the Communist Party of China; for a long time it was the guiding centre of the Chinese revolutionary movement. Although the reactionary forces imposed a savage white terror—

[1] This is a Xinhua News Agency editorial. The text set in bold type consists of words added and rewritten by Mao Zedong.