Telegram to Ehmetjan Qasimi
(August 18, 1949)
To Mr. Ehmetjan Qasimi1 of the People’s Government of the Yili Special Region
in Xinjiang:
Our country’s People’s War of Liberation against imperialism, feudalism,
bureaucratic capitalism, and the reactionary domination of the Guomindang
headed by Chiang Kaishek is about to achieve victory in all of China. Following
painstaking preparations, the new People’s Political Consultative Conference,
including every democratic party and faction, every people’s organization, every
field army of the People’s Liberation Army, every Liberated Area, and every
minority nationality in China, as well as the overseas Chinese, will convene a plenary meeting in September. In addition to establishing how the People’s Political
Consultative Conference will be organized and electing its own national committee, this plenary meeting must also establish how the central government of
the People’s Republic of China will be organized, and it will elect the Central
Government Council. The struggle that you have been engaged in for many
years is a part of the people’s democratic revolutionary movement in China as
a whole. As a result of the victorious development of the war of liberation of
the peoples of the Northwest, the day of liberation for all of Xinjiang is close at
hand. Your struggle will thus achieve final victory. We wholeheartedly welcome
your five representatives to participate in the plenary meeting of the People’s
Political Consultative Conference. If you agree, please send them to Beiping by
early September. Please peruse this telegram carefully, and we hope that you will
reply soon.
Director of the Preparatory Committee for the
New Political Consultative Conference,
Mao Zedong





1.  Ehmetjan Qasimi (pinyin: Ahhamaitijiang, 1914–1949, Uyghur, born in Ili Kazakh
Autonomous Prefecture) was a leader of the autonomous regions of Ili [Yili], Tacheng
[Tarbaghatay], and Aletai [Altay], and chairman of the Central Committee of the Xinjiang
Peacekeeping Democratic Alliance. He died in a plane crash on August 27, 1949, while on
his way to Beiping to attend the People’s Political Consultative Congress.