September 16, 1949


The Chinese should thank Acheson, spokesman of the U.S. bourgeoisie, not
merely because he has explicitly confessed to the fact that the United States
supplied the money and guns and Chiang Kai-shek the men to fight for the
United States and slaughter the Chinese people and because he has thus given
Chinese progressives evidence with which to convince the backward elements.
You see, hasn't Acheson himself confessed that the great, sanguinary war
of the last few years, which cost the lives of millions of Chinese, was planned
and organized by U.S. imperialism? The Chinese should thank Acheson, again
not merely because he has openly declared that the United States intends
to recruit the so-called "democratic individualists" in China, organize a
U.S. fifth column and overthrow the People's Government led by the Communist
Party of China and has thus alerted the Chinese, especially those tinged
with liberalism, who are promising each other not to be taken in by the Americans
and are all on guard against the underhand intrigues of U.S. imperialism.
The Chinese should thank Acheson also because he has fabricated wild tales
about modern Chinese history; and his conception of history is precisely
that shared by a section of the Chinese intellectuals, namely, the bourgeois
idealist conception of history. Hence, a refutation of Acheson may benefit
many Chinese by widening their horizon. The benefit may be even greater to
those whose conception is the same, or in certain respects the same, as
Acheson's.

What are Acheson's wild fabrications about modern Chinese history? First
of all, he tries to explain the occurrence of the Chinese revolution in terms
of economic and ideological conditions in China. Here he has recounted many
myths.

Acheson says:

  The population of China during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries doubled,
  thereby creating an unbearable pressure upon the land. The first problem
  which every Chinese Government has had to face is that of feeding this
  population. So far none has succeeded. The Kuomintang attempted to solve
  it by putting many land-reform laws on the statute books. Some of these laws
  have failed, others have been ignored. In no small measure, the predicament
  in which the National Government finds itself today is due to its failure
  to provide China with enough to eat. A large part of the Chinese Communists'
  propaganda consists of promises that they will solve the land problem.


To those Chinese who do not reason clearly the above sounds plausible. Too
many mouths, too little food, hence revolution. The Kuomintang has failed
to solve this problem and it is unlikely that the Communist Party will be
able to solve it either. "So far none has succeeded."

Do revolutions arise from over-population? There have been many revolutions,
ancient and modern, in China and abroad; were they all due to over-population?
Were China's many revolutions in the past few thousand years also due to
over-population? Was the American Revolution against Britain 174 years
ago[1] also due to overpopulation? Acheson's knowledge
of history is nil. He has not even read the American Declaration of Independence.
Washington, Jefferson and others made the revolution against Britain because
of British oppression and exploitation of the Americans, and not because
of any over-population in America. Each time the Chinese people overthrew
a feudal dynasty it was because of the oppression and exploitation of the
people by that feudal dynasty, and not because of any over-population. The
Russians made the February Revolution and the October Revolution because
of oppression and exploitation by the tsar and the Russian bourgeoisie, not
because of any overpopulation, for to this day in Russia there is a great
abundance of land as compared with people. In Mongolia, where the land is
so vast and the population so sparse, a revolution would be inconceivable
according to Acheson's line of reasoning, yet it took place some time
ago.[2]

According to Acheson, China has no way out at all. A population of 475 million
constitutes an "unbearable pressure" and, revolution or no revolution, the
case is hopeless. Acheson pins great hope on this; although he has not voiced
this hope, it has often been revealed by a number of American journalists
-- through the allegation that the Communist Party of China will not be able
to solve its economic problems, that China will remain in perpetual chaos
and that her only way out is to live on U.S. flour, in other words, to become
a U.S. colony.

Why did the Revolution of 1911 not succeed and why did it not solve the problem
of feeding the population? Because it overthrew only the Ching Dynasty but
did not overthrow imperialist and feudal oppression and exploitation.

Why did the Northern Expedition of 1926-27 not succeed and why did it not
solve the problem of feeding the population? Because Chiang Kai-shek betrayed
the revolution, surrendered to imperialism and became the chieftain of the
counter-revolution which oppressed and exploited the Chinese.

Is it true that "so far none has succeeded"? In the old Liberated Areas in
northwestern, northern, northeastern and eastern China, where the land problem
has already been solved, does the problem of "feeding this population", as
Acheson puts it, still exist? The United States has kept quite a number of
spies or so-called observers in China. Why have they not ferreted out even
this fact? In places like Shanghai, the problem of unemployment, or of feeding
the population, arose solely because of cruel, heartless oppression and
exploitation by imperialism, feudalism, bureaucrat-capitalism and the reactionary
Kuomintang government. Under the People's Government, it will take only a
few years for this problem of unemployment, or of feeding the population,
to be solved as completely as in the northern, northeastern and other parts
of the country.

It is a very good thing that China has a big population. Even if China's
population multiplies many times, she is fully capable of finding a solution;
the solution is production. The absurd argument of Western bourgeois economists
like Malthus[3] that increases in food cannot keep pace
with increases in population was not only thoroughly refuted in theory by
Marxists long ago, but has also been completely exploded by the realities
in the Soviet Union and the Liberated Areas of China after their revolutions.
Basing itself on the truth that revolution plus production can solve the
problem of feeding the population, the Central Committee of the Communist
Party of China has issued orders to Party organizations and the People's
Liberation Army throughout the country not to dismiss but to retain all former
Kuomintang personnel, provided they can make themselves useful and are not
confirmed reactionaries or notorious scoundrels. Where things are very difficult,
food and housing will be shared. Those who have been dismissed and have no
means of support will be reinstated and provided with a living. According
to the same principle, we shall maintain all Kuomintang soldiers who have
revolted and come over to us or been captured. All reactionaries, except
the major culprits, will be given a chance to earn their living, provided
they show repentance.

Of all things in the world, people are the most precious. Under the leadership
of the Communist Party, as long as there are people, every kind of miracle
can be performed. We are refuters of Acheson's counter-revolutionary theory.
We believe that revolution can change everything, and that before long there
will arise a new China with a big population and a great wealth of products,
where life will be abundant and culture will flourish. All pessimistic views
are utterly groundless.

"The impact of the West" is given by Acheson as the second reason why the
Chinese revolution occurred. Acheson says:

  For more than three thousand years the Chinese developed their own high culture
  and civilization, largely untouched by outside influences. Even when subjected
  to military conquest the Chinese always managed in the end to subdue and
  absorb the invader. It was natural therefore that they should come to look
  upon themselves as the center of the world and the highest expression of
  civilized mankind. Then in the middle of the nineteenth century the heretofore
  impervious wall of Chinese isolation was breached by the West. These outsiders
  brought with them aggressiveness, the unparalleled development of Western
  technology, and a high order of culture which had not accompanied previous
  foreign incursions into China. Partly because of these qualities and partly
  because of the decay of Manchu rule, the Westerners, instead of being absorbed
  by the Chinese, introduced new ideas which played an important part in
  stimulating ferment and unrest.


To those Chinese who do not reason clearly, what Acheson says sounds plausible
-- the influx of new ideas from the West gave rise to the revolution.

Against whom was the revolution directed? Because there was "decay of Manchu
rule" and because it is the weak point that is attacked, it would seem that
the revolution was directed against the Ching Dynasty. But what Acheson says
here is not quite right. The Revolution of 1911 was directed against imperialism.
The Chinese directed the revolution against the Ching regime because it was
the running dog of imperialism. The war against Britain's opium aggression,
the war against the aggression of the Anglo-French allied forces, the war
against the Ching regime, the running dog of imperialism, by the Taiping
Heavenly Kingdom,[4] the war against French aggression,
the war against Japanese aggression and the war against the aggression of
the allied forces of the eight powers -- all ended in failure; hence the
Revolution of 1911 broke out against the running dog of imperialism, the
Ching Dynasty. That is modern Chinese history up to 1911. What is the "impact
of the West", as Acheson calls it? It is the effort of the Western bourgeoisie,
as Marx and Engels said in the Manifesto of the Communist Party of
1848,[5] to remould the world after its own image by means
of terror. In the process of this impact or remoulding, the Western bourgeoisie,
which needed compradors and flunkeys familiar with Western customs, had to
let countries like China open schools and send students abroad, and thus
"new ideas were introduced" into China. Concurrently the national bourgeoisie
and the proletariat were born in countries like China. At the same time,
the peasantry was bankrupted, and a huge semi-proletariat was brought into
existence. Thus the Western bourgeoisie created two categories of people
in the East, a small minority, the flunkeys of imperialism, and a majority
which is opposed to imperialism and consists of the working class, the peasantry,
the urban petty bourgeoisie, the national bourgeoisie and the intellectuals
coming from these classes. Those in the majority group are all grave-diggers
of imperialism, who were created by imperialism itself, and the revolution
originates from them. It was not that the so-called influx of ideas from
the West stirred up "ferment and unrest", but that imperialist aggression
provoked resistance.

For a long time in the course of this resistance movement, that is, for over
seventy years from the Opium War of 1840 to the eve of the May 4th Movement
of 1919, the Chinese had no ideological weapon with which to defend themselves
against imperialism. The ideological weapons of the old die-hard feudalism
were defeated, had to give way and were declared bankrupt. Having no other
choice, the Chinese were compelled to arm themselves with such ideological
weapons and political formulas as the theory of evolution, the theory of
natural rights and of the bourgeois republic, which were all borrowed from
the arsenal of the revolutionary period of the bourgeoisie in the West, the
native home of imperialism. The Chinese organized political parties and made
revolutions, believing that they could thus resist foreign powers and build
a republic. However, all these ideological weapons, like those of feudalism,
proved very feeble and in their turn had to give way and were withdrawn and
declared bankrupt.

The Russian Revolution of 1917 awakened the Chinese, and they learned something
new, Marxism-Leninism. In China, the Communist Party was born, an epoch-making
event. Sun Yat-sen, too, advocated "learning from Russia" and "alliance with
Russia and the Communist Party". In a word, from that time China changed
her orientation.

Being the spokesman of an imperialist government, Acheson naturally does
not want to breathe even a word about imperialism. He describes imperialist
aggression thus: "These outsiders brought with them aggressiveness...."
"Aggressiveness" -- what a beautiful name! Having learned this "aggressiveness",
the Chinese did not aggress into Britain or the United States but only created
"ferment and unrest" inside China, i.e., carried out revolutions
against imperialism and its running dogs. But unfortunately they never once
succeeded; each time, they were defeated by the imperialists, the inventors
of "aggressiveness". The Chinese therefore turned around to learn something
else and, strangely enough, they immediately found that it worked.

The Chinese Communist Party "had been organized in the early twenties under
the ideological impetus of the Russian revolution". Here Acheson is right.
This ideology was none other than Marxism-Leninism. This ideology is immeasurably
superior to that of the Western bourgeoisie, which Acheson calls a "high
order of culture which had not accompanied previous foreign incursions into
China". The clinching proof of the effectiveness of this ideology is that
Western bourgeois culture, which the Achesons can boast of as a "high order
of culture" compared with China's old feudal culture, was defeated the moment
it encountered the new Marxist-Leninist culture, the scientific world outlook
and the theory of social revolution, which the Chinese people had acquired.
In its first battle, this scientific and revolutionary new culture acquired
by the Chinese people defeated the Northern warlords, the running dogs of
imperialism; in the second, it defeated the attempts by another running dog
of imperialism, Chiang Kai-shek, to intercept the Chinese Red Army during
its 25,000-li Long March;[6] in the third, it
defeated Japanese imperialism and its running dog, Wang Ching-wei, and in
the fourth, it finally put an end to the domination of China by the United
States and all other imperialist powers as well as to the rule of their running
dogs, Chiang Kai-shek and all the other reactionaries.

The reason why Marxism-Leninism has played such a great role in China since
its introduction is that China's social conditions call for it, that it has
been linked with the actual practice of the Chinese people's revolution and
that the Chinese people have grasped it. Any ideology -- even the very best,
even Marxism-Leninism itself -- is ineffective unless it is linked with objective
realities, meets objectively existing needs and has been grasped by the masses
of the people. We are historical materialists, opposed to historical idealism.

Oddly enough, "Soviet doctrine and practice had a measurable effect upon
the thinking and principles of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, particularly in terms of
economics and Party organization". What was the effect produced on Dr. Sun
by the "high order of culture" of the West, of which Acheson and his like
are so proud? Acheson doesn't say. Was it an accident that Dr. Sun, who devoted
the greater part of his life to seeking from Western bourgeois culture the
truth that would save the nation, was finally disappointed and turned to
"learning from Russia"? Obviously not. Of course it was no accident that
Dr. Sun and the long suffering Chinese people he represented were all infuriated
by the "impact of the West" and resolved to form an "alliance with Russia
and the Communist Party" in order to wage a life-and-death struggle against
imperialism and its running dogs. Acheson dare not say here that the Soviet
people are imperialist aggressors and that Sun Yat-sen learned from aggressors.
Well, then, if Sun Yat-sen could learn from the Soviet people and the Soviet
people are not imperialist aggressors, why can't his successors, the Chinese
who live after him, learn from the Soviet people? Why are the Chinese, Sun
Yat-sen excepted, described as "dominated by the Soviet Union" and as "the
fifth column of the Comintern" and "lackeys of Red imperialism" for learning
the scientific world outlook and the theory of social revolution through
Marxism-Leninism, linking these with China's specific characteristics, starting
the Chinese People's War of Liberation and the great people's revolution
and founding a republic of the people's democratic dictatorship? Can there
be such superior logic anywhere in the world?


Since they learned Marxism-Leninism, the Chinese people have ceased to be
passive in spirit and gained the initiative. The period of modern world history
in which the Chinese and Chinese culture were looked down upon should have
ended from that moment. The great, victorious Chinese People's War of Liberation
and the great people's revolution have rejuvenated and are rejuvenating the
great culture of the Chinese people. In its spiritual aspect, this culture
of the Chinese people already stands higher than any in the capitalist world.
Take U.S. Secretary of State Acheson and his like, for instance. The level
of their understanding of modern China and of the modern world is lower than
that of an ordinary soldier of the Chinese People's Liberation Army.

Up to this point, Acheson, like a bourgeois professor lecturing on a tedious
text, has pretended to trace the causes and effects of events in China.
Revolution occurred in China, first, because of over-population and, second,
because of the stimulus of Western ideas. You see, he appears to be a champion
of the theory of causation. But in what follows, even this bit of tedious
and phoney theory of causation disappears, and one finds only a mass of
inexplicable events. Quite unaccountably, the Chinese fought among themselves
for power and money, suspecting and hating each other. An inexplicable change
took place in the relative moral strength of the two contending parties,
the Kuomintang and the Communist Party; the morale of one party dropped sharply
to below zero, while that of the other rose sharply to white heat. What was
the reason? Nobody knows. Such is the logic inherent in the "high order of
culture" of the United States as represented by Dean Acheson.

NOTES


1. The bourgeois revolution of 1775-83, known as the War
of Independence, in which the people of North America opposed British colonial
rule.

2. In their struggle for liberation in 1921-24 the Mongolian
people, under the leadership of the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party,
drove out the Russian Whiteguard bandit troops and the armed forces of the
Northern warlords of China, both of which were backed by Japanese imperialism,
overthrew Mongolian feudal rule and founded the Mongolian People's Republic.

3. T. R. Malthus (1766-1834), Anglican clergyman and
reactionary economist. In his Essay on Population (1798), he wrote
that "population unchecked . . . increases in geometrical ratio . . . [while]
the means of subsistence . . . could not possibly be made to increase faster
than in an arithmetical ratio". Basing himself on this arbitrary assumption,
he came to the conclusion that all poverty and all evils in human society
are permanent phenomena of nature. According to him, the only ways to solve
the problem of poverty of the working people were to shorten their life-span,
reduce the population or stop its increase. He regarded famine, pestilence
and war as means to cut down population.

4. The War of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was a peasant
revolutionary war waged against the feudal rule and national oppression of
the Ching Dynasty in the middle of the 19th century. Hung Hsiu-chuan, Yang
Hsiu-ching and others, the leaders of this revolution, staged an uprising
in Kwangsi in January 1851 and proclaimed the founding of the Taiping Heavenly
Kingdom. In 1852 the peasant army proceeded northward from Kwangsi and marched
through Hunan, Hupeh, Kiangsi and Anhwei and in 1853 it captured Nanking,
the main city on the lower Yangtse. Part of its forces then continued the
drive north and pushed to the vicinity of Tientsin, a major city in northern
China. Because the Taiping army failed to build stable base areas in the
places it occupied and also because, after establishing its capital in Nanking,
the leading group in the army committed many political and military errors,
it could not withstand the joint attack of the counter-revolutionary troops
of the Ching government and the aggressors, Britain, the United States and
France, and suffered defeat in 1864.

5. See Manifesto of the Communist Party, Chapter
1, "Bourgeois and Proletarians". The bourgeoisie "compels all nations, on
pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels
them to introduce what it calls civilization into their midst, i.e.,
to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after
its own image".

6. In October 1934 the First, Third and Fifth Army Groups
of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (that is, the First Front
Army of the Red Army, also known as the Central Red Army) set out from Changting
and Ninghua in western Fukien and from Juichin, Yutu and other places in
southern Kiangsi and started a major strategic movement. In traversing the
eleven provinces of Fukien, Kiangsi, Kwangtung, Hunan, Kwangsi, Kweichow,
Szechuan, Yunnan, Sikang, Kansu and Shensi, crossing perpetually snow-capped
mountains and trackless grasslands, sustaining untold hardships and frustrating
the enemy's repeated encirclements, pursuits, obstructions and interceptions,
the Red Army covered 25,000 li (12,500 kilometres) on this march
and finally arrived triumphantly at the revolutionary base area in northern
Shensi in October 1935.

Transcription by the Maoist Documentation Project.