According to the accompanying Xinhua news release, the “Hailiao” was a 3,000-ton
merchant steamer that had sailed from Hong Kong.

Captain Fang Linliu and all comrades onboard the ship “Hailiao”:

Congratulations on your insurrection on the seas and on your success in
bringing the “Hailiao” to our port in the Northeast. For the sake of the people’s state you have united together, overcome difficulties, and left the side of

reactionaries to stand on the side of the people. This action is applauded

the people of the entire country and should be emulated by all captains and
Os who are still under the control of the Kuomintang reactionaries and

bureaucratic capitalism.’
(Signed and dated)

Note

1. The term “bureaucratic capitalism” refers in CPC usage to capitalist structures that are tied
up with the Kuomintang government and foreign imperialists who had an influence on the Chinese government prior to 1949. They are seen as people or organizations conducting economic
activities and self-aggrandizement on the basis of monopolies and controls, in such areas as wartime government bonds, large-scale state-related fiscal enterprises, speculation, and foreign
trade, whose advantage is granted by the KMT government. As such they are often hand-in-glove
with the large landlords, the compradors and other monopolist capitalists. In China, it is often
pointed out, the bureaucratic capitalists were headed by the “Four Big Families” of Chiang Kaishek, Song Ziwen (T. V. Soong), Kong Xiangxi (H. H. Kung) and the Chen brothers, Lifu and
Guofu. In his December 1947 report to the Central Committee of the CPC (