July 14, 1956

[Part of a talk with two Latin-American public figures.]


The United States is flaunting the anti-communist banner everywhere in order
to perpetrate aggression against other countries

The United States owes debts everywhere. It owes debts not only to the countries
of Latin America, Asia and Africa, but also to the countries of Europe and
Oceania. The whole world, Britain included dislikes the United States. The
masses of the people dislike it. Japan dislikes the United States because
it oppresses her. None of the countries in the East is free from U.S. aggression.
The United States has invaded our Taiwan Province. Japan, Korea, the Philippines,
Vietnam and Pakistan all suffer from U.S. aggression, although some of them
are allies of the United States. The people are dissatisfied and in some
countries so are the authorities.

All oppressed nations want independence.

Everything is subject to change. The big decadent forces will give way to
the small new-born forces. The small forces will change into big forces because
the majority of the people demand this change. The U.S. imperialist forces
will change from big to small because the American people, too, are dissatisfied
with their government.

In my own lifetime I myself have witnessed such changes. Some of us present
were born in the Ching Dynasty and others after the 1911 Revolution.

The Ching Dynasty was overthrown long ago. By whom? By the party led by Sun
Yat-sen, together with the people. Sun Yat-sen's forces were so small that
the Ching officials didn't take him seriously. He led many uprisings which
failed each time. In the end, however, it was Sun Yat-sen who brought down
the Ching Dynasty. Bigness is nothing to be afraid of. The big will be overthrown
by the small. The small will become big. After overthrowing the Ching Dynasty,
Sun Yat-sen met with defeat. For he failed to satisfy the demands of the
people, such as their demands for land and for opposition to imperialism.
Nor did he understand the necessity of suppressing the counter-revolutionaries
who were then moving about freely. Later, he suffered defeat at the hands
of Yuan Shih-kai, the chieftain of the Northern warlords. Yuan Shih-kai's
forces were larger than Sun Yat-sen's. But here again this law operated:
small forces linked with the people become strong, while big forces opposed
to the people become weak. Subsequently Sun Yat-sen's bourgeois-democratic
revolutionaries co-operated with us Communists and together we defeated the
warlord set-up left behind by Yuan Shih-kai.

Chiang Kai-shek's rule in China was recognized by the governments of all
countries and lasted twenty-two years, and his forces were the biggest. Our
forces were small, fifty thousand Party members at first but only a few thousand
after counter-revolutionary suppressions. The enemy made trouble everywhere.
Again this law operated: the big and strong end up in defeat because they
are divorced from the people, whereas the small and weak emerge victorious
because they are linked with the people and work in their interest. That's
how things turned out in the end.

During the anti-Japanese war, Japan was very powerful, the Kuomintang troops
were driven to the hinterland, and the armed forces led by the Communist
Party could only conduct guerrilla warfare in the rural areas behind the
enemy lines. Japan occupied large Chinese cities such as Peking, Tientsin,
Shanghai, Nanking, Wuhan and Canton. Nevertheless, like Germany's Hitler
the Japanese militarists collapsed in a few years, in accordance with the
same law.

We underwent innumerable difficulties and were driven from the south to the
north, while our forces fell from several hundred thousand strong to a few
tens of thousands. At the end of the 25,000-li Long March we had
only 25,000 men left.

In the history of our Party many erroneous "Left" and Right lines have occurred.
Gravest of all were the Right deviationist line of Chen Tu-hsiu and the "Left"
deviationist line of Wang Ming. Besides, there were the Right deviationist
errors committed by Chang Kuo-tao, Kao Kang and others.

There is also a good side to mistakes, for they can educate the people and
the Party. We have had a good many teachers by negative example, such as
Japan, the United States, Chiang Kai-shek, Chen Tu-hsiu, Li Li-san, Wang
Ming, Chang Kuo-tao and Kao Kang. We paid a very high price to learn from
these teachers by negative example. In the past, Britain made war on us many
times. Britain, the United States, Japan, France, Germany, Italy, tsarist
Russia and Holland were all very interested in this land of ours. They were
all our teachers by negative example and we were their pupils.

During the War of Resistance, our troops grew and became 900,000 strong through
fighting against Japan. Then came the War of Liberation. Our arms were inferior
to those of the Kuomintang. The Kuomintang troops then numbered four million,
but in three years of fighting we wiped out eight million of them all told.
The Kuomintang, though aided by U.S. imperialism, could not defeat us. The
big and strong cannot win, it is always the small and weak who win out.

Now U.S. imperialism is quite powerful, but in reality it isn't. It is very
weak politically because it is divorced from the masses of the people and
is disliked by everybody and by the American people too. In appearance it
is very powerful but in reality it is nothing to be afraid of, it is a paper
tiger. Outwardly a tiger, it is made of paper, unable to withstand the wind
and the rain. I believe the United States is nothing but a paper tiger.

History as a whole, the history of class society for thousands of years,
has proved this point: the strong must give way to the weak. This holds true
for the Americas as well.

Only when imperialism is eliminated can peace prevail. The day will come
when the paper tigers will be wiped out. But they won't become extinct of
their own accord, they need to be battered by the wind and the rain.

When we say U.S. imperialism is a paper tiger, we are speaking in terms of
strategy. Regarding it as a whole, we must despise it. But regarding each
part, we must take it seriously. It has claws and fangs. We have to destroy
it piecemeal. For instance, if it has ten fangs, knock off one the first
time, and there will be nine left, knock off another, and there will be eight
left. When all the fangs are gone, it will still have claws. If we deal with
it step by step and in earnest, we will certainly succeed in the end.

Strategically, we must utterly despise U.S. imperialism. Tactically, we must
take it seriously. In struggling against it, we must take each battle, each
encounter, seriously. At present, the United States is powerful, but when
looked at in a broader perspective, as a whole and from a long-term viewpoint,
it has no popular support, its policies are disliked by the people, because
it oppresses and exploits them. For this reason, the tiger is doomed. Therefore,
it is nothing to be afraid of and can be despised. But today the United States
still has strength, turning out more than 100 million tons of steel a year
and hitting out everywhere. That is why we must continue to wage struggles
against it, fight it with all our might and wrest one position after another
from it. And that takes time.

It seems that the countries of the Americas, Asia and Africa will have to
go on quarrelling with the United States till the very end, till the paper
tiger is destroyed by the wind and the rain.

To oppose U.S. imperialism, people of European origin in the Latin-American
countries should unite with the indigenous Indians. Perhaps the white immigrants
from Europe can be divided into two groups, one composed of rulers and the
other of ruled. This should make it easier for the group of oppressed white
people to get close to the local people, for their position is the same.

Our friends in Latin America, Asia and Africa are in the same position as
we and are doing the same kind of work, doing something for the people to
lessen their oppression by imperialism. If we do a good job, we can root
out imperialist oppression. In this we are comrades.

We are of the same nature as you in our opposition to imperialist oppression,
differing only in geographical position, nationality and language. But we
are different in nature from imperialism, and the very sight of it makes
us sick.

What use is imperialism? The Chinese people will have none of it, nor will
the people in the rest of the world. There is no reason for the existence
of imperialism.

Transcription by the Maoist Documentation Project.