Cominform - MAO TSE-TUNG’S REPORT

MAO TSE-TUNG’S REPORT TO THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF CHINA 

At the recent session of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, which discussed the present situation in the country and the tasks of the Communist Party, the Chairman of the CP, Comrade Mao Tse-tung delivered a speech in which he said: A turning point has been reached in the revolutionary war of the Chinese people. 

The People’s Liberation Army of China has repelled the offensive of the 7 million strong reactionary army of the Kuomintang, the bloodhound of the USA, and has itself passed over to the offensive. During the first year of the war, that is from July 1946 until June 1947, the People’s Liberation Army repelled the offensive of Chiang Kai-shek on several sectors of the front, and forced him go over to the defensive. During the first quarter of the second year of the war (July-September 1947) the People’s Liberation Army launched an offensive on a national scale and frustrated the counter-revolutionary plans of the Kuomintang, plans which aimed to spread the war to the liberated areas and thus completely destroy them. 

At present the war is being waged not on the territory of the liberated areas but mostly on territory controlled by the Kuomintang, where the main forces of the People’s Liberation Army are now fighting. Noting the powerful, resistance offered by the Liberation Army to the forces of world imperialism and Kuomintang reaction, Mao Tse-tung stated that the Kuomintang troops have been drawn into a situation that spells disaster for them. The People’s Liberation Army is marching to victory. Therein lies the turning point. This turning point leads to the annihilation of the 20-years counter-revolutionary Kuomintang domination, to the destruction of the century-old domination of imperialism in China. This is an outstanding event. Outstanding because it is taking place in a country with a population of 450 million. And since it has already begun it will inevitably develop along the path leading to the victory of the people. 

This event is all the greater because it has come to pass in the East—in the part of the world with a population in excess of a billion. In other words where half of mankind is suffering under the yoke of imperialism. Dwelling in detail on the relation of reactionary and democratic forces in China in July 1946, Mao Tse-tung stated: When the Kuomintang reactionaries launched their counterrevolutionary offensive throughout the country they calculated that they would need only from three to six months In which to destroy the People’s Liberation Army. They reckoned on their 2,000,000 strong regular army, on the more than a million men in reserve, on the same number of troops in the rear and the personnel in the organisations in the rear—altogether over four million men. They were sure that these forces would be fit for offensive operations. 

The Kuomintang had large cities at its disposal, a population of over 300 million people; it had seized the munitions of the Japanese occupation army of one million men, it enjoyed the vast military and financial aid of the US government. Above an, the Kuomintang calculated that the People’s Liberation Army was exhausted. as a result of eight years intensive warfare against the Japanese. Moreover, it was much weaker than the Kuomintang army numerically and in equipment. The liberated regions of China counted a population of a little over 100 million. Reactionary feudal forces still remained in the rear.

 The Land Reform had not yet been fully carried out. The rear of the People’s Liberation Army had not yet been consolidated. Fully aware of this, stated Mao Tse-tung, the Chiang Kai-shek group, disregarding the desire of the Chinese people for peace, broke off the agreement signed by the Communists and the Kuomintang in January 1946, violated the resolution of the Political Consultative Council, in which the different political parties and groups were represented, and embarked on an adventurist offensive against the People’s Liberation Army. 

The war being waged by the People’s Liberation Army is a patriotic, just and revolutionary war and must, inevitably, win the support of all the people in the country. This constitutes the political basis for victory, as borne out by the experience of the past 18 months. During the 17 months of fighting, i.e. from July 1946 to November 1947 (December is not, included), we routed Chiang Kai-shek’s regular and irregular armies numbering 1,690,000 men. Of this number 640,000 were killed or wounded and 1,050 000 taken prisoner. Our troops repelled the repeated offensives of Chiang Kai-shek, retained the key positions in the liberated areas and went over to the offensive. 

The reason for the victory of the People’s Liberation Army is the correct strategic line pursued, speaking from the military point of view, stated Mao Tse-tung. This strategic line was elaborated by the People’s Liberation Army in the course of the protracted war against the internal and external enemies of the Chinese people. US personnel, continued Mao Tse-tung, are offering Chaing Kai-shek their strategy and tactics for the purpose of destroying the People’s Liberation Army, and with this aim in view are training Kuomintang troops and supplying them with military equipment. However, these measures will not save the Kuomintang army from defeat. They will fail because our strategy and tactics are based on the principle of a people’s war, and no anti-people’s army can employ our strategy and tactics. 

The good organisation of revolutionary-political work in the Liberation Army, based on the principle of a people’s war, and which aims at solidarity between the commanders and men and disintegration of the enemy, is an essential factor for victory over the enemy. The ranks of the allies of the People’s Liberation Army are today more consolidated than was the ease 18 months ago. This is the result of our Party’s stable alliance with the peasantry in carrying out the agrarian reform. Relying on the poor peasants and supporting a firm alliance with the middle peasants, our policy is to destroy the system of feudal and semi-feudal exploitation, created by the landlord and rich peasant class of the old type, whose land and property must be distributed among the peasant masses. Although the number of landlords and rich peasants in the Chinese countryside comprise only some 8 per cent of the registered families they possess a total of 70-80 per cent of all the land. Thus the agrarian reform is directed against a small section of the population, while the people who could, and should help carry out the agrarian reform, constitute over 90 per cent of the rural inhabitants. In his speech Mao Tse-tung devoted considerable attention to internal Party questions. Referring to the growth of the Communist Party he pointed out that in the past 11 years, that is from 1937 to 1947, the membership of the Communist Party of China increased from a few tens of thousands to 2,700,000. This, he stated, was no mean achievement. 

This growth makes it an unprecedentedly strong party; it has enabled us to rout the Japanese imperialists, to repel the offensive of the Kuomintang, to govern the liberated areas with a population of over 100 million and to lead the People’s Liberation Army of 2 million men. Concerning the economic platform of the new democratic revolution in China, Mao Tse-tung listed the following three tasks: confiscation of the land of the feudal classes and the handing over of this land to the peasantry; confiscation of monopoly capital, as represented by Chiang Kai-shek, Soong Tsi-wei, Koong Siang-si and Chen LI-fu, and the placing of this capital under the control of the new democratic state; the protection of national industry and trade. During their twenty years in power the abovementioned four families have accumulated enormous capital, running, into some 10 to 20 thousand million American, dollars, and have monopolised the economic life of the country. This monopoly capital merged with the State power, and became State monopoly capital. It is closely linked to foreign imperialism, and the national landlord class and to all rich peasantry of the old type who have become compradore-feudal capitalists, within the system of State monopoly capitalism. 

Therein lies the economic, foundation of the reactionary regime of the Kuomintang. This State monopoly capitalism not only oppresses the workers, peasants and petty bourgeoisie, but also the middle classes. State-monopoly capitalism reached its highest point of development during the war against Japan and after her capitulation. It prepared all the material conditions for a few democratic revolution. Mao Tse-tung, warned against pursuing an “ultra-left” incorrect policy in relation to the middle-class and petty bourgeoisie, which was the case with the Chinese Communist Party during 1931-34. The underlying principle of the agrarian reform, in China, stated Mao Tsetung, was that “the property and legitimate activities of the industrial enterprises and trading concerns must be protected against interference.” “Industrial enterprises and trading concerns” refers to all small and medium-sized enterprises of this nature.

Our new democratic revolutionary united front today, continued Mao Tsetung, has a broader base and is more consolidated than ever before. This is the result not only of our agrarian policy and policy in relation to the urban population. It is also the result, to a great extent, of the general political situation, characterised by the victories of the People’s Liberation Army, by the passing over of the Kuomintang from the offensive to the defensive, by the passing over of the People’s, Liberation Army from the defensive to the offensive, and by the new upsurge of the Chinese revolution. 

The people now see that the downfall of the Kuomintang is inevitable, and they are therefore placing all their hopes on the Chinese Communist Party and the People’s Liberation Army. The victory, of the new democratic revolution in China is impossible without a broad united front, embracing the overwhelming majority of the population. But this is not enough.

 The united front must be under the firm leadership of the Communist Party. Without this firm leadership no revolutionary united front can be successful. Referring to the imperialist policy of the United States in China, Mao Tsetung went on to say: In 1946, when the reactionary Chiang Kai-shek bloc launched their antipeople’s civil war on a nationwide scale, they embarked on this venture not because they relied on their own military forces, but, primarily, because they calculated that American imperialism, being in possession of the atom bomb, represented the most powerful and irresistible force in the world. But is American imperialism today, after World War II, really as powerful as imagined by Chiang Kai-shek and the reactionaries in the different countries? Can Chiang Kai-shek and the reactionaries in the different countries really depend on permanent aid from the US? Not at all. The economic might of American imperialism, which expanded during World War II, has come up against the unstable and steadily shrinking home and foreign market. The further shrinking of this market will lead to an economic crisis. Wartime prosperity in the US was merely a passing phenomenon, something temporary, American imperialism is daily threatened by a crisis, which will erupt like a volcano; in fact the American imperialists literally are sitting on a volcano. 

This state of affairs compelled the American imperialists to elaborate a plan of world enslavement for the penetration of Europe, Asia and other parts of the globe for uniting the reactionary forces in the different countries into an imperialist, antidemocratic front opposed to all the democratic forces, headed by the Soviet Union, to prepare for a third world war. Such is their world plan. The democratic forces of the world must frustrate this plan. The forces in the anti-imperialist camp are stronger than the forces in the imperialist camp. 

All the anti-imperialist forces of the East, stated Mao Tse-tung in conclusion, must unite against imperialism and the reactionaries in their countries, and make it the aim of their struggle to liberate the people of the oppressed ‘East, who number more than a billion. We must take our destiny into our own hands.

 We must purge our ranks of all backward and vacillating elements. All viewpoints that overestimate the strength of’ the enemy and underestimate the strength of the people, are wrong. Together with the democratic forces of the world we must exert every effort and then we shall unquestionably be victorious over the imperialist plans of enslavement, shall prevent a third world war and thus get rid of the yoke of the reactionaries and secure the triumph of lasting peace for mankind.

For a Lasting Peace, for a People’s Democracy! Organ of the Information Bureau of the Communist Parties. Belgrade No. 2 (5) Thursday, January 15, 1948.