Manifesto of the Chinese People's Liberation Army

#PUBLICATION NOTE

This edition of Manifesto of the Chinese People's Liberation Army has been prepared and revised for digital publication by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism under the Central Committee of the Communist Party in Switzerland on the basis of the following editions:

• Manifesto of the Chinese People's Liberation Army, in the Selected Works of Mao Zedong, First English Edition, Vol. 4, Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, 1965.
• Manifesto of the Chinese People's Liberation Army, in Mao's Road to Power, First English Edition, Vol. 10, Routledge, New York and London, 2023.

#INTRODUCTION NOTE

This is the political manifesto drafted by Comrade Mao Zedong for the General Headquarters of the Chinese People's Liberation Army in Shenchuanbao, Jiaxian, Shaanxi, China before the 10th of October, 1947.

The manifesto analysed the political situation in China at the time, raised the slogan «Overthrow Jiang Jieshi and liberate all of China!», and announced the eight fundamental policies of the Chinese People's Liberation Army, which were also those of the Communist Party of China. The manifesto was issued on the 10th of October, 1947, and was known as the «10th of October Manifesto».

#Workers and oppressed people of the world, unite!

#MANIFESTO OF THE CHINESE PEOPLE'S LIBERATION ARMY

#Mao Zedong

#Before the 10th of October, 1947

#★

The Chinese People's Liberation Army, having smashed Jiang Jieshi's offensive, has now launched a large-scale counter-offensive. Our armies on the southern front are advancing on the Yangzi River valley, our armies on the northern front are advancing on the Chinese Changchun Railway and the Beijing-Liaoning Railway. Wherever our troops go, the enemy flees pell-mell before us and the people give thunderous cheers. The whole situation between the enemy and ourselves has fundamentally changed as compared with a year ago.

The aim of our army in this war, as proclaimed time and again to the nation and the world, is the liberation of the Chinese people and the Chinese nation. And today, our aim is to carry out the urgent demand of the people of the whole country, that is, to overthrow the arch-criminal of the civil war, Jiang Jieshi, and form a democratic coalition government in order to attain the general goal of liberating the people and the nation.

For eight long years, the Chinese people fought heroically against Japanese imperialism for their own liberation and national independence. After the Japanese surrender, the people longed for peace, but Jiang Jieshi wrecked all their peace efforts and forced on them the disaster of an unprecedented civil war. Hence the people of all strata throughout the country were forced to unite to overthrow Jiang Jieshi, having no other way out.

Jiang Jieshi's present policy of civil war is no accident, but is the inevitable outcome of the anti-popular policy which he and his reactionary clique have consistently followed. As far back as 1927, Jiang Jieshi, devoid of all gratitude, betrayed the revolutionary alliance between the Nationalist Party and the Communist Party¹ and betrayed the revolutionary «Three People's Principles» and the «Three Great Policies» of Sun Yixian,² then he set up a dictatorship, capitulated to imperialism, fought ten years of civil war, and brought on the aggression of the Japanese bandits. In the Xi'an Incident of 1936, the Communist Party of China returned good for evil and, acting together with Generals Zhang Xueliang and Yang Hucheng, set Jiang Jieshi free in the hope that he would repent, turn over a new leaf, and join in the fight against the Japanese aggressors. But once again, he proved devoid of all gratitude; he was passive against the Japanese invaders, active in suppressing the people, and extremely hostile to the Communist Party. The year before last (1945), Japan surrendered and the Chinese people once more forgave Jiang Jieshi, demanding that he should stop the civil war he had already started, put democracy into practice and unite with all political parties and groups for peace and national reconstruction. But no sooner had the truce agreement been signed, the resolutions of the Political Consultative Conference adopted, and the four pledges³ proclaimed than the utterly faithless Jiang Jieshi went back on his word completely. Time and again, the people showed themselves forbearing and conciliatory for the sake of the common good, but, aided by US imperialism, Jiang Jieshi was determined to launch an unprecedented all-out offensive against the people, in utter disregard of the fate of the country and the nation. From January last year (1946), when the truce agreement was announced, up to the present, Jiang Jieshi has mobilized more than 220 brigades of his regular troops and nearly 1'000'000 miscellaneous troops⁴ and launched large-scale attacks against the Liberated Areas which the Chinese people wrested from Japanese imperialism after bloody battles; he has seized successively the cities of Shenyang, Fushun, Benxi, Sipingjie, Changchun, Yongji, Chengde, Jining, Zhangjiakou, Huaiyin, Heze, Linyi, Yan'an, and Yantai, and vast rural areas. Wherever Jiang Jieshi's troops go, they murder and burn, rape and loot, carry out the policy of the «Three Atrocities»,⁵ and behave exactly like the Japanese bandits. In November last year, Jiang Jieshi convened the bogus «National Assembly» and proclaimed the bogus «Constitution». In March this year, he expelled the representatives of the Communist Party from the Nationalist areas. In July, he issued an order of general mobilization against the people.⁶ Toward the just movement of the people in different parts of the country against civil war, against hunger, and against US imperialist aggression, and toward the struggle for existence waged by the workers, peasants, students, townspeople, government employees, and teachers, Jiang Jieshi's policy is one of repression, arrest, and massacre. Toward our country's minority nationalities, his policy is one of Han chauvinism, of persecution and repression by every possible means. In all the areas under Jiang Jieshi's rule corruption is rife, secret agents run amok, taxes are innumerable and crushing, prices are skyrocketing, the economy is bankrupt, all business languishes, conscription and the grain levy are imposed, and voices of discontent are heard everywhere; all this has plunged the overwhelming majority of people throughout the country into an abyss of suffering. Meanwhile, the financial oligarchs, corrupt officials, local tyrants, and evil gentry, all headed by Jiang Jieshi, have amassed vast fortunes. The families of Jiang Jieshi, Song Ziwen, Kong Xiangxi, and Chen Lifu own public and private industries worth more than USD 10'000'000'000. Jiang Jieshi and his like made these fortunes by using their dictatorial powers to extort taxes and levies and promote their private interests under the guise of serving the public. To maintain his dictatorship and carry on the civil war, Jiang Jieshi has not hesitated to sell out our country's sovereign rights to foreign imperialism, to collude with the US armed forces, so that they should remain in Qingdao and elsewhere, and to procure advisers from the United States to take part in directing the civil war and training troops to slaughter his own compatriots. Aircraft, tanks, guns, and ammunition for the civil war are shipped from the United States in great quantities. Funds for the civil war are borrowed from the United States on a large scale. In return for its favours, Jiang Jieshi has presented US imperialism with military bases and the rights of air flight and navigation and concluded with it a commercial treaty of enslavement⁷ — acts of treason many times worse than those of Yuan Shikai.⁸ In a word, Jiang Jieshi's 20-year rule has been traitorous, dictatorial, and against the people. Today, the overwhelming majority of the people throughout the country, north and south, young and old, know his towering crimes and hope that our army will quickly launch the counter-offensive, overthrow Jiang Jieshi, and liberate all of China.

We are the army of the Chinese people, and in all things, we take the will of the Chinese people as our will. The policies of our army represent the urgent demands of the Chinese people, and chief among them are the following:

• Unite workers, peasants, soldiers, intellectuals, and businesspeople, all oppressed classes, all people's organizations, democratic political parties, minority nationalities, overseas Chinese, and other patriots; form a national united front; overthrow the dictatorial Jiang Jieshi government; and establish a democratic coalition government.
• Arrest, try, and punish the civil war criminals headed by Jiang Jieshi.
• Abolish the Jiang Jieshi dictatorship, carry out the system of people's democracy, and guarantee freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, and of association for the people.
• Abolish the rotten institutions of the Jiang Jieshi regime, clear out all corrupt officials, and establish clean government.
• Confiscate the property of the «Four Big Families»⁹ of Jiang Jieshi, Song Ziwen, Kong Xiangxi, and the Chen Lifu brothers, and the property of the other chief war criminals; confiscate bureaucrat capital, develop the industry and commerce of the national bourgeoisie, improve the livelihood of workers and employees, and give relief to victims of natural calamities and to poverty-stricken people.
• Abolish the system of feudal exploitation and put into effect the system of land to the tillers, and where land in the countryside is divided equally and owned by the people in the countryside according to the number of people and the quantity and quality of the land.
• Recognize the right to equality and autonomy of the minority nationalities within the borders of China, and give them the right to participate in China's federal government.
• Repudiate the traitorous foreign policy of Jiang Jieshi's dictatorial government, abrogate all the treasonable treaties, and repudiate all the foreign debts contracted by Jiang Jieshi during the civil war period. Demand that the US government withdraw its troops stationed in China, which are a menace to China's independence, and oppose any foreign country's helping Jiang Jieshi to carry on civil war or trying to revive the forces of Japanese aggression. Conclude treaties of trade and friendship with foreign countries on the basis of equality and reciprocity. Unite in a common struggle with all nations which treat us as equals.

The above are the fundamental policies of our army. They will be put into practice at once wherever our army goes. These policies conform with the demands of more than 90% of the people in our country.

Our army does not reject all Jiang Jieshi's personnel but adopts a policy of dealing with each case on its merits. That is, the chief criminals shall be punished without fail, those who are accomplices under duress shall go unpunished and those who perform deeds of merit shall be rewarded. As for Jiang Jieshi, the arch-criminal who started the civil war and who has committed most heinous crimes, and as for all his hardened accomplices who have trampled the people underfoot and are branded as war criminals by the broad masses, our army will hunt them down, even to the four corners of the Earth, and will surely bring them to trial and punishment. Our army warns all officers and soldiers in Jiang Jieshi's army, all officials in his government, and all members of his political party whose hands are not yet stained with the blood of innocent people that they should strictly refrain from joining these criminals in their evil-doing. Those who have been doing evil should immediately stop, repent and start anew, and break with Jiang Jieshi, and we will give them a chance to make amends for their crimes by good deeds. Our army will not kill or humiliate any of Jiang Jieshi's army officers and soldiers who lay down their arms, and will even accept them into our service if they are willing to remain with us or send them home if they wish to leave. As for those troops of Jiang Jieshi's who rise up in revolt and join our army and those who work for our army openly or in secret, they shall be rewarded.

In order to overthrow Jiang Jieshi and form a democratic coalition government at an early date, we call on our compatriots in all walks of life to cooperate actively with us wherever our army goes in cleaning up the reactionary forces and setting up a democratic order. In places we have not yet reached, they should take up arms on their own, resist pressganging and the grain levy, distribute the land, repudiate debts, and take advantage of the enemy's gaps to develop guerrilla warfare.

In order to overthrow Jiang Jieshi and form a democratic coalition government at an early date, we call on the people in the Liberated Areas to carry through the land reform, consolidate the foundations of democracy, develop production, practise economy, strengthen the people's armed forces, eliminate the remaining strongholds of the enemy, and support the fighting at the front.

All comrade commanders and fighters of our army! We are shouldering the most important, the most glorious task in the history of our country's revolution. We should make great efforts to accomplish our task. Our efforts will decide the day when our great homeland will emerge from darkness into light and our beloved compatriots will be able to live like human beings and to choose the government they wish. All officers and fighters of our army must improve their military art, march forward courageously toward sure victory in the war, and resolutely, thoroughly, wholly, and completely wipe out all enemies. They must all raise their level of political consciousness, learn the two skills of wiping out the enemy forces and mobilizing the masses, unite closely with the masses, and rapidly build the new Liberated Areas into stable areas. They must heighten their sense of discipline and resolutely carry out orders, carry out policy, carry out the «Three Main Rules of Discipline» and the «Eight Points for Attention» — with army and people united, army and government united, officers and soldiers united, and the whole army united — and permit no breach of discipline. All our officers and fighters must always bear in mind that we are the great People's Liberation Army, we are the troops led by the great Communist Party of China. Provided we constantly observe the directives of the Party, we are sure to win.

#DOWN WITH JIANG JIESHI!

#LONG LIVE NEW CHINA!

#Zhu De, Commander-in-Chief of the Chinese People's Liberation Army

#Peng Dehuai, Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Chinese People's Liberation Army