893.00/1–3047: Telegram
The Ambassador in China ( Stuart ) to the Secretary of State
[Received January 30—5:45 a.m.]
162. Embassy is forwarding by despatch full text46 of lengthy statement by Lu Ting-yi, head of Department of Information, Chinese Communist Party and member Party’s Central Executive Committee, published Emancipation Daily, Yenan, January 4 and 5.
Lu sees world situation today as struggle between democratic and anti-democratic, or Fascist, forces; the defeat of Germany and Japan did not finally destroy Fascism and the struggle against it must now continue until the inevitable victory of democratic forces throughout the world. Democracy, in Lu’s definition, is synonomous with the Soviet Union and with those masses of people to be found in every country who find themselves in sympathy with the selfless desire of a Socialist Soviet Union to free all men from oppression and imperialism. It is simply because these democratic forces include the overwhelming majority of men that their victory is inevitable and what appears to be the impressive present strength of reactionary forces is merely a superficial delusion.
Lu then proceeds to state that American imperialists have taken the place of Germany and Japan in the world. Their objective is to enslave the American people and by “peaceful means” to ensure American domination of the other capitalist countries and all colonial [Page 30] areas. American imperialism, therefore, has become the great enemy of mankind.
Embassy considers statement to be the strongest and most orthodox yet issued by the Chinese Communists and the most important manifesto since Mao Tse-tung’s report “on coalition govt” to the Seventh Party Congress in April 1945.47 The statement follows so closely traditional Marxist analysis of social development and the inevitable course and fate of monopoly capitalism that it might well have been written in the Kremlin and it is of particular interest in view of current Communist policy of avoiding any semblance of compromise or of taking any position vis-à-vis the internal Chinese situation other than one of intransigence and willingness to fight for their own terms.
It is difficult, if not impossible, to estimate whether this revised line was reached from independent theoretical studies or was suggested by outside sources; or whether it is part of a long preconceived strategy which is now merely announced at what seems a propitious moment. Certainly it changes the emphasis of “on coalition govt” that socialism and communism for China are merely an eventual ideal. Lu’s statement, in terms stronger than any ever used before, closely identifies the Chinese Communist Party with the Kremlin’s self-appointed propaganda line of championship of oppressed peoples throughout the world.
There is another thing. The Chinese Communist Party is the only Communist group in the world which can compare in size and influence with the CPSU (B).48 The Kremlin must be well aware that it is the only important Communist Party in the world of which no one has yet been able to prove that it has direct ties with the Soviet Party and that it is not primarily an indigenous movement arising from Chinese conditions whose principal and perhaps only direct link with the Soviets is ideological affinity. This factor makes it, therefore, a useful vehicle for spreading the Communist line.
Sent Dept 162. Repeat to Moscow.
- ibid., p. 710; despatch No. 824, June 20, not printed.↩
- May 1, 1945, Foreign Relations, 1945, vol. vii, p. 362.↩
- Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolshevik).↩