893.00/1–948: Telegram
The Ambassador in China (Stuart) to the Secretary of State
[Received January 10—9:52 a. m.]
65. Full text December 25 statement by Mao Tse-tung has already been sent airmail to Dept.50 Embassy believes statement necessarily acquires importance (though not as great as Chinese Communists apparently would have one believe) because it was made by Mao and because it outlines in considerable detail the military and economic program of Chinese Communists, drawing together in one statement previous announcements and plans. Embassy is, however, of opinion that in reading statement it is necessary to dredge through appalling verbiage in order to gain a few ideas. The ideas, furthermore, expressed in this unwieldy exercise in dialectics represent little not already known and reported.
Embassy gains two dominant impressions: (1) the note of triumphant conviction that the essentials of the Communist struggle for victory in China have been achieved though Mao is careful to point out that additional great sacrifices will be required and (2) the continuous and vitriolic attacks on the US as the great enemy of the world and agent responsible for the continuing civil war in China. Endlessly Mao reiterates the point that reactionary American imperialism is a major enemy of the people of China. Even though recent months have witnessed heightening attacks on the US this is the first time that one of the top leaders of the party has publicly joined the human [hue and] cry.
Mao’s elaboration of Communist military tactics and strategy is a remarkably candid explanation of how precisely Communist armies operate as far as the Embassy has been able to determine. It is perhaps a mark of Communist contempt for Nationalist military thinking and intelligence that the Communists have so little hesitation in explaining their strategy which, it must be admitted, has to date not been without success.
Considerable attention in the manifesto is given to explaining the need for relentless pursuit of the land reform program in order to satisfy the aspirations of peasant groups regardless of cost to those who now hold the land. This is in accordance with other scattered and fragmentary reports received by the Embassy in recent months about the stepping up of the land program.
It is interesting to note the appeal for support from the middle group of peasants whom Mao says he believes will be willing to make [Page 29] certain personal sacrifices for the common weal. The threat that any opposition can expect no mercy rather suggests, however, that the Communists are not yet prepared to rely solely upon goodness of heart in securing cooperation. Nor should the gesture of conciliation to the middle groups yet be considered as anything more than a propaganda device which can be reversed at will.
It is significant that this statement moves even farther away than the New Year’s message of Lu Ting-yi51 of a year ago from the lip service to conciliation and moderation which characterized Mao’s report to the 7th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party. April 1945.52 It seems to the Embassy there is a striking similarity between the argument and invective advanced by Mao and that of other Communist leaders throughout the world. It also seems to the Embassy that more than at any other time in the past Chinese Communist thinking, with some exceptions made necessary by contemporary conditions, [is?] following the line of reasoning advanced by Lenin in his April theses. All current evidence indicates Communist willingness and intention to adopt and exploit any means possible or necessary to securing the ultimate objective, namely, full power. Not even the obscure vocabulary can obscure the fact that this is precisely what Mao is saying or becloud his conviction that it will work.
Dept. please repeat to Moscow as 3.
- Not printed.↩
- Minister of Propaganda and Information of the Chinese Communist Party; for text of his statement, see United States Relations With China, p. 710; for analysis, see Foreign Relations, 1947, vol. vii, p. 29.↩
- May 1, 1945; see ibid., 1945, vol. vii, p. 362.↩