CHIANG KAI-SHEK IS PROVOKING CIVIL WAR* August !#, !($%
A spokesman for the Propaganda Department of the Kuomintang Central Executive Committee has made a statement describing as “a presumptuous and illegal act” the order 1 setting a time-limit for the surrender of the enemy and the puppets, 2 which was issued by Chu Teh, Commander-in-Chief of the Eighteenth Group Army, on August 10 from the General Headquarters in Yenan. This comment is absolutely preposterous. Its logical implication is that it was wrong of Commanderin-Chief Chu Teh to act in accordance with the Potsdam Declaration 3 and with the enemy’s declared intention of surrendering and to order his troops to effect the surrender of the enemy and the puppets, and that on the contrary it would have been right and legitimate to advise the enemy and puppets to refuse to surrender. No wonder that even before the enemy’s actual surrender, Chiang Kai-shek, China’s fascist ringleader, autocrat and traitor to the people, had the audacity to “order” the anti-Japanese armed forces in the Liberated Areas to “stay where they are, pending further orders”, that is, to tie their own hands and let the enemy attack them. No wonder this selfsame fascist ringleader dared to “order” the so-called underground forces (who are, in fact, puppet troops “saving the nation by a devious path”4 and Tai Li’s 5 secret police collaborating with the Japanese and puppets) as well as other puppet troops to “be responsible for maintaining local order”, while forbidding the anti-Japanese armed forces in the Liberated Areas to “take presumptuous action on their own” against enemy and puppet forces. This transposition of the enemy and the Chinese is in truth a confession by Chiang Kai-shek; it gives a vivid picture of his whole psychology, which is one of consistent collusion with the enemy and puppets and of liquidation of all those not of his ilk. However, the people’s anti-Japanese armed forces in China’s Liberated Areas will never be taken in by this venomous scheme. They know 27
