The Chinese People's Liberation Army, having smashed Chiang Kai-shek's offensive, has now launched a large-scale counter-offensive. Our armies on the southern front are advancing on the Yangtse River valley, our armies on the northern front are advancing on the Chinese Changchun Railway and the Peiping-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, Chiang Kai-shek, 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 Chiang Kai-shek 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 Chiang Kai-shek, having no other way out.

Chiang Kai-shek'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, Chiang Kai-shek, devoid of all gratitude, betrayed the revolutionary alliance between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party[1] and betrayed the revolutionary Three People's principles and the Three Great Policies of Sun Yat-sen;[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 Sian Incident of 1936, the Communist Party of China returned good for evil and, acting together with Generals Chang Hsueh-liang and Yang Hu-cheng, set Chiang Kai-shek 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 Chiang Kai-shek, demanding that he should stop the civil war he had already started, put democracy into practice and unite with all 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 pledges[3] proclaimed than the utterly faithless Chiang Kai-shek 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 U.S. imperialism, Chiang Kai-shek 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, Chiang Kai-shek has mobilized more than 220 brigades of his regular troops and nearly a million miscellaneous troops[4] 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, Penki, Szepingkai, Changchun, Yungchi, Chengteh, Chining, Changchiakou, Huaiyin, Hotse, Linyi, Yenan and Yentai and vast rural areas. Wherever Chiang Kai-shek's troops go, they murder and burn, rape and loot, carry out the policy of three atrocities[5] and behave exactly like the Japanese bandits. In November last year Chiang Kai-shek convened the bogus National Assembly and proclaimed the bogus constitution. In March this year he expelled the representatives of the Communist Party from the Kuomintang areas. In July he issued an order of general mobilization against the people.[6] Towards the just movement of the people in different parts of the country against civil war, against hunger and against U.S. imperialist aggression and towards the struggle for existence waged by the workers, peasants, students, townspeople, government employees and teachers, Chiang Kai-shek's policy is one of repression, arrest and massacre. Towards 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 Chiang Kai-shek's rule corruption is rife, secret agents run amuck, 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 bullies and bad gentry, all headed by Chiang Kai-shek, have amassed vast fortunes. Chiang Kai-shek 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, Chiang Kai-shek has not hesitated to sell out our country's sovereign rights to foreign imperialism, to collude with the U.S. armed forces so that they should remain in Tsingtao 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 fellow-countrymen. 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, Chiang Kai-shek has presented U.S. imperialism with military bases and the rights of air flight and navigation and concluded with it a commercial treaty of enslavement[7] -- acts of treason many times worse than those of Yuan Shih-kai.[8] In a word, Chiang Kai-shek's twenty-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 Chiang Kai-shek and liberate all 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:

(1) Unite workers, peasants, soldiers, intellectuals and businessmen, all oppressed classes, all people's organizations, democratic parties, minority nationalities, overseas Chinese and other patriots; form a national united front; overthrow the dictatorial Chiang Kai-shek government; and establish a democratic coalition government.

(2) Arrest, try and punish the civil war criminals headed by Chiang Kai-shek.

(3) Abolish the Chiang Kai-shek 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.

(4) Abolish the rotten institutions of the Chiang Kai-shek regime, clear out all corrupt officials and establish clean government.

(5) Confiscate the property of the four big families[9] of Chiang Kai-shek, T. V. Soong, H. H. Kung and the Chen Li-fu 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