In the meantime, direct negotiations were conducted with the KMT officials at the highest level. It is my speculation that Chiang Kai- shek s account of Chou En—lai s contact with his subordinates, mistakenly dated autumn 1935, took place during this time. In Chiang's account, he claims that Chou, after meeting with his man in Hong Kong, forwarded a personal letter to Ch'en Li-fu on September 1 explaining the CCP's
position for ceasefire and unity against Japan. The actual date of this letter, as confirmed by one historian in possession of a copy of it, is
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September 1, 1936. In addition, in his private conversation with Snow IsTe September, Mao disclosed that "at present, negotiations are being conducted with the Nanking Government. This is confirmed by the
explanatory note in Mao's Selected Works} which states that following the August 25 letter to the KMT the CCP had dispatched representatives
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to negotiate with the Nanking Government. During the negotiations, moreover, Chou was reported to have attached no other conditions apart
from ceasefire and unity against Japan, a position which fell in line with the current stand of the CCP but totally incongruous with its position a year ealier. Finally, since Chou was already in Shanghai in May to con duct negotiations with the Nationalist officials, it is highly probable that he would have continued his journey to Hong Kong to seek out KMT representatives.
To facilitate Chou's diplomatic mission, Mao, on October 15, publicly declared that the Soviet Government and the Military Council of the Red Army had already issued orders to the Red Army troops to cease all offensive actions against the Nationalist troops except in self-defence. His plea for unity was such that the commentator of his speech in Hung- se Chung-hud, jointly published in the same organ,
could not but observe that Mao was "sincere and earnest beyond descrip- 98 tion" in his proposal for the Anti-Japanese United Front with the KMT.
The new policy reorientation, however, seemed to have met some resistance among the Party's rank-and-file who could not see the wisdom of making all these concessions to bring about an alliance with their
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erstwhile class enemies. In an internal and secret document, the CCP explained that the new policy line was only a tactical change at the present stage of the revolution, while its basic tasks of achieving the agrarian and anti-imperialist revolution remained unchanged. Whereas previously the Party launched the land revolution to eliminate feudalism and imperialism, it now sought to eliminate them through the anti
imperialist struggle. Similarly, the democratic republic was only a transitional stage to the establishment of worker-peasant dictatorship, replacing the former method of armed struggle to overthrow the KMT. In order to finally achieve socialism, it was necessary to go through the stage of "national and democratic" revolution. It further stated that the proletariat was not abandoning its class interests by
participating in the united front; on the contrary, it would be able to win over more allies and establish its leadership in the national
revolution. At the same time, the Party, representing the. proletariat, would zealously safeguard its independence and would not permit itself to
merge with other organizations. Admitting that adjustment in the land policy had been made, it denied that the Party was discarding the agrarian revolution: the Party would not permit excessive exploitation of the common peasants by landlords and would continue to oppose those landlords who capitulated to the enemy or participatedhalf-heartedly in the War of Resistance. Finally, it reassured the Party members that the failure in the First United Front was due only to the opportunistic errors of Ch'en Tu-hsiu's leadership and not to the fact that the united front policy was a mistake; owing to the growing strength and the enriched experience of the Party, there should be no fear that it would fall into the same errors again.
in the summer and autumn of 1936, the CCP had adopted a policy of re conciliation with the Nanking Government-. There is little doubt that Mao was personally in charge of this reorientation. In fact, according
to both Otto Braun and Chang Kuo-t'ao, Mao managed to monopolize the Party's external policy through his control over communication with Moscow and with the outside world during this p e r i o d . M a o ' s accept ance of the proposed alliance was naturally predicated upon the com plete independence of the Party and the retention of control of its armed forces. At this stage, however, Ch'en Shao-yll also publicly asserted the importance of safeguarding these prerogatives, and there did not seem to be any grounds for disagreement between the two leaders. As a matter of fact, Ch'en Shao-yd's article written on the fifteenth anniversary of the CCP, re-published under the new title "Struggle for the Independence, Freedom and Happiness of the Chinese People", was
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reproduced verbatim in many Communist and leftist publications. According to a recollection written in 1946, student activists in Nanking, after obtaining a copy of Ch'en's article from the National Liberation Vanguard in Peking in the spring of 1937, immediately
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