Revolutionaries

"Ironclad evidence had proved that China's Anti-Japanese National United Front could only be led by the proletarian Communist Party, and not by a so-called joint leadership. It was impossible for the Kuomintang of the feudal landlords and comprador bourgeoisie to lead the front, to set up the anti-Japanese democratic coalition government with the “three thirds system”, to transform the reactionary agencies of its party, government and army, and to implement the policy of reducing land rent and interest on loans and developing a national economy."

"Our goal was illegal (revolution), and legality was but a means of achieving that goal. Otherwise we would have been using legality for the sake of legality and would have become the will."

"The experience I gained taught me that one must be good at making use of contradictions of all kinds to legalize the illegal such as the rules of the soldiers’ committees which, through our work, were adopted as the objectives of the division school."

"A concrete analysis must be made of concrete conditions. Contradictions riddled the old-fashioned armies. We could provide opportunities for ourselves by taking advantage of these contradictions in a flexible manner, but legal and illegal struggles must be closely coordinated to achieve unity of action."

"Now whoever opposes the Communists and fires the first shot, will be hit by our second shot immediately, then our third shot. This is 'to pay a man back in his own coin'."

"We were enlisted to make revolution; to overthrow warlords, corrupt officials, local despots and evil gentry; and to bring about a cut in land rent and interest. But now there is neither revolution nor pay while talk of a cut in land rent and interest is heard no more. Yet, we are ordered to “suppress Communists” and crack down on peasant associations. Who orders us to do such things? Chiang Kai-shek! A soldier earns 6.5 dollars a month. Paying 3.3 dollars for mess, he has only 3.2 dollars left — and this is withheld from us. What a miserable lot we have! We can’t even afford to wear straw sandals or smoke coarse tobacco, let alone provide for our parents, wives, children. The officers must consider the problems of the enlisted men!"

"Don’t believe the good words of a man uttered in ordinary times; his action in an emergency will tell what sort of a man he is."

"We are determined to overthrow imperialism and the Kuomintang government, form a government of workers, peasants and soldiers; confiscate the land of the landlords and give it to the peasants. We will establish a Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army, in which officers and men are equal, the officers are elected by soldiers’ committees, and the accounts are kept open."

"China could only resist foreign aggression and develop its industry by instituting democracy and unifying the country."

"Born at a time when human history was moving forward by leaps and bounds, I was unable to keep pace with the tempo of this great epoch. The Communist Party of China was founded in 1921, but at that time I had not got in touch with Marxism and did not know the following fundamentals: the scientific laws of social development, analysing problems from the standpoint of class struggle, and revolution as the conscious action of the organized masses."

"The companies of my battalion had undergone training in the winter, and there were now members of the Save-the-Poor Committee in every company. After going through the discussions on the current situation conducted from the first to the third moon, the men and officers in my battalion had a better understanding of the Northern Expedition. They no longer feared it now, but were pleased to see it happen."

"Attack without delay the reactionary county government of Pingjiang, the “civil corps”, the village suppression units and the village suppression committees. Wipe them out resolutely. We are rising in arms! The day has come to serve the workers and peasants!"

"I hold that the Hundred Regiments Campaign was a military success. Especially after the Anti-Friction Battle, we had to organize such an anti-Japanese campaign to show that we had to oppose frictions for the sake of resisting Japanese aggression. Only thus could we win over large numbers of middle-of-the-roaders. At that time only by seizing the advantage of a weakly defended enemy rear to launch a vigorous surprise attack could we deal blows at the enemy and restore vast expanses of anti-Japanese base areas. It was not easy to organize such a campaign in a unified and planned way under the condition of dense networks of enemy blockhouses. Our victory helped expose the deceptive propaganda of the Japanese invaders and Chiang Kai-shek. It was also necessary for the accumulation of revolutionary strength."

"I reached the age of 23 in 1921. Having been a cowherd, a child labourer, a dyke worker and a soldier, I had been through extreme poverty and experienced the hard life of workers, peasants and soldiers. In the process, I cultivated some simple class feelings for the oppressed."

"The Mandarin language lessons taught included such messages as cultivating self-confidence and valuing time. I was one of the trainees, and in less than two years made some progress in language study. Talks were also given on the dismemberment of China by the foreign powers and on building China as a prosperous nation with a mighty army."

"When soldiers become conscious of what they are doing and are organized, they constitute a mighty force."

"Most of the officers and men in the PLA had their own histories of blood and tears. Since everybody had kept his bitter experience to himself, the soldiers’ common hatred for the enemy did not turn into a common class feeling."

"I was deeply influenced by my grand-uncle who had been a member of the Taiping Army. He often told me stories about the Taiping forces. The Taipings, he used to say, had food for everybody, the women unbound their feet, and the land was shared out among the tillers. This instilled in me the idea of taking the landlords’ riches to relieve the poor, of wiping out the landlords and finding a way out for the poor."

"The appalling poverty I experienced in my childhood and youth tempered me. In later years, I often recalled the plight of my childhood with a view to preventing myself from becoming corrupt and forgetting the hard life of the poor. That is why I can still vividly remember the ordeals I went through as a child."

"History is always moving ahead in a wavelike fashion, and the people of today outpace those of yesterday in their continuous forward advance."

"As World War I was then going on, the European and American imperialists had slowed down their aggression against China, and China’s industry was growing at a relatively high speed. This gave rise to such deceptive bourgeois patriotic ideas as “a prosperous nation with a mighty army” and “save the nation through industrial development”. They had an influence on me. But my chief motive in joining the army was to earn money to help provide for my poor family."

"I was born into a lower-middle peasant family on the 10th day of the 9th moon on the lunar calendar in 1898. All my family had at that time were a few thatched huts on eight or nine mu (hectre) of fallow and hilly land. We planted sweet potatoes and cotton on the fallow land and palms, tea, China fir and bamboo on the hill. Working hard and living frugally, the eight of us — my granduncle, grandmother, my parents and four boys barely managed to make ends meet."

"Experience shows that enhanced regional cooperation can be both the engine and the result of globalization."

"So far as artistic form is concerned, Peking opera has a relatively long history and has attained a relatively high artistic level; it is a type of opera with relatively strict conventions. For these reasons it is rather difficult to reform. But once successfully reformed, it will have a bright future."

"The knowledge gap is compounded by the ubiquitous phenomenon of brain drain from the developing to the developed world. The problem is almost as old as the United Nations itself."

"International order based on legal norms, even if administered under the authority of the privileged club of the permanent members of the Security Council, represented the embodiment of reason and of the hope that the world would never again fall prey to the demons of hatred and destruction."

"Regional cooperation makes it possible to capitalize on the advantages of globalization while reducing its risks."

"Literature and art should serve politics and the development of the productive forces. Now that we are living in a socialist society, whom should our Peking opera serve? What kind of plays should we stage? Should we serve socialism by staging plays that advance the socialist revolution and socialist construction or should we stage plays that benefit feudalism or capitalism? This is a fundamental question. It is quite clear that if one does not want to see feudalism or capitalism restored, if it does not hanker after these systems, then in a socialist society one cannot be always staging plays about such representatives of the exploiting classes as emperors, kings, generals, ministers, scholars and beauties."

"The extremely complex situations in various parts of the world and the contradictory currents that exist, with all their attendant risks and uncertainties for overall peace and security, demand a democratic vision of the new international order, which must be built, and abandonment of prejudices in relations between States inherited from the cold-war period. But that is not all. I believe that today we need a vision of the management of international relations in which realism and pragmatism predominate."

"The prosperity of peoples achieved through cooperation was not merely the formula of someday dreamers, but the rationale behind an international body meant to constitute an orderly space for moral and legal values to govern the manifestation of the freedom of creation of human civilization in all its diversity."

"A set of policies can be successful only if it relies consistently on the fundamental aspiration of ordinary people to a peaceful and decent life. The current unprecedented level of knowledge will, I am confident, enable us to find the requisite resources, both in ourselves and in society, for greater tolerance, mutual respect and constructive dialogue, as opposed to the primitive inclination to hatred and intolerance."

"What is an emperor? He is a representative of the landlord class, the chieftain of the landlords. What is an empress? She is the chief of the landlords’ wives. To be sure, some working people were portrayed in Peking operas in the past, but most of them were shown in a distorted and unfavourable light. How can we in our socialist society tolerate such a state of affairs with Peking opera — so important a stage art, a stage art with a relatively high artistic level and an important artistic heritage — continuing to portray emperors, kings, generals and ministers, and continuing to stage operas which are detrimental to the socialist revolution and socialist construction? That can’t be!"

"The consolidation of democratic values, building an efficient and competitive market economy, strengthening the country's capacity to play its role as a security and stability provider in the region, are all aims closely interrelated with our national interest."

"Fraud involving the public purse is all the more reprehensible, and must be severely punished, in that it cannot take place other than with the involvement of politicians and public officials, i.e. those who are entrusted essentially with defending and promoting the public interest. Their dishonesty undermines trust in the State, in the country's institutions and in democracy."

"In our times, Marxist-Leninists have all the greater confidence to declare to the whole world: The extinction of imperialism is inevitable, so is the victory of socialism and communism! The future of the international communist movement is bright, so is the future of the proletarian world revolution."

"While entrusting contemporary Marxist-Leninists and all other revolutionaries with arduous missions, history has at the same time created a wide stage of action for them. On this stage of history all real revolutionary heroes can perform many a revolutionary drama, full of sound and colour, power and grandeur, provided that they truly grasp the invincible weapon of Marxism-Leninism, truly rely on the broad masses of the people, and are courageous and skilful in waging struggles Innumerable revolutionary forerunners have opened up the road, set the example and accumulated experience for us."

"Let us hold aloft the revolutionary banner of Marxism-Leninism and boldly advance in the fight against imperialism, reaction and modern revisionism, for world peace, national liberation, people’s democracy and socialism, for the gradual achievement of complete victory in the proletarian world revolution and for the building of a new world without imperialism, without capitalism and without the exploitation of man by man!"

"But freeing international relations from ideology does not and must not necessarily lead to confrontation between civilizations. By definition, confrontation is alien to civilization."

"The structure of the international system, at the end of this century, is experiencing radical changes, particularly the end of the post-war bipolarity, the fall of the Iron Curtain and the end of the cold war. Many new peoples have gained their right to self-determination and democratic development, long repressed by totalitarian regimes."

"The dynamics of the world have changed. This creates many questions for the international community, governments, politicians and political forces. So far the answers have been few and inadequate. But life does not wait. States and people have concrete needs as well as hopes and ideals. Their natural tendency is to act in order to fulfil them, whether or not there exists an organized international framework for harmonizing divergent interests."

"It is for revolution that we unite. Unity with revolutionaries is out of the question if one opposes revolution. Making revolution and opposing imperialism is the demand of the broad masses of the people who comprise more than 90 per cent of the world’s population and is the irresistible trend of history. Whoever goes against this aspiration of the people and this trend will inevitably be discarded by history."

"From the point of view of our wishes, the best thing would be for them to abandon revisionism, or at least refrain from siding with U.S. imperialism, the common enemy of the people of the world. Indeed we were actuated by this wish when we repeatedly advised and criticized them, hoping that they might turn from their erroneous ways. Unfortunately, they have turned a deaf ear to all this. What can one do if they are happy in their own degeneration? They have insisted on staying outside, the united front of the people of the world against U.S. imperialism and conducting an ardent flirtation with it so that they are like a pair of lovebirds that even clubbing cannot separate. In these circumstances, of course it is impossible for them to really join the Marxist-Leninists and the people of the world in any “united action"."

"The great Soviet people is a people endowed with the glorious tradition of the October Revolution. The great Communist Party of the Soviet Union is a Party with a long history of revolutionary struggle."

"In the past, all kinds of opportunists and revisionists invariably used dual tactics to deceive the revolutionary people, and they invariably put on some false appearance to conceal the essence of their betrayal of the revolution."

"In endeavouring to bolster up the tottering edifice of imperialism, in addition to the direct use of violence, the monopoly capitalists of the imperialist countries invariably rely upon the labour aristocracy as a social prop and life-saver to sap the revolutionary will of the proletariat, to fool and divide the revolutionary people and to resist the proletarian revolutionary storm."

"Without an elementary class analysis, the slogan “unity against the enemy” is meaningless. We must make clear whom they want “unity” with and which enemy they want to deal with."

"At the present stage, the historical task of the parties of the proletariat in all countries is to unite the revolutionary people of the whole world, unite all the forces that can be united, combat the imperialists and reactionaries, win world peace, national liberation, people’s democracy and socialism, and strive for the gradual achievement of complete victory in the proletarian world revolution and for a new world without imperialism, without capitalism and without the exploitation of man by man."

"Since World War II, the revolutionary struggle of the people of the world has entered a new stage. The rapid growth of the people’s revolutionary forces and the rapid decline of the counter-revolutionary forces are general trends in the postwar world situation."

"If we don’t grasp the tasks of class struggle well and of socialist education too, then, it is also possible for revisionism to appear. Speaking frankly, there are quite a few problems in literary and artistic circles, surely no less than in other fields of work. Therefore, it is necessary to launch a rectification campaign and a movement for socialist education and wage the struggle between the two roads of socialism and capitalism on the front of literature and art. We must study Comrade Mao Tse-tung’s works carefully, learn Marxism-Leninism, and maintain a firm proletarian stand."

"After World War I, the capitalist system enjoyed a short period of relative stability. Since World War II there has been no such relative stability. The forces of imperialism have been greatly weakened. U.S. imperialism, the main prop of the imperialist system, is also in a state of general decline. The general crisis of capitalism has greatly deepened."