Tuesday, November 5, 2013
TIME on China Apr 9, 1965 - Red China: The Busy Travelers
Friday, Apr. 09, 1965
Red China: The Busy Travelers
Pakistan seems to have a special fascination for Red China's leaders these days. Foreign Minister Chen Yi spent five days there last week, signing a new border agreement with the government of President Mohammed Ayub Khan, and engaging in such tourist antics as a jolting ride atop a camel.Chen also caused a diplomatic stir in an interview given to a Turkish newsman in Karachi, informing him that Ayub Khan had promised his "good offices" in an effort to bring China and Turkey closer together. Chen Yi thought both countries had a lot in common since Turkey "takes its past from Asia." He added, "China is an injured country. As far as I understand, Turkey has not been free from suffering in her relations with the great powers."
Let Down. It was a shrewd ploy. Turkey had been cold to the idea when it was first broached by Ayub Khan last year. Since then, the Turks have been more ready to listen to Pakistani suggestions of an independent and self-serving foreign policy. Both nations feel a bit let down by the U.S. In Pakistan's case, it is the old grievance over arms shipments to India; in Turkey's, the U.S. position on Cyprus, which Turks regard as pro-Greek.
Several Turkish newspapers were eager for a break with Formosa and recognition of Peking, and even Ankara officials were talking about closer cultural and economic ties with Red China. Understandably well pleased, Chen Yi returned home by way of Nepal, stopping off in Katmandu to inspect a shoe factory built by Chinese technicians and to exude peace, friendship and coexistence.
Floodlit Formal. As Chen Yi left Pakistan, China's Premier Chou En-lai arrived. He had flown to Rumania for the funeral of Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, stopped at Tirana, capital of Albania, Peking's most distant and tiniest ally, and jetted on to Algeria and Egypt where he reportedly urged Ahmed ben Bella and Gamal Abdel Nasser not to invite Russia to the second Bandung-style conference of Afro-Asian nations scheduled for June in Algiers. Chou's point: despite its possession of Siberia, Russia is essentially a European country.
In Karachi, Chou got red-carpet treatment, though his name was misspelled "Chau" on a welcoming banner. He had a long and private talk with Ayub Khan, and a formal dinner at the President's floodlit house. Next day a Pakistani spokesman said the discussions had concerned the "tense and delicate situation prevailing in Southeast Asia, with special reference to Viet Nam." Pakistan hoped that "all nations, large and small, Asian and non-Asian, will play their role in bringing tranquillity and peace to that unfortunate country that has seen warfare for over two decades." Ayub was clearly enjoying his new Nehru-like role as world statesman and mediator. Two hours before Chou En-lai left Karachi, Ayub Khan was off on travels of his own—an eight-day state visit to the Soviet Union.
TIME on China Feb 26, 1965 - Asia: A Test for Tigers
[1965.02.26] Asia: A Test for Tigers
Friday, Feb. 26, 1965
Asia: A Test for Tigers
(See Cover)Out of Peking's Forbidden City, once the seat of China's emperors and now the headquarters of its Red masters, stomped an angry man in dark sunglasses. He was Marshal Chen Yi, Foreign Minister of the Chinese People's Republic and spokesman for Chairman Mao Tse-tung. "United States imperialism is the most ferocious enemy of the world's people," Chen declared in a speech at the Soviet embassy. "Peaceful coexistence is out of the question. Only in concrete action against the U.S. and its followers can the Chinese-Soviet alliance be tested and tempered."
Moving on to Nepal's embassy, Chen got even more excited. "Sheer drivel!" he cried when asked about U.S. demands that Communist guerrilla attacks in South Viet Nam be stopped. "There will be no peace in Indo-China," prophesied Chen, "so long as the aggressive forces of U.S. imperialism hang on there." Later, Chen told a touring Swiss journalist: "The Chinese people will not stand idly by as North Viet Nam is attacked. China and North Viet Nam go together like teeth and lips."
In that odd, oral simile Chen neglected to say who was the teeth and who was merely the lip. But Peking's friends provided plenty of lip service. From Djakarta to Caracas, mobs led by Chinese Communist and other "students" smashed U.S. embassy windows, burned cars, ripped American flags, winged inkpots, and howled for Lyndon Johnson's blood. Back in Moscow after his eleven-day swing through Asia, So viet Premier Aleksei Kosygin at least partly echoed the Peking line; he promised "appropriate" military aid to the North Vietnamese, and his propaganda machine threatened dire consequences unless "American imperialism" withdraws from Indo-China. On the surface at least, the divided Communist giants were closing ranks.
The Real Issue. Even in the paralyzed U.N. General Assembly, Peking's pals were busy raising a final bit of hell before adjournment. In Cambodia, Chief of State Norodom Sihanouk, who long ago decided that the Red Chinese are bound to win in Asia, is convening an Indo-Chinese People's Conference, at which many of the area's Communist and pro-Communist groups will no doubt demand the withdrawal of the U.S. "aggressors." Sihanouk's scheme was dignified by a letter from Charles de Gaulle, whose Foreign Minister, Maurice Couve de Murville, was in Washington pushing the French line about neutralization of Southeast Asia.
In South Viet Nam itself, the mood oscillated between faint rays of optimism and farce. The U.S. retaliatory air strikes against the North had lifted Saigon morale, and there was some feeling that continued U.S. pressure—rather than just tit-for-tat response—might create a climate of hope in which some political stability could be achieved. But while a new civilian government was trying to set itself up in business, the army engaged in another disheartening series of coups and countercoups (see South Viet Nam). On the military side, things looked a little better. For the moment, the Viet Cong were quiet. Presumably they had been given pause by the U.S. raids of Feb. 7 and 11. And besides, they were tired from the ferocious pace they had set for most of that week: they lost 795 men, more than in any earlier period, while taking 37 American and 290 South Vietnamese lives.
But beyond Saigon politics, beyond the agonizing guerrilla war, beyond the question of further air strikes against North Viet Nam, loomed the basic issue: the U.S. confrontation with Red China. Mao Tse-tung professes to take an unhurried view of the matter. "The Americans will tire," he told U.S. Journalist Edgar Snow recently. "They don't have the patience for this."
Perhaps not. But that is what the conflict comes down to: a test of patience, of will, of strength involving the whole balance of power in Asia.
Foothold on the Rim. In the vast sweep of country from Angkor Wat to the Great Wall, from the Yellow Sea to the Pamirs, Red China seeks hegemony. There is little doubt that Peking has two long-range objectives: 1) to drive the U.S. from the Asian mainland and eventually out of all Asia and 2) to re-establish Chinese borders as they were under the 18th century Manchu Dynasty.
China's borders then penetrated deeply into what is now Soviet territory, both on the west and beyond the Amur River to the north. Manchu China en compassed all of Mongolia, Korea and Taiwan. To the south, China either extracted tribute from much of the IndoChinese peninsula or else dominated trade so thoroughly that tribute was unnecessary. All this made the Chinese hated, feared, but nonetheless respected in the region. Since then, history has not favored Chinese ambition. First the colonial powers of Europe, then the Japanese conquerors early in World War II, and finally the U.S.—after assuming France's responsibilities in 1961—denied China control over the rice bowls of Indo-China. South Viet Nam, Malaysia and Thailand represent salients on the edge of China's sphere of influence.
So the Viet Nam battle comes down to the basic question: Can the U.S. and its allies retain their foothold on the rim of Asia, or must they eventually give way to China's insistent pressure?
Western Force. In one sense, it is absurd that the question should be posed at all, because the Western side is overwhelmingly stronger. If Peking's famous propaganda phrase is applicable to anyone, it is not the U.S. but Red China that is the "paper tiger."
The U.S. and its allies in the Western Pacific are deployed in a highly mobile, heavily armed arc of military power around China (see map). Carriers, cruisers and attack transports of the U.S. Seventh Fleet range the bulge of Asia from the bleak Kuriles north of Japan to the "gong-tormented" South China Sea. Three Polaris subs recently attached to the fleet add a 48-missile nuclear punch with a range of 1,500 miles, thus freeing the carriers from strategic responsibilities and allowing them to support Viet Nam operations.
The U.S. Air Force keeps 32 tactical squadrons of strike aircraft, ranging from Japan to the Philippines, while two squadrons of Strategic Air Command B-52s are on station at Guam. Air Force transports could carry a sizable force from Okinawa or Hawaii into Thailand within 24 hours. Since 1962's Laos crisis, which brought U.S. marines into Thailand, the U.S. and the Thais have been busy creating a military infrastructure that would make Thailand a final redoubt if the rest of Indo-China were to be abandoned. Three all-weather, 10,000-ft. jet strips have been built, and the hardware and ammunition needed to supply a brigade of U.S. troops is stockpiled in the countryside. The U.S. has even implemented its own psychological-warfare campaign among the Thais: USIS and Thai Mobile Information Teams produce films in the popular Mohlam style, with pro-Western propaganda messages insinuated in the love lyrics sung by the Mohlam actors.
Also, the British. Off Southeast Asia, a Marine Corps ready force of 1,500 men is embarked continuously, some aboard amphibious landing ships, some on carriers. In addition to its own force of 222,000 men, the U.S. can count with some surety on the support of 550,000 South Korean troops in the event China carries through its threats in that peninsula. The R.O.K. forces have recently been equipped with the latest in American weaponry: Hawk antiaircraft-missile batteries, Northrop F-5 supersonic "Freedom Fighters," and 175-mm. cannon that pack a harder, flatter wallop than anything North Korea possesses. A real showdown would release Chiang Kai-shek's wellarmed, tautly disciplined 600,000-man force, and in that eventuality the U.S. could probably also count on 40,000 SEATO-allied Filipinos.
Far to the southwest, the British have beefed up their forces to counter Indonesia's Peking-leaning President Sukarno, who threatens to "crush Malaysia." The 70,000 British and Commonwealth troops—including 50 Royal Navy men-o'-war and some 250 bombers—might not join a U.S.-Chinese fight directly, but they could be counted upon to defend the left flank from any incursion.
What can China offer in response? Mostly size and mass. Mao must rely on his powerful, ponderous infantry of 2,500,000 troops, backed by 12 million militiamen.
Well trained in both conventional and guerrilla warfare, the Chinese foot soldier is amply armed with Chinese-made automatic weapons—usually a stamped copy of the Russian World War II vent-barreled burp gun. He is supported by light and medium mortars, bazooka-style rocket launchers, recoilless rifles, and artillery that in performance ranks with the best in the world. As to armor and transport, Mao's millions are woefully underequipped. Some 4,000 Russian T-34 tanks are still operating, but though that machine was first-rank armor during the Korean War, it is now obsolete. Still, armor would be of little use to any army fighting in Southeast Asia, an area about as conducive to good traction as a rumpled rug on a waxed floor.
Weakness in the Air. Though China's air force ranks third in size in the world (behind the U.S. and Russia), its 2,900 planes are mostly obsolete MIG-15s and 17s. Western experts prediet that China will soon start turning out a few advanced MIG-19 and 21 jets on its own, but production will be slow and light. In any air clash with U.S. Navy and Air Force jets over Southeast Asia, Mao's planes would certainly be swept from the skies in a matter of days. Even the Chinese Nationalists, flying slow F-86 Sabre jets armed with Sidewinder air-to-air missiles, were able to shoot down 32 Red Chinese planes during 1958's Formosa Straits dustup. Since then, Red jets have rarely appeared over the Taiwan Straits. Moreover, military experts in Asia note that Chinese jets have not left their borders, even to make a show of force over North Viet Nam.
Of bombers, China mounts 300 Russian-built IL-28 twin-jets, but these planes are incapable of supersonic flight and thus become easy prey for U.S. air defense. China's navy is strictly a coastal-defense outfit, although its 28 submarines—if committed in a surprise thrust against the U.S. Seventh Fleet —could do some damage.
Theoretically, the Chinese might diffuse Western forces by fighting in half a dozen places at once, from Korea to India. But, given their immense logistical problems and other weaknesses, most military experts are sure that the Chinese could not possibly mount a multiple-front war.
Land v. Sky & Sea. In sum, while the U.S. still fears a land-based entanglement with China's vast army, American military superiority is overwhelming in any situation where air and seapower can be brought to bear. Mao Tse-tung seems determined to avoid any such situation. Protesting a little too much, an editorial in People's Daily last week asked: "What is naval and air superiority after all? Even if twelve American aircraft carriers are deployed in this area, it would only mean twelve more airports on the ocean. What can they do, since the outcome of the war in Viet Nam must be decided on the ground?"
Almost unanimously, military experts believe that Mao wants to avoid any direct encounter with the U.S., if he can possibly help it. His first aim clearly is to continue guerrilla war and subversion, where air-and seapower are least effective — even if the U.S. were to overcome moral and political scruples and use such power fully. Next, Mao wants to use other people's ground forces. As one observer puts it: "He wants the Vietnamese to fight the Americans, and he wants the Laotians and Cambodians and Thais and Burmese and anyone else Peking can subvert to fight the Americans." After his first audience with Mao Tse-tung, the new French ambassador to Peking reportedly cabled Paris in some horror that Mao "regards human life as part of his inventory of resources and is perfectly willing to spend it." But he plainly does not want to start spending the inventory unless he has to.
Slow Creep Forward. Perhaps the most vulnerable part of China is its economy, which would suffer disastrously in any war. Mao tries to divert Chinese attention from the weakness of the economy by harping on austerity as a kind of ethic. Last week, fearful that the traditional Lantern Festival with its fireworks, kite flying, dragon and lion dances would evoke memories of long-gone "golden eras," the regime sent cadres of girls to block celebrators from entering Shanghai's Temple of the Goddess of Mercy. Shop windows wore posters calling on people to end superstitious practices (one showed a coin on a coil of burning incense, implying that money spent on joss sticks is money profitlessly burnt). Traditional "round-ihe-Kang"* murals no longer depict scenes of filial piety but show "realistic" revolutionary hardship. In Peking, where chrysanthemums and purple cabbages once added daubs of color to the overwhelming grey of the city, the only flowers to be seen are in parks, under signs that read "The Chrysanthemum Is a Collective Flower." The cabbages are being salted down in jars in backyards—a sign that the Chinese believe vegetables will be scarce in the spring.
During the slow creep forward from the disastrous Great Leap six years ago, China's recovery has been uncertain all the way. Western economic analyses show China today at about the same level as 1957—with seven years of population growth adding to the burden. In most areas, the Chinese are still trying to transform a medieval economy into a late 19th century one. Typical of Chinese improvisation is a clever device recently developed for "mechanized" plowing of rice fields: the plow is dragged back and forth by barges sailing in canals at either end of the field.
Although China produces about as much food grain as the U.S., its population (700 million) is nearly four times as large, and Mao's regime must import 6,000,000 tons of grain a year merely to keep its people at subsistence level. Each year fully a third of Peking's convertible foreign exchange is spent on grain.
Aid from Trade. Still, Mao's hard-handed central planners have engineered some striking .gains in industry. Since the Korean War, steel production has increased 800% (still only a low 8-10 million tons a year, v. almost 40 million tons for Japan), coal output has tripled, and petroleum production is 20 times what it was then. As a result, China could within the next few years hope to produce enough fuel to keep its 2,900-plane air force flying for a change. In fact, Western intelligence sources claim that Red China's planes have been much more active in train ing flights over the past six months, indicating that fuel production has already increased considerably.
China has also received an economic boost from the West—through trade. Business between Red China and the non-Communist world rose 30% last year and now comprises more than half of China's total trade. Despite 14 years of U.S. objections, many of Washington's allies are serving Mao's purposes as suppliers and customers. Canada leads the imports list with $155 million in China trade, while Hong Kong and Malaysia took the largest amount of Chinese exports ($340 million). Japan, the object of much Chinese wooing over the past few years, bought $146 million worth of goods from Peking last year, while exporting $143 million to China. France, Britain, West Germany, Australia and Argentina also ranked high in trade with Peking.
Help from Puritans. This recovery from the Great Leap has emboldened Mao to draw up another Five Year Plan (after a three-year lapse) due to begin next year. But Mao knows that the greatest internal danger to his economy is population growth. Each year the Chinese increase in number by roughly 12 million—the equivalent of the population of Taiwan. To cut back on this score, China is once again advocating birth control, and early marriages are frowned upon. Couples who marry too early, in the Party's opinion, are likely to find themselves working hundreds of miles apart. Chinese "puritanism" helps too: boys and girls sleep in segregated dormitories, and block wardens keep a sharp eye out for hanky-panky in hallways or back alleys.
For all his slowly healing economy, Mao is hell-bent on developing a costly nuclear-strike capability. As Marshal Chen Yi once put it: "We'll build atomic bombs, no matter what—even if the job makes it necessary for us to go about without wearing pants." Last week Washington called a second Chinese bomb test imminent, and although the State Department remarked that the second bomb "would appear as of now to have no more military significance than the first," the Chinese might very-well drop the next bomb from a TU4 bomber rather than explode it on a test tower. That would give Mao a great psychological boost in the eyes of already intimidated Asians, hinting at the threat of Chinese delivery capacity.
All this aids Peking's most powerful weapon—subversion. The central agency for foreign subversion is the Party's United Front Work Department. Divided into internal and external, political, economic and military sections, U.F.W.D. seeks to win the favor of nonCommunist nationalists abroad, organizes innumerable friendship associations and cultural societies. As a rule, Peking avoids blatant takeovers of national movements, prefers to give them financial and arms support and help agitate against "imperialist" rule.
Being relatively new to the subversion game, Mao's men frequently make mistakes and are caught in embarrassing situations. In Burundi this month, a high-handed, totally undiplomatic Chinese embassy was expelled lock, stock and barrel, thus depriving Peking of its most important Central African base. But closer to home, China has done well, thanks to a small, skillful group of tirelessly traveling diplomats, headed by Premier Chou En-lai and his substantial shadow, Foreign Minister Chen Yi.
The Hatchet Man. Chen's personality is ideally suited to Peking's purpose: mercurial, cultured, tough, he can referee a pingpong match between Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah and Chou at Accra, dance with Mrs. Sukarno or talk "NEFOS" and "OLDEFOS" (New Emerging and Old Established Forces) with Mr. Sukarno in Djakarta. In Katmandu some years ago, he flew into a top-popping rage at an Indian reporter who was needling him about Tibet. Another time he delighted Japanese businessmen by mimicking Nikita Khrushchev—Chen's girth made him good casting for the part—growing Red-faced as he repeated Nikita's crack that China was "a mass of human flesh and nothing else." A U.S. reporter once buttonholed Chen and asked him whether China intended to recognize the U.S. Chen's answer: a jolly "No!"
In a sense, Chen Yi, 64, is an outsider who made it into the ranks of Red China's leadership by dint of energy and courage. The hard-core Chinese leaders—Mao, Premier Chou Enlai, President Liu Shao-chi, Marshal Chu Teh—all took part in the Long March, Mao's epic retreat from the Nationalist Armies in 1934. Chen stayed behind, south of the Yangtze River, hence never acquired that special patina of heroism of the Long Marchers. Chen was left behind for good cause: in the early 1930s, he supported an anti-Mao faction in Kiangsi province, and although Chen shrewdly changed horses later, Mao took a long time to forgive him.
As Mao's Kuai-tsu-shou (hatchet man), the rehabilitated Chen quelled a revolt in which hundreds died; during World War II he led Mao's Fourth Army across the Yangtze, later won several major victories in the Civil War, and in 1949 emerged—thanks to Mao —as the "conqueror" of East China. His tough, agile infantrymen chewed up dozens of Nationalist divisions. But for all his military success, Chen was afflicted with what the Chinese Communists call "liberalism"—a certain in ability to adapt to Mao's hard-boiled personal asceticism. Chen prefers Western suits to the stern, closed-collar pajamas affected by Mao, Chou and Liu, plays go (a Japanese game of strategy) like an expert—though one Japanese master found him "too hasty." In Shanghai some years ago, Chen's friendliness with Chekiang Opera Star Yuan Hsueh-feng was the talk of the Bund. He once said: "Without women, a guerrilla unit has no soul."
Like Mao, Chen is a poet, but his verses tend less toward ideology than his master's. In Geneva during the 1961-62 Laos peace talks, he wrote:
With the waters of the Rhone as my pillow
And facing the mountains of France,
Under the delectably cold moonlight
I forget my long trip.
The Options. Against this complex enemy, what are the U.S. choices? Despite Charles de Gaulle's belief that the U.S. and China are a pair of rigid giants locked in relentless struggle, the actions available are both multiple and mutable:
∙U.S. WITHDRAWAL from South Viet Nam would of course leave all of mainland Indo-China within Peking's reach. The U.S. might fall back on Thailand and still make quite a stand there, together with the plucky Thais and backed by U.S. offshore power. But this would depend on Thailand's willingness to bet its existence on U.S. determination and skill. After a U.S. retreat from South Viet Nam, not many would care to make such a bet. In short, withdrawal would largely destroy American credibility as a reliable anti-Communist ally—in Bangkok, in Seoul, in Manila and elsewhere. It would push Cambodia and Indonesia completely into China's lap. Malaysia would catch the brunt of this power realignment, thus forcing the British into a narrow, nasty corner. According to many experts, Russia would regret this move as much as the U.S., since it would immensely strengthen Peking's pretensions to the leadership of world Communism.
∙NEGOTIATED NEUTRALIZATION would only delay the effects of complete withdrawal. Right now, what is there to negotiate? The U.S. would have to insist on a non-Communist South Viet Nam. and this probably could be obtained only by 1) a foolproof international control, which is almost impossible to achieve; and 2) exclusion of the Communists from future South Vietnamese government, since "coalitions" including Reds usually end up all Red. But at present neither the Viet Cong nor their mentors in Hanoi or Peking have any reason to accept such terms. Thus any neutralization formula now possible would sooner or later deliver the Indo-Chinese peninsula to Communist domination.
∙TIT-FOR-TAT RESPONSE against North Vietnamese Communist nations and staging areas might inhibit both the Viet Cong and Hanoi to some extent. But essentially the policy of hitting North Viet Nam whenever the Viet Cone get too nasty leaves the initiative to the Communists and might at best maintain a shaky status quo. By itself it certainly could not change the course of the guerrilla war in the South sufficiently to send the U.S. into negotiations with a real, strong hand. Some of the top-ranking U.S. military commanders in Asia think it is high time the U.S. engaged in a little "tit-tit-tit for tat."
∙MEASURED RESPONSE aimed at hurting the North Vietnamese enough to keep them from supporting the Communist guerrillas in the South might show important results. This would necessitate more U.S. raids over the 17th parallel, launched 1) at will and not merely in retaliation; 2) at major targets, though perhaps still short of Hanoi. Such attacks would make sense only if coupled with hard, tough fighting against the Viet Cong. This might demand something close to the 10-1 troop ratio with which Britain beat the Reds in Malaya, hence additional U.S. ground forces in South Viet Nam. Judging by available intelligence, China is unlikely to join battle if U.S. troops enter South Viet Nam in force, though the North Vietnamese well-trained, 225,000-man army might. U.S. air and naval power could interdict the entry routes effectively enough to bloody the North Vietnamese army's nose, and the threat of bombing Hanoi—and the country's hard-won industrial complex along with it—might possibly keep the North Vietnamese out.
∙ATTACKING NORTH VIET NAM by bombing all major targets, including Hanoi, plus possibly sending in U.S. ground forces, would probably bring in the Chinese, if only for face reasons, and would probably also draw at least greatly stepped-up help from Soviet Russia. Nevertheless, some U.S. military men feel that the U.S. would be in a far better position than it was in Korea to fight successfully in North Viet Nam, and they favor such a course as the only one that would hurt the Communists badly enough to make, them accept an international deal the U.S. could tolerate.
∙BOMBING CHINA and its fledgling nuclear-production centers sounds tempting to some but is not now advocated by serious policymakers or experts. Whatever may be said in favor of "getting the war with China over now," before Peking achieves an effective nuclear-retaliatory force, such preventive war goes too heavily against American morals. Besides, Russia probably could not tolerate such a move despite its differences with Peking, and total war could result.
A Question of Patience. Letting go —either with all its force or through withdrawal—is clearly not the answer to America's Asian dilemma. No one relishes the risks involved in the var ious options available to the U.S. But to maintain its position in Southeast Asia, and ultimately perhaps in all Asia, the U.S. may sooner or later have to take the risk of war with China—care ful and calculated but still a risk. The U.S. held on to West Berlin and ejected Soviet missiles from Cuba only by a calculated risk of war with the Soviet Union. Short of an all-out nuclear holocaust, which would level American cities, China after all stands to lose much more from a war than the U.S. So long as the U.S. creates the impression that it will do anything in Southeast Asia short of facing the real enemy—either militarily or diplomatically—China can simply sit back and wait.
For 15 years the principal U.S. stand toward China has been not to recognize its Red regime. While there is no reason to change that stand at present, nonrecognition is no substitute for a policy. Since Korea, the U.S. in fact has developed not a China policy but a China mythology. One side of the myth holds that China is remorseless, implacable, omnipresent and possessed of warriors who love nothing better than to die in "human sea" at tacks. The other side holds that, like Russia and the satellites with whom the West has learned to live, Chinese Communists will in time grow softer, more reasonable. They may, although European Communism, superimposed on viable economies and workable political structures, is vastly different from the Asian variety. What is at stake in Asia is an undeveloped, politically shapeless region full of people who deserve better than the absence of chrysanthemums.
The West certainly cannot impose capitalism or democracy on Asia with the air of a crusader. But it can work toward building free economies and free societies, even if socialist concessions have to be made. Malaysia and Thailand represent viable, hopeful alternatives to Tibet and Burma. In the meantime, the U.S. must hang on—and then hang on some more—in Southeast Asia. The operative word is patience, and essentially, patience is an Asian word.
* The Kang is a raised, brick bed under which a fire is lighted to warm peasant homes; homey murals bedeck the surrounding walls.
TIME on China Dec 1, 1958: The Year of Leap
Monday, Dec. 01, 1958
The Year of the Leap
(See Cover)At night the sky over ten thousand villages glows red and gold with the glare cast by countless primitive blast furnaces of mud brick. In the fields lanterns as numerous as fireflies cast a softer light over "shock troops" fighting "night battles" to bring in bumper crops of rice, sweet potatoes and cotton. By 6:30 in the morning the clean-swept streets of the teeming cities resound to the chanting of millions of voices as clerks, factory hands and bureaucrats, all clad in blue boiler suits, perform the mass calisthenics that herald the beginning of another ten-to twelve-hour working day.
These were the sights and sounds of Red China this week in the midst of its "Great Leap Forward''—the sights and sounds of a nation in the throes of an economic and social convulsion unparalleled in modern history. Ten years ago, in what seemed only a provocative flight of fancy, left-wing British Author George Orwell conjured up in his novel 1984 a nightmare vision of the ultimate totalitarian state: "In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy—everything. Already . . . no one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer. But in the future there will be no wives and no friends. Children will be taken from their mothers at birth as one takes eggs from a hen . . . There will be no loyalty, except loyalty to the party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother."
Sorry Awakening. Today, a quarter of a century ahead of Orwell's timetable, a plump peasant who was born a subject of the Dragon Throne, is well on his way to converting Orwellian nightmare into reality in the world's most populous nation. In the past eight months, Mao Tse-tung has herded more than 90% of mainland China's 500 million peasants into vast human poultry yards called "people's communes." If Mao's historic gamble succeeds, the ordinary Chinese of day after tomorrow will have no fixed job, no home and no real family.
"Let China sleep," warned Napoleon nearly a century and a half ago. "When she awakens the world will be sorry." Eying the path along which Mao proposes to lead an awakened China, most of the world, if not yet sorry, is already apprehensive. In Warsaw recently a Communist editor nervously reflected that "the entire Polish nation represents little more than a slight miscalculation in Chinese population statistics for one year." In the U.S. some thoughtful men argue that within a generation the U.S. will be helping bolster Soviet defenses against Communist China. Writing in London's New Statesman, British Socialist M.P. Richard Grossman reports that he came back from a trip through Red China convinced that "Chinese Communism is far the biggest and far the most formidable mass movement in human history''—a movement which "within the next decade" may transfer the center of the world to Peking.
Exaggerated though such fears may be, they are not frivolous. As recently as World War II Winston Churchill could impatiently dismiss as "unrealistic" U.S. insistence that China have big-power status. Yet today, barely 15 years later. Red China is universally acknowledged as the most formidable military power in Asia, can throw into action at any time more jet planes (over 2,000) and more troops (over 2,000,000) than all the rest of the East Asian powers combined. Within the Communist bloc, when China speaks, Khrushchev listens.
The Glowing Image. More than any other government in the world today. Red China is the long shadow of one man. At 65, Chairman-Mao Tse-tung is at once China's emperor, pope and father image. Like Stalin in his heyday, Mao is quoted as the ultimate authority on ideology, military science, steel production, poetry, art, and the uses of fertilizer. Every proclaimed achievement begins with the phrase "Thanks to Chairman Mao." His public appearances arouse excitement bordering on hysteria, evoke near tearful tributes to his "affectionate and kindly gaze.'' Nor are foreigners immune to his spell: Brazilian Sculptor Maria Martins recalls him as "a glowing image—a genius in terms of 20th century politics and a sage out of ancient China."
When he is not touring his domain dispensing advice to athletes, farmers and lady cops, Mao lives with his fourth wife, exActress Lan Ping, and two teen-age daughters in the Imperial City's "Perpetuating Harmony House." No lover of regular office hours, he works either at home or, in good weather, in a tent set up in the park outside. Once a heavy smoker (50 or more British 555s a day), he now, on doctor's orders, confines himself to a pack a day, keeps fit by swimming in a luxurious pool in the Imperial City. For relaxation he writes classical Chinese poetry—a pastime his regime is otherwise discouraging by switching Chinese from their traditional ideographs to a Romanized alphabet.
For all his scholarly air, Mao is almost totally ignorant of science (which he dislikes) and, by the testimony of one of his former teachers, is "terrible at mathematics." Except for whatever he may have picked up on two brief trips to Moscow, he knows the world outside China only at secondhand, and according to Chang Kuo-tao, once his colleague on the Chinese Communist Politburo, he is a poor administrator ("Vague about details and has a rather poor memory about people who are not constantly around him"). Essentially, Mao's world is an imaginary one—a curious melange of Chinese monarchical concepts and Marxist ideology. And behind the benevolent, Buddha-like gaze lie vast personal ambition and ruthless purpose. To a sentimental intellectual who once suggested that "Communism is Love," Mao replied: "No, comrade, Communism is not love; it is a hammer which we use to destroy the enemy."
The Cave Dweller. Mao Tse-tung, who was born in the farming village of Shao Shan in the "rice bowl" province of Hunan, hated his father, a "rich," i.e., solvent, peasant who beat his sons often, gave them, as Mao bitterly remembers, "no money and the most meager food." After drifting through half a dozen schools. Mao at 24 got a job as assistant to Li Ta-chao, the Marxist librarian of Peking University, and finally found his hammer. In May 1921, he was one of twelve men who met in Shanghai to organize the Chinese Communist Party, though, according to one of his cronies, he "seemed to know little about Marxism."
In 1924 when the Chinese Communists, at Joseph Stalin's order, formed a coalition with the Kuomintang, Mao went along dutifully enough. But he was not convinced by Stalin's insistence that the Communist revolution must base itself on China's negligible urban proletariat. And when Chiang Kai-shek in a lightning stroke against his erstwhile allies all but wiped out the Chinese Communist Party in April 1927, Mao set out for his native Hunan to test his heretical belief that a successful Communist revolution in China must be based on the peasantry.
Mao's first, unauthorized attempt to organize a peasant uprising promptly got him expelled from the Chinese Communist Politburo. But within four years his "Chinese Soviet Republic," headquartered in a Buddhist temple on rugged Chingkan Mountain in Kiangsi province, was the most powerful Communist force in China. Five times Chiang Kai-shek's armies launched "campaigns of extermination" against the Communists; finally, in 1934, Mao's troops broke through the Nationalist lines and began their epic, 6,000-mile Long March to desolate Yenan in North China. When they reached their remote destination after fighting their way over 18 mountain ranges, less than a quarter of the 90,000 men who had begun the march were left. Of this remnant—and hence of the Chinese Communist Party—Mao was the unchallenged leader.
In the early Yenan years Mao, like most of his followers, lived in a cave. But from this rude lair, Mao succeeded in forcing Chiang Kai-shek to accept the Communists as allies in the "patriotic war" against Japan. Mao himself was primarily interested in profiting from chaos. "Our determined policy," he explained, "is 70% self-development, 20% compromise, and 10% fight the Japanese." Result was that in 1945 when Chiang Kai-shek emerged from his wartime back-country capital of Chungking, his power was largely confined to China's big cities; Communist forces, now over a million strong, roamed the countryside almost at will. The U.S. spectacularly failed in a politically naive postwar effort to bring Communists and Nationalists together, and by December 1949, what was left of Chiang's shattered armies was fleeing to Formosa.
The Creation of Peace. The nation that Mao had seized was devastated by twelve years of war and revolution, and it was cursed with a primitive economy—though not so primitive as China's present masters like to pretend. Mao inherited from the Japanese a major coal and steel complex in Manchuria and from the Nationalists considerable light industry as well as the Yumen oilfield—still China's biggest. Under Nationalist rule China's industrial production had risen 80% between 1933 and 1945. By the time Mao appeared, the stage was set for a Chinese industrial revolution comparable to that experienced by Japan in the 1880s or Germany under Bismarck. All that was missing was peace and a strong, central government.
These conditions Mao proceeded to create. In late 1952 Communist Minister of Finance Po Ipo publicly admitted that the Reds had liquidated 2,000,000 "bandits" in the preceding three years. Some Western experts calculate that 14 million Chinese were executed during the land-reform campaign of 1951 alone.
Today, with that sort of wholesale terror past but still a vivid memory, China is ruled by a weapon sometimes called "brute reason"—the knowledge that each man has no alternative. On trains, in city squares and village centers, loudspeakers blare away from dawn till midnight, urging China's millions not to spit in the street, and to "work hard for a few years, live happily for a thousand." In schools, factories and offices the walls are plastered layers deep with painstakingly handwritten posters of exhortation and criticism: "Professor Chen's teaching methods are strictly reactionary."
To ignore this barrage is impossible, since privacy has all but disappeared in China. One Shanghai factory manager during last year's "rectification" campaign spent four hours of every working day in group political discussions. And every Chinese city dweller lives under the baleful eye of a "street committee," most often run by a self-important woman. Wives are encouraged to write posters drawing attention to their husbands' shortcomings—and do. With depressing frequency newspapers throughout China carry reports such as the following: "Young Wei Kuo-chu, a student at Shin Tung High School, Shanghai, is cited and congratulated for having denounced his father as a counter-revolutionary.''
Once uncovered, a "reactionary"' is subjected to "re-education." His neighbors, his friends and his professional colleagues all "reason" with him, urge him not to drive them to the extreme step of ostracizing him. One particularly stubborn Shanghai writer managed to stand up to ten such sessions before he caved in.
The Crucial Question. While making his subjects more malleable under the never-ending blows of the Communist hammer, Mao also went to work on the Chinese economy. In exchange for technical help and machinery, he shipped out to Russia antimony, tin, tungsten and, above all, desperately needed food. Of the $2.2 billion in "aid" that China has received from the U.S.S.R. since 1950, almost none of it was a genuine gift; the $300 million surplus that China expects to run this year in its trade with the U.S.S.R. will go to pay off past Soviet loans.
By last year the combination of Russian machinery and Chinese toil had boosted China's steel production from a prewar peak of 1,800,000 tons to 5,350,000 tons, raised coal production from the Nationalist record of 62 million tons to 130 million tons. And this, according to Peking, is only prelude. Hailing 1958 as the year of "the great leap forward," the Chinese Reds took as their primary slogan: "Overtake Britain in production in 15 years." and after revising production targets ever upward, claimed that by the end of this year China would have produced 10.7 million tons of steel—double last year's figure. More breath-taking yet was their claim that production of edible grains would soar to 350 million tons, 90% over last year.
Peking's statistics are suspect, but 1958 figures, noted a British economist, "defy belief and baffle logic." But even if Communist figures could be trusted, Red China still has a long way to go before claiming to be a modern industrial state. Mainland China's rate of industrial growth last year was only half that of Japan's. By the end of its current six-year plan, Japan will have acquired new productive capacity greater than that of all the industrial plant Mao's China now has. The Chinese Communists have yet to produce an all-Chinese jet; their vaunted Manchurian "Detroit" still builds only a few thousand trucks a year, plus an occasional prototype "East Wind" automobile. And despite boasts to the contrary, all indications are that Chinese petroleum reserves are painfully scant. (Production last year: 1.46 million tons v. the U.S.'s 353.6 million tons.)
China's overriding economic problem is not its scarcity of resources but its oversupply of people. Population, now put at 653 million, is increasing by about 15 million a year. At this rate, there will be a billion Chinese by 1980, more than 2 billion by the turn of the century. In terms of per-capita production, Mao's China still lags far behind Japan or Formosa (see chart). Worse yet, despite mammoth irrigation and reclamation projects, population growth has cut the amount of cultivated land per person in Red China from .462 acres in 1953 to .429 acres in 1958.
Mao and his planners first sought to arrest China's inexorable march of population by birth-control propaganda, loudspeaker exhortations and traveling exhibits that featured crudely explicit diagrams and extolled the virtues of contraceptive devices, including something called "Healthy Pleasure Honey." All this hue and cry had no appreciable effect on the birth rate. Soon birth-control advocates found themselves accused of the heinous crime of "neo-Malthusianism," and China's teeming manpower became officially no longer a problem but the nation's greatest asset.
The Volunteers. To feed so many mouths, and to get work out of so many bodies, Mao decided on the ruthless and revolutionary device of the people's commune—a system of forced collectivization of human beings which the Russians abandoned as impractical in 1933. Rural people's communes, the first of which appeared in Honan province last April, sometimes have as many as 300,000 members, in most cases absorb the whole population of a county—peasants, traders, students, officials and professional men. Upon "volunteering" to join a commune, members turn over to it virtually all their private property, including homes, garden plots and heavy tools. Once in the commune, members cease to have a regular trade, become all-purpose production units. In Honan's pilot Sputnik Commune (which occupies an area two-thirds the size of Long Island), 43,000 members are divided into 27 "production corps" and 87 smaller "production battalions." At harvest time almost everyone is sent into the fields. In slack agricultural seasons or in their "spare time" they are put to dam building, construction of primitive factories, or industrial labor. All members of the commune get regular military training, and even when not on duty they must move by the numbers. At Chao Ying commune in Honan, according to an enthusiastic Red newsman, "assembly bells ring and whistles blow at daybreak. In about a quarter of an hour the peasants line up. At the command of company and squad leaders, the teams march to the fields, holding flags. One no longer sees peasants in groups of two or three smoking and going slowly and leisurely to the fields. The desultory living habits of thousands of years are gone forever."
Gone, too, is any notion of personal life or freedom of choice. Instead of a share of what they produce, commune members get wages fixed by a ruling committee of party activists. At Sputnik Commune, 260 mess halls have been set up where members are fed free rice. These communal kitchens, plus communal nurseries and "mending brigades," relieve the wives of members from "dull and trivial housework," transform women, too, into all-purpose laborers. (The sole concession made to femininity: pregnant women get a month off work with half pay.) Even the old folks, for whom the commune has established "Happy Homes," are kept busy with scheduled chores, such as feeding the chickens. And in at least one Kwangtung commune, when the inhabitants of the Happy Homes die, their bodies are dropped into a chemically treated pool and converted to fertilizer.
By last week,there were nearly 25,000 communes; their membership, at least on paper, comprised more than 90% of China's peasantry. The movement is now spreading to the cities. At Yangchuan coal mine in Shansi province, where more than 28,000 miners and their families formerly lived in "an unorganized, undisciplined manner." i.e., scattered around as they chose, workers have now been assigned to living quarters according to their work areas and shifts; according to Peking's People's Daily, "the head of a mine pit is simultaneously company commander of the militia and head of a row of rooms in the living quarters." Meanwhile, the miners' wives and teen-age children have been put to work running 40 new "industrial enterprises," including a cement factory. Logical next step at Yangchuan (and already in operation in some Red Chinese factories) is the "Saturday-night system," under which a married woman worker lives in a factory dormitory, is alone with her husband only on the odd Saturday night when she has the use of a dormitory room all to herself.
Tartars & Tonnage. For Red China's agricultural planners the commune system has obvious advantages: constantly under the eye of the commune's "activists," Chinese peasants will no longer be able to evade forced deliveries of crops to the government. More important, all of China's farmers can be forced to adopt improved techniques, such as deep plowing (as much as 3 ft.) and massive use of natural fertilizer, which have given Communist experimental farms per-acre rice yields twice as big as Japan's highest.
Through the communes, Mao also hopes to solve China's serious underemployment by building up vast cottage industries. Communes are now in the midst of a mass drive to produce pig iron and steel in tiny handmade blast furnaces of a kind developed by Chinese artisans in the Middle Ages. In China's desolate northern marches Mongol and Tartar women sweat over more than 5,000 furnaces which they have built in the last few weeks, and in Honan 440,000 furnaces (operated by peasants who have already put in a ten-hour day in the fields) allegedly turned out 300,000 tons of steel in October alone.
Western steelmen find it hard to credit Communist claims that such operations accounted for 30% of Red China's steel production in October. They are convinced, too, that the steel produced by these methods is of a low quality suitable only for the most primitive construction and the manufacture of agricultural implements. But Red China is headlong in its ambition to do-it-yourself.
Kill That Tiger! The xenophobia that in 1793 led the Emperor Ch'ien Lung to consider British Ambassador Lord Macartney a "Red barbarian bearing tribute," is still very much alive in China. "Westerners," says Foreign Minister Chen Yi, smiling faintly, "used to say Chinese were dirty. We were called an inferior race. Are we inferior now?"
Inevitably the U.S., as the most powerful of Western nations, has been declared the focus of Chinese hatred and resentment. With an ignorant arrogance that could have disastrous consequences for the world, Peking's rulers dismiss the U.S. as a "paper tiger," pooh-pooh the U.S. H-bomb. Four years ago Red China's War Minister confidently told Sam Watson, former chairman of the British Labor Party: "Even if 200 million of us were killed, we would still have 400 million left." Mao himself makes no bones of his ambition to "drive the U.S. out of East Asia," recently told a Brazilian journalist: "We must attack the tiger again and again until we finally kill it."
All for Australia. Dangerous as it may be for the non-Communist world, Red China's rise to great-power status is no unmixed blessing to Soviet Russia. Many Chinese visibly resent their industrial dependence on the Soviets. Even Mao, by stressing the fact that all Russian "aid" has been paid for by China, emphasizes the U.S.S.R.'s niggardliness. The bellicose men of Peking also realize that Russia has not yet seen fit to supply them with atomic weapons.
Ideologically, too, there are tensions between Peking and Moscow. Chinese Reds privately consider Khrushchev a waverer whose understanding of Marxism-Leninism leaves much to be desired. "The Russians are always blundering," one Chinese Communist loftily told British Journalist Dennis Bloodworth. "Weak Soviet policy was responsible for the Hungarian revolution and the trouble in Poland." Not having been afraid of differing from Stalin, Mao has never hesitated to differ from the Johnny-come-latelys now in authority in Moscow. The Russians officially proclaim Mao to be "a major Marxist-Leninist theoretician,'' but his writings are not required reading among Russian party members, and his major pronouncements are dutifully printed without endorsement or criticism. An embarrassed silence greets Mao's current claim that his people's communes will bring true Communism to China in the foreseeable future, since after 41 years the Russians have yet to make such a leap to "true Communism."
What the Russians have to fear from Mao's China is not that it will desert to the West or "pull a Tito," but that it will one day seize leadership of the Communist world. In public, Russian leaders are determinedly cheerful about their relations with Peking, but three weeks ago U.S. Pundit Walter Lippmann returned from a trip to Moscow to report that Russian reactions to China's "great leap forward" varied between "awe and anxiety." The vast geographical vacuum between the two countries is being competitively filled—by Khrushchev's reclamation of the Central Asian "virgin lands," and by China's intensive colonization of Sinkiang province, once a Soviet zone of influence. When Britain's Sam Watson forecast to Khrushchev that the Chinese would one day flood either north into Siberia or south into Australia, Khrushchev's reply was: "I'm all in favor of Australia."
Diminishing Rice Bowl. The central fact about Mao's China today, however, is that the bogeyman that in varying degrees haunts both the U.S. and Russia is still largely a bogeyman. If Peking's current statistics are questionable, its basic economic assumptions are even more so. That cottage industry can ever play a major role in transforming China into a modern industrial state is doubtful. As Peking has begun to admit, many of the mud-brick blast furnaces are vastly wasteful of coal and are located too far from major industrial centers to be of much value. And the rosy agricultural future that Mao promises does not take into account the possibility of repeated bad harvests ("Weather no longer counts in China"), or the fact that there is presumably a finite limit to the amount of food a given area of ground can produce ("There are no low-yield crops, only low-yield thoughts").
Best guess of many Western specialists is that within a decade or so Red China will reach the day when its food supply is inadequate for its population, even by low Chinese diet standards. If the rice bowl grows much emptier, Mao's promises of a glittering future may cease to assuage his subjects.
The outburst of student rioting and anti-Communist statements that followed Mao's abortive "Hundred Flowers" attempt at liberalization last year (TIME, May 27 et seq.) was clear evidence that the regime had forfeited the enthusiasm of the intellectuals. Mao's response—to treat all intellectuals as suspect and force them into "remedial" manual labor by the hundreds of thousands—may produce obedience, but hardly provides the climate for intellectual creativity. The great, vast public, foreign observers report, seems more resigned to its lot, and even grateful for the orderliness that keeps warlords from swooping down on farmers to steal their harvests. But in a nation that has only a paper-thin economic surplus to invest in industrial growth, a loss of mass enthusiasm and a consequent drop in production could be no less deadly than active popular resistance.
At a diplomatic turnout in Peking a year ago, Mao peered up at a towering Briton and jovially remarked: "It's not that you are so tall. It is just that we, at the moment, are too short." That Mao has started China growing again is a fact of incalculable importance. If human beings can be reduced to mindless production-line cogs, Red China may one day achieve the stature for which its rulers yearn. But, so far. the crucial elements of Chinese Communist power are still supplied by Russia. It was not Chinese strength but the fear of Russian involvement that ultimately led the U.S. to deny itself the means to victory in Korea. The smattering of glittering modern factories in China is also courtesy of Russia. And as Mao Tse-tung himself said almost a decade ago, so long as China must rely economically on foreign countries it will not be truly independent, far less a great power.
—-An all-purpose title since Mao is simultaneously chairman of 1) the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, 2) the Politburo oi the Chinese Communist Party, 3) the Central People's Government of the People's Republic of China, 4) the Council of National Defense.
林彪兵法 16 [中国人民的三年民族解放战争]
16 [中国人民的三年民族解放战争]
中国人民的三年民族解放战争林彪
四亿五千万中国人民为了中国的自由和民族独立，已经进行了三年英勇的卫国战争。
中国人民反抗日本侵略者的正义的、进步的战争也具有国际意义。中国人民的战争在一
定程度上制 止了欧洲帝国主义战争的扩大。目前，由于战争使日本帝国主义受到了削弱，因
此，它也制止了远东和 太平洋区域大战的扩大。中国人民的战争加速了殖民地和半殖民地国
家民族解放运动的发展，并且在全 世界被压迫人民面前展示了伟大的前景。
一九三七年七月七日，当日本军阀开始在中国作战时，曾指望实现“闪电战和闪电式的胜
利”。它 们曾经狂叫：“为了征服全中国，只要派出二十万到三十万的部队，二至三个月内问
题就可解决。”
中国三年的战争说明了什么呢？日本帝国主义在中国实行闪电战的计划已经垮台。中国
尽管经济落 后，尽管政治与军事虚弱，但能联合国内的一切进步力量，不仅坚决抵抗敌人，
而且迫使日本接受旨在 消耗其经济和人力资源的持久战的战略和战术。
为了夺取中国的首都，日本人用了二、三个月的时间，为了夺取汉口、广州和其它中心
城市，用了 一年多的时间。但是，日本人征服了中国没有？没有！
如果看一看中国的地图，那么，骤然看起来，好象日本占领了大部分国土。但在实际
上，在所谓占 领区的九百个县中，事实上只有近一百个县在日本人手中，而且包括日本帝国
主义者还在这次战争开始 前已侵占的河北省的四十二个县。日本人仅在大城市以及铁路和交
通线沿线胡作非为，按中国人的说法 ，就是仅仅占领了点和线，而其余部分的领土或是完全
掌握在中国人的手中；或者是游击队活动的场所 ，游击队在那里阻止日本人开发和掠夺占领
区。
日本司令部被迫年年增加在中国的部队数量，但是日本部队在中国国内的推进速度逐年
降低。在战 争的第一年，日本人在中国的推进纵深达一千八百公里，在第二年是三百一十公
里，而在战争的第三年 ，尽管他们，不惜一切力量，也只推进了不超过三百公里。日军在中
国的一个严重弱点是部队分散在广 阔的战线上，战线总长度超过四千公里，交通线特长。
在战争的第一年，日本曾向中国派出了二十五个师，总人数达六十至七十万人。目前，
日本在中国 保持三十三个师，人数超过一百万人。
如果说在战争的第一年，日本人使用了三分之一的在华军队来围剿游击队，那么在战争
的第二年和 第三年，他们就被迫投入了几乎在华日军的一半，对付占领区日益发展的游击运
动，丰要是对付在华北 作战的八路军。
根据中华民国国防部长何应钦在一次报告中引用的材料，日本人在三年战争中的总损失
达到一百六 十万人。尽管战役规模减小，但日本人的损失却年年增加。这里需要考虑到日本
可动员的人力资源不超 过六百万人。中国在战争中的损失约为二百万人，而它的可动员的人
力资源是四千到四千五百万人。
中国空军总司令周至柔不久前宣称，在今年四月三十日前击毁日本飞机八百四十八架，其中二百五 十六架飞机由中国飞行员击落，二百五十三架飞机在地面摧毁，而其余的由高射炮击毁。在中国共击毙 一千零五十五名日本飞行员，有五十一名飞行员被俘，四十二名飞行员失踪。
日本在华军队的士气和战斗力年年降低。在战争的第一年，日本士兵作战很顽强，通常是不投降的 ，但在第二年，尤其是在战争的第三年，中国军队的各个部队不止一次地缴了日本兵的械，俘虏他们， 还发生了日本士兵携械投奔到中国国民军方面来的情况。
至于傀儡政府目前拥有的总数达五十万人的部队，他们往往一有机会就自动起义反对他们的指挥部 ，并且携带武器投奔到中国军队方面来。在今年三月上海出版的英文报纸《华北每日新闻》上曾写道， 投奔到中国军队方面来的伪军不少于十五万人。
这样，同日本统治者的预想相反，日本陷入了同联合成民族统一战线的中国人民的大战之中。日本 首相近卫文麿于一九三八年秋就被迫承认：“应当抛掉快速和轻易战胜中国的幻想，要准备应付极端的 困难，并动员日本民族的一切力量。”日本陆军部长板垣征四郎将军当时也说：“在中国的战争还将延 续十年。”今年五月，前首相米内在东京的警察首脑会议上讲话时也承认：“达到在中国取得最后胜利 还非常远。”
日本当权集团尽管取得了局部的胜利，但仍被迫改变军事计划，开始寻求战争的出路。
正是由于这 个缘故，近卫文麿首相才在一九三八年十一月发表了关于建立“东亚新秩序”的“和平”宣言，企图使 中国政府接受投降的和平。日本人的方针是，“用中国人自己的手征服中国。”
在近卫文麿宣言发表以后，日本对中国展开了大规模的经济与政治攻势，虽然，众所周知，它也并 没有停止军事行动。但日本人不再采用象战争第一年那样的在所有战线上进行广泛的进攻。
一九四０年上半年前线的形势明显地证明，日军的进攻力量在进一步削弱，即使下述事实也可说明 这点：一九三九年十一月二十四日，日本人在南线占领了南宁，而在一九四０年元月，日军的主要部队 沿宾阳方向移动，二月二日宾阳被日本人占领。但是，在中国部队的进攻下，日军损失二万人，被迫由 宾阳撤退，而中国军队二月十七日就逼近南宁城下了。
在一九四０年的最近几个月（四月至六月），在华中战场上发生了激烈的战斗。日本司令部向那里 调去了大的兵团。按照中国军队的军政委员会长官陈诚将军的意见，在湖北和河南省的战斗中，日本人 伤亡达五万五千人，中国人缴获二千六百匹马，八十辆坦克和两千辆汽车。陈诚说：“中国部队的成绩 证明日本人不能进行大的战役。”
为了“用中国人自己的手征服中国”，日本着手建立傀儡政府。这些努力的结果是建立了汪精卫的 “中央政府”。应当说，甚至在日本国内，一些政治集团也不相信汪精卫能够解决摆在他面前的问题。 例如，一九三九年秋，著名的日本活动家阿布信行（后来日本政府首相），在他的一次讲演中说：“即 使日本同各第三国家的关系得到调整，即使汪精卫能够完全地在中国建立起自己的政权，中国事变的原 则基础仍将不会消除。”
日本占领者企图通过培植各种不同的“群众组织”，来为自己的傀儡政府和汪精卫建立群众基础。 他们力图在政治、科学、艺术、宗教、道德等方面，用传播亲日观点的方法，来影响中国的舆论。同时 ，加强了日本代理人在民族统一战线阵营中的破坏活动，力图从内部破坏民族战线。他们组织反对中国 爱国人士的破坏活动和恐怖活动。日本为力求使中国投降，
利用欧洲战争产生的形势，极力设法使中国 与外界完全隔绝。
对中国也展开了经济攻势。日本帝国主义者竭力使自己的“军事企业”即在中国的战争转向独特的 经济核算制。日本帝国主义在占领区的经济政策，是要在这里寻找到和动员到尽可能多的战争物质资源 和资本。为了实现日本经济“复兴”的计划，日本康采恩需要在当地“寻求到”大量的资本。
采用威胁和许诺取得高额利润的办法，汪精卫企图使中国的资本家与日本的康采恩合作。不久前， 日军在华总司令西尾寿造将军曾发布命令，把曾由日本人夺取的部分中国企业交回愿与日本经济合作、 准备参加“联合公司”的原主。这里应该指出，某些中国资本家，特别是买办资产阶级中间的某些资本 家，立即作出响应，并与日本康采恩合作。
日本帝国主义的这一措施的目的是，借助中国资产阶级，对中国的敌占区加紧抢劫性的剥削，把战 争的全部重担移到中国人民的肩上，并以此实现其“以战养战”的口号。
但是，中国人民愈来愈坚决地、勇敢地反对日本侵略者的政策，极力反抗掠夺中国的物质资源。在 这方面，占领区的工人表现得特别积极，他们往往离开企业到游击队中去。他们违抗一切禁令，组织罢 工，使日本帝国主义者遭受了不小的损失。在日本人占领的城市——上海和天津，去年曾举行了一些大 的罢工。仅在一九三九年的十二月，在上海就发生了二十次罢工。在上海和天津，召开了工人大会，大 会坚决抗议汪精卫的“中央政府”，并且在通过的号召书中号召所有工人不服从新 “政府”。
日本占领了中国所有最重要的城市，经济和政治中心，大的港口，主要的铁路、运河和内河干线， 并封锁了中国的全部沿海地带。
那么，如何解释不是中国、而是日本要极力设法实现“和平”和尽快停止战争呢？
当然，不是日本帝国主义者，而是中国人民，它的政府希望取得能够保证国家自由和民族独立的真 正的和平。但是，中国人民和它的政府知道，他们不是用投降和妥协，而是经过顽强的斗争才能够取得 这样的和平。他们知道，为此需要持久战，只有这样的战争能够彻底消耗敌人的经济和军事资源，最终 把侵略者驱逐出中国。
中国的战争拖延得愈久，日本内部的经济和政治困难就愈加尖锐，它的胜利就愈加变成得不偿失的 胜利。
三年的战争强烈地动摇了日本的经济，从战争一开始，日本的军费已用去一百八十八亿五千五百万 日元。日本在一九三九至一九四０年的军事预算与一九三一至一九三二年比铰，从四亿五千四百万日元 增至七十一亿二千四百万日元，即增加十四倍。军费开支占一九三九至一九四０年整个国家预算的百分 之七十三。战争期间，国债由一百亿日元增至二百四十亿日元，即增加一倍半。
同时，日本的黄金储备消耗殆尽。日本大量需要战略原料（日本由国外输入的铁占总消耗量的百分 之七十六，石油占百分之九十二，有色金属占百分之七十，棉花占百分之九十八，羊毛占百分之九十五 ，橡胶占百分之百，等等），经过三年战争，几乎消耗了战前和战争期间的黄金储备以及从人民中没收 来的相当数量的黄金，计二十亿金日元以上。从战争开始到一九三九年底，日本对外贸易的入超达二十 一亿六千九百万日元。
日本的战争经费从那里来？在中国进行战争的经费，目前是依*发行新的公债、税收和发行货币。 货币发行额由一九三七年的十五亿日元增加到一九四０年初的三十五亿日元。
日本国内公债，一九三七年发行十四亿八千五百万日元，一九三八年为四十三亿五千六百万日元， 一九三九年是五十二亿八千万日元，而在一九四０年为六十亿日元。在一九四０年中，按人口计算每人 平均担负了八十五点六日元公债，同时，纺织工人的年平均工资约二百至二百五十日元，由此清楚地说 明，强力推行的公债压在日本人民群众肩上的担子是多么沉重。在战争期间，日本的直接和间接税，从 一九三七年的十六亿八千万日元增到一九四０年的三十九亿一千万日元，仅直接税就增加了百分之二十 五至三十。
对劳动人民的剥削增加到空前的程度，日本大多数工人的工作日劳动时间延长到十一至十二小时， 四分之一以上的工人每天工作十四小时。
劳动人民由于国家粮食的极端困难，生活状况恶化。特别是感觉到农产品的不足。这是由于农业劳 动力的不足，牲畜总头数的急剧减少，农具的不足，耕地面积的减少等等引起的。所有商品，特别是日 用品的价格增涨。
所有这一切，引起了反战和革命情绪的高涨。当权阶级用残酷的迫害，试图镇压这种情绪。例如， 仅在东京，根据官方的材料，在一九三八年披指控为反战活动而被捕的就达一万三千人。日本军队中的 反战情绪也在增涨。在好些情况下，军队中的不满，表现为拒不接受司令部命令，甚至发生士兵骚动。
很清楚，日本的国内情况迫使它要尽快地结束在中国的战争。当前整个国际形势也迫使日本帝国主 义采取这样的政策。日本力图从欧洲战争中得到好处，它不仅力图在中国巩固下来，而且要夺取印度支 那，暹罗、印度尼西亚，或者至少要在这些地区站住脚。如果形势有利，甚至在菲律宾、香港和缅甸也 这样干。这就是为什么日本帝国主义者想迫使中国投降，使自己尽快解脱在中国的双手。这也较好地说 明了日本内阁发生变动（米内辞职，近卫内阁接任）的原固。
中国人民及其政府不顾一切困难，不投降，继续抗击日本帝国主义者。
用什么来说明，装备不好并且由于多年内战而削弱了的中国人民，能够顽强地抗击装备好得多的敌 人，并有成效地进行着民族解放战争呢？首先，这是由于国家的一切进步力量联合成民族统一战线。应 当直截了当地说，如果在被内部矛盾而分裂着的中国，不建立起民族统一战线，那么中国就不可能在三 年过程中抵抗日本帝国主义者。
民族统一战线是根据共产党的倡议建立的。早在一九三一年，当日本人占领了满洲时，中国共产党 就提山停止内战，联合中国一切武装力量驱逐日本侵略者出满洲。一九三五年八月，当日本企图夺取河 北省时，共产党号召人民及所有中国军队，联合民族的一切力量，反对日本侵略。此后，共产党又不止 一次地提出建立抗日民族统一战线的建议。在西安事变时（一九三六年十二月），中国共产党防止了新 的大规模内战爆发，并且奠定了民族统一战线的基础。
最后，一九三七年九月，在日本人侵入华北和华中、夺取了北平和天津两个月以后，国民党采纳了 中国共产党关于为了抗日，相互合作的建议。一九三七年九月二十三日，蒋介石先生说：“在民族生存 的危急关头，只有本民族联合起来的力量，能够战胜日本帝国主义。”
在两大政党——国民党和共产党建立合作以后，中国其它的政党和派别参加了民族统一战线。国家 的一切进步力量团结在以最高统帅蒋介石为首的中央政府的周围。
中国开始作战时，没有统一的军队和统一的司令部。除南京政府控制的中央军外，还有红军和许多 地方部队，这些部队多年来互相敌视。中央军，尤其是地方部队训练和装备均不好。中国的军队那时总 共约有六百架过时的飞机，枪支、炮弹、子弹不够用。
在民族解放战争的最初几个月，一切中国军队服从统一的司令部。在国民政府的领导下，在动员人 民群众参军和军训方面做了大量的工作。仅广西一省就动员三百万人参加军训，四川省有五百万人。云 南省派到前线的有二十多万经过训练的战士。在湖南省，从十八岁到三十六岁的男子均经过军训。在湖 南、湖北、江西、广东、陕西、甘肃、河南省动员和训练了四百万人。游击区人民的军训工作成绩特别 大。
在驻有八路军（其前身为红军）的游击区，甚至儿童也帮助军队做工作，当交通员和侦察兵。妇女 们从事卫生方面的工作，不少妇女在经过军事训练后，与男子一样，自愿奔赴前线，仅在晋察冀边区就 有三百万人经过军事训练。
在组织游击斗争和建立游击区方面，八路军起了特别大的作用。
八路军的一支部队，在聂荣臻指挥下，在晋察冀边区开展了游击战争。在一年过程中，这支部队参 加了八十次大小战斗，打退了日本人的多次进攻，并钳制了华北的大部日军。现在晋察冀地区成为最大 的游击根据地，控制着七十多个县，十万平方公里的土地，有一千二百万左右的人口。
八路军的另一支部队在贺龙指挥下，在山西省的西北地区作战，在那里也建立了游击根据地，根据 地控制三十个县，有约二百万人口。
由朱德直接领导的八路军的一支部队，在山西、河南地区作战。这里游击队控制了六十至七十个县 。八路军的这些部队给予另外在徐州、武汉地区作战的中国军队以大力支援。他们与日本人作战一百多 次，并且不只一次地突破了敌人的包围。在一九三八年四月，这部分八路军打退了日本军队大兵团在九 个不同地点同时发动的进攻。
此外，八路军司令部还建立了—些武装的队伍，派到敌后进行游击战。
在一九三九年一年内，八路军进行了一千八百多次大的战斗，抗击了集结在它的活动地区的五万日 本军队。日本第一一０师指挥官桑木在一次向日本最高司令部呈报的秘密报告中被迫承认：“用巧妙的 组织的办法，他们（指八路军——林彪）赢得了很多人。他们的基础很深，这使镇压与绥靖的工作非常 田难。”
在南京、上海、杭州地区，在共产党员的领导下，建立了新四军。这支军队的游击队甚至对南京、 上海这样的大城市也进行了袭击。他们破坏最重要的铁路和电报线路，使日本驻军处于经常的威胁之中 。
所有这些事实说明，八路军、新四军过去、现在、将来都是中国民族统一战线最忠实、最可*的支 柱。
由于民族统一战线的建立，在孙中山三民主义的基础上，中国在国家建设上取得了良好的成绩。
中国政治制度民主化的一个最重要的因素是国民参政会和省、县参政会的建立，以及村长制度的民 主化。一九三八年七月建立的全国国民参政会有各抗日政党和组织的代表。
在国民参政会第四次会议上，通过了关于召开国民大会以通过中国宪法的决议。这个决议有很大的 政治意义，得到全体人民的拥护，已被国民政府批准。国民大会预计在一九四０年底召开，而目前全国 已广泛展开了准备大会的运动。
实现国民政府的下述措施，对于政治制度的民主化有巨大的意义。这些措施是发表抗战任务和建国 纲领，颁布反对贪污犯和反对胡作非为的官吏的法律，枪决某些特别可恶的贪污犯以及腐化的官吏、县 长、省长以至于山东省政府主席韩复渠。这些措施有助于健全行政机构，减少贪污、非法征税、官吏专 横等现象。
尤其是在十年的禁止和迫害之后，头一次在中国的许多城市，于一九三八年和一九三九年举行了纪 念“五一”的活动。政治制度的进一步民主化将导致工人阶级积极性的提高，吸引中国最广大的劳动群 众参加到民族解放斗争的事业中去。
游击区的政治制度民主化取得了相当大的成就，例如山西省的县长由人民选举，安徽省的县长同时 是游击队和自卫队的领导。
在八路军驻地的陕甘宁边区，一切行政人员由人民连举，并且必须经常在选民面前报告自己的工作 ，如果他辜负了信任，人民在任何时候有权撤销任何官员。一切县长，一切政府机关的领导者与人民群 众紧密联系，在作战时他们在第一线，而在“和平”时期则进行大量的建设工作。
在战争过程中，中国政府在经济建设上也取得了不小的成绩。从现在的敌占区及时地撤退了最重要 的兵工厂及一些大的国防企业。在中国西南及西北的一部分地区建立了新的工业区。这些地区的工业生 产可以保证军队最低程度的需要，其中包括供应它最必须的武器装备和弹药：枪支，子弹、炮弹、榴弹 等等。目前，由政府领袖蒋介石领导的国家资源委员会拥有四十五个具有国防意义的企业。还建立了三 万个小型的工艺合作社，为军队从事必须的日用品的生产，制造装备和军服。但是在中国人民面前，国 家经济发展方面以及动员一切经济资源满足战争需要方面，还有巨大的任务。
在中国，也采取了某些改善农民和工人群众状况的措施。在重庆地区，目前集中了十万工业工人， 工人们提出了建立统一工会的要求，已经建立了统一的重庆市印刷工会，纺织工会（包括大型工厂“益 丰”的工人）正在发挥其作用。工会正在为提高工资和改善工人的劳动条件而斗争。在许多省份，不顾 地主和部分官吏的反对，减少了百分之二十五的地租。在八路军的地区，处处减少地租。山西省在“公 平分担战争负担”的口号下，进行了土地改革，地租减少一半。把荒地，甚至是私人所有的荒地，交给 农民协会和由敌占区来的难民耕种，是政府的重要措施。在陕甘宁边区和受八路军支配的地区，都提高 了工人的工资。
旨在提高部队战斗能力和改善劳动人民生活水平的一切措施，由于存在民族统一战线，并得到中国 人民的广泛拥护，是可以作得到的。但是，这些措施远远没有到处实行，而实行这些措施是中国人民胜 利所迫切需要的。
中国人民的三年民族解放战争证明，中国人民不顾一切困难，要求继续与侵略者斗争，
并且能够与 侵略者继续进行斗争。中国也有战胜日本帝国主义的客观条件。
日本军阀被迫进行持久战。而在这样的战争中，谁支持得久，谁就胜利。中国失去了相当大的领土 ，但是中国未被占领的领土还很大，给中国人民提供了继续进行战争的很大可能性。在中国未被占领的 土地上约有三亿人民，中国具有抗击日本侵略者的人力和物质资源，
它能够克服一切困难和危险，赢得 对敌斗争的最后胜利。
中国的主要危险过去、现在都是民族统一战线分裂的危险，投降的危险。虽然民族统一战线在三年 战争中克服了相当大的困难并取得了非常重要的成就，尽管中国人民继续顽强抗击着敌人，但是分裂的 危险还远远没有消除。而且，在整个战争年代，投降的危险从来没有象目前这样现实地显现在全国的面 前。
这个危险的来源和原因何在？首先，在于中国内部的局面。问题是中国的部分地主资产阶级，尤其 是买办阶层，害怕中国人民民族解放斗争的高涨，害怕威胁到自己的阶级私利，他们把这种私利放在民 族利益之上。为了作为日本股份公司的伙计参加对中国的掠夺，这些人准备投降日本。一部分民族资产 阶级的背叛，自然使民族统一战线的困难加重，它使国内的叛徒和投降分子活跃起来，使那些准备与日 本帝国主义妥协的拥护者们积极起来。
公开投*日本的汪精卫式的叛徒、投降分子，引起了全中国人民的鄙视和憎恨，所以他们的危险要 比在民族统一战线的阵营中的叛徒和投降分子，即妥协的拥护者小。
某些在投降分子影响下动摇的政治活动家，力图加强对劳动群众的剥削，并阻碍动员国家的民族资 源；他们企图镇压在中国许多地区存在的民主制度，消灭民主的成果。这些人从内部破坏民族统一战线 并削弱中国人民的抵抗力。他们中的一些人指望英美的援助，明显地忽略中国本身的人力和物力。这些 人断言，没有英美的援助，就不可能继续抗战。他们中的一部分人，把希望寄托在外国，首先是美国的 调停上，打算借助这些国家准备与日本妥协。
这样的妥协，与直接投降实质上并没有任何区别。
当然，不是任何叛徒、投降分子都将公开地号召投降。在大多数人民主张继续斗争的情况下，隐蔽 的投降分子通常说：“共产党在战争过程中发展了，影响大大扩大了，因此需要禁止或限制共产党的活 动”。他们声称：“我们拥护抗日战争，拥护国民政府，但我们反对共产党人”等等。这种挑拨离间的 谈话，不仅是反对中国共产党及其领导的八路军和新四军：
它们旨在反对民族统一战线和中国一切进步 力量。
一些放肆的叛徒，正在进行消灭共产党、八路军、新四军和边区的公开活动。发生不少这样的情况 ，即地方政权的代表迎合叛徒和投降分子的要求，没收和烧毁由中国共产党出版的抗日报纸和书籍，而 允许扩散亲日的报纸和书籍。发生了逮捕、杀害、枪决共产党人的情况。出现了武装进攻八路军部队的 情况，例如张荫梧将军用自己的部队公开进攻八路军部队；在山东省，秦启荣的部队进攻共产党员领导 的游击队。中国西北的反动将领们曾侵占了陕甘宁边区的县城宁县和镇原。
大家知道，中国共产党及其建立的八路军，新四军始终是中国人民抗日斗争中的先进部队，因此投 降分子反对共产党。众所周知，八路军是真正的人民的抗日军队，所以投降分子反对八路军。众所周知 ，边区是抗日的可*的根据地，所以投降分子要消灭这些区域。八路军在敌后建立巩固的抗日根据地， 所以投降分子要消灭这些根据地。政府领袖蒋介石曾公开承认，敌占区游击根据地的建立是中国军队的 成就，而隐蔽的投降分子口头上主张继续抗日，实际上竭力把这些根据地送到敌人手中。
中国共产党用行动证明，它把中国人民的利益放在高于一切的地位。共产党真诚地一贯地维护民族 统一战线，它忘我地为中国的民族解放而斗争，而隐蔽的投降分子千方百计地竭力分裂民族团结，破坏 国共两党的合作。在许多情况下，为了维护民族统一战线，共产党作了让步。
中国共产党知道，在投降分子中间，在所有那些反对共产党人的人们中间，不少是属于误入歧途和 动摇的，必须使他们认识到立场上的错误并吸收他们参加到民族统一战线方面来。共产党努力处理好与 那些部队，甚至过去反对过八路军而现在放弃敌对行动的中国各部队的友好关系。但是共产党和八路军 为了中国人民的利益，常常被迫给予叛徒和投降分子以坚决的回击，不这样做是不行的，因为不反对叛 徒和投降分子，就意味着坠入机会主义的泥坑，意味着不保护人民的利益。
真正的中国爱国者赞同共产党和八路军的行动，因为他们斗争在中国人民的前列，并且清楚地看到 国内分裂和投降的危险。
投降的危险也是由于当前国际形势的某些特点造成的。在欧洲战争开始前，英国、法国和美帝国主 义者在一定程度上支持过中国的抵抗。他们想用中国人的手削弱日本的力量，用日本人的手，使中国虚 弱，然后充当调停者。
但是，随着欧洲帝国主义战争的发展，英国和法国开始主张停止中国的战争，因为想拉日本参加英法 集团。此外，他们想把中国巨大的原料资源用于自己的军事目的。但是现在，在法国失败以后，情况发 生了变化，由于英国和法国无法保护自己在远东的利益，于是对日本作出实质上的让步。法国封锁了印 支边境。英国同意在三个月时间中禁止由缅甸运送货物到中国。
中国政府公正地认为，法国和英国政府的行为是直接帮助了中国的敌人。中国外交部长王宠惠说， 英国政府的行动是不友好的，不合法的。这些行动直接破坏了英国和中国还在十九世纪签订的条约，按 照这个条约，任何—方无论在平时或战时都没有权利封锁缅甸和中国之间的道路。
日本利用英国、法国的让步，取得了从南部和东部加强封锁中国的可能性。这无疑增加了中国经济 与军事上的困难。但是，同时也擦亮了许多中国政治家的眼睛，这些人对于英法存在着很大的幻想，指 望借助这些国家的援助，而低估中国人民本身在抗日斗争中的力量。
中国的投降分子想把事情描绘成这样：好象由于英国与日本的协议，中国已陷入绝境，仿佛现在中 国与外界的联系已被切断。
但是应该说，国际形势不是已经如此对中国不利。英国的行动无疑使对外贸易更加困难，因此，运 送装备到中国是困难了。但是，日美商约的废除以及美国对出口石油、铁和其它贵金属采用许可证的制 度，这些事实说明了美国与日本间的矛盾加剧，削弱了日本帝国主义的力量。
中国有取得胜利的一切可能性。但是，把这种可能性变为现实性，需要坚决克服投降的危险。现在 ，每一个希望看到自己祖国独立的正直的中国政治家，将更勇敢地、坚决地指*中国人民及其无穷尽的 内部力量，进一步巩固民族统一战线，这是中国在抗日战争中的基本的优越性。
如何克服投降危险呢？中国共产党人以及一切正直的中国爱国者认为，首先，现在，比以往任何时 候都必须加强对公开的和隐蔽的投降分子和汉*的斗争，坚定地继续民族解放战争，还要在更加广泛的 范围内，在敌后开展游击战争，巩固已有的游击战争的根据地。
第二，中国共产党人和一切正直的中国爱国者认为，必须巩固民族的统一，特别是加强和巩固所有 抗日党派、团体和组织的行动的统一。首先必须巩固国民党与共产党的合作，同分裂民族统一战线的阴 险计划进行无情的斗争。必须同那些在“反共”的幌子下推行投降政策和分裂、破坏活动的人进行无情 的斗争。
中国共产党从它涎生起，就是为中国人民的民族和社会解放而斗争的政党，中国共产党在抗日斗争 中是民族统一战线的骨干，因此，每一个正直的中国爱国者把同诬蔑共产党的行为进行斗争当作自己的 任务。
第三，中国共产党人以及一切正直的爱国者认为，为了克服投降的危险，必须更广泛地吸引人民群 众参加到国家和军事建没的事业中去。不给人民以民主利，就不可能英勇地、忘我地进行反对严重的 敌人的战争。
站在反对日本帝国主义斗争前线，并且为建立独立民主的共和国而斗争的中国共产党是民族统一战 线的政策的真正拥护者。
共产党员尽一切努力，争取最近的时间内召开国民大会，这个大会能够真正代表中国人民的利益， 并通过符合人民利益的宪法。
因此，继续抗战，巩固民族的统一和进一步使制度民主化，这就是一些条件，这些条件能够保证克 服困难，克服中国的主要危险——分裂和投降。实现这些条件，就能保证中国人民最后战胜日本侵略者 。
中国人民的民族解放战争已经进入了第四个年头，中国所有的政党为今后中华民族的命运担负的责 任无限地增加了，对中国人民的命运，共产党人肩负着巨大的责任。
中国共产党和全中国人民继续抗战的坚定决心，以及今年七月初国民党中央执行委员会第七次全体 会议又一次表明的国民政府武装抗日的政策，说明中国人民能够克服投降的主要危险，把日本帝国主义 者从中国的土地上驱逐出去。
林彪兵法 12 [对日作战的经验]
[对日作战的经验]林彪
———林彪1937年12月5日于山西
以下是我对过去抗战经验的一些简单意见，写出来贡献于我全国抗日的同胞，借供研究与采择。
一、敌系采外线作战原则，采分路合击方法，敌步兵本不及我军之勇敢，所赖者惟重武器与高武器。我 军此种武器教敌人诚少，在战略上应自觉的居于内线作战地位，认真的采取集中主力实行各个击破的运 动战法，在决战的战役上彻底集中兵力及武器，集中数十架飞机，数十百门大炮，猛攻敌之一路，而歼 灭之。胜利后应迅速转移兵力及飞机、大炮，以突击他路敌之侧后。设有时不及转移甲处步兵至乙处参 战时，至少亦须将不企图与敌决战诸点之飞机大炮（以汽车火车运输）彻底集中于企图与敌决战之方面 。如在华北方面，可自某日起至某日止三天或五天内，将华北全部飞机甚至武汉一带之飞机，统向企图 与敌决战之点进行轰炸，援助该方面之军队歼灭敌人。
二、我军不应分散兵力处处防御，不应设纵横数百里之防线，盖如此则处处工事不坚，处处兵力薄弱， 处处均易为敌突破。敌军进攻时往往集中兵力攻我一点，我军如处处守，则必处处不能守。我军如设横 宽阵线，被敌突破一点，我全线即有混乱溃退之虞。故我军只应在敌始终必经之要线上，选纵深之数要 点，如利用良好地形，构筑最坚固之工事，以少数精兵，
配备充分粮弹，进行充分死守阵地政治鼓动， 与宣布严格之战斗纪律，作固守数月之想。我主力则控制于待机位置，待敌猛攻我阵地未下时，或在我 阵地侧面绕过时而猛击之。这就是攻击与防御联系起来，亦即攻势防御。
三、敌甚骄惰，行军驻军中之警戒均甚疏忽，且不爱做工事。我军应乘敌在行军中，待其行至不利敌之 地形，以我军一部箝制其先头，以我主力猛击其侧后，或乘敌初到一地尚未站稳脚跟时猛击之。
四、敌步兵攻击精神甚差，服装亦笨重，统着皮鞋，颇不惯爬山地，战斗时要依靠飞机大炮坦克车。我 军须利用敌通过山地之机会，或诱敌进入山地战而歼灭之。因山地作战，敌步兵不会抢山，飞机大炮骑 兵之作用均大大减少，甚至全失作用。
五、敌大军所需粮弹，统由日本运来，我军须一面坚壁清野，同时派多数游击队，各附小电台，在敌运 输线上进行袭击，断绝其粮弹车辆之运输与毁坏汽车路铁路等。我军应将正规战与游击战结合起来。
六、敌攻击精神虽不行，但因恐被俘后加以残杀，故虽溃败，仍不肯缴枪，使战斗不易短时结束。我军 于战斗中各部须控制必要之预备队，借以在解决败敌后应付新的变化。
七、战斗须以“秘密”“迅速”之动作切实接近敌人，实施猛烈之冲锋，冲入敌间隙内进行肉搏战。盖 我军一与敌步兵相接，则敌之飞机大炮统失却作用，此为进攻战斗时避免敌飞机大炮及我军飞机大炮不 足时之良好战斗法。
八、我军各级干部及所有士兵，均应有独立作战之精神与动作，战斗时队形须疏散而有纵深，不可太过 密集而招致过分之伤亡。
九、夜战中敌之飞机、大炮、坦克、骑兵几全无作用，敌官兵均无夜战经验，故我军应极力利用夜战歼 灭敌人。在有月光之夜可进行大规模之夜战，在有星火之夜可进行小规模之夜战，在黑夜可进行扰敌之 夜战。更须将夜间作战与日间作战互相配合，日间须扩张夜战之成果。
十、我军须学会做坚固之工事与精确射击技能，以坚固工事掩护，减少伤亡与保持阵地，以精确射击之 技能大量杀伤敌人。敌攻击精神甚差，每于进攻阵地前数十米达处时，如我不退，敌每亦数小时不进不 退，此时最便于我之射杀。如我更以小部出击，则顿挫于我阵地前之敌比立即溃退。手榴弹是敌甚怕之 武器，我军宜多带多用。更须人人会用。
十一、敌服装有保护色，战斗时多采疏散开张，敌甚肃静，敌不爱登山，故敌之目标常隐蔽。我军战斗 前须注意弄清敌情，在敌情不明时不可冒险决定战斗部署与动作。
十二、敌军虽败、虽伤、虽散而仍不缴枪者，并非勇敢坚决，乃怕我军将其活捉后杀之之故。平型关之 战斗，敌虽负伤，仍以刀枪杀我，非死不肯缴枪。战后我军获敌日记信件甚多，内容均为想家想妻，均 无自愿作战之精神，其来华作战系迫于国家法令。我因此在平型关战后令步队学习“不杀日军俘虏”“ 优待日军俘虏”“医治日军伤员”等三句日语喊话。11月4日正太路南广阳战斗时，我大部官兵仍尚 未学会此三句日话，仅少数官长学会能喊。但此数人喊话结果，即生俘日军一部。如此可见日军不难以 政治宣传瓦解之。今后对日官兵必须进行宣传，对俘虏必须优待。
十三、平型关之战，我军隐蔽于敌进道路之侧，距敌约三十里至六十里，时间达一星期之久，在群众掩 护下，我军目标敌全不知，敌之汉奸亦失真作用，而我友军某部之配备敌则全明。我军战后胜利品伤兵 均借群众之力搬运，我军虽在山地亦能购得食物，该地一带原已逃走之群众均回家来。可见部队纪律及 进行群众工作之重要。若说到长期抗战人力物力之补充，对敌坚壁清野与发动游击战争，更无论点。
十四、敌射击相当准确，队形疏散而能作分散战，敌战术就是日本“战斗纲要”上的那一套，其动作常 可事先猜到，新的创造与机变则不见有。其牺牲吃苦精神及作战经验，均远不及中国兵。
十五、敌在占领线以内极力培植伪政府与伪军。我军应派出许多游击队，深入敌占领线内之广大区域， 纵横游击，牵制与削弱大敌，消灭与驱逐小敌，收复失地，破坏伪组织，动员群众帮助政府与军队抗战 ，收容溃散官兵，使之继续抗战，免其流落为逃与被敌利用。须知敌如果不培植汉奸力量作为工具，则 实无法统治下去，要想收捐税，做生意，逮捕抗日分子，都是不可能的。
———林彪1937年12月5日于山西
以下是我对过去抗战经验的一些简单意见，写出来贡献于我全国抗日的同胞，借供研究与采择。
一、敌系采外线作战原则，采分路合击方法，敌步兵本不及我军之勇敢，所赖者惟重武器与高武器。我 军此种武器教敌人诚少，在战略上应自觉的居于内线作战地位，认真的采取集中主力实行各个击破的运 动战法，在决战的战役上彻底集中兵力及武器，集中数十架飞机，数十百门大炮，猛攻敌之一路，而歼 灭之。胜利后应迅速转移兵力及飞机、大炮，以突击他路敌之侧后。设有时不及转移甲处步兵至乙处参 战时，至少亦须将不企图与敌决战诸点之飞机大炮（以汽车火车运输）彻底集中于企图与敌决战之方面 。如在华北方面，可自某日起至某日止三天或五天内，将华北全部飞机甚至武汉一带之飞机，统向企图 与敌决战之点进行轰炸，援助该方面之军队歼灭敌人。
二、我军不应分散兵力处处防御，不应设纵横数百里之防线，盖如此则处处工事不坚，处处兵力薄弱， 处处均易为敌突破。敌军进攻时往往集中兵力攻我一点，我军如处处守，则必处处不能守。我军如设横 宽阵线，被敌突破一点，我全线即有混乱溃退之虞。故我军只应在敌始终必经之要线上，选纵深之数要 点，如利用良好地形，构筑最坚固之工事，以少数精兵，
配备充分粮弹，进行充分死守阵地政治鼓动， 与宣布严格之战斗纪律，作固守数月之想。我主力则控制于待机位置，待敌猛攻我阵地未下时，或在我 阵地侧面绕过时而猛击之。这就是攻击与防御联系起来，亦即攻势防御。
三、敌甚骄惰，行军驻军中之警戒均甚疏忽，且不爱做工事。我军应乘敌在行军中，待其行至不利敌之 地形，以我军一部箝制其先头，以我主力猛击其侧后，或乘敌初到一地尚未站稳脚跟时猛击之。
四、敌步兵攻击精神甚差，服装亦笨重，统着皮鞋，颇不惯爬山地，战斗时要依靠飞机大炮坦克车。我 军须利用敌通过山地之机会，或诱敌进入山地战而歼灭之。因山地作战，敌步兵不会抢山，飞机大炮骑 兵之作用均大大减少，甚至全失作用。
五、敌大军所需粮弹，统由日本运来，我军须一面坚壁清野，同时派多数游击队，各附小电台，在敌运 输线上进行袭击，断绝其粮弹车辆之运输与毁坏汽车路铁路等。我军应将正规战与游击战结合起来。
六、敌攻击精神虽不行，但因恐被俘后加以残杀，故虽溃败，仍不肯缴枪，使战斗不易短时结束。我军 于战斗中各部须控制必要之预备队，借以在解决败敌后应付新的变化。
七、战斗须以“秘密”“迅速”之动作切实接近敌人，实施猛烈之冲锋，冲入敌间隙内进行肉搏战。盖 我军一与敌步兵相接，则敌之飞机大炮统失却作用，此为进攻战斗时避免敌飞机大炮及我军飞机大炮不 足时之良好战斗法。
八、我军各级干部及所有士兵，均应有独立作战之精神与动作，战斗时队形须疏散而有纵深，不可太过 密集而招致过分之伤亡。
九、夜战中敌之飞机、大炮、坦克、骑兵几全无作用，敌官兵均无夜战经验，故我军应极力利用夜战歼 灭敌人。在有月光之夜可进行大规模之夜战，在有星火之夜可进行小规模之夜战，在黑夜可进行扰敌之 夜战。更须将夜间作战与日间作战互相配合，日间须扩张夜战之成果。
十、我军须学会做坚固之工事与精确射击技能，以坚固工事掩护，减少伤亡与保持阵地，以精确射击之 技能大量杀伤敌人。敌攻击精神甚差，每于进攻阵地前数十米达处时，如我不退，敌每亦数小时不进不 退，此时最便于我之射杀。如我更以小部出击，则顿挫于我阵地前之敌比立即溃退。手榴弹是敌甚怕之 武器，我军宜多带多用。更须人人会用。
十一、敌服装有保护色，战斗时多采疏散开张，敌甚肃静，敌不爱登山，故敌之目标常隐蔽。我军战斗 前须注意弄清敌情，在敌情不明时不可冒险决定战斗部署与动作。
十二、敌军虽败、虽伤、虽散而仍不缴枪者，并非勇敢坚决，乃怕我军将其活捉后杀之之故。平型关之 战斗，敌虽负伤，仍以刀枪杀我，非死不肯缴枪。战后我军获敌日记信件甚多，内容均为想家想妻，均 无自愿作战之精神，其来华作战系迫于国家法令。我因此在平型关战后令步队学习“不杀日军俘虏”“ 优待日军俘虏”“医治日军伤员”等三句日语喊话。11月4日正太路南广阳战斗时，我大部官兵仍尚 未学会此三句日话，仅少数官长学会能喊。但此数人喊话结果，即生俘日军一部。如此可见日军不难以 政治宣传瓦解之。今后对日官兵必须进行宣传，对俘虏必须优待。
十三、平型关之战，我军隐蔽于敌进道路之侧，距敌约三十里至六十里，时间达一星期之久，在群众掩 护下，我军目标敌全不知，敌之汉奸亦失真作用，而我友军某部之配备敌则全明。我军战后胜利品伤兵 均借群众之力搬运，我军虽在山地亦能购得食物，该地一带原已逃走之群众均回家来。可见部队纪律及 进行群众工作之重要。若说到长期抗战人力物力之补充，对敌坚壁清野与发动游击战争，更无论点。
十四、敌射击相当准确，队形疏散而能作分散战，敌战术就是日本“战斗纲要”上的那一套，其动作常 可事先猜到，新的创造与机变则不见有。其牺牲吃苦精神及作战经验，均远不及中国兵。
十五、敌在占领线以内极力培植伪政府与伪军。我军应派出许多游击队，深入敌占领线内之广大区域， 纵横游击，牵制与削弱大敌，消灭与驱逐小敌，收复失地，破坏伪组织，动员群众帮助政府与军队抗战 ，收容溃散官兵，使之继续抗战，免其流落为逃与被敌利用。须知敌如果不培植汉奸力量作为工具，则 实无法统治下去，要想收捐税，做生意，逮捕抗日分子，都是不可能的。
林彪兵法 9 [平型关战斗的经验]
[平型关战斗的经验]
林彪
第八路军终于在九月中旬开到了晋北的前线，它开始执行它在抗日战争中的神圣任务了！
在全国同胞热烈的期望下，我们于9月25日在平型关与日军接触了。不负全国民众与友军的期望，不 负第八路军十年来的荣誉，我们这次的第一次交战获得了伟大的胜利！这一仗的确给了日军以重创，提 高了全国军民的抗战的信心，特别是更加提高了第八路军的威信！
在这次初步与日寇交锋的战斗中，我们更获得了不少抗战的经验。这不但值得第八路军全体指战员与战 斗员学习，我也愿意把它贡献于全国的抗战的“友军”与一切抗日的民众，作为对今后抗战的认识。据 我个人在这次战斗中所感觉到的是：
一、一到山地战，敌人的战斗力与特长均要大大降低，甚至于没有。步兵穿着皮鞋爬山，简直不行，虽 然他们已爬到半山，我们还在山脚，但结果我们还是先抢上去，给他一阵猛烈的手榴弹，他们只好像滚 罗卜一样地滚下去了，炮兵则难于运动与找阵地。坦克车呢，有些地方简直使它英雄无用武之地。飞机 的作用也不大。
二、敌人轻视中国军队，成了习惯，便由骄矜而疏忽，不注意侦察警戒，不爱做工事，打起仗来，先让 飞机和大炮显神通，等到猛攻时，他们的步兵连阵地也不爱占领，只荫蔽在沟内休息。这样的敌人，当 然便利我们袭击，所以我们这次一切布置得妥妥当当，向他们开枪了，冲锋了，他们才知道。
三、敌人不仅是弹药要靠后方输送，连粮食都要靠日本送来。他们的后方线已扯长有千里多，在这样的 情况下，把他们后方线一切断，他们的困难就可想而知了，可以弄得他们进退维谷。所以发展游击战在 敌人后方活动是非常重要的。此次平型关战斗，我们正是派了一部分人在敌后路上阻滞其增援部队及粮 食供给，最近又占了浑源、广灵等县。
四、利用敌人攻击友军阵地时，袭击敌人侧后方，这是最好的战法，比在其中和刚到阵地而未站住脚时 去袭击还要好些。这次就是利用敌以全副兵力注意对付友军时，突然在他们的后方大打起来。
五、为了避免他们的炮兵和飞机，战斗开始后要迅速接近敌人，投入肉搏，连续冲锋，使敌人的炮不好 放，要放就连自己的队伍也遭了殃。
六、友军在战斗中的配合，实在太差了。他们自定的出击计划，他们自己却未能遵守。你打，他旁观， 他们时常吹牛说要决战，但却决而不战；或向敌人打而又不坚决打，他们的部队本来既不充实，在一个 突击中，却以区区的八个团兵力分成三大路，还留了总预备队，而每路又相隔十多里或二十多里，这样 不仅缺乏出击力，而且连被我们打败了而退下的敌人他们碰着了，竟不但不能消灭之，反而被这些突围 的敌人冲坍了，他们的指挥真笨极了，特别不能真正了解与运用在战役上与决战的地点与时机集中绝对 优于敌人的步兵、炮兵、飞机以猛攻敌人。
七、敌人实在有许多弱点可为我乘，但敌人确是有战斗力的。也可以说，我们过去从北伐到苏维埃战斗 中还不曾碰到过这样强的敌人。我说的强，是说他们的步兵也有战斗力，能个自为战，虽打败负伤了， 亦有不肯缴枪的。战后只见战场上敌人尸体遍野，却捉不着活的。敌人射击的准确，运动的荫蔽，部队 的掌握，都颇见长。对此种敌人做战，如稍存轻敌观念，
做浮躁行动必易受损失。我们的部队仍不善做 疏散队形之做战，特别是把敌人打坍后，大家拢在一团，喧嚷“老乡！缴枪呀！” ----其实对日本人喊“老乡缴枪”，不但他们不懂，而且他们也不是老乡----这种时候，伤亡 往往很多。在“抗大”的军事教育中，特别要教育干部了解正规战斗中的战斗队形之运用。
八、日兵之死不肯缴械，一来因日本之武士道教育，法西斯教育，同时也因他们对中国军民太残暴，恐 怕中国人报复，但最主要的，是过去“华北军队”对日军俘虏政策之不正确，采用野蛮的活埋、火烧、 剖肚等办法。故我们今后须加紧对日本士兵的日文日语的政策宣传与优待俘虏。
九、夜袭是战胜日寇的重要作战手段。敌怕夜袭，他们的技术威力一到夜间有的竟至全无作用。我们要 努力，非常努力地去学习夜战，以此为特长以战胜日寇。
十、我八路军在目前兵力与技术条件下，基本上应以在敌后袭击其后路为主。断敌后方是我们阻敌前进 争取持久的最好方法。如经常集中大的兵力与敌作运动战，是不适宜的。
十一、“中央军队”如果还是守着挨打战术，便真糟糕透了。他们对主要点应坚工固守，而不应到处守 ，应行决战防御与运动战，应集中优势兵力、飞机、大炮于决战点。至于他们军官的调动，政治工作的 建立和对群众关系的改善，都是他们很重要的问题。
十二、我们的军事技术，特别是战斗员与班排连长的技术与战术教育，实在还须大大的努力。过去大半 年，部队虽然得到了休息整顿的机会，在风纪、礼节与正规化上进步很多，但对战术训练还很差。今后 应努力加强这方面的教育。
经过这次的战斗，部队中的一般情形更加活跃了，战斗的情绪高涨万分。战地群众对我军与友军完全是 两个态度。见友军就逃，见我军到了又转回。八路军所到之处，受群众热烈的欢迎与夸扬，不是无因的 。
这一切经验与教训都值得我们虚心地学习，运用在今后的抗战中，这些都是我们争取抗战胜利的必要条 件！
原文发表于1937年11月
林彪
第八路军终于在九月中旬开到了晋北的前线，它开始执行它在抗日战争中的神圣任务了！
在全国同胞热烈的期望下，我们于9月25日在平型关与日军接触了。不负全国民众与友军的期望，不 负第八路军十年来的荣誉，我们这次的第一次交战获得了伟大的胜利！这一仗的确给了日军以重创，提 高了全国军民的抗战的信心，特别是更加提高了第八路军的威信！
在这次初步与日寇交锋的战斗中，我们更获得了不少抗战的经验。这不但值得第八路军全体指战员与战 斗员学习，我也愿意把它贡献于全国的抗战的“友军”与一切抗日的民众，作为对今后抗战的认识。据 我个人在这次战斗中所感觉到的是：
一、一到山地战，敌人的战斗力与特长均要大大降低，甚至于没有。步兵穿着皮鞋爬山，简直不行，虽 然他们已爬到半山，我们还在山脚，但结果我们还是先抢上去，给他一阵猛烈的手榴弹，他们只好像滚 罗卜一样地滚下去了，炮兵则难于运动与找阵地。坦克车呢，有些地方简直使它英雄无用武之地。飞机 的作用也不大。
二、敌人轻视中国军队，成了习惯，便由骄矜而疏忽，不注意侦察警戒，不爱做工事，打起仗来，先让 飞机和大炮显神通，等到猛攻时，他们的步兵连阵地也不爱占领，只荫蔽在沟内休息。这样的敌人，当 然便利我们袭击，所以我们这次一切布置得妥妥当当，向他们开枪了，冲锋了，他们才知道。
三、敌人不仅是弹药要靠后方输送，连粮食都要靠日本送来。他们的后方线已扯长有千里多，在这样的 情况下，把他们后方线一切断，他们的困难就可想而知了，可以弄得他们进退维谷。所以发展游击战在 敌人后方活动是非常重要的。此次平型关战斗，我们正是派了一部分人在敌后路上阻滞其增援部队及粮 食供给，最近又占了浑源、广灵等县。
四、利用敌人攻击友军阵地时，袭击敌人侧后方，这是最好的战法，比在其中和刚到阵地而未站住脚时 去袭击还要好些。这次就是利用敌以全副兵力注意对付友军时，突然在他们的后方大打起来。
五、为了避免他们的炮兵和飞机，战斗开始后要迅速接近敌人，投入肉搏，连续冲锋，使敌人的炮不好 放，要放就连自己的队伍也遭了殃。
六、友军在战斗中的配合，实在太差了。他们自定的出击计划，他们自己却未能遵守。你打，他旁观， 他们时常吹牛说要决战，但却决而不战；或向敌人打而又不坚决打，他们的部队本来既不充实，在一个 突击中，却以区区的八个团兵力分成三大路，还留了总预备队，而每路又相隔十多里或二十多里，这样 不仅缺乏出击力，而且连被我们打败了而退下的敌人他们碰着了，竟不但不能消灭之，反而被这些突围 的敌人冲坍了，他们的指挥真笨极了，特别不能真正了解与运用在战役上与决战的地点与时机集中绝对 优于敌人的步兵、炮兵、飞机以猛攻敌人。
七、敌人实在有许多弱点可为我乘，但敌人确是有战斗力的。也可以说，我们过去从北伐到苏维埃战斗 中还不曾碰到过这样强的敌人。我说的强，是说他们的步兵也有战斗力，能个自为战，虽打败负伤了， 亦有不肯缴枪的。战后只见战场上敌人尸体遍野，却捉不着活的。敌人射击的准确，运动的荫蔽，部队 的掌握，都颇见长。对此种敌人做战，如稍存轻敌观念，
做浮躁行动必易受损失。我们的部队仍不善做 疏散队形之做战，特别是把敌人打坍后，大家拢在一团，喧嚷“老乡！缴枪呀！” ----其实对日本人喊“老乡缴枪”，不但他们不懂，而且他们也不是老乡----这种时候，伤亡 往往很多。在“抗大”的军事教育中，特别要教育干部了解正规战斗中的战斗队形之运用。
八、日兵之死不肯缴械，一来因日本之武士道教育，法西斯教育，同时也因他们对中国军民太残暴，恐 怕中国人报复，但最主要的，是过去“华北军队”对日军俘虏政策之不正确，采用野蛮的活埋、火烧、 剖肚等办法。故我们今后须加紧对日本士兵的日文日语的政策宣传与优待俘虏。
九、夜袭是战胜日寇的重要作战手段。敌怕夜袭，他们的技术威力一到夜间有的竟至全无作用。我们要 努力，非常努力地去学习夜战，以此为特长以战胜日寇。
十、我八路军在目前兵力与技术条件下，基本上应以在敌后袭击其后路为主。断敌后方是我们阻敌前进 争取持久的最好方法。如经常集中大的兵力与敌作运动战，是不适宜的。
十一、“中央军队”如果还是守着挨打战术，便真糟糕透了。他们对主要点应坚工固守，而不应到处守 ，应行决战防御与运动战，应集中优势兵力、飞机、大炮于决战点。至于他们军官的调动，政治工作的 建立和对群众关系的改善，都是他们很重要的问题。
十二、我们的军事技术，特别是战斗员与班排连长的技术与战术教育，实在还须大大的努力。过去大半 年，部队虽然得到了休息整顿的机会，在风纪、礼节与正规化上进步很多，但对战术训练还很差。今后 应努力加强这方面的教育。
经过这次的战斗，部队中的一般情形更加活跃了，战斗的情绪高涨万分。战地群众对我军与友军完全是 两个态度。见友军就逃，见我军到了又转回。八路军所到之处，受群众热烈的欢迎与夸扬，不是无因的 。
这一切经验与教训都值得我们虚心地学习，运用在今后的抗战中，这些都是我们争取抗战胜利的必要条 件！
原文发表于1937年11月
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