Chapter 30 Don't attack from all sides [1]

(June 6, 1950) Since the Second Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee, the new democratic revolution led by our party has won victories across the country and the People's Republic of China was established.This is a great victory, a great victory unprecedented in China since ancient times, and a great victory worldwide since the October Revolution.Comrade Stalin and many foreign comrades feel that the victory of the Chinese revolution is extremely great.Many of our comrades don't feel that way because they are used to this struggle.Regarding the great significance of the victory of the Chinese revolution, we must also conduct extensive propaganda within the party and among the masses.

In the context of our great victory, we still have very complicated struggles and many difficulties ahead of us. We have completed land reform in the north with a population of about 160 million, and we must affirm this great achievement.Our war of liberation was mainly won by these 160 million people.With the victory of land reform, there was the victory of overthrowing Chiang Kai-shek.This fall, we will start land reform in a vast area with a population of about 310 million and overthrow the entire landlord class.In land reform, our enemies are big enough and numerous enough.First, imperialism is against us.Second, the reactionaries in Taiwan and Tibet oppose us.Third, the remnants of the Kuomintang, spies, and bandits are against us.Fourth, the landlord class is against us.Fifth, the reactionary forces in the church schools and religious circles established by imperialism in our country, as well as the reactionary forces in the cultural and educational institutions of the Kuomintang that we have taken over, oppose us.These are our enemies.We have to fight against these enemies and complete land reform in a much wider area than before. This struggle is very fierce and unprecedented in history.

At the same time, the victory of the revolution brought about socio-economic restructuring.This reorganization is necessary, but it also places a heavy burden on us for the time being.Many people are dissatisfied with us because of the social and economic restructuring and some of the disruptions in industry and commerce brought about by the war.Now our relationship with the national bourgeoisie is very tense, and they are very dissatisfied with their tyranny.Unemployed intellectuals and unemployed workers are not satisfied with us, and there is also a group of small craftsmen who are not satisfied with us.In most of the rural areas, since the land reform has not yet been carried out and public grains have to be collected, farmers also have objections.

What is our current general policy? It is to wipe out the remnants of the Kuomintang, spies, and bandits, to overthrow the landlord class, to liberate Taiwan and Tibet, and to fight imperialism to the end.In order to isolate and attack the current enemy, we must turn those who are dissatisfied with us among the people into those who support us.Although this matter is difficult now, we will always find ways to solve it. We must rationally adjust industry and commerce, start factories, solve the unemployment problem, and provide two billion catties of grain to solve the problem of feeding the unemployed workers, so that the unemployed workers will support us.When we implement rent reduction and interest reduction, suppression of bandits and hegemony, and land reform, the majority of farmers will support us.We also need to find ways for small handicraft workers to maintain their livelihood.With regard to the national bourgeoisie, we must rationally adjust industry and commerce, adjust taxation, and improve relations with them, so as not to be too tense.For intellectuals, we need to hold various training courses, establish military and political universities, and revolutionary universities, use them, and at the same time educate and remould them.Let them take several courses such as the history of social development and historical materialism.Even those idealists, we have ways to make them not oppose us.They talk about God creating man, we talk about from ape to man.Some intellectuals are old, in their seventies, as long as they support the party and the people's government, we will support them.

The whole party must earnestly and prudently do a good job in united front work.Under the leadership of the working class, we must unite the petty bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie on the basis of the worker-peasant alliance.The national bourgeoisie will be wiped out in the future, but now we must unite them with us and not push them away.We must fight against them on the one hand, and unite with them on the other.We must explain this truth to the cadres and prove with facts that it is correct and necessary to unite the national bourgeoisie, democratic parties, democrats and intellectuals.Many of these people were our enemies in the past, but now they have split from the enemy side and come to our side. We should also unite with such people who are more or less likely to be united.Uniting them will benefit the working people.Now we need to adopt this strategy.

It is important to unite minorities.There are about 30 million ethnic minorities in the country.Social reform in minority areas is a major matter that must be treated with caution.In any case, we must not be impatient, for things will go wrong if we are in a hurry.Conditions are not ripe for reform.If one condition is ripe, other conditions are not ripe, and major reforms should not be carried out.Of course, this does not mean that there should be no reforms.According to the "Common Program", customs and habits in minority areas can be reformed.However, such reforms must be resolved by the ethnic minorities themselves.Without the conditions of the masses, without the people's armed forces, and without the cadres of the ethnic minorities themselves, no reform work of a mass nature should be carried out.We must help the ethnic minorities train their own cadres and unite the broad masses of the ethnic minorities.

In short, let's not attack from all sides.Attacking from all sides, the whole country is tense, which is very bad.We must not make too many enemies. We must make concessions and ease in one aspect, and concentrate our efforts on attacking the other.We must do our work well so that the workers, peasants and small handicraftsmen will support us and the vast majority of the national bourgeoisie and intellectuals will not oppose us.In this way, the remnants of the Kuomintang, spies and bandits will be isolated, the landlord class will be isolated, the reactionaries in Taiwan and Tibet will be isolated, and imperialism will be isolated among the people of our country.This is our policy, our strategy and policy, and the line of the Third Plenary Session.

It is published according to "Selected Readings of Mao Zedong's Works" published by People's Publishing House in 1986. -------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ note [1] This is part of Mao Zedong's speech at the Third Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.This part of the speech explained his written report "Struggle for a Basic Improvement of the National Financial and Economic Situation" at this meeting, and explained the strategic thinking of the report.