Chapter 2 Chapter 1 Mao Zedong and the CCP proposed "Taiwan must be liberated" in Xibaipo

Mao Zedong and the CCP first put forward the slogan "Taiwan must be liberated" in Xibaipo. (Xibaipo, March 15, 1949) The small village has been submerged by the lake. In this village, Mao Zedong and the CCP announced to the world the slogan "Taiwan must be liberated" for the first time.This past event will also be overwhelmed by the trend of history with the development of the times. Back then it was an extremely barren small mountain village on the banks of the Hutuo River at the bottom of the Taihang Valley.Today it lies quietly beneath the deep waters of a large mountaintop reservoir.For more than half a century, the great changes in China cannot but be said to have an extremely important connection with this small mountain village.History will never forget it!Because at the height of the hillside next to the large reservoir, people rebuilt this small mountain village according to the old model.The walls are built with yellow mud and the roof is covered with earth tiles; the country has listed it as a national key cultural relic protection unit, and a modern memorial hall has been built nearby.On the square in front of the memorial hall stands a giant statue of Mao Zedong, Liu Shaoqi, Zhu De, Zhou Enlai and Ren Bishi, five central secretaries with the style of the liberation war.

This small mountain village is called Xibaipo. From March 5th to 13th, 1949, the historically famous Second Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China was held in a large earthen house in Xiaoshan Village.It is said that it is big, but in fact, it is only big enough to accommodate more than 60 CCP elites who are present at the meeting.The seats in the room are rows of wooden boards fixed on the ground pillars.The first five simple wooden sofas are the seats for the five secretaries of Mao, Liu, Zhu, Zhou and Ren.This meeting in this mud hut decided a series of basic principles and policies such as shifting the focus of the party's work from the countryside to the cities, preparing for the establishment of a new CPPCC, and building a new China.Hu Qiaomu, who sat in the last row, was almost the youngest among the participants.Yang Shangkun, who also attended the meeting, also sat next to him.In the years before and after the establishment of New China, Hu Qiaomu, who was only in his early thirties, was already a well-known "pen" in the CCP, and Mao Zedong relied heavily on him.

Because the author wrote a book on Mao Zedong’s diplomatic thought, I was honored to visit Mr. Hu in his later years for advice on founding diplomacy. During the interview, I talked about the editorial "We Must Liberate Taiwan" issued during the Second Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee and its background.This is the eve of the founding of the People's Republic of China, the first time the CCP publicly stated in the name of an important editorial that "Taiwan must be liberated." Mao Zedong was a rare great literati in the world, and the reason why Hu Qiaomu became Mao Zedong's "pen" that Mao Zedong valued is of course a rare literary talent.Regarding Hu Qiaomu, there is a saying in his hometown Yancheng, Jiangsu.

When he was one year old, his mother, Mrs. Xia, held a "Zhou Zhou" ceremony for him according to the local folk customs.In a red lacquered wooden tray, his mother prepared ten items with symbolic meanings for him: copper coins, abacus, brushes, books, ears of wheat, bullwhip, candy, snacks, hairpin rings, and rouge.The red lacquered wooden plate was held in front of Xiao Hu Qiaomu, let him stretch out his little hand to grab it, and see what he grabs to determine his future.Do business, study, herd cattle, farm, or be a playboy in the rouge hairpin ring.To his mother's surprise, his little hand took the brush and never let go.My mother was so happy that she burst into tears, and the surrounding villagers were full of praise.Sure enough, he was intelligent and keen on reading. After graduating from high school, he was admitted to the Department of Physics of Tsinghua University in Peking with honors. The famous physicist Wu Youxun was the head of the department at that time.When Wu Youxun talked to the freshmen one by one, he told this freshman who preferred liberal arts: "In physics class, you need to spend a lot of time doing experiments."

Hu Qiaomu replied, "Director Wu, I just want to have more time to study." Wu Youxun suggested that he transfer to the Department of Chinese Literature. The Department of Chinese Literature was full and there were still vacancies in the Department of History, so he enrolled in the Department of History.During his study at Tsinghua University, he participated in revolutionary activities. Later, he joined the Communist Party in his hometown of Yancheng, and soon became the propaganda minister of the underground party in Shanghai. After the "Xi'an Incident", he came to Yan'an and began to do youth work. He served as the editor-in-chief of "China Youth" magazine, and the articles he wrote had already aroused great repercussions in the northern Shaanxi base.One of the articles, "Ideological Issues in the Youth Movement", has unique insights. Mao Zedong read it and appreciated it very much, saying that "Qiao Mu is a talent." In February 1941, Mao Zedong personally ordered him to be a secretary when he was 29 years old.From then on, Hu Qiaomu worked with Mao Zedong until the beginning of the "Cultural Revolution" for more than 20 years.When he first came to Mao Zedong, he sorted out drafts, documents, and articles for Mao Zedong, sorted out the "Speech at the Yan'an Forum on Literature and Art", and wrote an editorial for the "Liberation Daily" under the guidance of Mao Zedong. "Historical Resolutions".Due to his excellent work and increasing prestige, in the spring of 1949, he served as the official representative of the Seventh National Congress of the Communist Party of China.After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, he followed Mao Zedong to Chongqing to negotiate with Chiang Kai-shek.Then, he followed Mao Zedong to fight in northern Shaanxi.At this time, he has been deeply trusted by Mao Zedong. In 1948, after Mao Zedong and his party crossed the Yellow River and arrived at Xibaipo, he was nominated by Mao Zedong as the editor-in-chief of Xinhua News Agency, and in this capacity, he participated in the Central Collective Office Meeting at that time.

Hu Qiaomu was in charge of forming a lean small editorial department, which worked in the small courtyard where Hu lived. The small courtyard and the small courtyard where Liu Shaoqi lived were the front and back yards, and walked through the same gate, only a few hundred meters away from the residences of Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai.In the late days of the War of Liberation, when the strategic counter-offensive achieved decisive victory, Xinhua News Agency’s text broadcasts, oral broadcasts, and English broadcasts were all edited and distributed by him. Some important manuscripts had to be selected by Mao Zedong himself, reviewed and revised. , the signature must be issued.

Although Hu Qiaomu was not a member of the Central Committee or an alternate member of the Central Committee, as Mao Zedong's political secretary and editor-in-chief of Xinhua News Agency, he attended three important meetings of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee held in Xibaipo.The first two were Politburo meetings, one was from September 8 to 13, 1948, to discuss and decide the strategic policy for the third year of the War of Liberation, deploy the three major campaigns of Liaoshen, Pingjin, and Huaihai, and wipe out Chiang Kai-shek's main force in the Yangtze River The area to the north; the second time, from January 6 to 8, 1949, it was discussed and decided to fight across the Yangtze River to liberate the whole of China.The third time is the Second Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee.After attending these meetings, Hu Qiaomu wrote a series of news, editorials, and comments according to the meetings and Mao Zedong's instructions, promoting the spirit of the CPC Central Committee and Mao Zedong's latest instructions.For example, starting from November 23, 1948, in the names of "People's Liberation Army Headquarters" and "Generals Liu Bocheng and Chen Yi", Xinhua News Agency broadcast five radio conversations to the Huangwei Corps of the Kuomintang Army on the Huaihai Battlefield. The first two were Mao Zedong's speeches. Written by the pen, the last three are written by Hu Qiaomu. On January 26, 1949, the famous commentary on the list of "chief war criminals" broadcast by Xinhua News Agency was drafted by Hu Qiaomu and revised by Mao Zedong. On February 1, Xinhua News Agency broadcast the commentary "How the Kuomintang Views the Peaceful Liberation of Beiping".

On March 22, Xinhua News Agency broadcast the press release "The Second Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China", which was drafted by Hu Qiaomu. The full text is 1,500 words, of which more than 500 words were added by Mao Zedong during the review process.The first sentence of the draft, "The Second Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China will be held near Shijiazhuang", points out the location of the meeting.Hu Qiaomu emphasized: "Near Shijiazhuang" was added by Chairman Mao to the manuscript I drafted.This broke the practice of keeping the location of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China strictly confidential in the past.On the day the draft was broadcast, Mao Zedong and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China left Xibaipo by car and headed for Peiping.

The Xinhua News Agency editorial entitled "We Must Liberate Taiwan" was one of a series of editorials and comments drafted by the five secretaries of the CPC Central Committee during a meeting during the Second Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee.This editorial was published in response to the current situation in accordance with the sovereignty requirements of new China's territorial integrity in the future. At that time, the major victories in the three major battles of Liaoshen, Pingjin, and Huaihai made the defeat of the Kuomintang's Nanjing regime a certainty, and the People's Liberation Army's million-strong army was about to cross the river.During the great defeat, a large number of military and political personnel of the Kuomintang retreated to the island of Taiwan. Chiang Kai-shek had already arranged for the "fall" of the mainland to run Taiwan's aftermath.When the Huaihai Campaign was drawing to a close and his heir's elite Du Yuming Group was in a tight siege and was about to be wiped out, on December 29, 1948, Chiang Kai-shek hurriedly appointed Chen Cheng, a confidant who was recovering from illness, as the chairman of the Taiwan Provincial Government and established the Taiwan Military Region; On January 10, 1949, Chiang Ching-kuo was sent to Shanghai to supervise the shipment of a large amount of cash, foreign exchange and gold from the Central Bank to Taiwan. At the end of January, there was another news that the Kuomintang warships transported more than 5,000 boxes of national treasures from the Palace Museum in Beiping and relevant units in Nanjing to Taiwan in three batches. On February 12, the Kuomintang "Central Daily" also moved to Taipei for publication.All these circumstances indicated that Chiang Kai-shek attempted to use Taiwan Island as a revival base for a comeback.In response to this, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China responded at the Second Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee, clearly putting forward the slogan "Taiwan must be liberated."

This editorial to liberate Taiwan was published on March 15, 1949, the third day after the closing of the Second Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. The editorial stated: The Chinese people, including the people of Taiwan... Chiang absolutely cannot tolerate the illegal invasion of Taiwan or any Chinese territory by the U.S. imperialists, and likewise absolutely cannot tolerate the Kuomintang reactionaries using Taiwan as a base for their last struggle.The task of the Chinese people's liberation struggle is to liberate the whole of China until the liberation of Taiwan, Hainan Island and the last inch of land belonging to China.

So far we have not been able to verify whether this Xinhua News Agency editorial was written by Hu Qiaomu, or partially written, or written by other comrades in the group.However, it is certain that, as Hu Qiaomu said, the editorial was written in accordance with the spirit formulated at the meeting of the five secretaries of the Central Committee at that time. This is the first time that the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China put forward the slogan of "liberating Taiwan" so far.