Introduction.
The struggle in China is in the foreground of events today. The Chinese masses are in revolt against the age long oppression by foreign usurpers. And the battleships of these foreign usurpers, of English, American, French, etc. imperialists, are steaming full speed toward China to keep the Chinese masses in subjection.
We must protect American lives and property, says our secretary of state. What hypocrisy! For a century the property of the Chinese people was ravaged by foreign imperialists. The Chinese were killed by the thousand on any arbitrary pretext. Now these masses revolt, They defend their property and resist the mass murders perpetrated upon them for so long.
A feeling of shame must overcome every one who reads the hypocritical statements of our statesmen about the protection of life and property and compares them with the acts of wanton destruction of life and property committed on the order of the same statesmen. August 22 an English steamer ran into two Chinese boats on the Yangtze river. 58 Chinese soldiers on one of the boats drowned and all goods on the boat were lost. Thereupon the Chinese authorities took over the English steamer. As a result of this act the English admiralty gave orders to bombard the city of Wanshien. The bombardment destroyed completely whole sections of the city and killed and maimed 5,000 Chinese men, women, and children. A massacre of innocents, a wholesale destruction of property. Where do these statesmen get the nerve to face the world with their phrase of protecting life and property?
The Chinese revolt is of world importance. It effects the struggle of the oppressed and exploited the world over. The nationalist army in China fights for these masses. And they must fight for the Chinese. They must organize so that their will, their action, may prevent their respective imperialist masters to mobilize their forces against the Chinese revolution.
In the following pages the problems and the meaning of the Chinese nationalist revolution are dealt with exhaustively. This is a reprint of some of the speeches made during the consideration of the Chinese question by the Executive Committee of the Comintern at its seventh plenary session. A study of these pages will give a comprehensive understanding of the question.