OPEN
LETTER TO THE MEMBERS OF THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY
[The author of the following document, Peng Shu-tse, was one of the founding menbers of the Chinese Communist party. He later became one of the founders of the Chinese Trotskyist movement. A victim of the repression following the unsuccessful 1925-27 Revolution, he spent many years in Chiang Kai-shek's prisons. As a Trotskyist, he together with many other courageous revolutionists suffered at the hands of the Maoist faction. Despite this, he remains a firm defender of the Chinese Revolution and the Chinese workers state.
{In the current situation in China, readers of World Outlook will undoubtedly find the programmatic proposals advanced by Peng Shu-tse at the end of his open letter of special interest. They reflect the views of the Chinese section of the Fourth International.
Dear Comrades,
In May 1966, in the Liberation Army Daily, the chairman of your party, Mao Tsetung, launched the so-called cultural revolution. Since then, and especially since the organization of the Red Guards in August 1966, a storm has arisen over China, and a series of extraordinary events have taken place which have greatly shocked some of the most devoted friends and supporters of the Chinese Revolution. In particular, these events have included such things as the dismissal, the arrest, and imprisonment of top leaders in your party and government like Peng Chen, Lu Ting-yi and Lo Jui-ching, without any recourse to the laws of the state or the regulations of the party. These same people have also been so insulted and abused, and even humiliated by being paraded through the streets by the Red Guards, that some of them have attempted suicide. Hundreds of other well-known leaders and cadres in the cultural and educational fields, such as Chou Yang, Wu Han, Teng To, Tien Han, Sha Yen, Yang Han-sing, Li Ta, Iu Ping, Kuang Ya-ming, Peng Kang, etc., have been purged. Even Liu Shao-chi, the vice-chairman of the party and president of the People's Republic of China, and Teng Hsiao-ping, the general secretary of the party, have been openly attacked by the Red Guards and obliged to make self-criticisms. Moreover, in recent weeks, Mao Tse-tung has used the army to take over the government and party apparatuses in certain provincial capitals such as Tayuan in Shansi, Nangchung in Kiangsi, and Hofei in Anhwei.
All these events taken together demonstrate that your party not only finds itself in the grave crisis of an open split, but that the country itself could be on the brink of a civil war. If this situation is not corrected in time, the outcome will be catastrophic and socialist China will be led into an impasse. For the sake of the