Page 210 - SELECTED WORKS OF MAO TSE-TUNG Volume III.indd

208 MAO TSE-TUNG
What is the present domestic situation?
China’s protracted war has exacted and will continue to exact
great sacrifices from the Chinese people, but at the same time this
very war has tempered them. It has awakened and united the Chinese
people to a greater degree than all their great struggles in the last
hundred years. The Chinese people face not only a formidable national
enemy but also powerful domestic reactionary forces which are in
fact helping the enemy; this is one side of the picture. But the
other side is that the Chinese people are not only more politically
conscious than ever before but have built powerful Liberated Areas
and a nation-wide democratic movement that is growing day by day.
These constitute favourable domestic conditions. If the defeats and
setbacks in the Chinese people’s struggles of the last hundred years
were due to the absence of certain necessary international and
domestic conditions, then today the situation is different — all the
necessary conditions are present. There is every possibility of avoid-
ing defeat and winning victory. We shall be victorious if we can
unite the whole people in resolute struggle and give them proper
leadership.
The Chinese people now have much greater confidence that they
can unite to defeat the aggressors and build a new China. The time
has come for them to conquer all difficulties and achieve their fun-
damental demands, their great historic aspirations. Is there any doubt
about it? I think not.
Such is the general international and domestic situation today.

III. TWO LINES IN THE ANTI-JAPANESE WAR

THE KEY TO CHINA’S PROBLEMS

In speaking of the domestic situation, we have also to make a
specific analysis of China’s War of Resistance.
China is one of the five biggest countries taking part in the war
against fascism and it is the principal country fighting the Japanese
aggressors on the continent of Asia. Not only have the Chinese people
played a very great role in the war against Japan, but they will also
play a very great role in safeguarding peace in the post-war world
and the decisive one in safeguarding peace in the East. China has