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July 6, 1949

Letter to Stalin, Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), on Learning from the Soviet Experience in Party and State Building

Liu Shaoqi presents a list of questions and issues to Stalin that the Chinese Communist Party seeks advice upon.

July 4, 1949

Report to Stalin, Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee

The Chinese-language version of Liu Shaoqi's report on the Chinese Civil War and the future of China, presented to Stalin when Liu arrived in Moscow in summer 1949.

June 28, 1974

Chinese Communist Party Central Committee Notice [Zhongfa] (1979) No. 19: Notice on the Talks between Chairman Mao and Edward Heath

A summary of a conversation between Mao Zedong and Edward Heath. Topics covered include the Watergate scandal, European security, bilateral relations between the PRC and the UK, and the foreign policy of the Soviet Union.

March 26, 1965

Palestine Delegation in Peking

Formed in 1964, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was not the first Palestinian organization after the nakba (catastrophe), the escape from violence and the Israeli expulsion of a good half of Palestinians in 1948. The two most important earlier organizations were Harakat al-Qawmiyyin al-‘Arab (Arab Nationalists Movement [ANM]) and Harakat al-Tahrir al-Watani al-Filastini (Palestinian National Liberation Movement [Fatah]).

Founded in 1951 in Beirut, ANM became committed to Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918-1970) and his version of pan-Arab nationalism, which it saw as the means to liberate Palestine, opening a separate Palestinian branch in 1959. (In 1967, it would give rise to the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which split in 1968, one wing forming the Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PDFLP)).

Rejecting Arab states’ tutelage, Fatah was officially born in 1959, though organizational activities began in 1956 and though it built on military cells operating from Egyptian-ruled Gaza from the early 1950s. After Arab armies’ crushing loss against Israel in the Six-Day War of 1967 killed any remaining hopes, weakened since the early 1960s, that Arab armies would liberate Palestine, Fatah grew in strength. In 1969, it took command of the PLO. The latter had been founded in 1964 for several reasons. Nasser hoped to weaken Fatah and Syria, a state then in competition with him. Also, the PLO served (upper) middle class Palestinians some of whom—like Ahmad al-Shuqayri (1908-1908), Palestine’s representative to the Arab League and the PLO’s founder and first chairman—had played a Palestinian political role until 1948 and wished to do so again. And these men and women believed Palestinians needed their own statist entity, as Yezid Sayigh’s monumental Armed Struggle and the Search for State: The Palestinian National Movement, 1949-1993 (1997) notes.

In 1965, PLO delegates led by Shuqayri for the first time visited the People’s Republic of China (PRC), as reported in the English issue of the multi-language international organ Peking Review. Already in 1964 a small Fatah delegation led by Yassir Arafat (1929-2004) had accepted an invitation to visit Beijing, founding an office there. Sure, upon its establishment in 1949 the PRC had de jure recognized Israel, following the lead of the Soviet Union that acted as its older brother in the communist camp. (Israel in turn was the first Middle Eastern state to recognize the PRC, in 1950.) But after the PRC and the USSR split in 1960, Beijing amplified its anti-imperialist rhetoric and policies versus the Soviet Union and the United States, as Gregg Brazinksy’s Winning the Third World: Sino-American Rivalry during the Cold War (2017) has shown. It was in this context that it from the mid-1960s delivered arms especially to Fatah and the PLO—it soon also would train fighters—and that it politically embraced the Palestinian cause. The PRC framed this policy as that of one “revolutionary people” helping another one, a story strand in Paul Chamberlin’s The Global Offensive: The United States, the Palestine Liberation Organization, and the Making of the Post-Cold War Order (2012). By the early 1970s, however, Chinese support became more lukewarm. Moreover, after the death of Chairman Mao Zedong (1893-1976), relations with Israel cautiously warmed, though remaining surreptitious until the establishment of full diplomatic ties in 1992.

May 17, 1959

Several Notices from the Central Committee regarding Taiwan Work

The CCP Central Committee outlines its strategy toward Taiwan and how provincial and municipal level bodies in the PRC can effectively contribute to undermining Chiang Kai-shek's rule.

October 17, 1958

CCP Central Committee Notice on the Current Situation in the Conflict with the United States

The CCP Central Committee issues guidance on how the Party is navigating the struggle with the United States over Taiwan's future.

November 15, 1956

Communist Party Central Committee Notice on Implementing Support for Egypt in Its Fight against Aggression

The CCP Central Committee outlines how the PRC can support Egypt during the Suez crisis.

February 18, 1956

Central Committee Notice on Propaganda on Current Events

Summarizing a speech made by Zhou Enlai, the CCP Central Committee distributes propaganda guidance on the PRC's efforts to "liberate Taiwan by peaceful means."

July 29, 1957

Cable from the CCP Central Committee, 'CCP Central Committee Authorized Transmittal of Report on the Situation and Opinions by the Propaganda Department for Improvement of Propaganda Campaign towards Taiwan'

The CCP Central Committee distributes a detailed summary and evaluation of propaganda efforts vis-a-vis Nationalist controlled Taiwan.

July 29, 1956

Cable from the CCP Central Committee, 'Guidance Regarding Strengthening Work on Peaceful Liberation of Taiwan'

Following a major speech on Taiwan made by Zhou Enlai, the CCP Central Committee distributes updated guidance on the Party's approach to Nationalist controlled Taiwan.

Pagination