Third Message to Compatriots in Taiwan from the Ministry of National Defence

To our fellow countrymen, military and civilian, of Taiwan, the Penghu Islands, Quemoy and Matsu:

In view of the favourable response of the broad masses of officers and men of the Kuomintang forces on the Quemoy islands, the regulation issued by this Ministry that on even days shelling shall cease on the four military targets at Quemoy — the airfield, the wharf, the beaches and the vessels of Liaoluo Bay — is hereby extended to military targets in all other areas: on even days there will be no shelling at all, and all shelling will take place on odd days. Some targets — the airfield, the wharf, the beaches and the vessels of Liaoluo Bay, for instance — may be spared shelling even on odd days, but your aircraft and vessels had better not come, so as to avoid possible losses. The prohibition of American escort remains as laid down in our previous proclamations. Premier Zhou Enlai proposed to you two years ago that peace talks be held, that the historical disputes between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party be settled by reasonable means, and that the Taiwan area be liberated by peaceful means; you did not respond actively. The Americans are clamping down on the Taiwan authorities with all their might, forbidding them to hold peace talks with us, bent single-mindedly on interfering in China's internal affairs. The Americans are mortally afraid of peace, mortally afraid that the Kuomintang and the Communist Party may come together again and negotiate a peaceful settlement, which would frustrate their schemes for isolating Taiwan and putting it under trusteeship. We must smash this scheme. We hope that one day the Taiwan authorities will throw off that clamping demon-hand of the Americans and send representatives to peace talks. Our peace talks would be genuine peace talks: once they succeeded, the civil war could be declared over, and all Chinese could unite to face the foreign threat together — would that not be a good thing? As for the so-called unity and mutual trust between the Americans and the Kuomintang — these are words, words only, and in the last analysis cannot be relied on. Proclaim it a thousand times over, even you yourselves do not believe it. Fellow countrymen, we are all Chinese. We believe that when the Americans try to drive the Kuomintang to its death, the Kuomintang will come to see the light, and the peace talks may then succeed. To be pessimistic about this is groundless. As for all the pessimistic talk spread by the pro-American faction, we hope you will on no account listen to it.

Peng Dehuai, Minister of National Defence

The base text is the Wikisource version, three paragraphs, titled 'Third Message to the Compatriots in Taiwan from the Ministry of National Defence of the PRC', signed by Defence Minister Peng Dehuai. The text says the change arose from the favourable response of the broad officers and men of the Kuomintang army in the Jinmen islands.

The third message again mentions Premier Zhou's peace-talk proposal of two years earlier, which met no positive response, and says the US side is constraining the Taiwan authorities and forbidding peace talks. The items to be observed remain the prohibition on American escorts, the same as the previous two messages.