An Open Letter Calling on Chinese Soldiers to Rise Up Goes Viral Online

The image shows the representatives of the Chinese military attending the Two Sessions in Beijing. (Video screenshot)

[People News] On December 17, 2025, “China Action” published on the X platform an open letter written by a former military “senior officer” to Chinese soldiers, titled “A Letter to Chinese Soldiers: The Heavy Responsibility of History and the Call of the Times.”

The letter opens by stating that China is currently on the eve of a great historical transformation, and that as the nation’s crucial instrument, you are standing at a historical turning point. It expresses the hope that when change suddenly arrives before your eyes, you will be able to remain clear-headed, uphold your conscience, and make choices that live up to the times and the people.

Next, this “senior officer” puts forward three points to Chinese soldiers:

1. A political party is not the state. No political party has the right to represent the state. A people’s army has absolutely no obligation to be loyal to any particular political party.

2. “The Party commands the gun” is wrong. No political party has the right to appropriate the military as its own possession and treat it as, or use it as, a tool to maintain one-party dictatorship.

3. To love the land beneath your feet, to be loyal to the people who have labored and multiplied upon it for generations, and to protect their dignity and peace with your blood and lives—this is the duty of a “people’s army.” To suppress the people according to the Communist Party’s orders is to become an out-and-out, genuine “Party guard army.”

The “senior officer” hopes that Chinese soldiers will firmly remember: the Chinese Communist Party is not China; it has no qualification to represent the entire country, much less to represent the people. What you must defend is not the Party, but the country.

The “senior officer” then makes a comparison between the Soviet Union’s “August 18” incident and China’s “June Fourth” incident, and highly praises the Soviet soldiers for making a decision that would make their names endure in history—they chose to obey their conscience and social justice rather than their superiors and a regime that betrayed the people. At the same time, he expresses deep regret toward Chinese soldiers, saying that the lack among Chinese soldiers of people with historical vision and resolute, courageous wisdom led to the abrupt halt of China’s reform and opening-up and a comprehensive regression on the social and political levels.

The open letter concludes by writing: the Communist Party makes you believe you are “defending the motherland,” but in reality you are maintaining an evil regime whose essence is lies, violence, and enslavement; the Communist Party makes you raise your right hand to swear an oath to the Party flag—yet have you ever thought about when they have asked you to swear an oath to the Constitution, or to the people?

It finally calls on Chinese soldiers: may you, under the call of conscience and justice, recognize the situation and see the truth clearly, and at the moment when the darkness shrouding the land of China is about to disperse, consciously merge into that first brilliant beam of dawn!

The full text of the open letter “A Letter to Chinese Soldiers: The Heavy Responsibility of History and the Call of the Times” is as follows:

All officers and soldiers: greetings to you all!

As a retired serviceman and a “senior officer” who once held an official post, I am writing this letter because China is currently on the eve of a great historical transformation. As the nation’s crucial instrument, you stand at a historical turning point. Whether you choose to stand on the side of reformist forces or on the side of conservative forces will have a profound impact on the future direction of the country. Therefore, I feel that there are some things I need to say to you in advance, so that when change suddenly arrives before your eyes, you can remain clear-headed, uphold your conscience, and make choices that live up to the times and the people.

The first thing I want to say: a political party is not the state. No political party has the right to represent the state. A people’s army has absolutely no obligation to be loyal to any particular political party. To put it bluntly, any political party is only the representative of a specific political ideology or community of interests; what it represents can only ever be the ideas and pursuits of a certain segment of people, and can never be the common interests of all the people.

The second thing I want to say: “the Party commands the gun” is wrong. No political party has the right to appropriate the military as its own possession and regard it as, and use it as, a tool to maintain one-party dictatorship. The military belongs to the state, not to any particular group or organization in society; this has long been common knowledge in civilized countries. The question of whom the military belongs to has today already become an important dividing line between democratic countries and dictatorial countries.

The third thing I want to say: to love the land beneath your feet, to be loyal to the people who have labored and multiplied upon it for generations, and to protect their dignity and peace with your blood and lives—this is the duty of a “people’s army.” If you mistakenly treat some organization as the motherland to love, if you mistakenly transfer your loyalty from the people to the Chinese Communist Party, if whenever the Communist Party tells you to open fire on someone you aim your guns at them, then you are unworthy of being called a people’s army, and have degenerated into an out-and-out, genuine “Party guard army”!

At this point, I want to talk about your current title and the ironic meaning it contains. In June 1946, when the Chinese Communist Party formally bestowed upon your predecessor soldiers the title “Chinese People’s Liberation Army,” it proclaimed two major missions at the time: first, that this army represented the interests of the “Chinese people”; second, that it took as its duty the “liberation of the entire people” from deep suffering. However, how could the tens of thousands of martyrs who braved boiling oil and charged into hails of bullets to “liberate the people” have known, or even imagined, that more than seventy years later, this army bearing the name of “liberating the people” would be acting as the thug of a Communist Party that exploits the Chinese people, and would degenerate into a tool of a new oppressive machine!

Officers and soldiers, I hope you will firmly remember: the Chinese Communist Party is not China; it has no qualification to represent the entire country, much less to represent the people. What you must defend is not the Chinese Communist Party, but the People’s Republic of China; what you must be loyal to is not some organization, but the entire Chinese people!

When a country forms an army, analyzed from the standpoint of the nation’s foundation, its purposes are threefold: to defend the country; to safeguard and uphold the dignity of the Constitution; and to protect the lives and property of the people.

Below I will talk about one matter, to let you know how important the choices of soldiers are at critical junctures of social transformation, and thereby understand how heavy the responsibility on your shoulders is.

Gorbachev once vigorously carried out reforms in the Soviet Union, but encountered opposition from some high-level figures within the Party, the military, and the KGB. These people believed that Gorbachev’s reforms would lead to the demise of the Party and the state (worrying about losing their privileges and interests), and they plotted a coup to restore the old system. On August 18, 1991, Vice President Yanayev, Defense Minister Yazov, KGB Chairman Kryuchkov, and others formed the “State Committee on the State of Emergency,” placed Gorbachev under house arrest… announced that Gorbachev was unable to perform his duties due to health reasons, that Yanayev would act as president, and that the entire country would enter a state of emergency. Tanks and troops immediately entered Moscow, occupying major transportation routes and surrounding the Russian Federation government building. But turning back the wheel of history… was against the will of the people. Large numbers of citizens used their bodies and makeshift barricades to protect the building, confronting the troops. The coup leaders ordered the military to disperse the crowds, but multiple units, including the “Alpha” special forces, refused to carry out the orders. On the evening of August 21, the coup completely failed; the next day Gorbachev returned to Moscow, and the coup leaders were arrested.

If Soviet soldiers had obeyed their superiors’ orders at that time, Moscow would certainly have become a blood-red slaughterhouse, reformist and democratic forces would have suffered heavy blows, conservative forces would have made a comeback and continued to reign, and it is unknown how long the dissolution of the Soviet Union would have been delayed… But Soviet soldiers did not obey their superiors’ orders; the tanks stopped, the soldiers did not pull the triggers. This caused the conservative coup to collapse within three days. The Soviet soldiers’ act of “disobeying orders” was a historic “moral rebellion” and “conscientious refusal”: the soldiers’ gun barrels were not aimed at the people, but at those attempting to reverse history… the soldiers’ gun barrels were not aimed at the people, but at those attempting to reverse history… The soldiers made a move that would make their names endure in history; they chose to obey conscience and social justice rather than their own superiors and a regime that betrayed the people.

Officers and soldiers, similar circumstances and opportunities once also came to us in China, but because Chinese soldiers lacked historical vision and resolute, courageous wisdom, China ultimately missed the opportunity to integrate into the world’s civilized nations.

In 1989, calls for social transformation in China rose wave after wave. Teachers and students from colleges and universities, along with citizens, took to the streets and gathered in Tiananmen Square, demanding that the government implement democracy and carry out political system reform. Conservative forces represented by Deng Xiaoping, Li Peng, and others urgently ordered the 38th Group Army to go to Beijing to quell the “turmoil.” However, Army Commander Xu Qinxian refused to lead his troops into Beijing to impose martial law. Soldiers disobeying orders and refusing to use firearms against unarmed people was unprecedented in the history of Communist Party rule. Unfortunately, because Chinese soldiers lacked people with historical vision and resolute, courageous wisdom, this led to the abrupt halt of China’s reform and opening-up and a comprehensive regression on the social and political levels.
…

Have you realized that the “people” represented by the military emblem above your heads has long since been hollowed out by the CCP? The Communist Party makes you believe you are “defending the motherland,” but in reality you are maintaining an evil regime whose essence is lies, violence, and enslavement; the Communist Party makes you raise your right hand to swear an oath to the Party flag—yet have you ever thought about when they have asked you to swear an oath to the Constitution, or to the people?
…

Dear Chinese soldiers, I send you this letter as a compatriot and as a retired old soldier. May you, under the call of conscience and justice, recognize the situation and see the truth clearly, and at the moment when the darkness shrouding the land of China is about to disperse, consciously merge into that first brilliant beam of dawn!
△