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HAINAN
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P«*D«rcation Lini
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Vietnam
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Sam’HBryant'
THE
MORNING
DELUGE
by the same author
DESTINATION CHUNGKING
A MANY-SPLENDOURED THING
... AND THE RAIN MY DRINK
THE MOUNTAIN IS YOUNG
CAST BUT ONE SHADOW and WINTER LOVE
TWO LOVES
THE FOUR FACES
THE CRIPPLED TREE
A MORTAL FLOWER
CHINA IN THE YEAR 2001
BIRDLESS SUMMER
ASIA TODAY
THE
MORNING
DELUGE
Mao Tsetung and
the Chinese Revolution
1893-1953
Han Suyin
WITH A FOREWORD BY
MALCOLM MacDonald
JONATHAN CAPE
thirty BEDFORD SQUARE LONDON
FIRST PUBLISHED 197 ^
(g) 1972 BY HAN SUYIN
JONATHAN CAPE LTD
30 BEDFORD SQUARE, LONDON WCI
ISBN O 224 00793 9
The author is grateful to Lois Wheeler Snow and Victor
Gollancz Ltd for permission to include excerpts from the
first revised and enlarged edition of Red Star Over Cbitia
by Edgar Snow. Copyright 1938, 1944 by Random House,
Inc. Copyright © 1968 by Edgar Snow. Copyright ©
1961 by John K. Fairbank
BY BBENBZER BAYLIS & SON LTD
THE TRINITY PRESS, WORCESTER, AND LONDON
ON PAPER MADE BY JOHN DICKINSON & CO. LTD
BOUND BY G. & J. KITCAT LTD, LONDON
Contents
author’s note
FOREWORD BY MALCOLM MACDONALD I3
PROLOGUE
PART ONE
1 childhood
2 Youth and School Years
3 First Trip to Peking
4 The First Cultural Revolution: May 4, 1919
5 Dedication
6 The First United Front
7 The Ways Divide
8 The Betrayal
9 The First Red Base : The First ‘Left’ Line
10 Mao Tsetung and Li Li-san: The Second ‘Left’ Line
11 Mao Tsetung and Wang Ming: The Third ‘Left’ Line
12 The Long March
23
44
11
84
102
126
149
180
191
241
273
311
PART TWO
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
The Yenan Period: The Second United Front
Profile of Yenan
Mao Tsetung: The Man and the Teacher in Yenan
The Rectification Movement, 1941-1944
The Seventh Congress, April 1945
The Conquest of Power: Prelude
The Conquest of Power : The Civil War and Liberation,
1946-1949
Mao Tsetung and Stalin
The Korean War
note on sources
INDEX
353
397
416
446
465
491
513
545
570
599
601
Illustrations
Between pages 12S and 129
1 Mao Tsetung
2 Shaoshan, birthplace of Mao Tsetung
3 The Boxer Uprising; the Chien Men Gate, and United
States Marines in Peking, 1900
4 Mao Tsetung at college, and with his family at Shaoshan
5 Sun Yatsen and Madame Sun
6 Mikhail Borodin, Russian adviser to the Kuomintang
Between pages 160 and 161
7 The 1927 massacres
8 Mao Tsetung in 1937
9 Leaders of the Autumn Harvest Uprising
10 The author with a Red Army guide
11 The Long March; Loushan pass
12 The Long March: crossing the Snow Mountains
13 The Long March: Luting bridge
Between pages 256 and 257
14 Chiang Kai-shek and Madame Chiang
15 Mao Tsetung with Chang Kuo-tao
16 Kuomintang troops fighting the Communists
17 Communist troops moving out against the Japanese, and in
action, 1937
18 The Japanese take Shanghai: a celebration by occupying
troops, and a ruined suburb
Betiueen pages 288 and 289
19 Japanese troops in Northwest China
20 Chu Teh with Mao Tsetung
21 Liu Shao-chi
22 A Japanese tank advance
23 Mao Tsetung speaking in Yenan
ILLUSTRATIONS
24 The Japanese destruction of Hankow
25 Mao Tsetung and Madame Mao
26 Chou En-lai with Mao Tsetung at the Seventh Congress,
1945
28
Between pages 384 and 385
27 The United States Dixie Mission in Yenan, 1944: a theatre
for the troops, and members of the mission with Chou
En-lai
Members of the Dixie Mission with Mao Tsetung and Chu
Teh, and at a uniform factory in Nanniwan
Mao Tsetung with United States Ambassador Patrick Hurley
in Chungking, 1945
Mao Tsetung and Chiang Kai-shek during negotiations in
Chungking
Mao Tsetung leading the Northwest campaign, 1947
The People s Liberation Army entering Peking, 1949
29
30
31
32
Between pages 416 and 417
33 Last days of the Kuomintang: a street in Nanking, and a
bank rush in Shanghai
34 Proclamation of the People’s Republic of China, Peking.
October i, 1949
35 The People’s Liberation Army in Nanking
36 United Sutes troops at the Yalu river, Korea, 1950
37 Mao Tsetung with Bulganin and Stalin
38 Peoples Republic of China delegates at United Nations
session on Korea, November 1950
MAPS
1 Central and South China, with routes of the Autumn
Harvest Uprising and establishment of bases at
Chingkangshan andjuichin
2 Red bases in China, 1930-1934
3 The Long March, October 1934-October 1935
4 Communist areas of North China, 1944-1945
197
277
312
407
Picture Credits
By courtesy of Han Suyin: i, lo, ii, 25, 26, 31
@ Rene Burri, Magnum, New York: 2, 4
Robert Capa, Magnum, New York: 24
Henri Cartier-Bresson, Magnum, New York: 33, 35
United Press International Photos, New York: 3, 6, 7, 8, 14, 15, 29, 38
Wide World Photos, New York: 5, 21
Eastfoto, New York: 9, 12, 13, 20, 23, 34
Ullstein, West Berlin: 16, 17, 18, 22
Bildarchiv Bucher, Lucerne: 19, 32
By courtesy of Colonel David D. Barrett, from his monograph Dixie
Mission: The United States Army Group in Yenan, (China
Research Monograph No. 6, published by the Center for Chinese
Studies, University of California, Berkeley, Calif 94720. Copy-
right © 1970 by David D. Barrett): 27, 28
Jack Wilkes, Life Magazine, © Time Inc., New York: 30
Hank Walker, Life Magazine, © Time Inc., New York: 36
Tass from Sovfoto, New York: 37
The life of Chairman Mao is in essence the history of
new China. Rare are instances when an individual
makes such a profound impact on a nation’s history.
HAILE SELASSIE
in Peking,
October 6, 1971
Author’s Note
For this book I am indebted to an extent which cannot be repaid,
first to the memory of the millions of peasants and workers of
China who died for the Revolution, and whose children today
walk as men in full dignity towards the building of their own
future. I am also indebted to many, many friends, both in China
and elsewhere, in particular to the late Edgar Snow, who gave
me so much time and also allowed me to read and to utilize so
much of his material. There are also many American writers,
scrupulously fair, to whom I am greatly indebted for their
contribution to truth.
1 am also grateful to and wish to thank Madame Teng Ying-chao
the wife of His Excellency Premier Chou En-lai, for having fired
iny imagination with a single sentence, and thus planted the seed
ot this book, almost sixteen years ago. In a talk with her in Tune
1956. she compared the people of China to a great ocean, and the
leaders (such as herself) to the white froth on the wavetops, bom
of them, carried by them, forever renascent, but non-existent
without the ocean This image I never forgot. I thought then of
Chairman Mao as both the child and the leader of the Revolution
the nation-man and also the man-ocean, the student of his people
as well as their teacher; the one who represents and artkulates
thar genim and also is most indebted to that genius; the builder of
New Chma and the destroyer of that worst of all Chinese
traditions : submission and obedience to the ruler.
HAN SUYIN
Foreword
Mao Tse-txmg is probably the most important figure to have
appeared in the twentieth century. Many significant changes have
occureed in world affairs during the last seventy years, such as the
f solution of the empires of the Western powers, the emergence
of the United States of America and the Soviet Union as the two
super-states, the transformation of Britain’s colonial empire into a
multiracial Commonwealth, the creation first of the League of
Nations and later of the United Nations, and the founding and
now impendmg enlargement of the European Community. As
important as any of these, and perhaps more important, is the
rebrth of a strong China -a China that is partly Mao’s creation.
Une of the fascinating questions frequently provoked by
bjoric developments is this: to what extent do remarkable
individual leaders exert a decisive influence on the course of
pat human events, and to what extent is that course determined
by natural -more or less inevitable - economic, social and other
movements regardless of the thoughts and deeds of even the
most pperfhl personages? The story of contemporary China
Sat k h rii ^ suggests -rightly, 7 :hink-
contnbutions to the turns of history. At the beginning of this
en ury a weak China was moving towards a possible revival of
inm llTachl ’ P°-bility
say^i ST" Pew in number-
be L wori^S necessarily
800 oSo 00^^ to abom
populatir N ^ T I " '^t^tld’s total
qualuy .1,0 „ ,..,p„„iv=. They are a. able, Lrgedc and cicldve
13
14
FOREWORD
as any people round the globe. Their revival as a united, self-
confident nation therefore promises to be a titanic event. Only a
break-up of their unity, or a serious decline of their present zeal
after Mao’s disappearance from the scene, might destroy that
prospect.
Mao’s achievement is astonishing in several ways. One is that,
in spite of periodic and formidable opposition from inside as well
as outside the Communist Party, he gradually asserted his now
universally acclaimed authority over that immense multitude of
robust, intelligent and instinctively individualist, though cus-
tomarily well-disciplined, people. His unquestioned authority is
attributable primarily to another of his and his government’s
achievements: the progressive development of the national
economy on a scale which has raised the whole populace’s standard
of living to a point which, though still modest, far exceeds
anything that those masses would have believed possible twenty
years ago. It was Mao who not only adapted Marxist-Leninist
philosophy to Chinese circumstances, but also devised the
political and military strategy and tactics which made the Com-
munist Revolution attainable. This has been followed by another
amazing achievement. During recent years the entire population
fiom primary school children upwards has been instructed (or
mdoctimated, or whatever description is appropriate) in the
Thoughts of Mao with such success that virtually the whole
nation believes his teachings to be the embodiment of Truth. Nor
IS Aat all. His Thoughts not only determine the political ideology
which governs China’s national affairs; they also propound
prmciples of collecuve social conduct and individual moral
behaviour which are accepted and practised by the hundreds of
nullions of adults and teenagers throughout the land. This has
resulted in sweeping social reforms and an admirable Puritanism
in personal conduct which together have changed many age-old
Chinese traditions almost beyond recognition.
This IS not the place to expatiate on the deep significance of
Aese Jvelopments. I need only express the view that, because of
Mao Tse-tung s ideas, China will in certain ways never be the
same as before. Nor, perhaps, will the rest of the world. No doubt
FOREWORD
15
the influence of Mao’s Thoughts will be modified by notions
which in future years reach China from elsewhere in this in-
creasingly close-knit world; but some of his Thoughts will
likewise alter ideas and practices in other lands.
Of course, Mao did not transform China single-handed. As is
usually the case, he has been just one member -though the most
important one of a team. Several of his colleagues have made
distinct contributions to the success of the Chinese Revolution. In
particular Chou En-lai has been, and still is, an indispensable
leader in the work. Indeed, without the close partnership tlirough-
out more than forty years between the revolutionary genius Mao
and the administrative and diplomatic genius Chou, success
could probably not have been maintained. Perhaps this goes to
prove that one outstanding individual is not enough, and that a
group of remarkable individuals led by a great chief is required
at critical moments in history to shift the course of human affairs.
The hour must produce not just the man, but the men.
Some of Mao’s achievements referred to above are not described
in Han Suyin’s present book, which is only the first volume of her
story of Mao and the Chinese Revolution. This volume covers
the period up to the Communist accession to power and the
flight of Chiang Kai-shek to Taiwan in October 1949. The
portrait of Mao in these pages describes fascinatingly his per-
sonality , his tribulations, the gradual development of his ideas,
and his actions throughout his first fifty-five years, all against the
background of changing moods and events in China. It reveals
his pragmatism, originality and tenacity, among other striking
qualities. It also corrects some misjudgments made by earlier
authors and brings out aspects of this vital episode in contem-
porary history which may surprise many readers. No writer is
etter ^ahfied than Han Suyin to relate the facts and to interpret
hem. Her knowledge of modern China, understanding of the
Chinese people, and friendships with many of their present leaders
make her a wise authority. And her gifts as a writer have pro-
uced a book which is a gem of literature as well as of historical
MALCOLM MACDONALD
Prologue
When Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia visited the People’s
Republic of China in October 1971, he had this to say: ‘Today no
one refers to China without mentioning its great leader, Chairman
Mao Tsetung. The life history of Chairman Mao is in essence the
history of New China, Rare are instances when an individual
makes such a profound impact on a nation’s history.’
It is essentially in this spirit that The Morning Deluge has been
written. It is not meant to be the biography of a single hero, a
genius, a Caesar in absolute authority, a superman above the
crowd, manipulating people and events. It is to give, through
episodes of Chairman Mao’s life and especially through his de-
velopment as a revolutionary and as a thinker, the story of the
Chinese Revolution.
This book is not an officially sponsored book. It is entirely the
author s responsibility. No approval has been sought, but I am
grateful to the Chinese government for allowing me numerous
interviews with people who went through the Revolution, who
made the Long March, who lived these events. Ordinary people
whose testimony is precious. / r r •
The heroic view of an individual fashioning history at will
wreaking his fancies upon helpless millions, exacting absolute
Ma^ guided many a so-called biography of Chairman
ao Nothing could be further from the truth. Many historical
events have been described according to the testimony of Com-
unist Party renegades of Kuomintang sources. I have examined
nsTn U '^ith other sources, and in many
nstances have found them fanciful. There are also many so-called
ecret documents, procured by means which are not explained
a d purporting to represent official pronouncements. These have
also been examined; only in certain cases, when certain sentences
17
i8
PROLOGUE
used were also heard in China, have these been mentioned, with
due caution.
The Chinese Revolution brought forth its leader in Mao
Tsetung; Mao Tsetung shaped the Chinese Revolution. This
dialectical link, symbiosis between a man’s life and the Revolution
to which he has given his life, makes it impossible to write of the
one without the other. Mao Tsetung has embodied the aspira-
tions, needs, and desires of his nation and of his people; their will
to revolt, to end exploitation, misery, injustice; to free themselves
and become masters of their own destiny. Not for a single day has
Mao Tsetung departed from this goal, and he has always gone
back to the peasants and workers, the downtrodden of his land,
to learn from them, with magnificent humility. The source of his
creative power, as he will say himself, is the boundless creative
power of the masses, who topple empires and transform the earth.
He found his own people with limitless enthusiasm for revolution,
and unhesitatingly gave all of himself to it, and hence became their
leader, the nation-man.
Because the development of a man is the process by which his
ideas are formed, it is also impossible to describe the Chinese
Revolution without studying the thinking of Chairman Mao.
Mao Tsetung Thought was developed in this great forward
movement, this overwhelming tide which has brought, with a
speed unparalleled in history, one quarter of humanity into the
modern age and into its own future. Not only did he formulate
and develop the ideas which would make action possible, but he
has also documented them, and this scientific study of the relation
between theory and practice, between idea and action, makes his
thinking of world importance today.
Mao Tsetung s grasp of the future, his vision of man’s true role
on , as given him a place as a world figure. His creative
genius as come rom this constant return to the people, resisting
aU attempts to elevate himself above them. Much has been said
a out t e personality cult ; I have seen true, genuine love and
a miration from the ordinary people of China for Mao Tsetung.
The personality cult evolved round him by city bureaucrats he
has done his best to put down, withdrawing himself as a person.
PROLOGUE
19
giving to the people all homage for the Revolution. Only the
people are the heroes of history; only they make it. It is in this
spirit, not elevating Mao as a genius, but showing him as a man,
in a constant search for truth, for reality, that this book has been
written.
Chairman Mao was born when China was crumbling, in misery
and degradation and despair, halfway in that span of one hundred
and nine years known as China’s semi-feudal, semi-colonial period.
Since 1840, the time of the first Opium War made upon China by
Great Britain to force the drug upon the Chinese People, China’s
story had been one of swift ruin. The ruin was not only material,
with the Western colonial powers exploiting China at the point of
the gun, forcing upon her unequal treaties, burning the palaces
of Peking, massacring inhabitants at will, exacting huge sums of
indemnity for wars made upon her; it was also spiritual. None
of the old values and traditions could stem this tide of destruction,
and when Mao Tsetung was born China’s revolution had already
begun. Great peasant revolts had taken place; his childhood was
pinpointed with famines and devastation and revolts. Already
that great and noble revolutionary of the early twentieth century,
Dr Sun Yatsen, had begun to lead those who, in the first surge of
revolt, sought to make the Chinese people free.
Although far removed from the centres of revolt, in the deep
countryside, a farmer s child, Mao Tsetung was plunged into the
turmoil of his generation. So swift were the changes that took
place that Mao s life is a recapitulation of what his generation says,
that they have lived through many ages in their country’s history.
In these changes Mao Tsetung participated, and when others gave
^P» gsve in, gave way to despair, he went on, undaunted, un-
faltering, Perhaps his greatest moment was in 1927, when all
seemed lost, and when Mao rallied, persuaded, exhorted a band of
heroic peasants and workers to continue, and with them ascended
his eagle s nest, a forbidding mountain, there to forge a new
Army, a new Party, and to nurse back to life the Revolution
which seemed drowned in blood.
This enormous faith in the future was not an abstract belief; it
was a staunch confidence in the strength and power of people, in
20
PROLOGUE
their heroism and their courage. As the artist sees beyond the
surface and seeks the essence of truth in all things, Mao Tsetung is
the artist of the revolution, seeing hope and joy and power where
others only saw weakness, ignorance, slavery. Because he had the
eyes of love, because he is bone of the bone, flesh of the flesh of the
Chinese peasants and workers, he had that true greatness which is
humility; and humility led him to a total faith in the millions.
Revolution is made with passion and guts and vision and every-
thing that one has or is, and so is artistic creation. If this book is
said to be pro-Mao Tsetung, the answer is that it is. For there
cannot be a true attempt to picture the story of a revolution if one
does not also describe the faith and the steadfastness, beyond all
practical considerations, which animate it.
Of Mao Tsetung can be said what Thomas Traherne wrote:
Strange is the vigour in a brave man’s soul. His courage fits him
for all attempts, makes him the bulwark and defence of his being
and of his country. But Mao Tsetung’s repose and security was
not in himself, but always in the hearts of ks countrymen, from
whom he strove to cast out fear, from whom he called forth
boldness and initiative.
And because Mao Tsetung gave the Chinese people that
liberation of the mind which is true liberty, there is far greater
hope in the world that all the peoples on earth may achieve true
brotherhood.
Part I
childhood
Mao Tsetung was bom on December 26, 1893, in the village of
Shaoshan Chung, one of a scattered group of clan villages in the
fertile valley of Shaoshan, Hunan province. The nearest town,
twenty-two miles away, is the district town of Hsiangtan, so
named because of the beautiful, winding Hsiang river, which
flows from southwest China through three provinces into the
spongy meander of lakes and tributaries which forms the middle
basm of the Yangtze river. The Hsiang connects the district with
Changsha, the turbulent, steamy capital of Hunan province ; with
Wuhan, the triple metropohs* upon the Yangtze ; and with the
ocean port of Shanghai. Cargo boats of three to five thousand
tons ply Its waters bringing pork and bristle, rice and salt; the
old imperial highway from the southernmost city of Canton,
now called Kuangchow,t through the district to Peking
bearmg tribute and couriers and silk; in the early 1900s a railway
would be built along the road.
The district where Mao was bom was therefore a natural cross-
rpads for commerce, and a wealthy agricultural area. It was also a
strategic region, for no travel either in peace or in war could avoid
this heart province of China; east to west, south to north, the
province commanded the roads and the rivers. The Hunan people
were renowned for their agumen, enterprise and energy; their
peasant traders sustained far-reaching commercial links through-
^ nineteenth and early twentieth
ntunes Himan was also a centre of intellectual accomplishment,
d hence of diss^idence and revolt; it fostered the best scholars in
which
23
THE MORNING DELUGE
24
China, it also boasted a plethora of militarists. Both the generals
who helped the crumbling Manchu dynasty and the revolution-
aries who brought it down found their recruits in Hunan.
Throughout the nineteenth century Hunan had been on the high-
way of internecine warfare. The great Taiping peasant uprising
(1850 to 1864) had found here its millions of valorous warriors;
for despite the fertility of the province and the unrelenting labour
of its inhabitants, it was a region of peasants impoverished by
landlords and exorbitant taxation. The T aiping revolt was put down
with enormous slaughter; the peasantry went back to squalid
oppression. But the memory of rebellion was strong in the villages
of Hunan, and the 1911 revolution to come was already in embryo
in the schools of the capital city, Changsha, when Mao was born.
Today Shaoshan Chung, Mao’s birthplace, is a medium-sized
brigade,* part of a commune, with 708 families. The majority of
the families are still named Mao.j* The clan house remains, now
turned into a museum. Shaoshan today receives a million visitors
annually. In 1963, 30,000 people visited it; in 1964, 70,000; in
1 965 , 205 ,000. In 1 966, the mid-year had already seen over 3 1 0,000
pilgrims. On a day in July 1966, I saw delegations of peasants,
some from far-offTibet and Singkiang, walking up the pathways,
holding banners and portraits of Chairman Mao Tsetung. In 1971,
up to 10,000 visitors a day streamed in orderly files to visit the
house where he was born. Today the clay brick farmhouse with
its two wings, one roofed with tile and one with rice stalk thatch,
with its pathway winding between lotus ponds, is as familiar to
800 million Chinese as their own homes.
The farmhouse grew from an original mud-walled shack with a
low-pitched thatch roof, which Mao Tsetung’s grandfather, a
poor peasant crushed by debt, erected in 1878. Mao Tsetung’s
father, Mao Jen-shen, was then a wiry cight-y ear-old boy, hard-
working ill the fields. He had very little schooling, for at sixteen
he enrolled in the imperial army as a soldier to pay off his father’s
debts. After seven years, and incredible self-denial, he had saved
* A brigade is a section of a commune, and consists of several production teams.
t Among the families living there, eight are of revolutionary martyrs, 123 of
army men and Communist cadres.
CHILDHOOD
25
enough from his soldier’s pittance to buy back the small piece of
land (about half an acre) which the elder Mao had lost to a
landlord. Mao Jen-shen gradually improved the farmhouse,
chiefly after 1903, when he acquired another one and a half acres
and thus became, in the classification established later by his son, a
lower middle peasant.
Two families* lived in this house, one in each wing, connected
by a central hall in which, facing the entrance, was recessed a
wooden ancestors shelf. As Mao Jen-shen grew from poor to
middle peasant he added rooms to his wing, and two years before
his death in January 1920 was able to afford a tile roof, though the
floor remained of beaten earth. The other family could not afford
a tile roof. The present communist government has maintained
the house exactly as it was.
Mao Jen-shen was inordinately hard-working, frugal and tena-
cious. His bitter youth stunted him physically; the photographs
show him early emaciated ; he died at fifty of typhoid fever. To
accomplish what he did, buy back the land his father had lost
establish a family, and reach comparative comfort, he worked
unceasingly, never sparing himself nor his sons. An urge to better
himself drove him relentlessly; he was harsh towards his family
and his eldest son, who early opposed him. He put his children to
labour in the fields as soon as they were out of the toddling stage.
e ecame the kind of man who lies sleepless worrying over
the harvest, and forever reproved his family for waste and
idleness Mao Tsetung was not brought up as a rich peasant’s son
but as the son of a poor peasant driven by the memory of hmiger
and want. At sixteen, Mao only ate one egg a month, and he saw
meat three or four times a year.
Biographers have made much of the father-son relationship in
ao s ife. This is because, in the only record we have which is
Mao s own about his childhood,! he starts on this aspect of family
t»u family who moved into the house, but the ownership changed hands four
and (Gollancz. London. 1937; first revised
26
THE MORNING DELUGE
life and goes on about it at length. He makes no attempt to hide his
feelings of revulsion against his father. This relationship has there-
fore been described as abnormal, based on hatred, an Oedipus
complex; Mao’s achievements have been explained away as
founded on this childhood frustration.
But the father-son relationship in Mao’s family was not ab-
normal. On the contrary, it was a prevailing and prevalent feature
of the times, as any scanning of the novels and literature of that
period will reveal. This resentment, this generation ditch, is found
in the lives of almost every one of the revolutionaries whose
childhood fell within the 1890s to 1920s period. It was not a
private but a public feature, a defmite social phenomenon, just as
today in the United States the generation gap cannot be ex-
plained in terms of Freudian psychology or of family relation-
ships alone. Mao’s contemporaries, and the generation to
follow his, looked upon family rebellion as the first step in a
general revolt against society, against Confucian tradition; it
was a part of the search for new values, for a new order in the
making.
In Mao s case, it was not trivial quarrels about food, or work, or
study which would motivate his disagreements with his father. It
would be something more basic: his identification with his
downtrodden mother, with the labourer his father hired, with
his siblings, against authoritarianism and absolute patriarchal
rule.
Mao Jen-shen was not a wicked man, but he belonged to his
own generation; he had laboured and toiled to bring his family a
modicum of security, and he did not understand why his eldest
son should want to thwart his wishes. All he wanted was that he
should be thrifty, hard-working, obedient, raise a family and the
family status, in traditional style. All he knew was that the child
was headstrong, almost impossibly self-willed, a dreamer; and
yet It was he who had to give in, more often than not, and he did
not know what strange power his son had. In his harsh manner,
he not only loved his son, he was also nonplussed and unwillingly
fascinated. This love of his, however, could only be expressed in
roughness, in scolding, because that was the way the older
CHILDHOOD
27
generation treated the young ones in those days, when to dis-
g^age one’s children and wife was a part of traditional courtesy.
There is no autobiography’ of Mao save what he told Edgar Snow
in Other biographies by Chinese or Westerners (egregious
admirers or vjfulent haters) are trashes based on hearsay. Today,
with time and reverence, it is almost impossible to get a non-
i^giogr^phic account of Mao s childhood days. Childhood tales
niay endear, but do not inform. His own spontaneous descrip-
tions show that he belonged to the rebellious generation which
would effect the long overdue changes for which China was ripe,
^^o s rebellion was always an explicit one, a lucid, conscious
affirmation, linking his acts of revolt to a general, and genera-
tional, social context. He carried his young rage of change with
him wherever he went.
Physically, Mao grew tall and strong, taller and more robust
t an most boys of his age. His passion for water, an original trait,
developed early. He taught himself to swim when he was six
years old. Outside the farmhouse were two ponds where the
children splashed in the hot summer; in them lotuses were grown,
for food. Swimming became for him not only a physical ex-
perience but an exhilarating mental release. There is a connection
in Mao between this addiction to swimming and the decisive
movements of his mind. Sixty years later, on July i 6. iq66. Mao
Isetung would swim the Yangtze river at Wuhan the day before
returning to Peking to lead the Great Prole tarian Cultural
*^^--The act was symbolic; f^ the Cifftural Revolution
be a flood, sweeping away many accepted symbols,
enewing the freshness of revolution, renewing his own youthful
exploits through yet another generation of rebels.
1962, one summer day in Peking, Mao Tsetung went swim-
ng m the newly built reservoirs of the Ming tombs* together
witn Lm Shao-chi, at that time President of the Republic. The
Lil!!- ^ between the two as to the policy to follow in
rlacl ^ c Chinese state had already begun; they would soon
^ 1 in enmity. Besides being fellow Hunanese, for Liu was born
Built by student volunteers in 1958-1959.
28
THE MORNING DELUGE
in a village not far from Mao’s own, in 1898, Liu was regarded as
Mao’s successor and his intimate friend. When they emerged to
dry themselves in the sun, young swimmers crowded around
Mao, who spoke with them, but Liu did not say a word.
In September 1959, Mao Tsetung went to inspect the large
Miyun reservoir and its hydro-electric plants, thirty-seven miles
from Peking. He then had a swim, lasting forty minutes, in the
hill-surrounded man-made lake. One is tempted to associate
Mao s swim in that cold autumn to the problems then facing
China. For at the time Mao was in a minority, power taken from
him; before him loomed the Sino-Soviet conflict, the abrupt
tearing up of the agreements made between the USSR and China
by Khrushchev. Khrushchev was at Camp David conferring with
Eisenhower; the USSR was backing the Indian side of the Sino-
Indian border dispute. All this spelled danger to the Revolution.
Mao swam in the ice-cold water for forty minutes and came out
smiling, his mind made up.
Again, on July 16, 1971, anniversary of Mao’s swim in the
Yangtze* which started the Cultural Revolution, when all over
China millions were plunging in lakes and rivers and the sea in
commemoration, China would announce another Mao decision.
President Nixon had asked to come to China, and he had been
invited. Why was this date chosen? Coincidence perhaps.
From the childhood lotus pond to the tidal bore of the Revolu-
tion there is, in Mao s language, the vivid imagery of water in its
sweetness and its strength, in its life-giving passion and its irresis-
tible forward movement. He has reshaped the Chinese language in
terms of tides,^ waves, crests, seas, water, the flood. ‘That man ...
he s an ocean, said Edgar Snow to me in January 1971 after his
last interview with Mao. Unrelenting as flood, as water, the
Revolution is Mao’s whole being, thought and action. He merges
with the moving tide within the ocean body of the Cliinese
Revolution. It is impossible to separate them. The one is the other.
*From the age of sixty-three to seventy-three (1956-1966), Mao Tsetung
swyn the Yangtze river eight times at its widest point -about four miles back
and fortli.
CHILDHOOD
29
The valley of Shaoshan is called Hibiscus Land, because of its
beauty. From the fields which once belonged to Mao Tsetung’s
father (dispersed patches, not one larger than a quarter-acre) a hill
range is seen, and one prominence is striking — a cone 1,700 feet
high with a small Buddhist monastery atop. Mao’s mother used to
go there, climbing the stone paths on her bound feet. The young
boy went with her, to stare without reverence at the dim smoke-
wreathed figures of gilded clay.
At the age of six, Mao Tsetung, up before dawn, worked in the
fields. As the night mists withdrew, he would see the first rays of
the sun fingering the blue hills, inching above them; the light
would dazzle him and the rice-heavy plain around him. Feet in
the mud, head wrapped in sunlight, the little boy who would one
day be called the great Red Sun felt his soul widen, and he would
Among those
hills he had lost himself once for three days, running away from a
teacher who beat him. Hills, mountains would become his
strength in years to come, cradle his growing thoughts.
The highlands of his mind were reached in strain and suffering
among the mountains of his country.
In times past the legendary emperor Shun came to Shaoshan,
an pleased with the green prolific plain, sparkling its water
meanders, he climbed the hills, sat on a pleasant crest and began to
sing. A musical instrument was devised by him here to partner his
singing, hence the name Shao music, peculiar to the region ; and
^haoshan, musical mountain. The birds of the air, enthralled by
uns melody, flocked here, among them phoenixes; they
s aye , paired and nested. Hence Shaoshan is known as the birth-
P ace ot phoenixes ; great men doing great deeds.’ Every child in
me district knows the legend, and Phoenix Hill is the name of the
height Mao climbed so often.*
da-m Tsemng, a small boy bending over the rice shoots in the
land ’ *he sun rise, heard echoes of Shun’s music as the
the firird" stirred into life. And every day was marvel,
iirst day of the world.
‘lie revolutionary committee of
30
THE MORNING DELUGE
So deep the night, so slow to break the crimson dawn;
Demons and ghouls held sway so many centuries,
Like desert sand, our hapless downtrodden people.
Then the cock crowed.
And suddenly all under heaven clear in the light
And from Khotan to ocean sounds of music.
Setting the poet*s mind aglow with dreams ... *
The young Mao would go up, up, climbing the hills, walking
for hours. He would in years to come climb higher mountains and
feel the sky just ‘three-foot-three above me’. He would sing:
How beautiful your mountains and rivers, O my country.’ But
in the vulnerable years of childhood it was a beauty spoiled,
wracked by misery and want, tyranny and exploitation. Of this
he was conscious very early. The peasants of Hunan, of China,
had a long tradition of revolt, and Mao was born a rebel, in a
rebellious land.
The work Mao did as a child was not light; he laboured long
hours weeding, watering the buffalo and currying it, gathering
wood for charcoal and manure from the pigsties, picking beans,
atter the paddy harvest going over the field for spare stalks. He
grew tall and thin, his father grumbled at his ravenous appetite.
At seven he was sent to the village primary school of Nam An,
run by an old-type teacher, well thought of because he beat his
pupils mercilessly. No teacher was reckoned worthy unless he
showed severity to the children in his care. Each child, to recite
his lessons, would leave his desk, stand in front of the teacher’s
desk, then promptly turn his back to him and recite. Mao refused
to stand up If you can hear me weU and sit, why should I stand
up to recite, he said. And clung to his desk and stool. The teacher
was pa e wit ury. Never in a thousand years had this custom
been challenged. He ordered the seven-year-old to stand before
his desk, but Mao dragged his stool with him and sat himself next
to the teacher The teacher then tried to heave him upright. Mao
got up and left the school, and lost himself for three days in the
* Poem by Mao Tsetung.
I
hills. His distraught parents were overjoyed when he was founa
and after that he was not beaten in school. ‘The result of my act of
protest impressed me ... It was a successful “strike”.’ From this
^isode Mao would go on; in each school he would attend Mao
would lead student revolts, to reform teachers whose conduct he
thought unbecoimng. Why should not one go to sleep durmg a
bonng lecture? Mao would say in 1967, to the delight of another
generation of young rebels.
a, he could
read toleraby. His best-loved books were romances, stories of
me™ adventure. He did no, Ifc the d.»ea. though he
cov”'LT.h*"” I “ “'■“I.
work L? ‘ *' spells of
si'/-
his room Mao^r^v " “ sphe of the edicts. In
justice an""”" * ^^-^^tjes as a child were a pa^Jn for
stubbo’rnnesnjh^^h 7 t 7 '^'v'^ unequalled
n^edieva?efv l oTn^eL r ' ^“^fic -common in"a
ment ‘Kno 1 T ’, , ^ accepted values untried by experi-
Knowledge .s the beginning of action and actiLT the
pTaS 5Si" -
32
THE MORNING DELUGE
accomplishment of knowledge/ the philosopher Wang Yang-
ming had proclaimed, and thus Mao acted. In Mao’s mind the
heroes of romantic tales were real people he longed to equilai^,
not dead images to be smothered in incense and forgotten. He
was willing to endure unpleasantness to help others if he thought
their cause was right, and this ‘righting of wrongs’ instinct, so
deep in him, would give him throughout his life a kind of
candour and innocence almost naive. Thus he would save some
old woman’s crop from a storm before saving his own family’s
grain, and explain that it was the only thing to do, since she
needed the grain more than his father did; he would give his warm
gown to a poor student and go home shivering. For all these
things he was scolded and punished. But his mother understood
him well, for she too was generous of spirit, ever ready to share
what she had.
‘She pitied the poor and often gave them rice when they came
to ask for it during famines. But she could not do so when my
father was present ... We had many quarrels in my home over
this question. There were two “parties” in the family. One was
my father, the Ruling Power. The Opposition was made up of
myself, my mother, my brother, and sometimes even the
labourer . . . The dialectical struggle in our family was constantly
developing. Thus Mao described the family scene, and the
mother whom he venerated. Mao’s mother. Wen Chi-mei, came
from Hsiang Hsiang, a county sixteen miles from Shaoshan. As is
the custom in peasant China among the poor, she was older than
his father when they were married. She died of tuberculous
lymphadenitis in October 1918. Mao Tsetung loved her very
deeply; he also wrote about her and spoke of her with deep
emotion, even decades after her death.
Beside Mao Tsetung, Wen Chi-mei bore two other sons, Mao
Tse-min, born in 1896, and Mao Tse-tan, born in 1905. Both of
them seem to have been passionately devoted to their elder
brother and followed him during all the years of their lives. So
did his adopted sister, Mao Tse-chien, born in 1905 in another
family of the Mao clan. ‘After the death of the Chairman’s
parents the family became far more revolutionary,’ the director of
CHILDHOOD
33
the Shaoshati museum said to me in 1966, indicating the restraint
imposed upon the young by the parents. It seems certain that in
the necessary process of asserting his personality, Mao earned the
admiration of many of the young in his village. Later, in the
192OS, it was there he would found his furst peasant Communist
Party branch, drawing upon his own kin. They followed him
and laid down their lives for the Revolution.
This early training in contradiction within a family, this
‘dialectical struggle’ which lay beneath the ‘harmony and unity’
vermihon paper slogans, the facade of valedictory eulogies of
family filial piety, pasted at New Year on both sides of the shelf
upon which stood the ancestors’ tablets, Mao would see as the
start of his own revolt against society. His knowledge of the
classics, quick-witted use of sententious phrases and quotations,
became ‘a powerful argument of my own for debating with my
father on his own ground’. Thus, by using the hypocritical lore of
the revered ancients, he bolstered his sense of outrage against the
hypocrisy of tradition. Daring to argue was in itself a break
against filial piety. No son was supposed ever to talk back to his
father;* but Mao Tsetung spoke with such fire, raged with such
logic, persisted with such eloquence, that the peasants of Hunan,
always a good audience, were delighted and impressed, and
Would go round repeating the young boy’s catchy phrases. Even
his father, torn between anger and grudging admiration and pride,
would nearly always give in.
The times were of change. In peasant Shaoshan, ensconced in its
green valley, seemingly sleepy, the incipient revolution disturbed
the elders. The 1900 uprising of the Righteous Fists against massive
foreign exploitation was essentially a peasant revolt.f It had
opened a new era of resistance, although this was not noticeable
at the time. It had dealt a death blow to the odious and idiotic
* Even today in India, young people in their twenties complain that they are
never allowed to ‘talk back*. This happens even in well-educated families.
t Also known as the Boxer Rebellion, it was at first an anti-dynastic movement,
but was turned by the Manchu dynasty into an anti-foreign movement. See
Victor W. Purcell, The Boxer Uprising (Cambridge University Press, 1963).
34
THE MORNING DELUGE
tyranny of the Manchu dynasty, already bankrupt under the
burden of foreign debt imposed by the Western powers and
Japan. It was a violent demonstration against their pillage of
China. This revolt was a landmark in China’s contemporary
history, precursor of the revolutions to come, but it was put down
by the combined forces of the Et^ropean powers and Japan.*
When Mao was ten years old there were foreign garrisons in
every main city, including Changsha, the capital of Hunan
province; gunboats (British and American) patrolled the lakes
and waterways of Middle China, sailed down the Hsiang river, or
rode the high waters of the Yangtze up to Szechuan, deep in the
interior. Foreign power protected and supported the captive
Manchu imperial government, now become the main safeguard
of foreign interests against seething popular revolt. Mao Tsetung’s
grandfather, who lived till 1908, was incensed at the thought of a
British garrison in Changsha, was aware of the humiliating
indemnities and concessions imposed upon Cliina by the victorious
Western powers. The old man was no revolutionary, but he was a
patriot.
Educational reforms were proclaimed in 1901 and 1902, and in
1906 a programme of ‘new’ primary schools and modern in-
stitutions of higher learning was drawn up by the Manchu
imperial dynasty, but little was done. However, schools of ‘new
learning’! organized, and subsidized chiefly by merchants’
guilds, overseas Chinese, and landlords. Mercantile society wanted
reforms in education for its children. The Chinese have always
excelled at promoting schemes for the self-interest of a guild, clan
or other association based on local or provincial membership, and
now clans, guilds and societies took over when the Manchu
empire crumbled. Though the schools were ostensibly govern-
ment-supported, most were run on private contribution. This
practice was prevalent in Hunan, Hupei and the coastal provinces,
where the influence of the merchant class and intellectuals ‘newly I
* Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, United States, Russia, I
Japan.
t ‘New learning* meant learning history, geography, mathematics and the i
natural sciences, instead of learning only the classics. But the teaching of the
classics continued as part of Chinese language teaching
h
CHILDHOOD
35
returned’ from abroad, especially Japan,* was strong. Thus, very
quickly, institutions grew up which became training grounds for
dissent and rebellion. Hunan’s capital, Changsha, was such a focus.
Some of these new schools were set up in temples, and the clay
gods were boarded up, to turn the prayer halls into classrooms.
Mao Tsetung, like Sim Yatsen before him, was naturally irreverent
towards clay deities, and his Buddhist mother could not convince
him of their superhuman attributes. This agnosticism was of his
age and his generation, for Sun Yatsen, too, had battled against
images of veneration.
In 1906 occurred an event which was to mark Mao Tsetung
deeply. Famine, one of the great recurrent famines of China, due
to floods, stalked the provinces of Hupei and Hunan, coincident
with the Russo-Japanese war (1904-1905), which was fought on
Chinese soil, in Manchuria. The' war helped to fire patriotism
among Chinese students in Japan. It was due to the designs both
the czarist and Nippon empires had on Manchuria, and it was the
first time Mao’s generation saw a white and predatory power
beaten by an Asian one, similarly predatory. At the same time as
the war and famine. Sun Yatsen, the revolutionary of those
decades, launched yet another insurrection to overthrow the
Manchus and establish a republic in China. Seven such attempts
were made by Sun Yatsen between 1906 and 1908. They all
failed; nevertheless they sustained and inspired a generation of
intellectuals with the necessity for revolt. The unquenchable
Sun Yatsen, to whom Mao renders full praise, was never dis-
l^artened by defeat. ‘Let’s try again’ was his constant retort to
those who were disheartened. The revolution of 1911, the over-
throw of the Manchu dynasty in China, and the establishment of a
republic were all due to this indomitable leader from Kwangtung
province), who devoted his life to trying to restore to China her
independence and her sovereignty, whose dream was to establish
in China a system of parliamentary democracy as in the West.f
* The practice of sending Chinese students abroad also started in the 1800s but
accelerated after the defeat of the Boxer uprising in 1901.
Londrn^i''^)^^ (Heinemann,
THE MORNING DELUGE
36
Today his portrait, facing Mao Tsetung’s, hangs in the great
Red Square of Peking on October i, anniversary of the triumph
of the Revolution. And in 1906 it was, indirectly, because of him
that the boy Mao got his first sharp memory of revolt beyond the
confines of the family circle.
The Hunan insurrection of 1906 was launched by Huang Hsing,
a Hunanese, member of Sun Yatsen’s revolutionary organization
the Tung Meng Hui (then sited in Japan). Its particular feature was
that the uprising began in the coal mines of Pinghsiang and in
Liuyang, where the famine was particularly severely felt. The
leaders of the peasant secret societies* co-operated with Sun
Yatsen’s revolutionaries, and a march on Changsha, the pro-
vincial capital, was organized in which thousands of miners,
peasants, and the local soldiery took part. On the way the hungry
marchers raided the grain stores of the landlords. Again the old
Taipingf cry went up: ‘Share the land!’ This uprising created so
much excitement that many Chinese students in Japan came home
to join the Hunan insurrection. The people of Changsha, who
were starving, sent a delegation to beg for relief to the governor
of the province, but he replied, ‘Why haven’t you got any grain?
I always have enough!’ The citizens then rioted, attacked the
governor’s official quarters, and raided the rice barns of hoarders.
Both in city and countryside the revolt spread. Six thousand
miners at the Anyuan coal mines (where later Mao Tsetung was
to establish the first Communist Party cell of Hunan) picketed the
administrative offices of the mines; they were joined by the local
peasants, waving banners inscribed ‘Share the land’. The whole
province became involved; a movement so widespread was
already more than an anti-dynastic uprising, it threatened social
revolution. Seriously alarmed, the military governor sent three
provincial armies to cut down the unarmed peasants and miners.
Members of Sun Yatsen s party were caught and executed. The
* Secret societies at first emanated from peasant revolts against Manchu rule,
though later many degenerated into Chinese mafias. In Hunan. S7echuan. the
scCTet societies were particularly strong among boatmen, pedlars, petty craftsmen
and the peasantry.
t The Taiping peasant uprising (1850-1864), most famous of all China’s many
peasant upnsmgs, was also put down with the help of foreign powers.
CHILDHOOD
37
heads of the slaughtered adorned the city gates and remained
exhibited till the New Year.
Mao Tsetung heard of this event from some bean merchants
fleeing from Changsha, who came through Shaoshan and told the
story to the head of the Mao clan; the children crowded round,
shoving each other to catch a word. While the elders com-
miserated with the merchants, the young at school discussed it;
but their sympathies were for Huang Hsing and his colleagues,
who became heroes for Mao Tsetung, then a vulnerable twelve
years old. This event shows that already, even without knowing
why, the young were opposed to their parents* opinions and
reactions. ‘Most of the other students sympathized with the
“insurrectionists**,* Mao notes, ‘but from an observer’s point of
view. They did not understand that it had any relation to their
own lives ... I never forgot it.’ And this was the essential difference.
Thirty years later Mao was to look upon this incident as part of his
life as a revolutionary. ‘I felt that there with the rebels were
ordinary people like my own family and I deeply resented the
injustice of the treatment given to them.’
The child Mao Tsetung thus spanned a world in turmoil,
between the crumbling tyranny of an old feudal empire and an
unknown future which could only be brought to birth by the
mass uprisings of the exploited against their exploiters. Little did
he then know how much he would give of himself in shaping that
, future, but all his generation, like him, were sensitized to injustice
and exploitation. They already reacted to events in diametrically
opposite ways to their parents’.
In that same year the fledgling rebel was told by his father that
he had studied enough, and must work on the land and keep his
father s account books. Mao Jen-shen now had 15 mous of land*
and needed the extra labour of his son. Later, he would acquire
yet another 7 mous of land and would need a hired ‘labour-
hand to till the additional crops. The field labourer was paid one
Chinese dollarj- a month, which under conditions at that time in
China was almost generous. Mao received no money from his
* Six mous equal an acre.
t At that time worth 25 to 30 cents.
THE MORNING DELUGE
38
father for his work, and at thirteen he was doing man’s work in
the fields and also keeping accounts for his father’s small grain
trade. Another incident then occurred, in Shaoshan itself, which
would mark him for life.
One of the local landlords came into conflict with some of his
peasant tenants over rent payments. The peasants were members
of the Kelao, the Elder Brother secret society, the most widespread
among the peasantry in Hunan, Szechuan and Hupei. Sun Yatsen’s
organization relied much on this particular Kelao society for
armed insurrection and for the smuggling of weapons. In various
popular movements, such as the railway dispute in Szechuan,* the
Kelao would play a prominent part, and thus participate in China’s
Revolution of 1911.
The landlord won the lawsuit against his tenants by the usual
bribery of the magistrate; his tenants rioted, but were then
hunted down by the military governor’s troops and fled to a local
mountain, the Liu Shan. This withdrawal to a mountain strong-
hold was a traditional feature of peasant uprisings, celebrated in
historical romances. The ‘bandits’, as they were now called, were
captured and their leader, Pang the Millstone Maker, beheaded.
Once again Mao felt that heroic deeds of the past had been re-
enacted in actual, solid events affecting his own county, his own
village. Once again he saw the incident not as something apart
from himself, but as an intimate personal concern. Injustice!
Injustice! Would no one rise against this monstrous betrayal of
virtue? History then began to appear to him as a grand tradition of
righteousness, of rebellion in a just cause against tyrants and
exploiters. From that time dates Mlao s almost compulsory sense
of identification with the downtrodden, the persecuted.
The Chinese are traditionally history-minded, Chinese memory
being both specific and historical. Even in these childhood years
Mao’s conception of events and his relation to them is historical;
it is not abstract, self-centred, alienated. This historicity he was to
develop through the years, but it is inherent in his make-up. For
* See Han Suyin, The Crippled Tree (Cape, London, 1965), for an account of
the railway movement in Szechuan, one of the factors that sparked the 1911
Kevolution,
CHILDHOOD
39
him no breach could exist between past and present, only a
continuity. And he also had, like so many Chinese peasants, an
excellent memory. Most Chinese can recall the names of at least
several hundred personages, dating from 800 b.c. through Chinese
history; not only names, but their relationships, deeds and words.
Chinese fiction is fictionalized history, with no attempt to disguise
the fact. Tales of strategy and tactics, of how battles are won and
political schemes concocted, are the backbone of the romances
which Mao and millions of other Chinese little boys loved and
continue to love. But where Mao would be different would be in
his identification with revolt, especially with peasant acts of
rebellion. His mind was scientific. It reasoned naturally from
cause to effect, and it reasoned that if such evil things happened,
then there was something wrong with the system which allowed
them.
There was at the time a ‘radical’ teacher at a local school whose
talk greatly influenced Mao; also, a political pamphlet fell in his
hands opening with the sentence : ‘Alas, China -will be subjugated !’
‘After I read this I . . . began to realize that it was the duty of all the
people to help save it’ (the country), said Mao. And so, his
imagination nourished by the sporadic revolts around him, com-
mitted to be more than an observer by the intensity of his
feelings, he now made the leap from individual to nationwide
injustice. Already he felt himself part of his country’s history,
history a part of himself
Very soon after, once again famine came to the district. The
winter rice was exhausted, and the poor farmers asked help of the
well-to-do and began a movement, ‘Let’s eat at the Big House,’
meaning the landlords’ granaries. But the rich were exportmg
their rice to the city. One consignment belonging to Mao
Tset^g s father, who was now running a grain trade, was seized
by the^poor villagers. Mao sided with them against his father,
whose ‘wrath was boundless’. At the same time Mao felt that the
method used by the peasantry, of raiding the grain, was wrong,
b^ause it did not solve the fundamental poverty and exploitation
of the poor. He spent hours, weeks, months turning all this over
m his mind. Knowing his father wrong, at the same time aware
40
THE MORNING DELUGE
that the poor, in the end, would still be punished, he lay awake,
tossing in his bed, wondering where was truth, and justice, and
what was the meaning of all the misery, the beastliness, the
suffering.
And so Mao Tsetung irritated his father, not only because of his
reading habits, but because he was dreamy, withdrawn, and
demanded to go to school again. He was a hefty fiftecn-year-old,
as tall and big as a man, carrying on his shoulders two heavy
manure baskets, doing the work of one man and a half*. He must
be married, thought Mao Jen-shen. Marriage was the cure for
intractability, dreaminess, moodiness. Marriage, children would
sober Mao Tsetung.
But Mao, his work done, would take his two books (IVater
Margin and Three Kingdoms) to a place under a tree, behind an
andent grave. Frequently he arrived at a state bordering ecstasy
as he followed the lives and adventures, the scheming and the
strategies of his favourite heroes.’ writes Siao Yu, one of his
hostile bmgraphers.* Mao strenuously objected to being married
against his will. But Mao Jen-shen arranged the ceremony, which
was performed in 1908. Mao refused to have anything to do with
t e girl. Such was the scandal and the shame (for the bride’s
family) of Mao’s refusal to consummate the marriage that to this
day no one in Shaoshan will reveal the name of the bride’s clan.
All we know is that she was older than he by the customary four
or five years, and ‘comely’.
This experience, and Mao’s devotion to his mother, probably
started him on his lifelong campaign for the liberation of women;
his indignation at the shameful treatment of women in China was
to become an integral part of his resolve to change the world.
Mao Tsetung’s mother was a very good-looking woman with
the same stubborn streak, a great power of self-control, and
wholly illiterate as her son tells us. He looks astonishingly like
her, so much so that in his youth, photographs of Mao Tsetung,
especially when his hair was long (and he seldom had enough
money for a haircut), are almost feminine, with the same large
dreamy eyes, the high forehead and great shock of hair, the
* Siao Yu, Atou Tselrmf, and I Were Beggars (Syracuse Uuiversity Press, 1959).
CHILDHOOD
sensitive firm mouth, the attractive smile. Mao Tsetuiig grew to
be six feet, and very handsome. Madame Liu Ying* tells of seeing
him often when he was in Changsha. ‘He was so tall and so good-
looking, people stopped talking to watch him. And he was always
so calm.’ The likeness to his mother is still visible today, especially
when he smiles or talks, looking very much like the photograph
of her, round-faced and large-eyed, taken in 1906 or 1907, and
hanging on the wall of his parents’ bedroom in the Shaoshan home.
Mao Tsetung seems to have entertained good relations with his
mother s family, who helped him once or twice with small loans.
Perhaps it is in memory of his mother that Mao Tsetung coined
this beautiful sentence: ‘Woman carries half of Heaven upon her
shoulders’ (half the responsibility of the world is hers).
The years 1908 to 191 1 were turbulent. Everywhere widespread
fierce rebellions erupted. Sun Yatsen s revolutionary movement
was now followed all over China. Armed insurrection became
increasingly frequent; students now became radical teachers,
taught in the schools of ‘new learning’ and spread the sentiment
of national independence to the student body. They denounced
the Manchu dynasty, denounced traditions ; the pupils imbibed
revolt as part of the curriculum. The writings of Confucius were
attacked; and as in every age of revolt, the incomprehension
between the generations grew. The young knew that no adult
could tell what the future would be; they were thrown upon
themselves, the future theirs to fashion ; but how? No classics, no
ancient wisdom could guide them any longer. Only dissent, only
revolt was a signpost to becoming. A total revolt against feudal
society was in the making, though it appeared impossible at the
time that 2 500 years of feudal tradition and the social system it
had engendered would so swiftly succumb.
Carrying his baskets of manure, digging furrows, planting rice,
giving away his clothes to needy strangers, Mao Tsetung was
tormented by a need to participate in his half-sensed cataclysm
and resurrection in which his father’s world would disappear
and a new world would emerge. ’
* Interviewed by the author. Madame Liu was an
rang Kai-hui. whom he was to marry in 1921.
acquaintance of Mao’s wife
42
THE MORNING DELUGE
Shortly after his marriage (possibly spurred by resentment at
the coercion thus imposed on him) Mao Tsetung left Shaoshan
to stay with a friend, an unemployed law student, in Hsiangtan.
He walked to Hsiangtan, with some rice packed in a small
pouch, and stayed there, reading, arguing, meeting radicals;
perhaps his mother helped, secretly, with a httle money. Then as
usual his father called him back and Mao Tsetung returned home.
But he returned more rooted in revolt than ever, more dedicated
to a search for truth, more determined to ‘learn from all sources’.
In his life he would make many friends, seek out many teachers.
Ideas were always to excite him; he would pounce on them,
grow tremendously excited. Then he would start to re-examine,
to test the idea by doing; this would reveal a flaw and Mao
Tsetung would once again search, listen, learn, read, try. In this
quest he would go through many a metamorphosis, but his
purpose would remain a search for truth, for reality, for valid
principles to be translated into action. ‘I began to realize that it was
the duty of all the people to help to save ... my country.’ Many
years later he would say: National liberation, a consciousness
of national independence, is always the first step in any revolu-
tion; it is the first emotion in any revolutionary.’ It was this
emotion which possessed him now, fired him with the desire to
study.
The full-fledged rebel develops by fits and starts. All the
ingredients for the questioning of every tradition, tenet, value
were present when Mao Tsetung passed from childhood to
adolescence to young manhood. The age bred revolutionaries.
A total involvement and concern with national affairs was
considered ‘normal* by the young students and teenagers then —
though not by their elders. Already students had led great de-
monstrations against the shameful treaty of Shimonoseki of 1893,
marking the end of the war withjapan, and China’s defeat. In 1905
Chinese students had organized a boycott and protested against
American immigration policies, discriminatory against Chinese.
The young Mao Tsetung was brought, during his stay at Hsiang-
tan, in contact with problems not only of local interest but of
national dimensions. He noticed that in all the books he had read
CHILDHOOD
43
there was nothing about the ‘peasantry’, while around him
peasants rose in revolt, assaulted rice hoarders, and demanded land
for the landless. The savagery of the repressions against the peasants
was accepted by teachers and the intelligentsia. They were con-
cerned but not personally involved. Why did they not feel
personally involved? Mao was to struggle with this problem of
personal involvement for many a year. It was to remain for him
the touchstone of revolutionary advance: total identification
with the exploited.
But Mao took longer to make up his mind than others because
of a thoroughness, a perfectionism which marked even his labour
in the fields. He progressed slowly, but he went further than his
contemporaries. The story is told of Mao and another child
picking beans. His father berated him when the other child had
finished his rows long before Mao Tsetung, who still plodded
with half his rows unfinished— until his father looked at Mao’s
basket, which was as full as the other. He had left no bean un-
plucked. And so it would be with his career as a revolutionary.
When Mao Tsetung returned home from Hsiangtan once more
to plough and to plant and to reap in his father’s fields and to do
book-keeping for his father’s grain trade accounts, Mao Jen-shen
suggested his son be apprenticed at Hsiangtan to a rice dealer, a
business partner of his. Hsiangtan being a ‘radical’ place, Mao
thought at first that he could study in his spare time, reading at
night as he did at home, while being an apprentice by day. But
the choice, finally, was another school. Which to Mao meant
political involvement, knowledge and action.
Mao had heard through relatives of his mother’s of a ‘modem
education school’ in Hsiang Hsiang, where his mother’s relatives
lived. ‘My father finally agreed to let me enter, after friends had
argued to him that this “advanced” education would increase my
earning powers.’ Thus Mao said, wryly, of the consent he finally
wrung from the older man. The year was 1910, and he was
sixteen years old.
Youth and School Years
Mao Tsetung’s arrival at the Tungshan Higher Primary School in
Hsiang Hsiang is described by two childhood acquaintances, the
brothers Siao Emi and Siao Yu, who later published their con-
tradictory reminiscences of their schoolmate * He had set forth
at dawn, carrying a pole on his shoulder, his belongings suspended
at one end and his two books. Three Kingdoms and Water Margin,
balancing them at the other. After reaching Hsiang Hsiang, he
walked a mile to two more to reach the school. The road wound
between fields and farms; he crossed a small river by ferry, and
climbed up a hill with a gravel path leading to what appeared to
him enormous as a fortress, surrounded by a moat and a high
brick wall. It was the Tungshan Higher Primary School. Mao
crossed the stone bridge over the moat and saw before him the
black lacquer doors, with children playing in the courtyard.
If Mao was afraid, he did not show it. Yet as soon as he entered
the school, it was obvious he was a poor peasant. The Tungshan
Higher Primary School of Hsiang Hsiang was a school for the
sons of landlords and rich peasants, and the difference was striking.
Mao Tsetung had worked as a poor peasant’s son, and continued
to look what he was, a hardy, thrifty young labourer without the
air, the clothes, the habits of rich boys. He was not accompanied
by a private servant to carry his luggage. He came on foot. He
had only one pair of cloth shoes, and very few clothes at the end
of his pole. At that time, anything smacking of manual labour,
such as carrying one’s luggage, even carrying a parcel, was
regarded as demeaning.
Mao entered the black lacquered doors flanked by tall pedestal
stones representing crouching lions. The height of the carved
*Lr* Tsetung and I Were Beggars (op. dt.). Siao Emi, Mao Tsetung:
Hts Chtldhood and Youth (People’s Publishing House, Bombay, 1953).
44
YOUTH AND SCHOOL YEARS
45
symbolic beasts denoted the ^rank* of the board of landlords who
had had the school built for their children and whose donations
kept it up. These landlords of Hsiang Hsiang were wealthy; some
owned islands on Lake Tungting and as much as 20,000 mous of
land; they owned boats that plied on the Hsiang river as far as
Shanghai; they were interested in industry, their money was
invested in the Japanese- and British-owned factories of Changsha,
the German-Japanese-owned coal mines of Anyuan and Pingh-
siang. The school was beautiful, completely cut off from the
misery of the countryside.
The children of the wealthy or the comparatively wealthy,
handsome, clean, carefree and proud, stared at the ‘labourer
carrying his pole who now walked in. The gateman, as haughty
as the ‘yomig masters’ who studied inside, would not let Mao enter.
Mao said to him, putting down his pole: ‘I have come to study at
this school.’ The gateman started shouting, the children swarmed
to the commotion; they laughed. ‘Look at the labourer trying to
come to school.’ Mao refused to budge; he stood there saying:
‘Call the headmaster.’ The tumult brought out the headmaster,
armed with a long pipe with a copper bowl. There is something
extremely mandarin-like in the headmaster’s weaponing himself
with his pipe, which would not cause lethal damage but would
bring enough ‘loss of face’, should he have to use it, to make the
stubborn ‘bandit’ (as the porter apparently called Mao) withdraw
in confusion.
The headmaster saw a tall young man, thin and badly dressed,
with a cloth pack and a bamboo pole, like a pedlar. Mao
turned to him: ‘Please sir, allow me to study here in your
school.’
Even then, Mao Tsetung’s personality, his extraordinary pre-
sence, seem to have wrought a change in the headmaster. ‘Bring
him to my office,’ he said. He could not believe that this adolescent,
^ head taller and at least three years older than any other school
cliild, should now be arguing with him. He would have refused
Mao s request, but another teacher named Hu intervened. Were
there not, in Chinese tradition, stories of poor scholars who, like
Mao, had pleaded for entrance to schools, and had turned out so
4 ^ THE MORNING DELUGE
brilliant as to bring lustre to the establishment? Besides, Mao had a
clan cousin, on his mother’s side, at the school.
Mao was accepted on a temporary basis. The teacher who
intervened for him offered to coach him. All his life this would
happen with Mao Tsetung. People would be bowled over or
violently repelled by his strength and purpose, fervour and
directness, the silence and the withering flow of words, the
magnetic power. No one remained indifferent. Mao paid 1,400
coppers (possibly money saved by his mother) for five months’
board and lodging, and the books and material needed for
study.
Within a few days, Mao Tsetung was the focus of attention;
the whole school spoke of him. At first he was taunted for his
poor peasant clothes and his accent (the Shaoshan and not the
Hsiang Hsiang accent). The students stole his clothes, his books,
accounted ‘bad’, but later, ashamed, returned them to him. He
put up with taunts and insults; in five months he won not only
respect, but praise. And yet he was a difficult student, arguing
with his teachers, something which was not done at this ‘rich’
school. He was reputed bad-tempered because everything
mattered to him; there was no room left for hypocrisy.
Mao Tsetung himself has told how much reading he did while
at that school, but for him there was never enough, and he would
sit long hours in the classroom after the others had gone, reading till
he could no longer see, melting down candle ends to make new
candles. He could read twice or three times faster than other
students.
His teachers have left personal notes* on his ability, his singular
excellence. But he was irritated by their acceptance of the obvious.
The teachers liked me ... because I wrote good essays in the
classical manner. But my mind was not on the classics.’ He was
reading two books by the reformists Kang Yu-wei and Liang
Chi-chao. I read and re-read them until I knew them by heart.’
Mao has left us a word picture of ‘one of the teachers ... a re-
turned student from Japan [who] wore a false queue’. He was
* On cxliibit in museums. These notes date back to the years 1910 and igii •
they arc not, theretorc, products of hindsight. ’
YOUTH AND SCHOOL YEARS
47
called the False Foreign Devil, and talked a great deal about
Japan. Thirty years later Mao still remembered the Japanese
poem the teacher quoted, a poem commemorating the victory of
Japan over Russia in the war of 1904-1905* 1 knew and felt the
beauty of Japan, and felt something of her pride and might ... I
did not think there was also a barbarous Japan ... Mao took
everything seriously, and his allegiance to truth, or rather reality,
drove him to enthusiastic (but temporary) devotion to many
heroes. He ‘worshipped’ Kang Yu-wei and Liang Chi-chao.
Later he read of America and Washington, of Napoleon and
Catherine the Great (in a book. Great Heroes of the World), He
imbibed learning like a sponge and yearned for more ; his progress
was swift, too swift ; at the end, the students disliked him because
he did not belong. ‘I felt spiritually very depressed.’ All they
were interested in was factional snobbishness; there were three
sets, upper, lower, and middle, divided according to their districts.
Mao refused to take sides. ‘Consequently all three factions des-
pised me.’
During the winter vacation (the Chinese New Year) Mao went
back to Shaoshan; his father sent him to collect money from
debtors, as was the custom, before the festival. Once again there
was famine in the province, so much so that the governor had
been sacked in the belief (partly correct) that this would appease
the angry population. Again there were uprisings. Rice was sent
to Changsha, starving peasants trekked to the cities to sell their
children, to beg. Mao Tsetung, instead of collecting the debts,
remitted them and went home empty-handed; and on the way
back he gave his own long robe to a needy student. The reception
at home, not surprisingly, must have been unpleasant. Mao
does not speak of it.
He was now, at seventeen, convinced that strong men were
needed to build up the nation, and in this was no different from
thousands of other young students. But he had no set theory, only
an indignation against foreign exploitation, the heritage of his
generation. He admired all nation-builders — Napoleon or
Washington, Han Wu-ti or Peter the Great. There was no way
for him to distinguish between them at the time. To take up stray
48
THE MORNING DELUGE
sentences wliich he then said - ‘I admire Bismarck’ or ‘Napoleon
was a truly great man’ -in order to prove that Mao is ‘authori-
tarian’ by nature is not to describe his development. To lay stress
on the ‘military’ turn of his mind because he spoke of war and
strategy is to ignore the social context of his time : a time of armed
rebellion. Western history is littered with martial examples to
admire; Mao Tsetung deduced that military matters were as
important^in the West as in China. He dreamed of a way to ‘save
the nation . The students who adhered in increasing numbers to
Sun Yatsen’s revolutionary Tung Meng Hui engaged in bomb-
making and gun practice and dreamed no less. Young boys
gravely discussed insurrection as they took walks in the wooded
hills classics under their arms. They smuggled weapons and
books; they risked decapitation.
Siao Emi, the schoolmate who loaned Mao Tsetung the book
Great Heroes of the World, recalls how Mao marked passages with
circles and dots, in the Chinese manner,* and said : ‘We ought to
study these men, find out how to make China rich and strong
avoid becoming like India, Korea ... ’f
In the summer of 1911 Mao had ended a year at the Tungshan
Higher Primary School and was becoming restless. He had learned
a good deal, but now felt he was stagnating. ‘I am not progressing,
nor really learning what I want to learn.’ He wanted to travel ; the
courses in history and geography had stimulated this desire ;
already he had started wandering on foot round his own district
and the Hsiang Hsiang district. ‘I hear Changsha is a magnificent
place, he told bs friends, and only 120 lis [about 36 miles] from
my home. At home he spoke of travel. His father spoke of the
expense. When will you end your smdies and become a scholar,
and get honour for your ancestors?' he asked
Mao’s mother stood by him. At night when he read, she left
warm food for him in the kitchen, mended his clothes, made him
new cloth shoes. When he spoke of going to Changsha she looked
^ wish to
t The subjugation of India by
had a deeper effect on Chinese
historians.
Great Britain through the East India Company
minds than is usually recognized by Western
YOUTH AND SCHOOL YEARS
49
at him, proud of him and loving him. She had saved a little more
money and gave it to him.
Before leaving the Tungshan Higher Primary School, Mao sat
for the entrance examination for its Middle School, located in the
city of Changsha and catering to students who had attended the
Higher Primary School. This Middle School was also built and
kept in funds by wealthy Hunan landlords, and by the provincial
government. Mao asked one of the teachers at the Higher Primary
School to write him a letter of introduction; he was not sure he
would be admitted. But he was, without difficulties, which
‘astonished’ him. He had expected greater obstruction in the big
city than in the small town; he found less. This was due to the
radical atmosphere in the city of Changsha, and to his own re-
putation for brilliance, which had preceded him.
After the summer vacation of 1911 Mao Tsetung walked the
forty miles to Changsha, and entered his first city.
Changsha, capital of Hunan province, lies on the Hsiang river in
a magnificent setting of hills growing to mountains, of lush fields
and dense woods. It was, like all Chinese cities, a maze of small
dark houses and twisted mud lanes, yet it held fme temples and
residences, parks, and great schools. It was, in the early 1900s,
more than a provincial capital, a centre for intellectual radicalism.
Hunan was famous for its scholars. In 1865, out of eight viceroys
five were from Hunan; all had been educated at Changsha. The
endowment of schools by guilds of merchants made Changsha a
scholastic’ city. ‘Subversive’ material — books, pamphlets, as well
as weapons — were smuggled into Changsha by Sun Yatsen’s
adherents. Revolutionary associations under various names were
formed by teachers and students. Each school in that year was a
small time bomb with a short fuse; and the hunger and misery
of the countryside, despite the fertile soil, filled even ‘the scholars’
street with beggars and the corpses of those who had died of
starvation.
Institutes of physical culture and ‘self-strengthening’ were the
fashion, actually they were political platforms for expression of
dissent. A movement against opium smoking among the young
50
THE MORNING DELUGE
Hunanese in the schools was part of the rejection of traditional
values and customs, also of anti-imperiahsm * Mao’s interest in
health, in physical culture, dates from his days in Changsha
when exercise, fitness, clean living, were acts of revolt by the
young generation against the social degeneracy of their elders.
Mao Tsetung arrived at Changsha in September, a month
before the Revolution of 1911. He began his school life by reading
a newspaper, Min Li Pao^ published by Sun Yatsen’s organization
the Tung Meng Hui. The Tung Meng Hui was still in Japan,
where most of its members were exiles, but their publication
circulated secretly throughout China. In this paper Mao read of
an uprising which had taken place in April in Kuangchow, of the
deaths of 72 of the insurgents. They had been led by the same
Hunanese, Huang Hsing, whom he had admired for leading the
insurrection of 1906 in Hunan. Mao now discovered that the
reformists Kang Yu-wei and Liang Chi-chao, whose ideas he
admired a few brief weeks before, were now considered 'old-
fashioned , outdated by the tempestuous course of the national
revolution in the making, and vigorously attacked. Exalted by his
new discovery, he wrote an article which he posted on the school
wall; this was Mao Tsetung s first ta tze paOy or wall newspaper —
my first expression of a political opinion, and it was somewhat
muddled . The second ta tze pao we know of was written by him
in 1966, fifty-five years later.*}*
The ta tze pao or wall newspaper stems from an ancient Chinese
tradition dating from the lepndary times of the Yellow Emperor
(1300 B.C.). Scholars, literati and officials, when protesting against
injustice, would write an ‘open letter’ and affix it in a public
spot. In China’s continuing revolution the ta tze pao has become a
current form of expression, utilized abundantly to voice popular
opinion.
The 1911 Revolution began with a mistimed dynamite blast in
Wuhan on October 10. Within days the Manchu empire had
*Since opium had been introduced into China in vast quantities after the first
Opium War (1840).
t In his first ta tze pao, Mao advocated what Edgar Snow called ‘an absurd
coalition between Sun Yatsen and Kang and Liang,
51
YOUTH AND SCHOOL YEARS
collapsed and a republic had taken its place. Such was the speed of
change that to many it seemed hardly credible, yet the change
was irreversible.
Martial law was declared throughout the province of Hunan.
A member of Sun Yatsen’s Tung Meng Hui, a young teacher,
came to Mao’s Middle School in Changsha and made a stirring
speech, explaining the aims of the Tung Meng Hui. Not a word
[from the audience] was heard as he spoke, said Mao Tsetung.
Five days later Mao Tsetung left for A^uhan to join the Repub-
lican Army, to become a soldier of the Revolution. He cut off his
pigtail, then he and another student forcibly assaulted and cut off
the pigtails of ten of their schoolmates who had promised to
relieve themselves of these badges of slavery* but had then
changed their minds. He collected money from classmates for his
journey, and with other volunteers left for the ‘front’, which
meant Wuhan. They walked out of the city of Changsha on a
fme late October day. Already autumn was upon the trees, and
the hills glowed scarlet as the young recruit reached the city’s
outskirts, where he went to borrow some galoshes from a friend,
a fellow student already in the Republican Army, because he had
been told ‘the streets of Hankowj" were very wet’.
‘I was stopped by the garrison guards . . . the soldiers had for
the first time been furnished with bullets, and they were pouring
into the streets.’ A big battle was on outside the city walls, and
Mao Tsetung then saw the soldiers of the Republican Army cap-
turing the strongpoints within the city from its Manchu garrisons.
He also saw the city gates, which had been closed, stormed and
taken by Chinese labourers, boatmen and coolies, who had risen
to overthrow the Manchus.
He thus absorbed a lesson in the art of war he would never
forget. Fascinated, he could not leave. ‘I re-entered the city, stood
on a high place and watched the battle.’ He then saw the revolu-
tionary flag (a white banner with the character HanJ upon it)
* It was the Manchu dynastic rule which imposed the pigtail upon Chinese men.
Cutting it off meant revolt, and tlie penalty had been decapitation
t Hankow, one of the three cities of Wuhan.
% Han is the name the Chinese give to themselves.
52
THE MORNING DELUGE
raised over the official palace. He then returned to the Middle
School, since the war had now come home to him. On October
23, a new government was organized in Changsha, ostensibly
representing ‘the Chinese people’. But the landlords’ and mer-
chants’ representatives in the government clashed with the repre-
sentatives of the poor peasants and the workers and murdered
them. This was Mao Tsetung’s first direct knowledge of civil war,
of class struggle, of how the fruits of victory were wrested from
the labourers and coolies. ‘Not many days later ... I saw their
corpses lying in the streets.’
Levies of the Republican ‘New Army’ were organized in each
province to fight against the remaining dynastic Manchu armies.
Students were enrolled in special battalions. Instead ofjoining the
student battalions Mao chose to become a common soldier: ‘I
did not like the student army.’ It was organized by the landlords
and militarists. I considered the basis [of the student army] too
confused. * This refusal was related to the massacres he had
witnessed of the peasants and workers’ representatives, and to
other episodes of brutality against the poor, so common in those
days. Mao was already revolted by the illogic of those proclaim-
ing freedom yet continuing to ill-treat the exploited. ‘I decided
to join the regular army instead and help complete the revolution.’
But he was nevertheless a student, a cut above the rest of the
soldiery , for he could read and write. He was treated with
deference by his companions, wrote their letters for them, read
newspapers to them (he spent most of his seven dollars a month
soldier’s wage buying newspapers, and two dollars on food).
He became more conscious of ‘class’ differences, felt a beginning
isolation which cut him off, by virtue of a year’s schooling, from
the self he had been when he carried manure to the fields. Where
food was concerned he ate as the soldiers did, but was reluctant
to fetch and carry his own water, and was surprised at himself.
Why had he changed, and so swiftly? Why did he now think it
* Later he was to recall that among the students joining the student battalions
was Tang Shcng-chih, who was to become a warlord of Hunan; they were to meet
again sixteen years later, when Tang Sheng-chih became governor of Hunan
(192(5-1927), and again in 1949, when a repentant Tang Slicng-chili joined
Mao s government in Peking.
YOUTH AND SCHOOL YEARS
53
humiliating to carry his own hot water? What was it that had
made this change, so that the others also knew he was not like
them, hard though he tried? Thus he studied himself, and later*
was to write might mention the changes in my own feelings ...
I began as a student, acquired the habits of a student, surrounded
by students who could neither fetch nor carry. I then used to feel it
undignified to do even a little manual labour, such as carrying my
own luggage.* This transformation of feeling was a revelation to
him, but he had no explanation for it until he became a Marxist.
Introspection, self-criticism, became to him more than a habit,
a compulsion in his long search for truth. ‘After iJbecame a
revolutionary and lived with workers and peasants and with
soldiers, it was then, and only then, that I fundamentally changed
the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois feelings implanted in me in
the bourgeois schools ../'This is what is meant by a change of
feelings, a change from one class to another.* Because he observed
this transformation in himself, Mao would endeavour, fifty years
later, to obtain the same transformation in yet another generation
of young people.
The complexities of Mao’s adolescence— an adolescence re-
tarded, as it is often among the peasantry, because of its exhausting
physical labour — are not documented, for he kept no diary. But
the extent of his preoccupation with events, this inner fury which
drove him, was caused by and fed on the social turmoil in which
he was plunged. He knew himself not one, but many ; a sum of
contradictions, more accented, more violent and highly charged
than those of other young men round him. Everything for him
became high-pitched, immense, intense, serious, important. He
was both violent and gentle, aggressive and shy, enormously
sensitive and thick-skinned, humble and proud, blistering the
tnvolous among his fellow students, patient, considerate with the
poorest peasants, and with women. A great fear of mental and
'niiity years later, in Yenan, 1942 (see page 456). See Talks at Yenan Forum
on iterature and Art (May 1942), Selected Works of Mao Tsetung, vol. m (English
Languages Press, Peking, 1961-65, 4 vols.). This English edition
^ works, from which all quotations are taken, is hereafter cited as Selected
54
THE MORNING DELUGE
physical degradation kept him strenuously active. But there was
more to him than indignation and revolt. It was a prodigious fever
he suffered from, as he fasliioned for himself ways of thinking
and behaving, spuming self-indulgence, an ascetic figure. And
in this he was part of his generation, but always with that little
bit more, that longer time period, that deeper intensity, which
would make him continue where others gave up.
Because he was ten before he read the Chinese classics, thirteen
when two revolts and one uprising marked him deeply, sixteen
when he went back to school, and at seventeen a soldier for five
months (October 1911 to February 1912), he could watch with
amazement his own metamorphoses, remember distinctly how
events changed him. What was truth? At the time Mao liked
best of all the old classical scholar Han Yu for his wild wit and
furious scorn, couched in the most orthodox language. He knew
the Great Doubt in the old classics, the savage and subde innuendo
—and he was voracious for vocabulary, copying and then re-
fashioning felicitous phrases, wondering at the power of the word.
Always he would be thrown back upon his search for coherence,
a vision, a logic. Always he related himself not to the ‘elite’ bu
to the common people. What was their place in this new world
growing out of the fester of the old? Was man’s fate really
Heaven-determined? Or was it man himself who could fashion
his own destiny?
Decades later, in the Cultural Revolution, the transformation of
the ‘world outlook’ of the student, the intellectual, by living,
eating, labouring, identifying with the workers, peasants and
soldiers was to be Mao’s answer to his own youthful experience.
This was a ‘long and painful struggle’ and he was to repeat it
many times: ‘It takes a very long time’ — to remould one’s world
outlook.
Thus it was that while soldiering in tliis confused and doomed
Revolution of 1911, Mao came across the term ‘socialist’ for the
first time in a newspaper, the Hsiang River Daily News. ‘I also
discussed socialism with other students and soldiers. I read some
pamphlets . . , about socialism ... I wrote enthusiastically to several
of my classmates on this subject, but only one of them responded in
55
YOUTH AND SCHOOL YEARS
agreement.’ ‘No one I have ever known’, Siao Emi was to say
about Mao, ‘hungered for so much knowledge on so many
diflferent levels.’ He also hungered for communication.
The 1911 Revolution swiftly sank into the morass of a power
struggle. Sim Yatsen relinquished power to Yuan Shih-kai, a
circumspect, double-crossing militarist* who at one time served
the Manchu dynasty but was now commander-in-chief of the
New Republican Army. The hopes of the people ran high, but
lassitude, disillusion, cynicism, and intrigue were disrupting the
great plans of reform among the intelligentsia. Thinking the
revolution over, I resigned from the army and decided to return
to my books.’ Mao Tsetung found himself in March 1912 once
again in need of a school, penniless, with no great endeavour
except to find a way to go on studying. But he was not built for
personal enterprise alone. ‘I say : the concept is reality , the finite
is the infinite, the temporal is the intemporal, imagination is
thought, I am the universe ... the substance is the words, that
which is changing is eternal,’ he wrote, but did not quite believe
what he wrote. His whole nature was against this Taoist quietness
and inward turning. But he had not yet discovered himself.
He had no idea that he was uncommonly gifted.
Now he sought ‘a road’ and found others saying to him.
Well now, what do you want to be?
To be? To become? What did these words mean? Everyone
had an idea what he wanted to be, a fatuous lavish self-portrait,
softened with complacency, modest satisfaction with one s own
accomplishments. Mao had no such image of himself. He did not
know what he wanted, and he was eighteen years old. Listening
to well-meaning advice, he scanned advertisements in the news-
papers and registered for many and various schools — a soap-
making school, a police school, a law school, a commercial
school, each time paying a registration fee. I did not know
exactly what I wanted to do.’ Those around him proclaimed the
* The term militarist is more or less interchangeable with the term warlord. In
the break-up of the Manchu dynasty, military governors and commanders, with
their own armies and territories, were for decades to carry on exhausting warlord
wars.‘
THE MORNING DELUGE
56
‘revolution’ over ; it had succeeded, they said. Had not the Manchus
been overthrown? In a little while every problem would be
solved. Mao felt puzzled and lost. Friends persuaded him to
‘make a career*. The time for talents to be used for the salvation
of China had come, and experts confirmed the virtues of soap-
making (cleanliness and health), the advantages of becoming a
la-wyer, an official, an economist, a policeman, a trader; all these
pursuits to save the nation. Mao’s witty description of his trying
out various schools makes fun of himself
He sat for the examinations for the First Provincial Middle
School in Changsha and passed at the head of the list of candidates.
But after entering the school (and being loaned Chronicles with
Imperial Commentaries by a helpful teacher, for his literary style
had attracted this teacher’s attention) he did not like it; ‘its
curriculum was limited and its regulation objectionable*. After
six months I left the school and arranged a schedule of education
of my own which consisted in reading every day in the Hunan
Provincial Library*. Apparently reading the loaned Chronicles
had helped him to decide that ‘it would be better for me to read
and study alone*.
In that spring of 1913 the Hunan Provincial Library in Changsha
saw a tall, thin young man with a great mop of hair pacing out-
side its gates early in the morning, before the library opened,
leaving only when the library doors closed at night. Mao sat
stolidly and read the books on the shelves, one book after another,
stopping only to eat two rice cakes for lunch. Thus he went on
half a year. His father, however, was incensed and refused to
support him unless he entered a real school. He faced his son with
the despair of a parent before a hopeless offspring. Why did his
son spend all day reading? The older Mao would have been
pleased had his son entered a commercial school, or become a
lawyer or an official ... But to waste time just reading!
In these six months Mao laid down the foundations of an
education more ample than many. He studied world geography
and world history. There for the first time I saw and studied with
great interest a map of the world.’ He remembered everything
he read and he read prodigiously fast. He read through the works
YOUTH AND SCHOOL YF.Al^S
57
of Rousseau, Spencer’s logic, Montesquieu, Adam Smith and
Darwin; poetry, economics, tales of ancient Greece. The world
lay within his mind’s grasp, and what an intricate, marvellous
universe, all there for him to swallow! From then on, he would
never be without books, nor spend a day without trying to learn
something new. Even on the Long March he carried books with
him. Even today he lives in a sprawl of books, annotating, com-
paring, studying.
He also read newspapers from all over China, while at the same
time reading the histories of other nations. The French Revolution
impressed him; he would speak of it to Couve de Murville in
1970 and surprise the French statesman with his knowledge. The
mind could only be limbered by debate, contact with other minds;
synthesis, cohesion came from arrangement of knowledge in
categories; but which system was foolproof? Where did correct
ideas come from? One’s ideas changed as one’s knowledge
amplified; as Mao watched his own transformation, certainties
laid low, new doubts arising, he realized that ‘knowledge is
inexhaustible’. There could be no end to the search, but how
exciting this pilgrim’s progress towards a new cosmos of wisdom,
beauty and truth! All that happened, all situations and events were
teaching material ; life was a Long March to the discovery of the
infinite. In the Changsha library Mao became a dialectician; years
later Marxism would give him the answers he looked for;
dialectical materialism would supply the philosophical foundation
upon which he would found his vision of the world. But he
would always, because of this beginning, resist dogmatism.
Although we are determined by nature, we are also part of nature.
Hence, if nature has the power to determine us, we also have the
power to determine nature.’ A seminal thought, key to the pro-
cess of voluntary, self-willed direction which alone can conceive
of a Cultural Revolution as a conscious act of change, not only
of nature, but of man’s very soul.
After his six months’ reading in the library, Mao was destitute.
The guild house where he had stayed, very cheaply, during that
half-year was awash with brawls between soldiers, semi-vagrants,
and poor students. One night some soldiers attacked the students.
THE MORNING DELUGE
58
‘I escaped by fleeing to the toilet, where I hid till the fight was
over.’ Mao began to scan the newspaper advertisements again,
and was attracted by that of the Hunan First Normal College, or
Teachers College, ‘because tuition was so cheap’. He might be
suited for the career of teacher; te^hing would mean access to
books, constant learning as well as teaching. Teaching meant
being a perpetual student as well as opening the minds of others . . .
Today Mao Tsetung says that all he wants to be known as is a
teacher. But he adds that teachers must also learn from their
students]
Mao was accepted at the First Normal (Teachers) College after
having written an entrance examination essay. He also wrote two
for friends intent on entering the same school. ‘I did not then think
my act an immoral one, it was a matter of friendship’; but he
pondered over this later, and decided it was wrong.
Hunan First Normal College in Changsha is a large and hand-
some building with pillars and rounded arches; it was copied
from a Japanese building, in turn inspired by British colonial
architecture. Nothing can be more different from the Chinese
style than these paved courtyards, pillared halls and galleries.
In 1913 it had 400 students; attached to it was a primary and
middle school. It was partly burned in 1938 in a big fire,* but has
been rebuilt since. It boasted a large auditorium holding 2,000
people, which today is exhibited to visitors because Mao held
meetings there.
The entrance to the Normal College has an inscription by one
of the teachers, Hsu Te-li. Hsu was to become Mao Tsetung’s
friend and a follower of his illustrious pupil: ‘Seek truth from
facts,’ Hsu wrote; and this remains the motto of the college.
Mao Tsetung remained five years at the Changsha Normal
College, from the autumn of 1913 to the spring of 1918. In these
five years his political ideas took shape. He became a leader of the
students, a dissenter, a ‘troublemaker’ for some, a righter of
wrongs for others, an incipient political and social force, and he
left no one indifferent. He moved against many regulations at the
* The fire was started by Chiang Kai-shek*s orders to prevent a Japanese
invasion of the city, which never took place (October 1938).
YOUTH AND SCHOOL YEARS
59
college which he disagreed with. He went on campaigns to
change things, fighting tradition and red tape, was nearly thrown
out, reinstated on the pleas of students and professors, some of
whom he had fought against. All he did was subordinate to this
passion for getting things ‘clarified’. ‘He never gave anyone face’
was the complaint frequently heard of him. ‘Face’, an antiquated
concept, preserving a surface respect, destroyed efficiency and
justice; Mao Tsetung hated its hypocrisies. He would exclaim:
^ ^ about people behind their backs, say what you have to
say in front of them’— a statement now embedded in his Selected
Works as part ofThe working style desirable in a Communist
Party member.
In 1917, four hundred of his schoolmates chose him as a model
for ethical conduct, self-control, personal courage, and ability in
speaking and writing. Even his opponents, those who quarrelled
with him. finally gave him their respect; they even pleaded for
Mao when he was threatened with expulsion after he took on the
headmaster, Chang Kan, in May 1915 and tried to get him re-
moved from his post by writing to the provincial governor.
This was connected with the headmaster’s refusal to allow student
demonstrations against the Japanese ultimatum to China, the
aggressive Twenty-one Demands.*
Mao’s best friends at the college were Tsai Ho-sen (1890-1931),
a young quiet Hunanese, outstanding as a scholar and like Mao
ready to die for truth, and Hsu Te-li, then teacher at the Normal
College and eighteen years older than Mao. Hsu Te-li (1877-
1968) was of the old breed of Chinese scholar revolutionaries; his
life would span three revolutions; the reformist movement of
1898— suppressed by the Manchu Empress Dowager Tze Hsi
with terrible cruelty, the 1911 Revolution of Sun Yatsen, and the
Communist Revolution of 1949. He took part in all three and
became his pupil’s devoted follower, a Communist, in 1927. He
took part in the Long March. In 1910 he had petitioned for a
Demands, or Tairaka Memorial, of 1915 was actually an
PorTcTes ‘J® clauses, the total subjugation of ChLa’s
P ts, ernes, railroads and waterways to Japanese control under the name of
62
THE MORNING DELUGE
across the province for years, and ruined the countryside, which
lost half its pig population in ten years. Yuan replaced the
governor, Tan Yen-kai, who was pro-Sun Yatsen,* by his own
appointee and massed troops in Hunan, since it was the key
control area for all communications to South China.
When the First World War started in Europe in August 1914,
China was temporarily vacated’ by the Western powers. Japan
thus seized the opportunity to present to Yuan in early 1915 the
notorious Twenty-one Demands which substantially made of
China a Japanese colony. Yuan’s Western protectors were unable
to counter Japan’s bid for supreme power in China. Yuan,
enchanted with the idea of becoming emperor, cast caution aside;
the proclamation of the new dynasty in December 1915 brought
uprisings in southwest China. In April 1916 Hunan and Szechuan
declared their independence, and Yuan Shih-kai, abandoned by
his own military, died of a heart attack in June 1916.
But Yuan s death did not stop the centrifugal forces at work in
the land. No less than seven warlords were now fighting each
other in Hunan, where Yuan’s protege was driven out and Tan
Yen-kai came back as governor in August 1916.
Sun Yatsen returned from Japan and set up his headquarters in
Kuangchow, and by July 1917 there were two governments in
China: the warlord Tuan Chi-jui in Peking, successor to the late
Yuan, head of an uneasy northern warlord coalition; and Sun
Yatsen, heading an unstable coalition of southern warlords in
Kuangchow. The struggle for the domination of Hunan, the
heart province, crossroads of the country, became particularly
acute. China is falling into chaos’ was the verdict of most
observers, and it looked as if partition was imminent, Tibet and
Mongolia were infiltrated by Russian, British and Japanese agents.
Manchuria and Shantung province were openly claimed by
Japan as her ‘sphere of influence’. Only the continuing World
War in Europe prevented military intervention in China by the
* The ease and bewildering rapidity with which governors. mUitarists, warlords.
etc., changed sides need not alarm the reader. It will be happening all through this
book. Tan Yen-kai had been pro-Manchu. became pro-Sun Yatsen. then switched
against Sun.
YOUTH AND SCHOOL YEARS 63
Western powers. Japan felt her hour had come. China was now
flooded with Japanese goods.
Warlord armies were quartered in temples and schools all over
Hunan. Pillage was common, hoarding of goods and grain made
money worthless, the peasants starved and the townpeople rioted;
students plunged into mass protest. Thus took shape another
revolution, through a swift maturing of consciousness among the
young. The students organized self-defence corps, trained for
physical fitness (regarded as ‘political consciousness’ at that time)
and self-defence, which meant mihtary drill. Every school had
its ‘volunteer corps’, and the Changsha Normal College was no
exception. From the start Mao Tsetung took an active and swiftly a
leading position in all the political activities of the student body,
and that included military drill.
In 1915 he became secretary of the Students’ Society at the
Normal College, and created the Association for Student Self-
Government, for ‘collective resistance’ against ‘unreasonable’
demands by the headmaster. This Association for Student Self-
Government later served as a nucleus for the students’ organiza-
tions of the May 4, 1919, movement in Hunan province. As he
had fought against the teacher’s tyranny when a child of seven,
he battled now against ‘many regulations ... I agreed with very
few of them . , . Most of all I hated a compulsory course in still-life
drawing. I thought it was extremely stupid.’
The student association under Mao took up political causes,
demonstrations against Yuan Shih-kai, against the warlords!
against the Japanese Twenty-one Demands. Mao led street
demonstrations by the students against the Japanese and on May
7 , 1915, wrote: ‘To revenge this extraordinary humiliation
[imposition of the Japanese ultimatum] will be up to our genera-
tion. He also organized a research department, for ‘social in-
vestigation , and organized student teams to visit and investigate
conditions in Changsha’s factories. He laid plans for haison with
other schools to promote an All-China Student Federation. And
when the self-defence corps against the warlords was established,
Mao became head of the college battalion in the spring of 1917.
Just then scattered bands of warlord Fu Liang-tso’s troops
64
THE MORNING DELUGE
occupied the buildings of the Normal College. With some fellow
students, Mao obtained a few real and some dummy rifles from a
nearby police station, where he had made friends by going and
talking to the policemen during street demonstrations he had led.
At night he and his followers rushed the occupied college build-
ings, meanwhile raising a great shout: ‘Fu Liang-tso has run
away! Kwangsi troops are her e! Surrender! Surrender!’ The
conftised troops surrendered, were disarmed, and the student
self-defence corps obtained more weapons. This was Mao’s first
experience of a typical surprise guerilla attack; he now studied
intensively the science of war.
For war was a normal, daily occurrence in warlord China, and
Mao’s generation saw all life as war. They had been born between
two wars, had seen a revolution, and now the whole country
festered with warlords.
The influence of Sun Tze’s classic book The Art of War^ written
two thousand years before, extends throughout Chinese history,
and also influenced Mao’s generation. The book is regarded as a
treatise not only on the conduct of war but also on the conduct of
all affairs where rivalry occurs, negotiations with an enemy or a
potential enemy, tactics and strategy in war or in peace. Chinese
encyclopedias contain extensive sections devoted to the literature
of war. The concept of war and peace as alternate facets of the
same application of power is as old as Chinese history. Mao
Tsetung studied Sun Tze, and it is not surprising that he incor-
porated and developed in his creative writings on war the ideas of
the old master.
The notion of struggle could be applied to all situations,
whether wresting a rice crop from a field, building a factory under
hardship conditions, or crossing a mountain. Struggle against
nature, obstacles, the elements; and the greatest, the most ob-
stinate struggle of all, against self. This concept became embedded
in the consciousness and the vocabulary of Mao s generation.
‘The quality of decision is like the well-timed swoop of a falcon
which enables it to strike and destroy its victim, wrote Sun Tze.
‘./^ack the enemy where he is unprepared. Appear where you are
not expected.’ Mao remembered and applied these dicta in the
YOUTH AND SCHOOL YEARS 65
great campaigns he would conduct; meanwhile he devised small
ones as head of the student corps.
He taught the students devices utilized by guerillas of the
Taiping* days in the Hunan countryside — to cut the young
bamboo in such a way as to leave a sharp point which would
pierce the attacker’s feet or hands; to scream and shout from one
spot while attacking in silence from another. Thus guerilla war,
peasant war, was brought into the classrooms of the Normal
College by Mao Tsetung. He took charge ... his orders, even to
the senior professors, were instantly obeyed.’*|*
Mao now read everything concerning the campaigns then
takmg place in World War I in Europe. He followed Hinden-
burg s marches in Russia, and would mention several times in the
next thirty years the commandeering of taxicabs to prevent Paris
being taken. He lectured and wrote articles on strategy and
tactics. But above all he took notes. He took notes of everything,
and wrote his own reaction to what he noted down. A volume
of Paulsen s book on logic, with 12,000 words of notes and
criticism by Mao, is still on exhibit at the college today. Altogether
Mao is reckoned to have written more than one million words of
notes, criticism and remarks on books he read during those five
y c&irs*
But his restless energy pushed him into many other activities It
was he who started, in 1917. together with Hsu Te-li. evening
classes for workers and shop assistants. A buildbg near the colleg!
y e facsimile copy of a poster written by Mao Tsetung
rw j t ct" '» » colt fe of
oonorf.* V f comtry, the situation is that most people have no
litewrv r ^ ^‘^‘^cation,’ wrote Mao. He railed against the
l>terary language employed by the officials, and advocated mLg
Hunan prasltsTnMaofyi*' *^^“8 ^“>8 by the
mIo r?v“s°ed‘*edL^n°‘’Ab ^ ^
London, 1962). edition. Abelard-Schuman, New York and
t Seen by author in Changsha museum in 1966. igyr.
66
THE MORNING DELUGE
the vernacular in these classes. ‘When one lectures in the literary
language nobody can understand the lecture; when one writes in
it, no one can read it ... it is also impossible to do sums in it ...
We are not wood or stone, we are men ... so come quickly and
register ... do come and listen to some plain speech.’ The poster
added: ‘You can wear any clothes you want’, and ‘Copybooks
and other material supplied free’. About one hundred workers
from Changsha’s sweatshop factories applied. The courses were
from seven to nine at night. Mao taught history and also ‘current
affairs’, read the newspapers to the workers, and made them
discuss what was happening. It was through this experience that
Mao Tsetung acquired his basic grounding in education techniques.
And yet Mao himself could write a beautiful, elegant literary
language, as his poems prove. His essays were described as ‘models
of style and content’. But his habit of dating his work (setting the
date on the end page, at the bottom) annoyed one of his teachers,
Yuan Li-chin, nicknamed Yuan the Big Beard. Big Beard con-
sidered it arrogant that a mere pupil should
work; essays were ephemeral pieces, subject to correction. He also
disliked Mao’s style, calling it ‘the work of a journalist . But for
Mao each essay was a piece of his mind, ideas set in the writing,
landmarks of his understanding and social action. He was keeping
track not only of his own evolution but of Chinese history in the
making; to date his pieces helped him to sec the road he travelled.
One day, overcome with anger. Big Beard tore out the last page
of Mao’s essay while the other students looked on. Mao Tsetung
rose, seized the professor by the arm, pushed him firmly to the
headmaster’s room, and argued out the case. Yuan not only bore
Mao no grudge, but later lent him books, gave him judicious
advice on style, and pleaded for him when he was threatened with
expulsion, and Mao recognized Yuan’s good advice. ‘Thanks to
Yuan the Big Beard, I can today still turn out a passable classical
essay, if required.’
The Normal College had a fairly extensive library where Mao
gorged on books; he could be seen late at night in the classrooms,
still at work. Among the essays he then wrote, one on Energy of the
Mind was much praised by Yang Chang-chi, a professor of ethics
place dates upon his
YOUTH AND SCHOOL YEARS
67
and philosophy, also a pioneer in women’s education, champion-
rights for women. Yang Chang-chi, who had spent ten years
abroad in Britain and Japan, was a man of high moral character.
He had published an article on the reform of the family and
advocated the remarriage of widows, all of which was offensive
to Chinese conservatism, a complete upset of the feudal-patriar-
chal system. Mao attributed the writing of his essay to Yang’s
influence. I was then an idealist,’ he confesses. He also wrestled
with the problem of relations in the old family system. How could
there be change, revolutionary or otherwise, unless family
relations were also altered? With Yang Chang-chi he would
discuss these problems, centred on paternal authoritarianism in the
family. Mao s essay was his first attempt at tracing consciousness,
the theme of relation between mind and body, concept and
material force. He would refer to it again and again throughout
his life, but as a materiahst his approach to mind totally changed.
Mao Tsetung’s work for women’s liberation is little known ; yet
Changsha was fertile ground for such a movement, as it boasted
the best girls’ school in China, the Chounan Girls Middle School,
which was to produce many women revolutionaries. The
participation of girl students from the schools of Changsha in
the organizations that Mao would create, and subsequently in the
CHnese Revolution, are of great importance to the history of the
Chinese woman s liberation. One of the earliest recruits of Mao
Ho-sen s sister Tsai Chang ; a vivacious, beautiful girl,
still today a vigorous and active revolutionary, member of the
Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party.
One should not stop one’s pursuit of the truth until the aim is
achieved . . . Ten years without an understanding of the truth are
ten years without ambition’; thus wrote Mao. But only action
could prove the sincerity of one’s thinking, and it is action that
characterizes Mao’s years in Changsha. ‘Here I acquired my first
experiences in social action.’
int and tall, almost
looks or his poor
eyes, the high fore-
working, reading,
He is remembered then as uncommonly ga
emaciated, completely unaware of his good
c ot es. The photos show the large, prominent
head, a calm face. He spent days and nights
68
THE MORNING DELUGE
training, demonstrating, debating, organizing workers’ schools,
and students’ associations. ‘Ten thousand years are too long, seize
the day, the hour!’ He had already begun, even if he did not know
it, to prepare himself physically and mentally for extreme effort.
‘There are so many things to know; so many things to do.’ But he
also listened, intently, patiently; listened and let others speak, and
he had a genius for getting people round him involved with him
in his activities. When he listened he appeared quiet and mild,
eyes fixed on the floor in intense concentration.
‘Tradition can stifle what is new ... and the ability to adapt to a
new age will be ended for China.’ But where was the defect in
China’s history? And how could it be ended? ‘Understanding
must precede decision.’ ‘We must develop our physical and
mental capacities to the fullest extent ... that is why our country’s
three bonds, prince and subject, father and son, husband and wife,
must go, and constitute, with religion, capitalists, and autocracy
the evil demons of the empire.’
An essay Mao wrote in 1916 on physical culture was printed in
the magazine New Youth* In it Mao made no distinction between
physical fitness and military training, and no one of his generation
would have done so either. Around him he could see the ravages
of ill health. Many of the students complained of nervous debility,
headache, backache, eye ache; quite a few gambled and fre-
quented brothels. Tuberculosis and venereal disease were com-
mon. Mao’s concern with health never left him. The well in the
college courtyard is shown to visitors; here he used to sluice
himself with a pail of cold water, summer or winter. This
physical radicalism (for it went against all accepted ideas) was a
function of his political radicalism, against the traditions of ‘the
scholar’, weak, and afraid of physical exertion.
Many of the young Mao’s ideas on how to keep fit were to be
incorporated by an older Mao into the way of life promoted in
today’s China. Mao asserted that external causes were to be
distinguished from internal causes of physical deterioration;
physical fitness must also be based on a change of mind, of
subjective attitude; people must want to be healthy before they
* A very famous radical publication started in 1915.
YOUTH AND SCHOOL YEARS 69
can be. External force, the compulsory application of sport
programmes, will not work. ‘Strength depends on discipline,
which depends on self-awareness,’ he wrote. Mao would apply this
‘self-awareness’, and the distinction between internal and external
causes, to revolution. Revolutions arose from internal causes;
external pressures or forces could not in themselves make revolu-
tion. The second idea Mao promoted was that ‘physical education
complements education in virtue and knowledge’. Exactly the
same idea, in almost the same words, was to be repeated during the
Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution fifty years later.
It is due to Mao’s early and sustained enthusiasm that sports and
swimming has become an essential part of the training of every
person in China. The bad habits of a beaten nation — fear of water,
of air, of fatigue, fear of ghosts, of physical exertion, the use of
opium, prostitution -all this Mao fought; hence his article on
physical culture is a political article, and remains so in the Chinese
context.
Since a good mind in a good body was an act of will, it was will
which Mao strove to cultivate, and will drove him to uncommon
prowess. ‘Energy’ was in nature; one was energized by contact
with her. Long walks in the hills for days, barefoot, bare-breasted
to imbibe the sun, the rain. Cold swims in the rivers, the ponds.
On each holiday, with or without companions, Mao would walk
the land from village to village. A copy of a newspaper loaned to
Mao by a teacher told a story about two students travelling across
China on foot and reaching Tibet. Mao read it and was much
interested; he wanted to walk ‘all over China’; little did he then
know his wish would be fulfilled, and how.
In the summer of 1917 Mao set out across Hunan province on
foot, journeying through many counties, accompanied by one of
the Siao brothers.* In the farmhouses where they rested, receiv-
ing hospitality from the peasants, Mao inquired of conditions, of
crops and rain, of rent and landlords, a peasant talking to other
peasants, but also a budding social scientist and researcher. Mao
ept notes of what he had been told and remembered the peasants’
names. He walked over three hundred miles on this trip.
* Siao Yu, author oi Mao Tsetimg and I Were Beggars, op. cit.
70
THE MORNING DELUGE
Then in the autumn of that year of 1917 Mao Tsetung founded
with a friend, Ho Shu-heng,* the Hsin Min Hsueh Hui, or New
People’s Study Society. The significance for the Chinese Revolu-
tion to come of this society cannot be overestimated, nor what it
represented as training in leadership for Mao. For about a year he
had entertained the idea of organizing a society in which people
would debate new ideas and create for themselves a ‘new’
personality by discussion, debate, self-analysis and action. The idea
of becoming changed by argument and debate, by contact with
‘reality’ and by personal experience, he was later to expand, refine,
and apply to the making of revolutionaries. ‘Feeling expansive
and the need for a few intimate companions,’ he inserted an
advertisement in a newspaper, signed with the pseudonym under
which he wrote his articles. Twenty-eight Strokes.f In this
for the organization of a
society of young men, active, resolute and patriotic. ‘I specified
youths who were hardened and determined and ready to make
sacrifices for their country.’
Mao’s New People’s Study Society was only one of the many
such student groups, but it grew into something else, the core of a
political party. From the start it stipulated action as well as debate.
It would not only talk revolution, but practise it, first of all
revolutionizing its own members, turning them into ‘new men’.
Even if it had no political label, nor any stated aim but the pursuit
of truth and knowledge and their translation into deeds, ‘the
nucleus was formed of what later was to become a society that was
to have a widespread influence on the affairs and destiny of China.’
Already in creating the New People’s Study Society, Mao
Tsetung held the germ of the idea which would come to full
blossoming at the Cultural Revolution : ‘the conscious remould-
ing of man and his outlook, which in turn transforms the world’.
Because the society was not for dilettantes, Mao made his own
selections. Fifty years later, in a letter to the Red Guards during the
* Ho Shu-heng was to be also a founder of the Chinese Communist Party. He
was executed in 1935 by Chiang Kai-shek.
t The three ideograms of his name, Mao Tsetung, are written with twenty-
eight strokes of the brush.
advertisement he explained his project
YOUTH AND SCHOOL YEARS
71
Cultural Revolution, Mao Tsetung wrote of the necessity for
^‘continuously and without pause re volut ionizing oneself, chang-
ing oneself, criticizing oneself, seeking for one’s weaknesses and
correcting them^ Mao had already embarked on this programme
for himself in 1917.
The response to his advertisement was discouraging; he
received ‘three and a half replies’: one from a young man who
‘was to join the Communist Party and afterwards betray it’; two
others from individuals who later became ultra-reactionaries.
‘The half reply came from a noncommittal youth named Li
Li-san,’ with whom Mao would have an ambiguous relationship
for the next fifty years. ‘Li listened to all I had to say and then
went away without making any definite proposals himself, and
our friendship never developed.’ Later Li Li-san was to become,
in the Chinese Communist Party, an outspoken opponent of
Mao’s thinking and policies.*
Tsai Ho-sen, Mao Tsetung’s best friend, and his sister Tsai
Chang, immediately joined Mao’s society. At the age of ten Tsai
Chang had fled to Changsha when her father had tried to betroth
her against her will. With her brother’s help she entered the
Chounan school and was a brilliant student. She was slim and
tall, with wonderful hair; she studied physical education, a
revolutionary action for a girl then.f Most of the thirteen mem-
bers who made up the nucleus of Mao’s society when it was
formally inaugurated in 1918 had similar stories of revolt against
family tradition. The society took up among other problems the
oppression of women in the traditional marriage system. Its
members engaged in neither flirtation nor romance. ‘They had
no time for love or romance and considered the times too critical
and the need for knowledge too urgent to discuss women or
personal matters. I was not interested in women,’ said Mao, who
was then twenty-five years old. The programme of debate,
Study, and social action (running night schools for workers,
visiting factories, demonstrating against Japanese imperialism]
* See chapter 10.
t In China where women had bound feet and were not supposed to leave the
nouse, to smdy physical education was extremely progressive.
THE MORNING DELUGE
72
writing articles, championing new ideas and the use of the
vernacular) was strenuous. The manifesto of the society opposed
opium smoking, gambling, drinking, concubinage, prostitution,
corruption; it advocated ‘the reform of China and the world',
Mao Tsetung said that women should be ‘independent persons’;
man could not be free unless woman was also liberated. A new
society must instil in woman a consciousness of her social and
political role, equal to man’s; she too must be ‘new*. On this
point, too, Mao has never wavered. Tsai Chang under Mao’s and
her brother’s encouragement organized a Women’s Work and
Study Society in 1919, to send women students abroad.*
In later years all thirteen of the original members of the society
were to join the Chinese Communist Party, founded in 1921. By
1919 there were eighty members, of whom over forty were to
join the Party.
All these activities of Mao Tsetung’s would acquire their his-
torical significance in the massive involvement of the student
population of China in the May 4. 1919, movement. Mao was
already influential before the May 1919 explosion, with a con-
siderable following not only among the intelligentsia but also
among the factory workers of the city of Changsha.
Mao became involved in 1918 in a Hunan branch of the Society
for Work and Study in France. Started in 1903 by two Chinese
scholars, one of them a French-educated biologist, by 1908 it had
branches in several cities. After 1913, dismayed by the debacle of
Sun Yatsen’s revolution, many students and teachers went off to
France under the society’s auspices. Hsu Te-li started a branch of
the society in Changsha and asked Mao to help him. Mao and
Tsai Ho-sen helped select students to be sent to France, but Mao
wanted recruiting standards changed and engaged in a combative
correspondence with the headquarters of the society in Peking.
Mao did not feel that aptitude for languages alone should qualify
for recruitment. He urged assessment of conduct, ideals, and
especially ‘willingness to serve the country .
* The author had the pleasure of an interview with Madame Tsai Chang in
1956.
YOUTH AND SCHOOL YEARS
73
It was Mao who suggested that women should also be recruited,
because, he said, ‘women are very dependable and responsible ’
‘More women should go away and study, thus more will be
saved.* ‘As many women as men are capable, and they have a
tremendous influence on building up a society.’ It was through
Mao’s active sponsorship that Tsai Chang’s Work and Study
Society to send women students to France took shape. Fourteen
Hunanese girls, including Tsai Chang herself and Hsiang Ching-
yu, another indomitable Hunan girl who married Tsai Chang’s
brother Tsai Ho-sen, thus went off to France in 1919.
Mao’s insistence that women were also human beings inspired
him to write lengthy articles championing their cause, notably
The JVomen^s Revolutionary Army, in the Hsiang Chiang Review,
which he was to found in Changsha. Its first issue was on July 14,
1919. In the third issue he appealed to women to abolish feudal
morality, advocated women’s suffrage, railed against the unequal
demand for women s chastity — ‘Where are the arches of chastity
to men?’*
It was as a social revolutionary if not a Marxist, a fighter against
traditional oppression, a challenger of abuses, the unpaid teacher of
workers and small clerks, a speaker, a debater, a writer of articles, a
champion of women’s rights, an ascetic athlete and a patriot that
Mao Tsetung, in those five years at the Normal College, exercised
a growing influence upon his contemporaries.
Throughout all these activities Mao would swim in the Hsiang
river, climb the beautiful hills, walk shirtless in wind and rain,
write poetry, eat very little and that of the coarsest, depriving
himself of food and clothing to pay for books. But he still had
time for friendships. A number of picnics are recorded, gatherings
in scenic spots, jaunts along the banks of the beautiful Hsiang
river. In autumn when the orange groves glowed with heavy
fruit, in summer with the smell of cassia in the air, Mao Tsetung
would climb a high spot and gaze far out; at other times he
would walk right round the city wall. He kept up a voluminous
* It was the ^tom to erect an arch to a virtuous widow who had remained
chaste al her life; also to a young girl who, once betrothed, remained unwed and
virgm^till her own death if her husband-to-be died before the wedding.
3
74
THE MORNING DELUGE
correspondence with hosts of friends. To save a schoolmate from
an arranged marriage he exerted himself, visiting the respective
families, arguing against compulsion. Much of the early poetry
he then wrote has disappeared, only the printed articles remain.
An enormous amount of material — speeches, debates, discussions,
letters, and basketfuls of notes — has been lost. But in Changsha
can still be found the letters written at the time by Mao’s teachers
and contemporaries.
On the evening of the autumn festival in 1917, a picnic was
held by some of the college students at a famous spot on the out-
skirts of Changsha. As usual their conversation turned on ‘saving
the country’. Which was the best way to save the country?
‘To build a large army,’ said one student.
‘To learn science, build railways and factories,’ said another.
‘To become a politician and sweep away corruption,’ said
someone else.
Mao Tsetung was silent, his eyes fixed on the ground. He
appeared to dream. Someone turned to him. ‘What do you
think?’
‘It takes money and influence to become a politician,’ Mao
Tsetung replied. ‘As to learning science or becoming a teacher,
that also requires money and influence and time. To build an
army ... what kind of an army that would not oppress the people
could one build ... unless one does like the heroes of Liang
Shan-po ... ’ *
At this the others laughed, and the talk turned to heroes of old.
The heroes of Liang Shan-po are the heroes of the Chinese
people. In Water Margin, Mao’s favourite book, 108 rebels, called
‘bandits’ by the ruling power, gather in a mountain fortress to
fight for justice against tyranny. By referring to them, Mao
showed that he thought in terms of revolt— or fighting against the
corruption and oppression around him, not joining it to reform
the system. To choose, deliberately, the part of the rebel and
the outcast was what he offered his friends at the picnic that
night.
In his last year at the Teachers College, in March 1918, Mao
* Siao Yu, Mao Tsetung and I Were Beggars, op. cit.
YOUTH AND SCHOOL YEARS
75
Tsetung’s mother came to Changsha. Much worn, with a
swollen face and a purulent cheek, she sought medical treatment.
She was carried in a sedan chair all the way by a hired labourer
and her second son, Mao Tse-min. In that year Mao Tse-tan,
Mao’s third brother, was studying at the primary school attached
to the Teachers College. Treatment was of no avail; Mao’s
mother died in October. ‘More than ever’ Mao lost interest in
returning to his father’s house; he was, however, to return briefly
and to be photographed, standing by his father and wearing a
black armband.
In April 1918 Mao graduated from the college. He decided to
go to Peking with a group of thirty Hunanese being sent to
France by the Work and Study Society. Before leaving China
they would study French at the language school in Peking. Both
Tsai Ho-sen and Hsu Te-li had applied to go. Hsu Te-li, though
over forty, went with the younger men as a student worker.
Many of those chosen were members of the New People’s Study
Society. It would have been easy for Mao Tsetung to travel to
France. He was certainly expected to do so. What decided him
not to leave?
According to some biographers Mao was reluctant to learn a
foreign language ; his pronounced Hunan accent made him afraid
of being laughed at. But what we know of Mao’s character and
ability makes this assertion hardly tenable. Mao was not self-
conscious about clothes, appearance or accent. He went round in
the same clothes month in and out; he had no other. His patched
shoes never deterred him from calling on provincial governors or
headmasters, and no one laughed at his Hunan accent.
But to sail to France was for Mao to cut himself off from the
warm, exalting life, the nourishing sap he felt rise within him
when he was with his people, walking in the mountains and
valleys of Hunan, or going to the factories and teaching the
workers at evening school. This was his strength, a strength and
power undefined as yet, but real to him. He was spellbound,
enthralled, unable to tear himself away from his own coimtry.
Something now told him not to go, although he himself would
not be able to formulate it clearly. Later he would say that it was
THE MORNING DELUGE
76
the needs and the exploitation of his people that had propelled
him into revolution. The revolution made Mao Tsetung as much
as Mao Tsetung made the revolution. But the choice was his.
We must, therefore, accept his own explanation for his staying
behind. ‘I felt I did not know enough about my own country.’ In
the spring of 1919 he stood on the quay in Shanghai, tall and tliin
in his threadbare, wind-blown cotton go-wn, and watched his
friends, Tsai Ho-sen among them, waving at him from the deck of
their French steamer. He waved back at them, then turned and
walked away, to return to his own countryside, his own province
of Hunan.
First Trip to Peking
Mao Tsetung had spent only i6o Chinese dollars (this sum in-
cluded his numerous registration fees) during his five years at the
Changsha Normal College, one third on newspapers and journals.
He did not ask for money from his father to go to Peking, but
borrowed from friends. He went much of the way on foot, and
managed to walk round Lake Tungting— at low level a cir-
cumference of 155 miles. On this trip he also did social investiga-
tion and research, for he stopped in farmhouses, earning food and
lodging by lending a hand in the labour, or writing calligraphic
slogans of good omen, to paste on doors at festivals. The shores of
Lake Tungting belong to eleven counties; there landlords con-
gregate, taking the fertile alluvial islands left by the sift of waters,
and renting them out for rice planting to poor peasants. Of the
land there, 71 per cent was owned by 1-8 per cent of the popula-
tion, and each landlord had armed retainers. All this Mao was to
note and store in his memory as he trekked onward to Peking.
When Mao arrived in Peking there were a good many Hunan-
ese intellectuals already there. Soon he was calling on Professor
Yang Chang-chi, who was overjoyed to see him. Yang had left
the Changsha Normal College in 1917, having been appointed
to the staff of Peking University. The Changsha schools and
colleges were known for their Idgh standards, their professors
were among the best in China, and Yang was personally famous,
popular as well as erudite. He had settled well in Peking, and
introduced Mao Tsetung to Li Ta-chao, then university librarian
at Peking University. Mao was penniless and needed a job;
Yang Chang-chi asked Li Ta-chao to help him.
Mao Tsetung admired Li Ta-chao, whose articles in New Youth
e had read; but Li Ta-chao seems at first to have paid little
attention to him. A job was provided, however, that of assistant
77
THE MORNING DELUGE
78
in the University library, at eight dollars a month. Could Li
Ta-chao have done better for Mao? We do not know. Mao had
no money; he had to live. He took the job. Anyway, a library
was what he liked best. There he could read to his soul’s content.
Li Ta-chao, eminent, brilliant, mercurial, was the first intel-
lectual in China to praise the Russian Revolution of October
1917; he is described as having been the first to introduce Marxist
thought to China’s intelligentsia. Although young— Li Ta-chao
was thirty when Mao was twenty-five— he had a great reputation
for progressive ideas and personal courage. He believed that a
renaissance could be achieved only by discarding the suffocating
moralities and values of the past. He likened the hampering of
thought which the classics imposed upon the minds of students to
bound-foot women . At first attracted by the Western liberal
democratic system, he had turned away from it because of the
contradiction between the pious homilies of Western democracy
and its ruthless exploitation of China. He denounced the economic
stranglehold of Western finance; was one of the first to write and
lecture about Lenin and to translate Lenin into Chinese. He was
especially impressed by Lenin’s The State and Revolution. Like
Lenin, Li Ta-chao stressed the need for arousal or ‘awareness’ in
the masses. Education of the masses’ was essential for revolution-
ary results of a lasting kind. Li Ta-chao wrote and talked about
this a great deal, and Mao Tsetung had certainly been influenced
by Li s ideas, and through Li, by Lenin to a greater extent than
by any other philosopher of Communism.
It was through Li Ta-chao that Mao began to read Lenin, in Li’s
translations. Mao s dictum,\.The people, the people alone are the
motor force, the creator of univers^ Kistory,’ is the essence of
Leninism. Li predicted that the Chinese revolution would be
essentially a peasant revolution . Lenin had stated that revolution
in colonial and semi-colonial countries could not be successful
without the arousal and the participation of the peasantry, the
‘infantry’ of the revolutionary process. ‘Go to them, educate them,
make them understand that they should demand their own
liberation, speak of the oppression which they have suffered,
demand their release from ignorance and misery and to be
FIRST TRIP TO PEKING
79
masters of their own destiny/ wrote Li Tj-c^o'v This outlines the
method by which the leadership of an agrarian revolution is
acquired, though it cannot be interpreted as the demand that the
leadership of the revolution be agrarian. The peasantry is the
main force’ of the revolution; but ‘leadership’ is something else.
Whether Li Ta-chao saw this as clearly as Mao Tsetung was to
see it we do not know. Li Ta-chao was killed in 1927,* possibly
unaware that the diffident young Hunanese man who had come
to him for a job would be the leader of the revolution Li Ta-chao
ardently desired and died for.
The job of assistant librarian procured for Mao was a semi-job,
but unemployment among the intelligentsia was rampant. ‘My
own living conditions in Peking were quite miserable/ and ‘in
contrast the beauty of the old capital was a vivid and living
compensation , I stayed in a little room which held seven other
people. When we were all packed fast on the kang'^ bed there was
scarcely room enough for any of us to breathe. I used to have to
warn people on each side of me when I wanted to turn over. But
in the parks and the old palace grounds I saw the early northern
spring. I saw the white plum blossom flower wliile the ice still
held solid over the North Sea park. I saw the willows over the
lake with the ice crystals hanging from them.’ Enraptured by the
beauty of Peking, the poet Mao Tsetung walked for hours, ex-
ploring the enchanted city. The social investigator Mao Tsetung
went to the small craftsmen s shops, to the railway workers’
yard, walked to the Great ^^^all, round the city walls, to the
Western Hills, the Marco Polo bridge, learning the city with his
feet and his senses.
In the library of Peking University Mao’s job consisted in
fetching books required, checking the titles, writing down the
names of borrowers and those who came to read newspapers or
magazines. ‘My office was so low that people avoided me; to
most of them I did not exist as a human being.’ It was menial
* He was strangled in the wave of massacres of Communists that swept over
Chma m that year; see chapter 8. ^
NOTS"chinV'°”^ underneath to keep it wann. Used throughout
8o
THE MORNING DELUGE
work, just a little above that of a domestic. Seldom did any of the
great or not so great who came there glance at his face, or talk to
him. Peking University was a very highbrow, snobbish place; its
intellectuals the highest intelligentsia with the greatest arrogance
of all in the land. Among those who came to read I recognized
the names of famous leaders of the renaissance movement.* I
tried to begin conversation with them on political and cultural
subjects, but they were very busy men.’
This job provided Mao with insight into the vanity and egotism
of the intellectual who talked of humanism and socialism yet cut
himself oif from the wretched masses of the poor. Abstract
terminology the intelligentsia dealt with skilfully, but they would
never have dreamed of investigating the beggars’ hovels in the
filth and garbage just outside the city walls, where Mao went.
Years later, when the Revolution was successful, the problem of
intellectuals, of how to teach them the reality of China, would be
one of the most knotty problems of all for Mao. The Chinese
Revolution needed intellectuals, but they were also dangerous to
it, for they would always tend to ride high above the heads of the
people and to demand personal privileges as their due.
During those weeks in the library of Peking University, Mao
listened to the famous and revered discourse of ways to save the
country; and wondered. Sarcasm, not personal rancour, would
later appraise these talking machines’ at their true worth. The
fates of the brilliant ones who later gave up, gave in, became
turncoats, he would describe sparingly. He was thought of as a
slow-witted peasant, shouted at and ordered about; and he
realized that they [the important intelligentsia] had no time to
listen to an assistant librarian speaking a southern dialect^.
But I was not discouraged. I joined the society of philosophy
and the journalism society.’ These gave him the right to sit in on
courses at the back of the lecture rooms, coming in quietly after
all the others.
Mao thus met Chen Kung-po, a fellow student then, who
The name given then to a literary movement in existence since 1907, when Lu
Hsun, China’s most famous revolutionary writer, was in Japan. This movement
was to merge with the political and social upheavals of May 4, 1919; see chapter 4.
FIRST TRIP TO PEKING
8i
became a Communist but reneged and became a Chiang Kai-shek
supporter; Tan Ping-shan, who became a Communist and later
a member of a ‘third party’; Shao Piao-ping, very earnest, very
excitable, somewhat anarchistic (but in those early days this
tendency was easily acquired), who helped Mao greatly and was
killed in 1926; Chang Kuo-tao, who became a Communist,
bitterly opposed Mao during the Long March, later defected to
the Kuomintang, and is now in Canada; Kang Pei-chen, who
joined the Ku Klux Klan in California; Tuan Hsi-peng, later to
become vice-minister of education in Chiang Kai-shek’s govern-
ment. Once Mao tried to talk to the famous Dr Hu Shih, but the
latter ignored him. And he met Chen Tu-hsiu, the prestigious
editor o(New Youth, the magazine which had radicalized a whole
generation, the magazine Mao Tsetung read from cover to cover
and for which he had already written articles under his usual
pseudonym, the twenty-eight-stroke man.
Many years later, in an interview, Hu Shih would say to some
American friends: ‘Mao Tsetung was quite remarkable ... All the
young people then were members of a Young China Study
Society;* they were all interested in politics. Mao Tsetung was
one of them. When I was at Peking University, he asked to be
allowed to sit in on classes. As a prose writer, Mao was superb.
No one could equal him.’
Mao Tsetung read all that Li Ta-chao wrote on Marxism and
joined the Marxist Study Group, founded by Li, towards the end
of 1918. Under Li Ta-chao, I developed rapidly towards
Marxism.’ He also acknowledged his debt to Chen Tu-hsiu, who
was then thirty-nine years old. He influenced me perhaps more
than anyone else.’ For a long time Mao Tsetung thought Chen
Tu-hsiu an outstanding revolutionary. Chen was to be the first,
but not the last, of Mao s disappointing experiences with ‘bour-
geois radicals , revolutionaries and friends he would look up to
and trust, and find to be unscrupulous opportunists.
Mao’s personal life was changed in Peking. The puritan, the
ascetic, fell in love with Yang Kai-hui, daughter of Professor Yang
Chang-chi. Mao often went to visit Yang, for the old professor
* A society founded by Li Ta-chao, to which Mao adhered.
82
THE MORNING DELUGE
kept open house for the students. ‘He was a genuine friend
to me in Peking.’ Yang gave him books to read, helped him to
enroll in courses, and treated him with dignity, telling everyone
of Mao’s talents. He met Yang Kai-hui at her father’s house and
^ also at the University, where she attended courses in journalism.
Yang Kai-hui, bom in 1901, was beautiful, very much like Mao’s
mother in looks, but above all a noble and courageous girl, well
read, sensitive, and profoundly devoted to ideas.
This was for both of them first love. In the New People’s Study
Society, ‘everything we did or said must have a purpose ... We
had not time for love or romance, considered the times too critical
and the need for knowledge too urgent to discuss women or
personal matters. I was not interested in women.’ But this now
changed, although My interest in politics continued to increase’.
The love of Yang Kai-hui and Mao Tsetung in Peking was
‘new’ love, where the partners chose each other, then a daring
and uncommon innovation. It remained unspoken for a good
many months, since Professor Yang himself seemed unaware of it
for some time. The two young people were both shy, and they
had the problem which confronted many yoiuig people then.
Could they, was it permissible, to enjoy love and romance when
the country needed all their energy? This stress between duty and
private affection was a deeply serious one in those days of early
revolution, when high-minded young couples often voluntarily
sacrificed their love for what they considered their duty. Hence
they decided to wait, to be sure of themselves.
Mao also began a series of social investigations among workers
on the Peking-Hankow railway. Mao visited them, going as far
as Chang Hsin Tien railway station, 93 miles south. Today in one
of Peking’s important machine plants, the February 7 plant, there
are still old workers who recall how Mao Tsetung came to see
them. Some of these workers became Communist trade unionists
and took part in the Communist-led railway strikes of the 1920s.
Some were sent to France by Mao on the work and study
programme in 1921.
After about six months in Peking— from November 1918 to
April 1919 — Mao’s Hunanese friends were ready to sail from
FIRST TRIP TO PEKING 83
Shanghai to France. They had studied French in Peking at the
French Institute.* Mao borrowed the fare to go to Shanghai to see
them off; he had only enough money to get as far as Tientsin, but
borrowed ten dollars to continue the journey. On the way to
Shanghai he visited (on foot) temples, scenic spots, the grave of
Confucius, and climbed Mount Tai. Not far from Shanghai, at
Pukou, again he was ‘without a copper’ and without a ticket;
then a thief stole his only pair of shoes. But he was again lucky,
meeting outside the railway station a friend from Hunan who
lent him money for a pair of new shoes and for the remaining trip
to Shanghai. Having seen his friends off on their French steamer,
Mao returned to Changsha. It was then April 1919.
* Also known as the Auguste Comte Institute.
The First Cultural Revolution: May 4, 1919
The first cultural revolution of China’s twentieth century began
with the May 4, I 9 i 9 » niovement. It has been described as a
literary renaissance , especially in the United States, where the
influence of the late Dr Hu Shih denied its fundamentally political
nature. But the changes which affected Chinese literature cannot
be dissociated from the politico-social upsurges of the period. The
literary revolution was part of the political process. This first
cultural revolution was a precursor of the Communist Revolu-
tion, in which Mao Tsetung was to play such a leading role, and
his political radicalization was hastened by it.
It was in 1915, and because of the Japanese threat,* that many
radical patriotic magazines, among them New Youth, began
publication. In the summer of 1917 Dr Hu Shih, returned from
the United States and fresh from John Dewey’s lectures, spoke
and wrote of a literary revolution’ in China, but as an isolated
phenomenon, to accompany a gradual reform’ and *W^esterniza-
tion of Chinese social and political structures. At the time, the
question of utilizing the vernacular and abolishing the literary
language was ardently debated, and Hu Shih approved of lectur-
ing and writing in the vernacular rather than in the classical style,
as this would broaden education’. But Hu Shih failed to com-
prehend that the fundamental question was not a change of style
but a change of content and of system, a political and social
revolution rather than a literary revolution alone. The debates
then current concerning language and literature were symptoms
of a great upheaval. Hu Shih condemned all Violence’ and
excesses and argued that ‘students must study and not concern
themselves ... with political affairs’. But there is no traditional
* The Twenty-one Demands (Tanaka Memorial) of 1915.
84
FIRST CULTURAL REVOLUTION: MAY 4, IpIP 85
separation of the ‘literary’ from the ‘political’ in China;* this was
a purely Westernized viewpoint which Hu Shih, unconsciously
perhaps, imported into a Chinese situation. He was thus out of the
historical movement before it had begun, as his acrimonious
correspondence with several university student associations two
years before the May 4, 1919, movement testifies.
The origins of the May 4th movement are traceable to the
Twenty-one Demands made by Japan upon China. During the
First World War Japan sought to replace all other colonial
powers in China. The Twenty-one Demands crystallized patriotic
indignation among the students and the intelligentsia into a lucid,
definite anti-imperialist and anti-feudal movement. The literary,
political and social aspects of the movement became merged into
impetuous national protest. After October 1917, the success of the
Russian Revolution led to the spread of Marxism, in which Li
Ta-chao was a leading figure. A nationwide boycott of Japanese
imports began. Within this context the literary revolution also
took place. Informing the people became an imperative duty
which could only be performed by a radicalized intelligentsia
using the vernacular, expressing political and social events in
language intelligible to ordinary people. Already in 1917 Mao in
Changsha was using the vernacular in his workers’ evening classes.
National humiliation days,f anti-Japanese meetings, were held
in these effervescent years from 1915 to 1919. Student orators
stood on improvised platforms at street corners and explained
Japanese imperialism to the crowds— and British, French, and
other imperialism. Protest sheets covered the walls, pamphlets
circulated by hand. No one was interested in merely writing
poems in the vernacular, as Hu Shih recommended.
Lu Hsun. the great Chinese writer, had begun a magazine
called New Life in Japan in 1906 to urge language reform; it had
not prospered because Lu Hsun’s enterprise was too early; only
when he returned to China and participated in the anti-imperialist
* The whole of Chinese history is evidence of the close relationship between
politics and literary production, to a far greater extent than in any Western
country.
t In both Cliina and Japan, days of ‘humiliation’, to commemorate defeats,
were observed.
86
THE MORNING DELUGE
movement did Lu Hsun come into the mastery of his own craft
and give language reform its definite place in tL literary revolu-
tion : the propagation of political and social ideas which would
unite the people against tyranny; literature not for the elite but
for the masses . From then on the revolution in literature became
part of the Chinese revolutionary process. Hence the Com-
munists regard Lu Hsun as the originator of the literary and
language reform, as they regard May 4, 1919, as the watershed
between the old established form of literary-political dissent, with
its emphasis on maintaining through reform the structures of the
Chinese traditional system, and the new one, with its emphasis
on the total abolition of the old.
The literary revolution became a nationwide complex of
manifestoes, demonstrations and militant action. New political
terms were coined and stirred awareness of the new literature.
Satirical essays constructed a new style. Repression could do little
against this radicalization, which was proceeding so fast that by
1918 New Youth was by no means the only vanguard magazine,
nor the most left-wing. ‘A tide of new thinking’ became em-
bodied in the New Tide Society, its members and its publications.
Li Ta-chao s essays on Marxism, begun in the spring of 1912, and
his translations of Lenin and Marx had set the trend of radical
thought. Student societies (among them the New People’s Study
Society founded by Mao Tsetung) organized centres for the
production and dissemination of Marxist literature. These
revolutionary groups fostered a large contingent of young
intellectuals for the h4ay 4th movement.
Mao Tsetung, twenty years later, was to identify the literary
revo ution with the political one, and call it China’s first ‘cultural
revolution . This cultural revolution’ remained for him a vital
experience until the time came for yet another tide of renewal,
ty years later, initiated by him. No study of Mao Tsetung’s
evelopment can be complete without some knowledge of the
May 4th movement, Mao’s role in it, and his analysis and under-
standing of the event which shaped China’s future more definitely
than anything else at that time.
FIRST CULTURAL REVOLUTION: MAY 4, Ipip 87
Undeterred by student agitation, Japan in 1917 and 1918 gave
loans of about 150 million Japanese yen to Tuan Chi-jui, then
president of a coalition of warlords and militarists forming the
Peking government. Tuan agreed to secret pacts and military
conventions which turned North China into a Japanese satellite.
The students learned of these deals through the Soviet Union
press, and demonstrations against Tuan’s government occurred in
May 1918. Several thousand students in Peking assembled in
front of the presidential palace, demanding to know the contents
of the ‘Sino-Japanese military mutual assistance conventions’ and
other pacts. The merchant guilds denounced Tuan Chi-jui, asked
for a stop to the civil wars then raging in various provinces
between warlords, and for resistance to Japanese encroachment
upon China. In the summer of 1918 a Student Society for
National Salvation was founded on an all-China basis, linking
provincial student associations into united action. A section of
industrialists and merchants supported the students.
In November 1918, the end of the First World War, the
establishment of the League of Nations, and the declarations of
Woodrow Wilson were received with great rejoicing. ‘The
Chinese people were jubilant,’ writes Chow Tse-tsung.* They
hoped the shameful unequal treaties imposed by the Western
powers and Japan ever since 1842 (the first Opium War) would
be abrogated in an equitable settlement in the peace treaty.
Promises and assurances had been made to China in 1917, to
obtain her entry into the war on the side of the Allies; 200,000
Chinese workers had been exported to man the depleted factories
in France and to dig trenches at the front. Many intellectuals
believed that the victory of the Allies was a victory of democracy
over tyranny, of the rule of law over militarism, of the common
people over oppressors. They thought the declared peace aims
of the governments of the Allies, and Woodrow Wilson’s
Fourteen Points, would be translated into action. A victory
parade of 60,000 took place in Peking, fireworks were exploded,
and there was great hope among those who admired the Western
nu The May Fourth Movement: Intellectual Revolution in Modern
^hma (Oxford University Press, London, i960).
88
THE MORNING DELUGE
forms of democracy that China would at last be treated fairly,
and the rights she had been deprived of would be restored to her.
But when the Paris Peace Conference opened on January i8,
ipipj h became evident that promises were merely vague assur-
ances, unsubstantial words which would never see performance.
The Chinese delegation, representative of the Japanese-bribed
Peking government, was later reinforced, much against its will,
by a Southern delegation, sent by Sun Yatsen (who in 1918 once
again briefly returned to power in Kuangchow as head of a
coalition of Southern militarists). The Southern delegation inclu-
ded the brilliant Dr Eugene Chen,* an overseas Chinese from a
wealthy family in Trinidad, who managed to get a copy of the
secret Lansing-Ishii agreement made between the United States
and Japan m 1917. This agreement showed that the United
States had already come to an understanding with Japan concern-
ing respective ‘spheres of influence’ in China.
The publication of the Lansing-Ishii agreement in Chinese
student newspapers revealed the duplicity of China’s allies. By
March 1919, rumours that the Chinese case was ‘hopeless’ came
to Peking. President Wilson, on whom the hopes of the Chinese
were pinned, apparently gave in to combined European
manoeuvres, and China s demands for abrogation of the unequal
treaties were brmquely rejected. China was to remain, as much as
before the war, everyone s colony, no one’s responsibility’.
j. these weeks of hope and expectation and shattering
disillusion, merchants, shopkeepers, businessmen, students, pro-
essors kept on forming groups and associations ‘to obtain justice’.
Student organizations from all the cities sent hundreds of tele-
grams to the delegations in Paris. The chambers of commerce
flooded the delegates with cabled exhortations. The Chinese
students in France sent representatives to call upon the delegates
and in the end were to picket them and prevent them from
signing the treaty and ‘selling out’ Chinese rights.
On May 3, students in Peking learned that the Paris Peace
Conference granted none of the Chinese demands. On the
I ^ information concerning Dr Eugene Chen was obtained from his sons,
Jack and Percy Chen, by the author.
FIRST CULTURAL REVOLUTION: MAY 4, I919 89
contrary, Shantung province, Germany’s previous ‘sphere of
influence*, was now given to Japan.
‘We at once awoke to the fact that foreign nations were still
selfish and militaristic, and that they were all great liars.* *We
concluded that a greater world war would come,* ‘We must
Thus spoke the students.
It was decided to hold a mass demonstration on May 7,
National Humiliation Day, the anniversary of Japan’s ultimatum
of 1915. But the demonstration started earlier. On May 4 in
Peking 3,000 students representing thirteen academic institutions
circulated a manifesto written in the vernacular and marched to
the house of a pro-Japanese official; the police and army, who
were mobilized, arrested some and proclaimed martial law.
Within the next twenty-four hours the students turned to rallying
and organizing all those they could reach. Since the whole nation
was shocked and indignant, a great alliance of merchants, workers,
petty shopkeepers, craftsmen was formed very swiftly. And thus
a massive united front was created, not only against imperialism,
but against the Chinese warlords who had ‘sold out’ the Chinese
people. The newspapers and magazines printed articles in support
of the students. On May 10 began a general strike in all the schools
and academic institutions. On June 2, 3 and 4, arrests of teachers
and students occurred. This prompted strikes and demonstrations
on June 5, in which girls participated as well as boys, even from
primary schools.
National indignation found itself through student organiza-
tions. Mobile groups of ten teamed to carry out street propa-
ganda, put up posters, direct strikes, demonstrations, and the
burning of Japanese goods found in stores. Teachers and university
professors joined in the student demonstrations. On the morning
of June 6, all the business firms and factories in Shanghai went on
strike. The strike spread like a prairie fire. By noon it covered the
whole city and the suburbs. Textile plants, railways, public
utility enterprises — more than one hundred companies and
actories, involving about 90,000 workers, including many
women workers, shut down. Even the restaurants, the brothels
and singsong girls’ houses of Shanghai closed. In the streets, the
90
THE MORNING DELUGE
only activities were meetings — hundreds of students speaking to
listening crowds around them -and protest marches, banners
flying, on the main roads. Even police units had gone on sympathy
strikes.
Up and down the Yangtze, river transport stopped. Labour
unions, until then proscribed, suddenly blossomed. On June 28,
the date of the signature of the peace treaty at Versailles, Chinese
students, workers, and overseas Chinese in Paris surrounded the
Lutetia Hotel, where the delegation from Peking resided, and
prevented the delegates from leaving the hotel ; thus the Chinese
government did not sign the Versailles Peace Treaty. The demand
for abrogation of unequal treaties went on through the next
three decades; only in 1949, thirty years later, when Mao led the
Chinese Revolution to its all-China victory, were the aims of the
May 4th movement achieved at last.
The May 1919 movement was not isolated from world events;
what went on in the USSR as well as what went on at the Paris
Peace Conference directly affected the Chinese youth revolt. In
March 1919 the Third International had held its First Congress in
Moscow, an event given much publicity in Chinese Marxist study
groups in Peking, Shanghai, and later (April) in Changsha. The
First Congress had condemned the peace conference and called for
a world revolution.
The praise of Marxism which characterized the May 4th
movement, as well as its anti-Confucianism, its demands for
democracy’ and ‘science’, marked it as a turning point in the
history of China. And truly nothing was the same afterwards.
Attacks on all superstition, all tradition, went on throughout
1919. Intellectuals launched campaigns for social service; girls
cut their hair short; free marriage was advocated; opium smoking,
foot binding were denounced even in remote provinces. Progres-
sive publications underwent a great expansion; more than 400
began during that spring and summer. They voiced the temper
and the tone of those days: Warm Tide, New Learning, New
Voice, Awakening, New Culture, Mass Education, Upward, Strife,
Neiv Woman, Women’s Bell, New China, names evocative of this
FIRST CULTURAL REVOLUTION: MAY 4, I919 9I
great upsurge, in which millions were becoming politicized. New
books and translations, of Marxist and socialist content, were
published in far larger quantities than ever before ; no fewer than
fifty publishers now printed translations, and translating was done
at a feverish pace. All papers and magazines shifted to the ver-
nacular, and old-type publications radically changed their
editorial policies. And all this happened so swiftly, it seemed
almost overnight. Everything had changed, but for years no one
would be aware of the fundamental, qualitative change which
had taken place.
In that April of 1919 Mao Tsetung had returned to Changsha,
after seeing off his friends in Shanghai leaving for France, and
immediately plunged into political agitation. He obtained a job
as a lowly teacher at the Hsiu Yeh Primary School, attached to the
Normal College and built within its precincts. His salary barely
kept him alive. He lived on one meal of rice and broad beans a
day. All through his life as a student, and now as a teacher, he
saved on food to pay for books and newspapers. Political agitation
left him no time for the extra coaching of wealthy students
which usually formed a teacher’s chief source of revenue. His
greatest worry was shoes, he could not afford them. In summer
he wore straw sandals as the peasants did. He had returned to
Changsha with two articles by Li Ta-chao, Victory of the Common
People and The Triumph of Bolshevism, and gave a lecture on
Marxism and the Revolution’ under the aegis of his New People’s
Study Society. Mao Tsetung’s popularity had grown with his
return from prestigious Peking and the political excitement of the
times. The students, teachers, shopkeepers, the workers of
Changsha, who in 1918 already had demonstrated against Japan
and carried on a very effective boycott of Japanese goods, now
crowded to listen to Mao Tsetung. Mao’s speech was a great
success. It ended with the assertion that only by studying Marxism
could the Chinese people save themselves. In April 1919 the first
Marxist study group in Hunan province was founded in Changsha.
Mao was already convinced that only a Marxist revolution
comd save China, although he was not yet a fully confirmed
92
THE MORNING DELUGE
Marxist. The New People’s Study Society, the Work and Study
Society, the New Tide Society (Hunan branch) all turned to the
study of Marxism. It is no exaggeration to state that Mao brought
Marxism to Hunan, and did all the preparatory work prior to
establishment of a Communist Party branch there.
In the following weeks, Mao’s influence in Changsha expanded
with the anti-Japanese and anti-warlord struggle in the schools.
‘Hunan is the most radical province,’ the newspapers claimed. Mao
was blacklisted by the provincial governor, Chang Ching-yao, a
pro-Japanese nominee of the Peking government. Chang tried to
suppress anti-Japanese activity, but the students took to the streets
to lecture about ‘national betrayal’, and such was the sway of
public opinion that Chang Ching-yao dared not arrest them. Mao
formed the United Students’ Association of Hunan in June 1919,
to link student activities to the All-China Federation of Students.
While in Peking his attendance at mass meetings against the
warlords in November 1918, and the student conference against
Japanese encroachment in January 1919, had provided him with
many interprovincial contacts. He also maintained correspon-
dence with Hunan students in France— Tsai Ho-sen, Tsai Chang
and Hsiang Ching-yu; and knew of the revolutionary groups
forming there *
Twenty years later Mao would explain the concept of the
‘cultural revolution’, epitomized in the May 4th movement. The
cultural revolution was a continuing phenomenon, the May 4th
movement its beginning — ‘so great and so thorough a cultural
revolution that it was unprecedented in Chinese history’. But it
was going on; it would continue as long as the Chinese Revolu-
tion itself. Thus Mao would introduce Lenin’s concept of
‘cultural revolution’ as an inseparable component of the Chinese
Revolution.
* On New Democracy (January 1940); see Selected Works, vol. II. See, too. The
May 4th Movematt and The Orientation of the Youth Movement, also in Selected
Works, vol. II. It is incorrect to aver, as some scholars do, that Mao was ‘awakened’
or ‘came out of obscurity’ because of the May 4th movement, or that he started
his career with it. His career had already started. He had been the author of one
ofthe first anti-Japanese denunciations, on May 7, 1915, the very day the Twenty-
one Demands were published.
FIRST CULTURAL REVOLUTION: MAY 4, I919 93
On June 3, the United Students’ Association of Hunan issued a
proclamation demanding punishment of pro-Japanesc politicians.
Strikes of merchants, shopkeepers and workers, in which the
miners of Pinghsiang and Anyuan participated, took place. The
boycott spread through the schools and their faculties to country-
side small towns; even young schoolchildren took part. In
Changsha, teams of girls inspected and searched stores for
Japanese products. When these were found, they were publicly
burned.
Groups of three, five or more young people would get together,
pass a resolution, and go out lecturing, teaching, 'arousing and
awakening the people. Mao urged them to get organized* :
‘Arouse the people, give them their initiative.’ He was beginning
to learn what ‘the masses’ meant. His style as a revolutionary was
shaped then; a widespread stirring up, a multiplication of groups,
societies, teams; a seeming chaos, out of which grow new ways of
thought and behaviour. ‘If we want a great union to oppose the
mighty who do evil, it is necessary to have many small unions of
all kinds as a base. All Mao-inspired movements have the ten-
dency to look wildly undirected’ at the beginning, precisely
because Mao feels that directions from above’ will not do; it is
the people themselves who must educate themselves in doing,
practising revolution, shaping their own rules of conduct and a
new order; but the leadership must keep an initiative of theoretical
guidance, of ideas. The end is new cohesion and effectiveness.
This IS the key to the understanding of Mao’s style, to ‘trust the
people’, and it began during the first cultural revolution.
Under the slogan ‘Use national products, resist Japanese goods,’
Mao ad^dressed a rally of merchants and guilds in Changsha in
July and urged them to form a committee to enforce the boycott.
A unity of all circles’ association, in which workers, shopkeepers,
small craftsmen and intellectuals participated, was set up He
wrote numerous articles, addressed dozens of societies, com-
imttees’ organizations ; and began the Hsiang River Review
[Hsiang Cluang Pm Lun), a weekly whose importance exceeded its
s ort life. Founded on July 14, 1919, the weekly’s manifesto was
written by Mao; a week later (July 21) the first part of his article.
94
THE MORNING DELUGE
The Great Union of the Masses of the People, which ran into three
instalments, appeared.
The Great Union of the Masses of the People contains the Mao
Tsetung style and way of thinking; it proceeds methodically from
the abstract theme of the power of ‘unity of the masses’ to con-
crete proposals for the Chinese situation. The article urges the
‘union of the oppressed’, union of the peasantry, of women, as
well as of workers and students. The classification of the oppressed
is a ‘united front’ one, rather than one based upon orthodox
Marxist class analysis. Today the appeal remains substantially the
same; all those who want to fight imperialism and social im-
perialism, the ‘broad masses’, should form a great world common
front to overthrow them. The Great Union of the Masses is
regarded as a forerunner to the united front concept, an essential
feature of Mao’s revolutionary strategy.
The part played by will, option, individual consciousness,
‘arousal’ and ‘awareness’, which must lead to action, is expounded,
but the article goes beyond individual motivation. ‘The greatest
force is that of the union of the popular masses ... We are
awakened, the world is ours, the nation is ours, society is ours ... *
‘We should not fear heaven, nor ghosts, nor the dead, nor bureau-
crats, nor the militarists, nor the capitalists ... we must fear
nothing, but go forward together. The great union of the masses
is a deluge ... nothing can stop it, the whole world shaken by
it ... heaven and earth are aroused ... the traitors and the wicked
flee.’
Mao Tsetung the Marxist would reiterate the basic theme of
‘the masses’ throughout his life. The masses can do anything;
when the masses grasp the correct idea, they transform it into an
immense material force which can make heaven and earth change
places. ‘Of all things in the world, people are the most precious . . .
as long as there are people, any kind of miracle can be performed
under the leadership of the Communist Party.’ In 1919 he wrote:
‘The Chinese people is not only famous for endurance and
industry; it also is a people with a rich revolutionary tradition and
love of freedom ... they would never submit to a rule of the dark
forces.’ And in 1958: ‘There is no difficulty in the world that they
FIRST CULTURAL REVOLUTION: MAY 4, 1919 95
cannot overcome. I have witnessed the tremendous energy of the
masses, on this foundation it is possible to accomplish any great
task whatsoever.’
Mao Tsetung’s Hsiang River Review became the Hunan
students’ favourite weekly. From the beginning it ‘had a great
influence on the student movement in South China’.* It was
quoted in the universities in Peking, in Shanghai, in Kuangchow;
schoolboys volunteered to sell copies in the streets of Changsha.
The articles by Mao Tsetimg were popular for their vividness.
He attacked every vice and evil custom in society, including the
oppression of women. His style was then fervid, grandiloquent;
the spirit of the times was epic exaltation.
If the peasants are not liberated, then the nation will not be
liberated,’ Li Ta-chao had written. Marx had stated that move-
ments of national liberation in colonial countries had their place
in the socialist revolutions to come. So had Lenin.f These ideas
Mao propagated in his articles. The national, patriotic features of
the May 4th movement he would later incorporate in his revolu-
tionary strategy. ‘Can a Communist, who is an internationalist,
at the same time be a patriot? We hold that he not only can be
but must be. The specific content of patriotism is determined by
historical conditions ... In wars of national liberation, patriotism
is applied internationalism.’t In 1919, it was patriotism, on a
national liberation surge, which led to the ‘great unity’ of the
masses; it was on this basis that Marxism progressed in China.
The greater the oppression, the greater the resistance.’ This
phrase, now current as a Mao quotation, is already found in 1919 in
an article of Mao Tsetung in the Hsiang River Review. Mao spoke
and wrote of the need for a ‘cultural revolution’ to change society
- the only way to emancipate millions of people and their energy
and to carry forward the ultimate aim of liberating the country
tom imperialism and all capitalists’. Mao introduced to the public,
y his writings on the Russian Revolution, the upheavals in
* Edgar Snow, Red Star Over China, op. cit.
+ p (*■ Tempests in the Far East (Peking, 1967)
SelctefwiLl vlT
96
THE MORNING DELUGE
Hungary and other parts of Europe then taking place, the pos-
sibility of the same happening in China. He gave an international
dimension to the May 4th movement, an identification with all
that was revolutionary in the world. And indeed the generation
of May 4th did link events in China to revolution elsewhere.
Beyond the scope of local events they felt the forceful, irresistible
drive of history.
Mao pointed this out when he wrote and spoke against the
views expounded by Bertrand Russell and John Dewey in their
visit to China. Between 1919 Rnd 1921, these two eminent men
were invited by the more conservative groups in the Chinese
universities to lecture and to present view points to counteract the
incipient Bolshevik influence. Russell and Dewey toured and
lectured. They made an impression on so-called ^middle of the
road liberals, especially Russell, who denounced the arbitrariness
of Soviet Russian methods. (He had visited Soviet Russia and was
horrified by what he had seen.) But however acclaimed they were,
they could not stop the urgent march of history. John Dewey’s
influence persisted in some circles, promoted by Hu Shih and
other intellectuals. But these moderating influences had nothing
to do with the irrepressible revolution. Revolution had begun
but these men refused to see it. ‘The soft non-violent kind of
communism Russell preaches is good for capitalism, it can never
achieve socialism,* said Mao Tsetung, refuting Russell at a public
meeting held in the auditorium of the Teachers College in
December 1919.
As 1919 moved into 1920, splits, cliques, factions developed.
They led to a dropping off in agitation. But subsidence did not
mean a return to a previous situation. China was changed forever.
‘This kind of new culture movement reflects an unprecedented
change among the intellectuals of China today ... The success of
the revolution carried on by our party depends on a change of
thought in China, just as the ancient book on strategy by Sun Tze
says that to attack the mind is more effective than to attack a city,
and as the old saying has it that a renovation of the mind is pre-
requisite to a revolution.* Thus wrote Sun Yatsen at the time.
The movement, he said, ‘has brought us a good east wind to
FIRST CULTURAL REVOLUTION: MAY 4, I919 97
move our boat forward’. ‘This is the deluge,’ wrote Tsai Yuan-pei,
then president of Peking University, in an article entitled: The
Deluge and the Beasts. He likened the warlords, militarists and
reactionaries to beasts swept away by this deluge (the May 4th
cultural revolution) now carving new channels, a new destiny
for China.
Besides being involved with the May 4th movement, Mao
Tsetung continued to select students for the work and study
programme in France. But instead of selection by intellectual
ability, he recruited on the basis of ideas, enthusiasm, radicalism.
He urged the formation of investigation teams among the
students, to go among the people and report on actual conditions.
And he began a revolt against Chang Ching-yao, the provincial
governor, who seems to have been an extremely corrupt and evil
man.
An article penned by Mao On Radicalisntj calling for revolution
as the only way out, made him many followers but also many
enemies. The article was prompted by Bertrand Russell’s lecture in
Changsha in October 1919, which helped the formation of right-
wing groups advocating ‘orderly reform’. Mao stated in this
article that armed struggle was the only way a revolution could
succeed. Among the enthusiasts who wrote approvingly to Mao
when this article appeared was a young man named Jen Pi-shih.
Born in 1904, a modest, clever, dedicated student, Jen Pi-shih
would become in later years one of Mao’s staunchest adherents.
On Radicalism caused Chang Ching-yao to ban Mao’s weekly in
October 1919, and to disband the Student Union. Mao then led a
emonstration against Chang Ching-yao, calling him a pro-
Japanese traitor. He contributed articles to another student paper,
New HunaHy which started that spring, to the newspaper Ta Kuug
to magazines. He continued his fiery denunciations of ‘all
Warlords and traitors’, including of course Chang Ching-yao.
Hunan was suppressed in December 1919.
In the Hsiang Chiang Review, New Hunan, and other papers,
s articles covered the whole spectrum of change, of revolt
against tradition and the breakthrough of a generation into a new,
THE MORNING DELUGE
98
wide, modem world. He covered international and national
events, literature, the ‘reorganization of thinking’, vice, prosti-
tution, arranged marriage. He proposed revolutionary solutions
in a vigorous, exciting, if somewhat florid prose. The first issue
of the Hsiang River Review contained his article The Women^s
Revolutionary Army, which evoked a tremendous response from
the girls’ schools and led to the establishment of ‘an alliance of
women students’ to ‘fight imperialism, militarism and capitalism,
and all superstition*. Mao called upon women to ‘sweep away all
the goblins that destroy physical and spiritual freedom’. Teng
Chung-hsia, another Mao devotee at Peking University, re-
published an article of Mao’s in which he urged that all problems
be investigated before they came up for discussion or belief
‘Without investigation no right to speak,** a basic tenet of Mao’s,
is endlessly dinned into every individual in China today. Mao
wrote and published nine articles in Ta Kung Pao from the i6th
to the 28th of November, against arranged marriage and the
double standard of chastity. The suicide of a young girl, Miss
Chao, who killed herself rather than be forced into an arranged
marriage, horrified him. In Advice to Boys and Girls on Marriage
Problems, he wrote: ‘This tragic event in the blood-filled city of
Changsha should stir them to the very depths of their soul, and
make them totally aware.’ (The word ‘aware’, or its American
counterpart ‘consciousness-raising* recurs often in Mao’s writings
of that time.)
Mao was never to forget that women ‘who have more oppres-
sion on their backs than men, for whereas men have three moun-
tains of exploitation, women have four, for man also exploits
her’ are ‘a tremendous potential revolutionary force*. He had
seen what girl students could do; had watched the lightning
speed of their change; he would make of woman’s emancipation
a revolutionary goal. At the time of the Great Leap Forward in
1958, and again during the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1969*
the reprints of his early articles on women’s liberation circulated
* This phrase was coined by Mao in 1930. See Oppose Book Worship, Selected
Readings from the Works of Mao Tsettmg, English edition (Foreign Languages Press,
Peking, 1967).
FIRST CULTURAL REVOLUTION: MAY 4, I919 99
again; the role of woman in revolutionizing society would form
the subject of many articles in 1970. Mao believes that man
cannot be liberated unless woman is also liberated; today, un-
tiringly, he still continues to back woman’s liberation, through the
continuing Revolution of China.
On May 4, 1939, Mao was to say: ‘On this very day, twenty
years ago, a movement of great historical significance was begun
in China, the May 4th movement in which the students participa-
ted. What role have the Chinese youth played since the May 4th
movement? They have played the role of vanguard ... [that is]
to take the lead, to stand at the head of revolutionary ranks . . .
But this is not enough because it is not yet the main force. Who
then constitutes the main force? None other than the broad
masses of workers and peasants ... The young intellectuals and
students of China must go into the midst of the masses and
workers and peasants who constitute 90 per cent of the population
... It is only if the young students and the young workers and
peasants unite that they can become a powerful youth movement
... The ultimate line of demarcation between the revolutionary intel-
lectuals on the one hand and the non-revolutionary and counter-
revolutionary intellectuals on the other lies in whether they are willing
to, and actually do, unite with and integrate with the masses of workers
and peasants. And today, more than fifty years later, ‘integration
with the masses’ is the ultimate test for all intellectuals and
students in the restructuring of education which is taking place in
China.
But in that October 1919, the irate Hunan provincial governor
called a meeting of all student representatives, some sixty of them.
Mao Tsetung went with them, although he was a teacher.
Governor Chang Ching-yao started by hurling abuse at the
students. How dare they take up politics! Instead of studying!
He also shouted at the women student representatives, threatening
to cut off their heads’. One of the girls began to weep. Mao
Tsetung said, loud enough to be heard: ‘Do not be afraid; what
he says is not worth a dog’s bark.’ (Laughter.)
In December 1919 Chang Ching-yao sent soldiers to disperse
o
THE MORNING DELUGE
students making a bonfire of Japanese goods. Mao then wrote a
manifesto calling for Chang Ching-yao^s overthrow; 13,000
students signed it. He organized a march on the provincial
government; wrote to Sun Yatsen in Kuangchow and to the
Student Union in Peking urging denunciation of Chang Ching-
yao; organized a strike of all the students in the schools of
Changsha.
Chang Ching-yao, who now hated Mao so much he could
neither sleep nor eat, decided to have him murdered, probably by
hired thugs. The New People’s Study Society had now organized
an ‘anti-militarist League for the Reconstruction of Hunan
Province’, demanding autonomy— separation of Hunan from the
Peking pro-Japanese government— and the ousting of the gover-
nor. Mao sponsored himself to go to Peking to denounce Chang
Ching-yao, travelling as a journalist for Hunan newspapers and
magazines. He arrived in Wulian in January 1920. There he issued
a statement calling for the overthrow of Chang. Reaching Peking
in February, he renewed his ties with Li Ta-chao, with Professor
Yang Chang-chi, with other friends. He stayed about two months
in Peking, trying to get people interested in the Hunan autonomy
movement. But provincial preoccupations were very secondary
in Peking. By then, the May 4th movement had gone under-
ground, was giving birth to something far more radical.
Mao’s new Job as a journalist kept him in funds, gave him
enough to live. His friends, among them Teng Chung-hsia, with
whom he had been corresponding since he left Peking, gathered
round him in the room he rented in North Avenue, to the north
of the city. It was a poor district, far from the University, but it
was better than the accommodation he had had on his first visit.
Mao continued to visit factories, the railway yards, where he
discussed Marxism with the workers. He continued reading in
the library of Peking University. He now read the Communist
Manifesto, Engels, Kautsky, Kirkup’s History of Socialism. He saw
again Yang Kai-hui and it was at that time that they decided to
become engaged. Yang Kai-hui was also studying Marxism. She
too had taken part in political agitation.
During Mao’s absence from Changsha, however, the New
FIRST CULTURAL REVOLUTION: MAY 4, I919 101
People’s Study Society began to split; Mao wrote to the society
advising his friends to organize into small Marxist study groups;
he was himself going through a time of decision and felt he could
not immediately return.
Li Ta-chao now looked at the erstwhile assistant librarian with
new respect. He asked Mao Tsetung to help him; Marxist study
groups were not enough, there must be more. The idea of
establishing a Chinese Communist Party was already in the air.
Li knew that Mao Tsetung was an excellent organizer and had
great influence on the students.
Mao spent these weeks in Peking making up his mind. It was a
big decision he was about to take, and he studied the problem
very seriously and solemnly. He read, he walked, he thought; it
was not something to be undertaken without total dedication.
‘Once I had accepted Marxism as the correct interpretation of
history, I did not afterwards waver.’ He would not change, once
Ins mind was made up; and in this decision he was helped by the
love of Yang Kai-hui, also to become a Party member. Together
they discussed his dedication and hers. And in that bitter winter,
they thought of a new spring for the world. As they pledged
themselves to each other, they also pledged themselves to the
Revolution.
It was clear to both of them that their lives should be together.
But they also realized what this political decision they were both
to make would mean: little time to love; never able to forget
everything for love alone; a lifetime of hard work, revolutionary
action, sacrifice, separation, possibly early and painful death. The
beautiful Yang Kai-hui was just twenty years old. And then in
February, after a brief illness, her father Yang Chang-chi died of
pneumonia, and Yang Kai-hui and her mother left Peking to
return to Changsha.
Mao Tsetung, too, now left Peking, but to go to Shanghai to
see Chen Tu-hsiu, to confer with him on the organization of a
Chinese Communist Party. He sold his winter clothes to pay for
the train fare, arrived in Shanghai about mid-March, and there
met Chen Tu-hsiu for the second time.
Dedication
Tsetung has left us no account of his impressions of Shanghai,
the biggest city in China, the one where foreign domination was
only too grimly obvious through its squalid factories, its terrible
slums, the poverty which surrounded those oases of luxury and
wealth where foreigners lived. We can imagine his difficulty in
understanding the sibilant Shanghai dialect, the anger he felt at
the Sikh policemen beating up Chinese coolies, the rancour of
being treated as inferior in his own country. In later years he was
to refer with searing bitterness to the conditions which were con-
sidered normal at the time. He himself now became a ‘labourer*,
subject to gruelling exploitation. He worked in a laundry
to support himself, washing, ironing and delivering linen and
clothes.
There is no record of where Mao lived during these four
months, but he knew the overcrowded tenements; the miseries
of the overworked and hunger-driven workers were his, as he
sweated in the hot steam of wooden tubs for twelve to fourteen
hours a day. He delivered the clothes, bed sheets, household linen
washed and ironed overnight, wrapped in white cloth to keep
them clean. The houses and hotels the laundry worked for were
far from the slums where the actual work was done, and a coolie
was expected to pay his own transport, or else to walk. Some of
the laundry workers walked over ten miles a day, dragging a
handcart or staggering under piles of sheets. ‘The difficult part of
my job is not washing but delivery ... Tram tickets are so
expensive and most of my earnings have to be spent on them.’
Of the twelve to fifteen dollars a month he received as pay
for this monstrous expenditure of physical energy, about
eight dollars went into tram fares. He grew spectral thin;
yet he continued to meet small groups, to attend secret meetings
102
DEDICATION
103
at night with Chen Tu-hsiu and other Shanghai Marxists.
In May 1920 a pre-Communist nucleus was organized in
Shanghai, as well as a youth section known as the Socialist Youth
Corps. The recruitment among workers was fairly successful.
Mao’s correspondence with Tsai Ho-sen, still in France, refers to
the need for a nucleus organization.
We do not know to what extent he discussed his ideas with the
then prestigious scholar and radical Chen Tu-hsiu, According to
some biographers, his sole purpose in going to Shanghai to meet
Chen was to get his support to oust the Hunan governor Chang
Ching-yao and enlist Chen in the cause of autonomy for Hunan
province. We do not know whether he still had some lingering
idea of achieving this aim as well; but the lack of interest in this
provincial cause both in Peking and in Shanghai must have shown
him its futility.
Chen Tu-hsiu, famous then, later infamous in Communist
Party annals, was the typical radical intellectual of those days of
turmoil. Imprisoned for 83 days for distributing handbills on the
street in June 1919, he came out of jail in September a national
hero for the youth generation, declaring he had not changed his
ideas. By then, the intelligentsia was splitting up into three main
factions, and each of these fragmented into small groups, all of
which claimed to be the answer to China’s salvation. There was a
very large, so-called moderate group, which represented a
certain liberalism but was afraid of decisive action. A right-wing
group, definitely abjuring Marxism, pledged itself to orderly
reform , without changing anything. There remained what
looked like a discouraged minority of ‘hotheads’ and ‘radicals’ ;
among them Chen Tu-hsiu. But this was only the pellicle lidding
reality — the reality of a whole generation of the young who had
changed, and the change affected boys and girls of twelve to
fifteen as well, a source of revolutionaries-to-be.
In Wuhan, for instance, there was Tung Pi-wu, the veteran of
three revolutions. He, like Hsu Te-li, ‘lived through many ages
in the life of China .* Born in 1886, he had become a classics
* Said by Tung Pi-wu himself to Nym Wales (Helen Foster Snow) in 1936; see
her Red Dust (Oxford University Press» London » 1952)*
104
THE MORNING DELUGE
scholar, had since 1911 spent every day of his life in revolutionary
work, first in Sun Yatsen’s organization, and later, influenced by
the Russian Revolution, he also began to study Marxism. He was
only one of many, older or younger, affected by these so seemingly
impersonal yet so profoundly soul-moving events in which they
were participating. There were also Lin Po-cheng, the Szechuancse
one-eyed general, and Lin Piao, later to become a traitor. There
were others all over China— the names are thousands — and so
many were to die, some others to betray. Looking further north,
there was Chou En-lai, born in 1898. As students in Nankai Uni-
versity near Tientsin, Chou En-lai and his wife to be, Teng Ying-
chao, had formed an Awakening Society, a May 4th radical group,
in September 1919* The Awakening Society bore a marked re-
semblance to Mao’s New People’s Study Society. Chou En-lai
wrote and published and did political work, for which he was
jailed in 1920, just when Mao was going to Shanghai. In far-off
Szechuan there were Chu Teh and Chen Yi. Unknown to each
other, they too were ‘looking for a road*, as Mao was. Chu Tch
seemed most unlikely material for a Communist. He was born in
1886, had received some education, and enrolled in a ‘new learn-
ing’ military academy in Yunnan in 1909. He had taken part in the
1911 Revolution. In the subsequent period of chaos, when
militarists of all shades and descriptions rampaged in confused
civil wars, he had become a minor militarist. Caught ‘in a net of
warlordism’, he was yet searching for truth. A friend gave him
revolutionary literature to read, and Chu, by 1922, set off to study
abroad and ‘find truth*. This was to bring him to Germany, and
to Communism. Chen Yi’s road to the Party was similarly
wayward. Of a scholar’s family, he had left for France under the
work and study programme, and earned his living as dishwasher
while studying there.
According to present-day writings, Mao Tsetung is the
founder of the Chinese Communist Party. No one else is men-
tioned in the exhibition halls through which daily trail thousands
of workers, peasants, soldiers, schoolchildren in all China’s main
cities. Russian and other Western sources dwell heavily on this
birth as a Russian-engendered one. Which is the correct version?
DEDICATION
105
The CCP was a Chinese creation, but Russian encouragement
cannot be denied. ‘The salvoes of the October Revolution ...
brought as Marxism-Leninism,’ wrote Mao Tsetung.
Two weeks after the October Revolution (1917), Lenin had
published a declaration to all countries of Asia, relinquishing
unjustified privileges and territorial gains which czarist invasions
had acquired. This, where China was concerned, represented a
considerable amount of territory, more than i*i million square
miles wrested by czarist expansionism in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries. In early 1918 Chinese officials of the Peking
government held talks in Moscow with the Soviet government
regarding their common frontiers and previous czarist occupation
of Chinese territory. These talks were suspended under pressure
by the Western powers upon the Northern warlord coalition.
The coalition of Southern warlords, which supported Sun Yatsen,
was also approached by Lenin’s government. Russian foreign
commissar Chicherin, a brilliant, able diplomat who had met Sun
in Europe in 1916 during one of Sun’s travels abroad to raise
funds for the Tung Meng Hui, wrote to Sun Yatsen in 1918. In
July 1919 the Soviet government issued a declaration on China
(the Karakhan Manifesto) declaring that ‘the Soviet Government
has renounced the conquests made by the Czarist government
which deprived China of Manchuria and other areas’. Abolition
of all privileges conferred by the unequal treaties and an offer of
assistance to fight imperialist domination were embodied in this
document.* The Karakhan declaration was ignored by the
Northern warlord coalition government in Peking, but was
published by Sun Yatsen’s Southern government in Kuangchow.
It had a deep effect upon the students in China. The popularity of
Marxism during the May 4th movement was also due to this
timely publication.
In April 1920 three members of the Communist Party of the
Soviet Union arrived in Peking, where they held talks with Li
Ta-chao. Their names were Voitinsky, Yang Ming-chai, and
Sneevliet, alias Maring (Ma-lin), They were all three members of
* Allen Whiting, Soviet Policies in China (Oxford University Press,
London, 1968).
io6
THE MORNING DELUGE
the Comintern.* They then proceeded to Shanghai to meet Chen
Tu-hsiu and other Shanghai intellectuals. It was Chen who, in
May, summoned a conference and organized a ‘nucleus’ or pre-
Communist Party group. In May and again in September, the
Soviet government again attempted to hold talks with the Peking
government. But a China allied to the Soviet Union was intensely
alarming to the colonial powers; the warlords were encouraged
to expand their armies and to practise repression against ‘Bolshev-
ism’. The talks failed.
Mao Tsetung must have known of these Russian initiatives, of
the contacts with Li Ta-chao and Chen Tu-hsiu. But there is no
record of his having personally met the Russian delegation at any
time, either in Peking or in Shanghai, though he was in Peking
in February and in Shanghai in April and May. The odds are,
however, that he did attend the May conference in Shanghai, and
he seems also to have returned briefly to Shanghai in September
to attend another, together with Tung Pi-wu. ‘By the summer of
1920 , said Mao, I had become in theory and to some extent in
action a Marxist. And from this time I considered myself a
Marxist.’
In July the governor of Hunan, Chang Ching-yao, was expelled
in yet another warlord war, and Mao Tsetung returned to his
province. He was for a short while at home, and began recruiting
for his own province s pre-Communist group among his own
family, starting with his two brothers and his adopted sister. He
then went back to Changsha to continue recruiting.
Because Mao was acquainted with the new headmaster of the
Changsha Normal College, he obtained the post of director of the
Hsiu Yeh Primary School, and also taught one class at the college.
This advancement, after so many years of dire poverty, provided a
salary more adequate than the previous pittance. Mao Tsetung
rented a small isolated cottage outside the city, among vegetable
fields, called Clear Water Pool House. The house cost twelve
dollars a month rent. It was an ideal venue for secret meetings.
Yang Kai-hui and her mother were now in Changsha, and that
* The Third Communist International, founded in 1919, known for short as
Comintern.
DEDICATION
107
winter Mao Tsetung married Yang Kai-hui. They lived here
during the year and a half that Mao was director of the Hsiu
Yeh Primary School.
Once again Mao became gaunt with work, but he also knew for
the first time domestic happiness with Yang Kai-hui. Those who
saw Yang Kai-hui still speak of her quiet beauty, her intelligence,
her devotion; she and Mao Tsetung were regarded as an ‘ideal’
pair. She became a Communist Party member in 1922, and a
leader of a youth movement in self-education. Often she left
home, going on unrecorded missions to Shanghai and elsewhere
for the Party. There were two sons of the marriage. One of them,
Mao An-ying, born in 1929, died in November 1950 in Korea, a
volunteer in the Korean war. The other, Mao An-ching, is today
an accountant in a commune. Mao does not believe in promoting
his relatives, and the scarcity of information, even about Yang
Kai-hui, though understandable because of the dangerous secret
work Party members did, is deliberate. Yang Kai-hui was arrested
in the Clear Water Pool House in 1930, during the White Terror
of Chiang Kai-shek, tortured and executed for refusing to
denounce her husband and abjure her principles.
Among Chinese students abroad the need for a Communist Party
was as evident as it was in China. Mao kept in touch with the pre-
cursor group now started in France. The French precursor
Communist Party group was created by ChouEn-lai. Tsai Ho-sen,
his wife Hsiang Ching-yu, his sister Tsai Chang, her husband
Li Fu-chun, and Chen Yi joined the French group; so did Li
Li-san, the non-committal Hunanese, and other worker-students.
In Russia a pre-Communist group was formed that year by
Chinese students, and another was created in Germany, to which
Chu Teh, the ex-warlord from Szechuan, would adhere.
By October 1920 Mao had set up a Russian affairs study group
and a work and study programme for students to go to Russia, as
well as a Marxist (pre-Communist) group in Changsha. Tung
Pi-wu established a Marxist group in Wuhan in 1921, to which
Lin Piao adhered. Others were formed in Kuangchow and Tsinan
in November 1920, By April 1921 there were nine such Chinese
io8
THE MORNING DELUGE
groups: Shanghai, Peking, Changsha, Wuhan, Kuangchow,-
Tsinan, Paris, Berlin and Moscow, and one in Japan,
In December 1920 Mao established a Hunan branch of the
Socialist Youth Corps, and by 1922 it was the largest such group
in China, with 2,000 members. One of the members was Liu
Shao-chi, who had also attended Changsha Normal College, and
joined the New People’s Study Society in 1919. It was through
this connection that Liu Shao-chi was selected for the work and
study programme set up by Mao Tsetung for students to go to
Russia. In the winter of 1920 he left for Vladivostok, from there
to reach Moscow, where he would study, and join the Moscow
precursor group of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921.
During his tenure of office the Hunan governor Chang Ching-
yao had levied extortionate taxes, sold all the copper cash of the
provmce to Japan, and issued paper money instead. Rapid
inflation had resulted, and great misery for the average family.
The movement for the autonomy of Hunan province was not
dead; in July 1920 Mao Tsetung and Ho Shu-heng published a
statement in the name of the League for the Reconstruction of
Hunan Province demanding abolition of the post of military
governor, the disarming and disbanding of warlords and their
armies, and the establishment of a ‘democratic, autonomous
provincial government, with elections and a constitution*. The
petition was signed by 377 people.
Freed of Chang Ching-yao, Mao was able to extend his
activities. He was beginning to show his flair for rallying, on a
very broad base, a large number of people by involvement with
all kinds of issues, apparently unrelated, but actually all spelling
concern with social and political change. At the end of November
1920 a new governor, Chao Heng-ti, the appointee of the new
warlord in power (Tan Yen-kai, who once had been ousted as
governor by Yuan Shih-kai),* assembled the heads of all Changsha
schools and promised a liberal and generous policy. He swore to
clean up corruption and to reform the currency. Mao Tsetung
published articles in Ta Kung Pao urging the people of Hunan to
take part in politics and make their will known. ‘Power comes
* See page 62, and note.
DEDICATION
109
from the people, and should be in their hands.’ Whether this
pleased the new governor is not known; very soon Chao was to
hate Mao as bitterly as his predecessor Chang had done.
Mao’s most important work now was recruiting potential
members for a Communist Party. In all the societies and associa-
tions he had formed since May 1919, there were members of his
previous New People’s Study Society, men and women he had
worked with and trusted. ‘We must choose very carefully, reliable
people, sincere comrades,’ wrote Mao to Tsai Ho-sen in Paris.
He had been able to persuade Tan Yen-kai to preside at the
opening ceremony of the Cultural Bookstore which he, with
several other radicals, started in Changsha, and to dedicate a
calligraphic signboard for the store. Like most Chinese militarists,
Tan Yen-kai was proud of his calligraphy and pleased with the
opportunity to show his erudition and ‘progressive’ character.
Because of this patronage, funds became available for the book-
store and it was held above suspicion for a while. (This illustrates
another facet of Mao’s character, the knack of utilizing people,
all kinds of people, even the most unlikely, in pursuit of his aims.
It was the same with his choice of the Clear Water Pool House —
a good house, a landlord s house, hence also above suspicion.)
Through the Cultural Bookstore a network passing Marxist
literature throughout China’s southern cities was established. By
the end of the year it had half a dozen branches in Hunan besides
contact with the Social Benefit Bookstore in Hupei. It acted for
years as a clandestine post office and liaison centre. ‘Education is
self-education, we must provide books to stimulate self-awareness,’
Mao wrote. The bookstore fulfilled this aim.
Mao Tsetung and Yang Kai-hui then set on foot an education
movement, starting with evening schools for labourers, crafts-
men, stonemasons. Once again the scope went beyond education;
the mass education movement they would propagate in 1922
would be based on labour unions throughout the province, with
workers clubs and night schools. Organization depended on
education, education was also organization, Mao told his friends.
The work of a revolutionary was also that of a teacher; all events
were lessons given by life, and analysis must be applied to all
no
THE MORNING DELUGE
situations to elevate one’s own understanding. Mao’s gift of
persuading and rallying others to work with him was now
developing. He could delegate authority and not be niggardly in
doing so, but always he would keep his aim in mind. His enemies
would accuse him of making use of other people and discarding
them. But for Mao Tsetung what counted was the final goal of
the Revolution, and if he used others, he also used himself
unsparingly.
The mass education movement was an attempt at forming a
broad united front, a grand alliance of the masses; it involved
uniting a number of small associations and groups, guilds of
stonemasons, printers, even workers in the government mint.
The tenacious Mao had friends everywhere, even in government
offices, and through these personal contacts he promoted political
indoctrination. He wrote new educational textbooks, starting
lessons with words used by miners, stonecutters, in their work.
The first lesson taught the words labourt worker, exploitation.
Arithmetic problems were based on the daily living experiences
of the workers. Reading texts utilized the *one thousand word’
scheme devised during the May 4, 1919, cultural revolution to
teach people to read rapidly.
By 1922 there were 30,000 to 40,000 workers and small artisans
in this movement. A weekly. Labour World, which in turn gave
birth to a small monthly called Communist Monthly, started
publication on November 7, 1920, the day Mao organized a
celebration for the third anniversary of the October Revolution.
From this time on, I became more and more convinced that
only mass political power, secured through mass action, could
guarantee the realization of dynamic reforms.’ The weekly
Labour World was suppressed after four issues. Nevertheless, a
spate of Marxist publications and translations were appearing;
all were on sale at the Cultural Bookstore. It is significant
that Lenin s The State and Revolution, admired by Li Ta-chao
and also by Mao, was carried in Labour World. The Cultural
Bookstore would usually sell 5»ooo copies a week of such
periodicals. Communist Monthly was also very popular while it
lasted.
DEDICATION
III
Mao was again in conflict with authority, this time with the
‘liberar governor Chao Heng-ti. In 1921, workers of a cotton
mill in Changsha went on strike because of the inhuman working
conditions then prevalent. They struck for a ten-hour day and a
day's holiday a month. Chao Heng-ti suppressed the strike; the
workers were beaten up by soldiers. Chao Heng-ti then banned
the student organizations and labour unions. ‘As soon as he got
power’, said Mao, ‘he suppressed the democratic movement with
great energy.’ Mao Tsetung led a demonstration against the
governor and the provincial parliament, ‘landlords and gentry
appointed by the militarists’. ‘This struggle ended in our pulling
down the scrolls and banners erected in compliment to Chao,
full of nonsensical and extravagant phrases.’
But all Mao’s activities were governed by the project which would
claim his whole life, the creation of the Communist Party of
China. They were the proving ground, the experimental
theatre for what would become the decisive political grouping
in China’s history.
One night in May 1921 Mao Tsetung and his friend Ho Shu-
heng left Changsha secretly for Shanghai. They travelled in-
cognito and in disguise, going as traders. The precautions they
took, the secrecy surrounding their departure, were not overdone.
They were the earliest to arrive of the several delegates entrusted
with the founding of the Chinese Communist Party.
Those who came later, to meet in that simmering hot summer
for the same purpose, were mostly young; their average age was
twenty-six. Some had experience of organization, like Mao;
others nothing more than a vague smattering of Marxism.
Among them would be opportunists and traitors, but at that
time it looked as if a single dedication animated them. They had
yet to fight their first battles as Communists, and chiefly against
themselves. No one could then predict the outcome, either of
their purpose or of their own lives.
A few days after Mao, Tung Pi-wu arrived from Wuhan.
Both Li Ta-chao and Chen Tu-hsiu also seem to have paid visits
to the Shanghai organizing group during May and June, but
II2
THE MORNING DELUGE
neither was present when the Congress formally opened on the
night of June 30, to start its work on July i, 1921.
Each province where Marxist study groups had been organized
sent two delegates to this First Congress. The Chinese students in
Japan sent one young student, Chou Fu-hai, who was later to
betray the Communist Party and join the Japanese during the
Sino-Japanese war. Hupei province sent Chen Tan-chiu and
Tung Pi-wu from the city of W^ulian; Shanghai delegates were
Li Han-chun and Li Ta; while Chen Kung-po and Pao Hui-seng
came from Kuangchow. Shantung sent Teng En-ming and
Wang Chun-mei. Both Teng and Wang were slaughtered in
Chang Kuo-tao, whom Mao said he had met in
Peking University, and Liu Jen-chung represented Peking, and
therefore the province of Hopei. The delegates from Hunan, Mao
Tsetung and Ho Shu-heng, stayed all through the proceedings.
If we look through the origins of these delegates, we find that
Mao and Ho alone had a rural background; the others were city-
bred.
Two delegates from the Comintern are said to have attended
the opening of the First Congress on June 30. One was Sneevliet,
alias Maring, or Ma-lin* in Chinese. The other was Lizouski, a
Soviet worker. Since no official history of the Chinese Revolution
has yet been approved and promulgated by the Chinese Com-
munist Party, they are not mentioned in the explanations given
today; but then these explanations are regarded as non-definitive
and non-official. Even if two Russian delegates were present at
the opening ceremony, they did not attend all of the subsequent
meetings, especially when in the middle of the proceedings the
venue had to be changed.
It was originally intended that Chen Tu-hsiu should be chair-
man of the congress; but he remained in Kuangchow and sent
messages through his representative Li Han-chun. The minutes
of the First Congress have been lost. Much of what happened is
obscure. An account was given by Tung Pi-wu to Nym Walesf
* For an account of Sneevliet in China, see Dov Bing, ‘Sneevliet and the Early
Years of the CCP’, China Quarterlyy no. 48 (October/December 1971).
t Nym Wales, Red Dust, op. cit.
DEDICATION
II3
in 1936, when both she and Edgar Snow were visiting the Chinese
Communists in Yenan.
The congress opened at the Po-Ai Girls School, situated in the
French Concession and at that date, in the summer holiday, empty
save for a cook-watchman. The delegates met on the second floor
of the two-storey building. The cook-watchman bought food
and prepared meals for the guests. The cook noticed, however,
that they spoke different dialects, some of which he could not
understand. It was not possible to keep the goings and comings
secret in spite of the precautions taken; very swiftly the secret
police were alerted.
The congress lasted four days in Shanghai,* according to Chen
Tan-chiu, writing his reminiscences in the October 1936 issue of
the Comintern publication. He recalled that ‘serious disagreement
arose between ‘various tendencies*; in fact, the Chinese Com-
munist Party from its inception was far from monolithic; its
delegates fell roughly into three groups representing three dif-
ferent tendencies as to policies and methods.
One tendency, subsequently labelled the ‘right* wing, headed
by Li Han-chun, who spoke for Chen Tu-hsiu, considered the
Chinese working class ‘too young’, ‘not ready’, ‘too backward
and stupid’ to organize a ‘vanguard of the proletariat’ Communist
Party. Li transmitted Chen Tu-hsiu’s marked aversion to the
phrase ‘dictatorship of the proletariat*. Chen’s view was that it
was best to organize a Marxist club for debate, and to advocate
reform. Li Ta and Chen Kung-po upheld this line and voted for
It. Li Ta, who seems to have withdrawn early from the Party,
died of illness in Shanghai in 1968 ; Chen Kung-po was to become
one of Chiang Kai-shek’s adherents and to distinguish himself as
a rabid anti-Communist.
The extreme ‘left’ line, which would plague the young Party
for years, was represented by Liu Jen-chung and Chang Kuo-tao.
They had gobbled theory at the expense of common sense and
realism, considered the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ the im-
mediate aim of the organization, opposed all legal forms of
Four days in Shanghai, but several days more were spent in a boat on the
bouth Lake near Shanghai.
THE MORNING DELUGE
II4
Struggle. They advocated a ‘closed door policy’; that is, no
united front with any other party, the creation of a sectarian,
rigid, dogmatic small group relying entirely on ‘the Chinese
proletariat’ and rejecting everyone else. They denounced Sun
Yatsen and his party, now renamed the Kuomintang or Nationalist
Party, as ‘criminar and ‘counter-revolutionary’, Pao Hui-seng
also supported these views.
It is a pity that no true record of the wrangling that went on
exists; and secret police documents subsequently utilized by
scholars, as well as Chang Kuo-tao’s own memoirs, must be
sifted with caution. No record of what Mao really said then has
come down to us. All we know for certain is that he supported
neither of these two lines, was inclined to a united front policy,
and from the start earned the animosity of Chang Kuo-tao.
On the fourth day, as some of the delegates gathered at Li
Han-chun s lodging for a group discussion, a suspicious person
in a long gown appeared in a neighbouring room. He said he
had come to look for the Association of Social Organizations and
its chairman, named Wan. There was no chairman by that
name, and the association was three doors away. The delegates
quickly left the lodging, and a few minutes later the police and
nine plain-clothes men arrived. They ransacked Li Han-chun’s
room, but all documents had been removed. The delegates did
not dare return to the Po-Ai school. They had to flee, but de-
cided to continue the work elsewhere. How could this be done?
Someone had a bright idea. They would hire a holiday boat on
the South Lake, about eighty miles from Shanghai, close to the
town of Chia Hsing. This was a favourite beauty spot, with soft
hills and willows, a scene of great beauty where scholars often
went for picnics and to sample the famous Chia Hsing wine. A
summer holiday picnic was a normal pastime. To South Lake,
by separate routes, the delegates went.
And there, after another several days of dispute, the extreme
left line predicated by Chang Kuo-tao gained the upper hand.
The resolution adopted was against collaboration with Sun
Yatsen s Kuomintang and for a closed door policy, to keep
membership secret and pure . Yet the Comintern, in its Second
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II5
Congress in 1920, had stated that alliance between Communist
parties and ‘revolutionary bourgeois parties’ (a term under which
Sun’s party figured) in a common front against imperialism was
the keynote of the struggle to come. This was Lenin’s thesis,
repeated at the Third Congress of the Comintern in June-July
1921. At this Third Congress a thirty-seven-member Chinese
delegation, including both incipient Communists and Kuomin-
tang representatives, was present; a ‘temporary and vigilant’
alliance with the Chinese bourgeoisie had been suggested;
Lenin’s words of 1912 calling Sun Yatsen’s party ‘revolutionary
although a bourgeois party’ were recalled. But the young Chinese
Communist Party in its First Congress voted against it, though
the vote was not overwhelming.
Mao cast a contrary vote. He opposed the ‘erroneous, extreme
left viewpoint, hostile to accepting intellectuals in the Party’
which Chang Kuo-tao proposed. The term ‘yellow intellectual
class* was then coined by Chang Kuo-tao.* This extreme left
line made it difficult to extend membership in the first two years
of the CCP. Mao, it is reported, also spoke against the right-wing
adherents of Chen Tu-hsiu who advocated that no party should be
constituted, only a debating club. In line with his article The
Great Union of the Masses of the People, fresh from brushes in
Hunan, seasoned with organizing experience, he advocated
following the Leninist line, but was in the minority. Chang
Kuo-tao carried the day.
The First Congress of the CCP, though it refused co-operation
with Sun Yatsen’s party, the Kuomintang, decided to make
monthly reports to the Comintern and to send delegates to its
congresses. Another resolution taken at the First Congress was to
create a secretariat of the All-China Labour League in charge of
labour. But a secretariat in charge of the peasantry was not set up
till some years later, in spite of Mao’s suggestion that this should
forthwith be done. The goal set by the young immature Party
was to overthrow the capitalist classes with the revolutionary
T l- of the Peoples of the Orient, held in November 1921 in
Irkutsk, then in Leningrad in January 1922, which Chang Kuo-tao attended. There
a common front and alliance with the Kuomintang were again proposed.
Ii6
THE MORNING DELUGE
leadership of the proletariat’. The ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’
was to be immediately adopted. ‘Our party should stand up on
behalf of the proletariat, and should allow no relationship with
other parties or groups,’ said Chang Kuo-tao. At that time there
were in the whole of China fifty-seven Marxists. The largest
single group was in Hunan, where there were sixteen.
Today, of that First Congress, only Mao Tsetung and Tung
Pi-wu remain. Ho Shu-heng, Wang Chun-mei, Li Han-chun,
Teng En-ming were slaughtered during the long, bloody
decades of the Chinese Revolution; Li Ta died in 1968. The others
became renegades to the Party they had helped to set up in such
dramatic circumstances in July 1921.
The Central Committee elected at the First Congress was
headed by Chen Tu-hsiu as secretary-general with Chang Kuo-
tao and Li Ta to assist him. This was the embryonic Politburo.
The central headquarters of the Party would remain in Shanghai
and in the French Concession for some years. The provincial
Party organizations would receive directives from the Central
Committee.
Mao Tsetung returned to Hunan at the end of July 1921. By
August he had set up the first Communist trade union for workers.
In October he became secretary of the Hunan Party branch. In
1922 he was made chairman of the Hunan branch of the All-
China Labour Federation, which was created that year, with
headquarters also in Shanghai. His own immediate family —
two brothers, adopted sister, wife — swiftly followed him into the
Party. All would lose their lives for their cause.
There has been a strange reticence among some biographers to
describe Mao as a labour organizer and trade union leader. His
years of political agitation among workers from 1921 to 1925, the
schools for workers he organized, have been disregarded; the
picture of a peasant leader, organizer of rural bases and of peasant
guerillas, is the one promoted instead. Perhaps the obscurity
surrounding this phase of his activities was deliberate, as is now
being said in China. An attempt by those in opposition to him,
especially Liu Shao-chi, to present themselves as leaders of the
proletariat in contradistinction to Mao the *peasant organizer’ was
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II7
very evident during the early 1960s. Why Western biographers
also maintain this singular omission is less comprehensible.
To build the first workers’ Party cell in Hunan, Mao Tsetung
went to the coal mines of Anyuan in southern Hunan, thus
following the line of ‘the Party as the vanguard of the working
class . The most famous painting in China today is of Mao Tsetung
as a young man going to Anyuan. This picture was commis-
sioned by Chiang Ching, the present wife of Chairman Mao, and
is based on the recollections of the Anyuan miners themselves.
A facsimile was even hung (by mistake) in the Vatican as ‘a young
Chinese missionary’ !
The Anyuan coal mines were opened in 1898 by combined
German and Japanese capital. In 1 899 the Germans invested 400,000
marks to expand the coal mines; in 1913 Japanese capital led to
further development. The living conditions of the workers at the
Anyuan and Pinghsiang mines were typical of the exploitation of
the Chinese working class. They toiled fourteen to fifteen hours
a day. for which they received 26 coppers (about eight cents).
Not surprisingly, the first workers’ strikes in China occurred here,
in April 1905 and again during the Great Hunan Famine in 1906^
when three million people died. In May 1913 and October 1915
Jere were more strikes, also during the May 4, 1919, movement.
Ihe production of coal at Anyuan was 806,330 tons in 1920;
in 1925, after the big strikes, it fell to 386.230 tons. There were
twenty-four churches, of various denominations, within a radius
of four miles of the mines, but only one small clinic for the
6 000 workers. Anyuan, with its appalling conditions, was an
ideal base for Communist propaganda.
To Anyuan Mao went on his first visit in 1921, dressed as an
intellectual in a long gown, as the painting shows; but he did not
keep the gown. He lodged with a worker’s family at No. 44 in
Eight Comer Well Lane, and as usual took copious notes on the
intimate, heart-searching, unhurried long talks which later became
the technique of Communist Party political workers. For cen-
uries the scholar had lived in a world of abstractions. Mao was
he tirst to go down a coal mine and live the reality of a worker’s
ife, go down the pits, walk the coal shafts, experience physically
ii8
THE MORNING DELUGE
what life was like. He calculated that per month each worker
produced $70 worth of coal but received only $5 in wages.
In December 1921 Mao returned again to Anyuan -with his
brother Mao Tse-min, whom he was training in Party work, and
they lodged in a small eating house. The first Anyuan Party cell
was organized in a warehouse in January 1922 in Five Happiness
Lane with seven miners, five of whom would be killed before
1931. In that same January 1922 Mao went to the city of Heng-
yang in south Hunan and organized a Party cell there at the Third
Normal School, which had affiliations with the Normal College
in Changsha. The railway workers on the Kuangchow-Hankow
Railway at Hengyang and at Changsha also were organized into
Party cells and Communist trade unions. All together, 12,000
workers were thus enrolled.
The establishment of workers’ co-operatives at Anyuan in 1922
was an initiative taken by Mao’s brother Mao Tse-min, who
seems to have had a financial talent. One of the hardships in-
flicted upon the miners was the debt load they carried when
purchasing in ordinary shops and the usurious terms of loans
(30 to 50 per cent per month). The co-operative idea was meant
to relieve this situation, to provide shops at the mine where
workers could get food on credit, and even to institute a small
bank with easy terms for loans. Mao Tse-min ran the co-opera-
tive, but it was difficult to maintain, as there was no capital and
a total hostility from the administration.
Mao Tsetung then set up a school for Anyuan workers, as he
had done in Changsha. The miners were at first reticent. What
was the use of a school when they spent their lives in the pits?
He then conceived the idea of a day school for the children of the
miners. This had a magic effect— the miners all wanted education
for their children, and there were no schools for them. Mao
brought a weekly paper from the Cultural Bookstore, through
the medium of this school circulated it among the miners, and
established a branch bookstore. He then tried to get the men to
learn reading and writing; urged them to write their own articles
in their own newspaper— a suggestion which stunned the hard-
driven illiterates who worked naked and had almost come to
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IIP
accept their half-beast condition. But the suggestion caught on,
and some of the survivors are today’s most brilliant high-level
officials and ambassadors.
Old miners still remember how Mao talked to them, how
incredible it all seemed that an ‘educated’ young man should go
down in the pits, blacken his hands, crawl through the narrow
tunnels where stunted waifs of ten or twelve pushed the coal
carts, sit in their hovels, take notes of what they said, then tell
them to take their fate in their own hands, to become masters of
their destiny.* Mao made them recall how they had risen with
the peasants, in the previous famines, against Japanese imperia-
lism in 1915. ‘History is in your hands,’ said Mao Tsetung.
History is yours to make.’ After Mao had left, his brother
remained. In May 1922 a workers’ club was established in
Anyuan.
Mao Tsetung’s activity among the Anyuan miners was based
on a concept to be given nationwide propagation in the Great
Proletarian Cultural Revolution: Revolutionization oj^the proletariat
by itself, through awareness, political education, action, organization.
Hence his action in Anyuan is a model. Both there and in Ping-
hsiang the workers were to become a source of future Party cadres.
Mao Tsetung’s stature as a leader of the proletariat, not of the
peasantry alone, rests upon the work he began with the coal
miners, which received no publicity in China until 1967.
The workers club, founded to give the workers education in
the form of lectures, reading newspapers, and so on, was in late
summer to be put under the direction of Li Li-san, appointed by
the Politbmo in Shanghai. Mao’s work was commended as of
great value’, and Li Li-san was sent, as was later Liu Shao-chi, to
reinforce this working-class nucleus of potential Communist
cadres.
Li Li-san was the young Hunanese student who some years
before had come to see Mao when he advertised for recruits for
hs New People s Study Society, and of whom Mao said: ‘Our
tnendship never developed.’ Li was born in the county of Liling,
m Hunan, in 1899; after studying in Changsha, in 1918 he had
* Personal interviews with Anyuan miners. 1970.
120
THE MORNING DELUGE
joined classes organized in Peking by the work and study group
preparing to go to France. While Mao Tsetung had elected not to
leave China, Li Li-san went to France and remained till 1921, thus
missing the May 4th movement. In France he adhered to the
Socialist Study Group, promoted by Chou En-lai, Tsai Ho-sen
and Tsai Chang. In early 1922 he returned to Shanghai and was
appointed to work in the All-China Labour Federation secre-
tariat. His work in Anyuan was to co-operate with Mao.
Communists are supposed to have a dedication to a cause above
private feelings. This is not always the case, for it seems that some
of the intellectuals who joined the CCP never got rid of private
inclinations and personal resentment. Jealousy plays a role in the
emergence or attrition of personalities. Li Li-san’s hostility to
Mao, already in bud in 1917, developed as time went on. Perhaps
Anyuan was a turning point in this respect, both for him and for
Liu Shao-chi. Both were to follow policies radically different
from Mao’s.
Mao sent Chiang Hsien-yun, one of his recruits and a member
of the Socialist Youth Corps of Hunan, to help in Anyuan when
the membership of the club swelled from a few hundred to over
60 per cent of the total number of workers. Mao was busy with
the mass education movement, with organizing a club of railway
workers at Changsha, at Hengyang. Railway workers’ unions,
Communist-controlled, were being set up in the north to south
railways between Peking and Wuhan, and between Wuhan and
Kuangchow. Mao journeyed to Liling and Pinghsiang, both
mining areas, ostensibly to inspect schools (was he not a director
of a school?) but actually to set up labour unions and to organize
Party cells. Thus he spun a web of Party cells throughout the
province in all the key industrial enterprises.
In July 1922 the Second Congress of the CCP was held in
Hangchow, near Shanghai. Mao went to Shanghai, forgot the
name of the place where it was to be held, could not find anyone
who knew it, and thus missed the congress. He returned to
Hunan and continued his work. There were then 123 Communist
Party members in Hunan, but the labour union of Anyuan
miners had just been disbanded by order of Governor Chao
DEDICATION
I2I
Heng-ti, who also put a ban on railway labour unions and
workers’ clubs. The famous railway workers’ strike was about to
begin, to be followed by a strike of the Anyuan miners.
Because these strikes were Communist-inspired, great attention
was paid to them at the Shanghai headquarters of the Com-
munist Party, Liu Shao-chi was sent by the All-China Labour
Federation in Shanghai, where he worked with Chang Kuo-tao,
to reinforce and to direct the strike at Anyuan. Liu Shao-chi, who
as we have seen had gone to Moscow in December 1920 via
Vladivostok, enrolled at the Communist University for Eastern
Toilers in 1921, and joined the CCP Moscow branch in the
Winter of 1921. In early 1922 he travelled back to China via
Japan and became secretary of the All-China Labour Federation.
He had no direct experience of labour organization before this
first immersion in a full-blown strike at Anyuan. But due to the
enormous prestige of the Soviet Union, ‘returned students from
Russia were held in great reverence, a reverence almost Confucian
in attitude, based on the concept of a knowledge elite. This
attitude would bedevil the CCP for some years.
Liu arrived in Anyuan on September 1 1 , three days before the
strike exploded on September 14. Mao Tsetung, who had begun
the agitation, had drawn up thirteen articles or demands for the
workers, and was now proceeding to stimulate a general strike all
over Hunan in sympathy with the miners and railway workers.
By November more than twenty unions had formed themselves
into an association of labour unions with Mao as chairman. This
was a very strong movement, which Mao would lead
All-Hunan Federation of Labour.
luwaiub ail
Today, at such a distance, it is difficult to tell what really hap-
pened, but obviously Liu’s idea of the goals of the strike were
wi ely different from Mao’s. Liu saw it as a temporary, limited
protest, useful for acquiring an improved standard of living and
social benefits for a circumscribed number of coal miners. Mao
saw It as a political spearhead to form a powerful base organiza-
tion upon which to build the Hunan CCP branch. Nothing could
e more different than the basic views of the two men as regards
this single event.
122
THE MORNING DELUGE
Liu dismissed Mao s deputy, Chiang Hsien-yun. He and Li
Li-san proceeded to lead the strike towards a negotiated agree-
ment with the mine management. Clippings from newspapers of
that time relate that Liu issued guarantees that the strike would be
peaceful . Talks with the managers resulted in a compromise
agreement; Liu told the workers to give up their demands -
formulated under Mao’s advice -as ‘too drastic’. The Anyuan
episode looms large in the struggle— between ‘the two lines’ or
two policies, between Mao’s and Liu’s vision of the world -
which was to form the focus of the Great Proletarian Cultural
Revolution, forty-odd years later.
Repression continued, however, both in the mines and on the
railways after the strike had terminated on September i8. Wage
increases were granted to the Anyuan miners, but after some
minor and partial concessions they were rescinded and the strike
leaders were expelled. However, for many years Liu Shao-chi
was to base his reputation as a labour leader on the successful
Anyuan strike, and a film was made in the early 1960s to extol
his role as a ‘leader of the proletariat’.
On February 7, 1923, a railway workers’ strike at Chengchow
on the Peking-Hankow railway was put down bloodily by the
warlord Wu Pei-fu, who had also once been hailed as ‘liberal and
progressive until this slaughter revealed him as of the same stuff
as any other tyrant. Over a hundred workers were killed or
injured. In early 1923 Mao Tsetung returned to Anyuan to warn
the workers that they must prepare for protracted struggle. ‘The
bent bow must wait to be released is the way he phrased it at the
time.
In August 1923, and again in 1924, Liu was to argue that ‘in
China’s present situation, with such a cliildish proletariat, it will
be a long time before any revolution happens, so let us not discuss
It’. He spoke against ‘this infantile disease, blind struggle ... strikes
at every occasion ... adventurist impulses’. In 1924, in his article
Save the Han Yeptng Company, Liu appealed to the workers to
keep order and not to disrupt anything during strikes. He also
dismissed 140 workers from the Anyuan workers’ club for
‘indiscipline’. Liu ‘only talked to the bosses ... did not go down
DEDICATION
123
the pits ... wrote rules and regulations for us\* This is the gist of
what old Anyuan workers say of Liu Shao-chi. Without trying to
assess whether the strike, handled otherwise, would have led to a
greater upsurge and benefited the revolution, we may still pass a
qualified judgment: that Liu was the kind of functionary who
likes order and regulations, whose tendency is to compromise,
and who feels that social benefits dispensed to the working class,
rather than violent seizure of power, is the ideal to be achieved.
Liu may have been a social reformist, but he was not a
revolutionary.
In 1923 Mao Tsetung organized the first worker-peasant union
at Yuehpei in Hunan; his adopted sister, Mao Tse-chien, was to
work there for over two years, as also did his wife Yang Kai-hui.
He recruited Anyuan workers in 1925 and sent them to train in
Kuangchow at the Peasant Institute, and again in 1926.*}' He was
to pay more visits to the Anyuan mines in September 1927,
before the Autumn Harvest Uprising, when he recruited one
thousand soldiers and cadres from the miners. Again in 1930,
when a great wave of pessimism swept across the land in the ebb
of the terrible massacres unleashed upon the Communists by the
Kuomintang, he went to Anyuan.:!: ‘The future is bright,’ he said.
This put courage and patience into us. All was not lost; Chairman
Mao was continuing the Revolution. So we waited and trusted.’
The Self-Education College, founded in August 1922 in Changsha
by Mao Tsetung, and in which Yang Kai-hui took an active part,
inaugurated ‘a revolution in education*. The teaching was directed
towards arousing awareness’ or personal initiative. There were
no formal classes, but many debates and seminars, with emphasis
on current problems. Mao insisted on a course in hygiene — had
he not even tried to do so in the Anyuan mines, lecturing the
workers on the nefariousness of gambling and dirt, and on
keeping latrines clean? The college advertised for students who
* Interviews with Anyuan miners, 1968.
t See further chapters.
t Some say that Lin Piao accompanied Mao in 1930. But this ‘evidence’ was
produced by Red Guards, and may be incorrect.
124
THE MORNING DELUGE
wish to study but have no resources and are against the school
regulations in other schools . At its peak it had two hundred
students; one of them was Mao Tse-tan, Mao’s younger brother.
The whole purpose of the college actually was recruitment and
training of cadres for the Communist Party; the names of the
teachers are a rollcall of early Hunan Communists.
Chinese, English, mathematics, history and geography were
taught. However, the standard proved too high for the mixed lot
of factory workers, masons, carpenters, and shop salesmen as well
as ordinary students. In September 1922 a preparatory class was
added for students ofjunior middle school level. In April 1923 the
college began the publication of a Marxist monthly, New Age.
Mao wrote several articles, Marxism and China, Against Idealism,
and Foreign Power, Warlordism, and Revolution. The last was an
analysis of the Cliinese situation; it predicted an ‘inevitable’
Marxist revolution and advocated the unity of all progressive
people . Manifestly Mao was thinking in terms of a united front,
although this had been rejected by the Party leadership. The
Self-Education College was dissolved in November 1923 by the
Hunan governor as a heresy, disturbing law and order’. It was
reborn two months later under the innocuous name of the Hsiang
Chiang Middle School.
By the end of 1922, Mao Tsetung had founded labour unions
and led strikes throughout the industrial sites of Hunan, had
organized workers schools and Party cells, had set on foot a
mass education movement. Chao Heng-ti, the governor, had
gradually worked himself into a state of apoplectic fury whenever
Mao Tsetung was mentioned. On the iith and 12th December
1922, Mao Tsetung as chairman of the twenty-odd Hunan labour
unions called in person at the governor’s office, accompanied by
some of the heads of individual labour unions. He saw Chao
Heng-ti on the 13 th. The interview was a marvel of courteous
acerbity. Mao Tsetung reminded Chao Heng-ti of his promise
to protect the workers as his own children’. He quoted the classics
and the provincial constitution, drawn up by Chao Heng-ti him-
self. He demanded that the ban on trade unionism be lifted, and
official mediator to act as liaison and to settle disputes.
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125
The classic elegance of Mao’s discourse left Chao Hcng-ti with
no recourse but to protest his good intentions; he wanted to
protect the workers from evil influence. After the interview it is
reported that Chao Heng-ti said ; ‘This Mao is too clever ... he is
dangerous ... there is not enough place in Hunan for both of us.’
And in April 1923 Chao ordered Mao’s arrest as a ‘radical ...
anarchist ... Communist’. Mao Tsetung disappeared in the
countryside, losing himself among the peasants, to reappear, two
weeks later, in Shanghai,
6
The First United Front
Mao Tsetung’s departure for Shanghai in 1923 coincided with the
momentous decision taken by the CCP Political Bureau for an
alliance -a united front -with the Kuomintang Party of Dr Sun
Yatsen. This was confirmed in a resolution at its Third Congress
that year.
The background of the decision can be briefly retraced.
In his first visit to China in 1920, Sneevliet (alias Maring or Ma-
lin), later said to have been present at the CCP First Congress, had
suggested to Chen Tu-hsiu a ‘grand anti-imperialist alliance to
take in all classes based on the ‘bloc of four classes’ urged by Lenin.
Trotsky had opposed Lenin on this point; Chang Kuo-tao at the
First Congress also opposed a united front.
Sun Yatsen, sounded out by Chicherin and other Russian
envoys,* was at first obdurate. He would have no alliance with
Communism. But according to Dr Percy Chen, the eminent
lawyer now resident in Hongkong, it was his father. Dr Eugene
Chen, together with the eminent and respected scholar Dr Liao
Chung-kai, Sun Yatsen s most trusted friend, who successfully
persuaded Sun Yatsen to agree to such an alliance. Sun’s dis-
heartening experiences with various warlords helped him to take
tliis decision; since 1911 Sun had been several times at the mercy
of militarists; Yuan Shih-kai among others. They would help
him to power, but topple him when he did not serve their
mercenary purposes. They were out for personal gain ; Sun was
an idealist and a revolutionary.
In 1920, when Sun Yatsen was again briefly in power in
Kuangchow, Eugene Chen, by now a minister in Sun’s govern-
ment, made several trips to Peking to conduct negotiations with
the Russian ambassador Karakhan. Direct talks then took place
* Comintern envoys also contacted the powerful warlord Pei-fu and
even Chao Heng-ti, the reactionary governor of Hunan.
126
THE FIRST UNITED FRONT
127
between Sun Yatsen and Joffe, Lenin’s envoy, in Shanghai in
1922. ‘Other negotiations, with the leaders of the Chinese
Communist Party, were conducted by Dr Liao Chung-kai. Thus
a political alliance between Sun Yatsen’s party and the Com-
munist Party of China came into being.’*
Sun Yatsen’s aversion to alliance with the Russians was due to his
patriotic resentment of Czarist expansionism at China’s expense.
Czarist Russia had invaded and occupied large tracts of Chinese
territory for two centuries, and participated in all the unequal
treaties. ‘I don’t believe the leopard can change his spots,’ said
Sun; he claimed that the Russian Revolution had not altered
Russian aims in Asia, despite Lenin’s declaration that all unequal
treaties were null and void, and that territory wrested by Czarist
aggression would be returned.
Czarist Russian control of Manchurian territory and of the
Chinese Eastern Railway which ran through it (which it treated as
an extension of the Trans-Siberian Railway) made Manchuria a
Russian protectorate. Sun declared outspokenly that encroach-
ments by Czarist Russia in Sinkiang as well as Russian influence
over Outer Mongolia created a vast sphere of Russian influence
over ‘42 per cent of Chinese territory’.
But Sun Yatsen now realized the Russians needed a friendly
China, as China needed allies in her struggle against domination
by the Western powers and Japan. It was with him that the Soviet
government finally decided that co-operation would be most
fruitful; overtures to various warlords had proved futile. Lenin
had spoken favourably of Sun Yatsen’s party in 1912; Sun had
cabled Lenin, hailing the October Revolution of 1917. Though
mistrustful of Communism, Sun was now disgusted with
Western democracy. And after May 4, 1919, Sun Yatsen’s
opinions began to change. He began to read the works of Marx
and Lenin. The combined persuasion of Dr Liao Chung-kai and of
Sun s own wife, the brilliant and courageous Soong Ching-ling,*!*
* Interview with Percy Chen.
t See the Selected Works of Madame Soong Ching-ling (in Chinese). The book
1 ^ 7 Soong Sisters^ does not do justice to the greatest and noblest
o t sisters. Another sister, Soong Mei-ling, is the present wife of Chiang
128
THE MORNING DELUGE
fuially convinced Sun of the usefulitess of an alliance. He
started to write down his political credo, the ‘Three People’s
Principles’, now incorporating socialism in his third principle.
People s livelihood . Nationalism, democracy, and socialism’
became his new formula for the three principles which at various
times he had enunciated, but which had remained vague in
content until now, revised and redefined, they began to look like a
definite programme. It was not until 1923, however, that this
identification with socialism occurred; it was 1924 when he
clearly opted for socialism.
Mao, in his historical appraisal of Sun Yatsen in 1940, was to
emarcate Sun s three principles before this change of mind
(ca ed the old three principles) from their last version, or the new
three principles. The last were the only ones the CCP would
admit as the ‘Three Principles of Dr Sun Yatsen’.
The three principles ... as re-explained by Sun Wen* in the
opening speech of the first national Congress of the Kuomintang
(1924) ... [are] the only real three principles ... the others are
not ... This is not a rumour spread by the Communist Party,
myself and many other members of the Kuomintang, we were
present at this proclamation.’
Sun Yatsen encountered great opposition in his own party to
this leftward switch. ‘If Communism is a good ally, why do
members of the Kuomintang oppose the Communist Party? The
reason may be that members of the Communist Party do not
themselves understand what is Communism; and thus they have
spoken against the Three People s Principles.’ Sun was obviously
referring to the unflattering comments made about him and his
party at the First Congress of the CCP in July 1921. ‘We cannot
use the actions of some individuals for opposing a whole group ...
t len why has this trouble arisen among our Kuomintang com-
rades? Because they do not realize that my third principle is a
form of Communism.’
This forthright endorsement, made
in 1923, opened the door
* Sun Wen is the formal name of Sun Yatsen. Most Chinese had at least two, if
not more, names. This custom is now in abeyance, but many CCP members used
aliases to escape identification from 1921 to 1949.
I. Mu» Tj;otuiip
l.iu- I'l M.u> in Shaosh.iii. 1 luii.iii
one ul the lotiii ponds where he learned
9 ^ -
lu
k
3
1
•<
•
1
■
4 •
i
V/.
3 . Peking, 1900, after the Righteous Fists (Roxer) Uprising was put down by foreign
troops. Above, the partially destroyed Chien Men Gate: below. U.S. Marines mart h'in
4. Above Mao Tsetung (fourth from left) with Tsai Ho-sen (next, with fur collar) anJ
ot icr students at the First Hunan Normal College, about 1917. Below, in Shaoshan
after h.s mother s death with (from left) his brother Mao Tse-min, his father and a
clan relative
5 - President Sun Yatsen
with M.idainc Sun (Soong
Cliing-ling)
6 . Mikhail I 5 i>rodin,
Russian adviser to the
Kuomintang, speaking in
Hankow, March 192?
THE FIRST UNITED FRONT
129
for the admission of Communist Party members into the Kuo-
mintang, and for a Communist-Kuomintang alliance, which
would last till 1927 and be known as the First United Front.
Sun Yatsen recalled China’s grisly treatment by ‘Western
democracy . Despite reservations about Russian ambitions, he
was convinced of China s ultimate strength and power; he told
his colleagues that the Chinese people will not become satellitic
to Russia’.
Great revolutionary pioneer ... our forerunner,’ Mao has
defined Sun Yatsen s historic role. The memory of Sun Yatsen,
who made the bourgeois democratic’ Revolution of 1911, con-
tinues to be honoured in China by the Communists, who
utiucrstand Kis place in the history of the Revolution.
Sun Yatsen’s widow, the beautiful, fearless, and noble Soong
Ching-ling, is today Vice-Chairman of the People’s Republic of
China, and her life of dedication fits into the framework of
history as a symbol of the transition from one stage of political
development to the next. In this continuing process the alliance
between Sun Yatsen s party, the Kuomintang,* and the CCP
affords the most fascinating illustration of what was to become a
basic strategy of the Chinese Communist Party under Mao
Tsetung: the united front.
At the Second Congress of the CCP in 1922, which Mao had
missed ( I forgot the name of the place where it was to be held
could not find any comrade, and missed it’), alliance and co-
operation with the Kuomintang had again been discussed, but the
majority of th^e delegates still remained opposed to united front
strategy. But from the autumn of 1922, and throughout the next
year, the violent suppression of fomented strikes, and the mas-
sacres of the railway workers on February 4, 1923, by Wu Pei-fu,
ad forced rethinking. The tiny Communist Party could not
a!S growing fast, except in Hunan. Many
activists were already being slaughtered. ^
of the Second Congress already stated: ‘The
^nese Communist Party must, in the interest of the workers and
Also known under its usual abbreviation KMT.
130
THE MORNING DELUGE
the poor peasants, support the national democratic revolution,
and forge a democratic united front of workers, poor peasants,
and the petty bourgeoisie/ But no united front policy was spelled
out till the Third Congress, held in June 1923 in Kuangchow.
Coming via Shanghai to Kuangchow, Mao attended the Third
Congress, where he gave a detailed report on the workers’ move-
ment in Hunan. ‘There must be a great revolutionary union. One
cannot fight alone,’ Mao is reputed to have stated. At this Third
Congress, however, the right wing of the CCP headed by Chen
Tu-hsiu advocated virtual dissolution of the CCP. Frightened by
repression, Chen suggested that the KMT make its own bourgeois
revolution first, and that the CCP begin its proletarian revolution
‘after the historic period’ of KMT rule. Chen Tu-hsiu, possessed
by discouragement, told his friends that he hated ‘violence’. The
ultra-left wing, with Chang Kuo-tao, maintained that the Com-
munist Party should be free from bourgeois entanglements, and
again castigated the KMT.
Mao Tsetung, together with his friend Ho Shu-heng and a
young intellectual called Chu Chiu-pai,* opted for the united
front, but with the Communist Party keeping its own autonomy.
Mao and Chu were elected members of the Central Committee,
and a majority voted for Mao’s proposal. The Chen Tu-hsiu
‘right’-wing and Chang Kuo-tao ‘left’-wing theses were both
criticized.
Some historians say this was due to Russian pressure. At the
Comintern in Moscow, Karl Radek has scolded the Chinese
delegation for its opposition to a united front. They were too
theoretical, and just as the old Chinese scholars studied Confucius
behind closed doors and pretended to know the world merely by
reading books, they were reading Marxism but did not know how
to apply it. This observation was pertinent, but it must be noted
that Mao Tsetung had already indicated his option for a united
front in 1922, as his articles indicate. However, he stressed that
the CCP must keep its independence of action and the leadership
* Chu Chiu-pai had joined the Moscow precursor group of the CCP in 1921.
See T. A. Hsia, ‘Chu Chiu-pai’s Autobiographical Writings’ China QuaTterly,
January-March, 1966.
THE FIRST UNITED FRONT
I3I
of the working class and the peasantry in its hands. Leadership of
the Revolution could not be handed over to the Kuomintang.
He made this point forcefully. It agreed -with the Leninist thesis
on a united front. And Mao was already a Leninist.
A ‘united front of workers, peasants, and petty bourgeois’ was
the description worked out, the KMT now being identified with
the petty bourgeoisie. In the petty bourgeoisie, as Mao Tsetung
at the time understood it, were included merchants and traders.
The policies of Mao towards merchants and traders would be to
consider them useful to the revolution ; this was based on a realistic
appraisal of the Chinese social context, ‘because of the historical
necessity and current tendencies, the work of the merchants in the
national revolution is more important and more urgent than the
work that the rest [those other components of the petty bour-
geoisie participating in the national democratic revolution] do’.*
They were also far more progressive than other elements of the
middle class.
At the time of the Third Congress, there were only 342
Communist Party members in the whole of China.
An agreement between the CCP and the KMT was concluded
at the end of 1923. In that autumn Michael Borodin, a Comintern
agent, arrived in China with other Russian personnel to advise
Sun Yatsen s Kuangchow government in shaping policies and
institutions. The organization of a nationalist army, under officers
and cadres trained by the KMT, was a top priority. The goal was
to fight the warlords and to unite China. Sun Yatsen was con-
vinced that without an army to implement the national policies
of the KMT the Revolution would always be at the mercy of
sundry warlords.
This development gave a great impetus to the KMT. A new
hope animated its ranks, and new personages were to come into
the limelight, among them Chiang Kai-shek, known at the time
^ a iscip e of Sun Yatsen. Chiang made a good impression on
orodin, and was sent to Russia in the autumn of 1923 to study
Russian military methods. He stayed in Russia five months. By
* Translated from reported article
author’s possession.
in Min Pao magazine. Document in
132
THE MORNING DELUGE
June 1924 thirty Soviet instructors were attached to the newly
built military academy, known as the Whangpoo Military
Academy, and Chiang Kai-shek had returned from Moscow to
head it as director. Once again the prestige of the ‘Russian-
returned student’ label resulted in promotion to a position of
influence and command.
The admission of Communists to the KMT was formally
blessed by Sun himself at the First Congress of the KMT in
January 1924. Li Ta-chao, China’s first Marxist, was personally
inducted by Sun Yatsen into the KMT. Sun insisted that Com-
munists should be admitted without any curtailment of their
activities as Communists and no one dared to contradict him
Through the years, and Sun’s many shifts of fortune, in and out
of power, the Kuomintang had become a motley assembly of
various cliques and factions, save for a handful of staunch patriots
like Liao Chung-kai and his wife Ho Hsiang-ning.* Its re-
organization was imperative, but was never accomplished.
One of the Communists who became a member of both parties
was Mao Tsetung, who was given the task of liaison between the
CCP and the KMT. To be entrusted with this important and
delicate work was a tribute to his merit as organizer, recruiter,
persuader, orator, and his staunch advocacy of the alliance. But
due to the composition of the Kuomintang it was an almost
impossible responsibility, and it became ever more difficult as the
contradictions between the two parties became intractable. J
The CCP resolution on the united front was defined as co-
operation — but without merging into it— with the Kuomintang;
autonomy within the Kuomintang while sustaining a united front
* Interviewed by the author in 1966 in Peking, where Madame Ho headed the
Overseas Chinese Department for many years. Her son Liao Chen-chih is a
prominent diplomat and expert in the Chinese Foreign Affairs Ministry. See
Nym Wales, Red Dtist^ op. cit., for his biography.
4 A note on the Kuomintang: From 1895 to 1905 Sun Yatsen’s organization was
known as the Hsin Chung-hui; it was after 1905 and in Japan that it was renamed
the Tung Meng Hui. It became the Kuomintang (national party) in 1912, on the
eve of the first elections to China’s first 'parliament*, the National Assembly.
Until 1911 it was an anti-Manchu, anti-d>Tiastic alliance, vaguely democratic and
republican but without a very definite programme.
THE FIRST UNITED FRONT
133
policy to attain the reunification of China as a federal republic and
elimination of imperialism. Other resolutions agreed on the
fundamental rights of voting, freedom of expression and reunion;
an eight-hour day for workers, labour legislation, reform of
education, and tax reforms.
In later years Mao would analyse what was wrong with this
first united front. The strategy of a united front had been correct,
but the CCP had failed to recognize that leadership must never
be relinquished. ‘The Party ... was in its infancy ... inexperienced
in the three basic problems of the united front, armed struggle
and Party building, a party without much knowledge of China’s
historical and social conditions.’* No other Communist Party
member at the time seems to have given so much serious thought
to Sun Yatsen’s own programme, and to the structure of the
Kuomintang Party, as well as to the study of Lenin’s united front
techniques, as Mao did.
The resolutions of the First KMT Congress of 1924, calling for
co-operation with Russia, co-operation with the CCP, and help
and support to workers and peasants, the identification with
‘socialism’, gave the KMT a much more widely based popular
appeal, a refurbished, progressive, national image. Three Com-
munists were among the twenty-four members of the Central
Executive Committee of the Kuomintang— Li Ta-chao, Tan
Ping-shan and Yu Shu-te— and six Communists among the
alternate members, one of them Mao Tsetung. Students from the
work and study programmes, Communist Party members
returning from France, Germany and Russia, also entered the
Kuomintang as members, among them Chou En-lai in mid-1924.
Chou became secretary of the military commission in the CCP
Kuangchow branch, in charge of the Training Department, and
late in 1924 deputy director of the Political Department in
Whangpoo Military Academy, where he lectured on military
affairs. He was then twenty-six years old.
In February Mao returned to Shanghai, to become secretary
of the Organizing Department (Propaganda) of the Shanghai
* Introducing The Communist (October 4, 1939); also 0 « New Democracy
(January 1940); both in Selected Works, vol. II.
134
THE MORNING DELUGE
branch of the KMT, in charge of liaison. In daily contact with
politicians, Mao endured from them a treatment as arrogant as
that he had been subject to when assistant librarian in Peking, and
sarcasm from his own comrades because he tried to do his work
well under the ‘revolutionary’ elder Hu Han-min, a great
personage in the KMT. Hu Han-min had taken part in the 1911
Revolution. He was one of the editors of the Min Li Pao, which
Mao Tsetung had read in Changsha in 1911, and which had made
him discard his early enthusiasm for the reformists and discover
Sun Yatsen. With age Hu had become increasingly reactionary.
He scorned ‘the peasant’ Mao, who worked three months under
him. Wang Ching-wei, the brilliant and ambitious opportunist,
also appears to have looked down on Mao. Mao learned bitter
lessons on the ambivalence of ‘radicals’. Meanwhile, left-wingers
in the CCP called him ‘Hu Han-min ’s secretary’. But Mao
subordinated his temper to his dedication, and went on as if he
were completely insensitive. He was involved in a multiplicity of
details and they drained his mind and his strength. He was
appointed one of the three Communists to serve on the com-
mittee to examine and draw up the new Kuomintang Party
constitution. Painstaking, he drew up a scheme for the re-
organization of the Kuomintang Party structure, showing a
shrewd grasp of its weaknesses.
‘There are too many high-level functionaries sitting in posts in
Kuangchow and doing little, whereas there are too few outside of
the capital city.’ Where was the strength of the national move-
ment? Among the masses; but the decisive organizations, which
gave the leadership to the members, were in the cities, or at
county town level, and the latter were much too remote. There
was no contact between the people and the high bureaucrats
who put orders on paper, orders ‘empty of significance*. The
people were enthusiastic and patriotic, but they got no real
directives from the KMT. Mao even went into financial details of
the organization, showing a sound knowledge of accounting and
book-keeping, possibly helped in this by his early training at home
and by his brother Mao Tse-min. He tackled the work of con-
solidation and of training of cadres, insisted on the importance of
THE FIRST UNITED FRONT
135
recruiting and training cadres to work among the peasantry. It
was on Mao’s proposal that the Kuomintang established a Peasant
Department in its Central Executive Committee. The scheme was
submitted in February 1924, and by the summer the institute for
training peasant cadres was working. From its inception the
institute would be in Communist hands.
That Mao should be the only one out of that galaxy of intel-
lectuals to work out a complete KMT reorganization plan is
puzzling. No one else really seemed to want to do the arduous
groundwork involved in such an overhaul. Liao Chung-kai
praised Mao Tsetung and his ‘extraordinary talent’ and recom-
mended his report to Sun Yatsen. But the Kuomintang was too
full of dissension and venality to be able to reform itself By April
1924 already the first attacks against ‘Communist orientation’
were becoming vocal. The accusation of ‘creating a bloc within
the KMT’ was launched; the alliance with Russia was not
attacked, only the alliance with local Communists.
By the summer of 1924 Mao Tsetung was already overwrought
and overworked and seems to have had attacks of despondency
and sleeplessness. He was getting exhausted with frustration; his
work, which consisted essentially of making ‘fire and water’
coexist, was a never-ending cycle of pettiness. As the year wore
on, it also became obvious that Sun Yatsen was seriously ill, and
round him began the intrigues of various cliques jockeying for the
succession. Mao is said to have remarked casually to a friend that
the Communists were very vulnerable because they had no army,
a surprising thing to say when hopes were high, when in the
Whangpoo Military Academy the Russian advisers were treated
with great honour, and Chou En-lai was doing his utmost to
radicalize the officer cadets and appeared very successful at it.
Borodin, the Russian adviser, seems to have understood very
little of the intrigues around Sun. He was almost hypnotized by
Chiang Kai-shek s fluency and left-wing jargon. Chen Tu-hsiu as
secretary-general of the CCP was hypnotized with ‘co-operation’
and ‘unity’. This self-willed intellectual, shrinking from the gross-
ness of actual political work, afraid to displease, was not built to
lead a revolutionary party in the complicated tactics of united
THE MORNING DELUGE
136
front struggle. From Chen’s point of view, was it not more
reasonable to suppose these polished (if unscrupulous) gentlemen
of the KMT more capable of progress’ and ‘enlightenment’ than
illiterate workers and peasants? Many of the Russian advisers at
the Military Academy were fooled for a long time by Chinese
courtesy, and the ability to mask thoughts and feelings under a
bland, peaceful demeanour. Borodin was apt to blame the CCP
members, and especially Chou En-lai, for ‘pushing too hard’ when-
ever some complaints from the Kuomintang came to him. ‘Unity
above all’ was Borodin’s motto, as it was Chen Tu-hsiu’s, and in
the process both did forgo the essential component of leadership.
It was on the matter of policies towards the peasantry that Mao,
it is said, called on Borodin in Kuangchow in 1924. Borodin
spoke no Chinese, Mao no Russian or English; if they con-
versed it was through an interpreter. It is possible that Borodin
did not understand or appreciate Mao Tsetung. As for Mao, he
was not impressed by Borodin. ‘Borodin stood just a little to the
right of Chen Tu-hsiu, and was ready to do everything to please
the bourgeoisie, even to the disarming of the workers, which
he finally ordered.’
Hence 1924 was a year of great mental and physical strain for
Mao. He found men of repute, men whom he had revered and
respected, utterly disillusioning at close range. The admired
radical Wang Ching-wei, who had thrown a bomb at the Manchu
regent in 1906, and been at one time the idol of progressive
students, would turn out to be an intriguer, an opportunist, a
weak man with a big mouth. Hu Han-min, who also had the
reputation of a revolutionary, was weak, vain and corrupt. And
then there was Chen Tu-hsiu, perhaps the greatest disillusionment
of all. Mao had thought highly of him, acknowledging how much
Chen had influenced him, both in personal meetings and through
his New Youth magazine. Mao had looked up to him with all the
ardour of a young man seeking a model to emulate. But affection,
respect, could not blind him, as increasingly he saw Chen Tu-hsiu
evade, compromise, prevaricate. To those whose dedication is
revolution, there are bound to be such traumatic experiences. For
them everything is measured by that supreme and rigorous
THE FIRST UNITED FRONT
137
passion which takes all of a man’s life, the sinews of his body and
the strength of his spirit, and wrings him dry and wrecks him
often. All other relationships, emotions, passions, are removed
from the soul’s centre; all must inevitably be sifted and weighed
in the pitiless measure of sacrifice. For such a revolutionary there
can be no loyalty, no love, except that ‘based on principle’,
which means revolution.
When Mao began to doubt Chen as a Communist, then he had
to oppose him, however much it cost him in personal anguish. By
the end of 1924, Mao was seeing another Chen Tu-hsiu, no longer
a tower of strength but more like a weak bamboo; a vapid,
arrogant, and yet pusillanimous man to whose elegant intellect
workers’ demonstrations, strikes, the very idea of peasant up-
risings were repugnant. Chen’s fear of violence was an atavistic
panic, a class reaction, backed by long centuries of elitism, of the
almost ineradicable superiority of scholars above manual
labourers.
Mao found his relations with Chen deteriorating as Chen grew
nettled, then resentful, of the younger man’s arguments. Deeply
sensitive in spite of liis rigid control over himself, he would fmd
the death of his affection for Chen Tu-hsiu difficult to accept for
some months. But in the end he would not hesitate.*
Mao Tsetung was present at the Fourth Congress of the CCP in
January 1925, contrary to reports that he did not attend because of
illness. He was ill, though the cause may have been overwork, but
he was there, and he gave warning that ‘organizationally witliin
the CCP, and also in mass organizations, we must be prepared’.
For the worst. He asked for workers’ and peasants’ alliances, to
take part in the national revolutionary movement. Resolutions to
strengthen and expand peasants’ and workers’ unions were passed,
but little was done to implement these. The complacency of the
secretary-general, Chen, studiously avoiding ‘friction’ with the
Kuomintang, was unshaken. In fact, at the Congress, a tendency
* Edgar Snow, who spent days and weeks with Mao, often told me how deeply
sensitive Mao is to friendship; how often his eyes moistened when he spoke of
dead comrades. ‘His struggles against individuals once his friends, for revolution’s
sake, were always intensely painful to him.*
5 *
THE MORNING DELUGE
138
to Speak in terms of ‘restraining’ the peasants was evidenced in his
speeches. Emphasis on the importance of the workers dominated
the Congress, due to the strong representation of the ‘left’ wing,
Chang Kuo-tao, Li Li-san, in the All-China Labour Federation
and in the Central Committee. Mao Tsetung seems pretty much a
lone figure, and a very underestimated one, at this Congress.
Dissent between himself and the ‘city-oriented’ Communists
gave rise to sharp arguing. Mao’s repeated proposals that the
Communist Party should train its own peasant cadres and
mobilize the peasantry, that the training should be extended all
over China, to provide a rear base in any province and not be
confined merely to the area where the Kuomintang government
held sway, were watered down in the bland rotundity of resolu-
tions. It was not till 1926 that the CCP would organize its own
Peasant Department.
At the end ofjanuary 1925, an exhausted Mao went back to his
own province of Hunan, He went under an official cloud; for had
he not proved ‘unsatisfactory’ in liaison work? So write some
biographers,* more intent on faulting Mao’s performance in his
impossible job than in grasping the essence of his disgust. He
returned not to rest but to organize the peasantry. So secret, so
quiet was he in beginning this work that for a long time nothing
was known of his activities from January to August 1925* And
because he was considered ‘right’-wing by the city-oriented
leftists in the Party, he had not been re-elected to the Central
Committee of the CCP.
Mao Tsetung reached Shaoshan before the Chinese New Year,
and this was a family reunion. Both his wife Yang Kai-hui and his
brother Mao Tse-min had been working in Shanghai also, but not
with him. Yang Kai-hui did educational work, and Mao Tse-min
was with the propaganda section of the CCP. Back in the old
farmhouse, he read and he laboured at the spring planting and
sowing. His body was healed with the labour of the fields. He
worked and he thought, and his thoughts were far-sighted.
* See Jerome Chen, Mao and the Chinese Revolution, trs. M. Bullock and J.
Chen (Oxford University Press, London and New York, 1965).
THE FIRST UNITED FRONT
139
He had begun to see the problem of the Chinese Revolution in
the utterly concrete, down-to-earth, yet incomparably larger
vision that was to be known as Mao Tsetung Thought, to mark
his country and the history of his epoch. As he went among the
peasantry, the puzzles and confusions of the slick city intellectuals
fell into place. To serve a spurious ‘unity’ in the councils of the
alliance with the Kuomintang, the peasants and workers were in
danger of being sacrificed. Already it had been suggested that the
lowering of land tenure rents should not be left to peasant associa-
tions, but to a ‘collective bargaining’ process. Yet all around him
the reality of China was peasant revolution. How would he now
proceed? Obedience to the ‘leadership’ against what his mind and
conscience cried out to him was the right course, or defiance?
But never for a moment did he think of abandoning the Revolu-
tion, for that would be abandoning the peasants, the workers. He
could never do it.
In February and March, the tall, thin young Mao went walking
from village to village, staying with peasants in their farmhouses,
working with them for his meals and lodging, in the evenings
sitting with them and listening, always listening. ‘I have so much
yet to learn from them, they know so much more than I do.’*
‘Three old cobblers equal one Wise Manl’f Once again exalted,
informed, vitalized by this immersion in the vibrant, enormous
life of the working people of China, once again, like Antaeus
touching earth, Mao was filled with creative power and vision.
He wrote, analysed, investigated, planned. He went back to
Changsha, and from there moved around the counties to establish
peasant unions, peasant Party cells. His investigations in the
countryside during the spring planting season revealed that 10
per cent of the population consisted of landlords and rich peasants,
70 per cent of poor peasants, and 20 per cent of middle peasants.
By the end of the following year, 1926, 37 out of 75 counties in
Hunan had peasant unions. In the district of Hengshan, where
Mao placed some of his recruits and where his adopted sister also
* In 1967.
t The Wise Man alluded to is the renowned strategist of the Three Kingdoms,
Chukc Liang.
140
THE MORNING DELUGE
worked for the Party. 85 per cent of the peasant union member-
ship was of poor peasant origin.
In the attic of the Mao farmhouse in Shaoshan, above his
parents’ bedroom, meetings were held. It was there that the first
peasant Party branch was organized in August 1925. During
these seven months from the end of January to August, Mao
elaborated a scientific investigation technique which laid the
foundations for Marxist social research in China. This contribu-
tion of Mao’s to the social sciences is fundamental to the creation
of the new concept which today infuses China’s scientific achieve-
ments. He seems to have realized how little Chinese intellectuals
knew of their own country and their own people. It was not the
peasants and workers alone who needed education, but also the
proud and lordly leaders , scholars, riding high over the heads of
that patient immensity, the people of China. They needed to be
re-educated. Marxism is ... the concrete analysis of concrete
conditions, Lenin had said. How many Marxist intellectuals
bothered to do this?
Of the thirty-two peasant cadres forming the first Party branch
at Shaoshan, all were to die in the massacres of the Chiang Kai-
shek terror from 1927 to 1934* Other cadres Mao recruited dur~
ing those months were to follow him to Chingkangshan, the
mountain fortress where Mao was to create the first rural Red
base and start the Chinese Revolution going again when, at the
end of 1927, it had been almost destroyed.
In Kuangchow, the Peasant Department announced at the First
Congress of the Kuomintang in 1924 had taken shape as a Peasant
Institute in April 1924.
The Kuomintang Party, with its disparate composition and
varied cliques, was wholly agreed on the necessity for rallying
the peasantry, the ‘foot soldiery* of any military expedition. There
had never been an overthrow of dynasty without peasant armies.
It was they, the many-millioned, who made empires and des-
troyed them, but the power had always fallen back into the hands
* The son of one of these is now secretary of the Shaoshan Party branch
(interview 1971).
THE FIRST UNITED FRONT
I4I
of the mandarinate and the landlord class, and after reforms by
the new rulers— tax and rent remissions — the peasantry was
again exploited. This repeated betrayal was the feudal pattern for
two millennia. The KMT military unification of China would
need soldiers, armies, food; only the peasantry could fulfil those
needs. Chiang Kai-shek summed it up: ‘The task of the peasantry
is to provide us with information concerning the enemy, food
and comforts in our encampments, and soldiers for our armies.’
Not a word about the duties of the Kuomintang, once it came to
power, towards the peasantry! It was taken for granted that the
peasants would serve a purpose and die unprotestingly, or be
beaten back into submission should they revolt. Mao Tsetung
was not prepared to accept this repetition of Chinese history, but
Chen Tu-hsiu was; hence Chen’s reluctance to see the peasantry
really armed, really taking power.
This was the heart of the matter. And yet since 1919 Lenin had
stressed the importance of the peasants to the revolutions in Asia.
‘The national revolution in China, and the creation of the anti-
imperialist front, will necessarily be followed by an agrarian
revolution of the peasantry against the remnants of feudalism.
The revolution can be victorious only if it becomes possible to draw
into the movement the basic masses of the Chinese population ; i.e., the
peasants with small holdings ... Thus the peasant problem becomes the
central point of the entire policy of the Chinese Communist Party* **
Far from obeying the directives of the Comintern, Chen was
actually paying no attention to them where the peasantry were
concerned. It is curious that this fundamental defect in Chen’s
leadership should already have been pointed out as early as
August 1923, when an anonymous Communist Party member
wrote in the Party weekly The Guide that the weakness of the
socialist movement was ‘excess of urban orientation, cowardice
of intellectuals who fear to leap into the mass of the people, and
shortage of talented men in the local movement’. (The anony-
mous writer sounds a little like Mao, but it is not in his character
to have written this letter.)
* Comintern resolution received by the CCP before the Third Congress in
1923.
142
THE MORNING DELUGE
Chen Tu-hsiu had retorted: ‘Farmers are petty bourgeois ...
how can they accept Communism? How can a Communist
movement extend itself successfully in rural China?’ Peasant
revolutionary excesses would ‘disrupt’ the national revolution,
bring about ‘splits’ and ‘misunderstandings’ with the bourgeoisie.
These slurs upon peasant potential expressed the same fear as that
of feudal landlords. Chang Kuo-tao also wrote that the peasantry
was conservative’, ‘demanding only a good harvest under an
emperor’, and ‘scattered, individualistic, unreasonable’. Both the
right and ‘left’ wings in the CCP were united in their contempt
of the peasantry.
Chiang Kai-shek was well versed in the historical background
of China. The military expedition to wrest China from warlord
rule and to unify it under the KMT could not proceed unless the
KMT had the peasants with them; this was self-evident. But
already complaints of peasant ‘excesses’ were heard among the
landlords and capitalists in the KMT, for now something was
happening in the countryside of the Haifeng and Lufeng counties
of Kuaiitung province. A peasant revolutionary movement, in
which Peng Pai, whose memory is still honoured, played an
important part, was taking shape.
Peng Pai, surprisingly, was himself the son of a landlord and
had studied in Japan. Even before he adhered to the Communist
Party, Peng had already unbound his wife’s feet. (The unfortunate
woman was later executed by the Chiang Kai-shek regime.)
When his father died, Peng Pai began to distribute his father’s
lands and to divest himself of property — his father owned about
1,400 tenant serfs. He went among the peasants in Haifeng county
and lived with them, helping to form a peasant union in a village
in Haifeng county about the same time that Mao was organizing
a peasant-worker union in Hunan at Yuehpei. The peasant
unions in Haifeng district grew; poor peasants and landless
tenants flocked to join. Very soon they could stand up to terroris-
tic landlords and their private armies. When some tenants were
jailed because they could not pay exorbitant rent, 6,000 peasants
demonstrated in front of the city magistrate’s house and frightened
the magistrate into releasing them. The example of Haifeng and
THE FIRST UNITED FRONT
143
Lufeng counties spread; landlords, alarmed, fled to Kuangchow
city.
In December 1924 a warlord named Chen Chiung-ming
marched against Kuangchow to oust Sun Yatsen once again. But
Sun Yatsen was no longer at the mercy of a militarist coup. The
Whangpoo Military Academy cadets and the workers’ battalions
organized by the Communists defeated Chen Chiung-ming, who
fled to Hongkong. In their subsequent pursuit of his troops
through the countryside, the cadets were astonished by the
enthusiastic help which they received from the peasantry when
they crossed Haifeng county. ‘We had never seen such things
before.’
The peasants organized militia battalions, took the small towns
while the landlords fled; supplied stretcher bearers for the woun-
ded, carriers, an intelligence service. This demonstration of
peasant power won admiration but increased panic; the mobiliza-
tion of the peasantry, though essential for the military expedition
planned, was ‘dangerous’. If peasants were capable of such for-
midable initiative, they could seize power— and keep it. How was
one to utilize them and then discard them? This was the task
Chiang Kai-shek would perform. While despondency settled
upon the big landlords of the Kuomintang, Chiang played the
leftist, for he needed peasant and worker support to hoist himself
to power.
Only Sun’s personal prestige, by the end of 1924, was keeping
the Kuomintang Party from open dissension. But Sun died of
cancer in March 1925 in Peking, where he had gone for talks on a
possible peaceful unification with the militarist Feng Yu-hsiang,
then in power in a North China warlord coalition. No sooner
was Sun dead than a covert power struggle began between Chiang
Kai-shek and Wang Ching-wei, each claiming to be Sun’s chosen
disciple. Chiang was a poor military strategist but a master at
intrigue. Wang was to be no match for him.
A Society for the Propagation of Sun Yatsenism had already
been organized, with Chiang’s tacit consent, within the Whang-
poo Military Academy in January 1925, though it only came into
the open in April. In spite of its catchy title, it was a fascist
144
THE MORNING DELUGE
organization, enrolling cadets in the ‘army group’ nucleus which
would later form the core of Chiang Kai-shek’s military dic-
tatorship. The society clashed with a League of Military Youth
organized by Chou En-lai to recruit cadets for the Communist
Party. The leader of the Society for Sun Yatsenism was Tai
Chi-tao, in 1919 considered ‘radical’, but by 1925 already an
extreme right-winger in the Kuomintang.
The right wing of the Kuomintang took possession of the
Shanghai headquarters of its own party, and made an open bid
to cast out the Communist Party’ from its position within the
Kuomintang. The Central Executive Committee of the Kuomin-
tang held a meeting which expelled 120 right-wingers from the
Party, a measure to which Chiang gave his approval. This
looked like a great victory for the united front and for the left.
It confirmed the opinion of Borodin that Chiang was progressive.
Borodin looked upon Chiang as a ‘left-wing hope’ and treated
him with friendly respect.
After Sun Yatsen s death, a triumvirate was organized to rule
the Kuomintang. It was composed of Hu Han-min, Wang
Ching-wei and Liao Chung-kai. On May 23, 1925, a resolution
by the KMT Central Executive Committee announced the goal
of a Northern Expedition — as the military campaign to reunify
China was called — to be led by Chiang Kai-shek as commander-
in-chief of the Nationalist armies, as well as director of the
Whangpoo Academy. No compromise with the warlords was
envisaged. This reinforced the popular image of a revolutionary
party; it also appeared a victory for the Communists, since the
resolution added that ‘the only government in the world with
which the Kuomintang can work hand in hand is that of Soviet
Russia . Borodin’s prestige was enhanced, and the Kuomintang
appeared to be more and more left-inclined. High-sounding
declarations lulled the doubts of some Communist Party members
and reinforced their desire to ‘co-operate’.
The sudden irruption of reality in this rosy cloudland of decep-
tion was the assassination of Dr Liao Chung-kai in August 1925,
only five months after Sun’s death. In China this murder is now
currently ascribed to Chiang Kai-shek. Chiang was for years a
THE FIRST UNITED FRONT
145
member of a notorious secret society, the Ching Hong Pang, and
the murder was done by two paid ‘dog legs’* (who were never
caught). But somehow Hu Han-min’s brother was implicated;
and this threw suspicion on Hu Han-min. Chiang Kai-shek reacted
with fury at this ‘betrayal of the revolution’ ; he arrested seventeen
commanders — who also happened to be potential military rivals —
and supporters of Hu Han-min, clamped military rule upon the
city of Kuangchow, took over the police, and established his own
control, to check a ‘counter-revolutionary coup’. This assassina-
tion of a man known for his leftist sympathies was the first step
in a deep-laid plot to wrest power.
There had been in that summer a sudden upsurge in Communist
strength, in response to the killing of Chinese by British and
Japanese soldiers garrisoned in Shanghai and Kuangchow. On
May 15 a Chinese worker had been killed by a Japanese foreman
in a textile mill in Shanghai. On May 30 the students demonstra-
ted in the International Settlement; British soldiers fired and
killed a dozen of them. In Kuangchow, on June 23, workers,
students, and cadets of Whangpoo demonstrated in front of
Shameen, an islet on which British, French, and other European
commercial firms had installed their personnel. The British fired
upon the demonstrators and 56 people were killed. This gave rise
to a monster protest movement throughout Cliina. Strikes and
demonstrations occurred in every city; walls were plastered with
pamphlets denouncing Western imperialism. The withdrawal of
all foreign troops, abolition of extra-territoriality, the return of
the foreign concessions to China were demanded by the Com-
munist-led Federation of Labour. Already in 1922, the big strikes
on the mainland had been followed by a strike of 100,000
workers in the British colony of Hongkong. This time, 150,000
striking workers from Hongkong came into Kuangchow, and a
strike committee was formed. Hongkong was paralysed. The
Communist labour unions found their membership growing
with amazing speed; the workers organized revolutionary
* A term for paid murderers of the secret societies or of landlords* private
armies.
146
THE MORNING DELUGE
committees for militia, security, welfare, education and cultural
activities; power to the working class’ became a daily slogan.
The Communist Party all-China membership, only 995 in
January 1925, was 10,000 by November, with another 9,000
members in the various Youth Corps. The All-China Labour
Federation counted 540,000 members in 1925, and 1,240,000
members in May 1926, By 1927 there were to be 2-8 million
members, including dock workers and handicrafts men.
It was this sudden vast increase in Communist manpower and
influence, the appearance in Kuangchow of armed workers’
militia in May and June 1925, which alarmed the Kuomintang
right wing and precipitated the murder of Liao Chung-kai, who
had sided with the workers. But this intrigue was masked by an
apparent split of the Kuomintang itself into conservative and
progressive factions; with the right wing apparently cast out, in
exile outside Kuangchow (it was to form what became known as
the Western Hills group because it held a conclave in the Western
Hills near Peking). In the end there would be little difference
between the two factions; both would be recuperated by the
same landlord and compradore capitalist* interests. The national
capitalist class and the petty bourgeoisie, fearful and leaderless,
would follow where they were led by the big capitalists and big
landlords, because no valid leadership had seized the occasion to
produce a new orientation which they could follow.
It was in the middle of tliis tangle of intrigue and deception
that Mao Tsetung returned to Kuangchow in September 1925.
Even in the Hunan countryside, the May 1925 events had roused
the people. ‘Formerly, I had not fully realized the degree of class
among the peasantry.’ ‘After the May 30th movement
the Hunanese peasantry became very militant ... in a few months,
more than twenty peasant unions were formed.’ In many areas,
* The Chinese Communists distinguish between ‘national’ capitalists, whose
money and resources do not serve outside monopolies or interests, and who there-
fore may form part of the united front and can and must be rallied to the revolu-
tionary cause, and ‘compradore’ capitalists, who serve as middlemen for the
invasion and exploitation of China by imperialist powers.
THE FIRST UNITED FRONT
147
the tenants refused to pay exorbitant rents, and beat up tax
collectors. The slogan ‘Down with the warlords’ which Mao
employed in his propaganda to form peasant unions fitted in with
a more positive programme; land confiscation, forming a peasant
militia, and anti-imperialism. The events of May 30 made it easy
to explain imperialism to the peasantry, for whom foreign in-
vasion and domination was remote, since they saw little of it.
The foreigners helped the warlords; the foreigners had helped
to put down the great Taiping peasant revolt; foreign bullets and
money had always interfered to keep the Chinese people down.
Mao described what he had seen in Shanghai — Chinese insulted
on the streets, not allowed in public parks. Now the shootings
which had occurred made the lesson even more vivid.
It was during this stay in Hunan that Mao Tsetung told his
friends that should it become necessary, a peasant guerilla war
would be the best type of war for revolutionaries. He seems to
have already thought, even if only vaguely, of rural bases; on his
foot treks through the provinces he reached the foothills of his
future first rural base, Chingkangshan.
Rumours about the tall thin agitator who went through the
Hunan countryside organizing peasant unions came to Chao
Hcng-ti, the governor of Hunan who had said the province was
not large enough to contain both Mao Tsetung and himself,
which had caused Mao to leave in 1923. Mao could trust the poor
peasants, but the landlords sent out their private armies to
threaten their tenants if they did not denounce Mao. A visit
Mao Tsetung paid to Changsha was unfortunate; he was recog-
nized. Now he had to go, and very quickly.
But Mao s last stay in Changsha was the occasion for a poem,
Changsha — one of the many he wrote, one of the few that have
been kept. Nothing is more beautiful to a Hunanese than the
landscape of the Hsiang river in autumn; when the hills are russet
and gold, and Orange Grove island, opposite Changsha city,
glows like a gold nugget in the sunset. The ‘summer tiger’ days
that clamp a dripping heat upon the cities and the countryside
are over, and from the Hsiang water there comes a small cool
breeze.
148
THE MORNING DELUGE
CHANGSHA
Alone, standing in autumn*s chill
As the Hsiang river
Flows north past Orange Island,
I see the red-stained thousand hills
With crimson forests trooping.
On the lucid blue water a hundred barges sail.
Eagles fly above.
Fish glide in the deeps,
Under the unmoving sky, all living things strive for freedom.
I ponder, and ask the boundless earth
Who masters destiny?
In past years
I walked here with many companions,
Friends of crowded years and months of endeavour,
All of us students, all of us young.
In high assurance, strong and fearless.
Pointing the finger at all things.
Praising and condemning in our writings.
The highest in the land we counted no more than dust.
But do you remember?
How, reaching midstream, we struck the waters,
And the waves dashed against our speeding boats?
In that August there was high promise and great hope as the
Communist Party swelled in numbers. The Revolution seemed
very near. Mao stood, staring at the water. The Revolution would
go forward, but there would be obstacles to its progress.
There is no rapture, only sober purpose in this poem. Mao
Tsctung was perhaps saying farewell to his own youth. As he
slipped on foot across the hills, the autumn harvest was being
reaped. Soon, armies would be trampling the winter fields.
The Ways Divide
When Mao got back to effervescent Kuangchow, Communist
influence was at a peak. Everyone talked of the workers* battalions,
of the impressive growth of the worker movement. Mao, erst-
while trade union organizer, founder of workers* evening schools
and clubs, looked shunted on to a side way — peasant associations
and peasant Party cells in Hunan seemed very remote and un-
important in the general excitement of the southern city, with
soldiers marching, drums beating, red flags everywhere.
After the May and June killings by the British and Japanese,
other shooting incidents had taken place in Shanghai in September.
Every bullet, every corpse brought more adherents to the
Communist cause, more defiance of W^estern imperialism and its
aggressive outlawry. The walls of Kuangchow screamed de-
nunciations; milling crowds cheered orators at every street
corner. The workers militia drilled at dawn to the sound of
trumpets; the Whangpoo cadets were acclaimed and mobbed;
the excited population roared its approval of the Northern
Expedition to smash both feudalism and foreign imperialism*.
But within the Kuomintang the counter-revolution was being
organized. Chiang Kai-shek*s rise to power had begun.
Harold R. Isaacs* describes Chiang Kai-shek as a man whose
ambition, fathered by ruthless cunning and a total lack of scruple,
brought him to the centre of the political scene*. The adopted son
of a wealthy landlord, Chiang. as a student in Japan, was inducted
imo the secret societies and became the protege of Chang Ching-
chiang, a banker millionaire and secret society member, with
extensive connections with Chinese big business and foreign
bankers. Through this patron, Chiang then became the adopted
T Tragedy of the Chinese Reuolution (Seeker & Warburg
London. 1938; second revised edition. Oxford University Press, London, 1961I*
149
150
THE MORNING DELUGE
grandson’ of Shanghai’s A 1 Capone, Huang Ching-yung, lord of
the underworld in the French Concession of Shanghai. Chiang
was then in deep fmancial trouble. His sponsors bailed him out,
sent him to Kuangchow to become a ‘disciple’ of Sun Yatsen and
the ‘eyes and ears’ of the Chinese secret societies there. Chiang
Kai-shek reported to his Shanghai underworld friends, who sold
the information to the foreign powers. Chiang, who had become
director of Whangpoo Military Academy in May 1924, was now
commander-in-chief of the armies of the Kuomintang.
Chiang was far more worried about worker militancy than he
was about the peasants, although the Haifeng and Lufeng ex-
periences had disturbed him. The peasants were now dispossessing
landlord families, and 70 per cent of the Whangpoo cadets, and
Chiang himself, belonged to landlord or rich peasant families.
Thus the Whangpoo cadets were confronted with social revolu-
tion within the national war for unification of China. Some wanted
to ‘punish’ the peasants, others took the peasants’ side. This
caused open quarrels and even fisticuffs between the cadets.
Chiang mediated, and made revolutionary speeches which greatly
pleased Borodin. He was called ‘the red hope of the revolutionary
army’; the ‘dark-haired darling’ of Borodin. He declared he
would kill his own brother should the latter ‘betray’ the revolu-
tion. He shouted: ‘Long live the world revolution’ and ‘Down
with the imperialists’ as heartily as any worker.
In that autumn of 1925 the Kuangchow-Hongkong Workers
Strike Committee was very powerful. Strength lay in the
workers’ councils, in the peasant associations (also beginning to
arm themselves), in the left-wing groups of Whangpoo cadets,
the League of Military Youth under Chou En-lai. ‘They raised
the KMT nationalist leaders on their shoulders,’ writes Isaacs.
‘They were to carry Chiang to victory.’ Such was their power
that even after Chiang began to deliver telling blows to the
Communist leadership, he still had to pretend to be a radical.
This appears scarcely credible, but Chiang carried it off. In this
he was greatly helped by the ineffectual, flabby non-leadership
of the CCP secretary general, Chen Tu-hsiu.
THE WAYS DIVIDE
I5I
If Mao appeared neglected by his own party, it was not so with
his membership in the KMT. He became secretary of tlic Propa-
ganda Department of the Kuomintang, and he started a political
weekly that September, The weekly was to run for eighteen
months, till the spring of 1927. ‘I became editor of the Political
Weekly. It later played a very active role in attacking and dis-
crediting the right wing of the KMT led by Tai Chi-tao’ (head
of the Society for Sun Yatsenism). He also took charge of the
Peasant Institute for training cadres, housed in a Confucian
temple on the main street of Kuangchow. He had already lectured
at the institute in August 1924, invited to do so by Peng Pai, then
running it. Now he called his own recruits from Hunan to come
to Kuangchow for training and proceeded to renovate the
teaching programme. Among these recruits would be his brother
Mao Tse-min.
The Peasant Institute had produced about 30 graduates during
its first term (July-August 1924) and 142 in its second. All the
cadres were from Kwangtung, recruited by Peng Pai from his
own Haifeng and Lufeng districts. The third term was a three-
month session of 114 cadres, again all from Kwangtung. The
fourth term ran from May to September 1925; ten trainees were
sent by Mao from Hunan, 64 were from Kwangtung.
Mao started work with the fifth term, from October 1925 to
March 1926. He stipulated that the recruitment should not confine
itself to Cantonese cadres; these would prove ineffective in a
Northern Expedition, their dialect being incomprehensible out-
side the province. The enrolment was now much diversified. Of
113 graduates, 41 were from Kwangtung, 44 from Hunan; others
were from Fukien, Hupei, Shantung and Kwangsi.
The sixth term, from May to October 1926, was completely
reorganized. Sessions were lengthened, materials and textbooks
revised, the curriculum rearranged. There were fifteen teachers,
able Mao recruits. The number of trainees swelled to 327; five
were from Kwangtung, 36 from Hunan, 40 from Kwangsi, 27
from Hupei, 22 from Kiangsi, eight from Suiyuan, 10 from
Yunnan and two from Inner Mongolia. Mao was thus building
for the Communist Party a far-flung net of peasant cadres. ‘I
152
THE MORNING DELUGE
established a course for this purpose [to prepare the peasant
cadres for mass mobilization] which was attended by representa-
tives of 21^ different provinces and included students from Inner
Mongolia.’
Arrangements for students at the Peasant Institute were Spartan.
Their dormitories were in the building itself, and Mao too had a
room there, sparsely furnished with plank bed, table and chair,
and a bamboo bookcase. The work was far more thorough and
painstaking than it had been. The students attended over 250
lectures, some lasting three to four hours. Among the lecturers
were Chou En-lai, on military campaigns; Peng Pai, on the
peasant movement in the Haifeng and Lufeng areas and in the
East river area; Teng Chung-hsia, Li Fu-chun. Mao Tsetung
lectured on the problems of the Chinese peasantry, on education
in the countryside, on geography. He also prepared and later
lectured on material forming the subject of his An Analysis of the
Classes in Chinese Society, the first essay in his Selected Works*
Mao lectured 32 to 35 hours a week; gave students military drill,
lessons in hygiene; taught them the techniques of investigation
into social conditions wliich he had now been practising for some
years. He introduced debates, the independent study of books
and articles, condensation by the students of what they read, and
field teams.
I was writing more and more, and now assuming special
responsibilities in peasant work in the Communist Party.’ Clearly
Mao Tsetung was not training peasant cadres only for the
Northern Expedition, but building the nuclei of countryside
Communist peasant organizations.
In January 1926 Mao presented to the Kuomintang Third
Congress a report on propaganda work to be done among the
peasantry, insisting that the centre of the revolutionary movement
was in the countryside’. Elected an alternate member of the
KMT Central Executive Committee, he also moved an amend-
ment to bring the exiled right-wing movement of the KMT
under Tai Chi-tao (now dubbed the Western Hills group) under
control by extending ‘lenient treatment and inducing them to
* Selected IVorks, vol. I.
THE WAYS DIVIDE
153
repent*. This was not dictated by benevolence; Mao argued it
was better to have the right wing return so that their activities
could be ‘checked’, rather than leave them to intrigue outside the
orbit of the Kuomintang. In organization and propaganda he
wanted to extend the mass base, strengthen the grass roots level
of the cadres both among peasants and workers. Once again his
energy swept onward, became a propelling force among the
people he reached. These moves, if considered in the context of
the times, were those of an adroit tactician. They constituted a
vigorous bid for leadership on a broad foundation. Mao’s strategy
was to rally as many people as possible within the revolutionary
movement, including petty bourgeois members of the KMT as
well as the workers and peasants, and those among the national
capitalists as yet uncommitted to counter-revolution. Had he
been followed in this, the CCP would have been far stronger;
but Chen Tu-hsiu never saw the problem at all.
‘On the basis of my study and my work in organizing the
Hunan peasants,’ said Mao, ‘I wrote two pamphlets called An
Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society and the other called The
Class Basis of Chao Heng-ti, and the Tasks Before Us.* The Analysis
is dated March 1926;* it was the result of months of field in-
vestigations, which also served for his lectures at the Peasant
Institute. Mao emphasized the strategic importance of Hunan in
the campaigns to come — Hunan was the key province to conquer
in the Northern Expedition, hence the work of mobilizing the
Hunan peasantry was of great importance. The essay on Chao
Heng-ti was a warning against ‘liberal’ militarists who would try
to join the KMT and corrupt the national movement; Chao was
even then continuing his persecution of trade union leaders.
But Chen Tu-hsiu interpreted the united front relationship as:
Leave the leadership to the KMT leaders,
Mao spent those months arguing, disputing, writing about the
necessity of peasant mobilization, but was not listened to; Chen
* It was first published in February 1926 in the Peasant Monthly, the magazine
of the Peasant Institute in Kuangchow. It was also published in Chinese Youth, the
publication of the League of Military Youth organized by Chou En-lai in
Whangpoo Academy.
154
THE MORNING DELUGE
Tu-hsiu refused to print his Analysis of the Classes iti Chinese
Society in the Communist Party journals or periodicals because he
‘opposed the opinions advocating a radical land policy and vigor-
ous organization of the peasantry under the Communist Party*.
I began to disagree with Chen’s right opportunist policy about
that time, and we gradually drew further apart.’ This is Alao’s
reserved description of the dispute with Chen.
The substance of the matter in controversy was not only the
peasant question but also the whole problem of leadership. This
point is often obscured by Western writers on the subject with
discussion of whether the united front alliance with the KMT
should have been maintained or not. It is argued that maintenance
of the united front was the fundamental error of the Communist
Party. The fundamental problem was whether the Communist
Party should retain the initiative, which was in its hands all the
time but wliich was squandered by default. It was a matter of
class consciousness and class stand, not of maintaining or not
maintaining the united front *
Chen was more anxious to placate and to reassure the landlords
and compradores in the KMT than to proceed with the work of
the Revolution. He was morally defeated even before the 1927
massacres began, because he refused to face the central question
which Mao was now to pose: *Who is our enemy, who is our
friend? He who cannot distinguish his enemies from his friends
cannot be a revolutionary.’
On March 13, 1926, the sixth plenum of the executive com-
mittee of the Comintern, in Moscow, was to adopt a resolution:
The most important question of the Chinese national liberation
movement is the peasant question ... The victory of the revolu-
tionary democratic tendency depends on the degree to which the
400 million peasants take part in the decisive revolutionary
struggle together with the Chinese workers and under their
leadership. This Comintern resolution is echoed in Mao’s ideas
and writings, though Mao’s work with the peasantry antedates it.
Mao Tsetung may have thought for a moment that Chen would
now change, but Chen paid no attention to Comintern resolu-
* For further discussion of this fundamental problem, see chapter 13.
THE WAYS DIVIDE
155
tions not to his liking. Yet by June 1926 there were nearly one
million peasants organized in associations throughout China. A
year later, in June 1927, there would be ten million.
In organizing the peasantry, the Mao-trained cadres of the
Peasant Institute were very effective. By the next year, many of
them were to die, slaughtered along with hundreds of thousands
of peasants in 1927 and 1928. Mao, talking to Edgar Snow in
1936** *did not think the counter-revolution would have been
defeated in 1927 even if the Communist Party had carried out a
more aggressive policy of land confiscation and created Com-
munist armies from among the workers and peasants’. But the
soviets, he said, ‘could have got an immense start in the South,
and a base in which, afterwards, they would never have been
destroyed’ had the policies of the CCP been for ‘resolute and full
peasant and worker mobilization’.
It was not only Chen Tu-hsiu that Mao had to do battle against.
There was also the ‘ultra-left’ group in the Party, the leaders in
the All-China Federation of Labour, Chang Kuo-tao and Li
Li-san.
Chang Kuo-tao argued that it was the ‘proletariat’, the workers,
who were the leadership of the Revolution, and therefore it was
they and their strength alone which could win it. He persisted in
his contempt for the peasantry. ‘The working class is strong
enough ... to make revolution alone.’ Mao emphasized that the
working class needed allies and friends; that the semi-proletariat,
the peasantry, excluding rich peasants and landlords, were its
natural friends. Chang despised the peasants as ‘backward’ and
spontaneous capitalists’, missing the obvious fact that a leader-
ship also needs foot soldiery, numbers, masses, a potential of
human content; it cannot fight alone. Thus, between the lethargy
of Chen and the sectarian euphoria of Chang, Mao was checked
and hindered in his work. Even if the Comintern and Lenin had
pointed out the role of the peasant masses of Asia in the Revolu-
tion, Chang Kuo-tao and Chen Tu-hsiu, from diametrically
opposite stands, chose to ignore or fear peasant mass potential;
* Edgar Snow, Red Star Over Chitta^ op. cit.
THE MORNING DELUGE
156
this type of ‘city thinking’, dogmatic and unrealistic where
China (with a population in which 85 per cent were peasants)
was concerned, was to bedevil the CCP for a long time.
As the winter of 1925 yielded to the spring of 1926, one by one
the Communist positions were being eroded away. The great
mass protests of 1925 throughout China had shown that it was
no longer possible for foreign interests to hold China down by a
show of military force, by gunboats on rivers or the shooting of
demonstrators. The fear that all China would ‘go up in flames’
and become red’ now pervaded Western business in China.
Chinese businessmen were assiduously wooed by British,
American, and other financial conglomerates. There were re-
newed promises of taking up the question of Chinese tariff rights
and extra-territoriality (clauses of the unequal treaties imposed
since 1842.)* The Washington Conference of 1922 had promised
to look into the matter’, but nothing had been done. Now a
solemn declaration was issued to the Chinese merchants that
tariff autonomy would be restored to China by January i, 1930.
Other lures were dangled before Chinese businessmen to wean
them away from ‘the Reds’. Suddenly British bankers and
taipansf became ‘concerned’ about Cliinese culture. ‘Save the
priceless heritage of China’s ancient civilization,’ they clamoured.
The Western community of Shanghai even did an unprecedented
thing; it actually invited to dinner, at the Majestic Hotel, repre-
sentatives of the Shanghai Chinese business community. ‘The
first time in history ... any such gathering has taken place,’
crowed the Anglo-American-owned China Weekly Review, At
this dinner the American chairman of Shanghai’s Foreign
Municipal Council begged the Chinese capitalists to join foreign
interests in devising countermeasures against Bolshevism, He
asked: ‘Why not take advantage of the extreme credulousness
of the Chinese working classes ... take advantage of it for their
good and for ours.’ He suggested that the Chinese businessmen
present would make better ‘leaders’ of the Chinese society than
* End of the first Opium War — the first unequal treaty imposed on China.
t Big merchant princes — a word fallen into disuse since 1949.
THE WAYS DIVIDE
157
these ‘mad ... rebels’. Three weeks later, again making history,
three Chinese members were admitted to the all-European
Shanghai Municipal Council, which ran the International
Settlement.
Through businessmen, secret societies, through a thousand and
one strands of guile and corruption, seduction and deceit, ap-
proaches were made to all and sundry in Kuangchow. Foreign
interests were then reassured by the secret societies, many of
whose members were also agents of the European police in
China, that ‘our man’ in Kuangchow would take care of the
Communists when the time came. That man was Chiang
Kai-shek.
And indeed, Chiang was doing his best for foreign interests
and Chinese compradores and landlords. Insidiously the workers
were being deprived of power. True, they were mobilized; they
had armed themselves, they drilled; they worked enthusiastically.
But their hours of work, conditions of work were still the same
as before; apart from a few minor reforms, nothing was done
to ensure security or better working conditions. Buoyed by hope,
the workers suffered and sacrificed, and patiently put up with the
continuing exactions. ‘After the Northern Expedition, all will be
well.’ They were already being betrayed, but they did not know
it. There were continual complaints from the industrialists of
‘excesses’ by workers. The 150,000 Hongkong strikers staying in
Kuangchow had to be fed and clothed. Money was short, and
necessarily had to come from local capital. The customs revenues
were under British control, which blocked all funds to the ‘Red’
government in Kuangchow. To preserve ‘unity’ the Communist
labour leaders, following Chen Tu-hsiu, ‘restrained’ the workers
by a process of collective bargaining. At no time during these
decisive months did the Central Committee of the CCP, led by
Chen Tu-hsiu, give its own political orientation to the masses.
It restrained’, ‘scolded’, and ‘punished’ their ‘excesses’, and thus
became an auxiliary of the counter-revolution. It did not lead,
nor take bold initiatives from its position of strength.
The responsibility of Borodin for this sapping is possibly
greater than appears. Borodin argued that restraint must be
THE MORNING DELUGE
158
exercised. Things were difficult; the Communists must not
‘cause anxiety’ to the capitalists in the KMT. There must be
‘unity of action’ above all ... Thus the betrayal began.
In January 1926, to replace the murdered Liao Chung-kai, Wang
Ching-wei was confirmed as head of the KMT and another
triumvirate was set up, consisting of Wang Ching-wei, Chiang
Kai-shek and Chiang’s military superior. General Hsu Chung-
chih. This was a move to curb Chiang.* But Chiang soon got
rid of Hsu, with the help of the cadets and the Workers Strike
Committee, after denouncing him as a ‘rightist’. This left a duo
of Wang Ching -wei and Chiang Kai-shek. Wang Ching-wei
had all the titles and civil honours, Chiang had all the military
power. Less than three months later Chiang decided the time had
come for the next step to weaken the more liberal wing in the
KMT by getting rid of Wang Ching-wei, who stood between
him and absolute power, and at the same time to deal a decisive
blow to the Communist Party. This led to the famous Cliungshan
incident of March 20, 1926. Like all other landmark episodes in
the story of the Chinese Revolution, it has not been completely
elucidated to this day.
Borodin was away in Shanghai (his wife, Fanny Borodin, an
American, had placed their cliildren in an American school
there). The Russian adviser in charge of the Navy Department of
the KMT was also away. The KMT navy consisted of a few
gunboats; one of them, the Chungshan, was in the charge of a Com-
munist, Li Chih-lung. Li Chih-lung had confronted the Society
for Sun Yatscnism the year before and denounced it as anti-
democratic and trying to split the united front. He had thus made
himself a target for Chiang.
On March 18, Li Chih-lung received a message asking him to
dispatch two gunboats, the Cliungsimn and the Paopi^ for inspec-
tion and docking at Whangpoo dock, a mile or so from the city
docks. Another message then came by telephone advising him to
have the Chungslian ready for inspection, with full equipment.
* For all his play-acting, Chiang’s inordinate ambition caused considerable
unease among the more dedicated and upright personalities in the Kuomintang.
THE WAYS DIVIDE
159
Li Chih-lung overhauled the ships with extra combat-rcady
troops on board, and then telephoned Chiang Kai-shek, as he
understood the orders to come from him. Chiang, later, would
say that he had been warned there would be an attempt to
kidnap him, and that when Li telephoned to say ‘The gunboats
are ready’ he felt his suspicions confirmed and acted ‘to avert
disaster’.
No one seemed to query the singular prescience of Chiang
Kai-shek, who had already mustered troops and police in large
numbers. These, moving with swift precision, arrested Li Chih-
lung on his gunboat and forty other Communists in the city
itself The quarters of the Russian advisers in Kuangchow were
surrounded, their guards disarmed. Chiang then seized and
imprisoned twenty-five Communist cadres of the Whangpoo
Academy, among them Chou En-lai. Before the news of these
arrests could spread, the labour union headquarters were raided,
leaders arrested, the Workers Strike Committee and its pickets
disarmed, and all weapons seized. Troops and police patrolled
the streets, creating an atmosphere of terror; trucks rolled up and
down the main thoroughfares with police and special guards
armed to the eyebrows.
The other Kuomintang leaders were utterly unprepared. Li
Chih-lung unwittingly implicated Wang Ching-wei, saying it
was he who had ordered extra soldiers on board all the navy
ships, to ‘prevent trouble’, some weeks previously. Chiang kept
the tension on with street patrols, curfews, sudden searches, all
the apparatus of military intimidation. The CCP was incapable of
prompt adequate action. Chang Kuo-tao clamoured for an
immediate rupture of the united front. This would have been
disastrous, for by now the workers were disarmed, the Strike
Committee paralysed, and all the weapons in Chiang’s hands.
The whole of the Kuomintang would have rallied behind Chiang
Kai-shek and the CCP would have been suspected of having
tried (and failed) an attempted coup by gunboat.
In view of the events, the comrades of the left should retire
for a while.’ This resolution was passed by the KMT Central
Executive Committee at an urgent meeting. Wang Ching-wei
i6o
THE MORNING DELUGE
realized that Chiang wanted him out of the way; he left for
Europe on a ‘study tour’ and Chiang remained sole master.
Had the CCP then called upon the masses, rallied them — they
had the means, for the press and newspapers, curiously enough,
had not been occupied by Chiang’s squads— had they shown
mettle and courage, and refused either to submit or to run,
Chiang Kai-shek might not have won this round. But Chen
Tu-hsiu was petrified with fear, and kept wringing his hands and
asking what to do. Borodin returned from Shanghai, and Chiang
fell on his neck, sobbing that perhaps he had been a bit ‘excessive’
but his nerves were bad; he was overworked. His life was in
danger, without him the revolutionary cause could not go on;
after all, there was the Northern Expedition to prepare. Borodin
reprimanded the Communists, stressing they must not be ‘exces-
sive and hasty . Chen Tu-hsiu apologized with meek alacrity;
Chiang was gracious enough to accept being pacified, and now
advised Chen Tu-hsiu to withdraw Chou En-lai from his post at
Whangpoo, saying, ‘Communists take too much space there,’
and Chen obeyed with a profusion of apologies. Chiang was now
addressed with the utmost deference by the Communist leaders,
who wrote to him in deeply respectful terms as to a superior.
Instead of the Communists, it was Chiang who now came for-
ward to explain the situation to the workers! On May 2, he
presented a report to a joint session of the two parties (KMT and
CCP) entitled ‘The Great Union of the Workers, Peasants and
Soldiers ! On May 14 martial law was declared: rumours of a
Communist coup’ were floated ; again the atmosphere of panic
was unleashed. The workers remained disarmed; the trade unions
gave no orders; the Strike Committee was helpless. In the country-
side, landlords, and landlord-recruited armies, started to murder
peasant union leaders.
Yet when Chiang stepped on the platform of the Third All-
China Labour Federation Conference held in Kuangchow at the
end of May 1926 (with Liu Shao-chi and Li Li-san in charge),
which represented 400 unions and 1,240,000 workers, of whom
800,000 had taken part in more than 200 political and economic
strikes in the preceding year, he sounded wholeheartedly left.
S. Mao Tsctuiig in Ycnan,
around the time he first talkc
with Edijar Snow
9. Leaders of the Autumn
Marvest Uprising in the autuini
of 1927. Mao Tsetung is third
from tlic left
10. A Miao woman pomts
out to the author the mountain
paths through which she !cd the
Red Army
II. Loushan pass crossed
by the Red Army on the Long
12. Crossing tl^e Snow
mountains on the Long March
13. Luting bridge over the
T.uii river. Red Army men
swung from the chains under
fire to cross and capture it from
Kuomintang troops during the
Long March
THE WAYS DIVIDE
1(>1
‘The worker-peasant masses ... have swept away all the counter-
revolutionaries and consolidated the basis of the national govern-
ment ... From this one can see that the workers and peasants arc
already able to fight imperialism their otini forces, without
reliance upon the forces of the army,’ said Commandcr-in-Chicf
Chiang Kai-shek, greeted with thunderous applause by the workers
there. Chiang then clenched his fist and shouted: ‘Long live the
world revolution!’ To anyone versed in Chinese ways of doing
things, Chiang was warning his own adherents that the workers
were still too strong; the comedy must be played a little longer.
As Mao Tsetung said then: ‘Chiang Kai-shek speaks well. Let us
see what he will do.’ What Chiang was doing was actually very
clear. He was ‘curbing’ Communist influence.
On May 15, 1926, at the KMT Central Executive Committee
plenary session, Chiang had introduced a special resolution to
‘readjust party affairs’. It was designed to limit the role of Com-
munists in the KMT party and its organizations. A complete list
of all CCP members who were also KMT members was to be
furnished to him; directing posts in the KMT should not go to
Communists; all instructions issued by the CCP to its own
members were to be submitted first for approval to him. The
response of the CCP leadership was abject. Cliiang also asked to
be apprised of all messages and directives of the Comintern to the
CCP. Mao was the only one present to voice dissent.
With Wang Ching-wei tactfully away on a European tour,
Chiang became leader of the KMT, the army, the police; all
government and party offices were subordinate to him as com-
mander-in-chief of the Nationalist Army. He controlled finance,
the arsenal, the political department, Whangpoo Academy. But
he still needed the Communists for the Northern Expedition;
without them his army would have incredible difficulties, for he
could not mobilize peasants and workers. He now made a ‘self-
criticism , invited reprimand for the ‘overhasty actions of his
subordinates . He then punished some junior officers, sacrificed
a few of his old associates — such as the garrison commander of
Kuangchow, whom he disliked — and with real power in hand
went on to prepare his next coup.
THE MORNING DELUGE
162
The KMT was being transformed from a nationalist party with
revolutionary elements to a counter-revolutionary instrument in
the hands of a military dictator, Chiang Kai-shek. From that
time Chen Tu-hsiu, in fact if not in word, abdicated leadership
in the united front, the Revolution, and even the CCP. From
that time the Northern Expedition to unify China was being
subverted to become a military campaign to launch Chiang’s
rule.
For decades controversy has raged over tliis First United Front
policy of 1924-1927. It has been asserted that Leon Trotsky, with
his warnings of betrayal and his demands that the CCP ‘come out
of the KMT’ and disrupt the united front, was right, while
Stalin’s recommendation to preserve the united front was wrong
and led to the massacres.
There is no doubt that Stalin was not only misinformed on the
Chinese Revolution but never understood its complexity. The
Comintern, in its resolutions and directives, would become in-
creasingly out of touch, and especially out of time, with the
situation. But this does not make Trotsky’s thesis correct. The
‘left’ of the CCP, like Chang Kuo-tao, followed Trotsky in their
clamour for a rupture of the united front; but a rupture of the
united front could not cure the weakness within the Communist
Party; it would have meant its extermination, and Chiang would
then have brought in foreign troops to ‘aid’ in the liquidation.
This would have meant the disintegration of the whole nationalist
movement Sun Yatsen had given a lifetime to build up.
The substance of the matter was not the retention of the united
front, but Chen Tu-hsiu*s policy of capitulation, practically
handing the leadership of the revolutionary movement to the
counter-revolutionary leaders of the Kuomintang. The importance
of this First United Front and this first betrayal, is precisely the
lesson it gave to those capable of learning it.
Trotsky’s condemnation of the united front was a repudiation of
Lenin’s thesis of ‘temporary alliance’ with bourgeois parties.
Lenin had said in 1920 that the bourgeoisie would try to seize
and keep control of the national revolutionary movements.
THE WAYS DIVIDE
T63
However radical they sounded, they would betray and compro-
mise with imperialism. Hence tlic Comnuinist Party must pre-
serve its own independence and keep the leadership ol the workers
and peasants in its hands. This strategy of the united front only
Mao Tsetung seems to have understood. Ten years later, when the
Second United Front was formed, he would hammer the terrible
lesson of the first into the Chinese Communist Party.
The coup of March 1926 had been reported to Moscow, but its
real significance was denied or underestimated, and for this
deplorable error reports minimizing its gravity, from l^orodin
and Chen Tu-hsiu, must also be held responsible. Borodin wrote
of the ‘impetuosity’ of the Communists. Chiang played another
master stroke by sending his son, Chiang Ching-kuo, to be
educated in Moscow. How could anyone then suspect him of
not being pro-Communist?
Mao Tsetung was present at the combined CCP-KMT session
in May where Chiang Kai-shek, through his representative there,
insisted on Tcadjustment’ ofCCP-KMT relations. All the resolu-
tions for restriction and limitation of the functioning of the CC:P
were passed by the KMT members. Communists lost their jobs
in KMT departments. When Chiang Kai-shek’s representative
brought up a motion that Communist members should declare
their Communist affiliations, Mao Tsetung protested. He argued
that this was impossible, for in most areas in China a Communist
would be arrested and executed on the spot. ‘This is not good
for the future of the national Revolution,’ said Mao. He relin-
quished his office in the Propaganda Department of the Kuomin-
tang. But the Peasant Institute was ignored; Mao then left for
Shanghai to report to the Politburo of the CCP.
A meeting was held. Liu Shao-chi, leader in the All-China
Federation of Labour, and Chang Kuo-tao were present. Liu
Shao-chi said that the workers were ‘too backward’; that it was
a great responsibility to educate the peasantry and to lead them;
he implied that the working class was not ready and suffered from
infmtile leftism ; he thus advocated the same policies as Chen
Tu-hsiu. Chang Kuo-tao, on the other hand, maintained that the
164
THE MORNING DELUGE
national bourgeoisie was the natural enemy of the Revolution,
that a break was the only cure possible. The young CCP must
release itself of the united front and fight.
Mao Tsetung started to speak of the peasants and of peasant
mobilization, but was interrupted by the secretary general, Chen
Tu-hsiu. Unable to get a hearing, Mao told his friends that the
only way to cure the weakness in the Communist Party was to
prepare armed peasant organizations on a nationwide scale.
The peasantry is the surest ally of the proletariat,’ he repeated.
He then went back to the Peasant Institute in Kuangchow. Li
Fu-chun, married to Tsai Chang, the sister of Mao’s friend Tsai
Ho-sen, was then in Kuangchow as a teacher. He asked Mao to
lecture to his students on the topic of the peasantry when Mao
returned from Shanghai.
In July 1926 Mao again went back to Shanghai to set up, at last,
the Peasant Department of the Chinese Communist Party,
utilizing the cadres trained at the Peasant Institute in Kuangchow.
He also went to Hunan and alerted the cadres there. In June the
KMT Central Executive Committee had decided to launch the
Northern Expedition; in July the mobilization of the Nationalist
armies was announced. Travelling to and fro, writing articles,
editorials, lecturing and mobilizing the peasant associations for
the battles to come, Mao’s work was the most important of all
for the Revolution, but it was overshadowed by more spectacular
parades, mass demonstrations of enthusiasm as the Nationalist
Army set forth from the city of Kuangchow to end ‘feudalism and
imperialism*.
There is a little-known article by Mao Tsetung, written about that
time, on The Bitter Sufferings of the Peasants in the Provinces of
Kiangsii and Chekiang, and Their Antifetidal, Anti-landlord Move-
ment, published in November 1926 in the Communist weekly, the
Guide. It was the result of investigations in the countryside con-
ducted by Mao Tsetung when he went to Shanghai to consult the
Politburo. In these fields trips he took Peasant Institute trainees
with him. The article was abridged from the original draft when
printed; it left out the recommendation which Mao Tsetung put
THE WAYS DIVIDE
165
forward for organizing the peasantry, a ‘censorship’ possibly
imposed by Chen Tu-hsiu.
Mao wrote down in detail the situation in the various counties
he visited. He related how the landlords oppressed the farmers;
how Chou Shui-ping, a student of Wuhsi, returning from Japan
in 1925 had tried to organize ‘the tenant farmers’ co-operative
self-help society*. ‘The peasants followed him ... they rose like
clouds ... with one voice demanded the reduction of rent ...
But before the peasants had united themselves the landlords had
done so ... The gentry and landlords of the three districts acted
simultaneously.* They appealed to the warlord in control of the
province, Sun Chuan-fang, who executed Chou and suppressed
the movement. But in 1926 again the peasants had risen to demand
rent reduction, for whether the year was good or bad, landlords
refused to lower rent.
In the spring of 1926 in Tzuhsi county, the landlords had
refused rent reduction in spite of the drought, and the farmers
rioted. ‘All the lumpen proletariat joined them very courageously,’
Mao wrote, alluding thus to his classification in An Analysis of
the Classes in Chinese Society of the ‘elements* not considered
worthy of Marxist classification by some of his colleagues;
beggars, landless field hands, vagrants. The peasants went into the
landlord houses, ate up the grain and stores, burned the police
station, and shared out the weapons. ‘The movement was sup-
pressed ... the reason being that the masses did not fully organize
themselves and they did not have the proper leadership ... so that
the movement failed when it was starting.*
This article was probably meant as a warning, spelling out the
course to take. The broad hint about leadership was meant to
rouse his comrades in the Politburo. In vain. Chen Tu-hsiu had
already adopted limitation of peasant struggle* as his policy and in
September had forbidden the formation of any peasant militia.
Mao spoke of struggle, Chen propounded the formulas ‘Step
back and Work for the KMT without going beyond the limits
imposed by the KMT*. Thus in military work, as Chou En-lai
was to report, the Communists were ordered to ‘co-operate with
the KMT without in any way doing any political organizing for
THE MORNING DELUGE
1 66
themselves within the armies preparing to set out on the military
campaign to unify the country.
On July 9, 1926, the Nationalist Army left Kuangchow for the
Northern Expedition in the greatest enthusiasm. To the exultant
crowds cheering the grey-clad battalions, Chiang had promised to
defeat all the warlords, unify China, secure the abolition of unequal
treaties and extra-territoriality, the abolition of imperialism and
the achievement of ‘universal peace*. Chiang was the man of the
hour, hero of the land. This was great timing; Chiang had again
wrested the initiative; the CCP appeared a captive chained to his
triumph.
Within two months Kiangsi, Hunan, Hupei provinces fell to
Nationalist armies. On September 13 the army of General Tang
Shcng-chih, a Hunan ‘liberal’ militarist who had rallied to Sun
Yatsen’s Kuangchow government in 1923, entered Changsha.
By the end of September the province was in his hands, and Tang
became acting governor; the other warlords fled.
In these swift victories, it became evident that success was
largely due to the organized strikes of city workers and to the
peasant uprisings behind enemy lines. The fervour and self-
sacrifice of the workers was unequalled; they formed militia bat-
talions and took the warlord garrisons by surprise. The peasants
in the countryside marched to seize police posts, acted as porters,
couriers, guides, stretcher-bearers, fed and watered the Nationalist
Army — all without pay. In Hunan, especially, where Mao Tse-
tung had worked so hard, the Nationalist Army was assisted by
peasant self-mobilized militia which continued to expand on their
own. The battles were won for the army before the battalions
arrived. This massive demonstration of popular power frightened
many of the officer cadets and big capitalists. Here was might and
power, it could make a thoroughgoing revolution. The more
victories, the more they feared for themselves.
In December 1926 Mao was back in Changsha. His presence
there was of great importance, for he addressed the first Peasants
and Workers Congress of Hunan (December 20-29, 19^6), of
which he had been elected chairman. At this congress of workers
THE WAYS DIVIDE
167
and peasants, whose significance has been blurred and even ig-
nored, Mao made a speech important in its timing and also
challenging, for it went against Chen Tu-hsiu’s orders.
According to a report in the Changsha newspaper dated
December 29, 1926, Mao said that a great chance was coming to
China. Already 1,200,000 peasants had been organized; a united
front of workers, peasants, traders and students was necessary.
The Revolution needed a union of all revolutionary classes, but
fundamentally the national revolution was a peasant revolution
under the leadership of the working class, and it therefore
depended on the peasantry. He then analysed the market for the
commercial trades in the countryside. He also analysed the
situation of the students and intellectuals ; most of them were non-
revolutionary, some were progressive, a few were reactionary;
if they wanted to make revolution they must ally themselves with
workers and peasants.* We can imagine how unwelcome this
speech was to Chen Tu-hsiu. But even more significant is the
situation in which Mao found himself at that time.
Mao was torn between what he felt ought to be done and
what he had been ordered to do. Complaints by the Kuomintang
through its delegates in Moscow about ‘excesses’ of the peasants
and workers had even reached Stalin. Borodin received truculent
messages from Chiang Kai-shek declaring that Hunan was ‘out
of control and that there would be incidents due to peasant
excesses. Strict orders were given to labour unions to restrict the
workers and to peasant cadres to ‘restrain’ the peasantry in Hunan.
This also was Mao’s mission; he had been told to ‘check and
thwart’, to tell the Congress of Peasants and Workers to submit
to orders. But as he faced the tremendous tide of peasant power he
saw the dreadfulness of the wrong decisions and the betrayal of
the Revolution they entailed. The speech he made was therefore
more militant than expected by Chen Tu-hsiu.
Meanwliile Stalin, who had advocated rousing the peasants,
had now been swayed; this explains a telegram from Stalin sent in
October 1926, in which he enjoined ‘caution and restraint’.
Stalin, who did not know the situation, could not imagine how
* Documents on Mao*s speech seen by author in Changsha museum, 1971.
i68
THE MORNING DELUGE
Chen Tu-hsiu would jump at this chance to stop effective action.
In November Stalin reversed himself. *The information wc get
is incorrect,’ he said, and a telegram was then sent in November
which reinforced the line of peasant mobilization. In the same
month the Comintern (seventh plenum) under Stalin’s directive
also reversed its resolution advising ‘restraint’. But it is a pointer
to the confusion and contradictoriness which existed — not to
mention translation difficulties, misreporting, misinterpretation —
that Chen Tu-hsiu did not show this later reversal to Mao, nor,
it appears, to other members of the Politburo until much later.
No one can direct a revolution by telegraph,’ Stalin is reported
to have said, yet this was now happening. The Comintern resolu-
tions, Stalin s directives, came thick and fast because the CCP
leadership was incapable of making its own decisions. But it was
also incapable of implementing those of others, and this ‘think-
tank help from afar added to the disaster, so much so that even
today the tangle has led to erroneous interpretation.* Moscow
cables gave a stream of advice to China, but never knew in what cir-
cumstances it would misapply. The Comintern organized com-
mittees to work on the ‘documentary material* and submit
theses; these took time; two committees produced two divergent
theses. Envoys were sent who squabbled openly and contradicted
each other. And there was the time element; the situation changed
so rapidly that by the time ‘advice’ came from Moscow all was
radically different. And in Moscow itself the Stalin-Trotsky
struggle did not make things easier.
* See Kostas Mavrakis, Du Trotskyisme (Francois Maspero, Paris, I 97 i)*
pp. 151-162. It is now reported in the USSR that the Russian General Galen
established a plan for the Northern Expedition and all the military operations;
but neither he nor any of the other Russian advisers drew attention to the class
struggle; they divided the KMT into Tight* and ‘left’ and stated that the ‘left’,
‘due to the objective course of events’, would ‘remain with the CCP’. The
Russian documents are interesting in that although they assess clearly most of
the Chinese generals, they only mention Chiang Kai-shek favourably (the
documents were prepared six months or more before Chiang’s coup of March
1926). The Russians thought Chiang would be forced to keep ‘left’ because he
depended on the Kuangchow government for funds and resources. In this way
they signally failed to understand the financial network of Western big business
in China.
THE WAYS DIVIDE
I (>9
In the midst ot this appalling muddle,* wliat was Mao to do?
A photograph shows him at this December Peasants and Workers
Congress singularly gaunt, standing in a loose-fitting jacket,
hands on his hips. His face is not happy. All we know is that he
did not restrain the peasants and workers at the Congress, who
passed resolutions for confiscation of land from the landlords.
In the meantime, the revolutionary army swept forward to
Wuhan, which fell in December. Chiang Kai-shek arrived in
Changsha and delivered a speech, in his role as a ‘people’s hero’,
calculated to please an audience of militant w^orkers and banish
all suspicion of himself.
‘Only after imperialism is overthrown can China obtain her
independence ... The Third International is the headquarters of
the world revolution ... We must unite with Russia to overthrow
imperialism ... The Chinese Revolution is part of the world
revolution ... Wc must unite all partisans of world revolution
to overthrow imperialism.’ Thus he spoke, and already the
workers in Kuangchow were being murdered by his lieutenants.
‘In Hunan I inspected peasant organizations and political condi-
tions in five districts, Changsha, Tiling, Hsiang Tan, Hungshan
and Hsiang Hsiang, and made my report urging the adoption of a
new line in the peasant movement.’ This was Mao’s famous Report
on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunati'f based on a
five-week tour, January 4 to February 5, 1927.
Suppression of the peasants’ associations had begun right after
the Nationalist Army victory in Hunan at the end of September
* M. N. Roy, the Comintern Indian who became a Trotskyite, and Bukharin,
later to be purged by Stalin, hammered out between October and December 1926
two entirely divergent lines of action for the Chinese revolutionary situation.
Tan Ping-shan, director of the CCP Labour Department, who was in Moscow as
head of a delegation to the Comintern in November 1926, contradicted himself
twice in his report. At one moment he was strongly urging that the peasant
revolution should not be restricted, but later urged that it should be. Borodin
emphasized that the main task was military victory over the militarists, and Borodin’s
thesis was supported. The seventh plenum of the Comintern, however,
emphasized that ‘the party of the proletariat must put forward a radical agrarian
programme ... or it will lose hegemony in the national revolutionary movement*.
t Selected Works, vol. I.
6 *
THE MORNING DELUGE
170
1926. Yet the registered membership in the peasant associations
had increased in two months, November and December, from
one million to two million families; 54 counties out of 75 now
had peasant associations. But the head of the CCP Peasant De-
partment pelted Mao with angry telegrams urging that the ‘riff-
raff’ be restrained so as not to antagonize the KMT. What were
Mao’s feelings as he clutched the telegrams, knew the policies
wrong and heard round him the ovations of the peasantry?
He could not ‘check and thwart’. He investigated. Between
December 30 and January 3 Mao spent five days in Shaoshan
preparing his spirit for the great battle he would now begin.
The peasants had already started on their own to confiscate
landlords’ land, to punish bullies and corrupt officials; these
actions, described as ‘atrocities’ by the fleeing landlords, had the
approval of Mao Tsetung. Considering what they had suffered,
the peasants were remarkably fair-minded and lenient. This was
revolution, and Mao Tsetung found liimself on the side of the
peasant masses in the midst of this tornado, this tempest, as he was
to describe it, an outpouring of revolutionary energy, cosmic,
elemental, irresistible; an avalanche capable of ‘changing heaven
and earth’.
All his life he would remember the impact of this extra-
ordinary strength, ‘mightier than any’ when once set in motion,
animated by the ideas that would ‘teach the sun and moon to
change places’. Every day and night of these thirty-two days he
would remember as a bone-deep experience, shaping his thoughts.
‘During my recent visit to Hunan I made a firsthand investi-
gation of conditions ... I called together fact-finding conferences
in villages and county towns ... I listened attentively ... Many of
the hows and whys of the peasant movement were the exact
opposite of what the gentry in Hankow and Changsha arc saying.
I saw and heard of many strange things of which I had hitherto
been unaware. All talk directed against the peasant movement mnst
be speedily set right. All the wrong measures taken by the revolu-
tionary authorities concerning the peasant movement must be speedily
changed. Only thus can the Future of the Revolution be benefted. For
the present upsurge of the peasant movement is a colossal event. In a
THE WAYS DIVIDE
171
very short time ... several hundred million peasants will rise like
a mighty storm, like a hurricane, a force so swift and violent that
no power, however great, will be able to hold it back. They will
smash all the trammels that bind them and rush forward along the
road to liberation.’ (Author’s italics.)
Mao Tsetung went on to describe, paragraph by paragraph, all
he had seen, drawing anecdotes, vivid word pictures. The develop-
ment of the peasant movement fell into two periods: before
September 1926 a period of organization, but from ‘last October
to January of this year ... of revolutionary action’. This latter
period did coincide with the Northern Expedition, and during
it the membership in peasant associations had jumped to two
million families, which meant ten million people.* ‘Almost half
the peasants in Hunan are now organized.’ They were attacking
the local tyrants — landlords who respected no law or common
humanity, who killed, raped the daughters and wives of peasants
or kidnapped them at will — ‘the privileges which the feudal
landlords enjoyed for thousands of years are being shattered to
pieces’. ‘ “All power to the peasant associations” has become a
reality. Even trifles such as a quarrel between husband and wife
are brought to the peasant association.’ So powerful were they
that small landlords sought admission to the peasant association.
“Who wants your filthy money?’ the poor peasants would reply,
and refuse them.
But more telling is Mao’s pointed remark on the reaction to
all this. ‘ terrible^' or Jine^ ... When the news from the
countryside reached the cities, it caused immediate uproar.’ Even
quite revolutionary-minded people in the cities were ‘down-
hearted*, said Mao, and thought that ‘It’s terrible’. But Mao
asserted that it was fine. ‘The great peasant masses have risen to
fulfil their historic mission ... In a few months the peasants have
accomplished what Dr Sun Yatsen wanted but failed to accom-
plish in the forty years he devoted to the national revolution.
This is a marvellous feat ... It’s fme.
‘If your revolutionary viewpoint is firmly established and if
you have been to the villages and looked around, you will
* As Mao explained, each family registered only one name.
172
THE MORNING DELUGE
undoubtedly feel thrilled as never before. Countless thousands of
the enslaved — the peasants — are striking down the enemies who
battened on their flesh. What the peasants are doing is absolutely
right; what they are doing is fine!
‘The peasants are clear-sighted. Who is bad and who is not ...
the peasants keep clear accounts ... A revolution is not a dinner
party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing em-
broidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so
temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A
revolution is an insurrection , an act of violence by which one class
overthrows another.* Mao made fun of those who said the peasants
were going too far. ‘Proper limits have to be exceeded in order to
right a wrong, or else the wrong cannot be righted.'
Mao listed ‘fourteen great achievements’ of the peasantry.
These achievements sound very much like the suggestions and
proposals which were then being made by the Comintern. Mao
was proving that the peasants were indeed carrying out the
agrarian revolution and doing the things they were supposed to
do, according to Communist dicta. They were organizing them-
selves, hitting the landlords politically and economically, over-
throwing feudal rule, defeating landlord armies, organizing their
own self-defence, eliminating bandits, abolishing levies, and
starting movements for education and co-operatives. They were
also building roads and repairing embankments. And all this they
were doing by their own strength, through their own organiza-
tions. Mao ended with a gibe at the Chen leadership: ‘To talk
about “arousing the masses of the people” day in and day out
and then to be scared to death when the masses do rise — what
difference is there between this and Lord Sheh’s love of dragons?
This referred to a famous lord who loved dragons in paint, but
when a real live dragon came to visit him, he nearly died of fear.
Back Mao went to Changsha with this piece, to find that things
had very much deteriorated during the thirty-two days that he had
been gone in the countryside. For now all was fear and faint-
heartedness. In Wuhan, where the Kuomintang government
* The Kuomintang government, previously sited in Kuangchow, installed itself
in Wuhan on January i, 1927.
THE WAYS DIVIDE
173
had moved from Kuaiigchow, he found things highly unpleasant.
This corruption of the cities under the Kuomintang we must
trace briefly; for much had happened during the time Mao was
away in the countryside seeing peasant power ‘teach the sun and
the moon to change places’.
In Kuangchow and in other cities under the KMT actually
under Chiang Kai-shek’s military control, public meetings, the
press, the workers’ and peasants’ volunteer corps, the right to
strike, were restricted in the name of ‘maintaining discipline to
ensure the success of the Northern Expedition’. All strikes were
labelled ‘counter-revolutionary*. The secret society men from
Shanghai had been pouring into Kuangchow since the summer of
1926; they came by sea from Hongkong, laden with money and
weapons (supplied in great part by the British and French), to
destroy Communist organizations.
The secret society men formed spurious labour unions. One
gang became a ‘policeman’s union*, and was then turned loose in
armed attacks on the real workers’ unions, a dress rehearsal for the
massacres to take place the next year. The ferocity of the gangs,
the cruel tortures they inflicted, gravely affected morale. More
than fifty factory workers were killed in a few days, and hundreds
crippled. The employers threw out the crippled workers without
compensation; they were upheld by the ‘collective bargaining*
teams instituted and accepted by the CCP Labour Department.*
In December, in a speech on the peasant question, Stalin liim-
self had suggested the formation of elected revolutionary com-
mittees by the peasantry, to carry our the agrarian revolution.
He had added, ‘/ kmit^ there are people in the KMT, even in the
Chinese Communist Party, who think it is impossible to have a
revolution in the countryside, who are afraid that pushing the
peasantry in the revolution will break the united anti-imperialist
front ... This is a profound error ... The peasant question must be
linked to the perspectives of the Chinese final aim.’
* To some foreign delegates of the Third International who visited Kuangchow
in January 1927 (among them J. Doriot, then a French agent of the Comintern,
later a fascist) General Li Chih-seng, Chiang’s henchman in command there,
declared that he ‘loved and cherished tenderly the working class’! He was at that
very moment beating, jailing and shooting them.
174
THE MORNING DELUGE
There is nothing in this speech of Stalin’s supporting the
restraint preached by Chen Tu-hsiu.
Within the KMT the power struggle between Chiang Kai-shek -
assisted by the right-wingers — and a ‘liberal’ wing, supporters of
Wang Ching-wei, which was labelled the ‘left’ Kuoniintang, had
now reached a climax. This left* KMT was itself a confused
amalgam; there were genuine patriots, but also many opportu-
nists. On the whole, it had very few big landlords and business-
men. The main goal of this group was to oust Chiang from power
and get Wang Cliing-wci back. They represented a trend to
restore civilian control of the government, in contrast to Cliiang’s
purely military rule. This ‘left’ KMT, now in Wulian, sought to
restrain Chiang Kai-shek, who had moved headquarters in
November 1926 to Nanchang, to direct the campaigns.
Chiang had suggested that the KMT government follow
him to Nanchang. This would have made it easier for him to
control the civilian administration. But this was turned down,
and a convention of the KMT in Wulian in January removed
Chiang Kai-shek from his party and army positions and reserved
the leadership for Wang Ching-wei, who was now asked to
return.
This intrigue within the KMT was generally regarded as in-
stigated by the Communists. Chen Tu-hsiu, seconded by Borodin,
pinned his hopes on Wang Ching-wei. The acting Hunan gover-
nor, General Tang Sheng-chih, was cast in the role of Chiang’s
rival as the military arm of the ‘left’ KMT to continue the
Northern Expedition, while Chiang Kai-shek was castigated for
authoritarianism.
In the city of Wuhan the workers were jubilant. The great
concentration of China’s small proletariat (4 million in all,
600,000 in Wuhan)* induced a sensation of triumph in CCP
members by their ardent and total support, which obscured the
real issues for those who never looked beyond city walls. The
‘left* KMT petty bourgeois radicals, who ‘sounded more Red
* It is reckoned that there were at most 4 million workers in China then —
I per cent of the total population.
THE WAYS DIVIDE
175
than any Communist’, as Anna Louise Strong reported,* added
to tliis general (and deceiving) impression of victory for the left-
wingers. But as soon as the workers in Wuhan began to organize
themselves into pickets, militia, and revolutionary committees,
the traditional wail sounded — they were ‘going too far’, com-
mitting ‘excesses’ — from these very men whose inflammatory
speeches made screaming headlines in the press.
Again to avoid ‘conflict’, the Communist Wuhan Labour
Department set up an arbitration board which agreed ‘to follow
tradition in fixing the working hours’ and ‘to leave the practice
of hiring and dismissing to traditional practice’ as well as the
treatment of apprentices, cliild labour, and women. The
Communist Federation of Labour executive committee, with
Liu Shao-chi and Li Li-san at its head, agreed to this.f The work-
ing day was twelve hours, the working week seven days; there
was no compensation for accidents; children (called apprentices)
went unpaid for the first five to seven years of labour.
But the political vigour of the workers created its own momen-
tum. They demonstrated at the Hankow British Concession
border; the British withdrew their gunboats; on January 4
the workers stormed the concession, removed the barricades, the
barbed wire and sandbags, and took the concession back ‘for the
country’. There was no looting, no pillage, no one was killed or
beaten; no houses entered. No leadership from the KMT or the
Communist Party had dictated this action; it was a demonstra-
tion of working-class power. Eugene Chen, foreign minister of
the Wuhan KMT government, signed the papers legalizing the
return of the Hankow and Kiukiang British Concessions to
Chinese jurisdiction.
Chen Tu-hsiu deplored the seizure: ‘The foreigners might have
become irritated ... ’
* Anna Louise Strong (1885-1970) in her CJiina^s Millions (Gollancz, 1936)
gives excellent descriptions of Wuhan at that time.
t Liu Shao-chi, vice-chairman of the executive committee, All-China Federa-
tion of Labour, organized the Wuhan League of Labour Unions in November
1926. Li Li-san was also a member of the Communist Trade Union International.
Anna Louise Strong mentions meeting him in Wuhan in 1927; sec her China's
Millions, op. cit.
176
THE MORNING DELUGE
At Nanchang visitors, foreign and Chinese, diplomats and
bankers, flowed in and out of Chiang Kai-shek’s headquarters.
Chiang now had access to funds and resources from the foreign
powers in China and the compradores. At almost the same time
that Borodin and the Russian advisers in ^X^uhan were saying
that Chiang could not possibly turn against the national revolu-
tion because it would cut off his funds and resources, he was
being amply rewarded for doing precisely that.
Soon after the takeover of the British Concession, Chiang had
paid a short visit to Wuhan. Borodin took him round. Tight-
lipped, Chiang inspected the city; saw the British Concession
kept in order by workers’ pickets; saw the workers’ military
training; returned in stony silence to Nanchang and announced
his intention to ‘purify’ the ranks of the KMT. All those who did
not carry out the Three Principles of Sun Yatsen were to be
ousted.
It was against this backdrop of confusion, intrigue, betrayal, that
Mao produced his Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Move-
ment in Hunan. In its passionate yet profoundly logical sweep,
combining scrupulous social research and observation with an
emotion almost volcanic, the report will remain one of the world’s
great literary documents as well as a political manifesto. In it
Mao’s grasp of the Chinese agrarian revolution in its political,
economic, social and human dimensions appears in consummate
detail. There is not only analysis, but also a plan, detailed and
minute, for organization and leadership; for as Mao would say,
quoting Marx: ‘It is not enough to study the world ... one must
change it.’
What Mao’s report made clear was that the peasant upsurge
had coincided with his return to Hunan the previous winter and
so had the membership increase. This was evidence to Chen
Tu-hsiu that Mao was abetting peasant revolutionary action.
He had failed to ‘check and thwart’.
‘Early next spring,’ Mao said (that would be February 1927),
‘when I reached Wuhan, an interprovincial meeting of peasants
was held, and I attended it and discussed the proposals of my
THE WAYS DIVIDE
f77
thesis ... At this meeting were Peng Pai, Fang Chih-min, and
two Russian Communists ... among others. A resolution was
passed adopting my proposal for submission to the Fifth Congress
of the Communist Party; the Central Committee, however,
rejected it.’
Mao had written: ‘Every revolutionary comrade and every
revolutionary party will be put to the test, to be accepted or
rejected as they decide. There are three alternatives. To march
at their [the peasants’] head and lead them? To trail behind them,
gesticulating and criticizing? Or to stand in their way and oppose
them? Every Chinese is free to choose, but events will force you
to make the choice quickly.' Mao thus challenged ‘every comrade’
to measure up to revolution.
There were more meetings at which Mao Tsetung spoke force-
fully on the peasant revolution. He was supported by Tsai Ho-sen,
Li Fu-chun, Peng Pai, Fang Chih-min. But Chen Tu-hsiu refused
to publish or to circulate Mao’s report. Thus he chose to ‘stand
in their way and oppose them’.
Yet in the same February, in Moscow, the enlarged plenum of
the executive of the Comintern had once again discussed the
peasant question. MaoTsetung’s report, though denied printing in
the official Chinese Communist weekly, the Gnidc, was favour-
ably received. The thesis adopted by the plenum reiterated: The
agrarian question at the present stage ... is in acute form ...It is the
central point of the actual situation. The class which luill boldly take
up this essential question and give it a radical solution ... loill direct
the Revolution.
‘The might of Chinese militarism rests on foreign imperialism
on the one hand, on the indigenous landlords on the other ... To
overthrow completely the military and feudal cliques, the econo-
mic and political struggle of the peasantry must be developed, for
it is part of the anti-imperialist struggle.
The idea that an acute class struggle in the countryside will
weaken the anti-imperialist united front is unfounded ... Not to
boldly take up the agrarian question, not to give support ... to
the objective demands of the peasant masses will be a real danger
for the revolution ... It would be unwise not to put in first place
THE MORNING DELUGE
178
in the programme of the national revolution the agrarian move-
ment, for fear of alienating the uncertain and perfidious co-operation
of a part of the capitalist class ... This tactic is not revolutionary
proletarian politics ... the Communist Party must not fall into
this error.’
Can there be any doubt but that the Comintern thesis coin-
cided with Mao’s thesis? Again, in March 1927, at a meeting of
the ‘left’ Kuomintang (with Communists present), Mao Tsetung
spoke with great passion of the peasant movement; defended the
peasant organizations for their direct dealing with bullies,
gangsters, and bad landlords, and urged the arming of the peasan-
try. He once more presented his report to the Central Committee;
it was rejected again, as counter to ‘everything that had been
decided’. In April, at a special commission called to ‘investigate’
the land problem, Mao Tsetung spoke: ‘There is a high tide of the
peasant movement, both in Hunan and in Hupei ... In solving
the land question in China, we must first grasp reality.’ To people
who said the peasants’ actions were ‘illegal’ he retorted: ‘Legal
recognition of this reality will only come afterwards.’ He did not
advocate direct confiscation of land but simply ‘not paying rent;
this is enough*. In other meetings, he reminded the political
cadres active in the peasant movement that land reform was the
best way to get the peasants to join in the national revolution and
that ‘without this [land reform] the revolutionary forces would
find it difficult to move’.
But Mao was not through with inept and hostile bureaucracy,
the last dishonourable refuge of the Chen ‘leadership’. The
special commission before which Mao spoke set up a ‘land survey
committee’, ostensibly to ascertain how land confiscation should
be done, and define the difference between big landlords and
small ones. Mao Tsetung, irritated by this pointless procrastina-
tion, said that ‘in Hunan, the peasants have already divided up the
land themselves ... the landlords are fleeing into the cities. He
added, ‘The militarists in Hunan are also exploiters of the peasants
... The Nationalist government, after establishing itself in Hunan,
has also not eliminated this exploitation ... completely.
And now not only Chen Tu-hsiu but other Communists, made
THE WAYS DIVIDE
179
to face the stark facts of revolution, turned against Mao. Chang
Kuo-tao found Mao Tsetung’s proposals on confiscation of land
of landlords over 30 mous (5 acres) but advocating ‘flexibility’, as
conditions were different in each province and locality, not
thoroughgoing enough. He recommended wholesale immediate
confiscation of all landlord land, big or small. Finally the land
survey committee set the limit for confiscation at 500 mous
(80 acres), and only if there were no officers from the KMT armies
in the family; any land belonging to officers’ families, however
large, could not be touched. Since there was scarcely a landlord
family who could not boast, through clan connections, of one
relative, however distant, in the army, this simply meant there
would be no confiscation of landlord land at all, nor any land
reform.
Thus the betrayal grew.
The Betrayal
By the spring of 1927 the CCP-led All-China Federation of
Labour was forsaking the workers in Wuhan as it had done in
Kuangchow. The workers were asked sacrifices ‘for the sake of
the revolution*. They gave up their demands for an eight-hour
day at the arsenal, to work thirteen to seventeen hours ‘because
our revolutionary government is threatened*. They postponed
the demand for a child labour law. ‘I myself saw children of seven
and eight working ten hours in cotton mills,* writes Anna Louise
Strong.* The reason for this was twofold — the pressure from the
‘left* Kuomintang capitalists and the economic difficulties in
which the Wuhan government found itself.
On March 24, Chiang Kai-shek occupied Nanking, which he
would make his capital city. He was now advancing, deliberately
and slowly, upon Shanghai, symbolic city of ‘imperialism*. In
Shanghai several thousand workers had already staged an up-
rising in October 1926 against the local warlord Sun Chuaii-fang.
Chou En-lai was there to organize the workers. In February 1927
Chou had conducted a general strike with half a million workers.
But the Shanghai branch of the Communist Federation of Labour
was under the direction of Li Li-san, and it stuck to the principle
of ‘unity*, which was the Chen Tu-hsiu slogan. As a result
Kuomintang ‘trade unionists* also mobilized the workers, to
prepare them to receive ‘the heroic armies of the Northern
Expedition’ under Chiang Kai-shek.
No directive for combat readiness was issued by the Central
Committee. Chou En-lai, however, had set up an underground
city council, and also a provincial council ready to take power in a
coalition if need be. He drilled the workers for armed assault.
The KMT garrison commander tried to forestall Chou En-lai s
* Anna Louise Strong, China’s Millions, op. cit.
180
THE BETRAYAL
i8i
bid by making preparations to surrender the Chinese part of tlic
city to Chiang Kai-shek, and to him alone. Chou En-lai, liowever,
prepared for the take-over of the Chinese cit)', and on the even-
ing of March 20 led the workers to occupy the police headquarters,
the small arsenal, and the post office. The plan involved seven
surprise attacks, launched at the same time. The railroad station
was also seized. This momentarily stopped Chiang’s entry into
the city, and gave the Communists a decisive advantage.
For three weeks the workers held the Chinese city. The foreign
concessions and International Settlement were not touched by the
Communists, while outside Shanghai the troops of Chiang waited.
As late as March 16, 1927, the Russian advisers of the KMT still
thought that ‘the revolutionary pressure from below is so strong
that Chiang is compelled to swear allegiance to the principles of
revolutionary loyalty*. Rumours of a KMT-CCE rift were
denied by Chen Tu-hsiu,
In late March Wang Ching-wei came back from France via
Russia, where he had had lengthy talks with Russian notables.
Chen Tu-hsiu went to meet him in Shanghai. On April 6 they
issued a joint proclamation restating the alliance between the
Wuhan KMT government and the CCP, and denouncing as
‘malicious rumours’ all talk of a split. Wang Ching-wei also had
a meeting with Chiang Kai-shek on the very same day. A sensa-
tion of optimism, of an entente, was thus created. It weakened
the will to fight of the more militant workers’ leaders.
Chiang Kai-shek’s intermediaries were meanwhile parleying
with foreign and Chinese compradores and banking firms of
Shanghai, who arranged for an immediate gift to him of five
million silver dollars. On April 8 Chiang met his old friends the
heads of the Shanghai secret societies. These in turn met and had
talks with several foreign consular officials. Arms and ammuni-
tion were moved in trucks from the foreign settlements to the
gangs, and money flowed thither as well.
On April 12, six days after the meetings held ‘in a spirit of
unity, friendship and co-operation’, squads of well-armed secret
society thugs went round seizing Communist organized labour
pickets and executing them. ‘The shooting started and did no
i 82
THE MORNING DELUGE
Stop for three weeks/ J. B. Powell* was to record. On April 14
Chiang’s army entered Shanghai and continued the butchering.
Several thousand workers died, other thousands were horribly
tortured. For months the daily rumble of military trucks would
be heard, bringing their loads of workers to be shot. For almost
two years, every weekend, the executions continued. Thus
Shanghai was ‘saved’ by Chiang Kai-shek.f
Chen Tu-hsiu, who had been wined and dined by Chiang the
week before, was almost captured. He found a hiding place with a
friend who smuggled him out of Shanghai. Chou En-lai, with a
price on his head, managed to escape death by minutes, and to
reach Wuhan in time for the Fifth Congress of the CCP, which
had been scheduled for April 27.
On April 13, Chiang Kai-shek established a government in
Nanking, and was immediately recognized by all the Western
powers as the sole and legal government in China. There were
now two KMT governments, one in Nanking and one in Wulian,
where Wang Ching-wei had been greeted enthusiastically— at the
very moment the workers were being massacred in Shanghai.
The Wuhan KMT government was in great disarray. There was
a complete blockade by foreign gunboats, and the big business-
men and quite a few of the military were now secretly looking
towards Chiang Kai-shek to ‘save’ them as he had ‘saved
Shanghai. A good many of the military were ex-warlords who
had rallied to the KMT cause. This had worked its corrupting
effect on the Nationalist armies and their commanders. Never-
theless, the Wuhan KMT government denounced Chiang as
‘hired by the imperialists’.
In Peking, sixty Communists and trade union leaders were
arrested, including Li Ta-chao, who was strangled on April 17.
The USSR embassies in Kuangchow and Peking were searched,
and Russian diplomats and their wives were killed in Kuangchow.
All over China now, peasants and workers were butchered by
warlords and landlords. The militarists and ex-warlords of the
*J. B. Powell, My Twenty-Jive Years in China (Macmillan, New York, i945)-
t A dramatic description of some of these events is found in Man’s Fate
(Gallimard, Paris, 1934) by Andr^ Malraux.
THE BETRAYAL
183
‘left’ Wuhan KMT government now took their cue from Chiang
Kai-shek; from sporadic killing they were to proceed to systematic
massacre.
It was in this inspiring atmosphere that, ‘staring and trembling
like a rabbit before an anaconda’,* Chen Tu-hsiu convened tlic
Fifth Congress of the CCP that April. There were 80 delegates,
representing 57,967 members, and Wang Ching-wei was guest
of honour. At the same time the Wuhan ‘left’ Kuomintang also
prepared to hold its own Fourth Congress.
The Congress became one massive capitulation. Chen Tu-hsiu
spoke of broadening the Revolution’ (under the leadership of the
KMT) before ‘deepening’ it, which only meant once again
relinquishing any attempt to deal vigorously with the situation.
He now hoped the W^uhan left KMT would co-operate with
Feng Yu-hsiang, a Northern militarist reputed more democratic
than others, against Chiang Kai-shek, thus reverting to what the
late Sun Yatsen had found so disastrous, the protection of warlord
armies. The ‘left’ KMT now saw only one recourse, to rally more
militarists against Chiang under the slogan of ‘unification of
China’. However, the militarists always rallied (temporarily) to
the man who had the most money and power; none of them
scrupled to change sides as often as convenient, and the ‘left’
KMT found it impossible to buy the protection of Feng Yu-
hsiang, who would prove as unreliable as any other warlord. He
went over (temporarily of course) to Chiang, and advised the
Wuhan KMT to get rid of the Communists.
The call of Unity above all else’ became the slogan of the Fifth
Congress of the CCP. Mao Tsetung was held responsible for
peasant excesses , upbraided, and denied the right to vote. Chou
En-lai also was criticized for not getting the workers to disarm
themselves, which had ‘provoked’ the massacres!
The Fifth Congress did nothing to denounce or stop the
repression of workers and peasants; on the contrary, the line ‘was
* Anna Louise Strong.
t M. N. Roy, the Indian representative of the Comintern, who had arrived in
China in March, was present at the Fifth CCP Congress. His total ignorance of
Chinese conditions, and his own views, only added to the panic and confusion.
THE MORNING DELUGE
184
to slow down the agrarian revolution; concessions to the land-
lords, gentry, militarists ... The central committee made com-
plete concessions to landlords, gentry, everyone.’* ‘The party was
still under the domination of Chen Tu-hsiu,’ said Mao. ‘Although
Chiang Kai-shek had already led the counter-revolution and
begun his attacks on the Communist Party in Shanghai and
Nanking, Chen was still for moderation and concessions to the
Wuhan KMT.’
Mao Tsetung vehemently opposed the capitulation that Chen
cringingly offered to the KMT, to ‘reassure them’. It did not
reassure them; they were now looking for an outlet to save them-
selves. Suddenly, many of these so-called radicals, whose slogans
had been even more left than those of the Communists, turned
against them. As Anna Louise Strong, who visited Wuhan in
those crucial days, records: ‘The intellectuals of the KMT had
outdone the peasants and workers in the fierceness of their
demands. Sun Fo, the son of Dr Sun Yatsen by his first wife, and a
typical businessman of the conservative sort, shouted: “Kill the
gentry”. Hsu Chien, elderly minister of justice, made flaming
speeches more extreme in their demands than those of the
Communists.’
But ‘ultra-leftism’, petty bourgeois radicalism, changes fast to
ultra-reaction. This phenomenon, already described by Lenin,
occurs time and again in the Chinese Revolution.
‘I was very dissatisfied with the party policy then, especially
towards the peasant movement,’ said Mao. ‘I think today that if
the peasant movement had been more thoroughly organized
and armed for a class struggle against the landlords, the soviets
would have had an earlier and far more powerful development
throughout the whole country, but Chen Tu-hsiu violently
disagreed.’
Chen Tu-hsiu later pleaded that he had merely followed in-
structions from the Comintern. This is not borne out by a study
of the documents. Moreover, the instructions could not keep
pace with the changing situation; factual details of the Chinese
situation were not relayed to Moscow; and anyway, the duty of a
* Chu Chiu-pai*s words.
THE RETRAYAL
T85
Communist is not to ‘obey orders when he knows they are
wrong’, as Mao was to say, ‘but to use his own head’. Mao had
put the problem clearly in his essay on the peasant movement in
Hunan: it was a question of choke, of vision and class stand, of
making up one’s mind. Chen and the members of the Central
Committee who supported him did not refuse to choose, but thev
chose against the workers and peasants and clung to the property
owners, the bourgeoisie and the militarists. They doenned
themselves.
Through that terrible spring and summer of cowardice and
betrayal, of treachery and slaughter, Borodin sat in Wuhan.
Although described by Anna Louise Strong as a man who ‘had all
the revolution at his finger tips ,* he was greatly responsible,
along with Chen Tu-hsiu, for what ensued. Miss Strong was to
meet Borodin again in 1939 in Russia, shortly before World War
II, when he told her: ‘1 was wrong, I did not understand the
Chinese revolution ... I made so many mistakes.*’}*
Anna Louise Strong, however, says that ‘at that time [May
1927] it was his view, and the general orthodox Communist
view, that the revolution coming in China could not be a Com-
munist revolution, or even a workers* revolution ... but must
rather be a peasants’ revolution, aided and partly led by the more
developed urban workers, but by no means rejecting alliance
with the petty bourgeoisie.’ This formula, however, remained a
formula, a placebo; it was Stalin’s formula of 1926, but nothing
had been done (save by Mao) to implement it; quite the contrary.
By the end of April the ^X^uhan left KMT had already swung
fir to the right; the hopes of the CCP leadership centred on Wang
Ching-wei; but Wang would prove himself of the same cloth as
Chiang Kai-shek, an unscrupulous opportunist.
The Comintern Indian envoy M. N. Roy, whom Mao described
as a man who ‘stood a little to the left of Chen and Borodin, but
he only Just stood’, was also garrulous and undisciplined. ‘He
* Borodin’s expertise in revolution was based upon an unsuccessful previous
attempt in Mexico.
t Author’s interview with Anna Louise Strong, 1962.
THE MORNING DELUGE
1 86
talked too much,’ said Mao. Roy was now to show Wang
Ching-wei a secret telegram from the Comintern wliich outlined
how the Communists were to utilize the KMT for further
advance of the Communist movement. At the time Wang
Ching-wei and others of the ‘left’ were already in secret negotia-
tions with Chiang Kai-shek. Wang Ching-wei’s personal
jealousy of Chiang was acute, but he was also terrified at the
surge of revolution, and he was arranging, tlirough a ‘mediator’,
a way out for himself. That mediating friend was T. V. Soong
the banker, brother of the Madame Chiang Kai-shek to be,
Soong Mei-ling. The resolve of Wang Cliing-wei to abandon the
Communists was hastened by Roy’s appalling indiscretion; for
in the telegram the Comintern suggested raising an army of
workers and peasants. The knowledge of this document gave
Wang a way out.* He would now claim there was a Communist
conspiracy, and turn against the CCP.
There now began in Wuhan almost a landslide towards reac-
tion, motivated by manic fear of real revolution. The slaughter of
Shanghai was to be repeated here.
During that terrible spring thousands of petitions from peasant
associations had been received by the CCP Agriculture Depart-
ment, demanding clear policies, leadership, and weapons for
self-defence. They had been met with harsh scolding and denun-
ciation of ‘excesses’. Peasants were being killed, driven from their
villages; cadres and active workers were tortured and shot. But
the Communist ministers of agriculture and labour ordered the
disarming of the labour pickets and the peasants’ associations,
threatened the peasantry with severe punishment should it
proceed against the landlords. The workers were finally dis-
armed by order of the All-China Labour Federation, and this
order was carried out by Liu Shao-chi and Li Li-san. Liu Shao-chi
in June 1927 made a report on the ‘successful’ disarming of the
workers.
In May the Chen Tu-hsiu leadersliip had already abandoned the
workers and peasants. Two days after Chiang had started the
killings in Shanghai, all over China militarists had begun their
* See Kostas Mavrakis, Du Trotskyismet op. cit., p. 162.
THE BETRAYAL
187
own slaughter. The slaying of peasants, the torturing, mutilating,
impaling, burning of the women (thousands died witli breasts cut
off, impaled, cut in pieces, tortured in unmentionable ways) form
a nightmare recital of violence.*
Reports came pouring in, they were even printed in the Mill
Kiio Jill Pao, the republican newspaper, ‘of kerosene poured over
peasants and burning them alive, of using red hot irons to tear
their flesh’. In Hupei, 4,700 peasants, including 500 women, were
murdered between February and June by beheading, burying
alive, strangling, burning, cutting into pieces. Never did the
peasants inflict upon extortionate landlords a fraction of the
horrors that were inflicted upon them.
The peasants begged for weapons; they formed militia grtnips
and captured guns; inflexibly Chen Tu-hsiu in the name of the
Central Committee called for an end to ‘excesses and infantile
acts and for ‘restoration of order’, ordering the peasants and
workers to surrender their weapons.
Those terrible weeks were to remain burned into Mao’s
consciousness; speaking of them decades later, he had tears in his
eyes. Any less dedicated person would have given up or would
have turned altogether bitter with the ‘Communism’ which had
given such ‘leadership’. But Mao persisted; he and Tung Pi-wu
wrote report after report on what was happening. Mao refused
to give orders to disarm the peasantry, and was then accused of
having instigated the ‘excesses’.
In Changsha on May 21, to be known as ‘Horse Day’ massacre,
the KMT General Hsu Kc-hsiang put white bands round his
soldiers arms, marched them to the headquarters of the Hunan
provincial labour union and of the students’ and workers’
associations, and started shooting the unarmed occupants to the
cries of Long live Chiang Kai-shek’. No report of this deed was
published in the press for over a month.
On the 27th of May 20,000 infuriated peasants and workers, in-
cluding miners from Pinghsiang and Anyuan, marched on
* Abuiidaiuly documented in newspapers and books of the period. Also see
I larold R. Isaacs, The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution, op. cit.
i88
THE MORNING DELUGE
Changsha to avenge the massacre. It is now affirmed that Mao
backed this movement. But the workers and the peasants were
ordered to disarm by the Communist-led All-China Federation of
Labour Unions and the All-China Peasant Association. Then
they were mown down by the machine guns of the militarists.
In the course of the next three months over 30,000 people were
to die in the province, over 100,000 in the year.
Every day for weeks outside the west gate of Changsha, batches
of boys and girls, men and women, were marched to their death.
The soldiers amused themselves with the women, dispatching
them with bullets fired upwards into the body through the
vagina. Girl students who had cut their hair short were singled
out for butchering.
But not all the KMT armies were counter-revolutionary. Some
of the units, such as the Fourth Army, also known as the Ironsides
for its outstanding performance in the Northern Expedition, were
Communist-officered. Flowever, such suspect units had been sent
off to quarters near Nanchang* on the pretext of regrouping for
an assault against Chiang Kai-shek, now in Nanking.
A ‘committee of five’ with Borodin at its head was sent by the
KMT executive and the Central Committee of the CCP from
Wuhan to restore ‘order’ in Hunan; it set off on its travels but
could not proceed. Percy Chen, who accompanied Borodin, told
me that one of the things Borodin set out to do was to try to find
Mao Tsetung and order him to ‘stop the peasants’! But Borodin
did not get far. At Yochow, a riverine city on Lake Tungting,
halfway to Changsha, Borodin was courteously banqueted by the
warlord in charge, then sent back to Wuhan.
In June the ‘left’ KMT denounced its Communist ally. Decrees
were issued giving protection to all who would betray Com-
munists; peasant and worker leaders were shot; all land seized was
restored to the landlords. A hundred-odd delegates of Hunan
peasant associations, waiting for a conference in Changsha, were
* Nanchang, which had been Chiang’s headquarters for some months, had been
pardy evacuated by Chiang troops when he marched on Nanking and Shanghai.
A garrison of mixed KMT soldiers and warlord troops who had rallied to the
KMT remained there.
THE BETRAYAL
189
executed cn masse. Communist schools were closed; left-win^
teachers and students were burned alive.
On June 20 the Central Committee ot the issued a state-
ment of eleven points, entirely giving up power and control of
workers’ and peasants’ organizations to the KMT. Nevertheless
400 delegates of the All-China Labour Federation, also then in
conference in Wuhan, were arrested. Many were jailed and some
were killed. It was at this juncture that Liu Shao-chi was arrested.
It seems that he then saved himself by abjuring Communism.*
He spent a short time in jail reading the classics of Confucius,
which were sent to him by his captors. Tliis is regarded now as
the beginning of his career as a Tenegade’.
Public execution of trade unionists and labour leaders enlivened
the streets for weeks. The Central Committee broke up; C:oin-
munists were fleeing or going in hiding everywhere.
At the time of the Horse Day massacre of May 21, Mao Tsetung
had tried to hold mass meetings in Changsha to call for a punitive
expedition against the militarists who had perpetrated this act.
He had even called personally on Cicneral Tang Sheng-chih, the
acting governor of Hunan, to ask for action against his rani-
paging subordinates. This was a very courageous act, as at the
time no Communist dared to expose himself. He had also sup-
ported the peasants’ march on Changsha of May 27. This aroused
the wrath of Chen Tu-hsiu, who accused Mao of organizing the
uprising and ordered him to go to Szechuan: however, Mao
persuaded Chen to keep him in Hunan. Chen particularly
reproached Mao for having aided the Hunan provincial peasant
association to call for the confiscation of all land belonging to big
landlords. As the Terror spread, Mao Tsetung wrote bluntly:
All the peasant associations are being surrounded and the leaders
killed. Wang Ching-wei blustered: ‘1 have heard the organizers
of the peasant masses say, rely on your own strength; don’t trust
the KMT... This is disobedience ... the people have therefore
been ill-treated by counter-revolutionaries and we have not been
able to save them.’
* Because of the terror and confusion in those days, tliis episode was not known
until forty years later. See chapter 17 for details.
190
THE MORNING DELUGE
Acting-Governor Tang Sheng-chih issued orders for the arrest
of Mao Tsetung, and the latter left Hunan along with Kuo Liang
and Hsia Hsi, two of his early recruits. They hid in Wuhan for a
short while, until on July 15 the ‘left’ KMT decided to formally
expel the Communist Party. Communists were ordered to give
up their membership in the Party on pain of death. Execution
squads rounded up and decapitated suspects throughout the
cities.
On July 27, with executions going on in the streets of Wuhan,
the leaders of the ‘left’ KMT went to the Wuhan railway station
to bid a courteous farewell to Borodin, who was returning — or
rather, being returned — to Russia.
The hapless Borodin, accompanied by Anna Louise Strong,
was driven by car by Percy Chen to safety within Russia. Their
trek through North China, Mongolia, the Gobi desert, until the
frontiers of China were well behind them, was no mean exploit.*
But orders not to touch Borodin had been given. The journey
lasted seven weeks and they finally got to Moscow. Behind them
they left a Chinese Revolution almost drowned in blood, a
Communist Party apparently decimated. Borodin was in despair.
‘It’s all over,’ he said.
A congratulatory telegram from Chiang Kai-shek in Nanking
praising its righteous and patriotic action in getting rid of Com-
munists was received by the ‘left’ Wuhan government. Recon-
ciliation was effected, the Nanking and Wuhan KMT regimes
‘reunited’. Wang Ching-wei, with a large sum of money,
departed for yet another European saunter.
Tang Sheng-chih, the militarist governor of Hunan who tried
to arrest Mao Tsetung, was to rally to Mao in 1949 and end his
life with a sinecure. Wang Ching-wei, the brilliant ‘left’ politician,
was to end up in 1939 as a puppet of the Japanese when the latter
invaded China. He accepted a post in Nanking as head of the
Japanese puppet government of South China, and in Cliina today
his name has become synonymous with infamy.
* Notes and personal interview with Percy Chen, 1966, 1970*
9
The First Red Base: The First ‘Left’ Line
In inid-July of 1927, while the killing was in full spate, a new
policy calling for uprisings in China was proposed in a resolution
by the Comintern to the Chinese Communist Party, The situa-
tion had radically changed, as Stalin was to write.* Difficulties of
communication, and various interpretations (including possibly
translation difficulties)’!' rendered the directing of Chinese revo-
lutionary movements from Russia more than precarious; hence
only guiding principles’ had been issued. In 1936, Mao was to
comment on this point to Edgar Snow.
The Tliird International ... is not an administrative organiza-
tion, nor has it any political power beyond that of an advisory
capacity ... Although the Communist Party of China is a member
of the Comintern, still this in no sense means that Soviet China is
ruled by Moscow or the Comintern ... We are not fighting for
an emancipated China to turn the country over to Moscow.’
But these ‘guiding principles’ had been made an excuse by Chen
Tu-hsiu for subservience to the Kuomintang. Although Stalin
later deprecated giving advice to the Chinese Communists, his sug-
gestions did carry the force of orders’, and the orders were often
ambiguous and contradictory.:): For years psychological depen-
dence on Moscow, a ‘revolution by telegraph’, was to bedevil the
course of the Chinese Revolution and create more tragedies.
Actually, although the time for large-scale uprisings had now
passed, Stalin s advice was not altogether inappropriate. It
* Concerning Current Questions’, Inprecor, vol. VII, no. 45 (August 4, 1927).
t See an episode described in John E. and S. R. Rue, Mao Tse-tung in Opposition
i 927 J 935 (Oxford University Press, London, for the Royal Institute of Inter-
national Affairs, 1966), p. 71.
i This IS not a defence of Stalin, but there is no doubt that a close reading of all
t e documents must lead to an objective reassessment ofhis share of error and also
nis share of correct evaluation.
I91
192
THE MORNING DELUGE
coincided with Mao’s growing certainty that armed struggle was
the only way out; and this was also Chou En-lai’s view of the
course to follow. Revolution was at a low ebb, the Party decima-
ted, dismay and terror paramount; yet out of defeat was to be
born a new strategy for victory. Seventeen days after the break
with the ‘left’ KMT government, on July 15, 1927, when the
latter declared the CCP outlawed, the Nanchang uprising of
August I was launched.
A temporary Politburo had been formed; it had met on July 13
in Kiukiang with Chu Chiu-pai, a Russian-returned intellectual,
in charge. A Front Committee was organized, and Chou En-lai
became its secretary. It broke definitely with the old policy of
co-operation with the KMT. It also started a new, military out-
look among the intellectuals of the CCP. Until then indifference
and disinterest in military matters was one of the handicaps of the
intellectuals in the Central Committee — except for Mao Tsetung
and Chou En-lai. The ease with which armed workers’ pickets
were sacrificed, and peasants too, was part of this class contempt
for the lives of the poor, based on unconscious assumptions of
their worthlessness.
The Chinese Communist Party did not have its own army but
was dependent on the Kuoinintang armies, in which there were
units such as the Ironsides (Fourth Army) mentioned earlier,
which were largely staffed by Communist cadets trained under
Chou En-lai at Whangpoo. The establishment of the Front
Committee, and the uprisings which followed, led to the forma-
tion of the Red Army. Yet again, for reasons which show how
little the intellectuals in the CCP understood the situation,
although the break with the Wuhan ‘left’ KMT government was
total, for a number of weeks the flag under which these uprisings
were to take place remained the KMT flag! And because they did
not understand military tactics or strategy, Chu Chiu-pai and
other intellectuals now in the leadership of the CCP planned
uprisings in both cities and countryside at the same time, thus
dispersing the small untried forces hastily collected over a large
area, and leading to their own defeat.
Not all the KMT had turned counter-revolutionary, and within
THE FIRST RED BASH: THE FIRST ‘lEFt’ LINE 193
the armies many units with their officers would join the Com-
munists. As Mao Tsetung wrote in October 1928, tlic middle
class in the KMT, the small and medium capitalists, many intel-
lectuals, merchants, and other middle-class people, had been
panicked by fear of revolution. They had followed the big
landlords and compradores and thus given their adhesion to
Chiang Kai-shek. ‘The present regime of the new warlords of the
KMT remains a regime of the compradore class in the cities and
the landlord class in the countryside . . . The workers, peasants, other
sections of the conunon people, and even the national bourgeoisie
[national capitalists] have remained under counter-revolutionary
rule and obtained not the slightest particle of political or economic
emancipation. * This political judgment was to prove correct in
the years to come, especially at the end of Chiang’s rule in 1949,
when the middle class rallied to the Communist Party.
The distinction between the compradore bourgeoisie, the
national bourgeoisie, the petty bourgeoisie, was one of the most
distinctive and useful in Mao’s categories within classes. It made it
possible for him to fmd in every class, at every stage, a layer of
people who supported the Revolution, even if in a temporary,
vacillating manner’. He would never crudely lump together all
the ‘bourgeoisie’, nor arbitrarily condemn anyone because of
class category. It is this fine talent for lucid analysis which became
a component of his ability to rally so many to his cause. Thus a
portion of the KMT, with, at their head, Madame Sun Yatsen
(Soong Ching-ling, widow of Dr Sun Yatsen), had disassociated
themselves from Chiang Kai-shek and from the ^^ang Ching-wei
group, and denounced the betrayal of Dr Sun Yatsen’s aims and
principles, and of the Revolution. From that time on, Soong
Ching-ling and many other courageous women and men, such as
Ho Hsiang-ning, widow of Dr Liao Chung-kai, represented the
revolutionary KMT, persisted in denouncing Chiang Kai-shek
(who was to become Madame Sun Yatsen’s brother-in-law in
December 1928 by marrying her sister Soong Mei-ling), and
steadfastly refused to join in the anti-Communist wave which
* Why Is It lliat Red Political Power Can Exist in China?, Selected Works vol I
(October 5, 1928).
194
THE MORNING DELUGE
swept over the Kuoinintang. It was therefore still possible to
speak of a united front with this revolutionary KMT and its
representatives whose opposition to Chiang Kai-shek’s military
dictatorship would last for the next decades. Perhaps this may
explain why the KMT flag was kept, but it created much con-
fusion and prevented many peasants and workers, knowing they
were being slaughtered by the KMT, from joining in the risings
now being organized.
The plans for insurrection were approved at a meeting of the
Front Committee on July i8, 1927, in Hankow. While Chou
En-lai was to lead the uprising against the city of Nanchang,
Mao Tsetung, together with Fang Chih-min and Peng Pai,
would start uprisings in the countryside. These countryside
insurrections were thought of as a support to the city ones, which
were regarded as a priority. Mao (who only some weeks before
had been upbraided for his ‘gunpowder’ outlook when he
pleaded for organized peasant uprisings) was now selected to lead
the uprising in his own province of Hunan, to be co-ordinated
with similar peasant uprisings in Kwangtung and Hupei provinces.
Mao considered the countryside uprisings more important than
taking cities, but he was overruled. As a result, the bulk of the
existing forces loyal to the Communists was set to take Nanchang
city.
On August 7, an emergency conference of the Central Com-
mittee of the CCP took place, again in Hankow. The meeting
was tumultuous. Chen Tu-hsiu was deposed from his post as
secretary-general; Tan Ping-shan was also held guilty for the
debacle. Both had been servile and obedient towards the Kuoniin-
tang. They had given up the exercise of leadership to ‘the
bourgeoisie of the KMT’. There were only eleven members
present on that occasion, but Mao told Edgar Snow that he was
‘active in the decision’ to get Chen deposed and the leadership
changed. The opportunist policy of Chen was condemned. All
connections with the Wuhan KMT government were severed.
The new policy of armed struggle was formulated; all this did
not precede but followed the insurrection and the taking of
Nanchang on August i.
THE FIRST RED BASE; THE FIRST ‘lEFt’ LINE 195
Although Chen Tu-hsiu’s disastrous line was thus brought to an
end, an ultra-left line of action was to develop, partly as an
emotional reaction, partly due to the composition of the new
Central Committee. Chang Kuo-tao, Li Li-san and Liu Shao-chi
(the latter had ‘escaped* from jail) condemned Chen Tu-hsiu,
though they had not opposed Chen before; on the contrary, tliey
had obeyed his orders to disarm the workers.
Besides deposing Chen, resolutions at the August 7 meeting
supported armed uprisings, ‘taking a city’, and ‘arousal of the
masses*. Because of this ‘city-taking’ outlook, the peasant uprising
led by Mao would later be condemned as not having been
approved by the Central Committee, and yet today it is this
peasant insurrection which is regarded as the real breakthrough in
Communist military and political thinking. Called the Autumn
Harvest Uprising, this brief struggle was to lead to the rebirth of
the decimated CCP, and to open a new road for the Chinese
Revolution.
The auturmi harvest season was propitious for a large-scale
peasant movement because, with landlords taking the grain from
the peasants for rent, taxes and usury loans, the class struggle,
landlord versus tenant, especially where land confiscation had
occurred, would prove extremely violent. The landlords, with
private armies, with guns and whips, raided their own tenant
farmers, and often executed a few to terrorize the others.
How did the Autumn Harvest Uprising begin and end? Only
very briefly did Mao refer to it in 1936,* but since then details
have been filled in.f Mao went to Anyuan (Chang Chia Wan) to
recruit mine workers for the uprising, to build a worker-peasant
force. W^ith him was his brother Mao Tse-tan. Miners from Any-
uan were to be the core of Mao’s troops; these, together with
peasant self-defence militia from Pinghsiang and Tiling, some
Nationalist Army soldiers and oificers, sympathizers, some
students and peasant cadres, would compose his first Red Army.
The very collection of these troops was a tour de force. The
* Edgar Snow, Red Star Over China, op. cit.
t Author’s persona! research; see the map on page 197.
196
THE MORNING DELUGE
area crawled with landlord armies, warlord armies, and Kuo-
mintang armies, all possessed with a frenzy of slaughter. The
Communist recruits were a ragtag band; they had pikes and staffs,
some had rifles but little ammunition. They had no uniforms.
Mao himself was in cotton trousers, with a top of different
colour, both very patched, and straw sandals. He wore a towel
round his neck and walked with the soldiers, up and down their
lines. They marched from Hunan to Kiangsi and back again and
fought against very heavy odds. Other peasant uprisings took
place in other provinces. All were put down very quickly and the
assembled forces drifted and dispersed. Mao’s troops had a
different fate.
‘The long, open struggle for power now began,’ says Mao. It
would last twenty-two years.
The uprising began on September 8, 1927. It ended in October.
If it is hailed today as a great victory, this is not because it was a
conquering feat, but because it was the first step taken by Mao
Tsetung towards the creation of a new kind of revolutionary war
— that of ‘the countryside surrounding the cities’, towards the
creation of a new kind of army, and towards the creation of
rural bases where the Communist Party and Red Army would
grow strong.
The First Division of the First Peasants and Workers Army was
the bold name Mao gave to his forces. Mao Tsetung in early
August urged that ‘the KMT flag should not be used, it confuses
air. He created the flag of the Autumn Harvest Uprising, a
hammer and sickle in a star (and not a plough, as has been
reported). It was not until September 19 that the Politburo of the
CCP finally declared that ‘the uprisings can under no circum-
stances take place under the KMT banner’. Mao’s flag design
became, and remained, that of the Red Army until the Japanese
invasion and the Second United Front.
Because the troops were so disparate, Mao had to divide them
in regiments more or less according to their origin. The First
Regiment of the First Peasants and Workers Army, the vanguard
in the battles to follow, was formed by the miners of Anyuan
and Pinghsiang, the Second from peasant militia, the Third and
THE MORNING DELUGE
Fourth from those garrison forces at Wuhan which had revolted
against Wang Ching-wei and joined the Communists. These
regiments totalled 8,000 men and became the First Division of the
First Army.
But the confusion among the hastily assembled new leadership
of the CCP almost wrecked the plans. The curious affair of a
July telegram from Stalin nearly stopped the armed uprisings.
This telegram was read by Chang Kuo-tao (whose Russian may
not have been adequate). Chang Kuo-tao interpreted it to mean
that there must be a ‘wait and see’ policy.* But Chou En-lai
disagreed with this interpretation, and went on to prepare the
Naiichang uprising of August i. It did, however, produce dis-
unity among Party members. Another confusion centred on the
vacillations of the Hunan provincial committee, which was
supposed to prepare, in conjunction with the peasant uprisings,
an assault on the city of Changsha. To this Mao was opposed,
contending that the peasantry must be armed and have its own
rural bases, not attack cities. As a result of this dispute the forces
of Mao Tsetung carrying out the Autumn Harvest Uprising did
not have any reinforcements nor support and the initial successes
could not be followed up.
‘This army [the one he had organized] was organized with the
sanction of the Hunan Provincial Committee, but the general
progranune of the Hunan committee and of our army was
opposed by the Central Committee, which seemed to have
adopted a policy of “wait and sec” rather than of active opposi-
tion.’ The tragic indecisions, the shift of focus, the contradictory
statements, all tended to fissure the small, if passionate, group of
revolutionaries Mao had assembled. And when things went
wrong they would bitterly shift on Mao and Chou En-lai the
onus of their lack of foresight.
And then, while travelling between the Hengyang nuners,
where he had gone for more recruits, and the peasant militia,
Mao Tsetung was captured and taken to the headquarters of the
counter-revolutionary forces to be shot.
* This was not the first instance of Stalin’s reversing himself and thus causing
much confusion among those who received his ‘advice’.
THE FIRST RED BASE: THE FIRST LEFT LINE I99
'While I was organizing the army --.1 was captured by some
mintuan [bodies of troops formed for self-defence under com-
mand of landlords], working with the Kuomintang ... I was
ordered to be taken to the tuintuivi headquarters, where I was to
be killed. Borrowing several tens of dollars from a comrade,
however, I attempted to bribe the escort to free me. The ordinary
soldiers were mercenaries, with no special interest in seeing me
killed, and they agreed to release me, but the subaltern in cliarge
refused to permit it. I therefore decided to attempt to escape, but
had no opportunity to do so until I was within about two
hundred yards of the miutuan headquarters. At that point I broke
loose and ran into the fields.’
Mao hid in tall grass until nightfall; the search for him came so
near that the searchers could almost have touched him, but he
escaped. Since his shoes had been removed (preparatory to killing,
a victim’s shoes were always taken away, as it was feared the ghost
might run after his executioner; also because shoes were a prize
possession for the ordinary soldiers), his feet were badly bruised
as he travelled all night across the bush-tangle of the craggy hills
until a peasant sheltered him. He had seven remaining silver
dollars with him and used them to buy shoes, umbrella, and food.
When he reached the peasant militia, he had only a few coppers*
left.
Mao rejoined his troops, and issued the Ten Articles of the
Autumn Uprising. They were simple slogans, related to the
situation, (i) Down with Tang Sheng-chih. (2) Down with Wang
Ching-wei. (3) Down with the Hunan provincial government.
(4) Down with the Kuomintang government. (5) Liquidate land
tyrants and evil gentry. (6) Power to the workers and peasants
and soldiers. (7) Establish the dictatorship of peasant associations.
(8) Organize revolutionary committees. (9) The true revolution
is a peasant revolution! (10) Long live the uprising’s victory!
‘The little army, leading the peasant uprising, moved south-
ward through Hunan. It had to break its way through thousands
of Kuomintang troops, and fought many battles.’ The presence
and action of the Anyuan and Pinghsiang miners and some of the
* Equivalent, more or less, to a cent for ten copper coins.
200
THE MORNING DELUGE
Hengyang factory workers validated Mao’s claim that he was
leading a worker-peasant army. Over 30,000 peasants, armed with
spears, rose in Pinghsiang county, heartened by his presence. On
September 12 the Army took Liling county, and on the 15th the
county town of Liuyang.
But there was no central direction, save ‘to take Changsha’, and
no supporting reinforcements. The band -now four thousand
strong — walked the tiny hidden paths twisting among stark hills
and valleys, for now the fields were bare, and the grey line of
ragged men could be easily perceived against the skyline. Liuyang
was besieged by KMT troops and retaken, with heavy losses for
Mao s troops. Hsia Tou-ying, a commander of KMT troops who
had joined Mao s army, deserted to the enemy with several
hundred men. Discipline was poor, political training at a low
level, and some of the soldiers rebelled because they were not
allowed to loot. The KMT White Terror had massacred 330,000
peasants in north Hunan by September; whole areas were bare
of men; food was hard to get, and the troops were starving. The
wounded were left in the villages, but the peasants would not
always care for them, since the tortures and mutilations the
enemy inflicted upon poor peasants were more frequent among
those who had sheltered Communists. The countryside crawled
with spies and informers, vying with each other to capture Reds,
and betrayals became common.
All the bad habits of traditional Chinese militarism infected the
small army — some of the officers shouted at and beat the soldiers —
and the confusion of contradictory orders from the Hunan
provincial committee and the Politburo (a confusion wc must get
accustomed to in this story) did not make Mao’s task easier. There
was not a more heteroclitic, individualistic collection of men than
at that moment in the CCP, and this fundamental diversity would
continue. What is surprising is that in spite of these disheartening
factors, at this critical juncture, instead of disbanding his very
reduced forces or marching them to join other levies engaged in
city-storming, Mao Tsetung took the momentous decision to
follow his own judgment — to forge a Red Army and to select a
base in the countryside for survival.
THE FIRST RED BASE: THE FIRST ‘lEFt’ LINE 201
There can be any amount of discussion as to Mao's decision,
and the choice of the first Red base. Why did he do so? When
others almost destroyed themselves in trying to capture cities?
To ans'wer this is to reach the mechanism of Mao’s thinking: U^e
your head coolly, relentlessly, unswayed by passion or a )-earning
for success./ His decision corresponded to the traditional concept
of peasant revolt; it was in line with the heroes of Matfr Miir^iii'^
and other popular rebels, who went into mountain fistncsscs and
there existed for years, warring against injustice and helped b)’
the common people.
But there were more practical, down-to-earth reasons. Mao
knew liis own province extremely well, having measured it on
foot in his long walks. W^hen he went for a trek into the moun-
tains near Liuyang in January 1918, he had seen that they made an
excellent hideout, because the plication of the hill ranges, stretch-
ing into a maze of dense forest and undergrowth, rising to rocky
cliffs, boulder-strewn, would be a nightmare for a pursuing
regular army. He knew these frowning crags held pathways
crossed by smugglers and salt pedlars. From the peasants he
learned that the mountains round Chingkangshan harboured
bands of rebel peasants, not only in previous centuries but even
now. And he also knew that the borders between provinces were
usually less patrolled by warlord armies than the central portions;
these forbidding, desolate heights would not be claimed by the
press-ganged, opium-smoking warlord soldiers. This feature was
to remain an advantage for all the subsequent Red bases; it
crystallized Mao s decision to fuse peasant tradition with present
realism. And so he took the step which in the short term saved
him and his followers, and in the long term would save the
Revolution itself
On September 20, on the sports ground of the Li Jen Middle
School, a building of some grace, at Wen Chia Shih, on the road
to the Chingkangshan massif, Mao called a meeting of his troops,
now shrunk to a thousand or so men. The decision to *go up the
mountain and to carry on with the Revolution was taken there.
*The famous novel of peasant revolt which had deeply influenced Mao
Tsetung in his childhood.
7*
202
THE MORNING DELUGE
It is a pity that Mao s speech at Wen Chia Shih was not recorded;
for it must have been a speech of grace and vital strength. All we
know is that at the end he shouted : *Do we dare to carry on the
Revolution or not? And from the thousand men assembled came
the answer: ‘We dare!’
On September 23 the trek to the ranges began. But now a small
number of those who had shouted ‘V^e dare!’ had second
thoughts ; two hundred more left. Mao declared that anyone who
wanted to go home should do so, and would even be given travel
money. This itself was most unusual; some of the revolutionaries
wanted to kill the traitors . And so only eight hundred began to
climb the treacherous, muddy foothills, trudging through the red
clay soil which stuck to the soles of their straw sandals, hacking
the undergrowth. They did not dare light a fire to cook rice or to
warm themselves. They were hungry and they were cold.
Then they reached Liu Shih, a small market town, and were
attacked by a large Kuomintang force, their rear cut; but they
managed to beat off the attackers, then went on to capture the
small county town of Lien Hua. Here they got food and ‘pro-
claimed the Revolution’. They then began to climb again, on to
Sanwan.
Sanwan is a village perched precariously over a mountain
stream that bubbles down to the plains. Here begin the massive
mountains of Chingkangshan ; a path winds up to its gorge-like
access passes. What is called the ‘reorganization at Sanwan’ of the
forces Mao had under him took place from September 29 to
October 3. It was Mao’s first original attempt to educate what
men he had left into a new force, to teach them a compelling
vision wliich would carry them forward in a unity stronger than
any enforced discipline.
Mao spoke at length. The men huddled, listening. They were
in a disused temple which was their temporary refuge from the
small cold rain of autumn. The men were chilled and hungry,
but they listened. And they were heartened and chose to go on,
an act of will which committed them to the Revolution.
Here Mao began the lecture meetings he would continue all
along the climbing path to the central liigh plateau which would
203
THE FIRST RED BASE: THE FIRST ‘lEFt’ LINE
become the base. For again at Kuchcng in Ningkang county tlicrc
would be another meeting and another talk. And there he dis-
cussed what had gone wrong with the Autumn Harvest Uprising,
submitting the events to debate, to the scrutiny of his faitliful
band. This was the only way to grasp the initiative, he told them,
to ‘analyse past errors’, to ‘make the past serve the future’. In 1936
he was to tell Edgar Snow very briefly that the Central Com-
mittee was practising a ‘contradictory policy, consisting in
neglecting military affairs and at the same time desiring an armed
insurrection of the popular masses’. But he did not say that the
‘city-taking’ bent of the new leadership, their disregard of peasant
power, had led to the total abandonment of himself and his band.
To those who were with him at the time he said none of these
things. He spoke of the ideas which had begun to germinate in
him. And if it sounded extraordinary, they were all, at that
moment, extraordinary men, and so he told them of high
courage, and of armed struggle, land reform, and the setting up of
agrarian bases, and of the countryside surrounding the cities and
of conquering them. The plan for what was to become the strategy
of the Revolution was created by Mao on the road to
Chingkangshan .
The insurrection they had just carried out, he said, was of a
kind never tried before. Many people thought that only cities
mattered, but the countryside mattered because there were
more people in the countryside. The countryside grew food, the
cities ate it. And so the peasant was the important one, the giver
of life, of food. From now on they would avoid ‘taking’ any
strongholds. The vast countryside would be theirs to roam, they
would survive and create a new Red Army. Thus, even while in
ascending Chingkangshan Mao was adopting a traditional
feature of peasant revolt, he was at the same time transforming it
by a totally new social content, of organization and ideology. A
stable base in a mountain fastness would nurse their failing
strength and resurrect the Chinese Revolution.
At Hsia Shui Wan, another small village, Mao made another
step in the building of the Party and the Red Army. He organized
the Party cell at company level, and emphasized the building of
204
THE MORNING DELUGE
the Red Army as a political force by inaugurating a Party group
in each squad, a cell in each company, and a committee in each
battalion. Each committee consisted of seven to nine men,
ordinary soldiers; among them one, two or three were Party
members. Mao called the latter (most of them trained by him)
instructor-delegates , for they were to educate the soldiers, keep
up their political consciousness and morale. They were to
maintain discipline, train the Army in work among the people,
in mass propaganda. Mao said that the Red Army was not only a
military instrument but above all a political weapon of propa-
ganda, agitation, seconding land reform and peasant struggles,
educating the people and leading them to establish their own
associations, to take power from the landlords.
Mao also created soldiers committees’ or ^soldiers’ soviets’ at
company level to look after the welfare of the soldiers; he drew
up rules — officers must never beat soldiers, they must have the
same salary, and soldiers had the right of debate and of criticizing
defects in officers; all army accounts were to be open to public
inspection. Thus he instituted a democratic process in the Red
Army, subject to Party control. He then reorganized his men
into the First Regiment of the First Workers and Peasants Army.
The regiment was divided into two battalions (the First and Third
battalions) with seven companies and two detachments, one
sanitary, one of surplus officers. There were too many officers
in relation to ordinary soldiers. The detachment served as an
officer reserve corps, whose members assumed duties as new
recruits came into the Red Army after it settled in Chingkangshan.
Thus from the very start Mao was to fuse the Party and Red
Army into a twin synthesis, but with the Party in ideological
control; so indissolubly linked that throughout the next decades
he would never envision them as separate. This essential com-
ponent of his thinking, refusing the dichotomy which prevails
everywhere else, had the most important consequences; Mao
would always consider the Red Army as the best training ground
for Party cadres, since armed struggle was the dominant factor in
the Revolution in China.
Everywhere Mao’s army went, meetings were held with the
205
THE I-IRST RED BASE: THE FIRST LEFT LINE
local inhabitants. At Sanwan, at Kuchcng, the people at first fled
to the mountains when the Red Army arrived. Fearful, hiding in
bushes, they watched the soldiers. And this was routine; everyone
fled when any soldiers came by. Mao decreed that his soldiers
should never enter a house or take anything. This behaviour was
so unusual (soldiers looted, robbed, burned as a matter oi custom)
that by the third day the local people, watching from their
hideouts on the slopes, filtered back. Mao talked to them, urging
them to return, and distributed ‘some money and cloth’ taken
from the landlords on the way to Sanwan.* He told them that
this army with its Red Flag was their own army, devoted to their
own interests. The people were moved, and spontaneously they
cooked rice and fed the soldiers, and some joined up. This was
to be repeated everywhere Mao’s army went.
From Hsia Shui Wan, Mao led on through the mountains,
always climbing, to Hsing Chu Shan, and there laid down the
first three of his famous eight rules of discipline: speak politely;
buy at fair prices; return what you borrow.
These decisions were not accepted without dispute. Some of the
officers, it is said, even attempted to kill him. Mao Tsetung in-
sisted that nothing be done to them; whoever wanted to leave
could do so ill peace. All this had never been done before.
The peasants still remember that end of October 1927 when
Mao Tsetung walked up, always up, scaling the passes of this
forbidding mountain fastness, past Great Well hamlet to Tzeping,
which was to be his main headquarters and centre of the base.
He was ragged, unkempt, very thin, his hair very long, and his
troops were in the same sorry state. They looked terrible, like
real bandits, covered in lice-ridden rags, but they were gentle
and did not take anything. The peasants remember how Mao
greeted them: ‘Cousin, what is your name?’ he would inquire
politely. ‘Even the children were no longer frightened, and the
women came back and cooked for the soldiers.’^
The massive Chingkangshan is a huge natural fortress amid a
cluster of loping ranges, an amoebic spill of rocks, crags, gullies. It
* Interview by author,
t Interview by author.
206
THE MORNING DELUGE
is part of the Lo Hsiao range, lying between two provinces,
Kiangsi and Hunan. The massif is surrounded by plains, with very
poor irrigation and poor red earth growing scant crops and a kind
of oily bush in profusion. The upper heights are densely forested;
the lower slopes are a tangle of secondary bush. Only five villages,
with a total population of under 2,000, dotted this desolate area.
It is about 30 miles across from north to south and from east to
west, and squats in the midst of six counties, of which four are in
Hunan province and two in Kiangsi province. Five passes, so
narrow only a few men were needed to hold them, lead to the
central weathered plateau, 5,000 to 5,600 feet high, which is a
convergence of crests to form a 'well* high above the gorges
twisting the folded slopes. The rock protrudes everywhere, and
the soil is thin. The inhabitants did not use the wheel; they made
fire by striking stones. They were so poor that few had more than
one pair of trousers, or one blanket per family. Most of the men
were porters and carriers for the farms in the plains below, and
all the families were Hakkas. The Hakkas, or ‘guest people’,
originally from North China,* had been pushed down by the
Mongol invasion and spread southward. Unwelcomed by the
local people, they settled in the poorest areas and on bad mountain
land. Their villages were often raided by local inhabitants and
they were at the mercy of landlords.
A very wide rift has long existed between the native in-
habitants and the settlers [i.e., the Hakkas] whose forefathers
came from the North ... their traditional feuds are deep-seated ...
[they] have been oppressed by the native inhabitants in the
plains.’f Tins rift would give Mao more trouble later in Party
organization, ‘hi theory, this rift ... ought not to extend into the
exploited classes of workers and peasants, much less into the
Communist Party. But it does, and it persists by force of long
tradition.’ There would be many another theory which Mao
would find inadequate to explain away practical realities; from
* Sec Selected WorkSy vol. I, pp. 93-94, for comments on Hakkas, referred to
as ‘settlers’. For a description of Hakkas see Han Suyin, Tlte Crippled Tree
(Cape, London, 1965).
•j* Selected Works, loc. cit.
THE FIRST RED BASE: THE FIRST ‘lEFt’ LINE 207
then on his particular gift for flexible adaptation would be put to
good use.
Chingkangshan was already occupied by two bands of Hakka
peasants turned bandits. These were led by an ex-middle school
student, Yuan Wen-tsai,* and Wang Tso, a tailor; they had 600
men and owned 120 rifles. To establish himself there, Mao
Tsetung first negotiated with Yuan and Wang, and so successfully
that he won not only their acceptance but incorporated them in
his Army of 800 men and 80 rifles. He then quartered his troops
in two areas, the first in the region of the Five Wells, the second
at a jutting ridge called the Nine Dragons. And thus was created
the first Red base at Chingkangshan.
Chingkangshan was held that winter against the most frightful
odds. The amount of persuasion, explanation, education that Mao
did must have been enormous. He constantly had to repeat his
three rules, also stress the equality between officers and men. ‘Do
not kill enemy soldiers and lower rank officers,' he urged. Mao
Tsetung did not look down on the human material he had in hand
as unsuitable, reject it a priori; he would work on it, mobilize it,
educate it, make it grow. And hence he would never exclude the
lumpen proletariat, the beggars, peasants turned bandits, from
this education process. This problem of consciousness-raising,
mobilization of the human being, is one inherent to revolutionary
action. In Western societies, to be mobilized connotes pressure
because it is an external enforcement, but there is a need, a desire
in man to harness his own strength and capabilities in a struggle
worthwhile and enduring. All societies thrive only in the measure
in which they have succeeded in inspiring individuals with worth-
while, stimulating aims; exacting sacrifice and abnegation; these
aims exalt and transcend the self. And Mao, in the circumstances
in which he was placed, was to develop and intensify this process,
which he called political training. In doing so he became a teacher
of the Revolution.
The real teacher is the mobilizer of the human spirit, who has
the genius to make every sacrifice seem a worthwhile endeavour,
full of meaning, linked to a wholeness inspiring and noble. And
* Yuan Wen-tsai’s widow is still alive in Maoping village, Chingkangshan.
208
THE MORNING DELUGE
the genius of Mao Tsetung lies in this teaching. With the words
Man can change he established a whole programme of self-
change, exploding the myths of helplessness, submission and
despair which had fettered the millions of China. In this he trained
himself in the most inauspicious circumstances, with the most
incongruous and backward-seeming human material, in that
bleak winter on desolate Chingkangshan.
Because the programme of the Autumn Harvest Uprising had
not been sanctioned [it had been drawn up on July 13, before the
August 7 meeting]* by the Central Committee; because the First
Army had suffered losses, and from the angle of the cities the move-
ment appeared doomed to failure ... I was dismissed,’ said Mao
Tsetung. Made a scapegoat for this Tailure’, he was yet Teeling
certain that we were following the correct line’. (Author’s italics.)
War was not yet made the centre of gravity of the Party’s
work, wrote Mao in 1928. ‘An excessive, sectarian, inner-Party
struggle ... a serious state of extreme democratization in the
Party ... this “left” sentiment became a left line of reckless
action. The furst ‘left’ line, dating from August 1927 to the end of
1928, was to be associated with the name of Chu Chiu-pai, the
young bespectacled intellectual who had become secretary-
general of the Party at the August 7 meeting in Hankow. Born
in 1889 in a gentry family of Kiangsu, he was essentially whimsi-
cal, erratic, though gifted. He was much influenced by Stalin’s
representative, some historians contend, to excuse him. But the
apology is not accepted by the Chincse.f Chu urged a violent,
almost terroristic line of ‘city-taking’.
The results of the Autumn Harvest Uprising, which was so
vehemently condemned by the leadership of the CCP, were
Mao’s creation of the Red base, the formation of a disciplined
body of militarized teachers, and the resurrection of the Party.
Without it there would have been no Chinese Revolution. The
* See page 195.
•f The Chinese view has always been that the fault for erroneous lines and devia-
tions in the Party must not be attributed to outside influence, but to those who
accept it. Stalin’s new representative at that time is said to have been Lominadze.
THE FIRST RED BASE: THE FIRST ‘lEFt’ LINE 209
Chingkangshan Red base permitted this creation to survive and
to grow, something which neither the Nanchang uprising of
August I nor the December taking of Kuangchow could liavc
achieved. But what Mao had done would not be recognized by
his own Party leadership. He lost his place in the Central Com-
mittee as alternate member of the Provisional Politburo set up
on August 7. He was also deprived of membership in the Hunan
Provincial Committee. Yet he went on, convinced that his was
the correct strategy.
This is not to belittle the gifted and dedicated Chou En-lai, his
immense personal courage, enterprise and dedication when he led
the uprisings against Nanchang, and later Swatow and Kuang-
chow, But the actions against the cities, however significant, were
not to lead to the rebuilding of the Party and Army as inter-
locked essentials for the prosecution of the Chinese Revolution.
‘The armed struggle led by the Chinese Communist Party is a
war of the peasantry under the leadership of the working class,’
said Mao, and in that single sentence lay the clue to victory.
In addition to the Autumn Harvest Uprising, the city-oriented
Nanchang uprising is of fundamental importance, because it was a
decisive action towards the revolutionary principle of armed
struggle. It involved far larger numbers of well-trained troops, yet
it failed. In the failure lay a lesson which, had it been learned in
time, would have spared the CCP costly mistakes. The Red
Army dates its birth-August i, 1927-from the Nanchang
insurrection, although this anniversary was not proclaimed as
Red Army Day until 1932.
W^e have seen how Chou En-lai organized the Shanghai armed
workers squads, and was upbraided by Chen Tu-hsiu for pro-
voking Chiang Kai-shek. Chou En-lai replied that these armed
actions were not premature, that the CCP should concentrate on
winning over the military, for without military backing, without
an established base of operation, it was impossible for the young
CCP to assert itself as an independent party. In this way his ideas
were similar to Mao’s. The difference was that Chou En-lai, an
intellectual from a city-based family, would also think in terms of
210
THE MORNING DELUGE
city-taking for some time, although by 1929 he had come round
to see that this policy was wrong.
Chou En-lai supported the plans for armed uprising which
were the new line of action at the July meeting of the Front
Committee, and on July 25 reached Nanchang city, where,
incognito, he stayed at the Kiangsi Hotel in the city itself, and
there contacted Chu Teh, the Szechuan ex- warlord become
Communist, to plan the capture of Nanchang.
Chu Teh — we last left him when disgusted with life as a minor
warlord — had given up women and opium, and gone abroad to
study. He was deeply patriotic, and naturally gravitated to the
Communist Party, joining in 1922 in Germany on the advice of
Chou En-lai, whom he met there. He had tried, on his return in
1926, to persuade some of the warlords of his own province to
join the Northern Expedition. Failing in this, he went to Nan-
chang, where he became chief public security officer under the
Kuomintang.
This is one of several reasons why Nanchang was chosen for
Communist capture. Its strategic position, the fact that there were
stationed in the vicinity the troops of Yeh Ting and Ho Lung,
both KMT commanders friendly to the Communists, as well as a
portion of the Communist-officered Ironsides regiment, and
fuially the presence of Chu Teh as chief of public security at
Nanchang, as well as the city’s deputy military commander, were
all advantages for such an action. Chu Teh knew all the officers
on the spot, his rollicking Szechuan manner and great gift of talk
had made him highly popular with them. He would, it was
thought, be able to lull them into a false sense of security when
the first assault would seize the city.
On July 26 Li Li-san, Hsu Te-li, and Nieh Jung-chen, a Com-
munist who had joined the work and study group going to
France, and returned to enter Whangpoo Military Academy,*
arrived in Nanchang. The Ironside troops were quartered close
to the city; some infiltrated, wearing civilian clothes, inside its
walls. Again because of Stalin’s telegram, the planned insurrection
* Nich was one of the Communists who taught with Chou En-lai at Whang-
poo Academy in 1926 and was arrested with him.
THE FIRST RED BASE; THE FIRST ‘lEFt' LINE 2II
was almost stopped; Chang Kuo-tao arrived with the telegram
on the morning of July 30. But Chou En-lai refused to stop, and
this decision was a breakaway from ‘obedience*.
The planned deception failed, and this precipitated the assault.
On August I the Communist-led troops attacked and seized the
city, disarming the garrison. On August 2 a mass rally was called
in the centre of the city, and Chou En-lai announced the estab-
lishment of a Kuomintang Central Revolutionary Committee
with several KMT leaders who had not defected to the counter-
revolution, including Chang Fa-kuei, a militarist then on his way
to Nanchang, and Madame Sun Yatsen.
But Chiang Kai-shek rushed reinforcements to Nanchang by
rail and by water. On August 3 a withdrawal was begun. The
troops pulled out by August 5. The combined forces then moved
southward and began a long, deteriorating scries of campaigns.
The usual erosion took place -defections, desertions, betrayal -
but a nucleus went on, and even tried, on the way, to fulfil a
revolutionary programme, killing landlords, proclaiming land
reform, burning land titles.
Later Chu Teh was to say (to his good friend the American
journalist Agnes Smedley)* that the Nanchang uprising failed
because only the city people had been rallied. The insurrectionists
had neglected to propagandize the countryside and to proclaim
the agrarian revolution. They also failed to support the peasant
uprisings (which were actually going on) in the province. ‘Mao
Tsetung was the only leader who used armed force to help
peasant uprisings,’ said Chu Teh.
But this was hindsight. Meanwhile, the now ragged troops
went on pushing their way through a deserted and devastated
countryside and engaging in pitched battles under harrowing
conditions. They reached Swatow, a port in Fukien province,
around September 23 or 24. Although ill with high fever, Chou
En-lai stayed at the front line, directing the troops. But now they
were vastly outnumbered, and they fell back on the Haifeng and
Lufeng areas (Peng Pai’s area), where peasant revolution had been
* See Agnes Smedley, Battle Hynm of China (Gollancz, London, 1944) and The
Great Road (Calder, London, 1958).
212
THE MORNING DELUGE
SO lively two years before. But now the White Terror had cut its
swath of massacres. The troops starved; Chou was near death, or
so it seemed, but he refused to abandon the soldiers. Thinking he
would die, his comrades finally smuggled him to Hongkong with
Yeh Ting and Nieh Jung-chen, while they dispersed in small
groups and went into hiding, submerged in the vast ocean of
fields or seeking isolated mountain villages. After two weeks in
Hongkong, Chou, scarcely recovered, made his way to Shanghai.
Again he was involved in insurrection there; but the workers
were cowed by the violence of the repression; there was no
alleyway without its spies and its killings. The Kuomintang
government of Cliiang Kai-shek put a price on Chou’s head, and
in January 1928 ChouEn-lai got away to Russia. In a few months,
however, he was back, and again went underground to work for
the Party in Shanghai.
The subsequent years, 1928 to 1930, were to bring ChouEn-lai
to repudiate the city-taking military strategy. Chou contributed
greatly to the new orientation and policy of the Party, though the
correct strategy was to be created by Mao. Chou, like many
others, was to gravitate towards Mao Tsetung. Throughout those
years one of Mao’s most significant victories was the fact that his
ideas won over dedicated men: Chu Teh, the ex-Szechuan war-
lord turned Coimnunist, a man older than Mao; Chou En-lai,
the brilliant student, organizer, a man of enormous personal
bravery, charm, and intelligence; Chen Yi, the humorous
Szechuan student become a Communist officer; Lin Piao, the
precocious schoolboy activist, also a Whangpoo cadet, who took
part in the Naiichang and Swatow uprisings; Jen Pi-shih, of great
skill and valour, and so many others, men of talent and of courage;
all would, sooner or later, be won over by their individual dis-
covery of Mao’s genius for revolution.
And though many were to die, and others were to be found
inadequate and even opportunistic, they did, at the time, push
forward the wheel of Revolution.
Life on Chingkangshan during that winter of 1927-28 was a
struggle for survival. The greatest problems were food and
THE FIRST RED BASE: THE FIRST ‘leFt’ LINE 213
clothing for so many men. They could have been obtained in the
way usual to marauding bands, by loot and rapine, but this Mao
strictly forbade. The working out of logistics, and the expansion
of his army within a framework of revolutionary action which
would benefit, not prey upon, the population, led to the elabora-
tion of new techniques, making of the Army a production corps
as well as a political and military force.
His two brothers and adopted sister were with him on Ching-
kangshan. All three had taken part in the Autumn Harvest
Uprising. In November the Red Army attacked the county of
Chaling, and took its county town. Landlords were killed, and
their stores and goods shared equally with the poor peasants.
Land reform was proclaimed and the Red flag floated over the
town. In December, it was Lung Shih in Ninkang county which
was overrun. People’s local governments were proclaimed in
each county brought under Red rule.
Thus the six counties around the mountain base were to sec the
Red Army First Regiment arrive; they were to provide the food
required and other necessities, but only within the limits of a
redistribution of land and wealth, the agrarian revolution. Mao
always deplored the first action at Chaling. For the troops were
not yet sufficiently disciplined, and terrorist acts occurred in
which landlords, rich peasants, and some not so rich were killed.
It must have been difficult for the half-starving men to exercise
the tremendous self-control required not to loot, not to kill, but
to concentrate only on the houses of landlords and tyrants; not
to take anything for themselves, but scrupulously to bring it to
the command, for sharing with the poor peasants; to teach and
educate the latter, while giving them their share from the hoarded
landlord grain. Some of the poor exploited peasants were afraid
to take their share of grain, at times by night bringing back to the
landlord what they had received. A uniform tax of 20 per cent of
the crops was to replace all previous taxes and lighten the peasants’
burden. Everywhere the poor peasants were to form associations,
and elect at mass meetings their representatives for local
government.
By February 1928 the Red Army had promoted
agrarian
214
THE MORNING DELUGE
revolution in Ningkang, Yunghsin, Chaling, Suichuan, Lienhua,
Linghsien. In each a Communist Party committee had been
organized. These in turn had created soviets or councils of
workers, peasants and soldiers. Thus had been provided, for the
base, a source of supplies and of men. The poor peasants were
rallying to this new force which both protected them and im-
proved their living conditions.
Landlords ran away, the more tyrannous were executed
publicly, and poor peasants began to take heart, and now came
with baskets to share the goods and the land. But the new ways
and the new power were weak. The peasants were afraid of
reprisals. Should the Kuomintang troops return, what would
happen to them? As soon as possible, Mao organized militia and
Red Guards, backed by the peasant associations among the popu-
lation. These were to defend the peasantry. At the mountain base,
meanwhile, he organized political and military courses for cadres
and soldiers. But these could not be pushed without, also, some
ordinary schooling. Learning to read and to write was hampered
by a lack of teachers, of textbooks, of paper. The soldiers crouched
on flat, sandy terrain and wrote with sticks on the ground.
The several hamlets that dot Chingkangshan where Mao lived,
wrote, lectured, the stone he sat on, the trees he planted, his habit
of watching the soldiers do their physical training, while his
finger kept the book he always had in hand open at the page he
was reading, are now part of the great historic legend woven
round his person. It is difficult through this halo to see the great-
ness of the man, slogging away at what seemed a doomed adven-
ture, his tiny handful on a stark and poor mountain, surrounded
by the gathering enemy forces, so vastly superior. But Mao was
flesh of the flesh, bone of the people’s bone; like water under-
ground his ideas coursed, a hidden network, through the peasan-
try he lived with; and they changed. The Hakka carriers of the
mountain villages, going across the mountains, in and out of the
plains surrounding the fortress heights, along paths known only
to them and to salt smugglers, became an intelligence network
and liaison for him. Salt is essential to the life of an army, and
Mao’s men needed salt. This organization of porters took nearly
THE FIRST RED BASE: THE FIRST ‘lEm ’ LINE 215
a year to fashion. Many became Red Cluards, members of tlie
village conmiittee created by the people’s councils. Today they
live on a transformed Chingkangshaii with schools and hospitals;
Shanghai city students come to develop the land, television and
electric lights, and a neat tarmac highway to bring many thousands
of visitors every month.
Through that tragic winter of massacres all over (.’hina,
Chingkangshaii stood fast, fed itself, and fought. In January 1928
the first attack came; a warlord force to retake Ningkang was
sent; it was routed. The Red Army kept Ningkang. This success
heightened the prestige of the base among the population ; it gave
the poor peasants more confidence.
By February the troops were disciplined enough to go down to
the plains to help the peasants in the early sowing and planting,
and to open up some unplanted land on their own. Thus the
army began to feed itself as well. This would become a Mao
concept of what a workers’ and peasants’ army should be, econo-
mically self-sufficient, no burden to the population. And this in
China was unique, for never before had any army been a help to
the peasantry. Now he kept the soldiers busy cutting wood for
building and firewood, erecting huts and planting vegetables.
He began a small hospital with a pharmacy storing Chinese
medicinal herbs, since it was impossible to procure anything else.
Elementary courses in hygiene and health were also started when
in May 1928 Dr Nelson Fu, a Methodist-trained practitioner,
arrived in Chingkangshan ; by November there would be six-
teen ‘doctors’ (partly trained cadres from the army). Mao in-
sisted that the doctors also look after the health of the local
people, and shared with the peasants the very scanty medical
supplies which they had brought.
All that winter Mao had been out of touch with the Politburo
now underground in Shanghai. It was not until later February or
March of 1928, in the midst of holding fast against a campaign
launched by two warlord arinies (the second attack on the base),
that he learned he had been dismissed from the Central Com-
mittee as alternate member of the Politburo for his ‘errors’ and
216
THE MORNING DELUGE
criticized severely for what he had done, beginning with the
Autumn Harvest Uprising.
The Central Committee plenum convened in November 1927
which ‘dismissed’ Mao Tsetung, to use his own words, had
rigorously condemned all that did not fit within the formulas
evolved, without taking any notice of Mao’s situation. All the
old leaders of the CCP were damned ; so were most of the leaders
of the Nanchang uprising; Chou En-lai was severely censured.
Apart from calling for continuous armed insurrection, confisca-
tion of land, killing of all landlords, agrarian revolution, butcher-
ing of local bullies, and so on, the plenum announced that a
‘high revolutionary tide’ was coming. Actually the Revolution
was at a very low ebb.
Mao Tsetung at Cliingkangshan was not, therefore, an undis-
puted chief whose authority was paramount; he was quite the
contrary, a man whose ideas and policies were ignored or repu-
diated by his own Party leadership. He appeared, to the CCP
headquarters in Shanghai, to be doing all the wrong things,
leading an isolated band of guerillas in a mountain fastness, and
showing ‘right-wing’ proclivities by his moderate policies, not
doing enough burning and killing.*
At no time during his stay in Chingkangshan was Mao really
left in peace, whether from the warlords and the Kuomintang
attacks on his base, or his own Party’s stream of directives and
counter-directives and criticism. Delegates came to scold and to re-
voke; had he followed all the instructions and counter-instructions
he received, there would not have been a Red Army, and Red
bases at that time, and the Revolution might have taken much
longer.
But he was, luckily, in a mountain fastness; communications
were slow and difficult, and he had built up, and would continue
to build, an organization upon principles based on realistic
appraisal of China’s conditions. When told of the castigation he
received, he did not show any emotion; nor did he, Hke some,
* This ‘Trotskyite’ view of Mao is also found in M. N. Roy, Rei^olufio/t and
Cotmter-Renolution in China (People’s Publishing House, Calcutta, I94b)-
THE FIRST RED RASE! THE FIRST ‘iFFT’ 1. 1 N F 21"^
turn against his Party or change his conviction. Me went on as
usual, administering, surveying, walking about, going to tlie
villages, spending the night writing because lie was so busy by-
day. Any'-way, he was at that moment engaged in planning a
counter-offensive against an attack by Kuomintang and warlord
forces. And he was to win another victory.
To build broad-based organizations, to avoid extreme terro-
rism, was not in contradiction to the Revolution but in line witli
the construction necessary to carry out the Revolution. This is
where Mao averred himself a Leninist, in contra-distinction to the
‘kill all the bourgeoisie, all rich peasants and middle peasants’
thesis of secretary-general Chu Chiu-pai. The policies Mao tried
at Chingkangshan were ‘moderate*, affecting only big landlords;
but even then, he was later to say, he had not drawn enough dis-
tinction between ‘tyrants’ and big, middle, small landlords and
rich peasants, though always cautious in sparing the physical lives
of all but the worst. Very early he formulated the distinction
between the liquidation ofa class by economic and political means
and the physical liquidation of human beings, which he con-
stantly abhorred. This distinction marks him out as an extra-
ordinary person for his time and his environment. He was thus
to add a dimension of humanity to the Revolution which Stalin
never possessed. But his moderation immensely displeased the
Central Committee, intent on ‘butchering and burning* and in
that way antagonizing, instead of rallying, a majority of the
countryside.
Mao made the point that the peasantry must be educated and
also educate itself in class struggle for land reform, by active and
total participation in the process. It was necessary to lead peasant
guerilla action against big landlords in other counties and districts,
even if only for the replenishment of guns and ammunition, but
this could only be done with the overwhelming support of the
people. But the setting up of People’s Councils and other measures
in Mao s land reform programme were not approved by the
Central Committee. In December 1927, directives had already
been sent to Mao to ‘burn and kill’ more in the countryside. The
assassination in the cities of ‘yellow’ union leaders (KMT-created
2I8
THE MORNING DELUGE
labour union leaders), the robbing of banks, attacks on police
stations, were all inscribed in the ultra-left policies of Chu Chiu-pai.
Through a fortunate lack of liaison, however, Mao had been
given till March 1928 to try out his own methods before the
extreme left line caught up with him.
Mao’s experiment in rural Red bases for a revolutionary Party
and Army changed the history of China. There was no exact
blueprint for the future; someone had to experiment, to draw
the first sketches. The Chingkangshan base was such a critical
test; and its success was due to Mao’s refusal to accept suicidal
orders and his understanding of the realities, together with a
determination to make the Revolution a creative, working
proposition.
Edgar Snow told me of his first impression of Mao. ‘It was night
and I was walking back when someone (my interpreter) pointed
out to me a man walking past. It was Mao Tsetung, he said. He
looked like anyone else, there was nothing to distinguish him
from any of the other thousands there. He walked alone, going
back to his cave dwelling. A few days later I was to meet him in
the daytime. It was not that he was impressive at first sight;
though tall and lean, he was so quiet, taking in at first everything
that was said to him, that it was only gradually I came to be more
and more impressed. Here was a man with great mastery, a
command of knowledge and wisdom, and talking to him one
felt it. A real storehouse of knowledge and original ideas; a free-
dom of thought and a total lack of rigidity, surpassing anyone else.
‘Talking to him one felt in the presence of a world statesman,
and then one went back and one began to wonder. Here was this
man living in the poorest circumstances, it seemed there was no
hope for his cause, at least if one only looked at outward ap-
pearances, yet talking to him, one felt that he was the only man
in China who really understood its reality. It looked as if there
was a world against him, and Mao alone, yet one wanted to be
on his side. He convinced; had I been Chinese, I would have
joined him. After talking with him, no other way was possible
than to “see” as he saw, and to follow him.
THE FIRST RED BASE: THE FIRST ‘lEm' LINE 2J(J
This was almost a decade later;* but the sense of daiintlessness,
of quiet endurance, already radiated from Mao in Clhngkangshan ;
his power to make others see as he saw already proven. Tlic Mao
Tsetung of Chingkangshan saw further than any of the other
revolutionaries, though he still had much to learn, as he liimself
said. His writings of that time link the extremely practical to the
overall ground plan, meticulous detail to broad sweeping
principles. And all through runs the scholarly touch, the close,
cold, masterly reasoning of the born scientist. For all his personal
humility, Mao’s writings always carry that lecture stance. It was
this which probably enraged the lesser men in Party control.
Agnes Smedley, who did not like Mao, says of the Mao she met
during those guerilla days: *Mao’s mind perpetually wrestled with
the theoretical problems of the Chinese Revolution. Sensitive
and intuitive almost to the point of femininity, Mao possessed
all the self-confidence and decisiveness of a pronouncedly mas-
culine man.’
This intuitiveness Mao would have explained easily had he
been asked. He would have said that he tried to be totally inte-
grated with his own people, and that his strength and knowledge
came from them. He would say that it was they who made him,
not the other way round.
In early 1928 the counter-revolution was very strong, the
revolutionary forces were weak and scattered. In the cities the
Communist workers unions had been decimated. In the country-
side the peasants were cowed; yet it was here that the Toot
infantry of the Revolution could be organized. This organization
needed a consolidated base, just as the course of the Revolution
needed a clear political line. The definition of a rural Red base
had to be worked out. It must provide the physical, geographical
and economic sustenance of a political regime with an armed
force as its principal support. It must be as self-sufficient as possi-
ble, it must have capabilities of defence and possibilities of ex-
pansion, it must have a sufficient population for recruitment and
for economic growth; it must have leadership cadres, and insti-
tutions for education and training. The support of the population
* In 1936, when Snow met Mao Tsetung in Yenan.
220
THE MORNING DELUGE
was its overwhelming prime condition. It must not be an army of
occupation, but like fish in water, an army of the people.
The peasantry was the Vast paradise* in which there was great
opportunity for the weak Communist Party to consolidate and
develop its armed strength. Mao’s strategic thinking during
these rigorous weeks and months at Chingkangshan meant a
thorough sifting of the problems of the Chinese Revolution, and
a solution. Why Is It That Red Political Power Can Exist in China?,
written in Maoping, a hamlet of the Chingkangshan base, in
October 1928, analyses the internal political situation, and the
reasons for the survival of a Red structure though surrounded
by enemy forces. In his vivid descriptive Struggle in the Chingkang
Mountains of November 1928, Mao wrote in detail of the work
and the fighting, the policies of survival and build-up tliroughout
that year at Chingkangshan.
China was not at the stage of all-out socialist revolution, but
still at the stage of a bourgeois-democratic revolution, wrote
Mao. This stage could only be completed under the leadership
of the working class, but it did mean entirely different policies
and techniques. The aims of the bourgeois-democratic revolution,
which had been Sun Yatsen’s aims, had been subverted by Chiang
Kai-shek, but not all of the Kuomintang was with Cliiang, hence
the extreme left policies applied by the CCP were quite wrong;
they isolated the Party and the Army from the ‘masses’ (‘cold and
aloof’ because of these ultra-left methods) and from a very large
and possible ally, the petty bourgeoisie, as well as a section of the
national capitalist class.
In these two essays of the Chingkangshan period the main ideas
of Mao’s strategy appear. The relation between the national and
the social revolution is clearly defined in stages. The problem of
leadership, of creating leadership, looms large as well as the
absolute necessity of armed struggle and the building of a people s
Red Army: ‘Without a people’s army the people have nothing
is the logical conclusion. How and in what manner it will be
built is of fundamental importance.
The defeat of 1927 was ‘a blow to the petty bourgeoisie and the
national bourgeoisie as well’, Mao wrote. ‘The national hour-
THE FIRST RED BASE: THE FIRST ‘i.EFt’ LINE
221
geoisic had never really held pow'cr from the restrictions imp(')secl
by the reactionary policies of the big landlord class and the big
bourgeoisie in power.’ These fine distinctions reveal that Mao
was still searching for a formula to rally majorities, wresting allies
from even such unlikely groups as national capitalists, and thus
re-creating a sort of a united front. Even if these allies were
Vacillating’ and the alliance temporary, they were still needed
and useful. In all this Mao was displaying a subtle psychological
tactic for sifting, dividing, and breaking up enemy blocs into
allies, neutrals, and targets for attack.
The existence of a Red Army of adequate strength was ‘a
necessary condition for the existence of Red political power’.
Again and again through the decades the supreme importance of
the Red Army as a pillar of Communist power is stressed in all
of Mao’s work. But at all times the Army must be subordinate to
the Party, framed by the Party, directed by its policies. Hence the
important condition required ‘for the prolonged existence and
development of Red political power [is] that the Communist
Party organization should be strong and its policy correct’.
Rebuilding the Party organizations on a mass base was a task
fundamental to the strategy of power, and this was accomplished
at Chingkangshan by the Red Army. It was the Red Army which
cradled, protected and nourished the young Party, but it was the
Party which gave the Red Army its reason for existence, and both
were nurtured by the people. It was through the Red Army,
carrying out the policies of the Party, that the agrarian revolution,
essential for the support of the masses, could be carried out, but
without the revolutionary masses they could not exist. This
complex triple relationship of masses-Party-Army forms the basis
of Mao’s organizational principles, and they have not varied for
the last forty years.
Because of this theoretical analysis based on Chinese conditions,
Mao Tsetung argued that at all times advantage must be taken of
the enemy s weakness, such as inter-warlord strife, the historical
weakness of provincial armed forces at borders between provinces,
strife between Chiang Kai-shek and provincial warlords. The
establishment of a Red rural base and its survival were unique:
222
THE MORNING DELUGE
‘it cannot occur in any imperialist country [as in Europe or the
United States then] or in any colony under direct imperialist
rule’. It was due essentially to China’s great unevenness of de-
velopment, her disjointed state as a ‘semi-colonial, semi-feudal’
country.
So long as splits and wars continued within the camp of the
Kuomintang and the warlords in alliance with it (but often at
war with it), so long could an armed regime of workers and
peasants also continue to exist and develop, provided the problem
of leadership was solved. On this question, Mao was ruthlessly
frank, listing the opportunism, localism, ‘evil feudal practice of
arbitrary dictation’ with ‘no liking for the bothersome democratic
system’, of Party cadres. It was to provide a basic democracy in
the Party, and in the Army, that Mao stressed the need for soldiers’
committees, conferences of soldiers’ representatives, debates and
discussions.
The Chingkangshan period is thus of great importance,
because Mao Tsetung wrestled with so many fundamental
problems affecting the structure of a new model for the Chinese
Revolution, in which recognition of the peasant component, the
importance of rural bases, the strategy of the countryside sur-
sounding the cities, the Red Army, were all his creations.
The emphasis on agrarian revolution in rural areas as an essential
for the consolidation of Red power and the building up of an
all-China Red Army was to create a new military science, the
strategy and tactics of ‘revolutionary people’s war’.
In that late February and early March of 1928, as winter still
harrowed Chingkangshan and freezing rain soaked the ill-clad,
ill-fed men, Mao received Ho Ting-yin, a delegate representing
the South Hunan Special Party committee. This was a body set
up by the Central Committee after the November plenum for the
purpose of arousing insurrections in South Hunan. Ho Ting-ym
came with orders to Mao to lead his small forces on an armed
attempt in South Hunan, in line with the ‘high tide of revolu-
tion’ theory evolved at the November plenum. Mao indicated
that he did not think there was a ‘high tide’, as announced by
THE FIRST RED BASE: THE FIRST ‘lEIt’ LINE 223
the Politburo. The time was unpropitious for such militar\'
action.
‘At the same time, Ho criticized us for having leaned to rlic
right, for having done too little burning and killing, and for
having failed to carry out the so-called policy of turning tlie petty
bourgeois into proletarians and forcing them into the revolution,’
wrote Mao. (Ho Ting-yin may have brought the news of Mao’s
expulsion from the Central Committee, and from the Hunan
Provincial Committee as well.)
Ho Ting-yin then ‘abolished tiie Front Committee’, which
meant that technically Mao was no longer in charge of the Red
Army, and then ordered the troops to fight in south Hunan
pitched battles against some large warlord troops. ‘Conscc]ucntly
the Hunan-Kiangsi border area [Chingkangshan base] was
occupied by the enemy for more than a month ... At the end of
March came the defeat in South Hunan.’ In tliese words Mao
alluded to the six counties being almost totally overrun by five
battalions of warlord troops under two generals (both named
Yang). Thus Mao nearly lost the base he had taken all winter to
build. He lost control of the troops as Ho took over. The latter
carried out the ‘killing, burning and butchering’ policy which
was the line of the plenum, antagonized a great many middle
peasants and small landlords, and hence the defeat, as these all
turned against the Red Army.
When the troops returned from south Hunan, they too had lost
a good many men; and now another campaign had to be under-
taken to get rid of the occupying forces. Mao’s need for men and
guns, for hospital care for the wounded, was urgent. He tried
all methods to win over again the hearts of the peasantry, liis
mass base; he set the soldiers to dig entrenchments. He was now
only the secretary of the Special Committee for Chingkangshan.
And then, as so often in his life, occurred an event which was to
turn the tide in his favour. This was the arrival of Chu Teh.
We must now take up the tale of Chu Teh, since the with-
drawal from Nanchang city in August 1927, the previous year.
Chu Teh had moved southward with the other insurrectionists;
the bulk of the Red troops entered Fukien province and reached
224
THE MORNING DELUGE
the large and wealthy city of Swatow. Swatow being an overseas
Chinese stronghold sympathetic to Sun Yatsen, as well as a large
port, its capture would have greatly benefited the Communists.
But the capture of Swatow was a transient affair; the revolu-
tionary forces withdrew and dispersed. Chu Teh, who had been
in the rear, was left with a thousand men. Pursuing evasive guerilla
action, Chu Teh joined forces with an old friend of his, a Kuo-
mintang military commander. Thus Chu Teh did not take part
in the attack upon Kuangchow city, the setting up of the Kuang-
chow commune, and the withdrawal from Kuangchow in
December, followed by a White Terror of gruesome cruelty.
These three attempts to capture a city, Nanchang, Swatow, and
Kuangchow, as a Communist base, and the resultant failures
decimated the Red troops. Now only stubborn valour sustained
them, as they withdrew and dispersed.
By joining with the Kuomintang, Chu Teh seemed to have
given up his beliefs, but this was a feint, for shortly afterwards
(in January 1928) he left this obliging friend, renaming his army
the Fourth Red Army (two regiments and one battalion), since
it was the remnants of the Fourth ‘Ironsides’ Army of the
Northern Expedition, and made liis way through the countryside
to South Hunan. There he participated in the hapless insurrection
ordered by the Hunan Special Committee, into which Mao s
troops had also been drawn. The retreating Chu Teh came m
contact with Mao’s brother Mao Tse-tan, who was doing
dangerously heroic work as liaison, and seems to have been per-
petually moving about the villages of Hunan (as was Mao s
adopted sister, who was butchered in Hcngyang, where she did
underground work, by the Kuomintang in 1929).
Chu Teh’s troops were in an exhausted state; they had no base,
they had truly become roving guerilla bands. Although supported
by the poor— even little boys of eleven and twelve from the mines,
were trying to join up to ‘kill the landlords, share the land —
Chu Teh’s army was facing destruction, as every engagement
cost him more men. His only course was to join Mao at Ching-
kangshan. This alone, had the Politburo used its brains, would
have shown the importance of Mao’s base.
THt IIRST Rl-D RASt: Tllii IIRST LlilT LlNli 225
The decision of Chu Teh to join Mao at Chingkangshan was
thus partly due to an invitation from Mao, conveyed by Mao
Tse-tan, and partly due to the perilous situation in which Chu
Teh found himself. By the end of April, Chu had arrived in
Linghsien county, at the foot of the massif The campaign against
Mao’s base was in full blast. It was a combined warlord and
Kuomintang operation, outnumbering Mao’s depleted men by
twenty to one. Chu Teh himself was in great danger, for the way
up the mountain was barred by enemy troops. Most of the six
counties were rcoccupicd by the enemy after the disastrous
initiative of the ‘south Hunan insurrection’, and a perpetual see-
saw of battles round the mountain fortress took place; it was to
continue, off and on, all the rest of the year. At this moment,
Mao Tsetung, with the only two battalions he now had, came
down from the mountain like an avalanche, in a swift and daring
onslaught, hacking open a road for Chu Teh and his troops so
that they could reach safety.
Visitors to Chingkangshan arc shown, in Ningkang county,
the plain where the historic meeting between Chu Teh and Mao
Tsetung took place; at the small town of Talung, now a pros-
perous brigade but at that time a primitive poor village. A com-
memorative stone is set up on the plain where the two met, by a
mountain stream. Mao was all smiles as he hugged Chu Teh.
This meeting was to begin a co-operation and a legend, wliich
would last nearly forty years, between Chu Teh and Mao
Tsetung. The legend of perfect harmony was exploded during
the Cultural Revolution; but it remains a fascinating human
story of two human beings, with their dedication and their dis-
agreements. We must content ourselves with imperfect know-
ledge, though valuable. Mao’s relationship with the men around
him will never be fully known ; we have the right to ponder them,
and the final appraisal is yet to be made. But one thing is certain,
Chu Teh was never a conspirator, greedy for power. He had his
defects and often acted with rashness, but he would be Mao’s
faithful friend too, and Mao Tsetung would never forget or
abandon him.
It is said that Chu Teh was not in agreement with Mao when
8
226
THE MORNING DELUGE
he arrived, and actually had received instructions to oppose him.
This may be true, but he was certainly won over by Mao’s
persuasive talent and sincerity of purpose, touched by the warmth
with which he was received, and the personal sacrifice involved
when Mao led all the men he had left to hack a way up the
slopes, through enemy armies, for him. The immediate result
of this merger was that, with strengthened troops, Mao and Chu
Teh were able to rout the attackers and reap a brilliant victory.
The aid of the population in the ravaged districts now proved
itself effective; Yuan Wen-tsai, the ‘bandit’, also joined in the
battle, which was catastrophic for the two Yang warlords. This
common victory soldered the alliance between Mao and Chu
Teh, and between the soldiers who had endured the winter and
the tired remnants who had survived so many battles against
superior numbers. Chu Teh and his troops were then quartered
at Maoping, and there a conference was held in May.
The Maoping Conference of May 20, 1928, also called the
First Congress of the Border Area (Chingkangshan), was a
seminal conference, and Mao dominated it even though the news
of his ‘expulsion’ was now generally known. Chu Teh was to call
it the ‘most important party conference after the counter-
revolution began’. The conference reviewed the history of the
Chinese Revolution. Mao Tsetung advanced five basic points,
characteristics of the Chinese revolutionary war, now in its
‘agrarian revolutionary war’ stage. These characteristics in turn
were to determine the political and military strategy adopted.
They were to be developed and expanded in a Second Congress,
also held at Maoping, in October 1928.*
Because these ideas represent a total strategy for revolution, it
is important for anyone who wants to understand the Revolution,
and Mao, to make the effort of grasping them. And it is also
important to realize that through the dreary dragging winter of
bitterness and suffering on Chingkangshan, the mind of Mao
Tsetung had been so active, creating an entirely new concept of
Revolution for China.
* A portion of Mao Tsetung’s report at the Second Maoping Conference is
incorporated in Why Is It That Red Political Power Can Exist in China?
227
THE FIRST RED BASE: THE FIRST ‘lEFT’ LINE
Mao’s basic idea was that there could be no delimitation, no
partition between military action and political-economic-
agrarian policies in the Chinese Revolution. ‘Since the struggle
in the Border Area is exclusively military, both the Party and
the masses have to be placed on a war footing.’ Even Stalin had
remarked that in China it was armed revolution against armed
counter-revolution which characterized the Chinese situation
(December 1927). This indivisibility of Party-Army would be a
long-term phenomenon.
The five characteristics Mao brought out were:
(1) China was a semi-feudal, semi-colonial country with un-
even development of the Revolution, few workers in coastal
cities, and a vast countryside with a large population of peasants.
(2) China was large and had many resources, especially man-
power, The masses had already proved what they were capable
of in the Revolution, but the Communist leadership (meaning
the Chen Tu-hsiu leadership) had followed ‘incorrect policies’.
Now a Red Army was being created (workers-peasants-soldicrs).
It was a people’s army, absolutely essential for the Revolution.
But it must be placed under the Party’s control. ‘Our principle is
that the Party commands the gun, and the gun must never be
allowed to command the Party.’
(3) The White Kuomintang regime was now strong, yet it was
divided; the divisions and internal conflicts must be utilized by
revolutionaries, but at the present time it was dangerous to
attack it. In these words Mao showed his disagreement with the
foolhardy military enterprises ordered by Chu Chiu-pai.
(4) The Revolution was now at a low ebb, said Mao, going
directly against the 'high tide’ theory of the Politburo. This was a
time for building up bases, educating the masses, nurturing the
forces of the Revolution, and rebuilding a Party based on demo-
cratic centralism, not a time for offensives and large scale up-
risings. The strategy and tactics of the forces must be based on the
defensive; there must be no ‘military adventurism’. Supplies of
food, clothing, weapons, were precarious. Hence the military
tactics should be:
228
THE MORNING DELUGE
^ The enemy advances, we retreat.
The enemy halts, we harass.
The enemy withdraws, we attack.
The enemy retreats, we pursue. ^
These were the tactics of guerilla warfare, classic tenets of revolu-
tionary peoples’ war.
(5) The agrarian revolution was essential if the bases (and the
Red power and Army) were to survive. Therefore in building a
people s army and party, prominence must be given to land
reform; only through it could the ample support of the peasants
be achieved, only through land reform could mass organizations
be built; recruits be found, and leadership talent reared up from
the masses.
Mao wrote that the revolutionary army would expand be-
cause its rank and file would come from the agrarian revolution,
and because commanders and officers were at one with the men.
The three main rules of discipline and eight points for attention,
or code of the Red Army, were also drawn up at the Maoping
Conference. They remain the cardinal principles of the Red
Army today. Only 6 points were elaborated by Mao, points 6
and 7 were added at Lin Piao’s suggestion, it is said, in the sum-
mer of 1928.*
The three main rules of discipline are;
(1) Obey orders in all your actions.
(2) Do not take a single needle or piece of thread from the
masses.
(3) Turn in everything you have captured.
The eight points ‘for attention’ are:
(1) Speak politely to the people.
(2) Pay fairly for what you buy.
(3) Return everything you borrow.
(4) Pay for anything you damage.
* This is hearsay, and is also to be found in several historical exposes in Chinese
museums. But there has not been official confirmation of this point.
THE FIRST RED BASE! THE FIRST ‘lEFT LINE 229
( 5 )
(6)
(7)
( 8 )
Replace all doors and return all straw on which you
sleep.*
Dig latrines away from houses and fill them with earth
when you leave.
Do not take liberties with women.
Do not ill-treat captives. .
These were to be learned by heart and sung by all soldiers of the
Red Army.
The First Maoping Conference also decided that the Ching-
kangshan base should consolidate, the six counties be retaken,
then gradually expand. Mao Tsetung’s policy of moderation
towards middle peasants and petty merchants was accepted by the
conference (though not by the Central Committee). The creation
of peasant militia and Red Guards was to be carried out. It was
thus a Mao programme which was adopted. Mao was to develop,
through this experience, the concept of ‘fluctuation’. The area
controlled by a fluctuant base might shrink or swell as it was
attacked or as attacks were repelled, but the main thing was
people, not territory. So long as the people were organized, and
the organization held fast, the land could always be retaken.
Chu Teh was named commander-in-chief of the Red Army,
now nearly 4,000 strong, and redesignated as the Fourth Red
Army of Workers and Peasants. Mao Tsetung accepted the
merger, becoming Party representative in the Fourth Army. They
were to double in numbers when joined at the end of 1928 by
other groups wliich had found themselves in the same predica-
ment as Chu Teh’s.
For a few short spring weeks, things became much better. The
soldiers were heartened by the additional weapons, the men, and
the victories. The base had enough manpower to build fortifica-
tions, dig entrenchments, and carry rice up from the plains.
Chu Teh carried rice with the rest, and his pole is still shown as a
museum exhibit. Medical and teaching personnel had also come
in. Mao directed all political work in the Army and among the
* The Red Army borrowed doors (made of wood planks and easily unhinged)
and straw to sleep on. These were returned to the peasants in the morning.
230
THE MORNING DELUGE
peasantry, insisting the Political Department was the ‘lifeline of
all work in the Army*. He promoted the miners from Anyuan,
more politically advanced, to become political instructors and
officers. An Army-Party committee was created to control the
political educative process; soldiers’ committees were set up
throughout the newly arrived troops. ‘Everyone fought and
everyone did political work,’ which broke down ‘military
mindedness’.
‘The troops were taught the history of the Revolution, of
foreign aggression, methods of mass leadership and organization,
how to carry on propaganda with enemy troops, singing and
public speaking,’ Agnes Smedlcy writes. ‘A special training
detachment was formed consisting of some of the staunchest,
most experienced miners.* Reading, writing, arithmetic were
taught by officers to their men. The men sat on the ground tracing
characters and figures in the dirt since there were no paper or
pencils. But the most powerful educational method consisted of
the conference — debate. All rank disappeared, soldiers had full
rights to free speech ... Not only were battles and campaigns
discussed, but the individual conduct of any commander or
fighter could be criticized,’ The inarticulate peasant thus learned
to think, to express himself; he became responsible, valuing his
own worth as a member of a great revolutionary company.
Besides the Red Army, Mao paid special care to the Red Guards,
who now disposed of 683 rifles. They represented the guerilla
peasantry, were the lookouts and watchers, meanwhile continu-
ing their ordinary occupations. Thanks to this network, when
Chingkangshan was attacked there was now warning beforehand.
The local militia organized in each village supplemented the
Red Army and was also a source of recruitment for it. Mao
lectured on the ‘indissoluble link’ between Party, Army, and the
masses of the people. He insisted on popular representation; he
would draft a detailed organic law for the People s Councils
established in the counties controlled by the base, to provide
mass participation in their administration.
* For instance, Keng Piao, once an Anyuan miner, who followed Mao to
Chingkangshan, became ambassador to Albania and is now a Minister.
23T
THE FIRST RED BASE: THE FIRST ‘lEFT’ LINE
But this satisfactory state of consolidation was brief The
conflict between Mao Tsetung’s line and that of the Central
Committee was not at an end. Mao would not be rehabilitated
till the Sixth Congress Quly-September 1928); meanwhile, further
irrational directives from the Central Committee and the Hunan
Provincial Committee again almost destroyed what he had built.
In the next months and years Mao would be facing drastic
choices: compliance with orders from above which would mean
disaster for the Revolution, or rejecting these orders, which would
mean indiscipline and being censured. It was this long ‘tempering
in ideological struggle’ that he underwent which he feels is
essential in learning to discern correct from incorrect policies.
Hence, far from shunning these conflicts, he would look upon
them as a valuable experience, teaching patience, resilience,
endurance, and firmness of purpose, indispensable adjuncts to
any revolutionary’s political education. Meanwhile he went on,
on the one hand with the large, all-encompassing vision, creating
a new, grandiose blueprint for the conquest of power, on the
other materializing these abstract theories in a thousand practical,
down-to-earth, meticulously detailed directives and activities.
Hence nothing he wrote is to be regarded as trivial; it was as
essential to return straw bedding as it was to capture villages.
And so, in a thousand ways, the Chinese Revolution grew in the
mountains of Chingkangshan.
‘In April [1928] after the whole of our army [Chu Teh’s Fourth
Army] arrived ... there was still not much burning and killing,
but the expropriation of the middle merchants in town and
collection of compulsory contributions from the small landlords
and rich peasants were now rigorously enforced ... This ultra-
left policy of attacking the petty bourgeoisie drove most of them
to the side of the landlords ... with the result that they put on
white ribbons and opposed us.’
The Maoping Conference of May 1928 reversed some of the
highly unpopular policies which had succeeded in turning the
masses against the Communists. ‘Thanks to these proper tactics ...
we were able to win a number of military victories and expand
232
THE MORNING DELUGE
the people’s independent regime from April to July. Although
several times stronger than we, the enemy was unable to prevent
the expansion ... let alone destroy it.’ ‘We fought the enemy for
four long months, daily enlarging the territory . . . deepening the
agrarian revolution, extending the people’s political power and
expanding the Red Army and the Red Guards. This was possible
because the policies of the Party organizations (local and army)
in the Border Area [the Cliingkangshan base] were correct.’
There was a large increase in Party members in all six counties.
In the April to July series of battles, Lin Piao, then twenty-one,
distinguished himself, particularly at the battle of Lungyuankou,
and caught Mao’s attention. The younger man seemed attracted
to Mao by the latter’s wide span of ideas, and his military origi-
nality, Lin Piao, too, would not always agree with Mao Tsetung;
but he seemed his best pupil in military matters. On June 23,
1928, Lin Piao lured five enemy regiments in Yunghsin county
into pursuing the Red forces into the mountains, then swooped
upon them in a narrow place and cut them to pieces. This, called
the victory of Lungyuankou, was to become a favourite tactic
of Lin Piao’s, based on Mao’s military ideas.
But now, once again, the ‘left’ line of Chu Chiu-pai interfered.
‘The Hunan Provincial Committee advocated three different
plans within a few weeks of JuneandJuly ... each ... the absolutely
correct policy to be carried out without the least hesitation. In
June, a man called Yuan Teh-sheng, representative of the Hunan
Provincial Committee, arrived at the base, and approved of the
measures taken to establish political power and the independent
regime of Chingkangshan ; that is, he approved of the Maoping
Conference and its results. Butin July two other emissaries named
Tu and Yang came, with orders for an immediate military
operation to be carried out in South Hunan, leaving only 200
men and rifles at the base. ‘How can there be Marxism in the
mountains of Chingkangshan?’ they said. They found fault with
everything, castigated the set-up, and transmitted orders for the
Army to move out of the base and advance to attack as the
‘absolutely correct policy’. Ten days later Yuan Teh-sheng re-
turned with a letter ‘rebuking us at great length and urging the
THE FIRST RED BASE: THE l-IRST LEFT LINE 233
Red Army to set out immediately to East, not South, Hunan,
and again describing tliis as the ‘absolutely correct’ policy to be
carried out ‘without the least hesitation’. ‘These rigid directives
put us in a real dilemma ... Failure to comply would be tan-
tamount to disobedience, while compliance would mean certain
defeat.*
Faced with these caprices of the Hunan Provincial Committee,
Mao Tsetung termed both these sets of contradictory orders
suicidal, and called a conference of the Party-Army committee.
On July 4, at Yunghsin, where Mao was now staying, he pro-
duced a reply ‘in seven reasoned paragraphs’ showing the dangers
inherent in both these instructions, urging that the army remain
where it was.
Tu and Yang, however, went off to the headquarters of the
Twenty-ninth Regiment of the Fourth Army, to persuade
individual commanders to leave the base and fight in South
Hunan. In this they succeeded. The Twenty-ninth Regiment, now
homesick, and tired of the privations and asceticism of Ching-
kangshan, was persuaded to attack several county towns. They
suffered very heavy losses. Yang created a rival committee and
took Mao’s place as secretary; at the same time the major detach-
ment of the Red Army, which was on operations to control the
counties previously overrun, was now deflected from its tasks
and also ordered to go fighting in South Hunan. In this change of
plans, Chu Teh, as commander-in-chief, seems to have, possibly
from a sense of loyalty, obeyed the orders of Tu and Yang from
the Provincial Committee, despite Mao’s protests.
The result of this disastrous South Hunan expedition was that
the whole of the Fourth Red Army, except one regiment recupe-
rating from fighting, left the base and, in August, incurred a 50
per cent loss in pointless battles. The newly expanded base was
left unprotected. This was ‘the August defeat’ described in detail
by Mao.* Through it, all that had been gained from April to
July was again lost. The ultra-left policies were again rigorously
enforced by Tu and Yang, now in control, and once more the
‘intermediate’ classes, the petty merchants and traders, the middle
* Selected Works, vol. I, pp. 76-77.
8 *
234
THE MORNING DELUGE
peasants turned against the Red Army. Mao’s patient mass work
was undone once more.
Mao then attempted to bring back the remains of his army. He
led some soldiers of the regiment he had left to Kweitung, in
South Hunan, to catch up with the defeated main forces, rescue
them, and make them return to base. On the 23 rd of August he
reached them, and on the 25th held a meeting. The regiments
were in full mutiny; the 29th regiment wanted to go home, the
28th did not want to return, a commander defected. Mao spoke
to the men, to the officers, debating with them, analysing the
cause of defeat. ‘We want to go home,’ they shouted. Mao argued
with them and was able to bring many of them round. And so
he led them the weary way back to Chingkangshan.
Profiting from the absence of the Red Army, ‘enemy units
from Hunan and Kiangsi seized the opportunity to attack the
Chingkang Mountains on August 30. Using their points of van-
tage, the defending troops, numbering less than one battalion,
fought back, routed the enemy and saved the base.’
This was the famous battle of Huang Yang Chieh (August 30,
1928), one of the five passes into the mountain complex, which an
elated Mao celebrated in a poem.* The erstwhile ‘bandit’ forces of
Yuan Wen-tsai and Wang Tso, who had remained behind, played
a great part in keeping Chingkangshan against the enemy, as did
the local population, who planted bamboo spikes in all the passes
and fired off an old wooden cannon, making great noises with
drums and howling. Mao was delighted with the victory and the
valour of the Chingkangshan Hakkas, men and women. The
exhausted main detachment came back, the wounded were very
numerous, and again all had to be rebuilt. The base counties had
once again been overrun by looting troops on the rampage.
Harvests had been burned. The population now was definitely
more hostile.
Came September, autumn, and little to eat. Difficulties in-
creased. The ultra-left line had alienated the people; the costly
and stupid battles had depleted the forces. Battles were now
continual between the base and the surrounding enemy, which
* Reproduced at the end of the chapter.
THE FIRST RED BASE: THE FIRST ‘lEFt’ LINE 235
assaulted time and again. The base needed everything, weapons,
clothes, medicines. The soldiers had little to eat and wear. They
got up at night to drill, in order to keep warm,
‘How to fxght has become the central problem in our daily
life.’ The Red Army consisted partly of workers and peasants
‘and partly of lumpen proletariat" (here Mao meant the bandits
Yuan and Wang, so contemptuously described by the envoys of
Chu Chiu-pai). Because of mcessant attacks, it was ‘already no
easy matter to get replacements even from among them’ (the
lumpen proletariat). The Red Army had abolished the mercenary
system, had equal distribution of oil, salt, firewood and vege-
tables; each company, battalion or regiment had its soldiers’
committees; Party representatives were at company level — but
the hardships endured were enormous. ‘Cold as the weather is,
many of our men are still wearing only two layers of thin
clothing ... Fortunately we are inured to hardships.’ ‘From the
commander of the army to the cook everyone lives on the daily
food allowance of 5 cents, apart from grain.’ Because of the in-
cessant battles, there were ‘many wounded . . . many officers and
men are ill from malnutrition, exposure to cold and other causes’ ;
and yet such was the morale that ‘newly captured soldiers'* feel
that though in material life worse off in the Red Army than in the
White Army, spiritually they are liberated ... the Red Army is
like 2L furnace in which all captured soldiers are melted down and
transformed’. Mao added that ‘apart from the role played by the
Party, the reason why the Red Army had been able to carry on in
spite of such poor material conditions and such frequent engage-
ments’ (over eighteen large and small in twelve months) ‘is its
practice of democracy’. ‘In China the army needs democracy as
much as the people do.’
More than 6o per cent of the land in the border areas where the
base was located belonged to the landlords — in some counties up
to 80 per cent. ‘Therefore, given this situation, it is possible to win
the support of the majority for the confiscation of all the land.’
But there was a difficulty; that of the ‘intermediate class’, stand-
ing between the big and middle landlords and the poor peasants.
* See end of chapter.
236
THE MORNING DELUGE
Because of the ultra-left line of complete confiscation, the inter-
mediate class had been alienated, and a great deal of obstruction
had resulted. The small landlords and rich peasants had defected
to the enemy, led the KMT forces to enter and to commit atro-
cities. ‘The most difficult problem ... is to keep a firm hold on the
intermediate class — this class has attached itself almost wholly to
the big landlord class, and the poor peasant class has become
isolated. This is indeed a very serious problem.*
Mao also pointed out that mass meetings ‘called on the spur of
the moment* could not train the masses politically. ‘The reason is
the lack of propaganda and education concerning the new political
system. The evil feudal practice of arbitrary dictation is so deeply
rooted on the minds of the people and even of the ordinary
Party members that it cannot be swept away at once; when any-
thing crops up, they choose the easy way and have no liking for
this bothersome democratic system . . .
‘Owing to the tight enemy blockade and oar mishandling of the
petty bourgeoisie* trade has almost entirely ceased, necessities
such as salt, cloth, medicines are scarce and costly, agricultural
products cannot be sent out.* Poor peasants were more able to
bear these hardships, but not the intermediate class, and ‘unless a
nationwide revolutionary situation develops, the small indepen-
dent Red regimes will come under great economic pressure and
it is doubtful whether they will be able to last\ (Author’s italics.)
Within the Party organization, Mao wrote, ‘manifestations of
opportunism [in the last twelve months, since October 1927]
continue to be widespread*. All this made it difEcult to organize
a ‘militant Bolshevik Party*. In September, after the August
defeat, Mao ordered a drastic shake-up of the Party in Ching-
kangshan and re-registration of Communist Party members. This
was the first ‘rectification’ he had conducted at a Red base. We
do not know how effective the results were. Possibly in view of
having to leave the base, he now set on foot underground Party
organizations and cells. The structures were the same as the visible
ones, but now they could function even if the base was overrun
by the Kuomintang, as indeed it would be within the next year.
* From Kuomintang and warlord troops who attacked Chingkangshan.
THE FIRST RED BASE: THE FIRST ‘lEFt’ LINE 237
The Second Maoping Conference (October-November 1928:
also called the Second Conference of the Border Area) was the
occasion for a summing-up of all the experiences through that
gruelling year. Mao could then write fully to the Central Com-
mittee, justifying all he had done. With courtesy but relentless
logic, he exposed the wrongheadedness of the directives, and his
indignation at the human losses incurred comes through.
Mao Tsetung emphasized the paramount importance of army-
political indoctrination; a ratio of one Party member to two non-
Party in the Army would now be his aim. (Today it is still the
ratio in the Red Army.) By stressing the importance of the
‘intermediate’ class, the middle peasantry, petty traders and
craftsmen, he refuted the ultra-left policy of lumping them all
with ‘landlords and rich peasants’ to kill. The conference had
passed resolutions on Prohibition of Reckless Burning and Killing
and Protection of the Interests of the Middle and Small Merchants.
This line against terrorism, against ultra-leftism, would be Mao’s
all through the next decades.
The land law, which had been promulgated in the base terri-
tory in September, was too drastic because it ordered confiscation
and redistribution of all land instead of only landlord land. Mao
realized this error by the year’s end; he would change the law in
April 1929 to ‘confiscate public land and the land of the landlord
class’.* He would also continue to make provision for the pro-
tection of merchants in county towns. The experience of Ching-
kangshan confirmed his natural bent for flexible practical policies
based on meticulous investigation. But there was a storm of
abuse against Mao not only from the provincial committee in
Hunan but also the one in Kiangsi (since the base area straddled
both); abuse which later was to be reiterated by the next secretary-
general in charge of the Party who replaced Chu Chiu-pai in that
autumn of 1928 — none other than Li Li-san. ‘Rifle movement’,
conservatism’, ‘peasant consciousness’, ‘localism’, ‘guerillaism’,
‘alliance with bandits and lumpen proletariat' were hurled at
Mao. But in spite of this his work was being highly spoken of
even in Moscow at the Comintern. From July to September of
* Land law of Hsingkuo county; sec next chapter.
238
THE MORNING DELUGE
1928, the Chinese Communist Party was holding its Sixth Con-
gress in Moscow, and Chu Chiu-pai was already out, though
Mao may not have known of this till later, in November. The
reason for Chu’s deposition was his ultra-leftism; the Comintern
had done some reappraisal of the situation.
Enemy harassment continued through September, October,
November, against Chingkangshan. In October more pro-
Communist groups ascended to the fortress. This time it was
Peng Teh-huai who came with his troops, bringing the number
to about 8,000. Peng Teh-huai was a Kuomintang officer who
had revolted and joined the Communist Party in April 1928.
He too had been ordered to launch insurrections in Hunan, was
defeated in July, and like Chu Teh had to seek shelter in the
Chingkangshan base. But now, with the bitter winter approach-
ing, the base could not cope with this influx of men. There was
simply not enough to eat. ‘Make revolution and eat squash!’ the
soldiers shouted. But even squash was difficult to get.
In early December another large enemy force of no less than
eighteen regiments was launched against Chingkangshan.
Grievous battles took place. It was freezing, the men were
starved. They no longer even shouted, ‘Make revolution and eat
squash!’ Though Mao still insisted that the doctors of the Army
should look after the population as well, there were no medicines.
Some of Mao’s colleagues in the twenty-four-man Border Com-
mittee he had organized in September urged abandoning the
base and reverting to roving guerilla warfare. Mao still held to the
notion of the base. ‘Wc hold as wc always held, that it is abso-
lutely necessary and correct to build up and expand Red political
power,’ wrote Mao. He asked for help, some medicines, supplies,
but none were forthcoming.
A conference was then held at Ningkang on January 4, 1929 J
the conference it appears that it was Mao who decided that he and
Chu Teh, with 4,000 men, should found another base, leaving
Peng Teh-huai with 5,000 men at Chingkangshan. This is called
the White Dew (Pai Lou) Conference. Again Mao criticized the
‘roving bands’ idea, and then made ready to leave Chingkangshan.
Except for a few advance squads, each soldier was issued some
239
THE FIRST RED BASE: THE FIRST LEFT LINE
rounds of cartridges; the bulk of the ammunition was left on
Chingkangshan. It is said that one of the first things that hap-
pened was dissension between Peng Teh-huai and the two Hakka
leaders, Yuan and Wang, with whom Mao had got on rather
well. But there is no real evidence that Peng Teh-huai killed
them, even if this is what is now being said.* Chingkangshan was
attacked again by White forces and the base almost entirely
evacuated. Save for the clandestine groups (created by Mao in
September 1928), the Red Guards, and the (secret) peasant militia,
by March 1929 the base was no longer the vital focus it had been.
But the region remained a guerilla area. It would be 1937 before
Chingkangshan would be revisited by Chen Yi, to revive the
Party structures there and to recruit old cadres; from this area
would come fighters to staff the New Fourth Army organized to
fight the Japanese invasion. Mao had indeed succeeded in forging
‘indissoluble links* between the people and their army, the Red
Army, and this was the single most important factor of the grand
strategy of building rural bases which started at Chingkangshan.
As he left Chingkangshan, trudging on foot with Chu Teh and
his men, the figure of Mao is already different from the energetic
student, the dedicated young Communist. Already he carried
with him a weight of experience, responsibility, leadership. It is
as the teacher, the theoretician, as well as the administrator that
we sec him moving with his men, down the passes framed by
their boulders, leaving Chingkangshan.
‘When I say that there will soon be a high tide of revolution in
China, I am emphatically not speaking of something which in
the words of some people is possibly coming, something illusory,
unattainable, and devoid of significance for action.
It is like a ship far out at sea whose masthead can already be
seen from the shores.
‘It is like the morning sun in the east whose shimmering rays are
visible from a high mountaintop.
‘It is like a child about to be born moving restlessly in its
mother’s womb.’
* Interview, 1969. Such Red Guard and other material issued during the Great
Proletarian Cultural Revolution must be handled with caution.
240
THE MORNING DELUGE
Moving away from Chingkangshan, southward, the soldiers
did not need to ask A'lao what they would do. They had been
told. To make another base, to spread the Revolution,
HUANG YANG CHIEH*
At the mountain foot our banners,
On the mountain crest sound bugles and drums,
The foe round us in their thousands.
We stood fast, unmouing.
Our defence a stout wall about us,
Now our wills unite, impregnable fortress.
From Huang Yang Chieh the thunder of guns.
The enemy fades at night.
* Poem dated autumn 1928; see page 234. The reference to banners at the foot
of the mountain is because while the Hakkas and militia at the top were holding
the passes, a small regiment left at the base, by forced marches, attacked the
enemy in the rear. Thinking the armies had returned, the enemy fled after four
attacks had been launched against the defenders on the crests.
10
Mao Tsetung and Li Li-san:
The Second ‘Left’ Line
In the story of the Chinese Revolution, Mao’s relentless battles for
what he deemed the correct road encountered many obstacles, not
the least from comrades and colleagues whose hostility to Mao
can possibly be explained in a Marxist analysis by *class stand-
point’— but this explanation appears simplistic to non-idcologucs,
for it docs not convey the presence of vindictiveness or empathy,
the components of love, loyalty, rivalry, resentment, ambition,
which give each episode the potential of a Greek play. Becoming
a Party member does not sterilize emotion, it transmutes it,
makes it express itself in political language; in the end, however
deep we delve, to come upon the perplexing ‘class imprint’
answer still cannot answer all that wc ask. We shall not en-
deavour to psychoanalyse each protagonist, but perhaps one day
minute and painstaking research will tell us why Li Li-san disliked
Mao Tsetung so much, why at first sight their friendship never
developed.
The Mao-Li Li-san relationship is one which I fmd difficult to
visualize as purely a political struggle, since so much of what Li
Li-san did smacks of personal grudge. That Mao bore no personal
resentment, sought no personal revenge, is not due to benevolence.
The man had such trust in time and history to vindicate him, his
inner dimension of spirit made him so different, that he probably
never understood the grudge which some — especially intellectuals
— seemed to bear against him. His enemies have fallen one by one,
not through his actions but through their own inadequacy. Not
that he does not exert himself to bring them down; for a picture
of a long-suffering meek Mao, enduring all, is quite erroneous.
He did bring them down, but he had an uncommon knack of
241
242
THE MORNING DELUGE
doing SO by being so often right that some of his haters have
argued that he was simply born lucky. That he was so often, so
uncannily correct in so many ways could not be forgiven him.
hdao himself, once he had won, had no need to be pitiless. He
destroyed his enemies’ prestige and repute, showed them up, held
them to ridicule. And the laughter of the audience was enough.
He never felt the need to kill an adversary, it was much more
satisfactory to let them live, shorn and diminished. The shallow
Li Li-san would be a case study in overweening ambition, which
made him join the Party, and which brought him down. There
would be many others.
While Mao Tsetung and Chu Teh were trudging among the
mountains of South Kiangsi in that freezing January of 1929, Li
Li-san was assuming power in the Shanghai headquarters of the
Central Committee. To understand how this happened we must
go back a few months. The repeated reverses of the Chu Chiu-pai
leadership (also known in Chinese Communist history as the
First Left Deviation’) had led, in the Comintern, to dismay and
alarm. Stalin in March 1928 had already asked for a special
investigation. Chu Chiu-pai, ChouEn-lai, and Li Li-san, members
of the Chu Chiu-pai Politburo, all went to Moscow in June, and
the Sixth Congress of the Chinese Communist Party was held
there from July to September 1928. The policy of armed insur-
rection and ultra-leftist ‘kill and burn’ was still carried out in the
summer, leading to the August defeat at Chingkangshan which
Mao described so vividly, despite the fact that already Chu’s line
was condemned in Moscow. The time factor must always be
reckoned with; news of the verdict came to the base only in
November.
One hundred delegates, it is said, attended the Sixth Congress.
Besides those mentioned above, Liu Shao-chi under the name of
Tchao Kang-ming, Chang Kuo-tao, Hsiang Ying, Chou En-lai
and Tsai Ho-sen, Mao’s friend from Hunan, were also in Moscow.
The ones not present were Mao and Chu Teh. Li Li-san even
then derided Mao. ‘What kind of Marxism can there be in the
mountains of Chingkangshan?’
The Sixth Congress repeated the thesis that ‘armed struggle is
MAO TSfiTUNG AND LI LI-SAN
243
the sole path to the completion of the bourgeois democratic
revolution*, but the concept of Chu Chiu-pai that there was a
‘high tide’ was repudiated. There was no revolutionary rising tide
at the moment. However, one should be prepared for its coming,
by organizing armed insurrection. ‘The direction of work should
have been resolutely shifted from direct armed insurrection on a
large scale to better day-to-day organization and mobilization of
the masses.’ Tliis condemned the southern Hunan uprisings and
vindicated Mao. Though the Sixth Congress in its resolutions
thus upheld Mao, there was much ambiguity in the fuial resolu-
tions, which allowed of various interpretations.
The issues at stake actually could only be certified correct or
incorrect by trial and error, and there were several alternatives.
One involved the building up of rural bases and a protracted
struggle, the Mao concept; the second, a policy of continuous
insurrections in both towns and countryside, the Chu Chiu-pai
line, now rejected but still upheld by some at the congress; the
third, utilizing the strength built up in the countryside once again
to take cities and relieve the pressure on urban Communist
organizations. This third alternative was adopted by Li Li-san,
although it was not thus spelled out at the Sixth Congress. ‘The
line of the Sixth Congress was ... basically correct.’* It had
defmed the Chinese Revolution at that stage as still a bourgeois-
democratic one; had defined the political situation as ‘an interval
between two revolutionary high tides’. It had assessed the
development of the Revolution as ‘uneven’. It had castigated
‘putschism, military adventurism and commandism, which
alienate the masses’.
But the Sixth Congress also had ‘shortcomings’. It did not
assess the ‘dual character’ of the intermediate classes, the middle
class or petty bourgeoisie in the cities; and it ‘failed to understand
the importance of rural base areas’. This would be the verdict of
Mao at the Seventh Congress in 1945, when all historical ques-
tions would be subject to scrutiny. Because of these omissions ‘the
“left” ideas existing after the August 7 [1927] meeting’ were not
eradicated. Li Li-san was to evolve another ‘left’ deviation.
* Selected Works^ vol. Ill, p. 182.
244
THE MORNING DELUGE
A new Politburo was elected. Although the timid Hsiang
Chung-fa, a Communist of worker origin who had been a labour
organizer in Wuhan, was made secretary of the CCP, Li Li-san
was to wield the power as head of the Propaganda Department.
Chou En-lai was in charge of organization and Liu Shao-chi of
labour, which meant trade union work in cities.
Li Li-san was six years younger than Mao. He was also from
Hunan province, his father a schoolteacher. In 1919 he had gone
to France in one of the work and study groups, and there met Tsai
Ho-sen, Mao’s long-time friend, and Chou En-lai. He had joined
the Communist Party branch formed there and in 1921 returned
to China. In 1922 he became labour organizer at the Anyuan coal
mines and director of the workers’ club. At the time Mao was
secretary of the Hunan Party Committee and chairman of the
Hunan branch of the Labour Federation. Li went against Mao’s
ideas on how the Anyuan strike should be led, and associated
himself with Liu Shao-chi’s policies. Li continued to rise in the
hierarchy as a labour organizer; he was an extremely fluent man
and according to Anna Louise Strong, who met him in 1927, an
eloquent speaker, one of the most prominent at the time of the
united front in Wuhan. He had taken part in the Nanchang
uprising in August 1927, then gone to Shanghai, and was in
Moscow for the Sixth Congress.
In Moscow, where there was at the time some admiration for
Mao, Li Li-san did his best to discredit him; he was responsible for
the inclusion in a resolution in September 1928 of a warning
against ‘peasant mentality’ — ‘If the danger of peasant mentality is
not corrected, the Revolution will be liquidated entirely and the
Party will die.’ As soon as he returned from Moscow he started to
proclaim the danger of a shift from working-class leadership to
the peasantry. This was to serve as a platform for attack against
Mao Tsetung.
The Li Li-san line regarded the creation and strengthening of
rural bases as a danger to the working class. To Mao there was no
contradiction between proletarian leadership and peasant mem-
bership; the agrarian revolution being, as he had expounded, the
necessary step in the two-stage revolution. At least 700 Anyuan
MAO TSETUNG AND LI LI-SAN 245
workers and Shuikoushan lead miners were in his army. Tliere
were only 4 million workers in China and 500 million peasants, a
proportion of less than i per cent. Among his 4,000 Red Army
men Mao had a far higher percentage in 1928, over 14 per cent.
While on Chingkangshan, Mao had requested the Hunan commit-
tee several times to send him more miners from Anyuan, and in
December 1930 he was to go himself, again, to Anyuan to recruit
miners for command posts. He had trained workers to become
leaders of the peasant recruits. Peasants would also be trained to
become workers in the arsenals and workshops created at the
next Red base which Mao would set up. But for Li Li-san,
peasants were a different breed from workers and they represented
a danger to proletarian leadership.
Li Li-san* s first action on his return to China was denunciation
of ‘peasant mentality’ again, as in Moscow. Peasants, he said,
constituted 70 to 80 per cent of the Party membership — ‘The
peasant cannot have correct ideas regarding socialism’ ... ‘The
peasantry is petty bourgeois ... it lacks organizational ability.’ This
attack on ‘peasant consciousness’ was circulated just at the time
Mao Tsetung and Chu Teh were leaving the base of Ching-
kangshan. It had a bad effect on the rank and file of the Red Army.
It was calculated to lessen Mao’s prestige.
Li Li-san had been important in Communist labour organiza-
tions since 1922; as a trade unionist he knew only Party work in
the cities. But when he returned to Shanghai the workers in the
cities, after the terrible massacres, were cowed, and the active
Communists among them decimated. Li could gather less than
4,000 workers in all China to mount strikes as a prelude to the
general insurrection he contemplated. This alone should have
taught Li Li-san a lesson in coolheaded calculation; In April 1927
the Party had counted nearly 58,000 members, of whom approxi-
mately 60 per cent were workers; in late 1927 Party membership
was down to 10,000, in 1928 up again to 40,000, but only 10 per
cent of these were workers. (In 1930, out of 122,318 members,
only 8 per cent would be workers.)
Mao Tsetung and Chu Teh, leading their 4,000 men, went
THE MORNING DELUGE
246
through the winterbound mountains southward. Mao’s plan was
the building up of a new base* which would have as its founda-
tion several scattered Communist guerilla bands in Kiangsi, in an
area where the terrible exactions of the Kuomintang had effec-
tively radicalized the peasantry. There were also commanders
and officers who had taken part in the actions in Swatow and
Kuangchow of the previous year now hiding with their troops
in these areas. Mao Tsetung would fuid them and link up with
them.
One pound of cooked rice, the clothes they stood in, and some
rounds of ammunition were all that each of the men carried as
they left the massif a week after the White Dew conference, on
January 12, 1929. They went across the freezing ranges, walking
by night and hiding by day. They struck at landlords and their
private troops; the peasants who knew them came out to help.
They revived the mass movement against landlords in several
districts but were attacked and pursued; desperate battles with
‘enemy troops swarming against them’ took place day after day.
Snow fell, and as they trudged the wounded left blood marks
upon it. They made desperate assaults for food, and were easily
hunted down as they withdrew, by their all too visible tracks.
They had only thin, ragged cotton clothes, they were covered
with lice; less than half the soldiers had rifles, many died of cold
and exposure. There were no medicines, no fuel for cooking, no
rice to eat. And yet there were recruits, for the area was ripe for
revolt. Mao was emaciated, his hair grew almost to his shoulders,
he wore the same straw sandals as the soldiers and he insisted, still,
on keeping the three/eight rules. At home in Shaoshan he had
learned to weave sandals on a wooden lathe, but now there was
no straw to be had. Among the 4,000 were 100 women. The snow
lay deep in treacherous pockets; the icy wind screamed about
the weathered slopes; there were no pathways, and the men
sheltered behind boulders. They sometimes walked two or three
* This is now represented in China as Mao’s own decision, but there may also
have been an order for Mao and Chu Teh to conduct insurrection without the
proviso of building a base; this interpretation is probably more accurate, as Li
Li-san is said to have issued these orders in December 1928.
MAO TSETUNG AND LI LI-SAN 247
days without finding any hanilet that would feed them; at others
they would be fed by peasants who welcomed the Red Army but
had desperately little to give. They reached the outskirts of Tayu,
in the tungsten-producing area, a fairly rich city, and there made
a mistake; they remained too long, thus giving the enemy time
to catch up and kill hundreds of them. From then on Mao avoided
all the towns and cities, and hid in the countryside away from
any sizable urban centres. For the next fortnight a desperate
running battle through the Wuyi mountain range with its
treacherous zigzag slopes took place. Carrying their sick and
wounded, the Red Army loped along the border, eastward,
unable to throw off the dogged troops at their heels. Again at
Hsun Wu they were attacked, and crossed into Fukien, to
Wuping, to shake off the enemy; then back again into Kiangsi,
heading straight, it seemed, for Juichin, an important market
town, but bypassing it and going on northward to Tapoti. There
Mao Tsetung decided to take advantage of the terrain and to get
rid of the enemy once and for all. He and Chu Teh drew up the
battle plans. ‘Our troops discussed the plan of battle until every-
thing was clear. They then swore to destroy the enemy or die in
the attempt.’* Tapoti is a shallow, basin-like valley of fields, the
bed of an old clayey lake, hill-cradled, about twenty miles from
Juichin. On the morning of February 10 Mao and Chu Teh
prepared the ambush here. Their men hid on the many-folded
hills; in the afternoon, as fog began, a feint by one of the four
regiments which made up their Fourth Army lured the Kuomin-
tang and warlord troops into the valley; the battle began at noon
and went on throughout the night. ‘It was foggy and the enemy
did not know the terrain; he wasted much ammunition.’ Lin
Piao led a small force through the night to hit the enemy at the
rear, and at dawn attacked. ‘By noon it was over.’ One thousand
of the 7,000 attacking troops were taken captive, including two
regimental commanders, and 800 guns. It was a great victory, the
first after Chingkangshan, and the decisive battle for opening up
a new base.
They then captured the walled town of Ningtu in central
* Interview at Tapoti, visited by the author.
THE MORNING DELUGE
248
Kiangsi and spent three days there, taking the food of the land-
lords and resting, calling mass meetings, opening prisons and
releasing prisoners. Then they marched towards Tungku.
Peasants came to help them, carried the wounded, for Tungku
was under the command of a Communist, Tseng Shan, and an
cx-Whangpoo cadet now turned guerilla, Li Wen-ling. Here
the peasants were enthusiastic in their welcome. Before leaving
Tapoti, Mao had sent a small contingent to the Juichin post
office to get the newspapers to read, a habit he would never give
up. It was New Year’s Eve, and the contingent surprised the local
garrison, disarmed them, and ate a New Year’s banquet which
was ready.
Hsingkuo, a walled town twenty-five miles south of Tungku,
an area of good soil and wealthy landlords, was their next target.
Hsingkuo fell to them, and was joined to Tungku as a ‘soviet’
area. Mao and Chu found that the ‘base’ already established at
Tungku was a base only in name; there had been no agrarian
revolution. However, here was a central massif ringed with
plains, with villages and towns, much richer and more peopled
than Chingkangshan, and beautiful in spring, with bamboo and
spruce and fir. At Hsingkuo they stayed and rested, delouscd and
bathed, continued training and teaching and drilling. At a
general mass meeting held in Tungku, Mao Tsetung spoke to the
Red Army, as usual infusing hope and power, communicating
his vision of a dazzling tomorrow: ‘A single spark can light a
prairie fire; though we are weak and small today, our future is
boundless.’ He explained the general strategy and tactics of the
Revolution, the necessity for rural bases. Again they sallied forth,
eastward, and now they took Changting (Tingchow), a large
town on the border of Fukien province, by stratagem, luring the
men of the garrison out of town and then attacking; they cap-
tured the garrison commander and a great quantity of ammuni-
tion. The battle of Tingchow was the foundation of another Red
area, later consolidated into a base. There Mao changed his four
regiments to three columns. Recruitment made good the losses.
It was at Tingchow apparently that a messenger arrived from
Shanghai with reports and documents of the Sixth Congress, and
MAO TSETUNG AND LI LI-SAN 249
also, at the same time, a peasant messenger with a message in the
lining of his jacket. This message was from Peng Tch-hiiai, ami
announced he was near Juichin, three days’ march west of
Tingchow, having abandoned Chingkangshan. So Mao and Chu
Teh left Tingchow in April and returned to South Kiangsi, to the
counties of Yutou and Hsingkuo, and there organized revolution-
ary committees and mass organizations, on the way to Juichin.
In this campaign to shape a new base, Mao Tsetung began to
perfect ‘the countryside surrounding the cities’ method. But his
actions must have been greatly hampered by the effect of Li Li-
san s denunciation of peasant mentality . Though he received
help from Tseng Shan, the several Communists commanding
small agglomerations (some had participated in the putsch on
Kuangchow of December 1927, others in the march on Swatow)
on the whole gave him no help, and even refused to receive him.
The peasants, however, were far more enthusiastic; they had
been radicalized during the Northern Expedition, and massacres
in this region had not been as thorough and effective as in Hunan.
But they were very poor and oppressed, and this condition still
existed; hence the Red Army obtained recruits — many of them
under eighteen -but nothing much in the way of food or am-
munition. However, the peasant families sheltered the wounded,
and sometimes went without rice to feed the Red Army,
In May, Mao was to return through Tapoti, and there to hold a
great popular feast, a celebration of the victory at Tapoti that
February. He then gave money back to the people, three dollars
per person for the food the peasants had given his army. The
money came from Ningtu, where 5,000 dollars had been collected
from the wealthy merchants. He distributed clothing taken from
the landlords of Hsingkuo to compensate for the damage done
during the battle. In 1933 Mao wrote a poem about Tapoti:
After the rain sunlight gleams through,
Mountains and valleys melt in one azure.
That year fierce was the battle,
Bullet holes still scar the village walls,
More lovely the hill pass they adorn.
250
THE MORNING DELUGE
They now arrived at Juichin, and Peng Teh-huai was waiting
for them, though not in the city. Peng Teh-huai’s falling out with
Yuan and Wang, the ‘bandit’ chieftains, after Mao’s departure
allowed an enemy attack to succeed, and Peng lost the base.
Juichin was taken in May 1929, and it was to form the capital
agglomeration of the new base, known from that time as the
Central Base, or Kiangsi-Fukien Border Area.
The Anyuan and Pinghsiang miners were now organized in an
engineer corps; there would be an arsenal, hospitals, schools, even
a military academy of sorts. This base was far wealtliier than
Chingkangshan ; the counties more fertile, handicrafts and trade
well developed, water abundant, and the tungsten mines provided
a source of income. But the organization of the base still rested
on the co-operation of the peasants, its defence on the Red Army
as an adequate regular force. Here, as in Chingkangshan, there
would be local militia and Red Guards, mass self-defence in-
stitutions; but they were only for local self-defence. Round the
Red Army and its use, the struggle between Li Li-san’s ‘left’ line
and Mao Tsetung would now develop, but it would be a struggle
of far more scope than merely military utilization; it also involved
two different strategies of revolution.
In April, at Tingchow, another of Li Li-san’s circular letters had
reached Mao. The October 1928 letter, which had been an attack
on the influence of ‘peasant mentality’ in the Party, had been
deleterious in its effect.* Now this second letter had been com-
posed in February 1929; it took two months to reach Mao. Work
was to be concentrated on the workers in the cities. To rebuild the
Party in urban areas and to recapture working-class leadership,
Mao and Chu were enjoined to abandon their efforts to create a
base, fragment the Red Army into small guerilla bands, disperse
in the countryside and arouse the masses’. Li Li-san also asked
Mao and Chu to leave the ranks and come to Shanghai to help
* ‘We must make every effort to restore the Party*s working-class base ...
Peasants now constitute 70 to 80 per cent of our Party membership — peasant
mentality is now reflected in our Party ... Only a proletarian mentality can lead
us into the correct revolutionary road ... Unless we correct [this peasant
mentality] it may lead to a complete destruction of the Revolution and the Party.
MAO TSETUNG AND LI LI-SAN
251
rebuild workers’ unions in the cities. And Li advised them to
postpone the land reform and redistribution, as the peasants were
‘not ready’.
This meant undoing all that had been done between January and
April. Mao had drafted the Hsingkuo land law of April 1929 to
institute land reform. The Chingkangshan land law, passed in
September 1928 after ‘one year of experience in the land struggle’,
contained, said Mao, several mistakes; it did not allow for inter-
mediate categories in the peasant economy. Mao had now revised
it. On it depended the stability of the new base, both political and
economic; without a flexible, realistic agrarian revolution, Red
power could not consolidate itself, establish government and
organs of mass representation, could not fuiance, feed, recruit a
Red Army, nor develop Party organizations in the countryside.
At Juichin in May, Mao, Chu Teh, and Peng Tch-huai seem to
have held a three-day conference. The upshot was that Mao, while
not directly contradicting Li Li-san, in reality went on organizing
the base he had in mind. That the new leadership in the Politburo
was opposed to Mao’s policies and his establishing Red power was
already manifest to a good many of the local Party members, to
those commanders of guerilla bands now diminished in their own
prestige and influence, and to the Party cadres nominated by
Li Li-san. This added to Mao s diflicultics. The clique spirit,
currying favour with the Central Committee by slighting or
opposing Mao, would of course occur, and with increasing
frequency, during the next year. Not only did Mao have to fight
Kuomintang and warlord armies; there would be a relentless
inner-Party struggle as well.
Mao replied to Li Li-san on April 5, and would again reply in
May. He disagreed with fragmenting the Red Army into guerilla
bands. Li Li-san was confusing, he wrote, the local Red Guards,
who were the militants among the masses, with the Red Army.
This [dispersion] is impractical ... with small dispersed units the
leadership will become weak ... suffer defeat. The more adverse
the circumstances, the greater the need for the forces to be
concentrated and for the leadership to conduct a resolute struggle,
for only thus can we achieve internal unity against the enemy.
252
THE MORNING DELUGE
Only in favourable circumstances can the forces be divided, only
then the leaders need not stay with the ranks.* This was a courteous
way of refusing to go to Shanghai.
Another point at issue was ‘uneven development*. To disperse
in order to rouse the masses everywhere, in cities and in the
countryside, would not work, said Mao. It was better to select
one or more areas, and there concentrate, and build up political
and military strength.
Li Li-san actually wanted to retard the growth of the peasant
movement until the workers* movement had caught up. Both had
to be simultaneous; or rather, the workers had to start first, for no
agrarian revolution could succeed without the leadership of the
proletariat. Thus he reasoned, forcing facts to fit dogma. Mao
gave it as his opinion that ‘it is a mistake for any of our Party
members to fear the development of the power of the peasants’;
and went on to explain the structure and economics of a base, the
policy of ‘advancing waves* to expand a base, its essential fluctuant
quality. ‘The tactics wc have worked out ... arc indeed different
from any employed in ancient or modern times, in China or
elsewhere.** Li Li-san now accused — or rather said that ‘others’
had accused — them of having ‘abandoned* the struggle in the
cities. But Mao Tsetung was not to be budged, nor talked into
leaving the rural base, nor was Chu Tch, and they stuck to their
guns (literally speaking). Li then suggested that the Red Army go
to Hunan to make insurrections. Mao pointed out that ‘because
of the August defeat’ of the previous year the mass base had been
lost in Hunan, and there was no point in losing more men. Upon
which Li Li-san*s seconders at the base and elsewhere accused
Mao of ‘military adventurism and banditry*.
Mao now expanded thcjuichin base; by fighting, expanded the
Red Army, and took Kanchow; east and west, north and south,
they fought. The peasants fought with ‘the poor man’s army’. In
the darkness, choked with tears of the great land, the Red Army
brought more than hope, it brought a way out of desolation. The
landlords took up to 70 per cent of the crop, and lived in the
* On Correcting Mistaken Ideas in the Party (December 1929) ; A Single Spark Can
Start a Prairie Fire (January 1930). Both in Selected Works, vol. I.
MAO TSETUNG AND LI LI-SAN
253
cities. Mao went among the people, asking questions, setting up
investigation teams in order that land reform should work better.
Policies were flexible, concrete, made to fit the situation; the
advice of the peasants’ associations formed was sought. He was
hastening to consolidate the base, and popular support, before
Li Li-san thought up something else.
Li Li-san in Shanghai had in effect thought of something else.
He now dreamed of a great soviet centre for a soviet government
in China. Perhaps remembering the previous enthusiasm in
Wuhan, the large number of workers there, he thought the work-
ers of Wuhan would rise and ‘smash imperialism’. Gradually his
daydream took the shape of political strategy’, ^t^uhan must be
the centre of a soviet government (of course run by Li Li-san).
For this he would need military strength, he would need the Red
Army of Mao and Chu Teh.
Because Mao Tsetung saw the disaster which Li Li-san’s
policies might bring about, he had proceeded to a reorganization
of the Red Army, apprehending that Li might seek to remove
him and Chu Teh. Mao seems to have foreseen that a duel over
the control of both Party and Army would develop. He now
reorganized the small guerilla bands in Kiangsi already in existence
before his arrival into the Third Red Army, and the guerillas
from west Fukien, where he and Chu Teh had gone fighting and
extended the base, into a Twelfth Red Army. To this Twelfth
Army were added some Kuomintang troops who in July had
mutinied against Chiang Kai-shek and come over to the Red
Army. With his own Fourth Army, the 4,000 or more (with
recruits) who had smashed their way from Chingkangshan, and
the Third and the Twelfth, he now had three armies and about
10,000 troops.
The Fourth Army remained the centre of Mao Tsetung’s
military strength and pillar of his power, the best training ground
for officers and political education and cadres. After a term in
the Fourth Army, political and military cadres would go into
the other armies to train and educate, and thus assure linkage
which would bring all the various contingents under control
of the headquarters, under Mao’s control. But resistance to this
254
THE MORNING DELUGE
reorganization, by men such as Li Wen-ling, who had been dis-
placed by Mao and Chu Teh’s arrival, would soon come to a head.
In June 1929 a letter from the Comintern was received by the
Central Committee. While it was the first time Mao was referred
to by name, and in a comphmentary way, the letter was fairly
uncomplimentary to Li Li-san, who had sent directives advocating
a ‘rich peasant’ line to the various bases, or ‘soviets’, as they were
called.
This Comintern letter was a slap to Li Li-san, who had written
to Mao saying it was necessary to conclude an alliance with the
rich peasants, and disapproving of his land law.* Mao Tsetung
had previously been upbraided for not burning and killing enough.
In order to win the intermediate class, he had in November 1928
prohibited reckless burning and killing, and decreed protection
of the interests of middle and small merchants. In the Hsingkuo
land law drafted in April 1929, wholesale land confiscation had
been changed to ‘confiscate public land and the land of the
landlord class only’. But to spare the rich peasants did not mean
to conclude an alliance with them. However, many other small
guerilla areas with commanders owing allegiance to the Com-
munist Party did operate under a ‘rich peasant’ land law.
Li took no notice of this letter of the Comintern J which called
alliance with the rich peasants ‘impermissible’; on the contrary he
reaffirmed ‘the possibility of leading the rich peasants ... even if
tactically the poor peasant is the main force and the middle
peasant his ally’.
This was not at all ‘in line’, for StaUn had now begun the drive
against the kulaks, or rich peasants, in Russia. But it was not the
main reason for Li Li-san’s downfall. The main reason was his
total loss of perspective of the Revolution. Li Li-san showed no
grasp of the realities of the Chinese situation. He remained fixated
on ‘the proletariat’, never considered the revolutionary potential
of the peasantry; above all, he wanted control of Mao s Red
Army, but had no idea what the Red Army really was like, or
* The Hsingkuo land law. . ,
t Letter from the Executive Committee of the (Third) Communist Internationa
to the Central Committee of the CCP on the peasant question, June 7 , 1929-
MAO TSETUNG AND II Ll-SAN
-55
what it really did. He confused leadership with inenibership,
arousal with organization, Red Guards and militia roles witli the
operations of regular forces. ‘The principle for the Red Army is
concentration, that for the Red Chiards is dispersion, Mao
patiently explained. And at Chingkangshan he had written ; 1 he
existence of a regular Red Army of adequate strength is a neces-
sary condition for the existence of Red political power ... A
special characteristic of the Revolution in China, a country with
predominantly agricultural economy, is the use of military acti(')n
to develop insurrection,’ but this could not be done haphazardly,
by methods of ‘roving guerilla bands’.
Unfailingly, Mao answered Li with logic and courtesy. As L.i
became increasingly incoherent, Mao became more coldly watch-
ful. What he really thought of Li Li-san’s mental capacity he has
never told anyone. But one can guess.
Chou En-lai, who had also been at the Sixth Congress and been
nominated to the Politburo with Li Li-san, Tsai Ho-sen, and
others, began to point out to Li the discrepancies and irrationalities
of liis theses. Chou began to disagree with Li Li-san from June
1929. Tliis disagreement reached such a pitch later that they could
not meet, it is reported, without quarrels breaking out over what
policies to follow.*
When the second plenum of the Sixth Congress of the Central
Committee of the CCP was held that June, Li Li-san was already
showing signs of instability. He divagated from the Sixth
Congress resolutions; whether wilfully or simply because he
misunderstood them, no one can say. He now changed from
‘dispersal’ and ‘widespread guerilla attacks’ to a city-oriented
strategy, concentration of forces to attack main cities. Perhaps he
thus hoped to wrest control of the armies Mao had built up. More
probably he was planning to take Wuhan. The extraordinary
thing is that he did not sec what he was landing himself in. But
now the Comintern, which was already concerned more with
assuring Russia’s strategic security than with any other problem,
sent out a new set of directives in October, calling for an increase
* Hsu Kai-yu, Chou Ett-lai: China’s Gray Eminence (Doubleday, New York,
1968).
256
THE MORNING DELUGE
in activity strikes, guerilla movements — in cities and countryside.
This directive of the Comintern was oriented towards Russian
interests, not to the China situation, and was due to the Chinese
Eastern Railway crisis. An attempt by the Chinese warlord
government in Manchuria to take over the Chinese Eastern
Railway, accompanied by raids on Soviet consulates in Man-
churia and North China, had taken place. The Chinese Eastern
Railway was still under Russian control.* A near war threatened
and General Galen, also known as Bliicher, who had been military
adviser to the KMT at Whangpoo Academy in 1925 and 1926,
was appointed head of the Russian Far Eastern forces."}* The inci-
dent lasted about a year and ended in negotiations. Li Li-san
tried to utilize this crisis in yet another effort to get Mao Tsetung*s
Red Army out of Mao’s control and into his own hands; he called
for a nationwide upsurge’ against ‘international imperialism and
its ally Chiang Kai-shek’. Li Li-san was disquietingly aware of
the shift of power as Mao’s base atjuichin grew and strengthened,
and the Kiangsi-Fukicn Border Area Independent Regime, as it
was called, coalescing many small guerilla areas, was regarded
now with favour and had more prestige than the Shanghai
headquarters of the Politburo. With the arrival of the October
Comintern letter— ‘strengthen and extend guerilla warfare,
especially in Manchuria and in the region of Chu and Mao’ —
Li felt fortified. ‘The former strategy of avoiding taking impor-
tant large cities must be changed ... we must attack important
cities and even occupy them.’
At the same time, Stalin ordered a purge of ‘Trotskyites’.
Some of the Cliinese students in Moscow had come back as
Trotsky adherents. Li Li-san sent out orders for a general purge
of Trotskyist elements in the CCP.
Mao became very ill from malaria contracted in fighting, which
incapacitated him till November 1929. Chu Teh, during Mao s
incapacity, began to obey ‘central’ directives and went roaming
on guerilla warfare to ‘arouse the masses’. Carried on a stretcher,
trying to get about, to go on with political work, Mao gradually
* In spite of the Karakhan Manifesto.
■f General Galen Bliicher was to perish in the Stalin purges of I936-I937-
•4 P
MAO TSETUNG AND LI Ll-SAN
^57
got better, though off aucl on he was to suffer from malaria for
years. Meanwhile Chu Teh suffered some losses and returned to
the base. He had taken only part of the armies with him, and thus
the harm done was relatively minor, but it convinced him that
Li Li-san was in error. However, Chu Teh could not disobey the
very definite orders given, reinforced by the Comintern.
In September 1929 the Central Committee under Li Li-san
sent a directive to Mao Tsetung calling for the elimination of all
non-proletarian ideas from Party organizations in the Fourth
Army and the immediate establishment of a political com-
missariat; the Party was still infected with non-proletarian*
ideas, Trotskyites, ‘peasant mentality’ and other such which had
to be purged. The response of Mao Tsetung was the December
192-9 draft of resolutions presented at a conference in Kutien,
called the Nfinth Congress of the Fourth Red Army Delegates and
Party Workers.
The Kutien conference was to remain, for the Red Army, a
historic event. The resolutions were to be republished many
times in the next forty years; the last time was in 1971. They are
compulsory study for every political worker and military officer
in the Chinese Red Army.
Kutien is a small town ensconced in mountains, commanding a
beautiful valley. In its picturesque temples and landlords’ houses
were quartered, for over ten days, some of the most important
people in China; but there is no real report on what happened
there. All we know is that the struggle between Mao Tsetung’s
line and the Li Li-san line was more in the open than ever; it
concerned Party control over the Army, a political line versus a
purely military line. Here was expounded, codified, categorized,
the very reason for existence of the Red Army; here was fully set
out the theme of Party control and leadership in the Army and
the theme of political education and political work in and by the
Army among the masses. It was the culmination of what had
egun at the Autumn Harvest Uprising, had been first affirmed
at the Maoping conference when Chu Teh joined Mao on Ching-
anphan : the goal of ‘an educated, conscious revolutionary army
dedicated to the liberation of the country and the emancipation
258
THE MORNING DELUGE
of our people’. Mao dealt with all aspects of political education
of the Army and the Party-Army relationship. Whenever a
rectification movement was held in the Army during the next
four decades, the Kuticn resolutions would be the fundamental
document to be restudied.
At the Kutien conference, Mao obliquely criticized the Li Li-san
line; Some people want to increase our political influence only
by means of roving guerilla actions, but are unwilling to under-
take the diflScult task of building up base areas and establishing
the people’s political power ...
Some people lack the patience to carry on arduous struggles
together with the masses and only want to go to the big cities
to feast... The eradication of this ideology is an important
objective in the ideological struggle within the Red Army and
Party organizations ... ’
On Corrcctinq Mistaken Ideas in the Party * a shortened portion
of Mao s speech at the Kutien conference, was passed as a resolu-
tion, which seems to indicate that Mao won despite bitter opposi-
tion. The full version was not made available in published form
till January 1944, in a special edition used for Party cadres in the
Red Army, during the rectification campaign in Yenan.f
The Kutien resolutions ‘enabled the Red Army to build itself
entirely on a Marxist-Lcninist basis and to eliminate all the
influence of armies of the old type. It was carried out not only
in the Fourth Army but also in all other units of the Red Army
successively.’
Mao Tsetung also criticized the ‘purely military viewpoint of
these comrades [who] regard military affairs and politics as
opposed to each other and refuse to recognize that military affairs
are only one means of accomplishing political tasks’. ‘Some,’ he
said, ‘give military affairs a leading position over politics ... They
think that the task of the Red Army, like that of the White Army,
* Selected Works, vol. I.
t Three versions of the Kutien resolutions were published between 1944
1951; seejolm E. and S. R. Rue, Mao Tse-timg in Opposition ig 27 -i 9 y 5 > ^P-
p. 173. John Gittings also gives an account of them in The Role of the Chinese Army
(Oxford University Press, London and New York, 1967).
MAO TSETUNG AND LI Ll-SAN
259
is merely to fight. They do not understand that the Chinese
Red Army is an armed body for carrying out the tasks of the
Revolution ... Besides fighting to destroy the enemy’s military
strength, it should shoulder such important tasks as carrying on
propaganda among the masses, organizing the masses, arming
them, helping them to establish revolutionary political power
and setting up Party organizations ... Without these objectives,
fighting loses its meaning and the Red Army loses the reason for
its existence.’
Mao proposed to correct subjectivism (becoming conceited
when winning and dispirited when defeated), cliquism, opportun-
ism, revolutionary impetuosity (wanting to do big things rather
than ‘minute and detailed work among the masses’), and suggested
that all this proceeded from a low political level, the mercenary
mentality, the absence of trust in the masses. But it was ‘the
Party’s failure actively to attend to and discuss military work’
which had led to this situation — a broadside at the Politburo in
Shanghai, which never replied to reports, and sent representatives
who did not know anything of the practical work done. Mao
criticized those who wanted to live well (‘they always hope that
their unit will march into big cities ... to enjoy themselves’);
passivity, retaliation, (the I’ll-find-some-way-to-pay-you-back
mentality), backbiting, not speaking up at meetings, malicious
personal bickering, and so on.
Reinforcing the Party at company level, directing the attention
of Party members to ‘a political and scientific spirit’, to do ‘social
and economic investigation and study’, criticism and self-criti-
cism would correct all this. The extraordinary thing about Mao,
in such a forbidding environment, is that enormous faith of his
that all defects can be ‘educated’ out of a man if one is patient
and relentlessly goes on educating, educating.* Besides these
methods, Mao laid down new rules for admission of Party can-
didates, since in the bases the great majority of new Party mem-
bers came from the Red Army. Hence he insisted on soldiers’
* But the ultra-left line would emphasize class origin irrespective of individual
fitness. Later, Chang Kuo-tao, for instance, in his ‘purging* of ‘counter-
revolutionaries*, would ‘purge* anyone he suspected of ‘bourgeois origin*.
262
THE MORNING DELUGE
counter-revolutionary camp, Li felt, were decisive. He pointed to
Wuhan and the cities near it as the ‘main objective’ in the struggle,
and called for a conference of delegates from all Soviet areas to be
held in Shanghai on May i, 1930. He again repeated his denun-
ciations of peasant mentality and ‘ascend-mountainism’, but still
invited Mao Tsetung and Chu Teh to come to Shanghai.
Chou En-lai was against this plan of Li’s. The Sixth Congress
had placed Chou in charge of organization; he was meant to
reorganize the Party and link it up with a Red Army. By early
1930 there were ten Red armies scattered over China in bases or in
guerilla areas, some pretty unstable, some actually more like
warlord strongholds than soviet bases. The only stable, successful
and expanding base was Mao’s; the most impressive, the best
organized Red armies were under Mao Tsetung and Chu Teh;
the Fourth Red Army was a model Red Army, a fact recognized
by all. Chou En-lai wrote to other Red commanders in his
Central Military Co/nn/inn'tjne of January 15, 1930 (an occasional
publication to keep the various movements in touch with each
other) that ‘in the Juichin independent regime many valuable
experiences can be found ... unique in China, never seen or heard
of before in the world ... all ought to learn from these experiences’.
This praise of Mao Tsetung, coming while Chou was at the
Politburo in Shanghai, had a direct influence, at least on the
military personnel, to raise Mao’s prestige. Chou also pointed
out that the revolutionary tide in the cities among workers was
at low level. By 1930 only 8 per cent of the CCP was of worker
origin.
Mao and Chu Teh ignored or did not receive the call to go to
the May meeting in Shanghai. They still did not reply when it
was postponed to June. Li Li-san stressed that there must be a
‘unified leadership’ (which could only be vested in himself).
He accused Mao and Chu of being ‘rightists’ because they re-
fused liis plan to attack large cities. The Red Army (meaning
principally Mao’s forces) must launch attacks on big cities, in
preparation for all-out state conquest, all-out attack on Chiang
Kai-shek’s Nanking government. Li Li-san now organized a
General Front Committee, to start war preparations. He decried
MAO TSETUNG AND LI Ll-SAN 263
Mao’s slow, patient build-up. ‘By such tactics our hair will be
white before the Revolution is victorious.’
Mao wrote back that the time had not come for this direct
confrontation with the Kuomintang, that first a lot of hard work
must be done, and that it was very dangerous to launch these
insurrections against cities. Chou En-lai called Li’s plan ‘suicidal’.
Li retaliated by condemning the opponents of his policy, sending
some to posts known as dangerous, and in some cases even be-
traying one or two covertly to the KMT (according to his own
confession made in Peking in 1956).
But Li Li-san was also threatened from another side. A group
of Moscow-trained Chinese Communist students, later to be-
come known as the ‘twenty-eight Bolsheviks’ or ‘returned
students’, came back to China in the early summer of 1930.
They had all studied Marxism in Russia and were ‘experts’ in
revolutionary perfection. Their leader was Chen Shao-yu, alias
Wang Ming, a melancholy-looking young man, very arrogant.
All were young, city-bred; none had behind him the experience
in China’s countryside which Mao had accumulated.
Li Li-san pushed on, hoping to achieve success and thus vindi-
cate his ‘line’ before the ‘twenty-eight Bolsheviks’ caught up with
him, for he was well aware that their return meant a struggle for
leadership within the Party. He issued articles in Red Flag and
other Communist publications to prove himself theoretically
correct. All the emphasis was on workers’ struggles and the con-
quest of key cities. He called Mao a pessimist, condemned again
in September the idea of ‘the countryside surrounding the cities*.
But articles continued to appear praising Mao’s struggle in
Chingkangshan and the Central Base as a heroic epic: ‘Without
ammunition, money or supplies they fought against the enemy
many times their superior. They hid in the mountains ... staying
for months at a time without interrupting revolutionary work.’*
In May 1930 Mao wrote Oppose Book Worship, clearly a re-
proof of those, like Li Li-san, who talked ‘nonsense’ without
investigating concrete situations. Surprisingly, Oppose Book
Worship was left out of the 1951 Chinese edition and the i960
* These articles were signed with a pen name. Their authorship is obscure.
264
THE MORNING DELUGE
English translation of Selected Works of Mao Tsetung, though
published in Selected Readings in 1967. The reason for this omis-
sion is not known, though it is known that Alao was much
criticized for writing it. But Oppose Book Worship is an important
essay, not only on the technique of investigation, but on its
essential importance. ‘No investigation, no right to speak’, is
the heading of the first paragraph.
Unless you have investigated a problem, you will be deprived
of the right to speak on it . . . Talking nonsense solves no problems
... You can t solve a problem? Well, get down and investigate the
present facts and its past history.
Social investigation should be a regular part of the work of the
Army. The Political Department of the Fourth Red Army
prepared detailed forms covering such items as the state of the
mass struggle, the condition of the enemy, the economic life of
the people, the amount of land owned by each class in the rural
areas. ‘Wherever the Red Army went, it first made itself familiar
with the class situation in the locality and then formulated slogans
suited to the needs of the masses.’
This essay is constantly quoted in China today to promote the
scientific objectivity, the frank speaking up, the democratic
debate based on truth, which Mao Tsetung teaches the 800
million people of China. ‘Stress investigations! Oppose irrespon-
sible talk!* he cried, and went on to criticize those who blindly
obey directives ‘from a higher organ’, even if the contents are
incompatible with ‘the objective and subjective conditions of the
struggle’. He was against blind, superficial enforcement of a
directive, rigid and rigorous dogmatic application, which actually
is a kind of sabotage. He was to encounter many examples of
blind enforcement, and also sabotage, of his own directives.
Mao Tsetung at this time is described by Chen Chang-fong,
his orderly to be, then a raw, illiterate peasant youth of fifteen,
who came to serve him early in 1931. ‘Political Commissar Mao
[he became chairman only later] would go himself, on horseback
often, because of the long distances, to carry out investigations.
He would come to a place, and sit down with the peasants, and
throw off his cap, and start to talk with them. And they forgot
MAO TSETUNG AND LI LI-SAN
265
who he was, so debonair was he, and so concerned with them.
And they told him everything. He would stay for hours with
them. He would forget time, and food, and sleep. I used to call
him, to say he would be late for such and such an appointment.
“But first I must listen to this,*' he would say. He would go to a
meeting with an outline in his head, or already written down,
with questions prepared. He would question each and every one
present, and probe, and go on probing. He insisted that everyone
who was engaged in political work, in administering of any kind,
should do similar investigations.’*
He did not believe in written reports, and sometimes would
frown at them, and then go off himself to investigate. ‘There
must be personal investigation,’ he said. ‘Marxist theory, like
Party resolutions and Central Committee directives, must be
tested by practice.’ Marxism did work; but only if one took the
trouble to move one’s brain, stick to principle, and modify the
application in the most flexible manner.
Writing Oppose Book Worship may have stimulated some Party
members to cudgel their brains, but Li went on with his plans.
The June conference was duly called. Neither Chu nor Mao
attended. There, on June ii, Li Li-san and his majority of sup-
porters carried through the resolution for attacks on large cities
by the Red Army, strikes with insurrection in the key cities. The
General Front Committee reorganized the Red armies, and the
Third, Fourth, and Twelfth armies under Mao and Chu Teh were
grouped into the First Army Corps.
Li Li-san now saw world revolution near, China’s revolution
as the spark igniting it; he saw an ‘even’f revolutionary high tide
developing. He urged Red Army attacks and outbreaks of
workers in the cities, pinpointed W^uhan as the key urban base
for the proletariat; saw an immediate passage to socialist revolu-
tion without any transitional stage or period. He poured scorn
* Interview by author with Chen Chang-fong, 1971.
t ‘Even’ meant similarly active in all areas of China. This was against Mao’s
uneven development’ idea, which stressed that not all regions were similarly
prepared for uprisings.
266
THE MORNING DELUGE
on his opposition, alluding to ‘rightist pessimistic people* whose
ideas of ‘localism and peasant mentality’ were the most serious
obstacle to Red Army expansion, and castigating the concept of
using the countryside to encircle the cities as ‘extremely erroneous’.
Battle plans were drawn in order to carry out the military
actions planned by Li Li-san. All Red Army forces were placed
under Chu Teh as commander-in-chief of the General Front
Committee and Mao Tsetung as political commissar! This was
to face Mao and Chu with an insoluble dilemma. Their nomina-
tion (in absentia) to head the very action they strenuously resisted
meant insubordination if they refused (Li could blame all succeed-
ing disasters upon them); if they obeyed, any failure would bring
them discredit.
Mao and Chu held a conference in Tingchow, Fukien, where
Chu Teh had been consolidating a Fukien offshoot of the base.
Once again the suggestion that the Red Guards (the local peasant
guerillas) should also be incorporated into Red Army units for
the purpose of attack on big cities was rejected by Mao, for it
meant denuding the countryside of its self-defence.
Li Li-san assumed that there would be uprisings in the country-
side, mutinies in the Kuomintang, and warlord armies’ strikes; he
prophesied all this happening at once. ‘Li Li-san has gone mad,
said Chou En-lai. Li demoted his opponents, among them some
of the twenty-eight Bolsheviks, who had arrived in Shanghai and
began attacking him verbally. But suddenly, under pressure,
Wang Ming (Chen Shao-yu), the most outstanding of the
twenty-eight, gave in, apologized, and accepted Li’s views
(though later he was again to change). Hence in June Li Li-san
appeared to have won. As Chu Teh said: ‘The Li Li-san line
dominated the Party then ... and was sufficiently influential to
force acceptance, to some extent, in the Red Army, against the
judgment of its field command ... Apart from Mao and myself,
there was very little opposition to the Li Li-san line.’
Chu was to say to Agnes Smedley that isolated in the base, he
and Mao felt that perhaps Li Li-san and the Politburo in Shanghai
might have more knowledge of the situation, though they were
‘sceptical*. A civil war was raging between Chiang Kai-shek and
MAO TSETUNG AND LI LI-SAN
267
some warlords. Perhaps Li’s assessment was correct ... And so the
troops prepared, the Red flags flew, and trumpets sounded and
drums beat as the armies marched ‘for the Revolution’. They
crossed the length of Kiangsi province, and tens of thousands of
peasants rose and joined the Red armies. For a while it all looked
quite splendid.
Li prepared for workers’ uprisings. They were to begin on a
nationwide scale in mid-July. He made ready to call on November
7, the anniversary of the Russian Revolution, the first All-China
Soviet Delegates Congress, to establish a national soviet govern-
ment. He also set up ‘action committees’ to carry out the details
of the insurrections, and to supersede, bypass, and strip of power
all other organizations in the provinces, thus taking away Mao’s
power in the base.
But although there were some demonstrations and strikes by
workers, they did not lead to uprisings. The Kuomintang was
very strong in the cities, and heads rolled, as workers were un-
armed and were killed ; before the strikes could be well organized,
their leaders were dead.
An assault on Changsha led by Peng Teh-huai* and his Third
Army Corps was at first successful; for a week the city was held.
Reluctantly, but having to obey orders, the First Army Corps
of 20,000 men under Mao Tsetung and Chu Teh made haste
slowly to attack Nanchang City, as ordered by Li Li-san. They
reached it on July 29. It was most powerfully defended, and had
big walls. Nevertheless, they took it, but only held the city for
twenty-four hours. One cannot but feel that what preoccupied
the commanders was not to waste human lives, not to commit
a reckless victory.
It had been planned that after Nanchang and Changsha were
taken, all the armies would converge on Wuhan, where it was
supposed the workers would rise and take the city from within.
But neither Nanchang nor Changsha had been kept. The First
* Peng Teh-huai was in command of a Fifth Army. In June 1930 it was re-
organized with the Eighth Army from a soviet area in Kiangsi into the Third
Army Corps, which took Changsha. Peng, after the conference at Juichin, had
been operating in a guerilla area near Chingkangshan.
268
THE MORNING DELUGE
Army Corps and Peng’s Third Army Corps were now joined.
Li Li-san ordered another attack on Changsha, and at the same
time on Wuhan by the Second and Fourth Army Corps under
other Red commanders.
Li had by now received, and suppressed, a telegram from the
Comintern condemning his plans for taking cities. But this
message could not be concealed indefinitely. ‘The Comintern
does not understand the Chinese conditions and cannot lead the
Chinese Revolution,’ declared Li Li-san, Still hypnotized by his
role as the Chinese ‘Lenin’, Li Li-san urged liis revolutionaries to
attack as Lenin had done prior to the eve of the October uprising
in Russia in 1917, when things looked very unpromising. Letters
and telegrams from Moscow urged him to abandon the capture
of Wuhan. But Li Li-san paid no attention.
The second attack on Changsha was now carried out by Mao,
Chu and Peng. Kuomintang forces had been dispatched to the city
in great numbers. Foreign powers also helped Chiang Kai-shek.
American, British, Italian and Japanese gunboats lay in the
Hsiang river. They had bombarded the city while it was in
Peng’s hands, and hundreds of civilians were wounded and killed.
Again this was repeated, but the Red troops were raked with
murderous fire as well. ‘They fell like autumn leaves in the north
wind.’
Mao and Chu now took one of the most serious steps of their
careers. They repudiated the Li Li-san line, and the troops were
ordered by Mao to withdraw from Changsha. The other political
commissars denounced them for rebellion, but the troops cursed
the political commissars and obeyed Mao and Chu Teh. By this
action they preserved the Red Army from literal destruction.
After the attempt on Changsha the city was subject to the most
frightful White Terror. Workers, students, anyone suspected of
Communism was rounded up and killed, in the most gruesome
manner, reminiscent of the terror of 1927. It was then that Yang
Kai-hui, Mao’s wife, who was doing underground work in
Changsha, was also rounded up and executed. Mao had not seen
her since 1927.
In August 1930 Chou En-lai and Chu Chiu-pai, the former
MAO TSETUNG AND LI LI-SAN
269
‘left’-liner, returned to China with specific instructions to convene
the third plenum of the Sixth Congress. It was clear that Li Li-san
had erred; but how much, how far, and what was the true situa-
tion? Wang Ming made things more confused by suddenly
going over to Li Li-san’s side. 'Only those who protect militarists
... and liquidationists, can oppose, criticize the Party for preparing
armed uprisings or term these actions adventurism now,’ Wang
Ming now said. The third plenum was held in September 1930.
A new Politburo came into being, through the efforts of Chou
En-lai; on it were Mao Tsetung, Chou En-lai, Chu Teh, Jen
Pi-shih. Mao and his supporters were now fully represented. In
this Politburo the twenty-eight Bolsheviks were not in majority,
though represented; the group would take some time and
manoeuvre to oust Li Li-san completely.
Meanwhile, the effect of this strife between two policies was
being felt at lower levels. Skirmishes between pro-Li and anti-Li
factions reached the Party provincial hierarchies. The ‘action
committee* in Kiangsi province created by Li, and supposedly
in authority over the Juichin base, was rent by factional dispute,
which provided excellent opportunities for counter-revolutionary
penetration by KMT agents. Mao and Chu, returning with their
armies from the disastrous attempt at city-taking, on their way
captured the town of Kian on October 30, in accordance with
Mao’s idea of extending the base ‘in waves’. In captured KMT
police files at Kian, Chu Teh found evidence that certain of the
Communist officers in the area whom Chu Teh and Mao had
already been dealing with were actually KMT agents, of a so-
called A-B group. He also found there plans for Chiang’s First
Annihilation Campaign, soon to be launched against the base
Mao and he had set up.
The A-B (anti-Bolshevik) corps had been created by the KMT
to infiltrate and penetrate the CCP and the base at Juichin. The
successes of ‘the Red remnants* at Chingkangshan, their successes
in Kiangsi and Fukien, alarmed Chiang Kai-shek. The city
assaults would do more; they so frightened many warlords that
they made peace with Chiang and united with liim in a combined
assault against the ‘Reds’. The utilization of captured Comnaunists
270
THE MORNING DELUGE
who, jailed, turned renegade and went back to the Party as agents
is part of the still unwritten history of the penetration of the
Communist Party. The A-B group, utilizing Trotskyites, fac-
tional strife and discontent, had already set up a net of terrorism
throughout the soviet areas. Among the names of Communist
commanders found on lists whose families and relatives were
implicated with A-B groups was that of Li Wen-ling, who had
welcomed Mao and Chu at Tungku the year before.
Mao Tsctung conducted an investigation in the districts,
uncovering clan, marriage and other connections between land-
lord families and certain high-ranking cadres who had followed
Li’s ‘alliance with rich peasants’ policies, and under pretence of
obeying Li Li-san had sabotaged Mao’s land policy. In certain
counties one third of the Communist officials were rich peasants
or landlords themselves. Evidence of business and family relations
between the A-B group and some Communist officials accumu-
lated. Mao Tsetung had already purged the Party in Chingkang-
shan in September 1928, expelling unsatisfactory members. Here
the issue recurred, but in graver form. The dissension between
the Shanghai Politburo and the base had opened the door wide
for the enemy. Furthermore, some factions now proclaimed
themselves ‘genuine’ Communist groups and broke away.
Other factions set up squads of murderers; three of the body-
guards for Mao and Chu Teh were killed by these squads.
In early November, large KMT forces were moving up to
relieve Kian, and Mao Tsetung decided to withdraw rather than
lose more men. The occupation of Kian had lasted two weeks;
several hundred thousand peasants had come to see the Red
Army, and there had been many recruits.
Mao was now able to find out, by checking up on land reform,
where and how the land redistribution and land policy had been
misapplied or not applied, or applied according to Li s action
committees — for it was during Mao’s absence that the action
committees had abrogated his land law. ‘My viewpoint on the
many circumstances affecting the agrarian revolution at district
and village level was still muddled ... It was only during this
investigation that I discovered that using the village as a unit in
MAO TSETUNG AND LI LI-SAN
271
dividing land has serious consequences/ But mistake or not,
Mao persisted, he thus modified as he went on, restoring the
ravaged areas to production.
On this occasion, however, investigation of land law applica-
tion bore direct relevance to the anti-Bolshevik corps, whose
members took refuge in Li Li-san’s ‘alliance with rich peasants’
land law. In late November some 4,400 suspects were arrested
in one vast swoop, conducted by the Red Army under Chen Yi,
the corpulent and jovial Szechuanese. In December, members of
the anti-Bolshevik corps, together with some of Li Li-san’s
erstwhile supporters, started an armed revolt against Mao. They
made a forced march to Futien and released some of the arrested
officials and cadres. The provincial soviet administration in Futien
was overthrown, and more than 1,800 followers of Mao were
killed. Chu Teh’s wife, Kang Ke-ching, was captured. They called
for Mao’s overthrow, set up a rival soviet government, which
accused Mao of acting against the Central Committee, and
asked for his liquidation. Some of Li Li-san’s supporters joined
them.
It was at this time that Chiang Kai-shek launched his first
‘annihilation campaign’ against the Juichin base, occupying
Hsingkuo and Tungku. But the Red Army was prepared; it
smashed the 100,000-strong Kuomintang troops in a splendidly
conducted offensive in which Mao deployed his own ideas on
strategy and tactics for the first time against a large body of enemy
forces.
In spite of the bitter feuding in Kiangsi, and the arrest of
thousands by Mao, ‘neither side acted with the ruthlessness of
Stalinists , writes John Rue.* Very few of Mao’s opponents were
shot, contrary to the legend of a ‘ruthless purge’ having taken
place. Only known agents of the KMT were liquidated; about
400 to 500 men were tried and condemned. Others were released
after investigation and ‘education’. This action, known as the
Futien incident, has been much distorted, and Mao presented as
having ‘liquidated’ 5,000 men in a ‘power struggle’.
Not only was Li Li-san now being challenged by Wang Ming
* Mao Tse-ttmg in Opposition 1927-1935, op. cit.
272
THE MORNING DELUGE
and die twenty-eight Bolsheviks, he was also being challenged by
other groups. Chou En-lai tried to hold the balance, to have Li
Li-san's line judged equitably. ‘There is a tradition in the Party
that stresses the importance of intra-party peace ... This tends to
becloud the correct Party line ... Only by relentless struggle on
behalf of the correct Party line can true unity be achieved.’
By these words Chou showed himself very near to Mao’s con-
ception of debate and struggle in the Party as essential to the
Party’s life. Chou spoke of principled struggle, but what hap-
pened now was a putsch operated by the returned-student
group under Wang Ming.
Ho Meng-hsiung, a Communist Party leader, and the Wang
Ming faction had both condemned Li Li-san’sjune ii resolution,
which had launched the city attacks. Li, with a big majority, had
punished both, suspending Wang Ming for six months, taking
away Ho’s Party posts. Wang Ming then capitulated to Li Li-san,
as we have seen, but later reversed himself The third plenum in
September revised the policies of Li Li-san. Chou made his
fan^ous Shao Shan report (Shao Shan being one of his names)
criticizing the errors of Li Li-san and the Central Committee, and
also criticizing Ho Meng-hsiung and Wang Ming. In December
1930 Li Li-san was called to Moscow by the Comintern, and in
January 1931 Wang Ming and his twenty-seven adherents called
a fourth plenum, despite opposition by Ho Meng-hsiung. They
did not invite Mao Tsetung or Chu Teh, who were on the Central
Committee; neither did they call for a general debate; they simply
deposed Li Li-san. Ho Meng-hsiung denounced the meeting as
illegal (which it was). Ho was later betrayed to the Kuomintang
(some say by Wang Ming himself) and executed, together with
Lin Yu-nan, a relative of Lin Piao, who also had opposed the
‘twenty-eight’. Thus the ‘returned students’ came to power,
fashioned a ‘provisional’ Politburo and Central Committee, and
proceeded to ‘lead’ the Chinese Revolution.
11
Mao Tsetung and Wang Ming;
The Third ‘Left’ Line
It is sometimes said by cynics that Stalin ‘disliked* Mao Tsetung,
and personal hostility is held to be the cause of Russian-conceived
policies and directives which plagued the Chinese Revolution for
some years. This is hardly tenable. There is a tendency to attribute
to well-planned policies what is often blind chance. The esteem in
which Mao Tsetung was held by the Comintern in 1930 is un-
deniable. Not only from reports, which blamed Li Li-san and
approved Mao even if not by name, but also from the obituary
of March 1930 published about him, in which he was praised high
above other leaders in the CCP. This could not have happened
without Stalin’s approval. It is much more likely that after 1930
Stalin lost interest in the Chinese scene, as events in Europe took
up most of his attention. The Comintern was to become mainly
an instrument of Soviet policy, to safeguard the Soviet Union’s
strategic security; Russian interests predominated, and all Com-
munist parties in the world were expected to place Russia’s
welfare above everything else. The ‘fountainhead of socialism’,
the first socialist state, brooked no contradictions. The notion
that there could be contradictions in socialism, both between
socialist states and parties and within a socialist state itself, would
not be evolved before Mao would demonstrate it and thus expand
the dialectics of revolution.*
The rule of the returned students’ — the twenty-eight Bolshe-
viks -lasted four long, disastrous years. Not until 1945 would
their line definitely be condemned, f In the historical suimning
* This would be fully elaborated in Mao’s essay On the Correct Handling of
Contradictions Among the People, February 27, 1957 (Foreign Languages Press
Peking, 1957).
t Appendix: Resolutions on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party. Selected
Works, voL III.
273
274
THE MORNING DELUGE
up no Russian is mentioned, although the returned students, led
by Wang Ming, were accompanied by Pavel Mif, a teacher at
the university in Moscow where they had studied, and a member
of the Comintern. Pavel Mif is said to have manoeuvred the
student group’s gain of power by the strong-arm method described.
Once again the CCP follows its tradition of never blaming other
than its own members, and Mif is a name forgotten in China.
After the ‘putsch’ of January 1931, the Central Committee was
reduced from 30 to 16 members, with alternates. Wang Ming
(Chen Shao-yu), Po Ku (Chin Pang-hsien), Chang Wen-tien,
and Shen Tse-min dominated the Politburo. The mild, inoffensive
and willing Hsiang Chung-fa, personally irreproachable, was
made secretary-general as a proletarian cover for the policies of
the group.
The net result of the four years which followed was the loss of
90 per cent of the Communist Party of China and of the Chinese
Red Army; the loss of the base Mao had created and many other
small bases in South China; the subjection of millions of peasants
to massacres and reprisals; and a headlong flight, monstrously
mismanaged, which would, however, turn into an epic: the
Long March.
Very clearly, the new leadership set out to pull Mao down. It
slanderously asserted that ... there was as yet no “genuine’ Red
Army ... and with special emphasis that the main danger ...
consisted of “right” opportunists ... The new “left” line was more
determined, more theoretical, more domineering ... than the Li
Li-san line.’ This quotation from Mao is a cry from the heart. He
could never think of the hecatombs which the returned students
wrong policies gave rise to, the purges, the massacres, and the
decimation of the Party and Army, without deep emotion.
In February 1931 the intra-Party struggle began; on the theore-
tical plane first, since the provisional Politburo was in Shanghai,
and Mao Tsetung and Chu Teh were far away in the depths of
Kiangsi. Wang Ming published a pamphlet, which he appears to
have written either in the USSR or on his return to China, called
The Two Lines; or The Struggle for the Further Bolshevization of the
MAO TSETUNG AND WANG MING 275
Communist Party of China. The gist of it was that the Party was not
Communist enough, and that tliis had to be remedied. The main
obstacle, as Wang Ming saw it, was ‘right opportunist’ ideas
(and ideas always mean people too) in the Party. It was actually
a very direct and obvious attack on Mao.
The Shanghai abode of the Politburo was in the French Con-
cession, and of course clandestine. But the Kuomintang secret
police received the help of the foreign police in the international
settlement and the French Concession. Every week Communist
workers, labour leaders, were captured and executed. There were
some defections, and the defectors betrayed others. In June 1931,
following the capture and execution of Ho Meng-hsiung and
Lin Yu-nan, the secret police captured more Party members.
Through one of them the Party’s secretary-general, the hapless
Hsiang Chung-fa, was also betrayed and put to death.
Wang Ming became acting secretary-general without conven-
ing a plenum. But the police were not going to stop. The Polit-
buro’s hide-out in Shanghai was discovered and hundreds of
names were found. Hundreds were arrested in July and August;
the tumbrils brought them to be shot in the waste ground re-
served for such spectacles in Shanghai. The Politburohad to move;
to remain was too dangerous. There was only one place where it
could be safe, and that was at the base Mao Tsetung had created
in south Kiangsi. But to get there would be dfficult and dangerous
too — in that summer of 1931, Chiang Kai-shek was launching his
third and largest campaign against Mao’s base. It was, however,
defeated, and in September the crisis of Japanese invasion of
Manchuria preoccupied the KMT. The Politburo was able to
disperse and to reach, under various names and disguises, in small
groups, the Kiangsi-Fukien Border Area. Some may have gone
by ship, others by land; details are not clear about tins exodus.
By November 1931 some had already reached the base; others
would filter through during 1932.
We must now ask, who was Wang Ming? — for it is a name we
shall hear often during the next decade. Born in 1907, Chen
Shao-yu (Wang Ming) was a landlord’s son who at the age of
eighteen became a student in Shanghai University. Shanghai
276
THE MORNING DELUGE
University was heavily politicized, and Wang Ming and many
others went to Russia straight from their studies there, to attend
the University for the Far East, also called Sun Yatsen University,
in Moscow. He joined the CCP in Russia in November 1925 and
became fluent in Russian, acting as Pavel Mif’s interpreter. He
may or may not have been briefly in China again in 1926 — this is
uncertain. But he did return after the Sixth Congress in 1930. He
had no practical experience of revolution, and does not seem to
have acquired any, as he did not stay very long in China.
His friend and colleague, the one who would be identified with
the Wang Ming line, was Chin Pang-hsien (alias Po Ku). He died
in an aeroplane crash in 1946, and this has possibly saved him from
execration, though he appears to have been less stubborn, less
resistant to common sense, than Wang Ming. He studied English
at Shanghai University and went with Wang Ming to Moscow.
Chin stayed on in China till his death, whereas Wang Ming was
to return to Russia in 1932 and from there ‘direct* the Revolution,
particularly through Chin Pang-hsien.
The essential feature about Wang Ming is the contempt he had
for the raw, illiterate human beings who under Mao*s leadership
would develop into dedicated, and brilliant Party members and
Red Army men. He had no idea of what the Chinese masses were
like. It is doubtful that he ever knew anything about the econo-
mics of the Chinese peasantry.
Not all the group must be identified with Wang Ming’s
policies, some truly changed, and in China today Wang Ming
alone is held responsible for the errors of the third ‘left’ line.
Mao’s achievement in establishing, consolidating and running
the Central Base must be seen in the perspective of the disasters
which befell it. Its period of existence is usually divided into three
stages. From February 1929, when the victory of Tapoti allowed
Mao and Chu Teh a foothold in the area, till November 1930 is
known as the first or the base-building stage. A judicious com-
bination of military action and agrarian revolution took place;
the military action followed the ‘wave’ theory already delineated:
withdrawal when enemy reprisals were too strong, tenacious
return, swift pounces to annihilate the enemy when he was weak,
Red bases in South China, 1030-1934
28 o
THE MORNING DELUGE
to the Bolsheviks, such terms were anathema, deviation. ‘General
ideological poverty’ together with ‘empiricism’ and ‘opportunistic
pragmatism’ were epithets hurled at Mao’s practical policies.
The Bolsheviks themselves used everywhere the words ‘soviet’
and Bolshevik , which no one understood, especially as they
were not translated but transliterated, which resulted in the
Chinese ‘Su Wei-ai’ and ‘Pu-Erh-Shih-wei-ke’. Many people
thought that Su Wei-ai was the name of a man, Kuomintang
and warlords offered prizes for capture of the ‘Red bandit Su
Wei-ai ... dead or alive . Mao Tsctung already had a prize on his
head, and so had Chu Teh and Chou En-lai. The figures kept on
going higher and higher. ‘I’m the most expensive man in China’,
joked Chu Teh. Wang Ming and his wife Meng Ching-shu
returned to Moscow in the winter of 1931 or early 1932, after
the establishment of the ‘soviet republic’. It was Po Ku who was
left in charge to carry out the directives sent to him from Russia.
It must be noted again that September 1931 was the month in
which the Japanese had invaded Manchuria. If, instead of setting
up a ‘soviet republic’ and starting to devise ways and means
to ‘Bolshcvizc’ the Party and to reduce Mao Tsctung, the Polit-
buro had taken a good hard look at the Chinese situation, things
might have been very different. The invasion of Manchuria had
produced a nationwide shock. Patriotic Chinese everywhere,
students and intellectuals, demanded resistance to Japan. Had the
CCP rallied the smouldering discontent with Chiang’s anti-
Conimunist campaigns, proclaimed resistance to Japan as a
national movement, the struggle for power in Cliina would have
been shorter for the CCP. But the young sectarians were unable
to see reality. It was Mao Tsctung who, the next spring, would
initiate policies aimed at rallying the people of China on the
platform of resistance to foreign invasion. But he was already
losing power fast, and would not be listened to until some years
later.
The other point to be noticed is that the proclamation of a
‘soviet republic’ was not in line with the view that China was still
in the stage of ‘bourgeois-democratic revolution’ as asserted at the
third plenum in 1930 and as Mao had so often expounded. In
MAO TSETUNG AND WANG MING
281
fact, it was part of this extreme leftism which we would now find
fully deployed. We do not know whether Mao at the time pro-
tested against it, for the years from early 1930 to mid-1933 are his
years of silence, when we find practically nothing written by him.
Even if at the time he thought it correct, he must have realized
this proclamation was a mistake in timing. For in Yenan, years
later, he would again make the point that the stage of revolution
was not yet proletarian but ‘democratic-bourgeois’, and he would
proclaim a ‘people’s republic’. Even today, China is not a Com-
munist republic but a ‘people’s republic’. The distinction is
important.
But in those far-off days in the Central Base,* the heady slogans
and inflated rhetoric of the provisional Politburo carried the day.
The people of the base were elated; they did not know what was
in store for them. The ideological struggle which had already
begun was unknown to all but the handful of men who, on that
November 7, sat on a raised platform on the plain between
Yehping and Juichin and watched the Red Army parade. On the
ground of the parade enclosure were the words: advance in
THE blood-stained TRACKS OF OUR MARTYRS. The red
flags unfurled stiffly in the keen November wind; there were
songs and dances and happy applauding crowds, and cheers and
fireworks.
The Appendix: Resolutions on Certain Questions in the History of
Our Party of 1945 tells us that from the very start, and without any
provocation, the sectarians (as they were called for a while) ‘put
into effect two interrelated and erroneous tenets’. These tenets,
couched in ideological terms, aimed at wresting power from Mao.
Wrenching would be a more effective word, for Mao was not a
weak and puny opponent, and he fought back ‘on a principled
basis , but with all the ability of his supple brain. As always, he
had already made preparations for this onslaught. His brother
Mao Tse-min held in his hands the financial structure; he would
* The author visited the area of the Central Base extensively in the summer of
1971 and interviewed numerous cx-Red-Army men, political instructors, and
survivors of the Long March at Yutou, Tapoti, Yehping, and elsewhere.
282
THE MORNING DELUGE
be dislodged, but it would take time. His other brother Mao
Tse-tan was to help him in land reform, again an economic
process. It would also take time to reach and to destroy the
agrarian changes which Mao Tsetung had instituted. Mao him-
self was political commissar of the Red Army, and also held other
posts. The two erroneous tenets would therefore have as their
goals the ideological disparagement of Mao s ideas, taking away
his military power and Party, and a purge of all cadres loyal to
Mao both in the Party and in the Army. Before the First All-
China Soviet Congress was convened in November 1931 this had
already been plain in the pronouncements of the provisional
Politburo. In the next two years these intentions would be
accomplished.
Where the Red Army was concerned, Mao Tsetung had ex-
panded the First Front Army Corps, organized in 1930 to take
Changsha as Li Li-san ordered, and comprising then 20,000 men,
which did not burden the population of the base. From 1930
onward a large number of eager young peasant recruits were
trained, some only fifteen or sixteen years old. The Chiang Kai-
shek campaigns against the base also provided a flow of recruits
through desertions and defections. The policies towards captured
prisoners had been defined by Mao at Chingkangshan and were
strictly enforced: good treatment and political indoctrination for
deserters and defectors who were ordinary soldiers or junior
ofl'icers. This absence of ill-treatment, this positive benevolence,
was so entirely new in China — where it was customary to torture
prisoners and put them to death — that the very rumour of it
brought deserters with their guns from the Kuomintang side.
Some of the junior officers captured would prove useful and
steady members of the Communist Party during the Long March.
Some of them would bring wireless sets, and this was a great
help, as the Conununist Party was then able to link through radio
with other groups scattered throughout South China.
Because of this army expansion and the swiftly growing popu-
larity of the Communists, small guerilla bases were established
in adjacent provinces; there would be twelve in all by the
summer of 1932. Though some were unstable, and more like
MAO TSETUNG AND WANG MING 283
guerilla areas than bases, they did represent a rising tide of revolu-
tion. By that summer, 70 counties and 9 million people were
under Red control, with ten armies of various calibre and
quality. The Central Base remained the best equipped, which
was not much, until an arsenal was established in 1931. An
academy to train officers was set up, and Mao Tsetung planned
to send cadres from this academy to the other bases. This was
regarded as highly dangerous, and labelled 'opportunism in
practical work’ and halted by the sectarians.
Concerning the treatment of cadres, Mao Tsetung was to
write in 1945 that the Wang Ming sectarians had ‘violated the
fundamental principle of democratic centralism, turned Party
discipline into mechanical regulations, fostered tendencies
towards blind obedience*.
It was worse than the above description would lead us to
believe. The ‘Bolshevization’ and ‘strengthening of the Party at
all levels* announced by the sectarians decimated the Com-
munist Party. This systematic campaign involved not only
punishment of many cadres, but a terroristic so-called ‘counter-
revolutionary’ witch hunt at all levels.
In this the two vice-chairmen, Chang Kuo-tao especially,
participated. Hsiang Ying seems to have been an intelligent but
rather obstinate man. The sectarians tried to make of the Futien
incident of 1930, when Mao moved against the A-B group and
together with Chen Yi crushed the plot to set up another leader-
ship, a matter for attacking Mao Tsetung directly. Hsiang Ying
was asked to investigate and appears to have turned in a report
unfavourable to Mao Tsetung. However, it was not possible
even then to lay conclusive charges, as a great many of the cadres,
and the Army men involved, supported Mao’s action. We must
not be surprised if, from Moscow where he lives today, Wang
Ming still goes on bringing up the Futien incident as one of the
‘crimes’ of Mao Tsetung.
A ‘security’ apparatus was set up by the sectarians, and acted so
thoroughly that cadres were physically liquidated on suspicion, a
practice which filled Mao with horror. He termed it impermis-
sible, but was not heard. After 1945, Mao Tsetung would insist
THE MORNING DELUGE
284
that those cadres who had been wrongfully killed should
be posthumously rehabilitated. The conduct of affairs under
the sectarians is so strongly reminiscent of what happened in the
USSR through the purges (and there were already purges in the
USSR in 1931) that one cannot but feel the twenty-eight Bol-
sheviks were closely imitating what was being done in Russia. It
is however not possible to say they were following Russian
orders; the presence and personality of Wang Ming, back at the
Comintern in 1932, is enough to have motivated these odious
practices through sheer eagerness to prove to the Russians what
thoroughly good Bolsheviks the returned students were.
The measure of failure of these unrealistic policies was the
disasters they precipitated. The step-by-step wresting of power
and influence from Mao was relentless. Elected chairman of the
soviet government, he was still political commissar of the Red
armies at the base, and secretary of the Front Committee. But in
August 1932 a conference and plenum was held at Ningtu. By
then most of the sectarians and their adherents had arrived. Mao
Tsetung was away fighting in Fukien (yet another campaign was
on, Chiang’s fourth) and returned to attend this meeting. He was
then divested of his posts as secretary of the Front Committee and
political commissar of the Red armies at the base. His connection
with the Red Army was thus severed. He remained, however,
chairman of the government. But as this was entirely subject to
the Politburo, he had no real voice any longer in political or
military decisions.
The sectarians averred that Mao’s equal distribution programme
to all persons, men and women, old and young, was an error.
They charged that he had avoided adopting a thorough policy of
‘class struggle’. He was soft, they said. All landlords, big or small,
all rich peasants should be killed or driven off their land. Let them
die of hunger. No land (or the poorest) should be given to them
to labour and to live on.
But though the sectarians refused to be ‘infected with reality
in Mao’s felicitous phrase, the reason they could not destroy
the land reform programme as thoroughly as they destroyed the
Party and Army was that, after all, these things take time, and the
MAO TSETUNG AND WANG MING 285
urgent necessity of being fed and feeding the troops, the need for
money precisely from the very merchants and traders they tried
to liquidate, slowed down this ‘Bolshevization*.
Another reason was that they did not know the people. There is
no record of their going round, as Mao did, from small village to
small village, pacing the field pathways, stopping for familiar talk
with the peasantry. The grass-roots cadres knew Mao, and they
would obey him. Mao did not directly counter the orders given;
he would proceed, as he always does, by indirection; taking up
one point, then another, and showing how impracticable the
decisions were; and thus finally, steadily, bringing down the
theoretical edifice. But the practical demonstration of his views
would not take too long to be manifest.
Although we have an absence of recorded writing from Mao
during the three and a half years from early summer 1930 to
August 1933, it is indubitable, from eyewitness reports, that
he was busy writing, and making investigations. But this material
went unpublished and ignored, and was probably lost with many
other documents during the Long March, or left behind or
burned.
It was in policies concerning the Red Army that the best
examples of erroneous decisions are seen. Because Mao was not
deprived of control till the end of 1932, the full force of the new
line for the Army could only be applied in 1933. Already, in the
resolutions passed in 1931 concerning the ‘Bolshevization and
rebuilding’ of the Red Army (it apparently was not a genuine
Red Army before the twenty-eight Bolsheviks arrived), there are
many pointers as to the methods by which Mao’s control would
be taken away. The Red Army leadership was castigated for
guerilla warfare. The new line called for occupation of key
points and holding them to the death, for an end to ‘indecisive
fluctuation , for the seizure of the whole of Kiangsi province. It
accused Mao of rightist opportunism for neglecting positive
action, for procrastination, for being sceptical about occupying
cities, for avoiding head-on confrontations. He preferred, they
said, propaganda in villages to ‘destroying the enemy through
combat , and he failed to pursue enemy forces to the end. They
286
THE MORNING DELUGE
denounced the concept of ‘fluidity’. All this would lead to a line
of ‘regular warfare’, or classical positional war, for which the
Red Army was completely unsuited. The flexible tactics and the
guerilla strategy of Mao, which spared men, collected weapons,
and was maximally effective in its twin objects of political arousal
of the people and social revolution, together with protracted,
attritional methods of war, was to be given up entirely by the
end of 1933.
But all theory must be tested in practice, and it is in war that
theories are best tested. Chiang Kai-shek’s campaigns would
serve to illustrate the two-line struggle in a more striking manner
than any other event could have done.
‘Before the central leadership following the fourth plenum had
time to carry through its erroneous line ... the Red Army of the
Central Area in Kiangsi under the correct leadersliip of comrade
Mao Tsetung won great victories and smashed the enemy’s
second and tliird campaigns of “encirclement and suppression’’.’*
Between 1930 and 1931 three ‘annihilation’ campaigns were
launched by Chiang against the Central Base. The fust campaign,
as we have seen, started in October 1930, f with a force of 100,000
men. In the decisive battles of December 27, 1930, and January i,
1931, Cliiang’s troops were lured deep into Red areas; he lost one
fifth of his men, including a top general who was killed. The Red
Army numbered 20,000 men.
The second, begun in May 1931, was under thecommandof Ho
Ying-chin, Chiang’s defence minister and chief of staff, with
200,000 men. The population and the terrain were against the
KMT; the peasants and the Red Guards of the liberated areas
helped the Red Army, numbering 40,000 men, which routed the
armies of Ho Ying-chin. Thirty thousand prisoners were taken
or came over to the Communists; there were 4,000 casualties
on the Communist side.
The third campaign followed immediately upon the second.
* Appendix: Resolutions on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party. Selected
Works, vol. III.
f See chapter lo.
MAO TSETUNG AND WANG MING
287
It was led by Chiang Kai-shek in person, with 300,000 men, in
July 1931. Chiang set up headquarters in Nanchang; he used
German and Japanese military advisers. The Communist forces
manoeuvred ably, gliding between the armies, cutting them off
from the rear in lightning actions, covering by night unexpected
distances to appear suddenly when least expected on a flank or
behind the KMT divisions. Ten thousand firearms were captured,
and over 20,000 men, together with their commanding officers,
went over to the Communists in December.
Mao Tsetung was to give, in December 1936, a long lecture on
the strategy of all these first three campaigns; citing not only the
military aspects but also the political situation at the time. The
first campaign, he said, could have been more successful, in that a
counter-offensive might have been mounted, had it not been for
the disunity inside the Red Army and the split in the local Party
organization (the two difficult problems created by the Li Li-san
line and the A-B group). The alternation of offensive and defen-
sive, advance and retreat, must always be kept in mind, and one
must always be prepared for this alternation and not persist in
offensive only. During the third campaign, the offensive was on a
very large scale, and it was only by making long detours (1,000 lis
or 300 miles) in order to attack the enemy at the rear that a very
strong column had been crushed by weaker Red forces. ‘When
the enemy launches a large-scale encirclement and suppression
campaign, our general principle is to lure him in deep, withdraw
into the base area, and fight him there, because this is the surest
method of smashing his offensive,’*
But we should note here that besides the military strategy
involved, another factor would also predicate the success of the
third campaign. This was the fact that the Japanese had attacked
and invaded Manchuria in September 1931. They followed up
with the total occupation of Manchuria. This in turn provoked a
wave ofindignation and protest within China itself against Chiang
Kai-shek, The trials and tribulations of the KMT from September
1931 to April 1932 gave the Communists a much-needed respite,’
* Problems of Strategy in China’s Revolutionary War. Selected Works vol I
ch. 4, p. 200. ’ ■ ’
288
THE MORNING DELUGE
writes Jerome Chen,* The defection to the Communists of 20,000
men of the KMT Twenty-sixth Route Army, with all their guns,
more than a hundred pieces of artillery, and wireless sets -called
the Ningtu uprising — was also a tremendous boost.
The tribulations of Chiang Kai-shek were multiple, for he now
also had a full-fledged rebellion on his hands, ending with a
dissident ‘government’ proclaimed in Kuangchow. However,
this revolt had already started in February 1931, and had not
prevented him from mounting his second or his third campaign
against the Communists; hence the excuse made by some
historians that Chiang would have been militarily successful had
he not stopped because of these ‘tribulations’ is not borne out by
facts. Oil the contrary, the invasion by Japan, (termed euphemis-
tically the Mukden Incident) was the means of a reunion between
the Kuangchow dissidents and Chiang Kai-shek. Of course the
dissidents had the support of that eternal peripatctician Wang
Ching-wei, once again reconciled with Chiang Kai-shek. There
is no evidence that the Communist triumph in the third campaign
was directly due to any hasty withdrawal by Chiang. It was a
straightforward military victory. Cliiang did not withdraw his
forces because of the Japanese; he never sent any to fight them.
13 y January 1932 the Japanese were also attacking Shanghai,
which was bravely defended by the Nineteenth Route Army of
General Tsai Ting-kai, who only a few weeks previously had
been fighting in the third encirclement and suppression campaign
against the Red base, under Chiang Kai-shek’s orders. Chiang’s
reluctance to battle Japan became then very evident; he did all he
could not to support (practically to sabotage) the Nineteenth
Route Army’s gallant efforts, which had stirred the patriotic
emotions of the whole country. In order to continue his anti-
Communist campaigns — under the slogan ‘Internal pacification
must come before external resistance’ — Chiang Kai-shek in
April 1932 ordered General Tsai Ting-kai and his Nineteenth
Route Army to battle the Communists in Fukien province, with
what paradoxical results wc shall sec.
■^Jerome Chen, Mao and the Chinese Ret^olntiotiy trs. M. Bullock and J. Chen,
op. cit., p. 171.
ip. Jjipancse units moving into Northwest China during the war (1937-1945)
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MAO TSETUNG AND WANG MING 289
Chiang Kai-slick then made a truce with Japan, the May i
Tangku txuce, tacitly agreeing to Japan’s occupation of the three
eastern provinces of Manchuria. This was to lead the following
year to the establishment of a puppet state of Manchukuo,
ostensibly independent, actually under Japanese control. The
deposed last emperor of the Manchu dynasty, Puyi, who had been
living in the Japanese Concession in Tientsin, was now made
emperor of Manchukuo. Chiang meanwhile readied his fourth
encirclement and suppression campaign against the Communist
Central Base.
In January 1932 Mao Tsetung was urging that the Communist
Party should seize the opportunity dropped into its lap, literally,
by the Japanese invasion. A united front of the people of China,
the ‘broad masses’, furious with Chiang’s supine attitude, and
demanding resistance to Japan, was in the process of coalescing.
It needed a head, a leadership. Mao Tsetung argued that this
leadership should be seized by the Chinese Conmiunist Party.
This was, said Mao, a struggle against imperialism, Japanese
imperialism. Whichever party would combine the leadership of a
national liberation movement together with the fulfilment of
demands for social revolution, such as land reform, could win
leadership of the entire nation and thus make the Revolution
progress. Mao Tsetung argued that since the Revolution was still
in the bourgeois-democratic stage, it was up to a united front to
rally all the classes that wanted to resist the invader. This reasoning
was sweepingly denounced by the ‘left’ sectarians as right
opportunism. They saw the whole process quite differently. The
attack on China was not an attack on China; it was a preparation
for a combined imperialist attack on the Soviet Union ! Any sign
of nationalism’ was therefore bourgeois. Only ‘proletarian
internationalism was the correct line. All reformist groups were
enemies; Chiang Kai-shek was in league with Japan and therefore
to fight him was essential. Mao tried to refute this haywire
reasoning. Japan could not possibly attack anyone else before it
had subdued China and turned China into its vast base to conquer
the world. Hence to fight Japan was true ‘internationalism’. This
reasoning was deemed non-Marxist. ‘What kind of Marxism
290
THE MORNING DELUGE
can you expect from the mountains of Kiangsi?’ sneered the
sectarians.
However, in April 1932, while Chiang was manoeuvring for
a truce with Japan, Mao Tsetung as chairman of the Chinese
soviet government, Chu Teh as commander-in-chief of the Red
Army, and Hsiang Ying, the vice-chairman, signed a declaration
of war against Japan. This was regarded as a propaganda move
abroad; and the sectarian members of the Politburo went ahead
with their own logic.
A totally different military strategy was developed. The Red
Army was to be expanded; it was. By the end ofjanuary 1932 it
had grown to a massive 200,000 men. It was announced that
‘guerillaism’ was now out. ‘It was wrong to lure the enemy in
deep because we had to abandon so much territory.’ The sec-
tarians argued: ‘Now our own state has been established and our
Red Army has become a regular army. Our fight against Chiang
Kai-shek has become a war between two states, between two
great armies ... everything pertaining to guerillaism should be
totally discarded.’ The new principles were ‘completely Marxist’.
They were:’^‘Pit one against ten, pit ten against a hundred...
exploit victories by hot pursuit’, ‘Attack on all fronts’; ‘Seize
key cities’ and ‘Strike with two fists in two directions at the same
time’. When the enemy attacked the methods of dealing with
him were : ‘Engage the enemy outside the gates’, ‘Gain mastery by
striking first’, ‘Don’t let our pots and pans be smashed , Don t
give up an inch of territory’, and ‘Divide the forces in six
routes ’. '
These quotations from the slogans show how the new strategy
was to govern part of the fourth, and the fifth, defence against
Chiang’s campaigns. From Jtme to October 1932 Chiang Kai-
shek, who led the fourth campaign against the Communists in
person, installed his headquarters in Wuhan, and first attacked the
smaller scattered bases in Central and South China. This time he
used 400,000 men. He easily overran some of the smaller bases,
such as the Oyuwan base under Chang Kuo-tao. Chang Kuo-tao
fled westward with the bulk of the forces to set up another area on
the borders of Szechuan province. He would move again when
MAO TSETUNG AND WANG MING
291
threatened by a local Szechuan warlord, av'oiding battle and
retreating into national minority areas deep into West Szechuan,
where we shall meet him again in 1935. Only some guerilla
deuchments remained in the area; they were rallied by the
commander, Hsu Hai-tung. who later would join up witii Mao
Tsetung.
Chiang also scattered a base in Nortli Hunan — Hupei, under Ho
Lung, the Kuomintang commander who had joined the Com-
munists at the Nanchang uprising. Another column of Chiang's
troops would smash the guerilla area where Peng Teh-huai now
operated. Peng Teh-huai had returned in late 1930, after the
fiasco of Li Li-san's ‘capture Wuhan’ line, to the Hunan-Kiangsi
border area. His base was therefore almost in the former area of
the Chingkangshan mountain massif Peng lost the territory and
withdrew, to join the Central Base.
This provided the sectarians with a rival military opinion
against Mao Tsetung. Peng Teh-huai agreed with them that
‘guerillaism’ was outmoded, and that with such a large Red
Army (and the Pohtburo called for its constant expansion
throughout 1933 and early 1934). regular warfare should be
engaged in. When in August 1932 at Ningtu, Mao Tsetung was
fmally deprived of control over the Red Army, right in the
middle of the fourth campaign, both Chang Kuo-tao (who seems
to have been briefly in Juichin) and Peng Teh-huai joined in
criticism of Mao’s military strategy. The new resolutions on the
Army were now set into practice. Soldiers’ conferences and
soldiers committees were done away with; they would not be
restored till 1947-1948. Political education in the Army declined.
Officers and privates were to be regularized, which meant
different uniforms, and saluting, which Mao never bothered
about. Positional warfare and trench warfare, sudden lightning
attacks, were ‘the modem way’ of fighting— ‘Marxist’. A Military
Commission was set up, to prosecute what was now called ‘the
decisive battle between the road of revolution and the road of
colonialism’. A war ‘of short swift thrusts, blockhouse warfare,
war of attrition ... anyone who did not accept these things was
to be punished, labelled an opportunist and so on and so forth ...
292
THE MORNING DELUGE
[These] were the theories and practices of hotheads and ig-
noramuses; they did not have the slightest flavour of Marxism
about them.’ Thus wrote Mao, in 1945, of this period.
The MiUtary Commission would pass under the command of a
German, Otto Braun, aUas Li Teh, alias Hua Fu, alias Otto Stern,
who arrived in 1933. Li Teh would have the distinction of being
the only European to make the Long March. His qualifications
for assuming military control were puzzling. He appears to have
been a schoolteacher by profession, a member of the Comintern
by conviction, a journalist occasionally, and a military strategist
by virtue of having soldiered for a while and also taken some
in Moscow. He called on Edgar
Snow in early 1933 in Tientsin, under the name of Otto Stern,
journalist. He was dramatically smuggled into the base a little
later. He has now written his own memoirs of those days.
The fourth campaign, which dragged on for almost nine
months, was also a defeat for Chiang Kai-shek. The military line
set down by the sectarians was not followed everywhere; Mao’s
influence would continue among some units; a commander
named Lo Ming would be ‘struggled against’ and cashiered as an
‘opportunist-liquidationist’ and a ‘flightist’ for having followed
Mao’s guerilla precepts.
Mao Tsetung was ill with malaria (he had all together three
bouts of it) and was therefore certainly not in any position to
influence military events— besides having been deprived of his
post with the Red Army — during the winter of 1932 and the
spring of 1933. The fourth campaign was victorious, even if
costly in manpower, and this seemed to prove the correctness of
the new military line. It was actually due to the impetus and
^lan, the courage and fearlessness of the troops, much less well
equipped than their opponents. The losses in men were speedily
made up, but new recruits are not seasoned soldiers, and this the
sectarians ignored. The Red Army, they argued, could grow to
‘several hundred thousand’ and start a nationwide insurrection.
In March and April 1933 a swift forward thrust carried the Red
Army within striking distance of Changsha; but then logistics
became a problem, and Chu Teh argued that Changsha could not
courses at the military academy
MAO TSETUNG AND WANG MING
293
be taken. But this seeming victory greatly exalted the Com-
munists. Another military conference was called that April, and
again Mao was criticized (in absentia).
But the expansion of the Red Army in preparation for the war
‘to end colonialism’, the decisive stage foreseen by the provisional
Politburo, needed economic support. There cannot be an army
without food — what the peasant grows and supplies. Not one of
the members of the Politburo could spare the time to do the
laborious, boring work of economic consolidation. This was left
to Mao Tsetung, who was put in charge of producing the sinews
of war: food, clothing, money, and men.
In the summer of 1933, we fuid Mao Tsetung writing again; and
it is on economic work.
The economics of the base were tied up with recruiting.
Recruits could only come from the peasantry. The sectarians
spoke of getting at least 500,000, if not a million, men under
arms. The ‘regular’ army would now man blockhouses, trenches,
and other fortifications in ‘regular’ warfare fashion. Peasants
were set to digging and shovelling and building. This entailed a
drain on field labour. The soldiers were locked in trenches and
forts. All this was against Mao’s ideas, which was to utilize the
Red Army also as a production and work force in the fields, so
that the burden on the population would be light. The intensive
army-people relationship which Mao had promoted was
endangered.
At the April 1933 military conference which had criticized Mao
in absentia, and started the struggle against Lo Ming because in
his battles he had followed Mao’s military tactics, Mao’s brothers
Mao Tse-min and Mao Tse-tan were also censured. Mao Tse-min
was relieved of his job, as also was Mao’s secretary. Mao Tse-tan
was left to help Mao with land reform.
To counteract the offensive ‘left’ land programme, which
admitted of no intermediate classes and had already resulted in
decline of production, Mao Tsetung organized a land investiga-
tion movement in that April of 1933, in spite of his illness. In
May 1933 the policy of physical liquidation of landlords and the
294
THE MORNING DELUGE
tax to the limit on rich peasants was producing poor results,
and Mao halted it. It antagonized the middle, yet did not fulfil
the demands of the poor peasants. He then set up experimental
points , and held two more meetings on economic work in June
193 3 » going to villages and calling on groups of three to twenty
people, asking questions, making notes, comparing reports, in
fact doing what any scrupulous scientific social researcher should
do. If a point was unclear, Mao would remain, stimulate a debate,
and have a discussion with as many people as possible until he got
to the bottom of the local problem.
All this painstaking, meticulous work would be regarded by
the haughty sectarians as trivial; and there is no record of any of
them doing the same. Yet tliis was the basis upon which Mao
Tsetung set out to verify (which was really to mitigate) the ‘left’
line in land reform and in economics. He said that the line practised
was a most dangerous policy, the population will be troubled’.*
In August 1933 Mao Tsetung called an economic conference for
seventeen counties (the base total) for economic construction. The
fifth campaign of Chiang Kai-shek had started that very month.
At the conference he criticized the discrepancies between the
policies urged and the goal, which was to win the war. The
essence of the matter was that the enemy’s campaign must be
checked and the enemy defeated, but the line carried out asked
for an economic set-up which could not sustain the war effort.
There would not be such a contradiction, he maintained, if
appropriate tactics and strategy were followed.f The call ‘Let us
have a million soldiers’ was devastating the countryside; it
interfered with labour power needed at harvest time, as did the
work on fortifications.
He was then accused of ‘narrow empiricism, peasant localism,
and opportunistic pragmatism’. Mao then withdrew to a small
village where a drought had occurred and mobilized the popula-
tion to dig wells, digging a well himself At the time he repeated
what he had written in 1930: ‘It is quite wrong to take a formalis-
* Interviews at Juichin Central Base by author, 1971.
f Be Concerned With the Well-Being of the Masses, Pay Attention to Methods of
Work (January 27, 1934), Selected Works, vol. 1 .
MAO TSETUNG AND WANG MING
295
tic attitude and blindly carry out directives without discussing
and examining them in the light of actual conditions.’
At the end of 1933 Mao Tsetung made trips to Hsingkuo, to
Shanghang. He kept moving about the base, and he visited some
places, such as Yutou, where his brother had been in charge of the
tungsten export, about eleven times during those four years. About
a thousand co-operatives were founded to alleviate shortages in
food, clothing, salt due to enemy blockade, Mao made a report
to the plenum in January 1934 on all aspects of economic work.
‘To conduct the task of land reform merely through the action of
a few cadres’, he said, ‘depresses the morale and the fighting spirit
of the masses.’
His operational principles were three: land distribution, land
verification, and agricultural production. Exhaustively Mao
Tsetung tackled the subject of economics, tedious to those who
sail above pedestrian matters such as ‘oil, flour, vinegar and salt’,
details vital for the war eflbrt and for the livelihood of the
millions in the base. The landlord class certainly was the principal
enemy of the Revolution, Mao agreed, but physical extermination
was not the answer. It should be used most sparingly. Only
twelve ‘big tiger’ landlords after ‘verification of more than three
hundred families of landlords and rich peasants’ had been shot in
a certain area, after ‘mass movements in the countryside’ when
‘for fifty-five days the masses of the whole district were set in
motion’. Mao indicated that the people, the poor peasants them-
selves, would not stand for massive liquidation.
Warning about the serious underestimation of Chiang’s
military capability in the fifth campaign, Mao analysed the
resources of the base, going into minute details such as the
number of piculs of grain produced in certain localities, the way
in which land redistribution enhanced production, the obstacles
to the sorely needed good harvests. ‘Comrades, what is a true
bastion of war? It is the masses, the millions upon millions of
people who . . . support the Revolution . . . What is the real wall
of bronze? It is the people.’
This was a retort to those who praised the earthwork bastions
they were erecting and boasted that the base would be
296
THE MORNING DELUGE
impregnable, with ‘walls of bronze and fire’ around it. Alas, the
wall of bronze and fire was being erected by Chiang Kai-shek
round the base, to choke it off.
Be concerned with the well-being of the masses, pay attention
to methods of work. And with growing anxiety as he felt the
obduracy of the ‘ignoramuses’ round about him: ‘Some com-
rades have thought it impossible to spare time for economic
construction because the revolutionary war keeps people busy
enough, and they have condemned anyone arguing for it as a
‘ right deviationist”. Comrades ... fail to realize that without
building up the economy it is impossible to secure the material
prerequisites for the revolutionary war and the people will
become exhausted.’
Already in 1933 the food restrictions imposed by the blockade
were felt; and also the shortage of textiles. No winter uniforms
were made. Money dried up as trade became impossible. Just
before the Long March, in October 1934, the food ration was
fourteen ounces of rice per day, only 60 per cent of the minimum
required. Cooking oil almost disappeared. Lack of salt again
became a great problem.
The soldiers were paid five cents a day; officers were supposed
to be paid the same, but their pay had been raised. Salt, even the
minimum, would cost them twice that per day in 1934. Then it
was to disappear totally. Mao organized salt-smuggling squads.
Many of them were caught and tortured to death by Chiang s
troops. Even the wounded in the hospital did not have salt, and
saplings were cut and burned, salt recovered from the ashes, for
hospital patients.
‘Salt is very dear ... sometimes unobtainable ... all this directly
affects the life of the workers and peasants ... And does it not
affect our basic line ... the alliance of workers and peasants?
Even with these urgent problems, and the tightening blockade,
the sectarians ‘invariably attached damaging labels to all com-
rades who, finding the erroneous line impracticable, expressed
doubt about it’. Doubters were treated ‘as if they were criminals
and enemies ... persecuted, punished, deposed ... this resulted in
the most lamentable losses inside the Party’.
MAO TbETUNG ANU WANG MING 297
And yet in 1934, Wang Ming in Moscow was still to speak of
the application of the left line as eminently successful; and Beda
Kun, member of the Cominteni, was to publish a pamphlet
extolling the success of the counter-revolutionary drive through-
out the Chinese soviet republic, wliich occupied, he wrote, one
sixth of China. The Central Base was ‘twice the size of Holland
and Belgium taken together’, he wrote. The Chinese Army now
had 350,000 regular soldiers.*
Another opportunity would now be offered to the Communists
to emerge on to a national plane, and by so doing to break
Chiang’s blockade of the base.
In November 1933. the Nineteenth Route Army under Tsai
Ting-kai, which had stirred the whole country with its heroic
resistance against the Japanese at Shanghai, revolted against
Chiang Kai-shek. It had been moved to Fukien province, to fight
the Communists’. Tsai Ting-kai now raised the standard of a
‘people’s government’ and opposed the authority of Chiang’s
Nanking goveniment. This revolt was not unique, other war-
lords. such as Feng Yu-hsiang, had felt the patriotic fibre vibrate
with Japanese aggression. Feng had taken up arms against the
Japanese, and Chiang cut off his subsidies to keep him from
fighting.
All over China massive protests, spearheaded by student groups,
gave rise to demonstrations. Although for years cowed by the
White Terror Chiang exercised — many students were executed,
and each university had its spies— the students sent delegations to
Nanking to demand resistance against Japan. Tsai Ting-kai was
therefore supported by patriotic individuals such as Eugene Chen,
Sun Yatsen s former minister for foreign affairs.']*
In January 1933, Mao Tsetung as chairman of the soviet central
government had set out a tentative united front policy, based on
resistance to Japan. If attacks against soviet areas stopped, if
democratic rights were guaranteed to the people, the war
T> Chinese Souiet Republic (International
Publishers, New York, 1934).
t General Tsai Ting-kai is. of course, now in Peking.
298
THE MORNING DELUGE
against Japan vigorously prosecuted and the people armed against
Japanese imperialism, then the Chinese soviet government was
'willing to co-operate with any armed forces’ to resist Japan.
However, in 1933 the Politburo maintained that there could be
no alliance with any ‘bourgeoisie’. There could be no distinction
made between compradore bourgeois, petty bourgeois, national
bourgeois; all were bad, all were to be hquidated together, and
this was in line with the view that there were no ‘intermediate’
classes. In the USSR too, Stalin was against ‘intermediate’ classes
as the worst enemies of the Revolution.
By the summer of 1933, when the Fukien people’s government
was not yet installed but there were already signs of dissidence,
contacts had been established between Tsai and the Communists
and Mao had made renewed truce offers. Had the CCP leadership
encouraged such contacts, and a tactical alliance, Tsai’s position
would have been greatly reinforced. The Communists would
have immediately captured national attention. For the people
were truly tired of internecine warfare. On the basis of ‘uniting
all the people to fight Japanese imperialism’ a powerful propa-
ganda offensive against Chiang Kai-shek could have been moun-
ted. There would have been no fifth encirclement campaign, and
even if there had been, the existence of a friendly province next
to them, Fukien, would have added enormously to the resources
of the base and broken the blockade.
In December 1933 Mao Tsetung and Chu Teh, in the name of
the Chinese soviet government, exchanged telegrams with Tsai
Ting-kai. But the Politburo tarried and dallied. Wang Ming in
Moscow continued to denounce the Fukien ‘rebels’ and the
people’s government of Fukien. Wang Ming said of Tsai Ting-
kai: ‘I’ll shake his hand only if I can spit into his face.’ Moscow
seems to have signified, however, through some Communists in
Shanghai, that ‘military co-operation with Tsai’ was authorized,
though criticism of the ‘bourgeoisie* must continue. But the
general impression was of reluctance to associate with the Tsai
Ting-kai revolt, and no alliance was contrived.
Surprisingly, an extract of a speech by Mao on November 17,
1933, in the midst of the controversy about the desirability of an
MAO TSETUNG AND WANG MING
299
alliance with Tsai Ting-kai, appeared in the Comintern press.* In
his speech Mao criticized the Party leadership for underestimating
Chiang’s military strength, and identified Tsai Ting-kai with the
national bourgeoisie against Chiang Kai-shek as representative of
the landlord compradore bourgeoisie.
While this dispute within the Party about alliance with Tsai was
going on, Chiang Kai-shek moved. First he managed to separate
Tsai from potential allies in Hongkong and in Shanghai. Secondly
he sent troops along the Kiangsi-Fukien border to separate Tsai
from Communist contacts. In January 1934 he launched an
offensive against Tsai in Fukien, crushing his army and destroying
the people's government. Thus vanished the hopes of a united
front with Tsai Ting-kai.
No wonder that in January 1934 a fierce debate between Mao
Tsetung and other members of the Central Committee, in
particular Po Ku, would take place. But the ‘line’ of the January
1931 plenum, the ‘Bolshevik* line, was reasserted in its full fury;
the slogans launched were to defend the USSR, beacon of social-
ism. World revolution was just round the comer and this present
campaign was the decisive one. Mao asserted on the contrary that
a socialist revolution would not take place until the bourgeois-
democratic revolution was completed all over China. He repeated
that petty and national sections of the bourgeoisie, lower and
middle class, were themselves oppressed by the big bourgeoisie
and imperialism. He pointed to all the splits which were occurring,
the revolts against Chiang; the CCP was not taking advantage as
it should of these splits and factions. One warlord plus one
warlord did not make two warlords, there was always a possibility
of rallying one to hit the other. ‘To turn the revolution into a
seething surging tide all over the country it is necessary to launch
a political and economic struggle for democracy involving also
the urban petty bourgeoisie.’ He noted that in spite of their brave
slogans, the ‘left’ line had already seriously abrogated leadership
even in the cities, among workers and intellectuals, sensitive
spheres of the social context where CCP influence was not being
* International Press Correspondence, vol. XHI, no. 50, p. 1124.
300
THE MORNING DELUGE
built up as it should be, and all because of the neglect of this
essential platform of national unity against Japan.
After the January 1934 plenum, Mao’s influence was curbed
even further. A seventeen-man presidium was formed out of
which, at any time, a new chairman might be selected, thus
imperilling Mao s position as chairman. This body was to act as a
supervisory committee over Mao’s actions. His training of cadres
was drastically cut; he was deprived of the chairmanship of the
Council of People’s Commissars, the political and educational
branch of the Party. He had been active in promoting a university,
an academy, Lenin schools, had begun to send cadres out ‘in straw
sandals and by night, walking the mountain paths to call on the
people . It was said that the people ‘loved the cadres sent by
Chairman Mao’. This new and subtle way of keeping in touch
with the people aroused fear that his popularity would be
strengthened. Another of the twenty-eight Bolsheviks, Chang
Wen-tien, took over this job, as well as becoming secretary-
general of the Party. Not a word of complaint escaped Mao, nor
did he take a single action against Party unity. ‘The only thing to
do is ... to wait.’ Meanwhile he went on his inspection tours,
carrying a small lantern, riding a horse. ‘We heard the sound of
hoofs, and knew it was Chairman Mao, going his rounds by day
or by night.’*
Chiang’s fifth military campaign started, in August 1933. He
consecrated to it vast funds, a new loan from the United States
and Great Britain, a million troops, tanks, aeroplanes, the advice of
German military experts, among them General von Seeckt, who
came with the assent of Hitler to help Chiang Kai-shek.
The scorched earth pohcy of ‘bum, kill, destroy all’ was put
into practice. The total economic blockade meant not only the
building of hundreds of thousands of blockhouses round the
Central Base; it also meant the uprooting of thousands of villages.
One million peasants were to die when Chiang cut a wide desert
swath 18 miles deep around the base.
Besides this ring of death, there was a ring of fire; all crops,
* Interview at Yehping with peasants of those days.
MAO TSETUNG AND WANG MING 3OI
trees, houses were burned. A ring of blockhouses, six miles in
depth, with machine-gun nests, supplemented it.
The death penalty (most horrible death, with gruesome
cruelties) was provided for anyone who traded with Communists,
who gave them salt or food. The secret police controlled all the
schools and other public places in county towns. The system of
collective responsibility, Paochia, by which everyone in a village
was ultimately responsible if any one member helped the Reds,
was enforced. Twenty-four thousand special guards were created
as a supervisory body. Barbed wire was strung round all the
fortifications and between to prevent any entrance or exit to the
base for a depth of eighteen miles.
Because all this took time, victories could still be claimed when
sorties were operated in March and April of 1934. But economic-
ally, the effects on the base were already felt by November 1933.
Mao Tsetung was not impressed by the victories claimed. The
loss in men and in equipment had been very, very heavy. The
Red armies milled round and between the enemy’s main forces
and his blockhouses’; they were reduced to passivity. ‘This is
really the worst and the most stupid way to fight,’ said Mao. He
had in January suggested transforming the defensive into an
offensive by thrusting the ‘main forces of the Red Army ... into
the Kiangsu-Chekiang-Anhwei-Kiangsi region’, as if to threaten
the areas between the big coastal cities, a triangle of urban
concentration much prized by Chiang, his vital centre in fact. A
push in that direction would have compelled Chiang to split his
forces and give battle in areas where there were no Wockhouses.
By such means we could have compelled the enemy, who was
attacking southern Kiangsi and western Fukien, to turn back to
defend his vital centres, broken his attack on the base area in
Kiangsi, and rendered aid to the Fukien people’s government.’
But Po Ku had called this ‘bandit policy’ and ‘countryside think-
ing . Mao had then advocated another plan, which was to move
the main forces towards Hunan, driving into central Hunan, once
again drawing the enemy behind them and destroying it in
Hunan. This was also rejected.
In April, Suichuan, the county seat between Chingkangshan
302
THE MORNING DELUGE
and the Central Base, and Kuangchang, on the road to Juichin,
were both taken by the Kuomintang. There could not be any
more ‘halting the enemy beyond the gates’. The ring tightened
^d the base shrank. Any sorties by the Red troops became suicidal.
We could see the corpses of our comrades strewing the plain.
The summer came and the smell was very bad. We had to cross
the same terrain, over and over again.’* It was certainly bad for
morale. Mao Tsetung wrote memoranda to the Military Com-
mission ; in vain.
Since January 1934 the Military Commission itself was split.
Chou En-lai and Chu Teh were no longer happy with the military
strategy evolved, although at one time they do seem to have
thought it was a workable one. Chou expostulated with Po Ku
and with Otto Braun (Li Teh), but Li Teh now had too great an
influence; he banged his fist on the table and was very over-
bearing, and there was no way to change his ideas. Back in
Moscow, Wang Ming was claiming that the reorganization and
Bolshevization of the Party and Army was a great success, and
news was spread that Chiang’s expedition had already failed
and that the Red armies had won another smashing victory.
The order Don’t give up an inch of ground’ was now issued as
the Kuomintang pressed forward into the wizened base. As a
result, soldiers were literally imprisoned in the fortifications, with
no rest and, towards the end, very little food or water. The ration
in August and September of 1934 would fall to twelve ounces of
rice per day.
On July 15 a small portion of Red troops, led by Fang Chih-
min, cut its way out. Fang’s columns were called the anti-
Japanese vanguard; their declared aim was that they were going
to the front to ‘fight Japan’. Fang was instructed to operate a
united front* approach, should he meet with any troops prepared
to accept the terms Mao had drawn up in 1933. The departure of
Fang Chih-min’s troops meant that a portion of the north Fukien
counties, where they were quartered, was automatically aban-
doned. Unfortunately Fang’s rear was cut, he was captured,
exhibited in a cage in Changsha, and put to death. Some of his
* Interview with old Kiangsi soldiers.
MAO TSETUNG AND WANG MING 303
troops escaped and under Su Yu, his chief of staff, waged guerilla
war on the Chekiang-Fukien border until 1938, when they joined
the Communist New Fourth army created in 1937.
German pilots bombed and strafed the base almost daily; they
had one hundred and fifty planes. The Central Committee
dispersed.
In August another breakthrough, by Hsiao Ke and Wang Chen,
took place from the former base area of Chingkangshan ; they
proceeded due west, to Kweichow province. The base of Ho
Lung* (north Hunan-Hupei) had been overrun in the fourth
campaign ; but guerilla units still remained in operation there. Ho
Lung and the bulk of his forces of 20,000 men had moved to
northeast Kweichow province. Wang Chen and Hsiao Ke were
to Join him there, and the forces merged to become the Second
Front Army. Ho Lung was commander, and the political com-
missar was Jen Pi-shih, Mao’s dedicated friend. This appointment
of Jen was to be of consequence later, when Jen played a great
role in persuading Ho Lung to Join Mao.
The fighting at the Central Base now grew in intensity.
Sometimes the soldiers went for twenty hours without any rest.
Mao Tsetung had another bout of malaria, a bad one, his tem-
perature reaching 105 degrees in August and September 1934.
Just about that time Tingchow and Hsingkuo fell to the Kuo-
mintang. Both of these places were scenes of Mao’s early triumphs
in 1929, when he had been in the process of building the base.
The Central Base had now shrunk to only six counties, and the
other small bases had disappeared. Very little was left of the
Chinese soviet republic’. Or so it would appear, if one forgot
the people of China.
Is there any truth in the assertion of some historians that Mao
Tsetung was imprisoned, or at least under house arrest, in the
summer of 1934? Most of these tales come from defectors, and
defectors from the Communist Party in those years there were.
They should be studied with caution, since the primary motiva-
tion of defectors is Justification for their own running away.
See map of bases in South China, page 277.
304
THE MORNING DELUGE
According to interviews with people at the base, including Mao’s
own personal bodyguard Chen Chang-fong, Mao was never
a prisoner. He may have been ideologically attacked, but the rank
and file knew practically nothing of the two-line struggle within
the Party. Indeed, the soldiers who manned the fortifications,
when they asked why the new tactics were so different, were told
that it ‘was still Chairman Mao’s tactics, but improved’. This is a
pointer also to Mao’s great popularity. There would be many
instances in the future of Mao’s policies being invoked when
actually the contrary was being done.
Mao Tsetung visited the fortifications on the southern line of
defence in May 1934. He went to see the soldiers, advised a
withdrawal from the fixed trenches, and reorganization to allow
the soldiers to rest. He suggested mobile warfare as the opponent
there was a warlord, Chen Chi-tang, only a late recruit of
Chiang’s and not inclined to lose soldiers in decisive battles. A
breakthrough could have been operated from there, favourable
to the whole defence. In August and September, Mao withdrew
to Stone Cloud Mountain and was also in Yutou. There he lay
ill with malaria, quite emaciated, but dragged himself from bed
to work table. Chen Chang-fong* said Mao did not complain,
but set about teaching him to read. Mao wrote far into the night,
and compiled a textbook for the use of cadres. Perhaps he started
then on his notes for The Chinese Ret^olution and the Chinese
Communist Party. But this is sheer guesswork.
‘He worked so terribly hard no one could remain unmoved.’
His concern was very evident. Abstemious always, his frugality
increased as the shortages were felt. He was brought salt, smuggled
through, refused it and sent it to the hospital. He would eat only
vegetables and reheated rice, and wash in cold water. It was at the
Kiangsi base that, according to some witnesses, he began to
suffer from the acute spastic bowel condition which Edgar Snow
also was to mention in Yenan. (He seems, however, to have
recovered from it now.)
When his temperature reached 105 degrees, Dr Nelson Fu
* Personal interviews with cadres at Juichin Central Base and also with Chen
Chang-fong.
MAO TSETUNC AND WANC MINC
305
came to see him. Fu had followed Mao all the way from Cliing-
kangshan. Mao insisted that ‘doctors are precious, a nurse would
be enough’, and that Dr Fu should not waste time on him. He
also refused a chicken which Dr Fu brought, saying that it must
be shared with the soldiers. Once he upbraided the doctor for
giving him too many dishes at dinner.
‘Mao’s uniform was the same as ours,’ said Chen Chang-fong.
‘The only difference was that the pockets on his coat always were
specially large— he would put books, notebooks, and maps in
them. He slept very little and was too thin. He had a small
kerosene lamp, and he used it when he went on horseback to visit
peasants. He would throw his cap down and sit with them, and
call out: “Old cousin, what is your name?” He often told us to
observe everything, to note down what we saw. After supper he
woidd light his lamp, open a knapsack with nine compartments
which he always carried with him, and take out books and docu-
ments and work till dawn. When he left on the Long March, he
did not take his knapsack with him.
‘Whenever we captured a county seat or small town, Chairman
Mao would send people or go himself to the local government
offices and to the post office. He would get documents and
archives; he would buy the newspapers and magazines and books,
whatever he could get. We’d come back loaded with parcels of
books and magazines and newspapers. Chairman Mao would
read them, marking with a red pencil the pages he wanted to
keep, so that we could clip them for him and keep them.’
In 1931 Mao Tsetung had married again, a cadre called Ho
Tzu-chen, a girl from a local peasant family in Kiangsi who bore
him two children. There were always people coming to see him,
children running in and out. ‘He was very patient with ordinary
people; he loved to laugh and to joke with them. But he hated
arrogance and complacency. He could then be very curt.’
In all these years of accumulating experience, of learning how to
make revolution, Mao lived and moved in a perpetual seesaw of
war; how to fight, how to build; to build to fight, to fight to
build. Problems of war and strategy, problems of theory, prob-
lems of economy became the links of the same process: revolution.
306
THE MORNING DELUGE
And so though he loved people and fun, he was also often alone.
He knew the solitude of one whose prescience compels a distance
from his peers. During those years of vilification, his peasant
patience was tested, but he never faltered. He cannot have been
happy seeing everything he had built destroyed. But the depth of
his feelings would not be expressed in personal grievance; they
would be transmuted into a compelling historical experience.
The hard lessons learned would become historical knowledge, to
educate the Party in later years, so that ‘ignoramuses’ would no
longer overawe the meek, the dedicated.
As September came to the base and the leaves browned, and the
ailure of the military strategy became glaring, panic seems to
have seized Li Teh and Chin Pang-hsien. The suggestion to
abandon the base had already been made in August. And now
another mistake was to be committed. Impatience. Now that
there had been failure to take advantage of those occasions when
the blockade could have been broken, the decision to get out of
the base, abandoning it totally, was taken, according to Mao,
with unjustifiable haste . ‘In the circumstances then obtaining,
we could well have held out for another two or three months,
giving the troops some time for rest and reorganization. If
that had been done, and if the leadership had been a little wiser
after our breakthrough, the outcome would have been very
different.’*
Mao Tsetung was at Yutou, where his brother was also sta-
tioned, when Chou En-lai, Chu Teh and Chang Wen-tienf came
to call on him. Chou En-lai and Chu Teh were in disagreement
with the conduct of military affairs since the winter, and Mao
gave it as his opinion that there should be no headlong flight; a
strategic retreat must be prepared with as much meticulous care
as an offensive. Another meeting was then held at Stone Cloud
Mountain temple, a very pretty wooden structure on a small
granite boulder, overlooking the valley. It was here that the
decision was made final, but Mao would have no control over
the way the withdrawal would be carried out.
* Problems of Strategy in China^s Revolutionary War, Selected Works, vol. I.
•f Some say it was Wang Chia-hsiang, not Chang Wen-tien.
MAO TSETUNG AND WANG MING
307
The decision to leave was made by Li Tch and Po Ku,* and
Chang Wen-tien was to concur in it. It seems that as far as
destination was concerned, this renrained a dispute throughout the
first lap of the march. Mao Tsetung linked their final goal with
anti-Japanese action; this had been the proclaimed aim of the
two previous breakthroughs, and he opted for the slogan to be
raised again. This does not appear to have been done. Mao also
gave it as his opinion that a base in North China, where the Red
Army would be in a strategic position, would be the best. There
were students of his from the Peasant Institute in Kuangchow in
the only base that was left, bar the Central Base and Ho Lung’s
base, and that was in North Shensi province, adjacent to Inner
Mongolia. Mao also was to speak of Ninghsia as a good province
for a base, with plenty of salt and natural resources.
But no decision was actually made, or rather, it seems that Li
Teh again prevailed and a decision to join Ho Lung’s base was
drawn up. A Revolutionary Military Council was then formed,
with Mao Tsetung, Chu Teh, Chou En-lai, Wang Chia-hsiang,
Liu Po-cheng and the German Li Teh. One week was allowed for
all preparations. Since the decision was secret, none of the rank
and file, no junior officers, no political instructors, were in-
formed. Nor, during the first few weeks, would a precise day-to-
day briefing as to the plan of march be issued. Most appalling of
all, no provisions for any military encounter of any importance,
no briefing for battle array or for measures taken in case of
attack were drawn up. This was really more like a ‘house-moving’
than a military performance.
The Red Army divided into two large groups ; the reserve, and
those who were to leave. Left behind would be 30,000 soldiers, of
whom 20,000 were wounded more or less seriously. Since there
were about 300,000 soldiers then and only 120,000 set out, another
150,000 must either have been disbanded or dispersed as small
guerilla groups in various areas which now received them.
Also left behind would be Mao Tsetung’s brother Mao Tse-tan,
and Chu Chiu-pai, now consumptive and ill, and many friends
and adherents of Mao. All who survived the years would become
* Po Ku is Chin Pang-hsien.
THE MORNING DELUGE
308
members of the Central Committee at the Seventh Congress in
1945.
In March 1935, when the Kuomintang overran the base, Chu
Chiu-pai and Mao Tse-tan were captured and executed. It is said
that Chu Chiu-pai turned renegade just before his death. This
was not found out until 1967, during the Cultural Revolution,
when some Kuomintang documents were discovered. The im-
posing marble grave erected in Chu*s honour in the Papaoshan
cemetery in Peking, where those who have contributed to the
Revolution are laid to rest, was pulled down and his remains
taken away in 1968.
Mao Tse-min’s son, Mao Chu-hsiung, bom in 1927, was
adopted by Mao. He was to emulate his father, became a Party
member in 1945, and in 1946, as a guerilla in the province of
Shensi, was caught and buried alive by the Kuomintang.
Mao Tse-min, who had been in charge of the finances of the
base, was among those in the departing group. He was placed in
charge of transport, of archives, of the equipment, money and
machinery which the Communists took with them. It is said that
Mao s children by Ho Tzu-chen, who were one and two years
old, were left behind with peasants, and could never be found
again.
Several hundred women, teachers, cadres, nurses, started in the
first lap of the exodus, but most of them had to give up or remain
in hiding in friendly villages. Only thirty-five completed the
journey to the end.
The marching force consisted of 120,000, of whom about
100,000 were soldiers, and the rest cadres and others, such as
stretcher-bearers and doctors. But many more started with them.
According to participants, it was a veritable exodus of a whole
population, with 100,000 Red Guards, militia, and peasants,
afraid of being caught by the Kuomintang, following the armies;
they too would be stopped during the first two weeks and com-
pelled to return. This peasant exodus along with the Red armies
happens often, and it would be seen again during the civil war.
It is not surprising that it took place now, despite the secrecy
with which the troops left the base. There were also 8,000
MAO TSETUNG AND WANG MING
309
porters who started with the marchers. They too would gradually
leave.
It was five o’clock on the afternoon of October 1 8 when Mao
Tsetung left Yutou with his personal guard and joined the van-
guard of the marchers; the advance troops had left on October
16. Under cover of darkness other units from other places also
left. They formed long files, processions which moved slowly out
of the base, and rumours were rampant, for no one knew exactly
where they were going, nor had orders been given as to resting
places for the night.
The soldiers were told to put rice in their bags. They carried
about three days’ supply; they could take no more than two
catties each.
The overwhelming impression from many interviews is of the
complete bewilderment, and the walking. ‘We did not know
where we were going, but we walked. We walked and we fought.
Day and night.’
Thus, as a ‘house removal operation*, as Mao Tsetung would
call it, this exodus began in panic and dismay — reflected in the
lack of any practical organization, care for the soldiers, or
methods for supplying information and maintaining morale.
There was no winter clothing for the soldiers; they left in their
summer kits. Mao Tsetung, still weak fiom his bouts of malaria,
went like the others. His orderly relates that ‘we received orders
to equip ourselves lighdy in preparation to go to the front to
fight the Japanese. Some other units apparently did not get this
information; they thought they were going to open up a new
base and fight landlords. Others thought they were going on a
parade.
The Chairman did not take his nine-compartment knapsack
with him ... his total personal possessions were two blankets, a
worn overcoat, one woollen sweater, a broken umbrella, a bowl
for eating. He took the umbrella and a small bundle of books.
He told everyone to make straw sandals, light and cheap, for
marching. All the way, whenever we could, we made straw
sandals. The next month Mao would give his overcoat away to a
wounded soldier. He took his horse with him, which he had
310
THE MORNING DELUGE
inherited from a Kuomintang officer defeated in battle in one of
the first campaigns. But most of the time he walked with the
soldiers. The horse was used to carry equipment.
Some units were told to ‘remove telephone lines’ and so they
removed lengths of wires and carried them away. Paradoxically,
they also took everything they could that was cumbersome, such
as sewing machines, the machines from the arsenal, and furniture.
The 8,000 carriers slowed down the military units.
The day the withdrawal started, a message from Moscow
arrived (some say it was several days, or even a fortnight later),
approving a ‘pullout’.
Later, Mao Tsetung, summing up this experience, would have
this to say to those who had so violently criticized his concepts of
‘fluidity’ of base territory, luring the enemy in, and conserving
men rather than space :
‘Fluidity of battle lines leads to fluidity in the size of our base
areas ... We must base our planning on it and must not have
illusions about a war of advance without any retreat . . . We must
...be ready to sit down as well as to march on, and always have
our marching rations handy. It is only by exerting ourselves in
today’s fluid way of life that tomorrow we can secure relative
stability, and eventually full stability.
‘The exponents of the strategy of regular warfare which
dominated our fifth counter-campaign (1933-1934) denied this
fluidity, and opposed what they called “guerillaism”. Those
comrades managed affairs as though they were the rulers of a big
state, and the result was an extraordinary and immense fluidity ...
the 25,000-li Long March.’*
* Problems of Strategy China’s Revolutionary War, Selected Works, vol. I.
12
The Long March
Li October 1934, the First, Third, Fifth, Eighth, and Nineteenth
Army Corps of the Red Army, which composed the First Front
Army of the Central Base, set out on the Long March.
The First Army Corps of this vast cohort had been reorganized
in June 1930 to include the Third Army under Huang Ktmg-lueh,
the Fourth Army under Lin Piao, and the Twelfth, Twentieth]
Twenty-first, and Twenty-fifth Armies. These six armies of the
First Army Corps formed the vanguard of the immense exodus,
all 7,500 miles of its trek. The Third, Fifth, Eighth, and Nine-
teenth followed, in that order.
The commander-in-chief of the First Front Army was Chu
Teh. Was Mao Tsetung its political commissar? So it seems,
although this point is obscure. At the Party conference held in
August 1932 he had lost his post as political commissar. His
connections with the Army were thus severed. Now, however,
with the creation of the Revolutionary Military Council, he may
or may not have been reinstated as commissar. In the chaotic
muddle at the departure of the 120,000 from Kiangsi, it is possible
this job was foisted upon him.
Peng Teh-huai was vice-commander-in-chief of this vast
force, second to Chu Teh, as well as commander of the Third
Army Corps; Yeh Chien-ying was chief of staff, and Liu Po-
cheng, nicknamed the One-Eyed Dragon, chief of operations.
There was also a corps of instructors and political cadres trained
by Mao at the Juichin Red Academy,
The conditions under which the Long March began could not
have been worse, with totally inadequate food supplies, much
cumbersome and useless baggage, no battle plans in relation to
enemy troop movements. Li Teh was the man chiefly responsible
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THE LONG MARCH
313
for the conduct of this evacuation. Backed by Chin Pang-hsien,
he overrode the opinions of other members of the Revolutionary
Military Council, as he had done persistently during the fifth
counter-campaign. In eight articles published under the pseudo-
nym Hua Fu, Li Teh had rejected Mao’s suggestions and Chou
En-lai’s, During the last four months, up till the final day of
departure, peasants of the base had laboured at earth fortifications
and trenches; the new recruits in the army had very poor training,
severe shortages had affected their health. ‘Where were we going?
Some were told we were going to beat the landlords and make
revolution ... We were told many different things. We did not
know where we were going.’
In the first stage of the Long March, from October i6, 1934,
when the First Army Corps, assembled at Yutou, started marching,
to January 1935, when at Tsunyi Mao Tsetung was voted into
power, the Red Army sustained enormous losses. Li Teh was
determined to reach another base, that of the Second Front Army
under Ho Lung, previously in the Hunan-Hupei area.* Strung in
four separate columns, carrying an enormous amount of goods,
the ponderous, inchoate mass moved out of the base. It took a
week to walk from the head of the cohort to the rear.
It appears that all that Li Teh (Hua Fu, Otto Braun) knew of
military science was the straight, straight line. He drew a straight
line and that was the line of march. But one important detail had
been forgotten. Maps, There were no maps except the maps Mao
had collected. These maps did not indicate the straight, straight
roads which Li Teh wanted for marching on. The Red Army
men, exhausted after months of combat, of malnutrition, lack
of salt, defeats, had had no time to rest. Yet these incredible
peasants and workers hurled themselves at the lines of block-
houses, machine-gun nests, trenches, fortifications, barbed wire
entanglements, which surrounded the Juichin base, and broke
them. Nine battles were fought against one hundred regi-
ments of the Kuomintang; 25,000 Red Army men died in the
breakthrough.
* Ho Lunp s Second Front Army had already moved to Kweichow province.
Sec map.
314
THE MORNING DELUGE
During the first ten days the orders were to walk by night and
rest by day; but there was no rest, as the open columns were
pitilessly strafed by German-manned aeroplanes. The orders were
changed to four hours of marching and four hours’ rest, day and
night. But again there was no rest, for they were attacked, had
no time to eat, to find shelter, water, before they were on the
march again. We fought every day, we were outnumbered.
We could only pluck up courage, and sing: “The Red Army
fears not death, /Who fears death is not a Red Army man”.’*
From the rear, from both sides as well as from the air, in front of
them, the enemy attacked. ‘We were so tired, we strapped our-
selves to trees, to our guns, we strung ourselves to each other ...
We slept standing up, we slept walking. We had only one thing
in mind, sleep. But there was no sleep. The strong pulled the
weak. We did not want to straggle, to be left behind. Long rows
of us roped ourselves together so as to keep on the march. We
called it “sleep flying”.’*}*
Always going straight as a ruler, the Red Army arrived on the
east bank of the Hsiang river. It had to be crossed, for now the
‘plan’ was to march straight across Hunan and then northwest, to
join the base of the Second Front Army, although by then the
bulk of the Second Front Army was elsewhere.^ A vast Kuomin-
tang force barred the way, yet the river had to be forded. The
Red Army waded through, the tall carrying the short; the children
of twelve and thirteen who in their hundreds had come to the
Army and served as orderlies, cookboys, carriers and trumpeters
hitched themselves on to the veterans’ shoulders.
The Red Army fought (how they fought!) w^ith marvellous
courage, stood in two columns to allow their noncombatants to
use the lane between them to cross the river. There were not
enough stretcher-bearers, many wounded lay in heaps dying. The)'
stuffed cloth in their own mouths to keep from screaming. Many
cadres also died, fighting side by side with the soldiers. Mao
* Interviews with Long Marchers.
f Li Teh’s memoirs state that ‘there were no devastating losses in the first phase
of the march’. But interviews with many Long Marchers do not bear this out.
J See map on page 312.
THE LONG MARCH
315
Tsetiing went to the wounded, but could not do very much
except cover one with his overcoat.
The battle of the Hsiang river lasted a week, with horrifying
losses. The dead and the dying littered the bank. This insane
attempt cost another 30,000 men. ‘We had to leave some of the
wounded behind, there was no way to carry them. By now we
had no footwear, some of us did not eat for four days ; yet we
fought.* ‘I remember how it rained and it rained, we wallowed
in mud, we sank in it; but we went through.* According to Liu
Po-cheng, by now half of the troops had been either killed or
wounded grievously. But the ‘Head on, straight on* Li Teh
would not change the orders.
The river was crossed; on the other side the march started
again. The columns sang: ‘Today we walk and tomorrow we
walk, and where do we walk to?* The political instructors were
constantly being asked: ‘Where are we going now?* They had to
encourage the men, lead in the singsong, see the wounded were
cared for, make food and rest arrangements, run up and down the
units, and fight. The political instructors finally sang a reply:
‘We follow Chairman Mao, the end will be good.’
Ahead of them was another enemy force, five or six times their
number. It took them three days to advance less than two miles,
fighting all the time. By then it was obvious that something was
seriously wrong with the conduct of operations. Men were
dropping dead from weariness, from wound infections. Yet they
went on, and now they were in Kwangsi, in the region of the
Miaos, a national minority.* ‘ “Squad leader, where are we now?’*
I don t know, comrade. Find a fellow who knows where we are.”
I trotted up to a man I saw, but he did not understand me; I tried
every word: Red Army, Juichin, soviet. Communist Party; I
called him old cousin in three dialects. He shook his head. Then
I thought: That s it, were out of China, we’ve arrived in a
foreign country where they can’t even speak Chinese.*’ ’ The
soldiers truly thought the Miaos were foreigners; they had not
met any before. Then Chairman Mao explained to us about the
* There are fifty-odd national minorities in China, making up 7 per cent of the
population.
THE MORNING DELUGE
316
national minorities, about the Miaos. How wc must respect their
customs. So wc talked with them by gestures.’
The November nights were bitterly cold; the troops had no
winter clothes; they trekked all night and in the morning saw
‘strange-looking wooden houses . . . like baskets hung in the air*.
On December 10, I934» the Red Army reached Tungtao county
on the border of Hunan and Kweichow; they were now only
30,000 men. ‘At that moment the “left opportunists”* still wanted
to join the Second Front Army under Ho Lung. A conference
was then held at Tungtao. Mao Tsetung opposed this plan. He
said that the First Front Army should enter Kweichow.’ Mao was
able to sway the others at the conference, and instead of going
northward, the Red Army wheeled smartly westward into
Kweichow, entering the province on December 12. On December
14 another battle was fought, to occupy Li Ping county town
within the Kweichow border. A meeting of the Politburo at Li
Ping from December 14 to 18 was devoted to arguing the
military line to follow. The soldiers, for once, rested. They rested
because, blessedly, the smothering white winter fog which wraps
Kweichow and part of Szechuan from October to March was
upon them; no longer were they strafed from the air.
The choice was between extermination or survival; even the
stubborn Chin Pang-hsien, even straight-line Li Teh, realized it
as they looked at the exhausted, overspent remnants. Two thirds
of the troops had been sacrificed. ‘It was at this critical juncture
that Chairman Mao saved the Red Army ... saved the remaining
30,000 from extermination,’ writes Liu Po-cheng, the one-eyed
general in charge of operations. ‘Here [in Kweichow] the enemy
is weak,’ Mao had said at Tungtao when he was able to make the
change in direction effective. And he proved it almost imme-
diately, for the Red Army had scattered warlord armies with
great ease, and taken Li Ping in a day, a small victory and their
first. But Li Ping was the first time they rested in two months.
Mao was able, during this brief pause at Li Ping, to carry out
some regrouping; his orders were to discard all that was un-
necessary on the march. Furniture, files, machines were burned or
* The sectarians.
THE LONG MARCH
317
given away or buried. More would be jettisoned later. Surplus
guns were given away to the villagers who came with joy to
meet the Red Army; despite its losses, it was famous and well
loved. Mao forbade the troops to borrow anything from the
Miaos, even doors to sleep on, as they customarily did in Han
villages. So the troops slept on the ground. Even though there
were fish in the ponds and herds of kine, they could not have
meat. The Politburo still gave the orders, but everyone turned to
Mao Tsetung, for now everyone was informed through the
Revolutionary Military Council of the day-to-day plan of
campaign and the route.
There is very scanty material on both the Tungtao and the Li
Ping conferences except for Liu Po-cheng’s statement that
‘reorganization occurred’ and a January 1936 number of the
Communist International, Paris edition, stating: ‘The military
errors . . . were corrected at Li Ping.’ The author, Chi Ping, defmes
two stages of the Long March: the period before the Li Ping
conference, when all was confusion, and the period after it, when
morale and decision returned. After Li Ping the Red Army
became once again a military force capable of initiative instead of
a routed mob. But this was not due to the Politburo, as the paper
seems to suggest. ‘We all knew that Chairman Mao was again
taking things in hand, and we were glad. He had a way of making
even the enemy do what we wanted — he called it regaining the
initiative. He would lead the enemy by the nose ... he always
did.’
Now they went west; deeper into Kweichow; small towns —
Chen Yuan, Shih Ping, Huang Ping -fell to them. The Red
Army felt itself again; in the villages it performed theatrical
sketches, dances, sang songs, once again an army with a political
mission.
Now they were to cross the deep, ensconced Wu river, tur-
bulent and savage between its high cliffs, burrowing its mountain
gorges. They were still almost a hundred miles from it, but the
Red Army made preparations. The soldiers were given imme-
diate, practical slogans, and the main slogan was: ‘To take the
warlord of Kweichow, Wang Chia-lieh, alive! Cross the Wu
318
THE MORNING DELUGE
river!’ ‘We made many pairs of straw sandals, we knew that we
Still had a long walk before us.’
At Hou Chang, again dissension occurred in the Politburo. Li
Teh and Chin Pang-hsien would not easily give up. They felt
authority slipping from them, and even the fact that the Red
Army had been saved (and this is not too strong a word) by Mao
Tsetung could not dampen their resentment towards him. Hence
orders given were now countered or cancelled. Li Teh urged a
battle plan, and again wanted to join the Second Front Army,
now on the border in northeast Kweichow. This would mean
turning back east. Mao Tsetung held firm for crossing the Wu
river into Szechuan and again prevailed, with Lin Piao, Yeh
Chien-ying, Nieh Jung-chen, as well as Chou En-Iai and Chu
Teh on his side. The order of the day issued by Mao was to
proceed to north Kweichow, take Tsunyi and Tungtze by
surprise, and arouse the masses’. Tsunyi, the second biggest city
in Kweichow, was held by the warlord Wang Chia-lieh; it was
on the highway to Szechuan. The Wu river curved south of it,
cutting Kweichow province in two and providing a natural
protection to Tsunyi. Between Tsunyi and Tungtze was a barrier
of mountains, with a pass, the Loushan pass, where ‘one man
could keep ten thousand at bay’. The Wu was to be crossed, the
pass captured, Tungtze and Tsunyi taken, and the way to
Szechuan would be open. From January i to 4, 1935, the crossing
of the Wu river, nearly 300 yards wide and with a flow of almost
six feet per second, was attempted. ‘Both banks were sheer
precipices. Under enemy fire the Red Army advanced. Keng
Piao, the miner from Anyuan, went ahead with a small party to
investigate; there was a ferry, but it was heavily guarded. The
Red Army men cut bamboo, made rafts, selected eighteen
swimmers; the swimmers plunged into the icy river and swam
across to destroy the enemy’s post on the opposite bank; mean-
while a feint attack on the ferry was carried out, to draw fire. But
this plan failed. By night, we tried again; then again; finally wc
did cross the Wu and destroy the outposts, scaling the opposite
cliff.’
On January 5, Lin Piao captured Tsunyi citv by a stratagem.
THE LONG MARCH
319
Disguising some soldiers as warlord troops, using captives as
guides, he got past the guards and fought in the city to over-
power the garrison. On the 6th. Mao and the Revolutionary
Politburo entered the spacious city with its beautiful carved brick
portals, its park, and big walled compounds where mcrcliants
and warlords lived. Mao Tsetiuig came over the bridge of tlic
small Tsunyi river and settled in the house of a minor warlord ;
the lower floor was occupied by a merchant of soya bean sauce.
It was in this house, now famous, that the most important
Tsunyi meeting took place, marking a turning point in the Long
March, in Mao Tsetung’s life, and in the history of the Chinese
Revolution.
At Tsunyi, where I went in September 1971, the two-storey
house, with gracious verandas and a wide paved courtyard, where
the Tsunyi conference was held, the conference room with its
wood-panelled walls, the chairs and the table, have been kept
exactly the way they were.*
The meeting at Tsunyi, from January 6 to 8, 193 5 ; was called by
a resolution of the Politburo. It was an enlarged meeting: besides
the Politburo, responsible comrades* from the Army and
Central Committee attended. The Tsunyi decisions were not a
military coup perpetrated by Mao Tsetung but a majority
decision, and Chou En-lai was the decisive influence in calling
it, whereas Li Teh strenuously objected, arguing that there had
already been a conference at Li Ping, which had ‘solved all
outstanding problems’.
Who were the people who attended? The numbers reported
vary between sixteen to eighteen; so far no one has given a
complete hst. We know that besides Mao Tsetung and Chou En-
lai, of the military commanders Chu Teh, Yeh Chien-ying, Liu
o-cheng, Lin Piao, Peng Teh-huai and Nieh Jung-chen were
there ; that of the twenty-eight Bolsheviks there were at least
seven or eight, including Teang Fa and Kai Feng; and that Liu
Shao-chi was also present. Liu Shao-chi had left Shanghai in the
autumn of 1932 for thejuichin base and become chairman of the
* yisit_and interview with local Party and revolutionary committee members
320
THE MORNING DELUGE
All-China Federation of Labour in Juichin. He made the Long
March until Tsunyi; and was at the time political commissar in
Peng Teh-huai’s Third Army Corps.
The meeting concentrated upon criticizing the left opportunist
and adventurist line in military action*. It hence defined its
limitations. It would not be a full-blown ideological struggle, but
would confine itself to military strategy and tactics. It was not
only the present operation, the Long March, but the whole
conduct of the defence against Chiang Kai-shek’s fifth campaign
which was called to account, for it was the defeat of the fifth
counter-campaign which had led to the evacuation of the base.
Within the rank and file of the armies as well as among the
commanders, there was resentment, argument about the defeat
and the withdrawal. Why had they been defeated; why had they
built fortifications? Why had they left the base? Why had no
explanation been given? Questions shelved then now returned
with added virulence, and had to be answered. The appalling
results of the first two and a half months, where ‘men died
quicker than flies’ had to be explained; Mao’s demand since
November for ‘a change of policy’ had become known. There
were many unit commanders overwhelmed by their own losses.
‘The Tsunyi conference put an end to the Wang Ming “left”
military line; it refuted “positional warfare”, and “war of short
swift thrusts”, the concept of “pure defence”, and of “not giving
up an inch of ground”. It criticized the sectarianism of the “left”
line and the system of “punishment and purges” which had
wronged many comrades.
‘The military leadership could not adopt the correct strategy
and tactics; in spite of the bravery and skill of the Red Army, the
high standard of the work in the rear, and the support of the
broad masses, this was the essential reason why Chiang Kai-shek s
fifth campaign could not be defeated. Instead of the strategy of
active defence, or offensive defence, which Mao Tsetung had
urged in view of Chiang’s “protracted war and blockhouse
tactics”, there had been a “pure defence” line, of positional
defence only. The Army had been enjoined never to give up an
inch of ground, the soldiers to die manning their posts rather than
THE LONG MARCH
321
to retreat. The line of pure defence was against all the principles
of strategy and tactics which had made possible, so far, the
victories of the Red Army/*
The resolutions of the Tsunyi conference analyse how wrong it
was not to employ ‘concentrating superior forces, selecting the
enemy’s weaknesses, using mobile warfare to destroy a part, or a
great part of enemy strength’; in other words, using the strategy
and tactics laid down by Mao Tsetung and employed by him so
successfully. As Mao was to say in 1936: ‘It was a serious mistake
to meet the vastly superior forces of Nanking [Chiang Kai-shek]
in positional warfare at which the Red Army was neither tech-
nically nor spiritually at its best.’
The resolutions go on to expose exactly what Mao Tsetung
later would develop: the strategy of protracted revolutionary
war when ‘we do not have the support of urban proletarian
uprisings and mutinies of White Army units ... when we do not
yet have aeroplanes, artillery . . . when we are still fighting on
interior lines’.
The resolutions are an excellent early summary of Mao’s basic
ideas on warfare, and are valuable to us because they show that
Mao’s classics on war, written from 1936 to 1940, had already been
elaborated in his mind before 1935. The resolutions repeat: ‘We
should lure the enemy to penetrate deeply into our territory ...
For victory, we must not hesitate to surrender some parts of
territory ... all this so that the Red Army can hold the initiative.’
All these principles had been violated.
This ‘lecture in military strategy and tactics’ delivered in
Tsunyi by Mao is in essence his theory of protracted people’s
war, which is China’s revolutionary war. Mao stressed the
‘preservation of personnel’ of the Red Army, criticized the waste
of human lives which had accompanied the erroneous military
line. He qualified as ‘opportunist tendencies’ either to ‘over-
estimate the enemy’s strength, inducing us to make no further
move’, or ‘to launch attacks -without any hope of victory (for
instance hopeless and unnecessary attacks on big cities)’. The
failure to take advantage of contradictions in the enemy camp was
* Interview at Tsunyi, September 1971.
322
THE MORNING DELUGE
also castigated including not aiding the Fukien Nineteenth
Route Army rebellion.
It was here that he criticized the fact that the withdrawal from
the Kiangsi base had not been explained to the cadres and the
officers, and thus all had been done ‘hke a house removal opera-
tion’. And finally, the whole conduct of the Long March until
then had led to wasting, terribly costly battles for three months
which ‘put us almost always in a passive position, constantly
under the enemy’s attack, while quite unable to deal telling
blows’.
After criticizing the conduct of the defence, the meeting out-
lined future strategy, and the Army and the Party’s main tasks
were reaffirmed. There should not be decisive battles unless the
Red Army was sure to win; there should be mobile warfare,
guerilla warfare — waiting for a favourable opportunity; luring
the enemy in; causing him to tire himself out in pursuit, inducing
him to make mistakes, to reveal his weakness. There should be
fluid and flexible use of territory. ‘The Red Army must always
hold the initiative and always be in a favourable position to beat
back any enemy attack. It must avoid any loss of initiative or to
be placed in an unfavourable position.’ The appalling losses
during the breakthrough from the besieged Central Base was the
fault of Hua Fu (Li Teh), and Po Ku (Chin Pang-hsien). The Red
Army forces were hurried off to march without preparation,
their ‘elephantine columns’ so slow they had constantly been
attacked. Li Teh had stifled constructive criticism, labelled the
correct suggestions ‘guerillaism’; Chin Pang-hsien had aided and
abetted him.
Neither Li Teh nor Chin Pang-hsien accepted the criticism
meted to them. Chou En-lai, who had taken the initiative in
calling the meeting, took the initiative in self-criticism. Chou
En-lai has never allowed considerations of his own selfesteem
to stand in the way of the Revolution. This has been traduced as
too ready a propensity to change sides and opinion. In reality it
is a deep and humble dedication to his convictions. Chou is
always the first to denounce his own mistakes. He now accused
himself of having, while on the Military Commission, concurred
THE LONG MARCH
323
in the wrong line, pushed the peasants to build fortifications. Had
Mao’s ideas been followed, the encirclement might have been
beaten off and the base saved, said Chou, who then voluntarily
withdrew from his post and suggested that Mao Tsetung take the
leadership of the Mihtary Commission. ‘He has been right all
the time and we should listen to him.’ He moved the resolution
that Mao Tsetung should take the leadership of operations.
Chang Wen-tien, one of the twenty-eight Bolsheviks, also
recognized that Mao was right. Chu Teh blamed Li Teh for the
losses incurred. It is not known whether the vote for Mao
Tsetung was by a large or a slim majority; it probably was larger
than expected because of Chou En-lai, the military commanders,
who all wanted Mao Tsetung back, and some of the twenty-
eight Bolsheviks group who voted for Mao.
The Tsunyi resolutions were published in a 1948 Chinese
edition of Mao’s Selected Works; they have not been reprinted
publicly since. The Tsunyi conference eschewed questions of
ideology, which might have brought about an undesirably
prolonged session, a complicated ordeal lasting weeks, perhaps
months. Thorough appraisal was postponed till seven years
later, during the great Rectification campaign of 1941-44.
The resolutions end on a note of unity, ardour, undying hope in
the Revolution. ‘The enlarged conference ... believes that the
Chinese soviet revolution, because of its deep historical roots,
cannot be destroyed or defeated.’ The ‘setback will not in the
least shake our faith in the progress of the Chinese Revolution ...
The Party has bravely exposed its own mistakes ... it has educated
itself through them.’ The dedication of the Red Army and the
Communist Party was thus reaffirmed. Today Tsunyi, the
meeting place of the conference, is one of the sacred spots of that
monumental pilgrim’s progress which is the Chinese Revolution.
Mao Tsetung was voted chairman of the new Revolutionary
Military Council. He also became one of the secretaries of the
new secretariat, with Chang Wen-tien as secretary of the Central
Committee and taking over the post of secretary-general from
Chin Pang-hsien. As such Mao was still subordinate to Chang
Wen-tien in the hierarchy; but he was reaffirmed as political
324
THE MORNING DELUGE
commissar of the First Front Army. The military direction of the
Long March would now be in his hands.
Mao Tsetiing*s long and dolorous spell in the minority seemed
over; he was now the only saviour and everyone knew it, in-
cluding those who opposed him. Mao would say; 'I have been in
the minority myself . . . The only thing for me to do at such times
is ... to wait.’ He would again be in the minority on further
occasions. Nothing is less valid than a picture of Mao in absolute
power ever since Tsunyi. ‘The minority is sometimes right’
would be one of the tenets of the Great Proletarian Cultural
Revolution. ‘The problem of who is right and who is wrong
cannot in every case be judged by who has the majority.’
On January 9 and 10. 1935, Mao Tsetung gathered the Military
Commission, the instruction corps and the cadres of the Army at
the elegant, monumental Catholic Church of Tsunyi; it provided
a convenient hall for a large meeting. He explained the resolu-
tions, although he gave no names and condemned no one by
name. He defmed the main tasks of the Red Army: to carry on
propaganda among the masses, to organize and to educate them,
to help them to establish a people’s political government. He
castigated the ‘purely military line’, exhorted the Red Army to
return to its original model, and told them the goal — ‘to march to
the northwest in order to fight Japan’. The goal must have also
been accepted at the enlarged meeting at Tsunyi, although it was
not mentioned in the resolutions as published in 1948. A Tsunyi
district revolutionary committee was established at a mass meeting
of 10,000 on the 9th. ‘Only Communism can save China! Down
with tyrants and evil gentry,’ read the slogans on the walls. The
constitution of the soviet government at Juichin was again
printed; a land reform movement was started in five districts and
two counties round Tsunyi. Mao was photographed with the
members of the revolutionary committee in Tsunyi, among
them his old teacher Hsu Te-li *
For twelve days the Army rested, reorganized. Morale was
high. Mao Tsetung tightened discipline, looked into grievances.
* Interviews and visit to Tsunyi by author, 1971*
THE LONG MARCH
325
Divisions were reorganized, the arrangements of the columns of
march simplified. Almost 4,000 recruits joined up. And then it
was again time to move.
The ‘spirit of the Tsunyi conference’ is said to have now per-
meated the 30,000 of the Red Army. Tsunyi was undoubtedly a
turning point. Mao Tsetung had not moved against enemies;
authority had come to him, and the initiative of power, through
no trick but because his enemies had virtually destroyed the
Party and Red Army. He was the only one qualified to lead.
To acquiesce is not to accept. The political overthrow of the
‘third left line’ was yet to come; the sectarians were still extremely
strong. Chin Pang-hsien had only made a very partial ‘self-
criticism’, but had also criticized Mao’s lack of ‘proletarian
internationalism’. Liu Shao-chi, who also now criticized the ‘left
line in the White areas’ as leading to ‘almost 100 per cent loss of
cadres’, had himself been found deficient in his work and en-
joined to work along united front lines and arouse the students
and workers in the White areas in resistance to Japan. He seems
to have gone back to northeast China from Tsunyi. The rank and
file had no inkling of this intra-Party struggle; all they knew was
that they were no longer in helpless flight. The Long March now
became an epic, a succession of marvellous exploits, through the
endurance, the courage, the unbending faith of many thousands
of peasants and workers.
On the east, day breaks; do not
Say we have started too early;
For we shall cross many hills yet
Before we grow old; here
The land is surprising in beauty*
The Army set out northward ‘to fight Japan’; the decision ratified
at Tsunyi to go northwest, actually made by Mao before the Long
March, was to be carried out. They would cross Szechuan, Kansu,
into Shensi province; there was a Red base in North Shensi,
which was their goal.
* Poem (1934) by Mao Tsetung.
326
THE MORNING DELUGE
But another struggle was to come. Chang Kuo-tao, who had
now established a base in Szechuan, was a Politburo member and
had been kept informed by radio of the Tsunyi conference
resolutions. He sent back a radio message signifying his non-
acceptance of the Tsunyi conference, though not in so many
words. Nothing would ever be straightforward or plain in the
course of the Chinese Revolution ; nothing would ever be easy
for Mao Tsetung, even when in authority. Chang Kuo-tao 's long
cable was couched in ideological terms; he felt that the whole
policy of soviet bases was erroneous; the Long March was a great
defeat; the CCP should withdraw, with its contingents, to a safe
place such as Tibet or Sinkiang, and for the time being give up
any attempt at struggle, as it was much too weak. He was himself
organizing in his base a ‘soviet republic and government’, and
was prepared to welcome the Red Army coming from Tsunyi.
This was a move to put himself in the position of chairman of the
soviet republic, and to bypass or ignore the resolutions of Tsunyi.
There was a strong insistence by some members of the Polit-
buro that a meeting with Chang Kuo-tao ‘to talk things over’
should take place; some of them were even of the same opinion
as Chang. The Red Army should ‘wait better days’ rather than
tackle the enormous military might ofjapan.
In the meantime Chiang Kai-shek had not been inactive. The
route northward into Szechuan was blocked with liis troops; he
sought to squeeze the Red Army between two rivers: the Wu,
now at their back, and the Yangtze in the north, barring them
from Szechuan. A pincer movement of mighty forces, his own
and those of the militarists of Hunan, Yunnan, Szechuan, Kwei-
chow and Kwangsi, was mobilized to crush the Red Army.
On January 22 the Military Council sent a radio message to
Chang Kuo-tao asking him to move southward towards the
Yangtze, to feint a threat to Chiang’s forces, while the Red Army
would attempt to enter Szechuan from the south. This would
have caught Chiang’s forces in a counter-pincer movement and
forced him to redeploy. But Chang Kuo-tao instead moved
even farther north, refusing battle. THs was, actually, his style of
action. In 1933, when the Oyuwan base had been overrun, Chang
THE LONG MARCH
327
Kuo-tao had put up little resistance, had gone, and regrouped in
Szechuan, leaving some troops in the base area. His first base in
Szechuan he had also abandoned before a weak warlord attack.
The Red Army prepared to enter Szechuan by pretending not
to enter it; the first principle of a successful commander being not
to let the enemy know your intention. Mao made the regiments
wheel and circle, adopting ‘sinuous lines of motion’. No one
could guess where their meandering course would lead them next.
They launched agrarian revolutionary action, killing tyrannous
landlords, burning land deeds and titles, distributing grain,
opening jails, holding mass meetings with songs and dances and
theatricals. Delegations of peasants came to ask the Red Army to
‘make a detour and come to liberate us from the landlords’.
Though fighting for their lives, they never forgot they were the
great wind of Revolution, the educator of the people. There were
no more punishments and purges, but discipline by exhortation,
meetings, political sessions. A great joy buoyed up the armies;
even many years later, veterans of the Long March would talk
of these post-Tsunyi days with excitement. ‘Our hearts were
light. Chairman Mao was in command ... He carried the Revolu-
tion’s burden upon himself’ And Mao wrote: ‘Infinite beauty
lives upon the perilous peaks.’
For fifteen weeks they twisted and turned and wound back on
their tracks. Mao turned sharp west, crossed the Red river and
went south toTchasi in Yunnan; suddenly rushed east, crossed the
Red river again, and on February 25 occupied Tungtze, attacking
and capturing the famous Loushan pass in one swoop, and
returned to Tsunyi on February 27. The second battle of Tsunyi
was a great victory, twenty enemy regiments were destroyed.
The taking of Loushan pass was to elicit the following poem
from Mao:
Do not say the strong pass is guarded with iron.
This very day with firm step we shall cross its summit.
We shall cross its summit!
Here the hills are blue like the sea,
And the dying sun like blood.
328
THE MORNING DELUGE
It was another of these deceptive, feint-and-dart, sudden pounces
which Mao learned from Sun Tze*s Art of War and developed
extensively throughout his war-strewn years.
In March, still wheeling and circling and doubling, marching
back in unexpected assaults, Mao divided his forces, sent a small
contingent rushing up to the Yangtze as if about to cross it. This
drew off the bulk of Chiang’s armies, which they proceeded to
exhaust by marching them up and down and up and down again
at a rapid pace, sometimes covering over 30 miles in a day. The
main force meanwhile wheeled south, smashing warlord forces,
and once again crossed the Wu river southward, as if threatening
the capital city of Kweichow province, Kweiyang. Chiang had
installed himself in Kweiyang to direct operations. He called
Yunnan troops to his aid, thus depleting the defences of Yunnan
province. As the Yunnan forces set out on the long, mountain-
hacked march up to Kweichow to ‘protect* Chiang, another
small contingent of the Red Army under Lin Piao literally ran
125 miles in three days, swooping suddenly into Yunnan itself,
as if to attack Kunming, its capital. The outsmarted Chiang Kai-
shek and his wife had just flown into Kunming to be sure the
troops would move (warlords were wont to tarry unless super-
vised) when the news came: ‘The Red Army is arriving!’ Panicky
officials prepared to withdraw to Indo-China; the Yunnan armies
were called back. Meanwhile the bulk of the Red Army forces
were crossing the Yangtze in its upper reaches, where it is called
the River of Golden Sands, much farther west than they had been
expected, and they were unhindered for a week. The crossing took
nine days and nights, and the Kuomintang forces arrived only in
the last two days. Such was the drive and imagination, the skill
and elegance, the art of war of Mao Tsetung. And the Red Army
laughed as the political instructors explained to them every step of
what they were doing. ‘Chairman Mao always makes his enemies
obey him.’
By running 53 miles in a single day, Lin Piao and his small force
also managed to return and to cross the Golden Sands river safely.
Now they were in Szechuan, in another national minority region,
among the Yi tribes.
THE LONG MARCH
329
‘Two days after [the crossing] wc reached the Yi region ... It
was May. The fields were deserted and untilled. There were no
rice fields, no farmhouses, only some rough shacks in the forest . . .
Soon after we entered a mountainous area a group of men and
women in strange clothes appeared ... They shouted as they
approached. Five tall women came out of the group, each carrying
a big red cock in her arms. They approached Chairman Mao and
surrounded him.’ Mao nodded his head, put his hands before his
breast to show thankfulness. He never had a gun on him; he
walked among the Yis unafraid. Some of the soldiers thought the
cocks were for eating, ‘but we soon found out they were not.
They were fighting cocks, house pets/ Yi people then appeared
on all the slopes, singing and welcoming; ‘it was a strange and
moving sight that brought tears to our eyes’. Again there was
propaganda, theatre shows and songs; about 200 men from the
Kuchi-Yi tribe joined up. The Yis were ‘tall like the Tibetans,
darkly aquiline; the younger men have smaller waists than the
girls’. The Red Army crossed ranges dense with camellias on the
lower slopes, and went on.
A great psychological as well as physical ordeal was ahead —
another river, the Tatu. Everyone was afraid of the Tatu. This
was where the last of the heroic Taiping peasant rebels had been
massacred in 1864. Here also enemy armies waited to pounce on
them. Already Chiang had boasted that the Tatu would drown
these Red bandits as it had drowned the last Taiping peasant
rebels. The troops were apprehensive as they cut their way to the
Tatu; they were quieter than usual. Above their heads the tall
trees seemed suddenly threatening.
During the nearly-200-niile march between the Golden Sands
and the Tatu, Mao kept up the spirits of the soldiers with droll
stories, with laughter and jokes, which were repeated down the
columns. He knew the soldiers’ fear of becoming ‘water devils’, —
drowning — in the black swift waters of the Tatu. It was said the
souls of the dead Taiping wailed here by night, lamenting their
fate. What if this happens to us?’ ... ‘This cannot happen to us,
for we are revolutionaries. History has changed, we have changed
it.’ Mao replied. ‘With Chairman Mao. even if purblind, we shall
330
THE MORNING DELUGE
walk the straight road and not be afraid of death/ the troops
sang. ‘The past does not return/ said Mao. They trusted him; for
he was one of them, in comfort and discomfort, sharing every
hardship, every emotion, leading them with songs and poems and
laughing words. He ate the same rations and wore the same
clothes; he only worked much harder; for while they slept he
would sit up, by the light of a small kerosene lamp, working,
planning, receiving messages, writing reports, giving orders...
He scarcely slept more than two or three hours at night, and not
every night, during those months of the Long March.
They passed the Cool Mountains, and marched 6o miles to the
medieval town of Anshunchang, on the Tatu. At Anshunchang
was a man-plied boat; it had to be towed by those naked river-
men whose lives were spent pulling boats against the swift current.
Athwart the river, for four and a half miles against the current,
the boat was pulled; it took hours, and only 50 men at a time.
How long would it take the Red Army to cross? Many weeks.
There was a bridge, however, across the Tatu, but over 90 miles
away. Mao said: ‘We*ll cross by boat and by bridge. We can do
both.’ And he looked cheerful. ‘So we hacked our way another
90 miles through dense forest, while a small party of soldiers
went by boat across to the other side, then, clinging to boulden
along the other bank, walked along the river edge to reach the
town of Luting, which had a strong garrison. Luting was at
the head of the bridge on its western side. They would attack
the garrison from behind while we would endeavour to cross the
bridge from the east bank and do battle with the enemy from the
front.’
Luting bridge, over a mile long, consisted of thirteen enormous
iron chains spanning the river, which, 200 feet below in the gorge
it had hewn, coursed with the noise of ‘ten thousand racing
horses’. ‘When we arrived it was four in the afternoon. We had
hacked our way through dense brush, never stopping, for three
nights. We had no torches ; who fell behind we could not wait for.
We had run part of the way; for we knew we must take the
bridge and get there in time. The fate of the whole Red Army
depended on our taking the bridge.
THE LONG MARCH
331
‘We had twenty-two volunteers to take Luting bridge. The
Kuomintang in the garrison town of Luting had removed all the
planks to tlie halfway point, over a half a mile. They had not
bothered with the other half, their own side. Our men had to
cross by swinging on the iron chains, hand over hand, under
heavy machine-gun fire. The Kuomintang could scarcely believe
their eyes. Who would have thought the Reds would insanely
try to cross on the chains alone? But this is what they did.
Seventeen of the first batch of 22 died, their bodies fell in the
torrent, others took their place. The Red Army screamed, we all
shouted, as if Heaven would tear, as one of ours got to the mid-
bridge where the planks were left, uncapped a grenade, and ran
and tossed it among the enemy soldiers. They set fire to the
planks, but it was too late. More of our men had swung like tree
apes, got to the planks; they rushed the garrison post through the
flames. And suddenly there was shouting and gunfire as the small
force that had crossed by boat attacked the enemy from behind.
They panicked and surrendered. Thus we took Luting bridge in
two hours, and the town was ours. We borrowed doors from the
people; they were civil and good to us. We put the doors down
on the chains, as planks, and the Red Army crossed. But our rear
fought another big battle, as the Kuomintang arrived behind us.
History did not repeat itself. We conquered the Tatu river.
Some of the local people said the souls of the dead Taiping would
no longer wail at night, they were revenged.** It was May 25,
1935 -
Now they were in the high mountain ranges that run like giant
stairs up and up, to Tibet; the parallel summits towered, the vast
glittering ocean of icecaps of Tibet spread a marvellous, dizzying
whiteness— a new world the soldiers had never dreamed of Most
of the men were southerners, or Szechuanese from the hot dank
plains. They had no warm clothes. Mao told the men to boil hot
chillies and ginger in water and drink it to keep warm. He climbed
with them, slipping in the snow, his grey trousers wet through,
his feet numb. ‘The snow has confiscated my feet,’ he said. They
were to cross the great Snow mountain at 16,000 feet, many died
* Personal interviews with Long Marchers by author.
332
THE MORNING DELUGE
of exposure. Hundreds fell down and never got up. Some died
in the snow, and others of exhaustion and pneumonia and heart
failure. A woman (there were now thirty-five of them) who had
given birth to a baby and placed it in a basket on a mule’s back
saw the basket overturn as the mule slipped; the baby fell out and
down the precipice and sank into the deep snow. No one could
find it again.
The men were heavily burdened as they carried ten days’ food
supply and fuel. Mao told the soldiers of a mountain in Hunan
called the Eight-faced, whose rocks are blue in the rain. The
people say it is so high that * **Men have to bow their heads,
horses must have their saddles taken off; for it is three-foot-three
from the sky.” “How can a mountain be so high?” we asked,
and Chairman Mao said: “Are we not crossing such high moun-
tains, and yet no one will be afraid, for the Red Army can do
anything.” So we made a song about it, that the Red Army
fears neither mountains nor rivers.’ Mao would write poems on
the mountains :
Mountains, O mountains,
I urge my swift horse, unmoving as it gallops,
Lift my head, surprised that Heaven
Is three-foot-three above me.
Mountains,
Untamed seas, churning tides, roll their waves.
An onslaught
Like a myriad steeds in the ecstasy of battle.
Peaks,
Needling blue heaven with lucid spear points.
Bearing space upon their slopes.
In July they finally arrived at Moukung, deep in West Szechuan,
where Chang Kuo-tao was established. The thousands of miles,
the battles, the ambushes (for they had been ambushed by tribes,
uttering war cries and rolling boulders to crush them and flinging
spears) seemed over. They recalled how one-eyed Liu Po-cheng
THE LONG MARCH
333
had sealed a treaty of friendship with some Yis by drinking
chicken blood with tlicir chief; how they had released from jail
200 Yis imprisoned for years because they had not supplied
enough young girls for the Kuomintang. They had composed
songs and made jokes, such as ‘catching the number ii bus’, to
mean a long walk that day. Now they felt almost at the end of the
journey, among comrades, fellow Red Axmy soldiers. For here,
advancing towards them, were soldiers from the Fourth Front
Army, holding large banners on which were inscribed: ‘Let us
expand the revolutionary base of Northwest Szechuan!’ Rain
was pouring down. The soldiers rushed to each other’s arms,
embraced and wept. ‘We were only about twenty thousand
left.’*
Mao Tsetung and Chu Teh, huddled in their rags under a
tarpaulin, waited for Chang Kuo-tao to appear. He came sitting
on his horse and surrounded by thirty guards, all on horseback,
‘They were all stocky, fat men, faces red with good eating, sitting
on fat, beautiful oily horses . . . we looked at them, our mouths
watered ... such beautiful horses! Chairman Mao laughed and
said to us: “Don’t envy the horses!” ’ Mao and Chu went for-
ward in the rain to meet Chang Kuo-tao, who did not even come
halfway to them, but sat on his horse, waiting, and then ‘dis-
mounted slowly’.
The men who had arrived were emaciated; they crawled with
lice and scabies; they were hungry and looked like a crew of
beggars; but they were elated, thinking their troubles at an end,
Chang stared at them and did not see their eyes, only their rags.
A famine-stricken mob, some could scarcely stand up. In his
memoirs, the whole of his vocabulary at this point is impregnated
Avith paternalism. Not a word about the ordeals they had endured.
The man who in 1923 had 'written that ‘peasants ... arc not
interested in politics . . . only in big harvests and an emperor’ now
thought that with his 50,000 men, well armed and well nourished,
he was far stronger than the newcomers, a scarecrow pack of
20,000 ghosts.
* Interviews with Long Marchers. Official historians say there were 45,000, but
this is not correct.
334
THE MORNING DELUGE
Since their first encounter in 1918 at Peking University, friend-
ship had not blossomed between Chang and Mao. Chang had
been to Russia, was an expert in Russian— had he not translated
Stalin’s messages in 1927? — had been a leader in the All-China
Labour Federation along with Liu Shao-chi and Li Li-san, was a
foimding member of the CCP, member of the Politburo, vice-
chairman at the Central Base. His seniority in the Party, he felt,
should be duly recognized. Chang insists on the many courtesies
he used; he writes that he was criticized for his formal, old-
fashioned good manners* — surely an extraordinary thing to
bring up at that moment. But the substance of their veiled enmity
was not only personal; above all it was a question of policy and
power. With military strength on his side — and the military factor
weighs heavily in the Chinese context— Chang Kuo-tao felt he
could impose his views; and liis views, however rational they
might appear, were motivated by concern for his own power
base.
Two conferences were held, and many smaller meetings.
Chang professed to doubt the whole course of the Revolution,
did not agree with the decision to go north to fight Japan, con-
sidered the Tsunyi conference ‘arbitrary’. Mao thought the Long
March a success; Chang thought it a failure and urged a com-
promise solution with the Kuomintang. J He wanted an entente
with Chiang, incorporating the Red Army in a ‘national’ army of
Chiang; there would be, he argued, place for ‘national-minded
officers’ in Chiang’s army. While negotiating the entente, a safe
base had been established by him, here in West Szechuan. He
suggested Mao go further inland, into Tibet or Sinkiang. The
Soviet Union would help with supplies; there had been a message
from the Comintern by radio suggesting the establishment of
bases inland ...
Mao knew well what Comintern advice now meant. Since
♦
1932 Wang Ming, back in Moscow, on the prestigious executive
committee of the Comintern, had been making ‘revolution by
* Chang Kuo-tao ’s memoirs, Ming Pao Monthly^ 1966-1968, Hongkong.
t Mao himself did not speak to Edgar Snow of these intra-Party struggles.
THE LONG MARCH
335
tdegraph’. He had written, or rewritten, the reports from the
base, adding his own bombast; sent ‘resolutions and directives’
back to the base. Li Teh (Otto Braun, Hua Fu) was to be men-
tioned as a ‘correspondent of the Comintern on the Long March
with the Red Army’ under yet another pseudonym, M. Fred. He
would write on July 20 a report which made no mention of the
Tsimyi meeting or of Mao’s having become chairman of the
Revolutionary Military Council.
Chang’s plans were contrary to Mao’s. What was the purpose
and aim of the Red Army, of the Communist Party, if not to
promote revolution, to fight Japan? The outlook on any event was
itself a decisive factor in moulding it. The Communists were
confronting new, unpredictable situations. Mao maintained that
a close study of the situation would reveal that it was excellent
(this produced a sensation, and some guffaws, we may presume,
on the part of Chang Kuo-tao).
Mao Tsetung went on, analysing, explaining the way he saw
events. The decision made to fight Japan had been correct. An
anti-Japanese united front was already in potentia, among the
broad masses of the people. It lacked only leadership; it would be
created, but never by surrender to Chiang Kai-shek or by accepting
high official posts. The Communist leaders would be neutralized
and massacred if they disarmed. The Long March was a success,
the slogans no chimerical assertion. Chang stared at the gaunt,
almost spectral Mao. ‘This, to speak of taking on the colossal
military power of Japan!’ Mao posed the question the way he
had asked it of Chen Tu-hsiu, way back in 1927: ‘To run away,
to hide, or to lead?’ The leadership of the national patriotic
movement must be the task of the Communist Party, which was
alone capable of it. Chiang Kai-shek would soon find his supine
acquiescence to Japanese aggression impossible— the people were
against him; they wanted resistance; even warlords, even his own
generals, were in revolt against him. There could be no with-
drawal to await better times in the westward areas of China where
the population was sparse, unable to sustain a large army, and
where, above all, they could never be in touch with the large
masses of the Chinese people or exercise an effective influence on
336
THE MORNING DELUGE
events. To vv^ithdraw to Tibet or to Sinkiang was to shirk one’s
revolutionary duty, and to become a ‘warlord’ preying on hostile
national minorities.
The meetings at Lianghekou and Maoerhkai were extremely
bitter; at one point Mao Tsetung won the majority vote for his
plan. The march would be continued. It would go to North
Shensi, to the small Red base there under Liu Chih-tan. This was
the nearest point to counter the Japanese offensives which were
developing in that direction.
Mao Tsetung would later say that the struggle with Chang
Kuo-tao, which is included in the two-line struggle so perpetual
within the Party, was one of the most difficult, searing episodes
in his life, ‘the darkest moment’. This shows the extent and the
gravity not only of the verbal disputes, but of the danger which
they ran, only avoided through a combination of firmness and
diplomacy. For it was only too obvious that Chang held the upper
hand where strength and fire-power were concerned, and would
not hesitate to use it once he had been able to win over enough of
the Politburo to his way of thinking to produce a vote against
Mao Tsetung, And when we think back to the relations of the
members of the Politburo with Mao, and what had happened
at Tsunyi, wc can see that Chang Kuo-tao had a good many
high cards in his hand. Chang’s arguments also would appear
very tempting to many tired with the battles, the hunger, and
dubious about the future. In the position they were in, the plans
of Mao did appear to some too grandiose, utopian. Chang
Kuo-tao tried his best to win Chu Teh to his view. Chu Teh was
a Szcchuancse; with Chu Teh and Chang Kuo-tao together,
Chang would be able to rally a great many Szechuanese to his
base. He already had about 35,000 Szechuan recruits among his
troops. And there is nothing Szechuan people dislike more than
to leave their province.
But for Mao, provincial considerations, even if they existed,
were to be combated. He had been successful in mixing soldiers
from many provinces together, and he continued to do so. It was a
choice, he said, between abandoning the people of China, the
workers and peasants, and their heroic struggle, or going on.
THE LONG MAUCH
337
irrespective of personal sacrifice. And Mao Tsctiing’s choice
would be the Revolution. The dangled prospect of a com-
fortable ‘western paradise’, a shelter safe from attack, the flattery
of ‘high official posts’ under Chiang, repelled him.
On August I, 1935, the Revolutionary Military Council issued
a very long, 8i-article proclamation to the nation, approved by
the Politburo and entitled: ‘Appeal to Fellow Countrymen
Concerning Resistance to Japan and National Salvation.’ Its
appearance on Army Day, August i, was symbolic of the
determination to fight Japan; it offered a ‘united front’ with other
forces willing to resist Japanese aggression. This reaflirmed the
Tsunyi decision.*
At the end of August or early September, the march resumed.
The armies were to be divided in two columns: the eastern or left,
the western or right. Each column held 30,000 to 35,000 men.
The right column was composed of the First and Third Army
Corps of the First Front Army, together with the Fourth and
Thirtieth armies of the Fourth Front Army (Chang Kuo-tao’s
forces). The left column was composed of the Fifth and Ninth
Army Corps of the First Front Army, and the Thirty-first and
Thirty-second armies of the Fourth Front Army. There was thus
a balance of both front armies in each column. It is not far-
fetched to think this was done to effect a deliberate equilibrium,
so that there would be ‘more unity’. There were more than
suspicions now that Chang Kuo-tao might attempt a military
action upon the much weaker, much less well-armed First Front
Army; that he might capture the Politburo and Mao, and declare
* It is now said that the text contains some ‘left opportunist* errors (dubbed
‘right* opportunism, in the constant paradox that what is ultra-left actually bene-
fits reaction). The Seventh Congress of the Comintern in Moscow (July-August
1935) on August 2 approved ‘the initiative taken by our courageous brother Party
of China in the creation of a most extensive anti-imperialist united front*. Stalin,
too, had now for several months been thinking of a united front against the Axis
powers. But what the Russians and the Comintern meant and what Mao meant
were different, as the future would show. This is probably why the August i, 1935,
proclamation is now criticized. An official Comintern declaration on united front
policy would appear on August 20.
THE MORNING DELUGE
338
himself sole leader of Party and Army. Chang Kuo-tao through-
out the bitter disputes had not only affected to doubt the legality
of the Tsunyi enlarged meeting, but pressed claims to becoming
secretary-general of the Party. But what was even more sinister,
he had refused to use his very well-equipped troops to do battle
against massing Kuomintang forces in the Sungpan region north-
east of his base. The Sungpan region was precisely the one that
Mao Tsetung, who was leading the right column, would have to
cross. Chiang of course had guessed that Mao would attempt to
go north, and he had made preparations. But the troops he had
at Sungpan were not his best; these were in reserve in a second
line of defence higher up in Kansu province. Chang argued that
the Kuomintang were too strong, and he would not risk his
troops. He does not explain how he proposed to cross, unless
battle was given.
Heading the right column then were Mao, Chou En-lai, and
most of the Politburo. Hsu Hsiang-chien, the commander of that
portion of the Fourth Front Army (the bulk of it) with Chang
Kuo-tao, commanded the Chang troops which were also in
Mao’s column. In the west column Chang Kuo-tao led, and
Chu Teh and Liu Po-cheng were with him, in charge of the
First Front Army elements that were included.
According to some reports, this division was planned by Chu
Teh. According to others, it was Yeh Chicn-ying who kept an
eye on the developments, and who later was to inform Mao of
Chang’s plan to make a surprise attack if possible.
The Mao-led right column was to cross the Sungpan region,
which Chang Kuo-tao had deemed so dangerous. In spite of the
month of rest, the men were still very weak. And now they had
to battle their way through. They had been quartered in an area
inhabited by Tibetans; the latter had fled because of Kuomintang
threats that they would be all put to death if they helped the Red
Army. Mao Tsetung forbade the troops to take anything from the
empty houses; and some were shot for infringing discipline. The
soldiers had found fields of barley, harvested the barley for the
absent villagers, piled it for them, and left money for the portions
they took. ‘But we did not get any rice, nor meat, nor salt. Lack
THE LONG MARCH
339
of salt tormented them, and they had great trouble digesting
barley. A young soldier proceeded to boil some fresh pigskins he
found in a house: a soup ‘with a wonderful smell*. Bristles and all,
Mao partook of this ‘banquet and said it was delicious ... he had
not had anything decent to eat for months*. This taught the
soldiers ‘how to boil and eat leather’ when they crossed the
Great Marshes.
The two columns set off; Mao aiming towards Sungpan, and
reaching the Great Marshes a few days later. Chang Kuo-tao*s
column started west of Mao’s, from the Apa region. The marshes
were an enormous extent of submerged steppe, with treacherous
bogs which sucked in those who stepped in them. This crossing
was to be one of the most terrible experiences of the Long March.
There is great confusion about what really happened, a con-
fusion which even the recent questioning of sixteen Long Marchers
does not dispel.*
Chang Kuo-tao’s version is that Mao was ahead and to the right
of him and succeeded in crossing a river (the Ke Ho, a part of the
Yellow river). Chang however found the river flooded, though
he was in its upper reaches. At the same time Chang was being
attacked by a big Kuomintang force. Chang declared the river
could not be crossed, then ordered his column back south, to
Apa. But this version does not explain why he also ordered the
portion of his armies which were in Mao’s column to turn back.
Without waiting for him, writes Chang Kuo-tao, Mao, in his
typical ‘savage* way, left by night, ‘sudden as the whirlwind’.
Chang’s troops in the right column were ‘abandoned’. There
was nothing for them to do but to turn back, or be massacred by
the Kuomintang. Mao Tsetung, as usual, said not a word, pre-
ferring the judgment of ‘the practice of revolution’, which is
Chou En-lai told Edgar Snow that there was indeed a Kuomin-
tang attack. This is correct, since Mao did score a victory over the
Kuomintang troops at the edge of the Great Marshes at Sungpan.
Otherwise, Chou En-lai proved as reticent as Mao. Chu Teh’s
* The author interviewed sixteen Long Marchers from various participating
armies.
340
THE MORNING DELUGE
wife, who was with Chu Tch in Chang Kuo-tao’s column,
mentions the flood which separated the columns and ‘forced us
to spend the winter in Tibet eating horse, yak. mutton’. Partici-
pants’ reports shed some light. ‘We were in Mao Tsetung’s
column. Suddenly we received an order to go south again, back
to Szechuan. Some of us were happy. “We’ll go back and eat
good rice.” We heard that in the north there was nothing to eat.
We were told that going back, wc would make all Szechuan
Red. So we turned back and left the column. We went back
through the marshes.’ This is from a soldier of the Fourth Front
Army who was in Mao’s column. By that time, they had already
crossed the Great Marshes.
Another testimony from a man of the First Front Army in
Chang Kuo-tao’s column: ‘There was no flooded river; and any-
way, we had forded so many rivers we were not afraid. Yes, there
were attacks, but no more than we were accustomed to. But
Chang Kuo-tao would not fight. His soldiers, who were with us
in the same column for over a year after we were made to tuni
back with them, told us: “We have such a big army, but we never
fight; even at Oyuwan we abandoned the base without any real
fighting.” ’The soldiers did not like this kind of ‘walking without
aim all over the earth’ without a battle.
Another, from a political instructor of the Fourth Front Army
w^ho elected to stay with Mao in the right column: ‘Wc were
told: We go back to establish a big base in Szechuan ... I was
in the Fourth Front Army, but in Chairman Mao’s column.
When the order came, many went back but I followed Mao
Tsetung.’
The left column, and the larger part of the right column, all
returned through the marshes to Szechuan. These who returned
thus crossed the terrible marshes three times, for they would
make the same journey a year later.
But another story must be mentioned. This concerns Yeh
Chien-ying, then chief of staff, who was with Mao. Yeh got
wind of a Chang Kuo-tao plan to get rid of Mao, not only by
allowing him to fight against the massed Kuomintang forces,
which were waiting for them on the other side of the marshes,
THE LONG MARCH
34T
but also by attacking him from behind. Whether this plan could
have been carried out or not we do not know. But this might
explain why Mao, ‘sudden as the whirlwind’, decided to push
forward, preferring battle with the Kuomintang to internecine
war. It would also explain why Mao told Edgar Snow later that
this had been one of the ‘darkest’ passages in his life. Chang,
knowing his plans discovered, then gave the orders to his soldiers
to return. But he would have gone back anyway; he had no
intention of fighting the Japanese or of going north. He did what
he had intended to do all along — turn back.
When Chang Kuo-tao turned back, he took Chu Teh, the
commander-in-chief, and Liu Po-cheng with him. Another
problem, much publicized during the Great Proletarian Cultural
Revolution, when these historical questions were debated by
young Red Guards (sometimes with non-historical exaggerations),
is the following: What really was Chu Teh’s attitude at tliis
critical juncture? Did he go with Chang Kuo-tao of his own free
■will, as Chang asserts; or was he forced to go ‘at gun point’, as
he himself told Agnes Smedley ; or was he just unable to make up
his mind?
Chang asserts that Chu Teh was ‘indignant at Mao’s flight’.
Chu Teh’s situation may perhaps be explained by the fact that he
was not at all sure what he wanted to do. On the one hand, he
might have been much tempted to remain in Szechuan, his own
province. He would be sure to organize a successful base there,
knowing the people. He may also genuinely have thought that
the northward advance was an error. On the other hand, he was
not the willing tool of Chang Kuo-tao, but he did not wish to
see a battle between two Red armies. Chu Teh’s life shows that
he was brave and unafraid, but not always capable of cool,
measured judgment. He had launched himself on military ad-
ventures before; at Chingkang, and in the Juichin base; he had
not always seen eye to eye with. Mao Tsetung. But it is certain
that the man was in a great dilemma, and thought it best to avoid
a bloody conflict. He was not happy during the whole year that
he was with Chang Kuo-tao, and never denounced Mao Tsetung
as Chang asked him to do.
342
THE MORNING DELUGE
The net outcome was that Mao was left with less than 8,000
men; 22,000 or more of the original column turned back. Liu
Po-cheng and the Fifth and Eighth Army Corps also went with
Chu Teh. *At Pahsi, where the marshes ended and we entered the
steppes, higher ground with long grass, we saw our comrades
from the Fourth Front Army retracing their steps, dragging
themselves in long files back through the marshes. We were
quite amazed. We asked Chairman Mao: “Why are they going
back?” They were shouting: “We go back to establish a Red
base in Szechuan.” But some said: “We go back to eat good
rice-
‘Here where we were it was desolate; sightless the sky hit the
long grass. There were stables with cows; the walls were of cow
dung and clay. Of course Chairman Mao did not allow us to
touch the cows; the people had fled, we could not take their
possessions. We looked at Chairman Mao’s face; we could see he
was very upset as he watched our comrades filing back, weary,
going back through the marshes. It seemed endless, their going
away. Of course we were tempted; for in front of us were many
mountains, and a big battle; and now we all knew there would
be no rice to eat in the North; they just did not grow rice there,
and we were Southerners, we all had dysentery; many of our
comrades died of it.
‘Chairman Mao said: “Let them go.” He even told the com-
rades who left him to look after themselves. At Pahsi we held a
big meeting and Chairman Mao asked us: “Do you want to go
back?” We looked at him; he had been with us all the time, and
he had walked with us. He never used the stretcher we had pre-
pared for him; he gave it to the wounded. We shouted: We
never go back! We go forward with you!” So Chairman Mao
said: “The others will return. They will return to us, and
clear the way for them, we’ll prepare the road for their return.
So we prepared for battle, and we fought very well.
This was the battle of Latzekou, the Waxy Mouth pass, a
mountain pass held by 40,000 troops of Hu Tsung-nan, Chiang
Kai-shek’s best commander. The Red Army fought with knives
and cutlasses, they hurled themselves at the cavalry, the Kansu
THE LONG MARCH
343
horsemen Hu Tsung-nan used to trample them down. ‘We cut
them to pieces. Nothing could stop us any more. Wc fought all
night and at dawn we took the pass.’
The memory of the terrible marshes is gashed in the minds of
thousands of Long Marchers (over 3,000 arc still alive today).*
‘They spread, an immense sombre shoreless ocean of mud, a
desert of water; swamps which sucked us down; with clumps of
bushy grass here and there, and little bits of firm land; there was
only one trail. Those that went forward marked it by a wlii tc
rope of goat’s hair. And then one day it snowed, wc could not
find the rope again. We moved snow with our bare hands for
hours. The rope was our lifeline.’
They attempted to get guides. ‘The local inhabitants shot at us
whenever they could. But we managed to get some guides. They
alone knew the way across the marshes. But they wanted meat to
eat, and money. They insisted on a very high price. And they
would not walk. We had to carry them in palanquins. Six men
carried them; and sometimes the men stumbled. The guides
knew they could ask for anything.’
There was no food. Three times a day the weather changed;
from pale bleak sun ‘like a moon’ to rain to hail to snow and
back again to wind; the mud froze on the men; they could not
sleep; they sat back to back, in mushroom clumps, and dozed at
night. They ate wild grass, weeds; discovered a small bush with
some cherry-like fruit; a sweet turnip which poisoned them.
They were stricken with terrible dysentery. ‘We ate the barley
we had taken with us; it was raw, we could not digest it; it went
through us and came out the same.’ The ‘little ones’, the children
of twelve to fifteen who went on the Long March, were wonder-
ful. ‘They joined the instructors; they were always in front. They
washed the sores of the men, woke at night to count the soldiers ;
hunted for berries, went ahead with the cadres, and stood with
them singing by the path and marking the time with wood
clappers. We sang? Of course we did. We sang: “Oh leather is
* Including members of Chang Kuo-tao*s Fourth Front Army interviewed by
the author.
344
THE MORNING DELUGE
delicious to eat.” We boiled leather belts, sliced the leather up
and chewed it. The water stank.’
They were also shot at and ambushed, repeatedly, by Tibetans
and the Kansu Hui cavalrymen who attacked them. ‘They came
from the rear and many comrades died. We could not see the
horsemen in time, especially when we reached the tall grass of the
steppes. We fought, and we even captured some horses.
‘Sometimes we vacillated in our minds: which death was
better, poisoning, sucked in the mud, or to be shot at? We must
have eaten every kind of weed or grass or root in the marshes.’
Their legs were covered with big gnawing ulcers. They stepped
on the corpses of those who died before them. A woman who
crossed the marshes three times told me: ‘I walked and some-
thing squeaked under my foot. I parted the dense weeds and my
foot was in a dead man’s face. I still dream of it.’
We do not know how many died in the Great Marshes, nor how
many died fighting their way out of them. ‘It was all one great
battle, one ceaseless struggle.’ But there was, after Waxy Mouth
pass and its battle, another mountain range, the Liupan, which
Mao crossed. On the crest they found a stone inscription ‘Dividing
the water’s crest’. Here was the border between Kansu province,
where they had battled the Hui horsemen, and Shensi province,
their destination. On the slopes they rested a short while; it was
October, very bleak and cold ; around them were bare mountains
and chasms. This was the loess land, the thick yellow earth
brought down by the Yellow river, folded and wrinkled, an
enormous grand canyon spreading hundreds of thousands of
square miles. People lived in caves scooped in the loess cliffs,
‘We’ve crossed ten provinces and we’re entering the eleventh,
said Mao, all smiles.
The summit passes of the Liupan are reached after six twists, by
narrow paths, rock-strewn. Hence its name of Liupan — six
twists. It was the 7th of October. Far out could be guessed the
Great Wall, which straddled the mountains on its gigantic
march to the deserts of Central Asia. Mao s happiness expressed
itself in verse:
THE LONG MARCH
345
High is the sky and clear the clouds.
The eye follows the wild goose winging southward.
If we do not reach the Great Wall, we are not men.
Already we count on our fingers a march of 20,000 Us.
On the crest of Liupan our banners waft in the west wind.
Today we hold in our hands the long rope to bind the dragon.
When shall we bind fast the grey dragon?
The grey dragon was a constellation of seven stars, representing
Japan. Mao, contemplating the great stretch of North China
before him, saw it already in terms of the battles to come, not as a
period of rest, a haven of refuge. It was this extraordinary
prescience which seemed so exaggerated to ‘reasonable’ men;
and who could have guessed that the 7,000 with him, a nothing-
ness in the vast ocean of China, contemplating the denuded,
desolate winter canyons in front of them, would indeed take on
the great military power of Japan, after the murderous year they
had endured? It looked like sheer rodomontade. It was history
in the making.
‘But we had more battles before us. For below the Liupan pass,
once again, the plain was grey and brown with the cavalry of the
warlord Ma Hung-kwei. We fought. Of course we won. The
horses and the men screamed as we charged.’
On October 20 they reached Wuchichen, a small county in
North Shensi. ‘We arrived in the twilight. Suddenly there was
the sound of gongs and drums and timbrels ... a crowd to wel-
come us, to welcome Chairman Mao. Like a small sea they came
up in the darkness, crying: “Welcome, welcome, long live
Chairman Mao. Long live the Chinese Communist Party.” We
wept.’
The Long March was ended for the 7,000 with Mao Tsetung.
In the same uniform with which he had started, tattered and thick
with dirt, Mao stood, coatless. Then up came Hsu Hai-tung,
commander of the Fifteenth Red Army Corps, who had been
delegated to meet the Long Marchers. ‘Thank you for taking so
much trouble to come and meet us,’ said Mao Tsetung. Then
they were both silent, because there was too much to say.
346
THE MORNING DELUGE
After its arrival in W^uchichen in North Shensi, the Army took
stock of its achievements. It had trudged 7,500 miles. It had
crossed eighteen mountain ranges and twenty-four rivers; walked
through eleven provinces; sixty-two cities and towns had been
taken by assault and occupied. It had broken through ten pro-
vincial warlord armies, and fought, outmanoeuvred, and beaten
one million men of the Kuomintang armies of Chiang Kai-shek.
It had also crossed six national minorities areas.
Speaking of the Long March, what is its significance? We
answer that the Long March is the first of its kind in the annals of
history, that it is a manifesto, a propaganda force, a seeding
machine ... It has proclaimed to the world that the Red Army is
an army of heroes. It has announced to some 200 million people
in eleven provinces that the road of the Red Army is their only
road to liberation ... The Long March ... has sown many seeds
which will sprout, leaf, blossom and bear fruit, and will yield a
harvest in the future.’* /
Mao Tsetung’s poem on the Long March, given to Edgar
Snow in 1936, is worth quoting:
The Red Army fears not these prodigious distant campaigns;
A thousand mountains^ ten thousand rivers^ they look upon as pleasantly
usual
The tortuous Five ranges are but ripples they leap;
The dread crests of Wumeng, mud dumps under their heels.
Warm are the fog-wrapped cliffs lapped by the Golden Sands river;
Cold were the iron chains spanning the Tatu stream.
How much laughter amid the unending snows of Minshan;
And when the Three Armies had crossed, smiles were on all their faces.'f
From Apa, when the columns came back, Chang Kuo-tao rode
southward to Cho Ke-chi, a town with many Tibetan lama
* On Tactics Against Japanese Imperialism (December 27, 193 5 )» Selected Works^
vol. I.
f The ‘Three Armies* are the First, Second and Fourth Front armies. Mao
included in his poem the two Front armies which would reach Shensi and
reunite the forces in 1936.
THE LONG MARCH
347
temples and great landlords, and there called a meeting. At the
meeting, packed with his adherents, he condemned Mao's
‘sudden departure* which had ‘broken the unity of action’ of the
Red Army and the Party. He says that the meeting accused Mao of
‘defeatism and guerillaism’ [sic]. Chang Kuo-tao got a subaltern
to denounce the ‘bogus Central Committee and Politburo ,
product of the enlarged Tsunyi conference. He called for a
plenum of all Party representatives in the whole of China to
select a new Central Committee. Until the plenum was held, no
orders from the ‘so-called Central Committee’ should be obeyed.
Meanwhile, a ‘temporary Central Committee* of which he
became (reluctantly, according to his memoirs) secretary-
general, was organized at Cho Ke-chi. A cable was sent to the
North Shensi base, saying that although it was decided no longer
to recognize the Central Committee with Mao, ‘yet military
action could still be taken in concert to preserve unity’. A
military council, with Chu Teh as commander-in-chief and
Chang Kuo-tao as chairman became the ‘supreme authority
over all the armies’. A new soviet base (called the Szechuan-
Sikang base) would now be established. A Confederacy of
the National Minorities government was proclaimed as a
soviet republic. Reports of these proceedings were sent to
Moscow.
Thus Chang Kuo-tao tried to establish his claim to head the
Chinese Communist Party. A ‘special independent government of
the minorities’ was then estabhshed by him in Kangting, capital of
Sikang province, nearest to Tibet, where he now directed himself
and his troops for the winter. It was an area sparsely inhabited by
Tibetans and Han people, and famous only for its production of
opium. The armies were an enormous burden on the population.
Chang Kuo-tao was unable to turn his men into a production
force. Mao Tsetung had warned him that the establishment of
bases in the national minorities area was hopeless, and actually an
exploiting, warlord device. The people were too few; the cultiva-
tion of land difficult, the soldiers could not communicate, did not
speak the same language. A long history of oppression by the
Han emperors, and by the Kuomintang, made the national
THE MORNING DELUGE
348
minorities hostile. Chang Kuo-tao’s armies survived on the sale of
opium. The armies turned into a warlord army. Desertions and
disease dwindled their numbers.
Mao Tsetung and the Central Committee sent telegrams
exhorting Chang Kuo-tao to come to North Shensi and to join
them. Then in June 1936, the Second Front Army of Ho Lung
arrived in Sikang. This Second Front Army was the one which
Li Teh had tried so hard to reach and merge with. It had had its
own checkered career.
Ho Lung, an erstwhile Kuomintang militarist, like Peng Teh-
huai, had joined the Communists and participated in the seizure
of Nanchang on August i, 1927.* He had then established a base
in northwest Hunan, his native province, later combined with
another one to form the West Hunan-Hupei Border Area. Chiang
Kai-shek had overrun it in the summer of 1934. Ho Lung with-
drew to Northeast Kweichow, where he controlled about four
counties, and was joined on the way by some of the guerilla troops
under Hsiao Ke, Wang Chen, and Jen Pi-shih, who had broken
out of the Central Base in the summer of 1934. Jen Pi-shih, who
continued to be in contact with Mao, had become the political
commissar of Ho Lung’s Second Front Army. In the spring of
1935 the Second Front Army was driven out of its Kweichow
counties and went back to Hunan; was pushed out of Hunan and,
doubling back on its tracks, using much the same route as Mao
Tsetung had done, went through Kweichow into Sikang,
arriving at Chang Kuo-tao’s base in June 1936- 1 ^ poor
shape when it arrived. ‘We had to give them food, clothes,
everything,’ The scarcity felt in the base was now greatly in-
creased by the additional burden of 20,000 Second Front Army
men. Disputes arose. Jen Pi-shih then came forward with the
suggestion that the armies join Mao’s base in Northwest Shensi
province. Chu Teh heartily concurred.
It is said also that Lin Yu-ying, Lin Piao’s uncle, had been sent
by Mao to Jen Pi-shih, to convey this delicate and important task
of persuasion. Jen Pi-shih persuaded Ho Lung, and Chu Teh and
Liu Po-cheng backed Jen Pi-shih. In July 1936 the Fourth and
* See chapter 9.
THE LONG MARCH
349
Second Front armies left Sikang, to walk north on their own Long
March.
Nieh Jung-chen was sent by a happy Mao and Chou, with half
the battle force then existing in North Shensi, to clear a way
through enemy forces for the advancing armies. In October 1936,
exactly a year after Mao’s arrival, the reunion took place at Hui
Ning, not far from Lanchow, capital city of Kansu province. The
soldiers threw their arms round each other, laughing and weeping
at once. ‘Chu Teh was thin as a ghost, but Chang Kuo-tao was fat
and smooth ... I wonder how he kept so fat.’*
Chang Kuo-tao had not given in happily. On the way, he
thought up another scheme. Another wrangle took place with
Chu Teh, Ho Lung, and Jen Pi-shih; Chang decided to go off to
Sinkiang and establish a base there, in close proximity to the
USSR. This absurdity proved him impervious to geography,
logistics, or common sense. Sinkiang was a great desert area,
with less than five inhabitants per square mile, strung in chains of
oases. The area was quite unsuited for a base. Chang went off,
crossed the Yellow river, and followed the Kansu corridor
westward to Sinkiang. The troops with him were cut to pieces,
the worst battle occurring at the foot of the Great Wall. Only
about 2,000 survived ... to be picked up in May 1937 by Mao’s
rescue squads and taken back to Shensi. Chang himself once more
escaped, to return to Lanchow in time to rejoin the Second Front
Army trekking towards Shensi, and arrive with them at Hui
Ning.
Chang Kuo-tao had destroyed his own army, and would now
proceed to destroy himself pohtically. Like many of Mao’s
enemies, he worked at his own downfall by his own means. None
of the commanders or units which had turned back with him
were castigated; some hold very high positions today.*}* Mao
Tsetung did not raise a finger against Chang Kuo-tao, but it is
impossible for those who have failed through their own faults
* Dr Ma Haiteh, also known as George Hatem, an American doctor who joined
the Red Army in 1936, when he was in China, a well-kept secret only lately
revealed. Dr Ma reached the North Shensi base early in 1936.
t For example, Li Hsicn-nien, vice-premier, and Chen Chih-fang, who is
ambassador to Switzerland.
350
THE MORNING DELUGE
to forgive. In the long, protracted, blood-filled history of the
Chinese Revolution, Chang Kuo-tao’s place is not with those
who died to serve their people, but with those who lived to
betray themselves.
Part II
The Yenan Period: The Second United Front
On the Long March, Mao endured both physical hardship and
mental strain. Daily staff and military conferences, marching
plans for so many thousands; documents to read and decide upon,
couriers galloping or running to him every hour of the day or
night, urgent decisions, sudden attacks, the care of the immense
cohort moving shaggily yet swiftly, enemy-surrounded, meant
very little sleep, constant alertness, lucid decisions, and a mastery
of the situation which no mere theory could encompass. Mao
worked anywhere— on bare rock, with a wooden plank for a
table; a small kerosene lamp or a candle lighted him as he pored
over papers. Above him an oilcloth stretched to shield his work
from the rain. He moved up and down the lines of singing men,
among the disarray of sleeping soldiers lying tentless on the
ground. He watched the troops wind across the mountain slopes,
a giant snake procession, for fifty miles. Concerned with the
nimierous woimded, he would send scouts to look for native
medicinal herbs. He questioned the political instructors, whom he
called in conference, on the problems of each unit, rallying the
weary, sending doctors, nurses, stretcher-bearers where needed.
And he also delegated authority and responsibility, inciting others
to initiative and selflessness, so that as the march went on, he
trained and inspired scores of young men throughout the Army
who would become a generation of potential leaders.*
And all this time, like the other many thousands, his body
crawled with lice and other parasites; both he and Chou En-lai
stuffed old newspapers (when they got any) around their feet.
Physically, it was a constant misery to the almost hyper-clean
Mao.
* Interviews with sixteen Long Marchers. 1970-1971. and personal documents
in author’s files.
354
THE MORNING DELUGE
Several hundred boy ‘soldiers’ in their early teens who made the
Long March are today grown men. They remember Mao’s
jokes, his good humour, and the songs they sang. As the Hakkas
of Chingkangshan had been for Mao a discovery, so were the
national minorities, through the vast regions of West China they
now crossed. He studied their manners and customs, instructed
the Red Army soldiers never to retaliate, even if they were
attacked by these despoiled and suspicious people. Struck by their
general morbidity, one of his first decisions after the triumph of
1949 was to send the American doctor Ma Haiteh (George
Hatem) to establish health programmes for the national minorities.
The Long March was, for Mao Tsetung, not only a campaign
but also an affirmation of his integration with the Chinese people.
His grasp of the essential, his ‘singularly un-Napoleonic disregard
for details’,* kept him unclogged in mind, able to diifuse his gift
of inspiring others with an almost superhuman optimism. On
the march, walking with the others, he would discuss with the
doctors*}- the impact of psychosomatic disease upon the body, how
it is hope and strong motivation which make men live. For there
comes a time when physical strength is not enough to sustain
long and continuous effort, only spiritual exaltation can continue
to make the body endure suffering and hardship. That ‘spirit
becomes a material force’ Mao was to affirm, for he himself was
buoyed by unfaltering belief in the rightness of his cause. ‘It is
possible to live on nothing but a furious hope,’ Robert PayneJ
reports his saying. The poems he wrote during the Long March
are among his more splendid and joyous ones; however busy and
tired he was, his poet’s eye raked the land, the sky; his poets
mind was stirred by beauty. He was with nature at her most
elemental, loving yet fighting her; and on his shoulders, as on
those of the toiler-soldiers with him, rested the destiny of China.
Of this he was aware at every moment of the Long March.
* A phrase of George Paloczi-Horvath, otherwise no lover of Mao Tsetung.
See his Mao Tse-tung, Emperor of the Blue Ants (Seeker & Warburg, London, 1962).
t Ki Peng-fei, now acting Minister for Foreign Affairs, and Dr Nelson Fu,
already referred to.
X Robert Payne, Portrait of a Revolutionary: Mao Tse-tung (new and revised
edition, Abelard-Schuman, London and New York, 1962).
THE YENAN PERIOD
355
Even Mao’s enemies do not begrudge him admiration for his
leadership during the Long March. Yet he would look upon it
not as his own achievement, but a manifestation of the greatness
and genius of his people. The man who counted was the poor
peasant, bent over the earth he worked; the boy soldier carrying
a rifle too big for him, slogging uncomplainingly on frozen feet;
the mine workers become soldiers, singing while they chewed
the boiled leather of harness thongs; the political instructor who
pushed himself to the top of mountain passes, there to sing and
call upon the wearied soldiers to walk up, for the next horizon
was marvellous; the people of China, workers and poor peasants,
who had followed him all the way, through Chingkangshan,
through Juichin, through the Long March ... the rank and file
of the Red Army, who knew Mao Tsetung and for whom
there was no other leader, who fought like heroes, and died
without complaint, an army of saints destined to create a new
world.
North Shensi is a desolate barrenness of windswept loess cliffs
more than three thousand feet high, a fawn and grey unkemptness
comparable to the Grand Canyon for grandeur, a beginning desert
with scanty rain, centuries-old deforestation, tremendous dust
storms whirling to veil the sun, the thick alluvial soil of the
Yellow river, which meanders its sand banks for 750 miles across
it. Its two miUion people were poor, dirty and ignorant, riddled
with hunger and disease, troglodytes living in caves scooped in
the loess cliffs. The ravages of invasions in centuries past had
ruined the land; great peasant uprisings dating back to the Ming
dynasty had been put down with ferocity, and hundreds of
famines* had unpeopled it.
In 1926-1927 a small Communist nucleus had established itself
in the area, with Shensi students trained in Mao Tsetung’s Peasant
Institute at Kuangchow. They led an insurrection, but in 1927
Chiang Kai-shek’s counter-revolution had exterminated thou-
sands of peasants and students. Within the next two years a severe
* It is estimated that from the seventeenth century on there were at least three
famines, big and small, every decade.
THE MORNING DELUGE
356
famine and warlord wars brought on a general rural crisis, and the
peasants rebelled again. Liu Chih-tan, one of the wLngpoo
Communist cadets who survived the 1927 massacres, returned to
Shensi, his native place, and organized the peasantry into guerilla
bands. In 1929-1930 Liu promoted land reform, based on
redistribution of big landlords’ surplus lands and animals; he did
not apply the ultra-left line followed in the Juichin base. In
February 1934 *^be Shensi-Kansu Independent Border Region was
proclaimed by Liu Chih-tan, with its capital at Pao An. Liu
expanded the base and remained in control till mid-1935, despite
attacks by Chiang Kai-shek’s armies. He had about 5,000 men,
grandly dubbed the Twenty-sixth and Twenty-seventh Red
Armies, and controlled about ten counties -but in the ‘fluctuant’
manner already described.
In July 1935 another Red Army group, the Twenty-fifth
Army, of about 3,000 men under Hsu Hai-tung, erstwhile
commander in the Oyuwan base under Chang Kuo-tao as political
commissar, arrived in the North Shensi base. Hsu had remained
behind when Chang Kuo-tao left, and when Oyuwan was
overrun he marched to North Shensi. Many other such groups,
from small bases captured by the KMT, were doing their own
marches, breaking through Kuomintang cordons, marching
westward and northward to reach the Shensi-Kansu (or North
Shensi) base, the only one left by that autumn of 1935 — unless
we count Chang Kuo-tao’s ‘safe’ base in West Szechuan.
Hsu’s Twenty-fifth Army joined the Twenty-sixth and
Twenty-seventh, to form a Fifteenth Red Army Corps. Hsu and
Liu then had some heated disagreement on policies although it is
now difficult to find out precisely what it was about. A ‘cadre
arrived from the (by no means extinct) ‘left’ wing in the Central
Committee. This cadre, Chang Ching-fu, nicknamed Chang the
Corpulent,* cashiered Liu Chih-tan as a ‘right deviationist
(which meant a Mao follower in the jargon of the ‘left’ Bol-
sheviks) who had not obeyed the (Wang Ming) Party line. Hsu
Hai-tung sided with Fat Chang, and Liu Chih-tan was to be
arrested and tried, when Mao’s arrival in October restored
* Edgar Snow, Red Star Ouer China, op. cit.
THE YENAN PERIOD
357
unity. Hsu was then apprised of the Tsunyi resolutions and of his
error. Mao called for a reassessment conference; the Politburo
found most of the accusations against Liu Chih-tan baseless. And
just in time. For the base was attacked in November by enemy
forces, about 60,000 strong. The attack was repelled, and by
December there was to be a lull of about four months before the
next bout of fighting in the spring of 1936.
Within the next two years, 1936 and 1937, the situation would
change radically. In December 1935 Mao’s policy was still
threatened, the most immediate danger being the internal
struggle with Chang Kuo-tao. But Chang Kuo-tao’s self-
determined end was to come, and swiftly. He arrived at the
North Shensi base in November or December 1936, over a year
after Mao. His defection to Chiang Kai-shek took place in the
summer of 1938. During those thirteen months he was subjected
to criticism, chiefly by Chang Wen-tien, secretary-general of the
CCP; but otherwise unhindered, even being made vice-chairman
and then chairman of the local government of the base, renamed
the Shensi-Kansu-Ninghsia Border Region in 1936. But his
opposition to Mao on the matter of a united front to fight Japan
continued unabated. He built himself a secluded and pleasant
pavilion on the outskirts of the city ofYenan, lectured in political
science at the Resist Japan University (Kangta)* founded by Mao
in 1936, and nursed his grudges till he went over to Chiang
Kai-shek.
In the summer of 1938, in that compulsion to escape which
seems to have been the mainspring of his actions, he fled to the
arms of Chiang’s secret police, was greeted with honour by Tai Li,
the number one hatchet man of Chiang Kai-shek, and began
working as an informer against the Communist Party.
Chang Kuo-tao’s life is a curious and instructive study of an
‘ultra-leftist’ becoming an ‘ultra-right-winger’; Chinese Com-
munist publications ^during the Great Proletarian Cultural
Revolution were to assert that this is a common phenomenon —
‘in appearance left, in substance right’. Mao Tsetung seems to
* Abbreviation for Kang Jih Ta Hsueh (Resist Japan University).
36 o
THE MORNING DELUGE
aieas, how many represented the Long Marchers from various
bases? The Party membership was back to what it had been in
1928, whereas in 1934 it had counted 300,000 members.
Mao Tsetung had reached his full maturity of thought; he now
had ideological authority, he was affluent with experience, he also
had some power. But the Wang Ming faction in the Party was
still very strong, biding its time. Mao set to forging a whole
new Party and Army for a new stage of development of the
Revolution, a stage in which the aim of the CCP was not only
winning a war of liberation against Japan, but through this war
to promote social and political revolution on a country-wide
scale, and to take power.
To the preparation of this future Mao set himself, head among
the stars, feet solidly planted in the Chinese earth. All those who
saw him during those years in Yenan realized that he thought
already in all-China terms, of nothing less than total triumph for
the Chinese Revolution. And his first problem to solve, in
conjunction with this total programme, was the ‘contradiction’
with Chiang Kai-shek. How would Chiang be brought to fight
Japan, to accept another luiited front with the Communists in
the name of national salvation?
The attack of October-November 1935 had been ordered by
Chiang Kai-shek, well aware that Mao had escaped him, now
planning yet another annihilation campaign, and jailing and even
murdering anyone determined to fight Japan. But Chiang’s fatal
flaw was his ultimate reliance on disparate troops and individuals.
The attackers of the Red base were mixed troops of the Shansi
warlord Yen Hsi-shan, of the Manchurian ‘Young Marshal
Chang Hsueh-liang, and of the pacification cormnissioner in
charge of Shensi province, Yang Hu-cheng. Three divisions of the
Manchurian troops of Chang Hsueh-liang were put out of com-
mission, and numbers of Manchurian soldiers and officers cap-
tured by the Reds, in the November attack. In February 193 * 5 ,
Liu Chih-taii was to follow up this victory by an offensive across
the Yellow river into Shansi province.* Shansi had coal and iron,
* Shansi province is next to Shensi province and not to be confused with it (see
map, page 312).
THE YENAN PERIOD
361
and it was Liu Chih-tan’s purpose to consolidate the base area
and to expand it, and also to establish a strategic forward region
to meet the Japanese onslaught which was sure to develop in
North China. But he was killed in battle in March 1936. By all
accounts a courageous and dedicated man, he was greatly
mourned by the peasants of the region, and his memory is still
honoured in his native province.*
Once again history moved in mysterious ways, lavish in
providing Mao with opportunities — or was it simply that he saw a
saving grace where no one else did? The participation of the
Manchurian troops of Chang Hsueh-liang in the anti-Communist
assault was such an occasion. Their presence in Shensi, far from
their original home, was due to the seizure of Manchuria by the
Japanese in September 1931 and the conversion of the three
eastern provinces, as Manchuria was known, into Manchukuo, a
puppet protectorate of Japan under the ex-Manchu emperor
Puyi.f
Chang Hsuch-liang’s father, the warlord Chang Tso-lin, ruler
of Manchuria, had been killed by a bomb placed in his train by
the Japanese in 1928. His son, known as the Young Marshal, did
not resist the Japanese invasion of 1931; he left on Chiang Kai-
shek’s advice, and he and his armies had been quartered in the
northwest, to ‘fight the Reds’, since 1932. This was not at all to
Chang Hsueh-liang’s liking. His army longed to fight the
Japanese, he longed to return home. The Manchurian officers
and soldiers captured by the Red Army quickly made friends
with their captors; Mao Tsetung’s policy of the united front
against Japanese aggression was explained to them, and aroused
their enthusiasm. They were well looked after, and released with
gifts within weeks. By then the last thing they wanted was to
fight the Red Army. Three thousand Manchurian soldiers of
Chang Hsueh-liang’s armies defected to the Red Army in the
spring of 1936.
* Jan Myrdal, Report from a Chinese Village, trs. M. Michael (Heinemann, 1965),
PP. 55-57.
t Interview with ex-emperor Puyi, i960. See also Autobiography of Aisin Gioro
Puyi, English edition (Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1965).
12 ^
362
THE MORNING DELUGE
Through his officers, Chang Hsueh-liang heard of the Red base,
was told of the honesty, the dedication, the determination to form
a democratic government ‘with all those ready to fight Japan*.
This stirred his patriotism, subdued his fear of Communism. He
talked to Yang Hu-cheng, the pacification commissioner, whose
second wife was a left-inclined student— some even say she was a
Communist And wonder of wonders, his secretary, Wang
Ping-nan, whose wife was German, was also a Communist.^
The pacification commissioner, ordered to smash the Reds, was
reluctant to smash himself in the process. While spouting promises
to Chiang Kai-shek, Chang Hsueh-liang and Yang Hu-cheng
began delicate manoeuvres to negotiate with the Communists.
In early 1936 talks began between the Communists and Chang
Hsueh-liang in Sian. Chou En-lai was placed by Mao in charge
of these negotiations. Soon Communist cadres in Manchurian
army uniform were going into Sian to have talks with officers
of the Manchurian army and officials of the provincial govern-
ment.
From Tsunyi onward, and until today, it is Chou En-lai who
has been the most able executor of Mao*s blueprints in internal
and external policies. Today Chou enjoys immense popularity,
second only to Mao, in China. He is called ‘the housekeeper*, the
one who carries out the policies.
In a speech at Wayaopao in December 1935,+ at the end of two
weeks of intense discussion in the Politburo, Mao laid down the
fundamental policies of the Party for the building of a united
front. Opinions on the united front were still very divided. A
faction in the CCP still did not want to have anything to do with
Chiang Kai-shek. They held that there could be no alliance of
any kind with ‘the bourgeoisie*. But Mao was also opposed by a
numerous and growing clique who wanted to hand over the
leadership (and that meant the Red Army, mainstay of revolution-
* Met by the author in 1938, in Brussels.
f Wang Ping-nan, later ambassador to Poland, was for a time in charge of
talks at ambassadorial level between the People’s Republic of China and the
United States (1956-1966).
I On Tactics Against Japanese Imperialism (December 27, I935)» Selected Works,
vol. I.
THE YENAN PERIOD
363
ary power) to Chiang Kai-shek. In this group were Chang Kuo-
tao, and, surprisingly, later would be Wang Ming himself, in one
of those dismaying turnabouts which discourage logic, but which
happen.
‘What is the basic tactical task of the Party? It is none other
than to form a broad national revolutionary united front ... The
Communist Party and the Red Army are not only acting at
present as the initiators of the anti-Japanese national united front,
but will inevitably become the powerful mainstay of the anti-
Japanese government and anti-Japanese army, preventing the
Japanese imperialists and Chiang Kai-shek from attaining their
ultimate end, in their policy of disrupting the national united
front.’ The people demanded resistance to Japan — the workers,
the peasants, the petty bourgeoisie. As for the national bour-
geoisie, it remained vacillating. ‘On the one hand they dislike
imperialism and on the other they fear thorough revolution.’
Hence it needed leadership. Only the CCP could provide it,
through the tactics of the united front.
At the meeting Mao reviewed the Tsai Ting-kai fiasco of
December 1933.^ It had shown that the Japanese invasion was
causing splits within the KMT, and now there were more splits.
All these could be utilized. He attacked what he called ‘closed-
doorism’, those for whom ‘the forces of the Revolution must
be pure, absolutely pure, and the road of the Revolution must be
straight, absolutely straight. Nothing is correct except what is
literally recorded in Holy writ. The national bourgeoisie
is entirely and eternally counter-revolutionary. Not an inch
must be conceded to the rich peasants ... If we shake hands with
Tsai Ting-kai we must call him a counter-revolutionary at the
same moment ... Intellectuals are three-day revolutionaries ...
closed-doorism is the sole wonder-working magic, while the
united front is an opportunist tactic.* This was an irate and
withering comment on the Wang Ming leadership, which had
wrought such havoc for the CCP. Mao was sarcastically quoting
back what Chang Kuo-tao and Wang Ming had been saying for a
good number of years; and his audience knew it, and tittered.
* See pages 297-299.
THE MORNING DELUGE
364
‘United front tactics are the only Marxist-Leninist tactics.* The
leadership of the war, of the united front, must remain with ‘the
party of the proletariat’, the Communist Party, although because
of its weakness it needed allies to tackle the national war of
resistance. And allies there were, all over China. There was
already a ‘united front of the broad masses’, which was clamorous,
potentially powerful; all it needed was a directing head. Chiang
would no longer be able to contain the tide of public opinion
demanding resistance to the invader. The slogan of Chiang,
‘Internal pacification before resistance to foreign invasion’, no
longer worked. Thus Mao gave a clear, decisive orientation to
the Party for a second united front. He also delineated the policy
of a ‘people’s republic’, which would now include, besides the
workers and peasants and urban petty bourgeoisie, ‘members of
all other classes who are willing to take part in the national
revolution’. And in this brief paragraph of his speech, the seed of
the People’s Republic of China was planted. ‘Why change the
“workers and peasants” republic [such as at Juichin] into a
“people’s republic”?’ asked Mao. He answered himself: ‘Our
government represents not only the workers and peasants but the
whole nation.* The Japanese invasion had changed class relations
in China, requiring this alteration into a people’s republic. This
would mean modifications in policies affecting, for instance, land
reform, representation in councils, and mass associations and
mass movements. The newly born formula was to be carried out
into all the bases, during the war with Japan.
It was this genial adaptation, flexible and inspired, to genuine
conditions, rallying the greatest number, which procured for the
CCP its immense popularity during the war and made it the core
of leadership of anti-Japanese resistance. Already, in December
1935, Mao was blueprinting the next ten years. Protection instead
of confiscation for private property other than imperialist and
feudal would rally still more of the bourgeoisie at this stage, even
if their status would be altered in the next. ‘In the stage of demo-
cratic revolution there are limits to the struggle between labour
and capital. The labour laws of the people’s republic will protect
the interests of the workers but will not prevent the iiational
THE YENAN PERIOD
365
bourgeoisie from making profits or developing their industrial and
commercial enterprises"* (Author’s italics.)
China was still, said Mao, at the stage of bourgeois-democratic
revolution. ‘The change [to the socialist revolution] will come
later.’
On May 6, 1936, a circular telegram was sent from the Revolu-
tionary Military Council of the Red Army to the Military
Commission of Chiang’s government in Nanking, asking those
‘Nanking gentlemen’ to break with the past, stop the civil war,
and form a united front against Japan. It also announced the
CCP’s decision of voluntary cessation of fighting against the
KMT. On August 25, 1936, an open letter from the Central
Committee of the CCP was addressed to the KMT Central
Executive Committee in the same vein. In this letter, the CCP
offered collaboration in fighting Japan and support to the
Kuomintang if the latter should truly practise the Three People’s
Principles of Dr Sun Yatsen and the three policies of alliance with
Russia, co-operation with the CCP, and assistance to the peasants
and workers which had been Sun Yatsen’s cornerstone policies.
‘If you really do this, we shall resolutely support you and are
ready to form with you a solid revolutionary united front like
that of the great revolutionary period of 1924-1927 against
imperialism and feudal oppression, for this is the only correct
way today to save the nation from subjugation and ensure its
survival.’
The strategy and tactics of this Second United Front were to
become the main factor in the prosecution of the war, and also in
the continuing revolution. But Chiang Kai-shek refused any
negotiations not preceded by total submission, the total dis-
banding of all the Red armies or their total incorporation in his
own. As Mao said: ‘Chiang understands power.’ In China, this
meant an army.
In September 1936, the Central Committee of the CCP passed
a resolution on ‘the new situation in the resistance to Japan and the
* ‘Marxism is ... the concrete analysis of concrete conditions’— Mao’s favourite
quotation from Lenin.
THE MORNING DELUGE
366
national salvation movement’, which repeated the offers made and
elaborated a united front programme. But Mao’s conception of
the united front was still not acceptable to all.
In Europe, the rise of Nazi Germany, and the Axis alliance
between Germany, Italy, Japan, had led the USSR to the formula-
tion of a united front policy, through the Comintern. This was
proclaimed on August 20, 1935. Wang Ming, who was on the
steering committee of the Comintern representing the Chinese
Communist Party, reported in August 1935 that there were half
a million Party members in China, a patently incorrect statement.
He said, Tn my opinion, and that of the entire Central Committee
of the Communist Party of China, together with the soviet
government of China ... we should issue a joint appeal to the
whole nation ... to organize an All-China United People’s
Government of National Defence.’ It must also be noted that a
resolution adopted on December 20, 1935, by the Central Com-
mittee at Wayaopao, indeed used similar phraseology, with Mao
Tsetung dissenting. Around this sentence the two-line struggle
over the strategy of the united front was to crystallize.
The formula sabotaged Mao’s concept of the independence in
action of the Red Army, independence of the Red base (and future
bases), and initiative and leadership in the war. It encouraged
Chiang Kai-shek in his pursuit of his own aims. Wang Ming
was reflecting not the interests of the Chinese Revolution, but a
tactic of the USSR in its ovni policies in both Europe and China.
For the USSR was trying to win Chiang to at least a neutral
posture, so that he would not join the Axis powers. Moscow knew
well enough that the influential right-wing, pro-fascist cliques in
Chiang’s government were urging an Axis alliance. At the same
time Chiang was also negotiating a non-aggression pact with the
USSR which he hoped would give him leverage against Mao; he
would be able either to utilize Comintern influence through
Wang Ming to exert pressure on Mao, or to counter Mao s
prestige in the CCP. Wang Ming still had a powerful following
in the CCP, and all the press and propaganda organs of the
Comintern through the world Communist parties were at his
disposal. Mao was now described vaguely as a ‘guerilla leader ,
THE YENAN PERIOD
367
always linked with and almost always second to Chu Teh * His
brief favour at the Comintern in 1930 had been eclipsed for four
years by the presence of Wang Ming.
That the conditions in which a united front would come into
being meant survival or extinction for the Communist Party and
the Red Army never seemed to have occurred to Wang Ming,
nor that the USSR could not be the best judge of the Chinese
situation. Wang Ming ignored the experience acquired during
the First United Front, which had taught Mao that acceding to
Chiang’s demands for absolute control of the Red Army meant
collective suicide. On no account would Mao allow Chiang to
butcher the Communists again; yet Wang Ming’s formula of
unity for national defence meant precisely relinquishing leader-
ship to Chiang Kai-shek, and this meant the armies as well.
‘Without a people’s army the people have nothing,’ said Mao.
And ‘Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.’
The control of the Red Army would always be the focus of
struggle within the united front; it would be in the continuing
Chinese Revolution — even today — the critical centre of leadership
preoccupation. There is no political leadership which does not
also imply a force capable of backing it, defending it and preserving
its power— an army. This basic fact the propounders of a ‘national
defence’ united front under Chiang’s leadership would not or
could not see. Had Stalin seen it? Or was he too engrossed in
Russian aifairs at the time? Or were his foreign policy advisers so
anxious to win over Chiang Kai-shek that they simply ignored
the role of the CCP? Or, more than likely, did they believe, after
the Long March, that the Mao-led Red Army was a spent force,
and put back the Chinese Revolution prospects to very much
later, meanwhile opting for Chiang Kai-shek?
Even though Mao seemed the unchallenged leader of the CCP
after Tsunyi, he acquired ideological authority only locally; he
had not acquired the completely unhampered exercise of power
even locally. Factions both in the Party and the Army would
* Edgar Snow, in Red Star Ouer Chinay op. cit., was the first to give a correct
perspective on Mao Tsctung’s role in the Chinese Revolution. Agnes Smcdley
devoted most of her writings to Chu Teh.
THE MORNING DELUGE
368
remain. Mao has always, like Lenin, regarded intra-Party struggle
as a dialectical expression of the class struggle, reflected within the
Party. ‘Peace’ within the Party, therefore, is not to be desired; there
has never been an entirely monolithic Communist Party, what-
ever the attempts to make it so. Such monolithism would mean
there was no criticism and self-criticism, no ideological education,
hence no advance; for ideological struggle is a facet of progress.*
Because of this singular liveliness of the CCP at all times, unity
can only be attained by ideological struggle, criticism and self-
criticism, and Mao’s way of handling his opposition would
therefore be radically different from the Russian way. But from
Moscow things may have appeared very different. Mao was but
the leader of a small ‘peasant’ faction; the Tsunyi conference was
ignored; Mao was not even referred to as chairman of the
Revolutionary Military Council till the end of 1938.
In the years 1936-1938, the intra-Party struggle on the question
of the united front would be bitter and complex; it would become
part of Mao’s assertion of ideological authority. Within the
Party, ‘closed-doorists’ and ‘capitulationists* (i.e. the ‘left* and the
‘right’) wrangled on many questions but agreed in attacking
Mao’s united front thesis. Wang Ming accused Mao of lacking
‘proletarian internationalism’ because he was not subordinating
his view to the Comintern view; he derided Mao as a ‘chauvinist .
But was it indeed not possible to be both a convinced revolution-
ary and a Chinese patriot? Was it true that only total subordina-
tion to Moscow’s policies would work for the success of the
Revolution? Some other Party leaders were plainly frightened of
the bold vistas Mao unfurled, the great goal which appeared to
them dangerously utopian. The CCP was much too weak, the
Red Army too small and miserably ill-equipped; the Kuomintang
armies were large; the Red Army would benefit in suppli^.
equipment and weaponry should it come under Chiang Kai-shek.
How could such remnants as they had in hand, in bleak
Shensi, pretend to lead a war against Japan, capture the leadership
of the whole country?
* Even at the termination of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, th
CCP proclaimed that ideological struggle goes on within the party (Apri 197 ^)-
THE YEN AN PERIOD
3<^'9
‘The victory of the Chinese national liberation movement will
be part of the victory of world socialism, because to defeat
imperialism in China means the destruction of one ot its most
powerful bases. If China wins her independence, the world
revolution will progress very rapidly. If our country is subjugated
by the enemy, we shall lose everything.’ ‘For a people being
deprived of its national freedom, the revolutionary task is not
immediate socialism but the struggle to independence. We cannot
even discuss Communism if we arc robbed of a country in which
to practise it.’* In a felicitous sentence Mao defined the duty ot
every Communist to be a patriot and to fight the Japanese. ‘Can
a Communist, who is an internationalist, at the same time be a
patriot? We hold that he not only can be but must be ... In wars
of national liberation patriotism is applied internationalism.’
At the moment, in spite of appearances, Chiang Kai-shek was
weak and the CCP was strong. The Long March had been a
triumph, Mao insisted. A united front which demanded leader-
ship was already in existence among the people; it was waiting
for the Communist Party to lead it, and most of the people
believed what the Communist Party said and no longer believed
Chiang Kai-shek.
Throughout 1936, the ideological struggle over policy raged
within the Party, more or less privately. Very little of it leaked out
save perhaps through Chiang’s spies. Mao Tsetung even spoke in
praise of some of his adversaries to Edgar Snow, who was present
at the Red base at the time.J This reticence helps to confuse
experts; some aver that history has been rewritten because during
some years no denunciation of Wang Ming’s ‘ultra-left’ line
occurred. Many years may elapse before final ‘historical judgment’
is pronounced.
* Quoted by Edgar Snow to the author.
‘Another reason for [the Party’s] invincibility lies in the extraordinary ability
and courage and loyalty of the human material ... Comrades Chu Teh, Wang
Ming, Lo Fu, Chou En-lai, Po Ku, Wang Chia-hsiang, Peng Teh-huai ... Hsiang
Ying, Hsu Hai-tung, Chen Yun, Lin Piao, Chang Kuo-tao ’ Edgar Snow, Red
Star Oi'er China, op. cit., p. 449. Mao’s intense wish for Party unity despite all
these ideological struggles is plain in the string of names he uttered.
370
THE MORNING DELUGE
Meanwhile, the Shensi base was consolidating; the negotiations
with Chang Hsueh-liang proceeded satisfactorily. Throughout
that spring and summer there were meetings, fnendly talks,
demarcation of ‘buffer zones* to avoid troop clashes, transport o
supplies and even gifts of weapons to the Red Army. A liaison
office was established in Sian, in a German dentist’s house. Stu-
dents and clandestine Party members from all over China came to
the liaison office and from there made contact with the Com-
munists in North Shensi.
Chiang Kai-shek spent the summer of 1936 flying from one
major city to another, giving pep talks to his commanders,
urging them to ‘mop up Red remnants’. In spite of this, such was
the force of public opinion against the civil war that during that
same summer Chou En-lai was able to travel to Kuomintang
areas, make contacts, and hold meetings and receive enthusiastic
welcome from prominent personalities, even Kuomintang Party
members.*
An All-China National Salvation League was organized under
Madame Sun Yatsen and Madame Ho Hsiang-ning, widow of
the late Dr Liao Chung-kai. In November 1936 Chiang arrested
seven prominent leaders of the League, all well-known intel-
lectuals. A storm of protest followed. But the obdurate Chiang
knew that intellectuals and students could be shot, jailed, and
coerced; he did not worry over protests. What disturbed him
were reports of the goings-on in Shensi province.
His intelligence agents mentioned the visits of suspected
Commimists to Chang Hsueh-liang. Chang Hsueh-liang even
wrote a letter to Chiang Kai-shek suggesting an end to the civil
war and a united front. ‘It is the people’s demand ... your name
as the leader of the resistance against Japan will be famous
for ever . . . Don’t believe only what the Japanese tell you, he
added, rather insultingly. The Young Marshal had even asked the
Red commander Yeh Chien-ying to dinner, had gone to see him
at the base and urged him to take in hand the training and
modernization of his own Manchurian armies. Students from the
* See Hsu Kai-yu, Chou Eii-hi: China’s Gray Eminence (Doubleday, New York,
1968).
THE YENAN PERIOD
371
Japaiicsc-occLipicd territory of Manchuria Hooded into Sian;
many went from there to the Red base, through the liaison office.
The National Salvation League was also very active in the city.
Chiang decided to visit Sian in person. But in September 1936 a
rebellion against him started in Kwangsi province by two
militarists, Li Tsung-jen and Pai Chung-hsi, delayed him. These
two warlords also proclaimed they wanted to fight Japan, and
rebelled against Chiang because he refused them funds and
weapons to do so. In December 1936, impelled by his mania for
destroying the Reds, Chiang flew to Sian, landing there on
December 7, and took up residence at the Lintung Hot Springs,
former resort of a Tang dynasty emperor. On December 9,
thousands of Manchurian students walked there from Sian to
present him with a petition to resist Japan. They were fired
upon by Chiang’s personal guards. Chang Hsueh-Iiang rushed
to the spot: ‘I will take personal responsibility for bringing your
demands to Generalissimo Chiang.’ Chang Hsuch-liang had often
intervened to save students from Chiang’s secret police and their
director, Chiang’s nephew, who tortured and executed suspected
Reds.
But when Chang Hsueh-Iiang appeared, Cliiang Kai-shek
scolded him like a child, recording it himself in his diary: ‘I
severely upbraided ... the Young Marshal.’ Chiang also threat-
ened Yang Hu-cheng. The trap was then sprung. On December
T2, before dawn, a subordinate of Chang Hsueh-liang’s surroun-
ded Chiang’s abode with soldiers, killed his nephew, and took
Chiang prisoner. It is said that this subordinate had strong
Conununist sympathies, and that the whole of Chiang’s kid-
napping was engineered by the Conamunists. Although there is
no evidence, it is more than likely that without some ‘suggestions’
from the Communists the Sian manoeuvre could not have been
carried out in so masterly a fashion.
This was the famous ‘Sian incident’, which caused enormous
excitement in China and abroad. Students clamoured for Chiang
to be brought to public trial; some of the Manchurian officers
and soldiers demanded his instant execution; in Nanking the
government was stunned; immediately a power struggle began.
372
THE MORNING DELUGE
Mass meetings held at Pao An (capital of the Red base) de-
manded Chiang’s public trial and execution. There were enough
Communists whose relatives had been murdered by Chiang, and
for whom a united front with Chiang appeared an outrageous
compromise. But it is highly unlikely that the mass meetings
were encouraged by Mao Tsetung, although other members of
the Central Committee might have joined in the clamour for
Chiang’s death. Mao had already defined Japan as the principal
enemy now, and not Chiang. He had made it clear that Chiang’s
co-operation in a united front was needed to fight Japan. It is
quite certain that he never meant to kill Chiang Kai-shek.
In Nanking, the fascist defence minister Ho Ying-chin, a die-
hard pro-Japanese, who had long wanted to play a historic role
and bring China into the Axis, threatened to bomb Sian and
march armies thither — a sure way to get Chiang executed— to
precipitate an all-out massacre, and to bring a massive Japanese
invasion ‘to restore peace and order’. Agnes Smedley reports that
already Japanese generals had gathered in a secret conclave in
Tientsin to decide whether the time was ripe for a total military
occupation of China. The extreme right wing in Nanking was
urging an alliance with Japan against the Communists. Meanwhile
Chang Hsueh-liang issued a message to the Nanking government,
and all those willing to fight Japan, with an eight-point pro-
gramme (which greatly resembled the Communist one). This
was rejected by Ho Ying-chin.
On December 15 the USSR press condemned the detention of
Chiang Kai-shek, calling it a ‘Japanese plot’. Ho Ying-chin
received a visit from the German ambassador; the Nanking
regime, it was rumoured, might join the Axis powers. The
Moscow news release reflected the Kremlin’s intense fear that
this might happen. For Russia, war on two fronts has been the
perennial nightmare. Edgar Snow* tells of a wire received by
Mao Tsetung ‘from Stalin’ which said: ‘Free Chiang at once or
we shall break all connection with you.’ It is more probable, as
Snow suggests, that the cable was from Wang Ming and not
Stalin. Mao was in a great rage when he received it; he swore,
* Edgar Snow, Random Motes on Red China (Cambridge, Mass., 19S7)-
THE YENAN PERIOD
373
stamped about, and tore up tlic message. But Soviet newsmen
and the Soviet ambassador in China were embarrassed at the
Soviet press denunciation of Chiang’s arrest as a Japanese coup.
‘This was one of the personal experiences which would convince
me that as long as Russia made Comintern policy, it would always
and everywhere be made first of all in the strategic interest of the
USSR as the Kremlin sees it/ writes Snow.
Mao had never intended either a mass trial of Chiang Kai-shek,
or his execution.* In the summer of 1936, speaking to Snow, Mao
had said: ‘There must be a day of decision, a day when he
[Chiang] muse either oppose Japan or be overthrown by his
subordinates ... This increasing pressure from his own generals
and the anti-Japanese mass movement may compel Chiang to
realize his mistakes ... We will welcome this change and co-
operate wholeheartedly ... but only Chiang can determine this
for himself. The decision cannot be much longer delayed.’
All Mao wanted was an occasion to persuade Chiang, if not
directly, then through that most brilliant and persuasive of all
Communists, Chou En-lai. The ‘occasion’ was the Sian kid-
napping. Four days after Chiang’s detention, a plane brought
Chou En-Iai from the Red base to Sian. Chang Hsueh-liang had
confiscated the aeroplanes and equipment accumulated by Chiang
at Sian to fight the Communists; he had planned a sixth annihila-
tion campaign.
Chou En-lai and Chiang Kai-shek thus found themselves face
to face again, as they had in the Whangpoo Academy in 1924.
What went on between them remains pure conjecture. That Mao
was fully informed of the conversations is certain. Meanwhile a
new Military Affairs Council was established in Sian under Chang
Hsueh-liang’s authority, to include ‘all anti-Japanese armies and
representatives’, including of course the Red Army. Sian began
to fill up with anti-Japanese militarists, including Feng Yu-hsiang,
♦ Andr^ Migot declares th-t on December 15 Mao said, ‘This is an error, it
should never have been done’ (Chiang’s kidnapping). Andr^ Migot, Mao Tsetung
(Editions Planete, Paris, 1966). Guenther Stein also says there never was a cable
from Stalin to Mao about this event. Guenther Stein, The Challetige of Red China
(Pilot Press, London, 1945).
374
THE MORNING DELUGE
who in 1927 had advised the Wuhan KMT to get rid of its
Communists. Madame Chiang arrived, with her brother T. V.
Soong and the Australian adviser to Chiang, W. H. Donald. It
does seem that Chiang promised verbally to consider a united
front, and said that he would be glad to be ‘working again
together’ with Chou En-lai — whatever those polite phrases might
mean.
Chiang was released on Christmas Day and flew back to
Nanking. But he took with him Chang Hsueh-liang, jailed and
fmally caused Yang Hu-cheng to be murdered in prison, together
with his son. The Young Marshal remained Chiang’s prisoner
for thirty years, and was only recently released in Taiwan, at the
age of seventy. By taking Chang Hsueh-liang with him, Chiang
wanted to prevent an alliance between the Red Army and the
Manchurian northeastern armies. The armies of Chang Hsueh-
liang were dispersed to other areas.
On December 28, three days after Chiang’s release, Mao issued
a statement. In it he said that he hoped that Chiang would keep
his promises’, though he had not signed any terms. ‘Chiang should
remember that he owes his safe departure from Sian to the
mediation of the Communist Party, as well as to the efforts of
generals Chang and Yang, the leaders in the Sian incident.
Whether Chiang intended or not to keep his promises, he
certainly did not hurry to keep them. Armed clashes occurred
between the KMT and the Red Army while he procrastinated.
He moved ten divisions under Hu Tsung-nan, the young,
fiercely fascist Kuomintang general, into Shensi province.
Throughout the subsequent war with Japan, Hu Tsung-nan
would keep these troops and the best equipment Chiang had to
blockade the Red base.
The capture of Yenan, a key city for communications m
Shensi province, had formed the focus of guerilla effort under
Liu Chih-tan. In December 1936 Mao moved with troops,
taking Yenan and expanding the base territory to almost 100,000
square miles. In January 1937 Yenan was declared the capita
city of the Shensi-Kansu— Ninghsia Border Region, the R^o u
tionary Military Council and the Central Committee transferred
THE YENAN PERIOD
375
thither from Pao An. The base now also straddled the borders ot
Ninghsia province; this ensured a permanent supply of salt from
Ninghsia’s famed salt deposits, and improved the strategic
advantages of the base.
Had Chiang Kai-shek been able to arrange a long-term truce
with the Japanese in early 1937, as he tried to do when he returned
to Nanking, there would have been no united front. But the
Japanese war machine could not stop. The Japanese army would
not wait. The Japanese war politicians no longer trusted Chiang
after the Sian talks. Neither could Chiang stop the tide of anti-
Japanese feeling among the Chinese people, who now all assumed
that at last he would fight the aggressors. Popular enthusiasm
acclaimed his release from pure relief at the prospect of an end to
the civil war. As the Chinese newspaper Ta Kiiiig Pao worded
it: ‘From now on Chinese will no longer fight Chinese.’
During 1936, Chiang had tried to hasten his negotiations for a
non-aggression pact with Moscow. Had the pact been concluded
in the midst of his projected anti-Communist campaign against
the North Shensi base, it would have meant the repudiation of the
Mao leadership by the USSR. But now Chiang was reluctant to
sign the pact, since it would make the Japanese even more
suspicious. Until late in 1938, the Russian press and left-wing
journals abroad persisted in lauding Chiang as the deader of the
resistance’, and were almost tomb-silent about Mao. Mao’s
position as chairman of the CCP and the Revolutionary Military
Council was ignored; only in late 1938 did the USSR begin to
broadcast pro-Mao commentary again. Even after Chiang’s
release from Sian in December 1936, the Comintern was still so
misinformed that Imprccor (the Comintern organ) wrote on
January 2, 1937: ‘Nanking has sent troops against the rebel
Chang Hsueh-liang ... who was compelled to release Chiang
Kai-shek.’*
In May 1937 Mao issued a report entitled The Tasks of the CCP
in the Period of Resistance to Japan. This document, clearly stating
* As for Trotsky, he had denounced the CCP appeal for resistance to Japan
since 1933.
THE MORNING DELUGE
376
the course of the Chinese Revolution and the responsibility of the
CCP to lead it, further developed his ideas on the united front. A
concluding speech by Mao, Win the Masses in Their Millions for
the Anti-Japanese United Front, was to stress points on which ‘some
comrades ... exposed different views’. In one of the most signifi-
cant passages, Mao says: ‘We are exponents of the theory of the
transition of the Revolution, and not of the Trotskyite theory of
“pennanent revolution”. We are for the attainment of socialism
by going through all the necessary stages of the democratic
republic.’ Mao’s fundamental ideas on the continuing Chinese
Revolution were thus penned in the turmoil of these high-tension
years of war with Japan and struggle within the Party. Mao also
announced the need for ‘many first-rate cadres’ to carry through
‘our great Revolution which is unprecedented in history’.* If
‘the leadership consists of a small narrow group and if the Party
leaders are petty-minded, short-sighted and incompetent , it
would be impossible to carry the Revolution through. Such
cadres and leaders ‘must be free from selfishness ... sloth ...
sectarian arrogance ... To attain this aim, inner-Party democracy
is essential. Let us apply democracy ... give scope to initiative
throughout the Party ... win the masses in their millions ... for
the anti-Japanese national united front.’
In that same May, while Mao was asserting this thesis, Chang
Kuo-tao was to join Wang Ming in issuing speeches and an
article circulating the slogan ‘Victory for all . Disputing Mao s
views, Chang argued that it was ‘dishonest not to trust Chiang
Kai-shek; should there be victory in the Sino-Japanese war, it
should be shared by all, inclttding Chiang Kai-shek. Chang Kuo-
tao rejected Mao’s estimate that the united front was a part o
revolutionary strategy, that the real theme and essence was class
struggle and consequently the seizure of power by the Communist
Party, that leadership not only of the war but also ^f a t e
classes rallied in the united front must be in the hands of the
Communist Party, to prepare for the postwar era. Chang Kuo-tao
now advocated, and found others to advocate, ‘parliamentarism
-merging of the Communist administration and Red Army
* Selected Works, vol. I, pp. 290-291.
THE YENAN PERIOD
377
with the Kuomintang administration and armies, in order to
make ‘one government, one army, one military administration’
under Chiang Kai-shek. This represented almost a death wish.
Liu Shao-chi, returning to Yenan that summer, also seems to have
written a pessimistic report about the outcome of the Revolution,
advocating ‘unity’ with Chiang Kai-shek.*
Mao argued that there could not possibly be any ‘merging’
with the one-party dictatorship which was Chiang’s government,
which gave no freedom or democracy to the people. The
‘capitulationists’ envisioned the resistance to Japan as an alliance
between two political parties, whereas Mao saw it as the arousal ot
the Chinese people and their mobilization in a people’s war. The
basic discord was, therefore, a question of ‘world conception or
outlook’ — to stand for the interests of the masses, or to act as a
new power group in a power struggle, practising compromise
and ‘a sharing ... of high functions and official posts’.
It was all very well for the Moscow press to broadcast articles as
if Chiang were the leader of Chinese resistance to Japanese
invasion; it was quite understandable that Stalin, anxious about
Germany, wanted to assure himself of Chiang’s support, and to do
nothing to strengthen the hand of the pro-Japanese clique in
Chiang’s government. Russian policy, pressured by the tear of
war on two fronts, might placate Chiang Kai-shek, seek to draw
him into a formal anti-Axis stance. But it was very different for a
Chinese Communist to do so. If Stalin gave ‘bad advice’ to the
CCP, there is, on the Chinese side, silence about it. This is not only
a fixed policy, but also the expression of a philosopliical concept
expressed by Mao — that it was internal causes which were the
main factors of change, whereas external causes only set the
background; they could be resisted or accepted, and the choice
depended on the individuals concerned.
Mao felt free, therefore, to ignore Stalin’s ‘advice*; he knew
that Moscow was also negotiating with Japanese-created Man-
chiikuo over the Chinese Eastern Railway. In Lenin’s time,
through the Karakhan Manifesto, the USSR had formally
* Chang Kuo-tao in preface to CoUccted of Liu Shao-chi (Union Research
Institute, Hongkong, 1969).
THE MORNING DELUGE
378
relinquished all rights to this railway, but the USSR had con-
tinued to hold it; in 1929 Li Li-san had called for the masses’
to arise and defend the Soviet Union, embroiled in local conflict
with the Chinese troops in Manchuria who had tried to take
back the railway. Now in 1937 the USSR was ‘selling’ this
very same railway to the Japanese in Manchukuo. In 1945,
the USSR would take the railway back; once again they would
return it, this time to the People’s Republic of China in the
early 1950s, and without payment.
Negotiations for a united front between the Communists and
the Kuomintang began with a conference in February 1937, in
which Chou En-lai played the chief role. The Communists
presented a five-demand programme ■with four conditions as
basis for a united front.
The four conditions were: (i) The Communist-led government
in the Shensi-Kansu-Ninghsia base would be renamed the
Government of the Special Region. (2) The Red Army would be
redesignated. (It was to be named the Eighth Route Army of the
Eighteenth Army Corps, under the overall direction of the KMT
government.) (3) The policy of armed insurrection would be dis-
continued. (4) Landlords’ land would no longer be confiscated.
The five demands presented at the same time were: (i) Cessation
of civil war. (2) Guarantee of freedom of speech, assembly and
association. (3) Convocation of an anti-Japanese people’s congress.
(4) Completion of preparations for resisting Japan. (5) Improve-
ment of the living conditions of the people.
But Chiang had replied asking for: (i) Total integration of the
Red Army and Red zones in the Nationalist army and the regular
Kuomintang administration. (2) Renunciation of class struggle.
(3) Stopping all doctrine and Communist propaganda not in
accord with the Three Principles of Sun Yatsen and Chinese
traditions’.
Negotiations dragged on till September. Wang Ming in
Moscow urged acceptance of the Chiang conditions. So did Chang
Kuo-tao at sessions of the Central Committee in Yenan.
On July 7, 1937, the Japanese attacked a Chinese contingent at
r H E Y E N A N I’ E lU O 1)
379
Lukuo-chiao bridge near Peking.* Tlie Chinese troops resisted,
and the country was clcctrihcd by the bravery of this handful of
soldiers. Cliiang tarried ten days before announcing an
‘emergency’, but the Japanese attack had its own precipitating
effect, both on Chiang’s negotiations with Moscow and on the
united front discussions with the Communists in Yenan. Between
July and September, talks between the two parties became
serious; Chiang could no longer dally, though still he would try
to get Ills way. Meanwhile, within the Parry, the struggle for the
united front policy which would give the CCP the upper hand
in the long run became more intense than ever. Mao urged the
‘capitulationists’ once again to remember 1927, Chen Tu-hsiu’s
submission, the orders to surrender weapons, and the resulting
massacres. ‘Never again ... must this be repeated.’ ‘It goes without
saying that we shall never allow Cliiang Kai-shek to lay a finger
on the Red Army.’
In his military text Problems of Strategy in China s Revolutionary
War, written as teaching material for new cadres and Red Army
personnel, Mao made a statement crucial to the conduct of the
united front. China’s revolutionary war, he wrote, had passed
through two stages; the first from 1924 to 19-7; the second from
1927 to 1937; now the third stage would begin, ‘the stage of
national revolutionary war against Japan ... In all three of its stages
this revolutionary war has been and will be fought under the leader-
ship of the Chinese proletariat and its party, the Chinese Com-
munist Party ... This war is not only the banner of China’s
liberation, but also has international revolutionary significance ...
in the new stage [the anti-Japanese war] we shall lead the Chinese
Revolution to its completion and exert a profound influence on the revolu-
tion in the East and in the whole world* (Author’s italics.) These
prophetic words were written in December 1936.
On July 23, 1937, two weeks after the Japanese had invaded
North China, Mao delivered a most important speech entitled
Policies, Measures and Perspectives for Resisting the Japanese Invasion.
Its substance was a ten-point programme; (i) Overthrow
* Also known as Marco Polo bridge.
38 o
THE MORNING DELUGE
Japanese imperialism. (2) Mobilize the military strength of the
whole nation. (3) Mobilize the people of the whole country (a
point of greatest importance to Mao for protracted people’s war).
(4) Reform the government apparatus. (5) Adopt an anti-Japanese
foreign policy. (6) Adopt wartime financial and economic policies.
(7) Improve the people’s livelihood. (8) Adopt an anti-Japanese
educational policy. (9) Weed out traitor and pro-Japanese ele-
ments and consolidate the rear. (10) Achieve national unity against
Japan.
On August 15 Peking and Tientsin fell to the Japanese; the
provinces of Hopei and Chahar were occupied, and the Japanese
began an assault on Shanghai. Chiang reluctantly had to make a
declaration of war against Japan. Meanwhile, united front
negotiations were locked in a frozen debate, with Chiang
insisting on total control of the Red Army.
Chu Teh and Peng Teh-huai, as representatives of the Militar)^
Council, and Chou En-lai as representative of the Central
Committee and the Politburo, attended the sessions of Chiang’s
Military Council in Nanking. By August 22, some sort of
partial agreement seems to have been reached. Apparently Chu
Teh and Peng Teh-huai had agreed, tacitly, to accept Chiang as
supreme commander against Japan.* Chiang Kai-shek then
nominated, in his role as ‘supreme commander’, Chu Teh and
Peng Teh-huai as ‘commanders of the Eighteenth Army Corps ,
which incorporated the Eighth Route Army. Some funds and
equipment were granted by Chiang to this army, limited to a
total of 45,000 men, in September ipsy.f Chiang still refused to
recognize the North Shensi base as autonomous and insisted on
Kuomintang control, and he still insisted on troop integration.
The nominations of Chu Teh and Peng Teh-huai were possibly
meant as a step to detach them from CCP control and bring
them over to a neutralized stance.
* During the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, documents and cables of
the period were exhibited by some Red Guards as evidence that the Red military
commanders accepted terms which Mao still persisted in refusing.
t For convenience, and because historically the Chinese people identified the
Eighth Route Army with the Red Army, the terms Eighth Route Army or Red
Army will be used rather than Eighteenth Army Corps.
THE YEN AN PERIOD
381
On August 23 the non-aggression pact between Chiang and the
USSR was concluded, but by now it had lost its main value
for Chiang; moreover, it had a clause asserting the 'independence’
of Outer Mongolia, which Chiang accepted but which stirred
criticism in his own Kuomintang Party, never reconciled to this
loss.*
Mao again outlined his ten-point programme at a Politburo
session, called the Lochuan meeting, in August 1937. Mao’s
proposals were discussed with the usual heat and intensity (Chang
Kuo-tao going all out against Mao) and were finally approved.
The struggle between two lines in the policies of the united front
arc very clear in Mao’s Lochuan speech. He reiterates that the
Red base or bases (later there were to be many more of them)
would not be given over to Chiang’s control. ‘The preservation
of the Communist Party’s leadership over the Special Region
[Shen-Kan-Ning Border Region] and in the Red Army, the
preservation of the Communist Party’s independence and
freedom of criticism in its relation with the Kuomintang ... these
are the limits beyond which it is impermissible to go.’ Chiang had
tried, even in that August, in spite of popular indignation, and
even while the Japanese were so menacingly successful in their
advance, to negotiate local truces with Japanese commanders
and to make ‘compromises and concessions’. How could anyone
trust Chiang’s leadership? Chiang was trying to get round
certain leading commanders in the Red Army, in order to
circumvent Mao’s ten-point programme, by offering them high
ranks and ministerial posts. ‘The united front does not mean
relinquishing the leadership, the initiative, but on the contrary
taking in hand the initiative by making allies, in order to continue
the Revolution.’
On September 22 a manifesto was issued by the Central
Committee. This manifesto was first dated July 15, and seems to
have had the approval of some ‘capitulationists’ in the Central
Committee and the Politburo; and since Mao Tsetung is reticent
* On March 12, 1936, the USSR and Outer Mongolia had signed a protocol
and defensive alliance despite a 1924 Sino-Sovict agreement recognizing Chinese
sovereignty over the Mongolian area.
THE MORNING DELUGE
382
about it, it may have been passed over his objections * The
manifesto was endorsed by Chiang Kai-shek, and no wonder,
for it is different from the ten-point programme formulated by
Mao. Sometimes represented as a compromise formula arrived
at in view of the ‘grave’ situation, it is as a document somewhat
ambiguous.
The three aims of the manifesto were: (i) Independence and
national integrity, return to China of all sovereignty over lost
territories (lost to Japan). (2) A democratic regime to be instituted,
based on the people’s rights, through a ‘national assembly’ which
would work out a Constitution. (3) Improvement of the life of
the people, consolidation of the economy and of national defence.
In the four resolutions, the Communist Party pledged to: (i)
Make every effort to practise the Three Principles of Dr Sun
Yatsen. (2) Renounce the overthrow of the government by
armed struggle, renounce the policy of soviets, stop confiscation
of landlords’ land. (3) Dissolve the actual soviet government of the
base and practise democracy based on the rights of the people, so
as to unify the national political system. (4) Disband the Red
Army, and reorganize it in a national revolutionary army under
direct control of the Military Affairs Commission of the national
government and be ‘ready to obey all orders to take part in
resistance to foreign invasion’.
The first two resolutions embodied concessions already
suggested in certain of Mao’s speeches and in previous letters of
the Central Committee for the period of the Sino-Japanese
war. The third is equivocal, though not disadvantageous; it
assumes Chiang will democratize his dictatorship but makes no
specific demand in that direction. The CCP had already ostensibly
* It is a feature of the intra-Party struggle in China (including the recent Great
Proletarian Cultural Revolution) that so many opponents of the Mao ‘line put
out speeches and statements which were either attributed to his influence or con-
sidered to reflect his policy when the contrary was true. Thus even an eminent
expert hkejohn Lewis ranges the reprinting of Liu Shao-chi’s How to Be a Good
Communist in 1962 as ‘in line with the ideological remoulding* that Mao stressed,
when it was the contrary. In 1936, I937» ^^d 1938, as in recent years before t c
Cultural Revolution, the Chinese Communist Party spoke with more than one
voice, and the attempt to fit all statements into one mould has given rise to
erroneous interpretation.
THE YENAN PERIOD
383
‘dissolved’ the soviet government of the base simply by re-
naming it, on August 10, 1936, the People’s Government instead
of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Government and calling for a
people’s republic rather than a soviet republic. The Red Army
had already been renamed the Eighth Route Army and would
be incorporated into Chiang’s Eighteenth Army Corps. The
ambiguity derives from the wording in the fourth resolution,
which surrendered, apparently, control of the Red Army to
Chiang and accepted obedience to orders to move into the field
to fight Chiang’s battles. Chiang’s acceptance of the ‘three aims
and four resolutions’ led, however, to liis declaring war on
Japan.
Immediately after the endorsement of the manifesto, the Eighth
Route Army received orders to march to the Yellow river battle
front. The aim was to relieve Chiang’s hard-pressed forces and
those of the warlord of Shansi province. Yen Hsi-shan, engaged
in protecting the capital city of Taiyuan, against Japanese attack.
This kind of campaign was contrary to all Mao’s ideas of how
warfare should be carried out. It was to defend a city, and
Taiyuan had no real strategic importance; it was not even an
industrial city. It was evident that Chiang intended to spare his
own troops while paring down the Red Army forces by throwing
them time and again into positional warfare battles, for which
they were ill-equipped.
The ‘independent, self-reliant guerilla warfare strategy and
tactics’ urged by Mao in the course on warfare he was at the time
giving to the Red Army cadres and officers in Yenan were to
become the main form of war against Japan, but they seem to
have not been followed in that first compliance with the terms
of the September 22 manifesto. In that great sifting of historical
evidence made by the Red Guards, who searched material in the
archives, during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, the
responsibility was to be placed on the shoulders of Peng Teh-huai
and also Chu Teh. But it is difficult, in view of the good use to
which this military move was put by the Red Army — building
bases behind Japanese lines — to blame the decision taken. Its
THE MORNING DELUGE
384
results were excellent for the revolutionary cause, even if the
classic city-taking type of positional warfare Chiang now
threw the Red Army into was murderous, facing superior
Japanese firepower and massive equipment. Chiang still had ten
divisions threatening the ‘Special Region’, and the Red Army’s
moving in toto out of the base into a neighbouring province
left a big risk of having the base overrun.
Fortunately it turned out not to be so. Mao’s skill at plucking
advantage out of disadvantageous circumstances turned the
tables on Chiang Kai-shek. Thirty years later, Mao would refuse
to let Chu Teh be criticized for having accepted this move.
Simple to the bone, incapable of intrigue, not much of a
theoretician, Chu Teh was a good commander, a brave and fear-
less man, but easily deceived. The action turned out to be one
Chiang would regret bitterly having ordered.
The Eighth Route Army was made up of three divisions: the
115th division under Lin Piao and Nieh Jung-chen, the 120th
under Ho Lung and Hsiao Ke, the 129th under Liu Po-cheng and
Hsu Hsiang-chien. The three moved to the Yellow river front,
while the Kuomintang troops withdrew. The 120th and the
129th won the battle of Taiyuan by containing two successive
Japanese onslaughts, which took a very heavy toll of their
numbers — precisely Chiang’s aim, to ‘win the war’ against the
Communists by attrition of the Red Army. In November the
Japanese were to take Taiyuan.
After this bout of conventional warfare and its hard lesson,
Mao’s strategy would prevail : guerilla war, people s war,
political arousal of the masses ‘in their millions’, establishment of
guerilla areas, later to be consohdated as bases, behind the Japanese
lines. This would turn ‘the Japanese rear into a front , a front
which was everywhere and nowhere, fluid, fleeting, borderfes,
but capturing in its web Japanese troops detailed in ever-increasing
numbers to patrol, to garrison, to ‘pacify . It was the combine
action of Japanese aggression and Red Army education of t e
masses which politicized the Chinese countryside in vast areas
ostensibly ‘occupied’ by the Japanese. This laid the foundation
for success, not only in the war against Japan but also in the next
s. Aln'vc. M.io Ibctun^ with C!lui Tch. Sciauc
n.irn.'tc w.itcli R(.\l Arni\ soIJkts workinii in
, .inJ li.nrcti. ik'low, Luddcn and
1 unit('rin factors at N.uiniwan
1
*jr^KLk.
29 (above). Mao Tsetung .arriving in
Chungking with U.S. Ainb.issador
Patrick J. Hurley, August 28, 1945
30 (below). The t.unous to.ist.
M.io Tsetung .and Chi.ing K,ii-')hek
drink to their negotiations in Ciningking
iiiSiaaiSi.ia
31 (nbovc), Mno Tscrung leading the
N(’rrli\vest rainpaign, 1947. In thebaek-
gi'i'iind is Ihs wile. Madame Cdiiang
Cdnuiz
33 (below). The IVople’s Liberation
Armv enters Pekinc;, March 1949
THE YEN AN PERIOD
385
one, the war against Chiang Kai-shek. Cluang's order to the
Eighth Route Army to advance had thus made possible a spreading
infiltration of China north of the Yellow river. Now each
division of the Red Army fragmented into squads, teams, clusters,
sometimes not more than three or four men. They insinuated
into the very tissues of the Japanese-occupied areas, educating,
rousing, recruiting.
In that September an operation was carried out which gave the
Eighth Route Army great prestige and wiped out, in the minds of
millions, the disheartening effect of successive Chinese defeats —
for Chiang*s battalions were crumbling on many fronts. It was
the victory of the 115th division under Lin Piao and Nieh
Jung-chen, at Pinghsinkuan, a victory in mobile warfare
operations which halted the Japanese advance into Northwest
China. After this battle, Mao gained the upper hand in the struggle
with the Party capitulationists. Never again would he allow
Chiang to try to utilize the Red Army for attrition purposes.
To ‘forestall capitulationist tendencies’ which were ‘likely to
appear or had appeared’, as Ho Kan-chi the historian hints
delicately in his History of the Chinese Revolution * the Central
Committee passed a resolution on September 25, 1937, con-
cerning ‘the question of participation in the Kuomintang govern-
ment*. It asserted that the government then in existence (Chiang’s)
was not a government of the anti-Japanese united front, it was
still the Kuomintang one-party dictatorship; hence no Connmniist
should participate in it lest such a step should obscure the stand of the
Party and prolong the reactionary rule of the Kuomhitang.
This cleared the ambiguity of the September 22 manifesto; it
implied some reproof of the acceptance by Chu Teh and Peng
Teh-huai of commands bestowed upon them by Chiang Kai-shek
and the military action which followed; checked a tendency
(ever recurrent) to consider these appointments really significant.
Chiang offered high posts to sundry commanders and also to
others in the CCP leadership. The KMT secret police entertained
relations, through local officials, with Communist cadres; and a
place for KMT ‘commissars’ and ‘instructors’ in the Eighth
* Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1959.
13
THE MORNING DELUGE
386
Route Army units was openly advocated. Insidiousness was more
difficult to resist than outright hostility. It must be mentioned
here that the Kuomintang Party structure is modelled on the
same pattern, though different in principle, as the Communist,
and that both derived from the Russian. The political idiom both
used, of ‘struggle’ and ‘national salvation’, of ‘cadres’ and ‘Party
leadership’, could at times confuse the lower levels, and the
verbal resemblance increased as the united front established a
foundation of common slogans.
‘It is most essential to maintain absolutely independent Com-
munist Party leadership in what was originally the Red Army and
in all guerilla units, and Communists must not show any vacilla-
tion on this matter of principle.’ Thus ran the directive, attributed
to the CC (Central Committee) but written by Mao. He also
wrote Combat Liberalism* in that confused period of wrangling,
aimed at people ‘tolerant’ to the point of losing all view of
principle in making deals with that arch-cunning politician
Chiang Kai-shek. Mao wanted to stress criticism, even of friends,
when political principles were involved. The old Cliinese habit
of ‘personal relations’, constantly invoked to dim the issues,
must be done away with. Chiang was adept at utilizing traditional
teacher-pupil relations, Confucian emotional ties, to create a
mental fuzziness in which erosion of principles could take place.
After this arduous establishment of a united front in the autumn
of 1937, Mao was to be burdened with the return of Wang
Ming from Moscow; a Wang Ming who still understood nothing
of the Chinese situation but who now, from the ultra-leftist line
of 1930-1934, had moved to the right in uncritical praise for the
‘leader of the resistance to Japan, Chiang Kai-shek’. The return of
Wang Ming to China is described in Chang Kuo-tao’s memoirs.
It was a grey, still autumn day. Mao, Chang Kuo-tao and some
others were conferring (pleasantly) when the drone of a plane was
heard. At first they thought it a Japanese bomber, but the
plane was trying to land. They went to the midget airport; out of
the aircraft, a Russian one, stepped Wang Ming. Mao had not
been told beforehand of Wang Ming’s return. Li Teh (Otto
* Selected Works, vol. II, dated September 7, 1937-
THE YENAN PERIOD
387
Braun) was to depart from Yenan on the same Russian plane
some days later.
As soon as Wang Ming returned, he set himself up against Mao.
and in December 1937 published A Key to Solving the Present
Situation, which proposed a complete merger of the Red forces
with the Kuomintang. Thus the struggle within the Party over
the united front policies continued, or began all over again, if it
had ever stopped. Wang Ming*s adherents now re-formed their
ranks. They recalled the resolution adopted on December 20,
193 5 » by the Central Committee (with Mao dissenting) which had
used the phrase ‘a government of national defence’; Wang
Ming sought, with his new article and with the prestige of the
Comintern behind him, to widen the scope of dissent. The
organizational aspect of the two-line struggle, in which key
positions would be held by one or the other faction, would
explain why, for so long, Mao’s authority in Yenan was contested.
On September 29, 1937, in a report. Urgent Tasks Following the
Establishment of Kuomintang-Commnnist Co-operation, Mao took
up the question of leadership. He recalled that it was the CCP
(through Mao himself) who had called for a united front as far
back as 1932. The united front must be extended ‘to all parties and
groups, people in all walks of life and all armed forces ... a united
front of all patriots’. On November 12, he again spoke to activists
in Yenan. The speech, now entitled The Situation and Tasks in the
Anti-Japanese War After the Fall of Shanghai and Taiyuan, was
another extensive explanation of the situation. He exposed
‘capitulationism’ and ridiculed it. ‘It [the speech] met with
immediate opposition from the right opportunists in the Party,
and not until the sixth plenary session of the Sixth Central
Committee in October 1938 (almost a year after) was the Right
deviation basically overcome,’ is the notice printed as footnote
to this report in Mao’s Selected WorksA This euphemism means
the renewed Wang Ming opposition which was stung into
open combat by Mao’s hard-bitten, effective, and withering
prose: ...We have the uneven theoretical level among Com-
munists; the fact that many of our Party members lack the
* Selected tVorks, vol. II.
388
THE MORNING DELUGE
experience of co-operation between the two parties gained
during the Northern Expedition; the fact that a large number of
Party members are of petty bourgeois origin; the reluctance of
some Party members to continue a life of bitter struggle; the
tendency towards unprincipled accommodation with the
Kuomintang in the united front; the emergence of a tendency
towards a new type of warlordism in the Eighth Route Army
'We must sharply pose the problem of ti^ho is to lead...' Thus
Mao Tsetung challenged Wang Ming to a strenuous, prolonged
debate, which would only be resolved in 1945.
Historically, events went in the direction Mao had predicted.
Whereas in 1937 the Red armies were weak, the cadres insuiEcient,
and many overawed by Chiang’s power and military might, by
October 1938 the situation had changed radically. Chiang had
suffered defeat after defeat, losing swiftly Shanghai, Nanking, the
big cities, centres of his power; all of North China. His crack
regiments vanished; his government was moved from Nanking to
Wuhan in early 1938, but Wuhan was relinquished in that
October; Canton also fell that month. The Chiang government
refugeed in Chungking, in far-off Szechuan. Chungking would
remain Chiang’s capital until the end of the Sino-Japanese war
in 1945.
The Kuomintang was thus proved militarily useless, not only
because of incompetence, callous mistreatment of its soldiers— the
vast majority died of malnutrition and disease, not in fighting—
and corruption, but also because of Chiang’s own lack of any
fighting will, and his policies of deliberate retreats and with-
drawals. By October 1938 the Communist armies, though still
small, had become vitally stronger, and were fighting the
Japanese with Mao-taught guerilla tactics. They had expanded
and, following the plans drawn by Mao Tsetung and the
Revolutionary Military Council in the summer of 1937, established
guerilla areas and bases behind the enemy lines. Not Chiang but
Mao was pinning down Japanese divisions; and if in Chungking
the press was silent on Communist successes, it was not so in
Japan, where the high military command and even the news-
THE YENAN PERIOD
389
papers, such as the Asahi^ began to hint at Communist prowess.
By October 1938 Chiang Kai-shek was thinking again in terms
of an extended truce with Japan. German and British diplomats in
China were already functioning as go-betweens. This was the
time of Munich in Europe, the appeasement of Hitler by Great
Britain and France, the sacrifice of Czechoslovakia. All this faced
the USSR with an alarming situation. The prospect of a coalition
against Russia, with France, England and Hitler on the western
front, Chiang and the Japanese on the eastern front, was un-
pleasantly near. Moscow’s attitude towards Mao changed.
Russian news agencies waxed fulsome in praise of the heroic
guerillas, immobilizing ‘vast numbers’ of Japanese troops. There
would not be, however, military aid from the Soviet Union to
the Communist guerillas. All the military aid that came from
Russia by an overland route built from 1936 to 1938 went to
Chiang Kai-shek’s armies. Mao was to make the point that
guerilla forces arm themselves chiefly by capturing weapons
from the enemy; self-replenishment is one of the abiding principles
of guerilla warfare; the Red armies fought the Japanese with
Japanese weapons. But the change in Moscow did produce, in
the Wang Ming faction, weakening of hostility. The firm ground
of the Comintern and Moscow was proving shifting sands.
By the end of 1938 many Party members who had sided with
Wang Ming came over to Mao’s side; among them was Liu
Shao-chi, who is mentioned* by Mao specifically: ‘Comrade Liu
Shao-chi has rightly said that if “everything through the united
front were simply to mean through Chiang Kai-shek ... it would
mean unilateral submission.* This sentence points to the ascend-
ancy of Liu Shao-chi in the Party; an ascendancy which began
when Liu decided to join Mao and to reject capitulationism.
By the summer of 1938 Chang Kuo-tao had gone over to Chiang
Kai-shek, and this also weakened Mao’s opponents. At a talk in
Lushan attended by his most trusted mihtary officers, Mao
revealed Chiang’s plan (made in July 1937) to ‘reduce the Com-
munist Party and Army strength by two-fifths during the war*. He
* The Question of Independence and Initiatirc Within the United Front {NovembcT 5,
1938), Selected Works, vo!. II.
390
THE MORNING DELUGE
exposed the new types of warlordism’ in the Eighth Route
Army— undisciplined use of troops without reference to the
Central Committee — and individuahstic heroism, taking pride
in being given appointments by the Kuomintang’ (this pointed
to Peng Teh-huai and possibly in some measure to Chu Teh.
Measures were taken to uphold the principle of ‘independence
and initiative within the united front’. The refusal to admit
cadres of the Kuomintang, the rebuttal of ‘parhamentarism*
proposed by certain Party members (which meant a system of
people’s representatives, but elected by KMT organizations),
the correction of the tendency ‘towards excessive accommodation
... in certain base areas’, the re-establishment of political com-
missars from the Communist Party, strengthened Party unity,
said Mao. ‘Many people inside and outside the Party ... belittled
the important strategic role of guerilla warfare and pinned their
hopes on regular warfare alone.’ To teach guerilla war, Mao
wrote in May 1938 his Problems of Strategy in Guerilla War
Against Japan and On Protracted War, which together with
Problems of Strategy in China^s Revolutionary War (December
1936) are major military works which were destined to educate
the Red Army and the cadres in people’s war.
There was also the matter of the New Fourth Army, made up of
the guerillas who had remained behind in the Central Base and in
the area of Chingkangshan, and not participated in the Long
March. In 1937, Chen Yi went to find them. He travelled dis-
guised as a merchant, his corpulence and Jovial wit lending
itself to this role. The guerillas at first would not believe him, and
nearly killed him as a traitor when they heard about a united
front with Chiang. (Chen Yi was also pursued by a tiger, and
hid in a cave.) He finally persuaded the guerillas to reassemble.
Chiang had agreed to their presence, but stipulated that their
strength remain at 15,000 and that they refrain from any expan-
sion; they were to move to Anhwei province, and he also tried
to incorporate them in his own troops. ‘We have taken special
care not to concentrate forces regardless of circumstances which
would suit the Kuomintang,’ wrote Mao ... ‘Not to accept Kuo-
mintang appointees ... to be vigilant against a sudden attack by
THE YENAN PERIOD
391
the Kuoniintang ... Our chief purpose is to extend the ground
already won and realize the positive aim of winning the masses ...
the deepest source of the immense power of war lies in the masses.’
But from the very start, the presence and the activities of the New
Fourth Army would give Chiang much concern. Tlicy were too
near the vital centres of liis own influence, astride the lower
reaches of the Yangtze river.
Quite openly, then, Mao was not going to obey Chiang. The
united front meant united action against the Japanese, but with
‘independence and initiative’ in Communist hands, with the
leadership of the masses in Communist hands, with freedom for
the expansion and spread, both in territory and in political
ideology, of Coimnunist power, with an entirely new and
masterly strategy of warfare, decided by the Communists, not
by Chiang. Hence, within the united front the question of
seizure of power was implied; this both Mao and Chiang under-
stood very well. The outcome would depend on Mao Tsetung,
on his work of that period, his vision and grasp, and his boldness.
Hence the Yenan period remains an enduring lesson in the skills
of war, diplomacy and politics; for the Chinese Revolution, the
foundations of its victory.
After his return from Russia in late 1937, Wang Ming held
several appointments — on the Central Committee, in the Polit-
buro, and as one of the seven Communist members of the liaison
committee organized under Chou En-lai to deal with united
front matters between the Kuomintang and the Communist
Party. His wife, Mcng Ching-shu, also on the Central Committee,
became the president of Yenan W^omen’s University. The liaison
offices functioned in Sian, and also in Wuhan till it fell in October
1938; then the conimittee moved to Chungking along with
Chiang s government. This liaison committee had a press section
to deal with foreign and Chinese newsmen. Chou En-lai was
chief spokesman, but Wang Ming did not refrain from issuing
statements amd making speeches for the Party, going counter to
Central Committee resolutions when he chose.
The ideological struggle was ‘severe’, writes the historian
392
THE MORNING DELUGE
Hu Chiao-mu. Those responsible for ‘the third left line’ became
rightist opportunists , took independent action against party
rules in their work, issued statements without “approval”, thought
the Communist army was too small ... decided the Kuomintang
should assume the leadership ... denied the Communist Party
leadership . They also looked down on guerilla warfare tactics
and looked for ‘speedy victory*, contrary to Mao’s protracted
war; they believed ... not in the masses’, derided mass education
and mobilization. Their slogan, ‘unity of action ... a unified
command, unified programme, unified administration, unified
discipline, unified weapons’, was a pro-Chiang Kai-shek line.
Wang Ming failed, the defeats of Chiang became his own
defeat; the virulence of his faction faded, though not its long-
term, protracted hostility to Mao. Mao Tsetung nailed down the
leadership role the Communist Party should play in the war. In
October-November 1938, at the sixth plenum of the Sixth
Central Committee, he won the majority votes of the Central
Committee. His three speeches* climaxed his ideological victory,
the downfall of ‘left’ and ‘right’ factions and the rallying of the
Party in unity behind Mao.
Mao would never do things by halves. He had put up with a
good many insults, and now he swung back at his accusers, at the
accusations of chauvinism and lack of ‘international proletarian-
ism* repeatedly launched at him: ‘Only those who are politically
muddle-headed or have ulterior motives talk nonsense about ...
our having abandoned internationalism ... To separate inter-
nationalist content from national form is the practice of those
who do not understand the first thing about internationalism ...
‘The victory of the Chinese national liberation movement will be
part of the victory of world socialism, because to defeat im-
perialism in China means the destruction of one of its most
powerful bases.*
Revolution was not to be made by people who parroted empty
slogans. These were really arrogant and slothful, for they never
* Tlte Role of the Chinese Commtinist Party in the National War; The Question of
Independence and Initiative Within the United Front; and Problems of War and Strategy
(November 5 and 6, 1938), Selected Works, vol. II.
THE YENAN PERIOD
393
used their heads. Revolution was a matter of learning not only
‘the theory of Marx, Engel, Lenin and Stalin’ but also ‘our
historical heritage’. ‘It is a matter of learning to opply the theory of
Marxism-Leninism to the specific conditions of China
^Foreigti stereotypes mt 4 st be abolished, there ainst be less singing
of empty abstract tunes, and dogmatism must be laid to rest; they
must be replaced by the fresh, lively Chinese style and spirit
which the common people of China love.’ (Author’s italics.) In
these terms Mao announced his next battle, to restructure the
Party itself.
On November 6, Mao concluded the plenum with his analysis
of the role of armed struggle and its importance for the Chinese
Revolution. ‘The seizure of power by armed force, the settlement
of the issue of war, is the central task and the highest form of
revolution.’ Armed struggle, the direction of a revolutionary
Party, and the strategy of the united front were once again
asserted as the three fundamental principles for the prosecution of
revolution. They are today referred to as the ‘three precious
things’ or ‘three magic weapons’ for revolution.
At the end of the plenum, everything had swung in Mao’s
favour— Chiang’s fiascos, Moscow’s attitude, the growing strength
of the Red armies. Wang Ming had lost the battle of the united
front, but it would take many more years before his influence was
rooted out of the Party — as the Great Proletarian Cultural
Revolution was to prove.
In 1937 the slogan of ‘a government of national defence’ launched
by Wang Ming had been taken up by the Left Writers League,
whose headquarters were in Shanghai. Four writers, of whom
Chou Yang, secretary-general of the league, was to become the
most notorious, promoted it in the league. This slogan had
important repercussions upon the literature produced in left-
wing circles. The ideological struggle in the Party was thus
reflected in ‘two lines’ in art and literature; complete clarification
of these literary battles did not come until thirty years later.
The four writers, Chou Yang, Hsia Yen, Tien Han and Yang
Han-shen, who echoed Wang Ming’s theme, spreading the
THE MORNING DELUGE
394
slogan ‘a literature of national defence*, were denounced with
great asperity by the famous Lu Hsun, whom Mao read and
praised.
Lu Hsun, China’s Gorky, became a Communist rather late in a
short life. He was an intensely active, brilliant, dedicated patriot,
a fiercely honest man. He had studied medicine in Japan, but
turned to literature, and to the literary revolution. In the early
193OS he became a Communist. Mao admired him. They were
much alike in one respect -they were artists of total integrity.
There may have been correspondence between the two, though
they may not have met, except perhaps briefly at Peking University
in 1920. Mao Tsetung often quoted Lu Hsun, praised his courage,
studied his writings. Some of Mao’s essays in the 1940s show the
influence of Lu Hsun’s sharp satirical style.
When the call for a united front came from Mao Tsetung in
1932 and 1933, Lu Hsun was one of the first to respond, writing
and praising Mao’s initiative. Lu Hsun batded fascism and
reaction all his life, completely unafraid of threats, poverty or
Chiang’s power. He went on writing, protesting, encouraging
the young. He was one of those who understood Mao’s genius
and vision, for at the end of the Long March, Lu Hsun sent a
message to the CCP and Mao Tsetung: ‘The whole of the
Chinese people look towards you for their salvation.’
Lu Hsun took great exception to the term ‘literature of national
defence’, derided ‘the four guys’ (as he called them) who pro-
moted it, and launched the slogan ‘a literature for the revolution-
ary masses in resistance to Japan’. Lu Hsun also denounced wit
pungent irony, in letters and essays, Chou Yang and Hsia Yen as
‘bureaucrats and officials of literamre’. They in turn never
forgave him.* . ,
The two slogans meant not only two different concepts ot ttie
united front but two entirely different political and ideological
backgrounds for literary production. Since literature and art, in
Marxist terms, are an inherent part of the superstructure (t e
* From .in interview by the author with Lu Hsun’s wife. Madame Hsu Kuang-
ping, in July 1966. Selected works of Lu Hsun have been translated by tnc
Foreign Languages Press, Peking.
THE YENAN PERIOD
395
realm of ideas, behaviour, expression being inseparable from the
physical base, the political, economic and social system), one
slogan represented a capitulationist, ‘revisionist’, ‘bourgeois’
line, the other a revolutionary — Mao’s — line. In 1970 and 1971
long articles were still appearing in Chinese newspapers on ‘the
two lines in art and literature’, denouncing Chou Yang and his
three colleagues (all of whom had obtained high positions in the
CCP) and exposing the ‘Wang Ming line’ of the late 1930s.
What is even more thought-provoking is that the opposition to
Mao should have survived, impervious to time and to the
triumph of the Revolution, among the same people and for so
long. There can be no understanding of the Great Proletarian
Cultural Revolution without study of these problems of thirty
years or more ago.
In November 1938, with a majority of the Party behind him,
with Chiang proved ‘a big straw bag’ in battle, with Chang
Kuo-tao turned renegade, with Moscow eulogizing the Com-
munist guerilla victories, Mao was able to state: ‘We have
rejected the Kuomintang’s request to appoint its members cadres
of the Eighth Route Army, and have upheld the principle of the
Communist Party’s absolute leadership of the Eighth Route
Army.’ The heart of the matter.
And none too soon. For in early 1939 the unstable marriage
between the two parties, always under strain, suffered an in-
creasing number of what were subduedly labelled ‘frictions’.
Chiang had already in 1938 issued documents entitled Methods of
Dealing with the CCP and Methods of Restricting the Activities of the
Alien Party. Armed clashes began in April 1939. The ten divisions
of Hu Tsung-iian, quartered in Shensi to keep watch over the
Red base, now attacked and overran about one quarter of its
territory, though this territory had been guaranteed inviolate
under the administration of the Communists. Hu Tsung-nan
erected rings of blockhouses and deep trenches around the base on
three sides, leaving open only the side that faced the Japanese,
who themselves were to start blockading the Red base in 1940.
But the struggle to establish, then to maintain, this apparently
THE MORNING DELUGE
396
short-lived and none too successful united front is not to be
validated by success in getting on with Chiang Kai-shek. This
was the least of Mao's worries at any time; nor was it the purpose
of the united front to placate him. The success of the united
front was in obtaining, through this avowedly unstable alliance,
leadership of the majority of the population. The rallying of as
many of the bourgeoisie as possible, under the pressure of
resistance to Japan, made the Party acceptable as a national
leader; its role in the social revolution was thus enhanced. Each
one saw in the CCP what he wanted to see. The policies followed
during the years at Yenan would be different from those of
previous Red bases. But there was never any cheating; all this
was clearly spelled out; never did the Communists stoop to
defining themselves as ‘agrarian reformists'; one has only to
read Mao Tsetung’s assertion that the final aim, Communism,
would never be given up, to know it.*
The appraisal of the united front by some writers who judge its
success or failure by the relations between the two parties,
relations which deteriorated so rapidly, is therefore incorrect—
this was never the objective. Only by the measure in which the
Communists were able to build up their strength, and win the
masses, through the united front can its success be judged; and in
this, under Mao's leadership, the CCP was startlingly successful.
By creating this charismatic, national, immensely attractive
image (and openly announcing each step) the CCP was able to
build up strength and win the masses. But it is doubtful whether
this success could have been achieved without the persistance,
vision and methods of Mao Tsetung.
* ‘Communists will never give up their ideal of socialism and of Communism ;
they will reach it by going through the stage of the bourgeois-democratic
revolution.*
14
Profile of Yenan
The Yenan period — as the years from 1935 to 1947 were to be
known — is the most important in Mao Tsetung’s life. The
development of his creative thinking, his methodology of
revolution, his ‘style’, his major philosophical and military works
date from that time. They are the years in which he rebuilt the
Chinese Communist Party and Army as revolutionary instru-
ments with a total adaptation to the Chinese situation. The slogans
of Yenan, the spirit of Yenan, the teacliing and writing Mao
Tsetung accomplished at Yenan, are China’s renewal patterns,
models not confmed to a small group but known and practised
by each Chinese man, woman and child. This was the time when
Mao Tsetung led his people into their own heritage, when the
Thought of Mao Tsetung was first structured, became a working
system, a science of revolution.
The Shensi-Kansu-Ninghsia base (known for short as Shen-
Kan-Ning, or as Yenan from the name of its capital after Decem-
ber 1936), was more than Chingkangshan or Juichin. It was not
only a Red base, with a government and social system different
from Chiang s, but it became the emblem of love of country,
incorruptibility, resistance to Japan, social justice. Blockade or
no blockade, students and intellectuals, from 1936 on, flocked to
Yenan, across Japanese-held territory, across Kuomintang barbed
wire and trenches. If caught they were murdered, tortured, put in
concentration camps. Yenan is 300 miles from Sian, and daily the
gauntlet of secret police and the blockade was run by youngsters
who left home to walk the dangerous roads to Yenan because it
was the symbol of the future.
Everything was lacking in 1935, when the Red Army arrived
after the Long March. Devastating floods poured down the gullies
397
THE MORNING DELUGE
398
of the loess cliffs, and if there was not flood there was drought.
Famine stalked the land two years out of three (in 1929, 2*5
million people out of the 9 million in Shensi province died of
starvation). The harvests were scanty and millet was the staple
food. There were no paper, books, wood for furniture, or
machinery, no industries, no resources except salt in Ninghsia —
difficulties of transport made it very costly— and coal. Yet Yenan
was to become the tough, secure and prestigious base where
Mao trained, educated, and disciplined over a hundred thousand
cadres, and an army of 2 milhon men was to be controlled from
here. From Yenan was to issue the most formidable unity and
power that China ever had. For a decade Yenan pinned down 50
per cent of the Japanese armies in North China (2 million men),
80 per cent of the puppet Chinese armies organized by the
Japanese (another 2 million men).
The Red Army had sappers developed from the toughened
miners of Anyuan and Pinghsiang who had followed Mao all
through the years and the Long March (some are still with him
today). Through guerilla actions and later through the friendly
Manchurian officers of Chang Hsueh-liang, the Army obtained a
few lathes, printing blocks, sewing machines. With these began
the basic ‘industries’ necessary for survival.
The Kuomintang started to blockade Yenan in earnest in 1939-
All subsidies stopped. Attacks against the base increased in
frequency throughout 1939 and 1940, to culminate in the mas-
sacre of the New Fourth Army in January 1941* After the
summer of 1940, because of the ill-conceived Hundred Regi-
ments offensive carried out by Peng Teh-huai against the Japanese,
the Yenan base had to withstand rigorous blockades and reprisal
attacks from both the Kuomintang and Japan. In 1941 and 1942.
imitating Chiang’s blockhouse tactics, the Japanese erected 7,70°
fortifications and made Chinese peasants dig more than 7,000
miles of tiered trenches to surround and cut off the Red bases
behind Japanese lines and the Yenan base.
The Japanese also launched a scorched-earth drive which
reduced the bases in size and produced immense suffering and
hardship among the people. Within a 12-mile corridor around
PROFILE OF YENAN
399
each base, in areas known to be pro-Communist, all the men were
killed, the women taken away, all the houses and crops burned.
Vast tracks of land were left covered only with rubble and
charred cinders. It is estimated that 30 million civilian people lost
their lives through these ‘kill all, burn alf scorched-earth methods
of the Japanese. ‘For a while we were reduced almost to the state
of having no clothes to wear, no oil to cook with, no paper, no
vegetables, no footwear for the soldiers, and in winter, no
bedding for the civilian personnel.*
Mao’s answer was the Production Drive, launched in 1941,
which transformed the base and also was to serve as a model in
mass education in self-reliance. ‘Self-reliance* and ‘Get organized*
were the slogans. Cotton growing was established in some of the
Red bases beliind the Japanese lines. Women hid the cotton
harvest from the Japanese, hand-spun it at home for the Red
Army. This was the first time that women had collectively and
massively gone into production and were paid for their work, an
economic precedent wliich was also a social revolution.
The machines in the spinning factories newly set up were
wonders of contrivance; the belts were made of homespun
soaked in resin. Factories were installed in shacks, caves, temples.
Workshops for making batteries, wire, shoes, toothbrushes, soap
and matches and paper were established. Paper was so scarce at
first that even the rough straw paper needed for hygienic pur-
poses was severely restricted. Production in chemicals, glass and
porcelain started from a few pottery kilns; leather goods work-
shops were built. ‘Essential springs were made of coiled telephone
wire looted from the Japanese, hardened and tempered by
heating in a crucible with charcoal and old bones to 700 to 800
degrees centigrade; the shop foreman who had improvised this
was justly proud. He demonstrated the superiority of his tele-
phone wire spring which, dropped from the same height,
bounced higher than an imported sample,’ wrote Harrison
Forman in his book Report from Red China. * By 1944 there were 90
workshops employing around 20,000 men in the Yenan base, and
an arsenal employing 300 men which made explosives and
* Robert Hale, London, 1946.
400
THE MORNING DELUGE
grenades. However, most of the firearms and ammunition con-
tinued to come from enemy sources.
A general union of workers was created in 1940; in 1943 it had
55»^94 members of whom 63 per cent were farm labourers, 22
per cent handicraft workers and 15 per cent industrial workers.
By 1944 Yenan was exporting men’s socks, candles, and cloth to
the supposedly richer Kuomintang regions. It fed its people and
it clothed them; it inspired initiative and it promoted stability.
Many industries were formed with private capital and were
under private management; over half were co-operatives formed
with government loans as working capital.
In the Production Drive everyone was set to digging, hoeing,
planting, ploughing — the Army, the cadres, the Party, the
intellectuals, the officials, Mao himself All planted and hoed, dug
and spun. This ‘stupendous’ effort, as Jerome Chen* calls it,
merits study because it confirmed Mao’s policies, already put
into practice at the previous bases, for a materially self-supporting
government administration and a Red Army which was also a
production force. It turned a threatening bureaucracy of con-
sumers into producers or part-producers. During this Production
Drive in Yenan we find Mao stressing using native ways and
means, making do, ingenuity, initiative, frugality and economy —
in short, all that is now being done on an all-China scale to make
an industrial revolution with no capital but with people, their
effort and their wisdom, their zeal and their tenacity, their
awareness and their devotion to the collective.
The use of the garrisoned army battalions as a production and
labour force remains a basic feature of the Red Army. In February
1971, for instance, the Army was again commended for pro-
ducing 40 per cent more grain in 1970 than in 1969, for running
factories, workshops, plants. This tradition of the soldier being a
‘three in one’ — a worker, a soldier, and also a peasant— was
solidly implanted at Yenan, where the Army also ran co-opera-
tives in industries. The Nanniwan valley, a bare, desolate tract,
was converted by the garrisoned troops into a fertile stretch of
* Jerome Chen, Mao and the Chinese Resolution, trs. M. Bullock and J. Chen,
op. cit.
PROFILE or YF.NAN
401
fields. ‘The soldiers have on the average cultivated 18 inou
[2’75 acres] per person; and they can produce or make practically
everything: food (vegetables, meat, cooking oil), clothing
(cotton padded clothes, woollen knitwear and footwear), shelter
(cave dwellings, houses and meeting halls), articles of daily use
(tables, chairs, benches, stationery) and fuel (firewood, charcoal,
coal).’ This was Mao’s satisfied assessment in 1942, and he called
upon all to do the same. In 1944 the American Dixie mission*
was impressed by the rugged, successful self-sufficiency of Yenan.
By then, 600,000 acres of land had been opened up, and produc-
tion of cereals had doubled in the base.
In Oh Financial and Economic Problems of the Border Region, a
200-page report made in December 1944, Mao explained how
‘self-reliance, by making non-producers such as civil servants,
Army men, produce their own food, could cut down enormously
our public expenditure’. ‘The Kuomintang thought our diffi-
culties insurmountable, they daily expected our collapse.’ But it
was the KMT finances which were on the point of collapse.'}'
‘In 1941 and 1942 the supplies obtained by the Army, the or-
ganizations and the schools through their own efforts were actually
the larger part of their total requirements.’ ‘This is a miracle never
before achieved in Chinese history and forms our unshakable
material foundation.’
In December 1935 a land law was passed for redistribution of
surplus land belonging to landlords and rich peasants, but in 1937
confiscation of land was halted and rent reduction of 25 per cent
or more substituted. The peasants in most cases demanded more
reduction, so that sharing of the crop in kind, in the proportion of
30 to the landlord and 70 to the peasant, was followed in some
base areas. Usury was also controlled, but ‘not to the point where
the peasant would find it impossible to obtain loans’ (i’5 per cent
per month was set as the standard interest; the rates had been 15
to 20 per cent per month before the Red Army arrived). But none
of this could be granted ‘as a favour’. Mao insisted that the land
* David D. Barrett, Dixie Mission : The United States Army Obseri^er Group in
Yenan, 1944 (University of California Press, 1970).
7 As certain American observers reported even then.
402
THE MORNING DELUGE
reform must involve the peasantry in arousal, mobilization, for-
mation of peasant associations to elect their own leaders, to perform
rent reduction and see it enforced, though Party cadres and the
local governments of the bases would help by directives and their
presence. This remained the land reform policy till the end of 1946.
Mao had to explain* that anti-Japanese resistance and land
reform were linked ; the masses who resisted Japanese aggression
were also those who wanted a social revolution; the archaic,
feudal land tenure could not serve as foundation for a national
liberation movement. However, confiscation of landlords’ land
caused the flight of landlords to the cities, and was suspended.
Freedom to expand production in industry and commerce was
safeguarded. The number of commercial establishments in
Yenan rose from 192 to 475 during those years.
The co-operative movement in agriculture began with mutual
aid teams, semi-permanent, then permanent, sometimes affecting
a whole village. Each locality fixed its own rules concerning
working hours, accounting, remuneration (later to be known as
work points). Mao insisted that women should be included in
this scheme. ‘All women, too, should be mobilized to do a
certain amount of productive work ... Such collective mutual-aid
producers’ co-operatives should be extensively and voluntarily
organized in all the anti-Japanese base areas ... there should be
no constraint or forcing.’ Mao stressed the voluntary aspect; the
co-operatives were still based on individual economy and were
not socialism, but a step in the right direction. Twenty-four per
cent of the labour force was thus organized into mutual aid teams.
The amount of land under plough almost doubled in the
Shen-Kan-Ning base; an agriculturally deficient area, the base
became a self-sufficient production region by 1944- hi I943
rations of an average Red Army soldier were by Chinese standards
the best in China, almost 4*5 pounds of meat a month, 48 po^ds
of vegetables, 60 pounds of millet, with oil, fuel and salt— The
best-nourished troops I had yet seen.’’!' Where pay was concerned,
* See Guenther Stein, The Challenge of Red China, op. cit.
4 Harrison Forman, Report from Red China, op. cit. This is corroborate y
other American observers and newsmen who visited Yenan in 1944-
PROFILE OF YENAN
403
privates and oliicers received the same, amounting to 5 cents a
day pocket money. No distinction of grades in uniform or
trappings was allowed. The general health of the population was
also improved, though conservatism and superstition, the lack of
doctors and nurses, restricted development.
Various types of industrial co-operatives, for salt transport,
credit, and handicrafts, made for secure supplies. By 1943,
137,000 women were in spinning co-operatives, 200,000 men in
handicraft and transport co-operatives. The Army had its own
industrial and transport co-operatives, as it would have its own
food, cloth and shoe production. Under the famous New
Zealander Rewi Alley, now living in Peking, the Indusco scheme
was set up wliich established schools for technical training in
various fields, such as soap-making, tanning leather, making ropes,
shoes, matches, pots and pans. The base also issued its own money
in 1941, since no more came from the Kuomintang after 1940.
Mao did not intend land reform and the co-operatives to
remain at that ‘new democratic’ stage. ‘At the moment,’ he said,
‘there cannot be a more radical solution to the agrarian problem;
but it will become imperative one day to go further ... but only
when a truly democratic government will be in control in the
whole of China ... However,’ he added, ‘it is not impossible that
a new civil war might start when the war with Japan is ended.’*
(Author’s italics.)
The enrolment of the population in co-operatives, associations
and unions helped mass education, which was placed under the
aegis of Hsu Te-li as commissioner for education. The old teacher
of Mao at the Changsha Normal College was sixty years old in
1937. Mao wrote to him: ‘You were my teacher twenty years
ago; you are still my teacher; you will continue to be my teacher
in the future. When the Revolution failed and many members left
the Party ... you joined in the autumn of 1927 ... You have
shown ... less fear of difficulty, and more humility in learning
new things, than many younger members.’ J*
* Interview with Guenther Stein. See The Challenge of Red China, op. cit.
f Jerome Chen (editor), Mao Tse-timg Papers: Anthology and Bibliography
(Oxford University Press, London and New York, 1970).
404
THE MORNING DELUGE
But the base was of a forbidding poverty and backwardness.
In 1936 it had a 60 per cent infant mortality rate and a i per cent
literacy rate. Even in 1943 there were still a million illiterates
(half the population) and 2,000 shamans (witch doctors). By 1940,
1,341 schools and 43,625 students for the 2 million people in the
Shen-Kan-Ning base had been established. But the results of
formal schooling were poor.* Only through the Production
Drive did adult literacy classes, winter classes, self-teaching units
operate. In the building of the Red Army, education was a
powerful incentive (as was the fact that the families of Red Army
recruits had privileges such as guaranteed team help for their
fields). Recruits were taught reading and writing; because of
often wrote in sand on the ground, and
learned words by wearing paper squares showing characters on
their backs as they filed one behind the other.
In October 1944 Mao wrote: ‘A good many vestiges of feudal-
ism survive . , . These are enemies inside the minds of the people . . .
more difficult to combat than to fight Japanese imperialism.* He
advocated scattered village schools, street schools, a mass self-
education drive. In 1971 this type of street school was revived
and called Kangta, in memory of the Yenan period and the
educational innovations of those days.
The people themselves were to be aroused to ‘struggle* against
their own superstitions, unhygienic habits, and illiteracy. Parents
were asked their advice on the study programme at school, which
was linked to production. Corporal punishment was forbidden.
Hygiene, defence, and political education were integrated in the
school courses. Each school united ‘practice* with ‘theory’, which
meant rearing pigs, poultry, planting trees, digging wells as part
of the courses, A medical school and school of nursing were
started. Mao urged the doctors to go to serve the people. The
human and animal mortality rates are both very high ... doctors
should “train doctors” for the people ... [If] they do not unite
with the thousand or more doctors and veterinarians of the old
type ... they will actually be helping the witch doctors.
* See Peter J. Seybolt, ‘Tlic Yenan Revolution in Mass Education , Chitia
Quarterly, October-Dcccntbcr 1971.
paper shortage they
PROriLE or YENAN
405
In 1942 the administrative policies of the government of the
base were organized on a system of ‘the three thirds* — one third of
the seats in councils and committees, in labour unions, women’s
associations, youth corps, and other mass representation bodies
being occupied by Communists, the other two thirds by ‘pro-
gressives’ and independent members. The main object was to
secure a broad base among the people and popular support. The
slogan ‘Unified leadership and decentralized administration’
defmed the control exercised — overall authority and leadership
were concentrated in Yenan but local originality and initiative
were encouraged, a system wliich required a high level of
political education. Throughout the far-flung territories of the
bases, despite difficult communications, a single leadership pre-
vailed and the decisions of the Party were carried through. Even
if there were attempts at ‘independent kingdoms’, they never
developed into real dissidence.
The popularity of the Communist government was assured by
its honesty, its integrity, the high calibre of its cadres; by fair
distribution, by democratic procedure, by the security given to
the population, by the abolition of extortion and the low level of
taxation. This was reinforced by the help given by the Army to
peasants, welfare and education movements. Army teams dug
wells and ditches, helped in harvesting, substantiating the slogans
‘Support the Army, cherish the people’, ‘Total integration of
Army and people’. In turn, this popularity eased recruiting. ‘The
Communist government and armies are the first in modem
Chinese history to have positive and widespread popular support
... because they are genuinely of the people,’ wrote John Paton
Davies, an American observer in November 1944, one of a score
of such favourable reports on the Communist administration.
The enrolment of the population in mass organizations made for
democratic platforms for expression of opinion by the people,
and for social change. There were associations of women,
youths, peasants, workers, schoolchildren, old people; there was
even an association of loafers where the loafers met, helped to
criticize each other and themselves so as to ‘reform*!
The exaltation of the ‘wisdom of the people’, the lists of ‘labour
4o6
THE MORNING DELUGE
heroes’, the new dignity and pride conferred on the ordinary poor
peasant left memories which could not be eradicated. Suddenly
the downtrodden became important, they learned the meaning of
human dignity. The terrible massacres by the Japanese, the
vicious oppression and ruthless killings by Kuomintang troops, in
glaring contrast to the care and scrupulous democracy of the
Communist Party and Red Army, turned the support of the
population towards the Communists. By 1943 the peasants were
hailing Mao as their ‘star of salvation’.
Mao had come into the base after the Long March with 7,000
men; with the 5,000 already there, and Hsu Hai-tung’s 3,000, a
total of 15,000 men was all the base had by the end of 1935. In
1937 the Army numbered 70,000 to 80,000 men, though Chiang
only supplied arms, equipment and money for 45,000 (from
September 1937 to May 1939). The New Fourth Army had been
limited to a 15,000 maximum. This made a total of 60,000 men
for the Red Army. Yet by 1945 the Red armies numbered 910,000
men in the Communist regular forces and 2,200,000 in the militia.
This enormous expansion in seven years, unfmanced by external
sources, was not the burden it could have been since it was 70
per cent self-sufficient. (The militia were always self-sufficient
except for weapons, and constituted a feed-in reserve for the
Red Army.) In this planned overall structure, almost biological in
its concept, education of the Red Army was itself a means of
providing cadres, leaders and instructors for mass education, thus
facilitating the Revolution and army recruitment.
Mao’s directive, ‘We must spread a guerilla war over all the
large areas occupied by the enemy, converting the enemy s rear
into his front, and forcing him to fight ceaselessly throughout his
occupied areas,’ was followed. To wage guerilla warfare in-
dependently and on its own initiative* was also to mobilize the
population, to educate it, politicize it. With its Party educators
and propagandists divided and subdivided into small teams, the
Party witloin the Army spread among the villages of China, bring-
ing hope and militancy. Its first offensives were political, not
military — propaganda, land reform, education; later came the
establishment of guerilla zones, still later consolidation into bases.
PROFILE OF YENAN
407
This step-by-stcp organization of the population was entirely
dependent on the ‘fish in water’ phenomenon, conditional on the
support of the people. The elimination of local collaborators and
bandits, collection of enemy weapons, sabotage of enemy
installations became cohesive factors in wliich the people now
took the initiative. Perhaps the most outstanding and impressive
phenomenon was the gathering of intelligence by the people, as
the American observer group in Ycnan found out.* Men, women
and children became detectives, risking their lives to report on
the enemy to the ‘brother Army’.
The formation of bases behind Japanese lines began in 1937.
After the battle of Pinghsinkuan (September 1937), the 115th
division of Lin Piao and Nieh Jung-chen established, with the
massif of Wutai mountain as centre, the Shansi-Chahar-Hopei
Base Area. This was to extend into central and east Hopei pro-
vince in 1938; it spawned offshoots into the southern Hopei
plains. It finally controlled a population of around 25 million
living in 108 counties covering 309,000 square miles. In 1939 it
spread west of Peking into Jehol, into the Lianoning province of
Manchuria. This sprawl across North China was essential for
long-term strategy: the access to Manchuria. Small guerilla nuclei
were already implanted in Manchuria well before the civil war
began in 1946.
The 129th division established the Shansi-Hopei-Shantung—
Honan Base Area, with the Taihang mountains as its centre. It
was a very large area of two sectors, one of 85,000 square miles
with 7 million inhabitants and 59 counties, and one of 122,000
square miles, ii8 counties and 18 million inhabitants. The Shansi-
Suiyuan base, established by the 120th division, barred the
Japanese advance into Mongolia; and the Shantung base, first
organized by local Communist cadres, was so successful that by
1943 the Communists controlled over half the province and there
were half a million militia. Shantung army recruits were used
extensively in Manchuria (almost 28 million out of Manchuria’s
* See David D. Barrett, Dixie Mission: The United States Army Observer Group
in Yenan, 1944, op- cit.
. Communist areas of North Chin
PROFILE or YEN AN
409
30 million people came originally from Shantung province).
The Central China Base Area, organized by the New Fourth
Army in the lower Yangtze basin, operated in two routes, one
south of the Yangtze river and the other north, in Anhwei
province. The New Fourth Army was plagued with diificulties,
not the least being that its second in command Msiang Ying, vice-
chairman at the Juichin base (with Chang Kuo-tao) when Mao
was chairman, was one of the men who sided with Chang Kuo-
tao and the ultra-left (which, let us not forget, became right !)
against Mao s military ideas in Juichin. He had been left behind in
1934 when the Long March began, and proved a courageous
man even if not always very intelligent, unyielding, and some-
what inclined to stubbornness. Hsiang continued averse to Mao’s
suggestions, though as a good Communist he had condemned
Chang Kuo-tao’s defection. He differed with Mao on the con-
duct of operations for the New Fourth Army; thought a policy of
‘appeasement’ ofChiang was best. Hsiang Ying’s ‘trust’ in Chiang
did not save him when in January 1941 the New Fourth Army
elements south of the Yangtze were ambushed by Chiang forces
and 9,000 slaughtered, including Hsiang Ying. This massacre was
to mark the high point of Kuomintang attacks upon the Com-
munists during the Sino-Japanese war.
Then there were the South China bases in Kwangtung, where
the movement had been strong in 1927. The Pearl river column
was formed in 1941 and, by I 944 » 10 million people were in small
base areas scattered across Kwangtung and Kwangsi provinces,
‘Communists never die’ became a saying among the South
China peasants when they saw their resurrection.
In Hainan Island the entry of the Japanese in 1939 also saw the
emergence of Communist guerillas, and by 1945 eight out of the
19 counties of the island were under Red control.
The physical splaying out of the bases provided a network of
Communist administration, a ‘state witliin a state’ effect, well
before the civil war with Chiang started again. But a high
political level in cadres was essential to keep this geographical
sprawl united by an ideology stronger than distance or time. To
this cadre training Mao devoted an enormous amount of his days
410
THE MORNING DELUGE
and his work; for this purpose, as soon as he had reached the
base after the Long March, he began writing whole courses in
philosophy (dialectics), military matters (strategy and tactics),
economics and politics. But to keep the Party in command of the
guns meant Party cadres not only politically educated but also
imbued with military knowledge. ‘The popularization of military
knowledge is an urgent task for the Party and the whole country.
I deem it imperative that we arouse interest in the study of
military theory and direct the attention of the whole membership
[of the Party] to the study of military matters.’
Army leaders would publicly criticize themselves for mis-
behaviour of their soldiers towards the local population, en-
courage the local peasantry to report misdeeds. These educational
disciplines are now enshrined in the traditions of the Chinese
Revolution and promote the solidarity essential to the system.
The soldiers’ clubs, instituted at Sanwan immediately after the
Autumn Harvest Uprising, were revived during the Yenan
period. They had been abolished in Juichin in 1932.
Mao Tsetung, as chairman of the Revolutionary Military
Council and top man in the Politburo, combined the Party-
Army hierarchy in one person. This unusual combination of both
military and Party strategy was to be highly successful, for Mao
would now, in dais backward area, forge the most efficient
weapon for military and political triumph that the world has yet
seen.
The effectiveness of the Red guerillas in dealing with the Japanese
is evidenced by documents from the Japanese military command
in China. ‘General Nishio’s chief of staff admitted at an army
briefing that the Chinese Communist forces had filled a power
vacuum in northern Shansi, in Hopei, in most of Shantung and
in north Kiangsu,* writes Chalmers Johnson.* The intense anti-
Japanese attitude on the part of the Chinese (Communist)
armies is beyond dispute.’ Of 15,000 engagements of the Japanese
* See Chalmers Johnson, Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power: 77(e
Emergetice of Revolutionary China (Oxford University Press, Lon on,
1962J
PROFILE OF YENAN
4II
armies from 1937 to 1945, wrote the Tokyo newspaper Asalii
Shimbum, 75 per cent had been fought against the Red armies.
Chalmers Johnson relates that the Bethune International Peace
Hospital,* located in the Wutai base, which had 1,500 beds, could
be evacuated at a half-hour’s notice and was in fact evacuated
twenty times. The Chinese Communists had mastered the art of
creating in Japanese-occupied areas a state of constant alert and
the mobilization of the population in techniques of sabotage.
^ From 1937 to 1945 the Red Armies would fight 92,000 battles,
inflict a million casualties, capture 150,000 prisoners (mostly
Chinese puppets — only a few hundred Japanese were captured,
most preferring to die), 320,000 rifles, 9,000 machine guns, 600
pieces of artillery; they would kill 55 high-ranking Japanese
officers and suffer 400,000 casualties ; all this without a single penny,
bullet, or pound of food supplied by the Kuomintang after 1940. ;
After the fall of Wuhan in October 1938, Chiang Kai-shek
settled into a tacit truce, a prolonged stalemate, with the Japanese,
which lasted till 1945. For the next five and a half years action on
his front would be desultory, if not make-believe, while both
concentrated on attacking the Coimnunists, almost in concert.
The passage of a good many of Cliiang’s troops and of some forty
of his high commanders to thejapanese in 1943 and 1944 furthered
this unspoken common enterprise.
But Chiang’s schemes of pursuing the civil war against the
Reds during the Sino-Japanese war were to fail. Strong popular
support for the united front, massive indignation against him
aroused by the January 1941 assault on the New Fourth Army
by his troops, and Mao’s skilful handling of the situation, his
refusal to panic or to destroy even the fictional ‘united front’, did
exert some measure of restraint. After December 7, 1941, pressure
from the United States, now involved in the war against Japan after
Pearl Harbour, and Chiang’s need of United States money also
operated as a check. Local attacks on Communists continued. In
1946 Mao s nephew, the son of Mao Tse-min, was murdered,
buried alive by Kuomintang agents.
c memory of Norman Bethune, the Canadian doctor who worked
tor the Red Army and died of septicaemia in China in 1938.
412
THE MORNING DELUGE
In 1939 Wang Ching-wei, the erstwhile radical, had gone over
to Japan, becoming head of a puppet South China government
General execration forced Chiang to condemn Wang Ching-wei,
though relations between them never stopped; the Communists
seized this opportunity to call for reinforcement of the united
front against all such traitors. This acted as a restraint on Chiang
Kai-shek. But he, W^ang Ching-wei, and the Japanese were
moving towards concerted action against the Reds, a scheme of
which Mao was aware; he warned that the danger of Chiang’s
capitulating to Japan had ‘greatly increased*. Yet ‘in no circum-
stances will the Party change its united front pohcy for the entire
period of the war of resistance against Japan*, he insisted. Some
Party members, infuriated by Chiang*s attacks, had suggested the
break-up of the united front, but Mao held firm. ‘Within the
united front our policy must be one of independence and
initiative,* he said in December 1940 ... ‘a policy neither all
alliance and no struggle nor all struggle and no alliance, but
which combines alliance and struggle ... In all cases we should
expand ... to reach out into all enemy-occupied areas and not be
bound by the Kuoniintang*s restrictions ... not ... expect official
appointments from them.* This warning went unheeded by some
commanders who still hankered for ‘official appointments’ in the
regular KMT army.*
In August 1940 occurred the Hundred Regiments offensive, a
most controversial campaign. Chiang, understandably furious
and worried over Communist Army expansion, had ordered the
Eighth Route Army, its commander-in-chief and second in
command, Chu Teh and Peng Teh-huai, to stay north of the
Yellow river, allotting them Hopei province to expand in. What
sudden thrust of ambition, what spirit of recklessness induced
Peng Teh-huai suddenly to switch from Mao’s policy of guerilla
warfare to a blitzkrieg attempt? Mao had written in On Pro-
tracted War.'f ‘Our strategy should be to employ our main forces
in mobile warfare over an extended shifting and indefinite front,
* This represented a form of corruption of the Red Army whicli Mao
strenuously denounced.
f May 1938. Schrtcil Works, vol. II.
PROFILE OF YF.NAN
413
a strategy ... featured by swift attack and withdrawal, swift
concentration and dispersal. Wc must avoid great decisive
battles in the early stages of the war, and must first employ
mobile warfare gradually to break the morale, the fighting spirit,
and the military efficiency of the living forces of the enemy.’ The
Hundred Regiments offensive was precisely the contrary.
Perhaps irritation at the elusive, slow attrition of guerilla
methods, a desire to do some real fighting’, to ‘test Japanese
strength’ led to the decision which was taken by Peng without the
approval of Mao Tsetung.* It may also be that the offensive was
stimulated by the new Japanese anti-guerilla strategy of 1939, in
which blockhouses and trenches, moats and high walls along
railway tracks and highways were built to blockade and break
up the Comntunist base areas.
On the night of August 20, 1940, 115 regiments of the Eighth
Route Army attacked all the communication lines of the Japanese
m North China. The railways were cut; the coal mine of Ching-
hsing which the Japanese used was sabotaged; bridges and tunnels
and railway stations were destroyed. Between August and
December 20,000 Japanese and 18,000 puppet troops were put
out of action, more than 300 miles of railway lines destroyed, 281
Japanese officers captured.
In retaliation the Japanese then started their scorched earth
P , behind Japanese lines were reduced by
alf in size and population ; hardly a village was left standing in
certain districts. The savagery and terror of the Japanese attacks
were unprecedented, and the severe blockade of Yenan by the
Japanese which ensued almost crippled the Red regime. Only
through the Production Drive launched by Mao was Yenan saved.
The massacre of the New Fourth Army by Chiang Kai-shek’s
military commanders occurred in January 1941. Chiang had
ordered the New Fourth Army, which he also accused of ex-
panding, to move and cross the river northward; Hsiang Ying
nni Hundred Regiments offensive
might ha^^bem Ch'’ ^ approved by ‘someone’ in the Pobtburo. This
offf^ve wasT^hnvT as secretary-general. The Hundred Regiments
tration of a suneH of attacks all over the place’ instead of the ‘concen-
P or force to annihilate a weaker enemy, as Mao’s tactics indicated.
414
THE MORNING DELUGE
obeyed Chiang’s orders, sending the bulk of the troops north,
leaving only 4,000 troops, 3,000 pohtical workers, 2,000 medical
personnel and their families, at headquarters. It was while this
contingent of about 10,000 was leaving headquarters, inade-
quately protected, that it was attacked by 40,000 Kuomintang
troops. Nine thousand Communists perished in a battle lasting
about ten days, Hsiang Ying among them.
On January 17, 1941, the Kuomintang government in Chung-
king announced the dissolution of the New Fourth Army for
‘breach of military discipline*. A wave of terror began; non-
Communist progressives fled, liaison offices of the united front
were closed; flare-ups between troops took place almost every-
where; it looked as if Chiang would start another ‘1927* massacre
... But Mao stuck to his united front pohcy, though criticizing
the Kuomintang and castigating the action taken, which he said
had been incited by ‘the pro-Japanese chque’ whose ‘towering
crimes* would be condemned by all. He did not forgo the united
front, in spite of divided opinion within the CCP. Had he yielded,
it would have been easier for Cloiang to mount a large-scale
assault on Yenan, at that moment seriously enfeebled by the
blockades.
Such was the indignation throughout China at this action,
public opinion condemned Chiang so strongly, so much sym-
pathy went to the Communists, that Chiang became uneasy.
Even Western newsmen and diplomats criticized Chiang Kai-
shek. Mao called on Chiang to ‘rein in on the brink of the
precipice and stop your provocations*, asked once again for
democratic freedom for the people.
In a way, the Japanese-Chiang attacks created the conditions
necessary for the success of the Production Drive and its con-
comitant mental and educational campaigns; otherwise the
incentives to arouse the people might have been lacking. Even
without these attacks, a pattern of material and spiritual mobiliza-
tion was essential to make cadres accept the hardships an
discipline which in turn moulded them into good Party members.
By 1943, after two gruelling years of blockade, the Production
Drive had saved Yenan and the bases; the Red Army was stronger
PROFILE OF YENAN
415
than ever; all loss of territory had been made good, and further
territory liberated from the Japanese, who now could no longer
maintain so many troops to garrison the vast territory, since they
were engaged in war in Southeast Asia after the Pearl Harbour
attack in December 1941. By 1945, ten years after the end of the
Long March and Mao’s arrival in North Shensi with 7,000
ragged men, there were 19 Red bases in 9 provinces, and the
population under Communist administration was around 100
million people. Mao’s ‘struggle and alliance’ policies within the
united front, his economic, political and military leadership,
were vindicated.
15
Mao Tsetung:
The Man and the Teacher in Yenan
Mao is not an enigma. He is a fullness, a nation man, incarnating
his epoch and people. The Revolution made Mao as much as Mao
made the Revolution. The life of Mao is not only his life but also
the representation of a period in China; of this Mao has always
been conscious. He is a man of many contradictions: a classics
scholar who swears and spits like a peasant; a health addict who
keeps on chain-smoking; a being full of humour and fun who is
deadly serious, candid and shrewd, naive and nobody’s fool,
simple and complicated, scrutinizing and meticulous yet forgetful
and negligent of personal attire; patient with the patience of a
history maker, yet who will not brook a minute’s delay when the
time has come to act.
Ten thousand years are too long,
Seize the day, the hour!
In Juichin and in Yenan, Mao Tsetung continued to call on
peasants. He would squat by the roadside with them, or sit under
a tree, and converse for hours, or walk with them talking and
waving his arms.* And at no time was he more himself than
when, completely unselfconscious, he listened attentively, soaking
in knowledge.
By 1935 Mao’s life had become so imbricated with the Chinese
Revolution that it is impossible to separate them; he is so much of
a piece with his work, what he thinks and does is so much the
Revolution, that to dissect him from history is to lose the di-
mension of history as well as to thin the man to a shade. The
Revolution was his bone and flesh and blood, brain and power
* Interview with Chen Chang-fong, Mao s orderly, 197^*
416
33- Last days of the Kuoniintnng. Above, street scene in Nanking as the Nationalist
government fled. Below, a bank rush in Shanghai
34 - Mao Tsctung proclaims the
People’s Republic of China, Peking,
October i, 1949. Next to him is Chen
Yi; at far right, Chou En-Iai
35. The People’s Liberation Army
arrives in Nanking, April 1949
37- Mao Tsctung with Uulgatiin and Stalin in Moscow in the winter of 1949-1950
38. General Wu Hsiu-chuan and (extreme left, behind him) Chiao Kuan-hua of
the People’s Republic of China at the United Nations, November 27, 1950. In the centre,
Kenneth Younger, United Kingdom; right, John Foster Dulles, United States
\CELAND
MAO tsetung: man and teacher in yenan 417
and reason for living. Edgar Snow had already observed, not
only in Mao but in other revolutionaries, that childhood memories
were about ‘I’, but when revolutionary fervour took hold it was
‘we’, and ordinary feelings, sentiments, details of personal life
became faint, colourless, effaced from memory, in the passionate
common enterprise which was life, all life. ‘We think and cat and
drink and sleep revolution,’ a dedicated revolutionary said.
‘This is a world genius, he will change the world,’ Norman
Bethune had said after meeting Mao Tsetung.* His ability to
transport others into his own realm of vision was part of his
charisma as a leader.
Snow described Mao in 1936 as a ‘gaunt, rather Lincolnesque
figure’. His thick black hair had grown long, but after 1940 he
seems to have worn it much shorter — the same time he started
putting on weight. He had large, searching eyes — his best
feature — and ‘an intellectual face of great shrewdness ... The
story of Mao’s life was a rich cross-section of a whole generation,
an important guide to understanding the sources of action in
China.’
Snow, like so many others, was aware of Mao’s personal
magnetism, ‘a solid elemental vitality ... the uncanny degree to
which he synthesized and expressed the urgent demands of
millions of Chinese ... the simplicity and naturalness of the
Chinese peasant, with a lively sense of humour and a love of rustic
laughter. His laughter was even active on the subject of himself
and the shortcomings of the soviets ... He was plain-speaking
and plain-living ... he combined curious qualities of naivete with
incisive wit and worldly sophistication ... An omnivorous reader,
a deep student of philosophy and history, a good speaker, a man
with an unusual memory and extraordinary powers of con-
centration, an able writer, careless in his personal habits and
appearance but astonishingly meticulous about details of duty, a
man of tireless energy, a military and political strategist of
considerable genius.’
Though he could be uncommonly patient, Mao could also
expose to merciless ridicule those ‘leaders’ in the Party who, with
* Papers of Dr Norman Bethune, seen by the author in Sian, 1971.
THE MORNING DELUGE
418
arrogance and the use of slogans, overawed and misled the run of
devoted Party cadres, ‘the little ones’. He could rage and curse,
and yet patiently explain, over and over again, the same things.
He would never relent against ideological deviations, yet would
work for years with his enemies and get the better of them in the
end.
There are many photographs of Mao, in patched trousers,
worn and baggy jackets, pockets always deformed by books and
papers. There are also many reminiscences of interviews with
him, of their length —sometimes lasting all night, of Mao’s
untiring passion for explanation down to the last detail. He would
join in the fun of parties, laugh at theatricals, in photographs he
has a habit o£fwt trying to occupy the centre of the picture. Anna
Louise Strong has left us a charming word picture of Mao dancing
to a timing of his own — he is not a good dancer— of children
running in and out of his cave while he worked. There is a kind
of childish, impish gaiety about Mao, but it can change into
deadly seriousness in a second.
Mao’s political intelligence explains his command of the
Communist Party, but not the real affection in which he is held
by the men of the Army and the country people, wrote Edgar
Snow. In speaking, he has a way of presen ting a most complicated
subject so that even the uneducated man can seem to understand
it. He never talks above the heads of his audience but he never
talks down to them either. There is a real flow of intimacy
between him and the people. He always seems to be in contact.
By 1940, a little more portly (no longer on starvation diet), his
hair clipped short, he was still the mixture of peasant and intel-
lectual, the unusual combination of real political shrewdness and
earthy common sense, full of homely idioms and instances
suddenly flashing into classic poetry; still the student of world
events and the political analyst, hungry for knowledge. Mao can
rarely speak long without making a wisecrack or an epigram and
he seems to maintain his leadership by winning all the arguments.
He is very well read and an accomplished dialectician in debate.
He has an interesting technique. He seldom makes a fronta
attack against opposition. He delivers a blow here, another there,
MAO tsetung: man and teacher in yenan 419
he outflanks his opponents’ case, he breaks down its defences one
by one, until gradually he has it completely encompassed and it
falls apart before a last witticism, or a telling stroke of logic.
He has a lively imagination. ‘I remember once seeing him laugh
till he wept when somebody described to him a comedy he had
seen in Shanghai. It was an American movie — Charlie Chaplin
in Modern Times," writes Snow.
Mao’s sense of humour is dialectical; he sees the obverse of any
situation at once, and it is this which colours his language as it
shapes his policies. It is sometimes outrageous humour; and
though he hates to kill, he is lethal in mockery. And since he
likes to keep his opponents about, active and in positions of
usefulness (even if circumscribed in the harm they might do),
life must be unpleasant to those who, brought up in the old
traditions, have an inordinate amount of ‘face’ and prefer death
to being gibed at. But this is the peasant in Mao. The countryside
is thus made; the village has its appointed characters; as if it
needed them in a play, to act their roles; and for Mao there must
be ‘negative characters’ whose failings and errors are a reminder
of the ‘wrong lines’. He is not afraid to be disliked or hated. And
although he has very sensitive, quick feelings and emotions, and
especially a deep sense of friendship, yet when he despises some-
one it shows all the way through and all the time.
Has Mao no defects? Has he never made mistakes? He has the
defects attendant upon his qualities. He is absolutely ruthless
because he is dedicated, and absolutely convinced that he can
convince by logic, which is not always true. He has made mis-
takes; he will say that at Chingkangshan the land law he passed
was too harsh and had to be modified, that often he spoke too
hastily, though never behind people’s backs; and that, perhaps,
he too often trusted others, thinking they were, as himself,
animated by the singleness of one passion. But hard though we
try, we cannot fault him in his grand design, and since his grand
design is nearly all of himself, there is little else left to fault.
Mao is also, or rather, uniquely, an artist, an artist of Revolu-
tion, with the daemonic urge, the pitilessness towards self and
towards others of the artist. As a sculptor moulds stone or clay,
420
THE MORNING DELUGE
Mao moulded Revolution, working in that perpetual ecstasy
which forgetting self can bring forth new beauty. More than his
poems, his prose stands high in its excellence, a great clearness.
His works of politics are works of art. Yet the man Mao existed
also, with his child’s laughter, and his keen need of friends, and
never more than in Yenan. It was in Yenan, also, that Mao fell in
love again.
Among the artists and intellectuals from the big cities who came
to Yenan was an actress named Lan Ping (a pseudonym). Lan
Ping’s family name was Li. She had become a Communist Party
member in 1933 and she acted in patriotic plays, refusing well-
paid films, going against the Kuomintang government ban on
anti-Japanese demonstrations in the theatre. Lan Ping came to
Yenan in 1937 and taught dramatic art at the Lu Hsun Art
Academy; she joined the propaganda teams sent out to various
parts of the countryside to put on plays for the peasantry, and she
did research in the archives of the Military Commission.
It was at Yenan that Mao Tsetung met her. It may have been at
the Lu Hsun Art Academy — Mao went there quite frequently.
Mao’s intense interest in plays, concerts, even dances, in the
sober Yenan society ‘where he sat inconspicuously among others,
enjoying himself hugely’, in literature, poetry, good conversation,
was of course matched by an intense interest in writers, poets and
artists, especially his interest in women writers, women artists who
emancipated themselves, as he felt they had struggled hard
against the tradition that ‘actresses are all of ill-repute . The
relation of art and literature to moulding public opinion, as he
had seen it in the May 4th movement, explains the importance
he attached to these activities, as a writer and a revolutionary.
In the Sinicization of Marxism-Leninism, which was what Mao
performed at Yenan, art and literature too would serve the
people, not copy ‘foreign stereotypes’. Art and literature had no
justification in being except to serve the revolutionary cause; the
bearers of culture must serve the policies that serve the people.
It was in one of these sessions that Mao met the beautiful Lan
Ping, who fully understood him, and it was on this common
MAO tsetung: man and teacher in yenan 421
ground of art to serve the people that they fell in love. The name
Chiang Ching, which is Madame Mao*s present name, was the
name she took after reaching Yenan; some say Mao gave it to
her.
Mao’s previous wife, Ho Tzu-chen, had been married to Mao
in Kiangsi in 1931. She and Mao were divorced in 1938, and Mao
Tsetung married Chiang Ching in April 1939, a marriage which
evoked a good deal of criticism and opposition among some
Party members; it was also made the excuse for political attacks.
But the marriage gave Mao great happiness and a deeper under-
standing of the problems of art and literature. Chiang Ching was
to exercise in this sphere an abiding influence. Even though her
name was not mentioned prominently for many years, and in
fact she appeared to have entirely withdrawn from any public
role, she has worked throughout to fulfil in the realm of art and
literature the ideas of her husband, and carried out investigations
and research in theatre techniques, as well as doing political work
among artists for many years.
Above all Mao is a teacher. It is as a ‘teacher’, educating a party,
educating an army, educating a whole people, that he dominates
the Yenan scene and that his own personality is determined. It is
his adapting of Communism to China, to a ‘land of millet and
rifles’, which overshadows all other aspects of Mao. ‘All I ever
wanted to be was a teacher,’ Mao Tsetung said to his friend the
American writer Edgar Snow in 1971. ‘I do not like to hear all
this great business, about being a great leader, great helmsman.’*
He had done all he could to take away the ‘personality cult’ built
around him during the GPCR. ‘All I ever wanted to do really
was to teach.’ At the Ninth Congress of the CCP in April 1969
he had looked, with that little smile he has when making a joke,
at the chests of the delegates presented to him, each one adorned
with a medal representing him, and then he had said, ‘Give me
back my aeroplanes’ — meaning that too much metal had gone into
these badges of loyalty. Perhaps, as they waved the little Red
book, he wondered how much teaching they still needed, won-
dered how many hearts, beneath those medals, were truly given
* interview by the author with Edgar Snow, June 1971.
422
THE MORNING DELUGE
to this great passion which had taken all he had, made him what
he is.
Mao’s philosophical texts, written in Yenan, On Practice and On
Contradiction, are today Marxist classics, studied and read by every
person in China, not counting millions outside China. Thirty-
two years later, peasants and workers now literate apply the
dialectics learned by reading Mao to their work. They learn to
think like Mao’. And this embedding of dialectical materialism
into the Chinese ethos is changing the Chinese mentality. From
irrational, unscientific, feudal consciousness to the use of a
scientific approach to phenomena is a thousand years’ leap in the
history of man’s maturation of spirit. Scientific thought also
means a new balance, new ethics, a new equilibrium of being.*
Professor Joseph Needham of Cambridge University has recently
commented^ on the ‘extraordinary development of Marxist
doctrine’ in China into a ‘moral science’, thus ‘tying the building
of socialism to the Chinese concept of individual virtue’.
Nothing is born but of necessity. It was the necessity of creating
a party and an army for the Revolution, and the dearth and
penury of the Yenan base, which decided Mao to rewrite, in a
form accessible and luminous, illustrated by Chinese examples,
the basic theories of dialectics and the theory of knowledge.^:
It was his long and painful apprenticeship in the Revolution which
gave him the rich practical experience and taught him how to
teach.
The first requirement was for Party members to become
educated in dialectics, in Marxism-Leninism. But how could
this be done? In previous years Li Li-san and Wang Ming had both
sneered, ‘How can there be Marxism in the savage mountains? —
thus reserving unto themselves all wisdom and science. True, it
was hard to believe that illiterate peasants and workers would
* Sec Social Transfonnation in China: Han Suyin in Contemporary China (New
York, 1966).
t China (issued by Society for Aiiglo-Chinese Understanding, London),
November-Dccember 1970.
$ As Mao explained to Edgar Snow in an interview in 1965* Interview of Snow
by author, 1969.
MAO tsetung: man and teacher in yenan 423
grasp the ‘complicated’ philosophy of dialectical materialism.
Who would interpret and teach them the monumental works of
Marx, of Lenin, as a livitjg philosophy, a code of doing and
thinking immediately apprehended, something that would make
the heart respond and ‘rub the eyes clean’? And how would
they understand them and translate them into deeds without
long years of education? And with all the restrictions of the
material necessities, with all the fighting to do, where would they
have the time for all this reading? Yet this was an absolute necessity
for the Revolution. The contempt of the intellectuals for the
uneducated was due to their own profound alienation from
Chinese reality — perhaps they themselves did not realize their
own basic repugnance to being with their own peasantry. But
Mao had retained his strong life roots in peasant earth, merged
and integrated with the peasant masses, admired their wisdom,
yet at the same time he had become a scholar, a classicist, able to
understand the complex subtleties of philosophy. He had grasped
and used the science of dialectics as a living method, and found it
worked; now he decided that he would teach this not by
mechanically allotting texts out of Marx and Lenin to be read
(which would confuse at least 90 per cent of his students) but by
Sinicizing, acculturation, transplanting these ideas and giving
them a Chinese shape and contour, illustrating them with
examples culled from Chinese literature and history, making
them accessible and understandable by a true living interpretation,
retaining their integral essence but giving them a Chinese form.
Sinicization. Adaptation. Not dogma, but guide to action. And
this is true creation, requiring the highest intelligence, requiring
passion, experience, artistry. This is the role of the teacher, to
make the substance of knowledge living and understood. It can
only be done if the teacher himself knows his material thoroughly
and this could only be done by Mao, because he had, by 1936,
fifteen years of practice in the Chinese Revolution. Because he
had been with and of the Revolution every day and every hour
of his life. And so Mao would never teach by rote, his language
lofty and hermetic; this in itself was against Marxism, which
to be the philosophy of the masses must be understood and
424
THE MORNING DELUGE
practised by the masses. Alarxist philosophy was for the masses
to live by, to live with, to transform the world; not for a dilettante
elite to debate and give lofty commands.
To apply Marxism concretely in China so that its every
manifestation has an indubitably Chinese character becomes a
problem which it is urgent for the whole Party to understand and
solve. Foreign stereotypes must be replaced by the fresh, lively
Chinese style and spirit which the common people of China
love
The prospects were daunting. A low level of literacy; not more
than 5 per cent of the recruits for cadres and army were even
barely able to read and write in 193^- There was a lack of teachers,
of books, of translations and translators for Russian texts, and
almost no paper at all. Mao had seen, often he had noted, puzzle-
ment and bewilderment among cadres ‘taught’ Marxism-
Leninism by the Party elite; the cultural background was so
totally different that they felt lost.* Mao knew well by now that
very few Party members, even the Moscow trainees, really
knew what they were talking about. Did they not thus often
confuse and mislead those they were supposed to enlighten and to
lead?
And so Mao had not waited. As soon as he arrived in Yenan, he
had started writing his teaching textbooks, both philosophical and
military, a way of thinking and a way of doing. ‘Think, think, think
hard, use your own head.’ As he had written, ‘No investigation,
no right to speak,’ he now showed how knowledge is acquired.
He taught the Art of Thought and the Art of War.
‘Mao was an ardent student of philosophy,’ Snow writes.
‘Once ... a visitor brought him several new books on philosophy
. . . He consumed those books in three or four nights of intensive
reading, during which he seemed oblivious to everything else ...
Mao worked thirteen or fourteen hours a day, often until very
late at night, frequently retiring at two or three.’ He worked
* Not only in 1937. Even fairly recently, in interviews with cadres, the author
was told how few of them had really been able to master concepts of Hegel,
Feuerbach, and Marx, ‘but when we first read Chairman Mao’s texts, then they
became easy for us to grasp*. This acculturation problem still remains; it is only
now being bridged by a thorough education process.
MAO tsetung: man and teacher in yenan 425
as all creators do, with complete absorption, in a frenzy. /Mao’s
orderly, Chai Tso-chun, tells how his famous essay On Protracted
War was written in 1938. For the first two days Mao did not
sleep at all, even forgetting to eat, wiping his face from time to
time with a moist towel. On the fifth day he was thinner, his
eyes bloodshot, but went on writing. On the seventh day he was
so engrossed that he did not notice the charcoal fire had burned
a hole in his cloth shoes until his toes felt the pain. On the ninth
day he had finished/
It was at Kangta,* the famous anti-Japanese university for
cadres, both ‘civil’ and ‘military’ — in Yenan days these were
interchangeable— that Mao delivered his lectures. Kangta was
set up in January 1936 directly under the Politburo; Lin Piao
became its director at the age of twenty-nine. Mao paid very
great attention to Kangta, for it was to be ‘a great nursery’ for
cadres. One hundred thousand of them would be trained at
Kangta and its branch universities in the next seven years.
‘The educational policy of the college is to cultivate a firm and
correct political orientation, an industrious and simple style of
work, and flexible strategy and tactics. These are the three
essentials in the making of an anti-Japanese revolutionary soldier.
It is in accordance with these essentials that the staff teach, and the
students study.’ Mao wrote the Kangta motto: ‘United, alert,
earnest and lively’.
The recruiting for Kangta was done by posters; all who wanted
to fight Japanese imperialism and were primary school graduates
were eligible. The entrance examination was on health, cultural
level, and political ‘seriousness’. Automatically admitted to
Kangta were activists, leaders in mass struggle — such as peasant
leaders in land reform — and others sent by the Party from the
far-flung bases. A good many students and intellectuals from the
White (Kuomintang-controlled) areas also entered Kangta after
1936.
In the second semester of 1936, 1,063 cadres for the Army were
formed at Kangta, and 2,764 in the first semester of 1937. From
August 1937 to March 1938, 1,272 cadres for the Army came from
* See page 357.
426
THE MORNING DELUGE
Kangta. At the end of 1937 ^he rush of intellectuals, professors and
students from the White areas and the Japanese-occupied areas
towards Yenan altered the student composition. At the same
time as it gave a boost to the educational level of the cadres, it
introduced other problems, both of political fitness and of
relations among the cadres themselves. The increase in numbers
led to the creation of several other academic institutions in
Yenan, and to eleven branches of the original Kangta in other
bases.
From May to December 1938, 5>5^2. young intellectuals were
admitted to Kangta, and in 1939 4,900. By 1939 the students
came from all regions of China, and there were also some over-
seas Chinese. In i 942 > i 943 » however, because of changes due
to the Rectification movement,* the students admitted were
chiefly lower-level cadres of the Eighth Route Army whose
class origin was of the poor and lower middle peasantry; soldiers
and workers; in other words, the intake from intellectuals then
in Yenan was cut down to permit workers and peasants to enter.
The interest of this move lies in the fact that access to responsible
posts was thus opened to many more toilers.
In language cogent and apt, Mao taught at Kangta his
philosophical essays On Practice and On Contradiction, beginning in
July and August of 1936. Certain scholars, put off by Mao*s
total accessibility, insist that On Practice and On Contradiction are
‘simplistic’ and ‘mediocre’. They are actually masterpieces of
compression and clearness. Mao’s aim was to popularize, so that
philosophy should become ‘a sharp tool’ in the hands of the
working people, the masses, following Marx, who had said that
philosophy must get out of its lofty abode in universities for the
elite and must be understood and used by the working people.
But in doing so, Mao actually enlarged and developed the
concept of contradiction, and there is nothing simplistic in his
genial rewriting of the science of dialectical thinking in ‘the
fresh, lively Chinese style and spirit which the common people
of China love’, with an abundance of examples from Chinese
tales and poems and classics. Mao quotes Dimitrov; ‘The masses
* See the next chapter.
MAO tsetung: man and teacher in yenan 427
cannot assimilate our decisions unless we learn to speak the
language which the masses understand.’ Communism, to vindicate
itself, must be a creative way of life, practised by the vast majority
of the people, who must think dialectically, must be able to use
these scientific ‘Marxist-Lcninist’ concepts naturally, spon-
taneously. They must not be like Wang Ming ... ‘When many
scholars of Marxism-Leninism speak, they must talk about Greece
... They are not ashamed but proud when they understand very
little or nothing about their own history ... For the past few
decades, many returned students have been making tliis mistake . . .
all they know is to recite a stock of undigested foreign phrases ...
They function as phonographs but forget their own responsibility
to create something new* (Author’s italics.) ‘... No dishonesty or
conceit whatsoever is permissible ... [for] this process [of changing
the world] has already reached a historic moment in the world and
in China ... The epoch of world Communism will be reached
when all mankind voluntarily and consciously changes itself and
the world.’* Mao was himself changed by that changing world,
and in turn helped to push forward the wheel of history by adding
to man’s consciousness, by teaching how to think, teaching
others to change themselves. It is indeed remarkable that Mao had
already apprehended that all mankind had already reached the
threshold of a new era in raised consciousness, of which we see
today many obvious manifestations.
Mao always considered On Practice a more important essay than
On Contradiction, unlike Western scholars, who by now have
written a good deal about On Contradictioti but have somewhat
ignored On Practice. Yet On Practice is ‘a mighty ideological
weapon in knowledge and transformation of the world’. It was
delivered in about two hours of lectures when it had ‘taken
weeks to write’. It was entitled On the Relation Between Know-
ledge and Practice, Between Knowing and Doing.
On Practice was a refutation of the kind of Marxism-Leninism
which was being taught to the cadres by some of the ‘returned
* In i960 Mao told Edgar Snow that it was because of the need of the Party
that he had written his essays combining the essentials of Marxism with concrete
and everyday Chinese examples.
THE MORNING DELUGE
428
students’. ‘There used to be a number of comrades in our Party
who were dogmatists and ... rejected the experience of the
Chinese Revolution, denying the truth that “Marxism is not a
dogma but a guide to action” and overawing people with words
and phrases from Marxist works torn out of context.’*
‘Renegades like Wang Ming ... who refused to study the
experience of the Chinese Revolution in the light of the universal
truth of Marxism-Leninism . . . and overawed people with terms
and expression from Marxist-Leninist works.’ There were others
in the Party who were ‘empiricists’, did not understand theory, or
were impatient with it, saying: ‘We’ve fought our way through
the Revolution, we know enough.’
The refutation of apriorism is the fundamental thesis which Mao
explains in On Practice. There is no spontaneous generation of
thought, as there is no spontaneous generation of life; yet
philosophical schools still assumed (in China, also in the West)
that abstraction can show the process of cognition, judgment
and inference, The dependence of rational knowledge upon
perceptual knowledge, or the discovery of truth and reality
through experiment and practice, was extremely important for
the basis of scientific thinking; Mao was fighting against a solidly
anchored tradition of classic philosophy through this simple
essay; he was wrestling against feudal apriorism as well as modem
metaphysics.
‘Discover the truth through practice, and again through '
practice verify and develop the truth ... In endless cycles, with
each cycle content of practice and knowledge rising, such is the
whole of the dialectical materialist theory of knowledge.’
Mao Tsetung defined the content of practice for a revolutionary,
and his definition has not been changed since 19371 his three
criteria of ‘practice in production, practice in revolutionary (class)
struggle, and practice in scientific experiment’ are the framework
within which a revolutionary acquires his being as a revolutionary.
To practise is to apply, to transform, to remould one’s ‘world
outlook through practice’. The manner in which it is done is
* See Selected Works, vol. I, for both On Practice and On Contradiction and for
the above quotations from the explanatory backnotes.
MAO tsetung: man and teacher in yenan 429
Mao’s developmental application to the concrete object of the
Chinese Revolution and to the target of self, for self must also be
revolutionized by revolution.
Theory depends on practice; it is inconceivable, said Mao, that
it should not be measured and checked by practice; in turn, theory
changes practice, changes methodology. Thus occurs transforma-
tion and acquisition of more knowledge. There is no inborn
‘wisdom’ or ‘stupidity’; no knowledge precedent to material
experience; no competence before practical doing. ‘The move-
ment of change in the world of objective reality is never-ending
and so is man’s cognition of truth through practice. Marxism-
Leninism has in no way exhausted truth but ceaselessly opens
up roads to the knowledge of truth in the course of practice.
Our conclusion is the concrete, historical unity of the subjective
and the objective, of theory and practice, of knowing and
On Contradiction was two lectures given by Mao in August
1937, and follows On Practice naturally. It is more attractive,
particularly to intellectuals, but Mao is probably right to consider
On Practice more important from the point of view of changing
methods of work and study and cadre training, for it is basic in
its rejection of idealism and apriorism, and psychologically
essential, given the traditional Chinese respect for abstract pro-
nouncements and ‘traditional wisdom’. It was paramount in
encouraging questioning, instead of submissive acceptance. Mao
wanted no blind obedience, no ‘docile tools’, but living,
thinking cadres who live and think revolution, who are always
asking, ‘why?’
Marx had stated that ‘labour is ... a process in which both man
and nature participate ... in which man of his own accord starts,
regulates, and controls the material reactions between himself and
nature ... He opposes himself to nature as one of her own forces.’
We may surmise that the Long March was a tremendous practice
in precisely this dialectic relation between man and nature. This
interrelationship between man and nature, the essential contra-
diction, opposition-unity theme, finds a ‘major extension’, says
Dr S. B. NomolF of McGill University, Canada, ‘in Mao’s On
430
THE MORNING DELUGE
Contradiction * This major extension is due, according to NomofF,
to the creative synthesis of certain elements of Chinese thought
with Marxism-Leninism.
Because Mao understood the importance of the relation of
cultural background to cognition, he chose most of his examples
from ancient Chinese history and tales. ‘There were numerous
examples of materialist dialectics in The Water Margin, in Sun
Tze s Art of War. When Mao lectured on contradiction in
Yenan, he also took examples from the famous novel the Red
Chamber Dream.f Mao’s view of truth as non-static, non-absolute,
determined by world outlook’, by class consciousness, contains
in its pursuit of reality a determination of unending practice and
experimentation, unfolding new discoveries.
of opposites was translated by Mao as *one divides
into two , a term borrowed from Taoism, fundamental to
Chinese thinking, and easily grasped by the ordinary man. As a
method of analysis, one divides into two’ becomes immediately
applicable by the Chinese millions. But whereas Taoism teaches
non-action as equivalent to action, Mao refuses the ‘harmony’
concept, which had proved so stunting to Chinese scientific
development. In dialectical materiahsm the universality of
contradiction is the fundamental law of nature; Mao made it
possible, by employing the sentence ‘one divides into two’, to
have this concept assimilated, both intellectually and emotionally,
by millions of people who would have been unable otherwise to
conceptualize the ujiity of opposites’. The phrase has now become
so familiar that it is heard every day, even from children.
The flux of change, perceptible or imperceptible to human
attention, is explained by the complementary nature of opposites,
* China QM<jrfer/y, July-September 1964, p. 20. Captain Xavier Sallentin in his
brilliant expose of studies on Chinese thought (Ecole Militairc, Paris, 1971) points
out that Mao*s thinking is vindicated by die new discoveries of physics, of particle
behaviour, and certain phenomena at the electron level in biology. The creative
development of On Contradiction derives from the practice of the Chinese Revo-
lution as well as from China’s processes of conceptualization which see all things
as perpetually becoming (individual paper by Dr Nomolf in author’s possession,
presented by Dr Nomoff to author in 1968).
t Interview with cadre who heard Mao lecture.
MAO tsetung: man and teacher in yrnan 431
necessity for the development of contradiction, for a ‘becoming’.
As Mao states, ‘each of the two aspects of a contradiction, in the
process of development of tilings, regards its opposite aspect as the
condition for its existence ... The contradictory aspects in every
process exclude each other and arc opposed to each other/
Such contradictory aspects are contained without exception in
‘the processes of all things’. But whereas in Chinese dialectical
thinking before Mao the balance between opposites was presumed
equal, thus leading to ‘harmony’ or confluence (the ‘fusion’ theme,
the two merge into one’ thesis, a theme which Yang Hsien-
chen,* an ideological opponent of Mao, was to teach in the
1960s), Mao advances the postulate of the inherent inequality of
the two aspects of a contradiction, an unbalanced state of opposites.
Due to this ‘unevenness’, the perpetual state of ‘becoming’ is
possible, the fields of force sliift, the structure of contradiction
becomes more complex, and change, transformation, conversion
occurs.
Mao distinguishes between antagonistic and non-antagonistic
particularities of contradiction; but he was to bring far more
development to the distinction. The possibility of transformation
from one type of contradiction into the other was to be further
amplified by him in 1957 with another philosophic essay, On the
Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People. 'f
Since the opposites in a contradiction are unequal, non-identical,
and variable in more than one aspect, facet, or relationship to each
other, within one and the same contradiction there are a dominant
or primary aspect and a number of secondary aspects, so that
* Yang Hsien-chen was also one of the ‘twenty-eight Bolsheviks’. He was
head of the publications department in the Comintern Far East bureau, and an
accomplished Russian linguist. In 1936 he was in charge of translating Soviet
works into Chinese. He may or may not have been in Yenan before 1945, but in
1949 was in Peking, became head of the China philosophy association, and began
delivering lectures on Marxism-Leninism. He was vice-president of the Marx-
Lenin Institute for training leading Party cadres, then its president 1957-1964,
and looked upon then as a ‘leading ideologue’, collecting some very high posts.
His ideological opposition to Mao, and his refusal to place Mao’s works on the
compulsory study programme of the institute, were revealed in the 1960s.
t Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1957.
432
THE MORNING DELUGE
opposites become actually a multiplicity of interrelated and
shifting situation aspects. The resemblance to the living cell, and
to the language of nuclear biology, becomes apt for describing this
hooking and unhooking’ type of living relation within a
contradiction. Mao thus not only broke away from the ‘harmony’
circle which fettered Chinese thought, but also from the ‘static
absolute’ which hampered the study of contradiction in Russian
thought. Mao has evolved contradiction from the ‘linear motion’
of ^X^estern dialectical thinking into a spiral route, forever
open-ended , which provides a polyvalence of possibilities; the
fluctuant and unequal positions of the aspects, principal or
secondary, of a contradiction providing built-in flexibility for
each situation.*
Within a contradiction, opposites tend to transform into their
own opposites when the contradiction is developed to the extreme,
or ultimate, stage. This phenomenon oi conversion Mao expounds
with homely precepts and proverbs (a good thing can become a
bad thing) and examples from Chinese legends (he might also
have drawn some of them from the Long March, which started
as a ‘bad thing’ and became a memorable epic).
Thus a subtle and intricate thought motion is made accessible
step by step, by the process of always keeping it ‘open-ended’.
There is no rigid, closed, hermetic circuit in Mao’s thinking. We
know now through molecular biology that the living protein
structure exhibits a natural disymmetry and therefore a ‘spin’, or
sense of orientation or direction. Parity and complementarity are
today revealed at the level of the atom, within the heart of
elementary particles. The theory of fixed and immutable
characteristics is negated; only the dialectic of contradiction can
attempt to explain many a phenomenon in modern science,
which no longer compartments energy, space, time. It is along
these lines that Mao Tsetung proceeds in his extension of the
theory of contradiction. His development thus also presumes anti-
matter, the essential inequality of energy and its various types ;f
* Sec S. B. NomofF in China Quarterly, July-Scptcmbcr 1964, p. 20.
•f Captain Xavier Sallentin’s ‘Seminaires sur la logique de la pcnsec militairc
chinoise’. Paper in author’s possession. Unpublished.
MAO TSETUNG: man and teacher in YENAN 433
and it is this ‘disequilibrium* or ‘inequality’ which is precisely the
‘accident* giving rise to new phenomena.
The ‘living application’ of such concepts to the growth of
peanuts, planting of cotton, running of steelworks, problems of a
university department, or how to fight a war may appear
baffling to Western thinking, but in reality it is the wethod of
analysis and synthesis (both of practical importance for the
development of scientific thought and discovery) which has to
be learned and applied at all levels, to all phenomena, and which is
so remarkable. Mao set out to teach one quarter of humanity to
think in a different way, a dialectic, scientific way, about every
event, situation, or problem.
Mao also spoke of the specific character (specificity) of con-
tradiction; each required therefore its own specific treatment;
each aspect also had its own particular features, again requiring a
different approach. This meticulousness widens and deepens the
philosophical themes, does away with mechanistic rigidity. There
are also the ‘necessary given conditions’, matrix, or background,
with their own knowledge component. Without knowledge of the
matrix, the specific attributes of the developmental process could
not be understood.
The ‘war-peace’ situation is ideal ground for a study of contra-
diction equations in all their intricacy and basic simplicity. Mao’s
essays on war, on strategy and tactics, cannot be treated as
purely military works; they are philosophical as well as military,
grounded in the same dialectical process, in the same methodology
of practice. The philosophic and military writings form a whole-
ness; we cannot study the one without the other.*
The military thinking of Mao Tsetung, which was the applica-
tion of dialectics to war, was the decisive factor for victory in the
Chinese Revolution. One cannot imagine any other way in which
* The chief military writings of Mao, prepared also as lectures to be given in
Yenan, were Problems of Strategy in China^s Revolutionary War (December 1936),
Problems of Strategy in Guerilla War Against Japan (May 1938), On Protracted War
(May 1938), Problems of War and Strategy (November 1938). His writings on
military subjects actually began in Chingkangshan, but the Yenan lectures on the
art of war are far more detailed and vastly comprehensive, since they take in a
great deal of history as well.
434
THE MORNING DELUGE
Victory might have been wrested from the matrix’ of Chinese
conditions. Mao’s military writings have been studied far more
extensively than his philosophical essays. In Algeria, the French
Army studied Mao intensively to beat the Algerians and to
reverse the situation; but they could not operate tliis conversion
in the contradiction, because the matrix was utterly different,
they lacked the essential components of the situation — above all,
the Algerian people.
Mao says himself that it was the three annihilation campaigns
launched by Chiang Kai-shek against the Central Base at Juichin
which taught him his strategy and tactics of war. But ultimately
strategy and tactics also rest on philosophical concepts; there can
be no learning by rote of such a science, unless one is a purely
military expert, not a creator of strategy. The Red Army was by
its very definition not purely a military but also a political
instrument, whose aim was revolution. All strategy and tactics
were conditioned and shaped by that goal. Hence politics in
command was the fundamental reason for success; political
leadership was essential for all enterprises.
The war against Japan was not only a war, but an example of
all revolutionary wars; for, said Mao, it was the class struggle
under its form of national struggle for liberation, and all such
wars are part of the world socialist revolution.
‘War is the highest form of struggle for resolving contradictions
when they have developed to a certain stage ... War is the
continuation of politics ... In this sense war is politics and war
itself a political action, but war has its own particular character-
istics and in this sense it cannot be equated with politics in
general ... politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics
with bloodshed.’
Because the study of the laws of war is a science and an art
based on contradiction, the reality or matrix in which war occurs
must be entirely understood; this means all political, economic,
cultural, geographic and liistorical issues, the body of knowledge
which focuses, delimits and determines the military aspect. The
enemy’s knowledge, his aims, also form part of this matrix. To
fight Chiang one had to know Chiang; the Art of War consists
MAO TSETUNG: man and teacher in YENAN 435
not in winning battles but in winning the revolutionary war.
Revolutionary war, said Mao, is a defensive just war, never an
aggressive, exploiting one. The moral issue -ethics -is of para-
mount importance. The superiority of a just, defensive war over a
war of aggression is undoubted; a people with justice on its side
will have the support of others in the world, those who revolt
against oppression. (And this revolt is inherent in man’s humanity.)
There are, therefore, just wars and unjust ones. A just cause
provides in itself a moral superiority. A people with justice on its
side will not give up; hence the war is protracted. The aggressor
would always prefer peaceful submission, but this is not available
in a people s war. It is not weapons but man who in the final
analysis decides the issue of the struggle, because the ifiitiatiue
rests with the defence since it rests with the people engaged in
revolutionary war. The more the masses understand about the
war and know the enemy, the more initiative they will display.
People s war is therefore long, protracted war, waged with all the
elements of the situation, of which people, the masses, thoroughly
mobilized, are the mainstay.
Mao wrote and lectured copiously on strategic defensive,
strategic retreat, and strategic counter-offensive; on the establish-
ment of base areas, their relation to preceding guerilla zones, the
consolidation and expansion of such bases, and the relationship
between the three types of war: guerilla, mobile, positional.
He wrote about the economics of a people’s war, the self-reliant,
self-supporting army, its leadership and administrative duties.
hi all his writings, it is the role of conscious activity, a thorough
grasp of awareness, which Mao considered essential for victory,
political or military. In this he also had to counter the sectarian
i eology of the Russian-trained group, who spoke of ‘proletarian
internationalism without reference to the concrete conditions.
Mao s most illuminating remark on this subject may be again
quoted: For a people being deprived of its national freedom, the
revolutionary task is not immediate socialism but the struggle for
independence. We cannot even discuss communism if we are
robbed of a country in which to practise it.’*
* Quoted by Edgar Snow, 1936.
436
THE MORNING DELUGE
In 1946, when the Red armies were in the phase of the strategic
defensive against Chiang, the preparation for going into the
strategic offensive was intensive political mobilization, the mass
line of education of the people, financial and economic measures,
training of the Army and of the Party, study of the geographical
and time elements, the build-up of bases in the countryside to
achieve the countryside surrounding the cities’ principle. In this
phase the mass line, achieved through land reform, was the chief
condition for success. A.tid no elements of this phase could be skipped.
Political and economic work took precedence over military
battles; thus Mao was quite prepared to lose territory and abandon
cities, because the chief thing was to economize manpower, to
reassure it psychologically and save it physically, not to risk large
losses in foolish onslaughts for empty Victories’. The enemy
armies must be drawn, sucked into a whirlpool of dissident,
hostile populations politically at one with the Red Army. Their
very presence and actions aroused hostility and helped the Com-
munist armies. This technique of making the enemy serve one’s
own goal Mao would use over and over again.*
Decision-making, and the laws of decision, are the paramount
concern of the commander. These decisions must be fully
understood by the rank and file and by all the people, as many as
possible; they cannot be kept as secrets nursed only in the leaders’
minds. What appears to be defeat will then dishearten no one;
what appears to be retreat will be a rest period safeguarding the
precious elements of man; these decisions entail knowledge of the
enemy’s mentality and of his type of decision-making. Decision-
making based on the law of contradiction is also, in the final
analysis, a collective phenomenon.
The concept of the asymmetry of contradictions — *In any
contradiction the development of the contradictory aspects is
uneven’ — is basic. It is in war that the asymmetry between the
two opposite aspects of a contradiction is most important for the
* He also lectured on the ‘contradiction’ many times, illustrating his talks with
ferociously funny (untranslatable) thumbnail sketches of Chiang’s stratagems for
victory. See Edgar Snow, Battle for Asia (Random House, New York, 194 ^ >
Gollancz, London, 1941, under the title Scorched Earth).
MAO TSETUNC: MAN AND TEACHER IN YENAN 437
outcome. This ‘uneven’ state (for instance, a large powerful state
versus a small weak one) is not a guarantee that the larger, bettcr-
equipped will win. ‘A small nation can certainly defeat a large one ;
a weak country can certainly defeat a strong one,’ Mao was to say
in 1970. The outcome depends on factors which can be roused and
enhanced in effect, such as the humafi factor: resolution, will,
conscious mobilization, thorough knowledge of the terrain, and
time. An example of this is the Vietnam war.
Mao studies the process of the conversion in contradiction as
applied to war (‘In given conditions, each of the contradictory
aspects within a thing transforms itself into its opposite, changes
its position to that of the opposite’). This phenomenon of trans-
formation of one aspect of a contradiction into its opposite is the
meaning of identity. It is of the very essence of dialectics. ‘Dialectics
... shows how opposites can be identical ... transforming them-
selves into one another ... why the human mind should take these
opposites not as dead, rigid, but as living, conditional, mobile,’ as
Lenin said. This is crucial in a war situation; to understand the
requisite action towards conversion is to hold the initiative.
Mao himself would show this talent of knowing the right time
when conversion’ would occur; politically he would show all his
life this instinctive flair for seizing ‘the day, the hour*.
This process of conversion cannot be done unless one distin-
guishes the principal, or main, contradiction from the secondary.
In the anti-Japanese war the principal contradiction was Japanese
imperialism; hence a united front which included Chiang (but
within well-defined limits) was the way of solving this principal
contradiction. But in the civil war which was to follow, the
principal contradiction was between the people of China, the
overwhelming majority, and the Chiang Kai-shek regime,
representing the compradore-capitalist class, sustained by United
States imperialism. All other contradictions became secondary to
this; and it was a matter, above all, of rallying as many of the
people as possible to form the broadest defence against Chiang
Kai-shek; hence another kind of united front. The contradiction
between Chiang’s well-equipped and numerous troops with a 4-5
to I superiority over the Red Army was more than made up by
438
the morning deluge
Communist training, political consciousness, dedication, and by
poprdar support. Nevertheless, numerical and -sveapon advantage
could not be underestimated, and the best way to tackle it- to
convert tHs contradiction -had to be studied very carefully,
^e method, adapted to the particular aspect of the contradiction
(Chiang s forces), would be lightning attacks by concentrating
mpenor forces to annihilate totally the weaker forces of the
Kuo^tang, without waging pitched battles against superior
numbers; tiring them out in pursuit; cutting off their food
supplies; sabotage, and psychological disintegration; tactics
dinerent from the guerilla war waged against Japan.
Again speaking of reciprocal transformation* (conversion
phenomenon) Mao wrote: ‘Some people think this is not true of
certam contradictions. For instance, in the contradiction between
the productive forces and the relations of production, the produc-
tive forces are the principal aspect. This is the mechanical material-
ist conception ... True the productive forces ... generally play
the principal and decisive role; but in certain conditions, such
aspects as the relations of production, theory and superstructure,
in turn manifest themselves in the principal and decisive role.
When it is impossible for the productive forces to develop ivithout a
change in the relations of production, then the change in the relations of
production plays the principal and decisive role ... W^hile we recognize
that in the general development of history the material determines
the mental, and social being determines social consciousness, we
also ... and indeed must ... recognize the reaction of mental on
material things, of social consciousness on social being, and of the super-
structure on the economic base.^ (Author’s italics.) Tliis phrase is
plangent with meaning; for it is the key to the whole process of
cultural revolution (which is an idea transformation) as motive
force for a material transformation (pushing the basic structures of
revolution forward).
It was this consciousness-matter and matter-consciousness
duality, the question of voluntarism versus material circumstances,
which would in Mao’s thinking become a most important
factor for the solution of contradictions, for the advance of the
Revolution. ‘Notliing in this world develops absolutely evenly;
MAO tsetung: man and teacher in yenan 439
we must oppose the theory of even development or the
theory of equilibrium/ wrote Mao. Thus he formally destroyed
statism, the ‘harmony’ Taoist theory, and Confucianist tradi-
tionalism, and opened a new era in thinking for the Chinese
people.
Another document penned by Mao must be studied in connection
with his role as teacher— although all his output can be said to be
teaching. It is On New Democracy. This is a socio-historical
document which explains the continuity of the Chinese Revolu-
tion and projects its process into the future.
On New Democracy, written at the end of 1939, was designed to
clarify the issues as to where the Coimnunist Party stood; to
repudiate the Kuomintang attacks upon it as an ‘alien’ party ‘not
following the principles of Sun Yatsen’; to answer the ‘left
sectarians’ who wanted to break the united front with Chiang
Kai-shek; to stop yet another assault upon Mao’s line from the
Wang Ming group. For in 1940, the unrepentant Wang Ming
again took action; he republished his pamphlet on The Two Lines
in Yenan. He was still challenging Mao’s ideological leadership in
the Party.
We have already seen how strongly entrenched in the Party was
the Wang Ming faction. By 1940 there had been an enormous
expansion of the CCP. From the 40,000 members it had counted
in 1935, it had grown to 200,000 in 1938; by the end of 1940 there
were 800,000 members.
That these new recruits knew absolutely nothing (or very
little) of Party liistory, of the period antedating the Long March,
is obvious. This brings us to the question of Mao’s real, actual
authority and power with the Party hierarchy at the time. Every-
one called him Chairman Mao ... but what was he chairman of?
He was not chairman of the Border Government, nor of the
Party Central Committee; he was chairman of the Military
Council, and he was the top man in the Politburo but subordinate
to the secretary-general of the Party, Chang Wen-tien. Hence,
though unquestionably the outstanding personality in Yenan,
he was bureaucratically speaking not in a position of overall
440
THE MORNING DELUGE
power. This probably is the reason his lectures at the time were
given little publicity.
The influence of the opposition to Mao was especially pro-
nounced in the area of press and publication, normally occupied
by Party intellectuals or ideologues. Edgar Snow had remarked
that although Mao was a classics scholar and a prodigiously
intelligent man, he deliberately kept peasant habits. I have a
feeling that Mao liked to shock arrogant scholars with a display of
peasant forthrightness, and this informality was not always
acceptable. He had been for some years making very forthright
remarks on muddleheaded* and ‘sectarian’ members who
overawed simple people. Everyone knew that an accounting on
the ideological plane was due sooner or later. Liu Shao-chi, who
also lectured at Kangta, in 1939 is reputed to have referred rather
contemptuously to Oti Contradiction to the students there. ‘A
little less talk of contradiction ... you should do a bit more work
for the White areas,* was the gist of his remarks. On Contradiction
was not published in Yenan, in fact not published officially until
the 195OS. Mao was certainly not in control of the printing presses.
When Oti New Democracy was published it was Violently
criticized* by ultra-leftists in the Party. It was not welcome in
Moscow either, because it introduced certain novel definitions,
such as the concept of ‘new democracy*.
In On New Democracy we find a very long and full explanation
of what cultural revolution is. Already (January 1934) Mao had
said, while in the Kiangsi base: ‘We have to practise a brand of
democracy ... and we must wage the cultural revolution to arm
the leaders of the masses of workers and peasants.* To look upon the
process of a cultural revolution as capable of bringing forth new
leadership from the masses was a tenet of Mao*s thinking on
revolution.
In the winter of 1939, Mao Tsetung and ‘several other comrades
in Yenan’ had prepared a history textbook for the Party called The
Chinese Revolution and the Chinese Communist Party. This was a
history of China and a history of the Chinese Revolution. It
already developed the theme, to be further expanded in On New
Democracy, of a new democratic stage and a socialist stage; both
MAO tsetung: man and teacher in yenan 441
to be led by the Communist Party, ‘fully consolidated ideo-
logically, politically and organizationally’.
Anna Louise Strong tells of Mao’s giving her his script of The
Chinese Revolution and the Chinese Communist Party to read. She
says it circulated for ‘over ten years’ among Party members. It
must have aroused, of course, a great deal of hostility from those
who felt blamed in it for certain tragedies. To be thus pilloried in
history is the most unpleasant thing for a Party member; even
death sometimes seems preferable.
Mao had started the newspaper The Communist in October 1939
as an internal Party journal. In it he wrote: ‘How arc we to
build up our Party today? The answer can be found by studying
the Party’s history, by studying Party building in connection
with the united front and with armed struggle ... To sum up our
eighteen years of experience ... and to spread this experience
through the Party, so that our Party becomes as solid as steel and
avoids repeating past mistakes ... such is our task.’ Obviously
the threat of a thorough ideological struggle was there. On
New Democracy was part of the ideological education for such a
struggle.
In On New Democracy Mao wrote that the democratic revolu-
tion in China no longer involved the old category of democracy as
seen in the revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
in Europe. ‘A semi-colonial country’s revolution is a revolution
of a new type ... of new democratic type. Because [such revolu-
tions] deny bases to imperialism, they are part of the socialist
world revolution and not part of the bourgeois-type, old demo-
cratic revolutions, as in the West. Politically, such a new demo-
cratic revolution always represents a struggle by a united front of
several revolutionary classes struggling against imperialism and its
satellite classes within the country. It therefore adopts economic
and social policies which differ from the old type.’
However, new democratic revolutions have an ambivalent
aspect. They open the way to capitalism of a national type, because
the national bourgeoisie in a semi-colonial country has some
revolutionary traits and is also included in the united front. At
the same time new democratic revolution creates conditions for
442
THE MORNING DELUGE
socialism. It is therefore a crossroads stage; the issue has to be
decided subsequently; the revolutionary party of the proletariat
must understand this dual action and push on to socialism.
In a new democratic republic (and Mao was to assert that the
Yenan base and other Red bases already enjoyed a new democratic
type of government) the economy is also new democratic, ‘so
that private capital cannot control the livelihood of the people’.
Big banks and big industrial and commercial enterprises are
state-owned. But small-scale private ownership is allowed.
Such a new democratic state is actually entirely in accordance
with the Three Principles of Dr Sun Yatsen,* as embodied in the
First Congress of the Kuomintang in 1924, which Mao had
attended. ‘For sixteen years the Kuomintang has betrayed this
declaration [of Dr Sun] and consequently created the grave
national crisis of today.’ Thus neatly, Mao turned the tables on
Chiang Kai-shek. It was the Communists who were practising
the Three Principles of Sun Yatsen; they were the continuators
of the revolution Sun Yatsen had begun. It was the section of the
Kuomintang under Chiang Kai-shek which had betrayed Sun
Yatsen ’s ideas.
In his fundamental discussion of cultural revolution, Mao
explains : ‘Since the May 4th movement ... a fresh and brand-new
cultural force has appeared in China ... A great revolution has
taken place in ideological content and in form, for instance in the
style of the written language... A cultural revolution is the
ideological reflection of the political and economic revolutions
which it serves.’ The May 4th movement had been such a great
cultural revolution — ‘There has never been . . . such a great and
thorough-going cultural revolution since the dawn of Chinese
history.’ A cultural revolution also has its stages; it is an inevitable
accompaniment of the socio-political-economic revolution, and is
essential for the continuing revolution.
Mao explicitly states the necessity for assimilation of new
material from other cultural sources. ‘The new democratic
culture is national ... it bears the stamp of our national character-
istics. It unites with the socialist and new democratic cultures
* The Three New People’s Principles; see chapter 6, page 128.
MAO TSETUNG: man and teacher in YENAN 443
of all other nations and establishes with them the relations
whereby they can absorb something from each other and help each
other to develop ... China should assimilate from foreign
progressive cultures ... We did not sufficiently do so in the past ...
However, we must treat these foreign materials as we do our
food ... separated into essence to be absorbed and waste matter to
be discarded ... So-called “wholesale Westernization*’ is a
mistaken viewpoint. China has suffered a great deal in the past
from the formalist absorption of foreign things.’
Mao’s ‘teaching’ manner was very popular. ‘There was always
much laughter.’ He was a brilliant speaker, interspersing his most
serious political statements with anecdotes, proverbs, quotations.
He would hold seininars for debate and discussion, encourage
forums. Always accessible, he would spend all night explaining
points which were unclear, and would be as fresh and lively at
four in the morning as when he had begun twelve hours previously.
But he heaped merciless taunts upon ‘formula Marxists’; he made
every humble cadre feel intelligent, because he prodded him into
thinking.
The apprehension and ire of the ‘formula Marxists’ is under-
standable. That Mao Tsetung should lecture on war was from
their point of view bad enough; but that he should also lecture on
Marxist philosophy was for them unbearable. Ideology is of
supreme importance to a revolutionary party; the ideological
hostility to Mao remained throughout these decades; the two-line
s*^ruggle in the Party is never ended. Ideological authority does
not mean unhampered exercise of power in the Party hierarchy.
Mao had ‘ideological authority’ in Yenan, but only by constant
and continuous struggle on the ideological level. This makes his
contribution as teacher the more significant. He was able to
exercise this role, to rebuild the Party and Army along the lines
he set out to do, to Sinicize and adapt Marxism to the concrete
Chinese environment, because of the tremendous popular appeal
he had in spite of the opposition, and because he was so often
proved right by events.
The crisis within the Party, a crisis of ideological authority,
444
THE MORNING DELUGE
once more gathered strength in 1941. It was to be resolved by the
great Rectification campaign.
Since 1938 Mao had hinted several times that a great ‘study*
drive for Party building was essential. It was necessary to reorient,
correct, strengthen and stabilize the Party, especially now that it
showed overwhelming expansion and consequent defects. And
it was also necessary to settle some unresolved ‘historical questions*,
pending since Tsunyi. A great many intellectuals were now
in Yenan. In December 1939 Mao had stated the Party’s need for
intellectuals who serve the working class and the peasantry;
without the participation of intellectuals, the Revolution cannot
be victorious*. But though necessary, they brought problems —
problems of suspicion from the older, seasoned cadres; resentment
when they saw top jobs going to intellectuals; reluctance of
intellectuals to rub shoulders with peasants and soldiers; oppor-
tunism and careerism; infiltration by KMT agents. Intellectuals
were almost all from the bourgeoisie; they were politically
unseasoned. Mao’s long-nurtured project of a wholesale ‘teaching*
or ‘rectification* movement became urgently necessary. As the
shortages and material difficulties temporarily added to the
disunity factors, the subsequent Production Drive also created
the conditions in which rectification could occur.
In June 1941 Hitler’s forces invaded the USSR. This at once
cleared the confusion in Communist minds arising from Stalin’s
non-aggression pacts with both Hitler and Japan — which Mao
had defended. With the invasion of the Soviet Union by the
Nazis, the resistance of the Chinese Communists and their
war with Japan became extremely important to the USSR.
This weakened the opposition to Mao in his own party. In
December 1941 occurred Pearl Harbour. America was now in
the war, and the China war theatre became of enhanced im-
portance. The primary obsession of the Americans for the next
three years would be how to keep Chiang Kai-shek from making
an alliance with Japan. The Chinese Communist Party and Army
were now recognized as of international significance and vital to
free world interests. The United States signified to Chiang that
it would not be happy if Chiang started another anti-Coinmunist
MAO TSETUNG: man and teacher in YENAN 445
onslaught like the one against the New Fourth Army in January
1941.
Mao’s vision had now come true. Catapulted into world
prominence as the main force pinning down Japanese armies, the
Chinese Communist Party had to prove worthy of the next step:
the conquest of power. And for this, a rectification movement in
Mao’s view was essential. It was a total preparation of the Party for
total victory; reorienting its attitude to the masses, reshaping
its style of work, streamlining it, throwing out opportunists,
enemy agents and other ‘undesirables’, quelling ‘factions’, and
writing Party history. It was a tremendous political education
project.
To this Mao gave his attention for the next three years, preparing
and then conducting the Rectification movement, the largest
political teaching movement yet tried out, something that had
not been done by any other Communist Party before.
The Rectification Movement, 1941-1944
The goal of the Rectification movement was plainly set down in a
speech by Mao Tsetung: ‘How can we build up ... a Chinese
Communist Party ... which is national in scale and has a broad
mass character ... No political party can possibly lead a great
revolutionary movement to victory unless it possesses revolutionary
theory and a knowledge of history and has a profound grasp of the
practical movement. We can put Marxism into practice only
when it is integrated with the specific characteristics of our
country and has acquired a definite national form.^
When Mao spoke of history, he meant not only the history of
China; he meant the history of the Communist Party as well.
This signified an all-out ideological struggle, pending since the
Tsunyi conference.
As a young man, Mao Tsetung had shown a relentless passion
for getting to the bottom of any vexing question when he had
firmly seized a teacher by the arm and pushed him into the
school director’s office to argue out his case. Now he would put
a stop to muddle-headedness and intrigue, inform the whole
Party of past events, call to judgment those who had almost
destroyed it, lay his case before history. He would make the past
serve future victory.
Because the Rectification movement would involve each
member as well as the organization as a whole, it would begin
with a thorough analysis, supplemented by biographies, of each
individual. A study of the composition of the Party showed that
members of peasant origin still accounted for more than 60 per
cent, nearer to 70 per cent; but there had been an influx of petty
bourgeois and intellectuals from the cities and the White Kuomin-
tang areas which would make up at least 15 per cent of the 800,000
Party members. There was a tendency for the better-educated to
446
THE RECTIFICATION MOVEMENT, I94I-I944 447
gravitate to higher jobs, of an administrative character; this pro-
duced a good deal of friction. In certain areas revolutionary
fighters of long standing found themselves ordered about by
people they considered less seasoned and less worthy.
Yet a good deal of unification had been realized through cadre
training in the bases themselves, at Kangta and its branches. Mao
Tsetung resisted the idea of sending those with higher talent for
training abroad in the USSR as had been the practice in earlier
years. The Sino-Japanese war had interrupted this practice. The
creation of regional bureaux whose leadership returned regularly
to Yenan for reporting and consultation was designed to streng-
then the administration, but it had also led to staff inflation,
bureaucracy, authoritarianism, evils wliich Mao fought against.*
Within each base there were two structures — one for the Party,
one for the elected base government — with their various depart-
ments. Mass organizations under the government found them-
selves not guided (the Party is supposed to guide, not to execute;
to suggest, not to order) but commanded. There were overlap,
reduplication, a plethora of administrative personnel, and with
the shortages of supplies these non-producers had become a
burden to the population. Among a minority of them the taint of
corruption, opportunism, not to speak of autocratic methods,
was beginning; the rapid population expansion had included
even enemy agents. A clean-up and a shake-up were necessary.
The problem focused not so much on the peasants and workers in
the Party, who were devoted, self-sacrificing, but did not always
have the educational background to grasp the subtleties of the
Marxist slogans they were asked to ingest and obey; it was
mainly a problem of the superstructure, the people in a position
to teach and who taught badly; it was an intellectual problem,
and a problem of the intellectuals.
Many of the intellectuals who flocked to Yenan were sincere,
willing, enthusiastic. Most of them came through the Rectifica-
tion campaign to hold positions of trust and to do excellent
revolutionary work. But there was a sizable minority which
*John Stewart Service, The Amerasia Papers: Some Problems in the History of
U.S.-China Relations (University of California Press, 1971), pp. 167-176.
448
THE MORNING DELUGE
was not changed. Some of the intelligentsia had become extremely
critical. They suffered from dejection and pessimism’, as the
reports of the period state, because of the hardships of the block-
ade, the isolation, the stern military discipline, the Kuomintang
attacks, and above all an incomplete understanding of the policies
of the CCP. There were also those who expected more regard
and better treatment than they received, although even in
Yenan intellectuals had a higher standard of living than the
average population. There was also, inherent in their upbringing,
a built-in reluctance to face the hard necessities of armed struggle,
of militarized life, the harsh truths of peasant China. Their
addiction to liberalism, their love of gossip, their disenchantment
because the long view escaped them, their muddled outlook
made them easy prey to the kind of factionalism and intrigue
which, in a highly ideological milieu, assumes political signifi-
cance. It was a question of attitude and concepts.
The gap between old and new cadres was also difficult to bridge.
There was mutual suspicion ; younger and better-educated
cadres were sometimes contemptuous of ‘old coarse’ veterans,
saw no reason to follow Party directives, kept aloof from the
local population. Many could not speak the dialect anyway, and
made no effort to learn. A small group of prominent left-wing
writers erstwhile in authority in the cities found themselves
neglected here, and they became even personal in their attacks,
given to oblique vilification. Thus private grievances and petty
grudges began to magnify, immense as a hand covering the sky,
obliterating the revolutionary perspective.
But above all, they had no idea of what had happened in the
Kiangsi base, or at Tsunyi; and the Wang Ming faction was
certainly not going to enlighten them. On the contrary. Both
Kuomintang agents and factions would thrive on rumours,
restlessness, among intellectuals.
In March 1941, as a preparation for the Rectification campaign,
the Second Preface To Village Investigations, written by Mao, was
announced as a study document of the movement. There were to
be eighteen such documents in all. ‘The only way to know con-
ditions is to make social investigations [of] the conditions of each
THE RECTIFICATION MOVEMENT, I94I-I944 449
social class in real life To do this, first direct your eyes down-
ward, do not hold your head high and gaze at the sky.’ Another
document was Oppose Book Worship, written in 1930 by Mao,
which had been so opposed at the time. ‘Although my assertion
“No investigation, no right to speak” has been ridiculed as
narrow empiricism , to this day I do not regret having made it
... I still insist that without investigation there cannot possibly
be any right to speak,’ said Mao.
In Oh OoHtrodictioti, also for study during the Rectification
movement, Mao had said: W^herc our dogmatists err is ... they
do not understand that ... we must go further and study the
concrete things that have not yet been thoroughly studied or have
only just emerged. Our dogmatists are lazybones ... They regard
general truths as emerging out of the void, they turn them into
purely abstract unfathomable formulas.’ They also taught others
abstract unfathomable formulas. The documents for study Mao
suggested would set a tone of scientific, objective, concrete
research and investigation, meant to prevent abuse and terroristic
methods. But these did happen anyway.
Two distinct trends by the leaders hostile to Mao’s idea of
rectification were to emerge. One was a tendency to consider
rectification a mere shake-up of individual members, throwing
out the unfit; this would become an ultra-left trend of trying to
punish the many at mid-level or lower level rather than concen-
trating on the few in the Icadcrsliip who were the actual target
of Mao’s effort. The second trend was to lag and to drag, and
not accomplish what the Rectification movement had set out to do.
In Reform Our Study, a speech delivered in May 1941 to
assembled cadres, Mao hit straight and hard and true; his words
must have been a most bitter medicine for those who understood
their meaning: ‘I propose that we should reform the method and
the system of study throughout the Party.’ Research work was
unsystematic, collected material on current conditions fragmen-
tary and not well prepared. ‘We are lacking in a climate of in-
vestigation and study of objective reality.’ The bad style of work,
with verbiage, should be corrected.
It is because of the word style’, which in Chinese is the word
450
THE MORNING DELUGE
‘wind’ (feng) and carries with it the connotation of attitude,
behaviour, thought and action, that the Rectification movement
is often called the ‘three-style rectification’, style of study, style of
work, and style of writing. But ‘style’ here denotes far more than
individual originality; it is the total sum of the individual and the
collective Party orientation and action which is involved. Style
is the outward expression of the person or the group.
Mao wanted the kind of cadres who would ‘use their heads’,
think clearly, work thoroughly and conscientiously, and also
express themselves clearly and frankly. Writing well, eschewing
long-winded politicalese which no one understood, meant
getting rid of ‘empty twaddle’ and jargon, the haven of those
who have not understood and for whom hermetic incompre-
hensible slogans were a way of holding their positions without
in the least knowing what real work meant. Lazybones. Hence
Mao’s attack on ‘verbiage’, not only in Reform Oar Study^ but
again in Rectify the Party^s Style of Work and Oppose Stereotyped
Party Writing* He made fun of the kind of Jargon which passed
for political acumen, in a manner which sent his audience into
fits of laughter. He derided the length of articles in the news-
papers, the use of long phrases which meant precisely nothing.
These two speeches are masterly essays by one who wrote clearly,
thought clearly, and knew what he was doing. The last one is a
classic; it would put an end — but only after the Great Proletarian
Cultural Revolution twenty-five years later— to the elephantine
compositions through which unfortunate Party members were
supposed to wade in order to understand policy.
Mao would do battle by debate; he would win by debate; by
criticism and self-criticism would the Party members, all 800,000
of them, be won over, in fair combat. In the doing they would
learn and they would be changed. They would discover the new,
concrete things about China which they did not know, and they
would be encouraged to develop ‘the organ of thought , initiative
and boldness. But first the ‘theoreticians’, in academic positions of
honour and respect in the various institutes, must be laid low.
* Delivered at the Party School of the Central Comniittce, February i and 8,
1942.
THE RECTIFICATION MOVEMENT, I941-T944 451
‘In the schools and in the education of cadres at work, teachers
of philosophy do not guide students to study the logic of the
Chinese Revolution; teachers of economics do not guide them to
study the characteristics of the Chinese economy; teachers of
mihtary science do not guide them to study the strategy and
tactics adapted to China’s special features ... They have no intention
of seeking truth from facts but only a desire to curry favour by claptrap.^
On July I, 1941, the Central Committee passed a resolution on
‘Strengthening the Party Spirit’. But within the resolution,
generalities replaced the whiplash sting of Mao’s phrases. The
resolution pointed out ‘tendencies’ to ‘individualism’ and to
‘heroism’, to disobedience, independent political action, deception,
the creation of cliques. A month later it issued another resolution
on the necessity of ‘investigation and research’; this resolution did
not mention Mao Tsetung by name.
In February 1942, Mao Tsetung gave another vigorous push
to the movement, which seemed to be stagnating, going into the
meanders of personal attacks while in some bases degenerating
into counter-revolutionary’ witch-hunts, with the usual pro-
pensity of the ‘ultra-left’ to strike down a great many innocent
Party members and to preserve out of harm’s way the far more
knowing ‘leaders*. His lectures Rectify the Party’s Style of Work and
Oppose Stereotyped Party Writing put the matter of reorientation
plainly: ‘There is the question of thought, the question of the
Party s internal and external relations, and the question of litera-
ture. The Army was not forgotten, and the Kutien resolutions of
December 1929 were again circulated in January 1942. But by
April 1942 the ideological study and debate (‘struggle’ in political
parlance) had not yet got off its feet because ‘most branches [of
the Party] have merely limited themselves to discussing the docu-
ments with the aid of documents and have not understood the
spirit and substance of these’.
The Rectification movement, the Production Drive, and a mass
education movement among the population coincided in the
same years— 1941 to 1944. This permitted integration of theory
with practice, manual labour with ideological debate. It made the
intellectuals really come in contact with the people providing the
452
THE MORNING DELUGE
food and clothing for the base. It also began the 'learn from
the masses’ movement, today the foundation of education in new
China.
At the same time, reorganization of the governments in the
various bases took place. The tripartite (‘three thirds’) system of
political power, in which only one in three members of the
government were Party members, broadened the mass base. Mao
urged that the advice and the knowledge of individuals outside
the Party be sought and listened to.
The cutting down of the bureaucracy followed naturally, in a
move called ‘better troops and simplified administration’. The
suggestion was first given by Li Ting-ming, a non-Party man
who had come over to the Communists because he was so
indignant at Chiang Kai-shek’s attack on the New Fourth Army
in January 1941. Mao Tsetung welcomed it. ‘Our enormous war
apparatus is suited to past conditions. It was then permissible and
necessary ... but men’s minds are liable to be fettered by circum-
stance and habits from which even revolutionaries cannot always
escape.’ They were to be unfettered now. At least 70 per cent, if
not more, of the cadres in the Army and Administration were
returned to ‘production’, which meant to labour instead of office
work. The Production Drive was ideal in creating the con-
ditions and atmosphere in which this could be done not only
without resentment but with positive glory attached to the names
of those who volunteered for manual labour either temporarily
or on a more or less permanent basis. Unified leadership com-
mittees were created in 1943. They seem, however, to have
disappeared pretty rapidly. They were mergers of representatives
from the Party, the Army and the base government mass organiza-
tions; in this way they foreshadowed the revolutionary com-
mittees with unified leadership of today. This was possibly an
attempt to replace the dual and parallel organizations with a
single organization, with, at its core. Party representatives to
guide the executive. It is puzzling that these had apparently such a
short life in Yenan. All these features of the Rectification move-
ment were resurrected during the recent Cultural Revolution
(1966-1971).
THE RECTIFICATION MOVEMENT, I941-1944 453
Mao s report on economic and fmancial problems in December
1942 laid down the principle that production determines demand;
the aim of Chinas economic policies being the development of
production, and not profit. This report was tied in with the
slogans of a revived land reform campaign ‘to reduce rent, increase
production, support the government and cherish the people in the
base areas . By the end of the Rectification campaign, it could be
claimed that the ideological thrust and the economic advance
were inseparable, and that the latter was successful also because
of the former. A reanimation of motives and goals, meaningful,
regenerating enthusiasm, is essential to a revolution. Mao Tsetung
now performed this, not only through the Party, but also through
the population of the bases. This success would give Yenan its
persistent validity even today.
Success was also manifest on the field of battle. In 1942 and 1943
victories were won over the Japanese forces. It could, of course,
be claimed that these victories were also due to depletion of the
Japanese armies, since after December 1941 the Japanese invasion
of Southeast Asia had begun and Japanese replacement troops
were much fewer. The Chinese puppet troops which took their
place could not make up for efficiency by numbers. But however
we may argue this point, the fact remains that there were hearten-
ing Communist advances, in glaring contrast to the stalemate
which continued on the Kuomintang-manned fronts. More
territory and more bases were in Communist control by 1944
than in any previous year. Nineteen base areas, one million square
miles in extent, were now governed by Red administrations, and
almost 100 million people, 25 per cent of China’s populadon.
Two other critical platforms, known in the Communist political
ictionary as commanding heights’ in the superstructure, were to
be submitted to the Rectification movement. One was the realm
of art and literature and artistic creation; the other, the one which
ormed actually the core of the two-line struggle, was the field of
Party history.
Mao Tsetung s talks on literature and art, known as Intervention
at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Arty are key pieces in policy
454
THE MORNING DELUGE
as regards the ‘superstructure’ of the society. As important as is the
material basis of a system, that ensemble of ideas, habits, attitudes,
behaviour, consciousness which produces, through artistic crea-
tion, a moulding characteristic of a class and a system is just as
important in Communist ideology. Public opinion and social
action have a definite relation. In this domain, the struggle in
China would be, for the next decades, prolonged, acute, and of a
bitterness which only today is revealed, although it is not charac-
terized by bloodshed, as it was in the USSR.
A forum of artists, writers and *art workers’ was convened in
May 1942 to examine the relationship between work in the
literary and artistic fields and revolutionary work in general’.
This forum Mao addressed twice, on May 2 and May 23. Visitors
to Yenan are shown the modest building in which the forum was
held. On May 2, eighty intellectuals attended the meeting; it
began early in the morning and continued, with discussions, all
day. Not only did Mao speak; he also took notes of every ob-
jection made, recorded by hand every question, especially the
controversial ones, listened attentively when the intellectuals
addressed the meeting to give their own points of view. This was
not uncommon behaviour for him; he had adopted it for all
debates and seminars, and after all his lectures he used to solicit
questions and the expression of personal opinion. It is a pity that
a record of these discussions has not been kept.
‘Some of the writers present brought books with them to prove
their points. One brought Wells World Dictionary and read out
loud the defuiitions of “art” and “literature”. There were con-
frontations on the meaning of these words; some stuck to Western
definitions of the bourgeois culture, which were not the under-
standing of Chinese culture, nor of the Revolution, nor of the
Chinese common people. Mao suggested smilingly to some of
these writers to go down among their own people and find out
what they thought about it all.
‘On the i8th of May a whole day of discussions took place till
late at night. They were on the five problems of art and literature
which Mao Tsetung listed. The question of “whom do we serve
was strenuously debated. On May 23 at the last meeting there was
THE RECTIFICATION MOVEMENT, 194I-I944 455
again a whole day of discussion. Many more artists and writers
came than at the first two meetings. The discussions were pro-
longed. Mao again noted down by hand everything that was said.
People there noticed one thing about him. How he saved paper.
He wrote on the backs of discarded sheets. At the time, because
of the great scarcity of paper, wc were happy when the Japanese
planes — who tried to bomb Yenan many times, and actually
knocked flat 80 per cent of the city, but could not knock the
caves down — did some pamphlet raids; we would collect the
paper and write on it. Mao Tsetung collected old envelopes,
unstuck them and used them again. The forum concluded late at
night, and Mao Tsetung made a final speech. That day at noon he
posed for a photograph with all those who came. Mao’s talks on
art and literature greatly encouraged the writers, who then went
among the people and started to create works of art for the
people.’* The song ‘The East Is Red’ was written then.
Despite these reports of excellent results, we may doubt that
all writers were thus affected, considering what was to happen
some decades later. Mao Tsetung himself was to say that it
took a very long time and was very painful for anyone to ‘re-
mould his world outlook’; hence instant conversions are a little
suspect.
Mao’s talks at this forum are interesting because in many ways
the problems evoked are still the problems of today. They deal
with the alienation of the writer, the artist, from a ‘bourgeois’
background, in the Revolution and from his own people. He
evoked the ‘new cultural army’ which the May 4th movement
had brought forth; but after 1919 literature and art, even if
revolutionary, had grown in cities cut off from the Red bases in
the countryside, from the majority population, the peasantry.
Now, in Yenan, artist and writer and the masses of the country-
side had been brought together physically, yet integration of the
artist with the masses was still practically non-existent. The five
problems of the artist were class stand, attitude, audience, work
and study. The audience was made up of ‘the workers, peasants,
* The reminiscences are from old Yenan cadres, interviewed by the author in
Yenan.
THE MORNING DELUGE
456
soldiers and revolutionary cadres in the bases’; they wanted to
read books and newspapers, ‘those who are illiterate want to see
plays and operas, look at drawings and paintings, sing songs and
hear music’. But writers persisted in only producing for a restric-
ted audience, a city audience, a bourgeois audience, or for each
other. ‘Their primary task is to understand people and know them
well,’ but they failed to understand their own people; they failed
to use ‘the rich, lively language of the masses’. Hence they pro-
duced insipid works which the people disliked. If they wanted to
be understood and accepted they must make up their minds to
undergo ‘a long and even painful process’ of assimilation and
integration called ‘tempering’.
Mao spoke of liis own tempering. He had as a student acquired
the ways of a student. ‘I then used to feel it undignified to do even
a little manual labour, such as carrying my own luggage ... At
that time I felt that intellectuals were the only clean people in the
world, while in comparison workers and peasants were dirty ...
But after I became a revolutionary and lived with workers and
peasants and with soldiers, it was then, and only then, that
I fundamentally changed the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois
feelings implanted in me in the bourgeois schools ... In the last
analysis, the workers and peasants were the cleanest people ...
cleaner than the bourgeois ... This is what is meant by a change
of feelings, a change from one class to another ... If our writers
and artists who come from the intelligentsia want their works
to be well received by the masses, they must change and remould
their thinking and their feelings.’
Mao touched here the fundamental problem of alienation of the
intellectual elite; a problem of urgency, but one which has
remained, in China, a problem up to today. Only a few artistic
productions bridged the gap. The Chinese opera was unchanged
by the Revolution until 1964, when Mao’s wife Chiang Ching at
last was able to work unhindered. In the domain of art and
literature, Mao’s recommendations were not so well accepted as
the enthusiastic paeans of praise which have issued, repeatedly,
from Chinese writers, would lead us to think. The problem of
artistic creation still remains the way Mao defined it. And the
THE RECTIFICATION MOVEMENT, I94I-1944 457
v^ay to integration with the masses is long and painful indeed.
Many writers never tried. Worse, perhaps, in the long run was
the stranglehold on art and literature by the Left League of
literocrats, who, using Marxist slogans, tried to re-create a
Confucian mandarinate, bureaucratic tyranny which stifled
artistic function. The same writers denounced by Lu Hsun were to
rise high in the hierarchy, but do nothing to change their own
class stand or abrogate their own privileges. Lu Hsun had said
that artists and writers in a revolution must not expect to retain
their arrogance and their privileges, or even to be treated politely
by the masses. ‘Even among comrades who have been to the
front and worked for a number of years in our base areas and in
the armies , it recjuired at least eight or ten years to solve this
problem of writing ‘for whom’; and ^ This question of^^for udwm”
is fundamental; it is a question of principle/ said Mao. ‘The life of the
people is always a mine of raw materials for literature and art,
materials most vital, rich and fundamental; an inexhaustible
source, their only source. But the people’ meant primarily
workers and peasants, not city intellectuals. How many writers
would write of and for them? He criticized copying from the
ancients and the foreigners’, an attitude redolent of servility, which
produced ‘dogmatism’ in art. All artists must plunge ‘into the
heat of the struggle ... in order to observe, experience, study and
analyse all the different kinds of people, all the classes, all the
masses ... Only then can they proceed to creative work’.
No artist, no writer would quarrel with what Mao said above,
on artistic creation. But a good many* will demur at the deter-
mined stance that portrayal must lean’ to drawing the heroic
features of the workers, peasants and soldiers, and that there can
be no vague, intermediate, indecisive, Hamletian characters held
up for admiration or pity, nor any counter-revolutionary or
bourgeois. Mao lived an epic, the workers and peasants had
created this epic, and epics need heroes larger than life-size. He
was quite right in pointing out the need for new hero figures to
replace the old, for a new art and literature to describe, to convey,
and to exalt the vitality of the Revolution and its many fascinating
* In Western society particularly.
15 *
THE MORNING DELUGE
458
exploits.'^' But how was this to be done if those qualified to do it
were imbued with elitism so that unconsciously, in their portrayal,
they would always set a ‘bourgeois’ in the centre of the stage to
display heroism? If the writer insisted on creating a Kuomintang
character as lovable as a Communist one in the name of ‘fair
play’ or ‘artistry’? The fundamental problem was the class
concept, and in this Mao’s analysis is a key one for the under-
standing of a writer’s difficulties in a Communist system. Perhaps
it would need another generation, a breed of proletarian writers,
intellectuals issued from the peasantry and from the workers, to
create a new art and a new literature for their own masses. Or
another Cultural Revolution. Meanwhile, the problem would
remain.
Within the scope of tliis struggle among the intellectuals there
also began a ‘pouring of grievances’ movement, a kind of Hun-
dred Flowers exercise, whose purpose was, of course, to streng-
then the Party, to consolidate its unity and integration. Just as in
the Hundred Flowers of 1956-1957, fourteen years later, some of
the literati, including Party members, began to challenge the
principles of the leadership instead of giving constructive criticism,
correcting shortcomings and criticizing errors within the limits
of the system. Since the literati were also the governing official-
dom in feudal and imperial days, the assumption that they would
always be entitled to authority, the illusion that in revolutionary
Yenan the ‘freedom’ of ‘parliamentary systems’ could work,
would prompt some unrealistic claims. The act of ‘throwing
oneself in the deep rich seas of the masses’, as Mao recommended,
spelled artistic suicide to others.
There is no doubt that some of the grievances were justified;
high-handedness and bureaucratic pressure existed; nor did all
artists and writers practise the virtues of patience and humility.
As the Rectification movement proceeded, in the heat and fire of
meetings, criticism and self-criticism (the slogan of the movement
was ‘Unity, criticism, unity’), it was possible for lower-echelon
* See Pingchia Kuo, China, New Age and New Outlook (Penguin, Harmonds-
worth, i960).
THE RECTIFICATION MOVEMENT, 194I-I944 459
Party members to come forward with their own grievances and
suggestions. Rectification with open doors — inviting non-Party
masses to criticize Party members — was also done; it has now
become a tradition. All this was to teach the intellectuals the
manifold complexities of a revolution. But hasty compliance
does not mean change, and some of the artistic productions seem
painfully forced, though there were also excellent ones.*
Rectification reached its peak in 1943. This was also the year of
the dissolution of the Comintern, an event greeted with sorrowful
bewilderment by many Communists parties in the world. When
asked his opinion, Mao stated that it was already quite some time
that the Comintern ‘had ceased meddling in our affairs*, and that
it had probably outgrown its usefulness. To Wang Ming’s faction
the disappearance of the Comintern was shattering.
Mao Tsetung had urged a practical programme of research on
Chinese economics, politics, military affairs, and liistory, deplor-
ing that it had not been done by the Chinese bourgeoisie although
‘bourgeois society in the West’ had been able to undertake such
research. It was therefore up to the Cliinese proletariat — the
Communist Party — to carry it out. A body of scholarship and
critical research methods were essential to the Party if, as vanguard
of the working class, it wanted to have its own sources of scientific
and technological data. In 1942 the sifting of historical material
began, and study of ‘historical questions’ such as incorrect lines
and deviations within the Party, the Sixth Congress, the putsch
organized by the twenty-eight Bolsheviks in January 1931, the
Tsunyi conference. Lengthy discussions were held, ‘especially on
the period from the beginning of 1931 to the end of 1934’, as
Mao requested.
In the preparatory sessions, Chou En-lai played an important
role. His seniority in the Party, the trust reposed in him by all
sections, his ability to hold together in unity those who otherwise
might have split, his recognized selflessness, gave his words great
weight. Chou had been in Chungking, in charge of the difficult
task of liaison with the Kuomintang. This liaison was maintained
* Such as The White-Haired Girl and Yellow River Cantata, books by Chao
Shu-li and Chou Li-po.
46 o
THE MORNING DELUGE
despite difficulties such as the lodging of KMT spies in the house
where Chou lodged, many restrictions, and even one murder *
It was maintained despite armed clashes between KMT and Red
Army units, which never stopped.
Chou was back in Ycnan in the spring and summer of 1942 to
take part in the Rectification movement, chiefly in settling Party
history problems. He there made a declaration entirely in favour
of Mao Tsetung. ‘The Party’s twenty-two-year history has
proved that the views of Comrade Mao Tsetung were formed and
maintained with historical perspective, aiming at a sustained
effort for the Revolution in China. The line he took was the only
correct line ... Comrade Mao Tsetung has integrated Commun-
ism with the movement of Chinese national liberation ... Because
of his leadership the strength of the Party is unprecedented.’!
Chou En-lai s testimony throughout the sessions rallied many
of the other members of the Central Committee, even some of
Wang Ming’s adherents. Yet Mao noted in April 1944 that in
spite of the proven success of his policies, ‘many Party cadres had
not yet reached a thorough understanding of the character of the
erroneous lines of the past’. Intense discussions were held in the
same building as the Yenan forum on art and literature. The
criticism and self-criticism sessions were prolonged; Wang Ming
and the other ‘Bolsheviks’ also had their say; but the ‘collabora-
tion of senior cadres’ of the Party heralded the victory of Mao’s
line. By the end of 1944 and early 1945, the struggle between the
two lines concluded with the victory of Mao, and this would now
be enshrined in Party history.:|:
Mao s policies, based upon the social sources of revolutionary
power, made the mass line the most important democratic and
initiative process to understand and to use. In his essay entitled
* At the Sian liaison office.
Also see Hsu Kai-yu, Chou En-lai: China's Gray Eminence, op. cit.
$ The settlement of these historical questions, which would confirm Mao*s
policies as consistently correct and condemn the Wang Ming line, would form
the subject of the Appendix: Resolutions on Certain Questions in the History of Our
Party, penned by Mao and approved at the last plenum of the Sixth Congress of
the Party in 1945, ‘enabling it to attain an ideological and political unity without
precedent in the history of the Communist Party of China’.
THE RECTIFICATION MOVEMENT, 1941-1944 461
Some Questions Concerning Methods of Leadership (June 1943), Mao
repeats the dialectic of the mass line. This ‘basic method of leader-
ship’, in which the leaders are the servants of those they lead
and have to be taught by the led in order to teach them, was to be
repeated for four decades; Mao in fact has never stopped repeating
it. ‘In all the practical work of our Party, all correct leadersliip is
necessarily “from the masses to the masses”. Tliis means, take
the ideas of the masses (scattered and unsystematic ideas) and
concentrate them (through study turn them into concentrated
and systematic ideas), then go to the masses and propagate and
explain these ideas until the masses embrace them as their own,
and translate them into action, and test the correctness of these
ideas in such action.’
The idea underlying the Rectification campaign was not to
purge and punish so much as to educate. The slogan was to ‘save
the patient by expelling the disease’, and self-criticism was the
most vigorous and effective manner in which unity could be
achieved without physical elimination. The Communist Party
membership went down from about 800,000 to 763,447 and then
736,191 in the years 1941 and 1942.*
In 1944 membership went up again, to 853,420; in April 1945 it
had risen to 1,211,128. Most of the new admissions were activists
of the Rectification movement, peasants, workers in the co-
operatives, and soldiers who had distinguished themselves in
fighting and in the Production Drive. The figures of admission
at Kangta also reflect tliis mass training of a core of proletarian
members. Whereas before 1942 the intellectuals began to be
admitted in a majority, after 1942 soldiers, seasoned grass-roots
cadres, were admitted and promoted (though intellectuals were
still admitted in considerable numbers).
Because in victory there must be justice but not vindictiveness,
Mao Tsetung set down the methods of handling cases when
errors are committed’. This was to leave a way out, a margin for
repentance and for change. He advocated a careful attitude, so
that there should be ‘no harm to comrades ... Our present task is
* Figures from Franz Schurmaiin, Ideology and Organization in Communist
China (University of California Press, 1968).
THE MORNING DELUGE
462
to prepare ourselves for a still greater responsibility ... we must
pay attention to work in the big cities and ^ong the main lines of
communication ... which has always been very inadequate* This
was a criticism of the work in the White areas under Liu Shao-
chi, as well as a preparation for the struggle for power to come.*
At the close of the campaign Mao again advocated making
good use of the ‘organ of thought’ ; to move one’s brains, he said,
was essential. ‘There is all too little of this habit in our Party.’
It was in 1943 that the Thought of Mao Tsetung began to be
mentioned as an entity. It would be consecrated at the Seventh
Congress in April 1945. This has been termed part of a ‘personality
cult’ which began during the Rectification campaign. Mao
Tsetung was unfeignedly and without any doubt tremendously
popular among the people, the soldiers, the grass-roots cadres;
his policies were sincerely acclaimed by them because they did
correspond to their needs. ‘The Party only takes measures after
we are sure of the approval of the majority ... we constantly
check on public opinion ... It is a fundamental principle of ours
to keep contact with the masses and satisfy their aspirations,’ Mao
told Guenther Stein. He also said: ‘You can only teach the masses
what you have learned from them.* Stein noticed the ease of
mind, frankness, democracy in Yenan (after Rectification), in
marked contrast to what he had seen in Russia. All this was the
basis of Mao’s popularity with ‘the little man’, the majority of the
people. It did give rise to expressions of love and respect; hence
the accusation of a ‘personality cult*.
But it is also true that Mao’s opponents deliberately went
overboard in fulsome praise of Mao; their laudations make
curious reading, especially after the GPCR. Mao may have
considered personal charisma necessary to carry out the policies
for victory he was bent on effecting. But ‘personality cult is a
feudal throwback wliich would obscure Mao’s real stature and
* Wang Ming was re-elected member of the Central Committee at the
Seventh Congress in April 1945 . next to last on the list, being 43rd out of 44 .
followed by Chin Pang-hsien. Both had been openly named as responsible for
the disastrous ‘left’ line from 1931 to 1934.
THE RECTIFICATION MOVEMENT, I94I-I944 463
contribution to the Revolution. Hence at the moment Mao is
doing all he can in order to eliminate it; the concentration must
be on ideas, on the Teaching of Mao Tsetung, not on the person.
This is a very difficult notion to instil in a country where
personal rule and autocratic power have been dominant for so
long. It would take decades to get away from the habits of the
past, and it is not certain that even yet the habit of democratic
debate is firmly established, although a beginning has been made.
The Thought of Mao Tsetung, which can be defmed as
Marxism-Leninism integrated with the specific characteristics of
the present epoch in history, stresses the continuous production of
new knowledge in contact with reality; adapts Marxism to the
specifics of revolution in a country. It is a ‘guide to action', and in
China denotes the body of theory-practice which guides the
Chinese Revolution. It is axiomatic, since it is based on the mass
line, that the Thought-Teaching of Mao Tsetung should be
widely disseminated and understood by the masses as a living,
working system, not an abstract intellectual discipline. Mao
Tsetung's trust in the masses and their mission to create the world
and transform nature by their practice and discovery of reality is
unbounded. It is this faith which underlies so many of his actions.
For Mao, the Party exists to serve the people, and not for power
for its own sake.
During the Rectification movement years, in spite of conflicts
and blockades, the liaison offices for united front work were kept
open.
On March 28, 1942, the CCP presented to the Kuomintang
certain demands: recognition of the CCP as a legal Party, and
recognition of the liberated territories as autonomous ; an agree-
ment to expand the Eighth Route Army from three to twelve
divisions, and agreement that the New Fourth Army remain
south of the Yellow river. There was also a reiteration of the ten-
point programme as the basis for a coalition government. It can
thus be claimed for the Communists that they began suggesting
a coalition of some sort, but predicated upon reform of the
Kuomintang and guarantees for the people of China, long before
THE MORNING DELUGE
464
the episodes which were to follow in the struggle with Chiang
Kai-shek for power. These demands were turned down by Chiang
Kai-shek and negotiations suspended.
But the international situation had changed in favour of the
Communists. With the United States at war with Japan and
anxious to keep Cliiang in the war, with Chiang dependent on
United States money and equipment, he did not dare start a
major offensive against the Communists, though storing weaponry
provided by the United States for a final decision against Mao on
the battlefield.
In Chungking, American newsmen and American embassy
officials were becoming increasingly critical of Chiang Kai-shek.
It was the appalling treatment of the soldiers, as well as of the
population, wliich stirred their indignation. By 1944 the United
States was to send General Joseph W^. Stilwell to reorganize the
Chiang armies in preparation for an all-out assault on Japan from
the Chinese mainland. The reports that more than 50 per cent
troops were pinned down by the Communists made a
favourable impact upon the Americans; at the same time President
Roosevelt was much perturbed by the obvious preparations for
civil war that Chiang was making.
It was within this network of shifting international events and
their effect in China that the Rectification Movement took place;
to prepare the Party for victory in the postwar period.
In 1944 Mao had warned — through Guenther Stein — of the
‘possibility’ of civil war with Chiang. The word probability was
more apt. To counter this, the Rectification movement was
imperative. War there would be, and it would be merciless. Mao
asked: ‘Shall we dare to win?’ He answered the question he had
asked: ‘Yes, we shall dare to win ... everything.’ This was no
less than the decision for total victory in all China. No revolution
justifies itself unless its aim is to seize power. The CCP was only
five years away from this goal, but no one would have thought it
possible at the time, and very few could sec that the Rectification
movement was essential to its accomplishment.
The Seventh Congress, April 1945
The Seventh Congress of the CCP, held April to June 1945 at
Yenan, has a place second only in importance to the Tsunyi
conference. It v^as the conclusion of one stage of the Revolution,
the beginning of another. Seventeen years had elapsed since the
Sixth Congress, held in 1928 in Moscow; at that time the CCP
had been a hunted, decimated, small party of survivors. In 1945 it
was the second largest in the world.
The Congress, as Mao formulated it, was *a Congress of unity, a
Congress of victory*. The CCP had recapitulated its own history,
drawn political and historical conclusions which were taught to
every member, assessed its gains, castigated its errors, proclaimed
its unity, the success of its Production Drive, the Rectification
movement and its war against Japan; it now proclaimed its
programmes for the future.*
The grey brick building where the Seventh Congress was held
is shown to visitors to Yenan. A two-storey edifice; its first floor is
a large pillared hall. Here, in November 1944, Mao had received
Eighth Route Army cadres of Brigade no. 359, going south to
reinforce the New Fourth Army. He had told them:
Become like a pine or a willow.
The pine is evergreen, straight in wind or storm (the pine has principle ).
The willow grows anywhere it is planted,
In spring its branches lengthen, numberless leaves move in the wind with
beauty (the willow has flexibility).
Here in 1945 the Central Committee assembled. The sober
platform with its long table and a dozen chairs, the wooden
* See On Coalition Gouermnent (April 24th, 1945). Selected Works, vol. III.
465
THE MORNING DELUGE
466
benches below for the members, have all been kept as they were
then.
The slogan of the Rectification movement, ‘Persist in truth,
correct your mistakes,’ spread under the flags hanging on every
pillar. At the back of the hall the words ‘One heart, one virtue*
(morality) were painted on the wall. Each pillar was adorned with
a V for victory emblem, to emphasize the participation of the
CCP and the Red Army in the ^Vorld W^ar. There were twenty-
four Red flags for the twenty-four years of the CCP’s existence.
Upstairs were rooms for relaxing. One of them holds a pingpong
table; Mao Tsetung played pingpong between sessions of the
Congress, He is a good-humoured, steady player, losing games
with great equanimity.
It is important to assess the background of the Congress to
understand Mao Tsetung’s three key speeches, notably the one
On Coalition Government.
The relations of the CCP with Chiang Kai-shek, with the
United States, with the Soviet Union, and relations between the
United States, the Soviet Union, and Chiang Kai-shek, were
significant in shaping the speeches at the Seventh Congress, as
were the strength of the Communist Party and the intentions of
the Party towards seizure of power. For in April 1945 the CCP
and the Red Army were not only a national force but an inter-
national one (even if this is ignored by some historians). This
made the Seventh Congress a culmination, a platform of far-
reaching decision. Mao Tsetung stood at the peak of his ideolo-
gical authority; the Thought of Mao Tsetung was enshrined as
the guiding principle of the CCP, defined as Marxism-Leninism
applied to the concrete conditions of China. The Party now had
1,211,128 members, a jump of 400,000 since I 944 ; *^he Red
Army counted 910,000 regular soldiers, 2,299,000 militia.
The Rectification movement had fashioned a united, dis-
ciplined party, a prodigious army, a potential government with
great leadership talent, with cadres experienced in rural conditions,
a core of devoted, zealous, and sclf-sacriflcing administrators.
Yenan’s reputation throughout China and abroad was prestigious.
‘There’, the peasants said, ‘the sun always shines.’ The success of
THE SEVENTH CONGRESS, APRIL 1945 4^7
the Production Drive had shown up the failure of the Kuomin-
tang, decaying with corruption, inflation, tyranny. The CCP
had evolved intelligent, flexible methods of caring for the
population, with sane economic policies; Chiang’s government
was floundering in economic crisis and the misery of the rural
population was becoming unbearable. The Communist Party
had the support of the great masses of the people, not only in the
liberated areas but throughout Cliina. It was the mass support
which legitimized the administrations of the liberated areas, so
that it was perfectly true to say that CCP represented the
Chinese masses far more than Chiang Kai-shek did.*
There was no longer any ambiguity on who had done what,
nor on the central role of Mao Tsetung in achieving the present
success. ‘The Party definitely established the leadership of com-
rade Mao Tsetung in the central leading body and throughout the
Party.* The Congress solidly endorsed the Tsunyi conference,
thus legitimizing Mao*s supremacy. It condemned all previous
erroneous lines, the sharpest castigation being for the ‘particularly
serious form ofwarlordism’ of Chang Kuo-tao and the ‘disastrous*
failures of Wang Ming and Chin Pang-hsien, the ‘two dogmatists*.
The resolution covering these pointsf ended with a note of
warning; since the stage of the war of resistance against Japan
was ‘not yet concluded, it is appropriate to postpone to a future
date the drawing of conclusions on certain questions in the history
of the Party during the IVar of Resistance', Mao was fully aware that
all ‘deviations* and opposition to his line had not been dealt with
through the Rectification campaign. He knew, as the plaudits
resounded, as Party members rose in ovation, as the thunder of
acclamation shook the windows, that among those clapping and
cheering were some who waited an opportunity to turn against
him. It is said that he has a ‘gift for smelling out’ potential
opportunists, but that he usually does not act until they have had
plenty of opportunity to betray themselves. There were more
* As two American observers, John Paton Davies and Major Evans Carlson,
were to state.
t Appendix : Resolutions on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party, resulting
from the two-year appraisal of the history of the CCP and written by Mao
{Selected Works, vol. III).
468
THE MORNING DELUGE
enemies to cope with, possibly even ‘nestling by his side’, but the
time had not come to take up the matter. In the very hours of
what looked like his absolute triumph, he knew already the seed
of other intra-Party struggles.
The Seventh Congress was held when both the United States
and the USSR were already planning the postwar world. The
presence since July 1944 of an American observer mission in
Yenan, and the visit of numerous American officials and news-
men, had brought the CCP into the orbit of international politics.
Since Pearl Harbour, the United States government in its Pacific
war had been concerned with the succinct problem of ‘keeping
Chiang in the war . Diplomatically, it became United States
policy to assert that China was a ‘great power’, in order to have
China by her side as an ally in the new postwar world order. As
a result, the return of territory lost to Japan, Taiwan among
others, was solemnly promised at various international con-
ferences. Chiang made full use of what he gauged as American
dependence on him for the war against Japan in order to extort the
maximum in money — he blandly asked for a billion dollars in
1943— ^i^d in weapons, without trying to launch an effective
military action against Japan. The United States government
endured it stoically during 1942 and 1943; but glowing reports
of the Communists and of their military successes came tlirough.
Although Chiang refused to allow newsmen to go to Yenan, the
liaison office of the Communists in Chungking was popular with
Americans and was a source from which facts about the Com-
munists’ war effort were gathered, as were also the Japanese
intelligence reports.
It was not until June 1944, with the visit of Vice-President
Henry Wallace and personal and unequivocal messages from
Roosevelt to Chiang (in February and again in June), that very
reluctantly Chiang Kai-shek authorized American military
observers and foreign servicemen to be stationed at Yenan in
order, as Roosevelt asked, ‘to collect more information on the
Japanese enemy in North Cliina and in Manchuria*. During 1944
Japan launched its last and biggest military offensive after five
years of stalemate with Chiang. This campaign in Central and
THE SEVENTH CONGRESS, APRIL I945 469
South China was designed not against Chiang but against Ameri-
can air bases in South China. Chiang withdrew lois troops, ordered
his crack regiments not to fight the Japanese, and deliberately
made things easy for the Japanese attack to proceed.
General Joseph W. (‘Vinegar Joe’) Stilwell, who had been sent
to Cliina expressly for the purpose of ‘reorganizing’ Chiang’s
troops and making them fight, was bitterly antagonistic to
Chiang. Much money had been expended in order to arm, equip
and train thirty divisions. Chiang, as always, stowed away men
and weapons to prepare for the only war he had ever wanted to
fight, war against the Communists. The very obvious prospect
of impending civil war intensely worried the United States
government, which identified Cliiang’s government with China.
It would mean an enormous weakening of the Pacific front if
Chiang made peace with Japan. Chiang played on this American
fear whenever he was refused loans or lend-lease aid; and America
paid up, ‘to keep China in the war’.
However, a spate of criticism from American newsmen and
Vice-President AVallace s visit had revealed some ugly facts
about the Chiang regime. It seems that for a short while United
States foreign policy makers did consider the possibility of an
alternative to Chiang Kai-shek. In July 1944 the Dixie mission,
composed of some seventeen officers of the United States Army
and two foreign service men, arrived by plane in Yenan. This
observer group would report diligently, accurately and honestly
on the Communist forces, organization, and intentions; and for
this scrupulous devotion to the best interests of the United States
many of them were to lose their positions, even be attacked as
pro-Red , in that orgy of anti-Communist unreason which
seized America from 1945 on and culminated in McCarthyism.
But even preceding McCarthy, only an emanation of this season
of hysteria, the first manifestation of the ‘Cold War’ psychosis
would be in the spring of 1945, when the Seventh Congress was
being held.*
The seven or more months spent by the ofEcers and observers
of the Dixie mission in Yenan were a revelation for both sides; a
* Daniel Horowitz, Containment and Revolution (Blond, London, 1967).
470
THE MORNING DELUGE
revelation of friendship, good will, camaraderie between Ameri-
cans and Chinese. The Communists knew that the United States
had urged upon Chiang, through Stilwell and Ambassador Gauss,
some basic democratic reforms. This had interested Mao; as he
spoke with American newsmen, military officers, foreign service
men, in a free, warm, happy series of interviews and informal
talks, he asked many questions about American democracy and
was vastly interested and also captivated, as his interviews
reveal.
So was Chou En-lai, who spent days, as Mao did, in talk with
the Americans. ‘For a brief period it was possible to prove to the
Chinese revolutionary movement that America stood for
progress,’ wrote Theodore White, but ‘we cast this opportunity
away.’*
Leaving aside the genuine and warm friendships that members
of the Communist Party contracted with some American
newsmen and other individuals who visited Yenan — Snow,
Evans Carlson, Jack Belden, Harrison Forman among others —
mutual respect, frank speaking, and genuine appreciation for
points of view so different also emerges from the documents of
the times. The author had the pleasure of knowing personally
Colonel David Barrett, head of the Dixie mission. Barrett, John
Service, John Davies were all to suffer, some for two decades, for
being members of the mission and filing reports which were
accurate about Yenan, and thus falling foul of United States
‘policy’ when that policy suddenly reversed itself.
The Americans in Yenan attended seminars, lectures, concerts
and theatres ; they walked everywhere, visited far-off bases, were
shown everything. The memory of Yenan was to remain in them
a wistful, nostalgic if Puritan ‘little heaven’. They were liked, and
liked the Chinese Communists.f
It was Roosevelt who had suggested to Chiang calling in a
* Theodore White and Annalee Jacoby, Thunder Out of China (William Sloane
Associates, New York, 1946), pp. 241-242.
t For entrancing accounts of the American stay in Yenan in 1944, read David
D. Barrett, Dixie Mission: The United States Army Observer Group in Yenan, 1944^
op. cit., and John Stewart Service, The Amerasia Papers: Some Problems in the
History of U.S.-China Relations, op. cit.
THE SEVENTH CONGRESS, APRIL I945
471
friend’, or American mediation for negotiations between Chiang
and the CCP, which had actually dragged on all through the war
in that curious atmosphere— no war, no peace — wliich was the
Second United Front. To Vice-President Wallace in June 1944,
who argued that the Russians had told him that Mao Tsetung and
the others were not real Communists but ‘margarine Com-
munists , because Communism was impossible without heavy
industry, Chiang had replied, ‘No, no, they arc real Communists.
They are in fact much more Communist than the Russians.’
As far as is known, the State Department at the time main-
tained an eminently flexible prudent position. Considering
United States interests first, it would not make the error of
thinking China was Chiang, or Chiang was China, but it never
actually stated this in a forthright way. The identification of
Chiang with China persisted. The self-assigned role of friendly
mediator turned into something quite different, and therein lay
the tragedy of those years.
The United States military mission to Yenan correctly ap-
preciated that the Chinese Communists were deeply rooted
among the people and could not be eradicated by annihilation
campaigns. They reported on the strength and popularity of the
Communists. The contrast between the young, well-fed, well-
trained and well-behaved Red soldiers, and the verminous soldiers
of Chiang, riddled with disease, starved, press-ganged; between
the simplicity of the Communist leaders* and the gross venality
of Chiang s officials, was too obvious not to impress deeply.
But then along came General Patrick Hurley.
Hurley was sent as special emissary by Roosevelt to Chiang
Kai-shek in September 1944, with the primary object of getting
Chiang and Stilwell to work better together. No other mission
was given to him. But Stilwell was recalled — Hurley apparently
supporting Chiang — in October 1944. From the start of Hurley’s
presence in China, whatever his self-contradictory statements and
actions for the next year, he had thrown his weight on Chiang’s
side.
* Mao Tsetung in 1944 was paid a ‘salary* amounting to three United States
dollars a month.
472
THE MORNING DELUGE
In July 1944, when the Dixie mission went to Yenan, a recom-
mendation by the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff that both
Nationalist and Communist forces be joined under a single
command (Stilwell’s) had been sent to Roosevelt; in Chungking,
Ambassador Gauss broached the idea ofjoint operations to Chiang
on September 15. Vice-President Wallace, it is said, in talks with
Cliiang in June, had already spoken of some sort of political
coalition with the Communists. The Communists themselves
could point out that throughout the years they had never re-
fused the idea of a ‘democratic republic’. But what they meant
by a democratic republic was entirely different from Chiang’s
regime. Even the Communist minimum programme for coalition
would have ended Chiang’s military dictatorship and one-party
regime, and Chiang would never agree to cancel himself out.
Perhaps all this increased Chiang’s haste to get rid of Stilwell,
who had sympathy for the Yenan regime. Soon after Stilwell’s
departure. Gauss also resigned, in November 1944. Hurley
became the United States ambassador in Chungking (on Chiang’s
request to Roosevelt) on November 17. He then took upon him-
self the task of effecting a marriage between the Communists and
Chiang Kai-shek.
Descriptions of Hurley’s physical impressiveness are many; but
his was ‘the tragedy of a mind groping desperately at problems
beyond its scope’, says Theodore White. He did nothing to
improve his knowledge of China; reading books or documents
was beyond his weak eyes; he never took notes; relied on a
chancy memory ; cursed hugely, and would brook no divergence
in opinion. But all this is immaterial; what is more to the point
is that Hurley was so obsessed with personal prejudice that he
failed to consider whether his conduct of affairs and his idio-
syncrasies would be detrimental or not to the ultimate interests of
the United States, not to speak of loyal United States foreign
service observers whose careers he savagely destroyed.
Unannounced, on November 7, Hurley landed by air in
Yenan. Colonel Barrett describes Hurley’s arrival ‘wearing
enough ribbons on his chest to represent every war ... in which
the United States had ever engaged except possibly Shays
THE SEVENTH CONGRESS, APRIL I 945 473
rebellion’. Mao was hastily summoned to the airport by Chou
En-lai, and a company of soldiers mustered for a guard of honour.
Hurley ‘swelled up like a poisoned pup and let out an Indian
warwhoop’, then told Barrett he had been paid a million dollars
by a certain oil company to negotiate an agreement with the
Mexican government. Possibly this gave the ambassador the
confidence he could negotiate anything.
Hurley spent two days in Yenan. During those two days he
submitted to Mao a five-point draft which he seems to have
worked out in conjunction with officials of the Kuomintang
government. Mao declared bluntly that it was the Kuomintang
who refused to negotiate with the Communist Party; that a
coalition government had already been offered several times, but
that the Kuomintang must first reform itself; Chiang did not
want any reorganization. He also told Hurley that Chiang utilized
the best of his armies to blockade the Communists.
The talk with Mao, and perhaps the Yenan atmosphere, seem
to have given Hurley, for a short while, some lucidity. He went
back to Chungking with a revised five-point agreement, which
in fact he drafted himself after the Communist proposals had
been submitted to him. They ‘did not go far enough’, he said, and
corrected their draft and signed the result, together with Mao.
On November lo, accompanied by Chou En-lai and Barrett,
Hurley flew back to Chungking. Chiang of course turned down
the proposals, although they represented a moderate basis for a
coalition government. Hurley himself had called them ‘reason-
able , and in fact had signed them because he considered them
‘fair and just’.
But Chiang answered with a counter-proposal which granted
nothing except a vague statement of civil liberties — ‘guaranteed
subject only to the specific needs of security’. This phrase left the
issue wide open for his continued dictatorship. After Hurley
became ambassador on November 17, he ‘increasingly inclined’
to favour the Chiang side against the Communists.
Chiang prepared another draft, substantially the same as his
furst counter-proposal but including an offer to appoint ‘some
high-ranking officer (one only) from among the Communist
474
THE MORNING DELUGE
forces to membership of the National Military Council’. And
now the pattern of interference took the place of the mediation’
which Ambassador Gauss had initiated. Hurley could not per-
suade Chou £n-lai in Chungking to accept the Chiang counter-
proposals. Barrett was now charged with the unpleasant task of
returning to Yenan to confer there with Mao Tsetung and
persuade him to accept Chiang s terms. The interview took place
on December lo, I944> ^i^d was *stormy’, and exceedingly
uncomfortable for Barrett personally. After months of warm
friendship and mutual trust, it must have seemed a stab in the
back, rank perfidy, to Mao and to Chou that the United States
representative in Chungking should now offer them Chiang’s
terms as backed by the United States, after Hurley himself had
found the Communist proposals fair and just and agreed to present
them to Chiang. Mao could not understand the sudden volte-face.
He kept getting angry, and calling Chiang ‘that turtle’s egg’.
The principal point in the three terms which are offered us’,
said Mao in the interview ... ‘is that the Communist forces must
submit to “reorganization” by the National Military Council.
This means the placing of our troops completely under the
control of the Generalissimo ... We will then be at his mercy.
In return for what is tantamount to complete surrender, we are
offered one membership in the National Military Council ... This
means nothing.’ Actually the council had not met for years.
Hurley had told Chou very rudely in Chungking that before
any co-operation with the Americans the Chinese Communists
*f7tiist accept the Generalissimo’s terms’. The United States,
however, ‘offers us absolutely no guarantee of our safety under
these terms’, Mao said. ‘We cannot trust the good faith of the
Generalissimo, and no one who has studied impartially the
history of the relations of the Kuomintang and the Chinese
Communist Party could reasonably expect us to have any
confidence in him. We find the attitude of the United States
somewhat puzzling,’ continued Mao; he was in liigh fury, but
his statements were restrained. Hurley had come to Yenan; a
five-point proposal, the basis for a coalition government, had
been given to him; he had agreed the terms were ‘eminently
475
THE SEVENTH CONGRESS, APRIL 1945
fair*, had even signed them on November lo. But now, thirty
days later, the same Hurley asked the Communists to accept
counter-proposals made by Chiang which ‘required us to sacrifice
our liberty. This is difficult for us to understand/ The words
‘perfidious’ and ‘treacherous’, which the Communists would use
later, are not too strong to describe what the Communists thought
of these actions of the United States representative.
Mao reiterated that he was entirely willing to participate in a
coalition government. Was this true? It probably was; because
of the Dixie mission, because of the feeling which Mao Tsetung
had come to in the several months that the mission had been in
Yenan that with the help of the Americans, who could keep
Chiang Kai-shek in check, a genuinely democratic coalition
government could be made to work. Mao was prepared, as he
put it, to co-operate ... to save the situation’ from impending
civil war. ‘We do not want war ... even for a day.’ But now he
knew war would be inevitable, and he also realized the Americans
might be on Chiang’s side in the war.
The point is important. Before the advent of the Americans,
Mao Tsetung saw no way out except seizure of power by armed
struggle. With the Americans and their help,* Mao Tsetung was
willing to try a peaceful coalition government; but with the
proviso that Cliiang must accept reforms. He had been almost
persuaded that America also would insist on reforms. Had not
every American he had met told him how appalled they were by
Chiang’s misrule? Only the United States could truly help
China to a new democratic government, and Mao was willing
then to forgo armed struggle. Perhaps a peaceful way out could
be found.
He was, understandably, extremely angry. ‘The United States
believes that Chiang must be retained in power at all costs. We
have no objection ... We are not, however, going to give up our
right of self-preservation for one seat ...’ He warned that it was
* On the military side, all through 1944 and imtil March 1945, the United
States had actually made promises of military co-operation with the CCP and
the Red Army; and Mao had indicated that the Communists would ‘gladly
serve ... under a United States commander’ against Japan.
47 ^ the morning deluge
useless to support Chiang Kai-shek . Mao insisted that under the
five points he had proposed, and with the help of the United States,
the Communists could prevent a civil war and make a coalition
government work. ‘If the United States abandons us now, we
shall be very sorry, but it will make no difference in our good
feeling towards you. We will accept your help with gratitude
any time, now or in the future ... If the United States does not
give us one rifle or one round of ammunition, we shall still
be friends of the United States.’*
But Hurley had now become fixated on a ‘unification of the
forces of China’, and this unification must be under Chiang. No
flexibility of any kind could be allowed. China was Chiang,
Chiang was China. As he never went out to see how the people
really fared under Chiang, but lived in solitary splendour,
banqueted and flattered by the Chiangs, he became increasingly
isolated from any advice but that of Chiang’s officials.
By January 1945 the Japanese campaign had come to its end.
Spent and overstretched, the Japanese withdrew; in their wake
Communist guerillas sprang up. Though Chiang then assisted the
Japanese with his own officers and troops, and invaded certain
Red bases, the cruelties of the Kuomintang caused wholesale
uprisings by the mobilized population; Red Army counter-
offensives took back the territories. All this Hurley ignored.
In January 1945 Hurley conceived of the idea of pressuring the
Chinese Communists through Stalin to force a compromise with
Chiang Kai-shek. The idea that Moscow dictated to all Communist
parties in the world made him certain the CCP would also obey
Moscow. From conversations in August 1944 with the Russians,
Hurley had gathered that they ‘thought little’ of the Chinese
Communists, that Moscow did not support the CCP nor desire
to see them in power. He too was told that the Chinese Com-
munists were not real Communists. And he repeated it. Later, he
would accuse the American foreign service men and army
officers of being ‘Communist-inclined’ because they had written
favourably about people wliom he himself had declared not
Communistic*.
* December 1944 interview.
THE SEVENTH CONGRESS, APRIL I945 477
Hurley reasoned that if Mao could be made to fed ‘abandoned'
by Moscow, he would have to agree to a compromise with
Chiang. Hence Stalin must be prevailed upon to sign a treaty of
friendship and alliance with Chiang Kai-shek, which would
take the wind out of Mao’s sails. Considerable exertions were
made by the Americans to get a treaty going between Stalin and
Chiang, Chiang was anxious for such an agreement. He counted
on an opposition to Mao in the CCP strong enough to outvote
Mao; Chiang was kept well informed on the intra-Party struggle;
but he overestimated the importance of some individuals and
underestimated Mao’s powers of persuasion in tlie Party.
But now, in the United States, the tactics of war and diplomacy
began to shift. Roosevelt was engaged in active negotiations with
the USSR. Doubt as to Russian reaction in case of civil war in
China and, even more, Roosevelt’s insistence on Russia’s enterino-
the war against Japan had led to these talks. By the end of 1944
Roosevelt considered that an alliance with the USSR for a
postwar ‘world balance’ might work to America’s advantage, and
China receded in importance. Militarily, also, the United States
had concluded that Chinese forces would no longer be needed to
defeat Japan, nor China be the great base from which to invade
Japan, since the island-hopping strategy was successful, and later the
use of the atom bomb would make it unnecessary for the United
States to consider Chinese armies important. On the other hand,
the United States was anxious to keep China’s enormous market
for itself, and its economic expansion. Hence an accommodation
with the USSR on China had to be reached. Tliis would lead to
the Yalta meetings in February 1945.
In Edgar Snow s Katidom Motes on Red Chitiaj there is a hint of
a ‘sharing’ of China envisaged already by Roosevelt. Some weeks
before Roosevelt’s death, Snow saw the President, and in the
conversation was startled by something Roosevelt said which
implied that he thought of a partition of China between two
‘legal’ governments, one in the North and one in the South.
Whether tliis, coming after Yalta, represented a state of mind
which was Roosevelt’s alone or one arrived at jointly with Stalin
is unclear. Thus from ‘mediator’ to involvement to interference,
478 the morning deluge
bit by bit was fashioned a foreign policy towards China which
would be the worst possible for the relations between the two
countries. In the ensuing years of opposition to the realities of
the Chinese Revolution the United States would waste her
prestige and power until a massive accumulation of problems, the
fruit of ill-conceived policies, would at last bring about a change.
The Yalta meeting of February 1945 between Roosevelt and
Stalin, with Churchill a poor third, took place, while in Yenan
preparations for the Seventh Congress of the Communist Party
of China were being made. W^as Mao Tsetung aware of the
significance of Yalta? He must have noticed that Chiang was not
invited, and later studied the clauses which concerned Chinese
territory, bargained away by Roosevelt in his desire to have the
USSR enter the war against Japan.
Stalin skilfully used Roosevelt’s haunting obsession with ‘sparing
American lives’, and his attempts to get Russia to fight Japan, to
extort concessions which it was not up to Roosevelt to make,
for these concerned Chinese territory and rights. Automatically,
having made these concessions, the Americans would have to
back Chiang Kai-shek, who agreed to these demands in regard to
China while Mao was neither consulted nor told— and would not
have agreed. For if the United States threw its weight in favour of
a Sino-Soviet pact with Chiang, surely it must appear to back
Chiang to the hilt, and leave itself no alternative. This is what
happened.
To enter the war against Japan, Stalin had demanded on
December 14, 1944, the lease of both Port Arthur and Dairen,
Chinese ports situated on Chinese territory, and the surrounding
area; lease of the Chinese Eastern Railway line from Dairen to
Harbin (again that famous railway!), thence northwest to Man-
chouli and east to Vladivostock; recognition of the status quo in
Outer Mongolia (the independent republic of Outer Mongolia).
On these conditions, Russia would enter the war against Japan
‘two or three months’ after the war in Europe ended and Germany
surrendered. Stalin was asking, in fact, the former rights of
Czarist Russia, ‘violated’ (as he put it) by the Japanese in the war
of 1904! The American negotiators managed to modify the
THE SEVENTH CONGRESS, APRIL I945 479
wording to ‘internationalization of the ports of Dairen and the
lease of Port Arthur as a naval base for the USSR; China’s full
sovereignty in Manchuria being retained, but the pre-eminent
interests of the Soviet Union safeguarded’,*
Two months after the Yalta conference, in April 1945, Roose-
velt died. The Cold War had already begun; the premises upon
which the Yalta agreement had been drawn up had already
changed, for the atom bomb was being tested and the United
States felt able to go it alone , felt no need to share the world with
anyone. The anti-Communist preparation of public opinion in the
United States was immensely stepped up. Mao watched this with
anxiety. He would always remember how swiftly public opinion
could be manipulated. Unlike his predecessor, the new President
Truman felt that a truculent attitude towards the Russians would
pay off. By June 1945 there was already a categorical shift in
attitude towards Russia. As for the policy towards China,
Hurley seemed, in the first six months of 1945, convinced he
would succeed in getting the two sides together — he was sure
they were really ‘that near’, holding the thumb and fmger half
an inch apart. But by together’ he meant under the supreme rule
of Chiang Kai-shek.
Increasingly, Hurley urged that pressure be put on the Com-
munists, whose strength was ‘exaggerated’. He would not use any
pressure on Chiang. American policy was ‘to sustain Chiang’
and no one else, said Hurley. Yet as late as January 1945 the State
Department had stated in a memorandum that a ‘government
representative of the wishes of the people’, and not necessarily
Chiang Kai-shek s, was what the United States desired in China.
But the State Department lagged beliind the formidable im-
peratives of the Cold War, the ruthless calculations of profit and
power. Hurley, therefore, was not the jackass some make him
out to be. He was unrelentingly an imperialist. Cliiang would
serve America s purposes in China far better than a patriotic,
strong government under Mao. The race for economic con-
cessions in Cliina had already begun ; American company
* Among many others, see Herbert Feis, The China Tangle (Princeton
University Press, 1953).
THE MORNING DELUGE
480
representatives flew into Chungking even before the war had
ended.
In February 1945 Hurley went to Washington and strongly
recommended supporting only Chiang Kai-shek, with military
weapons and money, opposing any other course of action. A
little-known memorandum of the time quoted by John Service is
the following: ‘Hurley, Lieutenant General Wedemeyer, and
Commodore Miles discussed the Chinese military problems with
the Joint Chiefs of Staff on March 27 [1945]. They were all of the
opinion that the rebellion in China could be put down by com-
paratively small assistance to Chiang’s government.’* Commo-
dore Miles was later to head the OSS (Office of Strategic Services)
in Cliina, in close co-operation with Tai Li, Chiang ’s secret
service director. The OSS was the parent of the CIA.
On April i John Service had another interview with Mao
Tsetung, a few days before the Seventh Congress opened. This
was his third interview; his first had been in August 1944 and
the second in March 1945. Mao then told him that the people of
China and of America had strong ties of sympathy, understanding
and mutual interest. Both were essentially democratic and
individualistic. China’s great postwar need would be economic
development. America and China complemented each other
economically. For all these reasons there must not and could not
be any conflict, estrangement or misunderstanding between
the Chinese people and the American people. Mao repeated
that Americans did not seem to understand the Kuomintang-
Communist issue; it was not just a kind of ‘bickering’ or legal
opposition between two political parties. It was, far more, a
military confrontation ; and Chiang would not hesitate to massacre
the Communists should they give up their armies.
Mao again offered friendship and co-operation to America in
the war against Japan; he reminded Service gently that the
Communists had saved many American airmen from Japanese
clutches, often passing them through hostile country at the risk of
their own lives. Now the Communists were even willing to
*John Stewart Service, The Amerasia Papers: Some Problems in the History of
U.S.-Chitia Relations, op. cit.
THE SEVENTH CONGRESS, APRIL J945 481
place their forces under the command of an American general;
they would loyally fight the common enemy. Mao said that
America would win ‘the undying friendship’ of the overwhelming
majority of China’s people should she decide twt to interfere in the
civil war that was looming. To interfere meant to help Chiang
solely. Then America would be helping Chiang make civil war
against the people of Cliina; and this would ruin the friendship
between China and America. Chou En-lai also urged Service to
stay a few more days in Yenan; had Service done so, he would
have been present at the Congress and heard some of the speeches
made; but he had to leave.
Service was ‘Hurleyed’ out of China in that same April 1945 ;
Ambassador Hurley sent in a very unfavourable report on him,
accusing him of pro-Communism. In June he was to be arrested
in his own country in connection with ‘leaks’ to the magazine
Amerasia,
But even then Hurley had not been able to move the State
Department — though with the fears and the pressures of the
times, some quailed and caved in -to an officially adopted
inflexible, help-Chiang-only policy, although the reality was that
this policy was operative in substance. The principle of ‘flexibility’
was still being advocated, but the suggestion of military co-
operation with the Communists had long since vanished, leaving
military co-operation with Chiang still operative. The State
Department reiterated somewhat weakly the ‘unrepresentative’
character of Chiang s government, its inefficiency and corruption.
But Hurley carried on, and a growing number of rabidly anti-
Communist businessmen and politicians seemed to back his
policies.
It is against this background that we must analyse Mao’s
speech On Coalition Government at the Seventh Congress.* The
speech has the all-encompassing sweep which Mao projects in so
much of his writing; the links between separate spheres of opera-
tion— military, political, economic, foreign relations — are shown
very clearly. There is not a single belligerent word; but it is a
speech of resolve and determination, of flexible offer to co-operate,
* Selected Works, vol. III.
THE MORNING DELUGE
482
but of inflexible principle not to disarm but to negotiate on the
ten-point programme set out in 1937. All this was not new; but
On Coalition Government is also a blueprint for a new Chinese
state. There is not a single word against the United States, in spite
of the way in which Mao might have felt let down. He had no
illusions left, but only quiet confidence. ‘We must exert ourselves
and learn, because China depends on us for reconstruction.’ He
expected no help from anyone.
He repeated again that the offer made by Chiang of one post in
the National Military Council meant nothing; there must be an
end to one-party dictatorship and political tutelage, repeal of all
laws suppressing the freedom of the people, abolition of the
secret police, of the attacks and the blockade against Communist
areas, recognition of the legal status of all anti-Japanese troops, and
of the popularly elected governments in the liberated areas.
Chiang’s book, China's Destiny* had been published in 1944; it
was full of Confucian precepts, and attacked the Communists as
an ‘alien’ philosophy. Mao referred to it with irony. China’s
two destinies were indeed plain: ‘Someone has written a book
about one of them ... our Congress represents China’s other
destiny, and we too shall write a book about it.’ Mao called the
CCP ‘the centre of gravity of the Chinese people’s struggle to
resist Japan and save the nation ... China’s centre of gravity lies
right here where we are, and nowhere else.’
Mao Tsetung also indicated that within the Party as well as
without there were people who were so wearied by war that they
were ready to compromise and come to an agreement on almost
any terms. The USSR, as well as the United States and Great
Britain and France, all tried to persuade the CCP to give in. But
the continuation of armed attacks from the KMT throughout the
years, and the blockade (which took no less than 790,000 of
Cliiang’s men), made it impossible to come to an agreement by
relinquishing the armed forces and the territories under
Communist administration.
The danger of civil war was present; Chiang was indeed
stepping up preparations ‘as soon as the forces of a certain Allied
* English edition, Roy Publishers, New York, 1947.
THE SEVENTH CONGRESS, APRIL 1945 483
country have cleared a considerable part of the Chinese mainland
of the Japanese aggressors’. Obviously Mao still believed that the
United States strategy of using China as a jumping-off base to
occupy Japan held good; he did not know that the plans had
changed.
The time was right for daring, but in the Party there were those
who did not dare; the fear of offending both the United States
and the USSR must have been often discussed by the faint-
hearted. They had no confidence in the Chinese people, said Mao,
they were ‘practical’ men, with a fear of taking power by armed
struggle. He was ready to talk peace, but not at the cost of
suicide.
On foreign policy Mao had this to say: ‘The Communist
Party of China agrees with the Atlantic Charter and with the
decisions of the international conferences of Moscow, Cairo,
Teheran and the Crimea [Yalta] because these decisions all
contribute to the defeat of the fascist aggressors and the main-
tenance of world peace.’ The fundamental principles of the
foreign pohey of the Communist Party, later to become those of
the People’s Republic of China, were stated by Mao Tsetung at
that time: ‘China shall establish and strengthen diplomatic
relations with all countries and settle all questions of common
concern, such as co-ordination of military operations in the war,
peace conferences, trade and investment, on the basic conditions
that the Japanese aggressors must be completely defeated and
world peace maintained, that there must be mutual respect for
national independence and equality and that there must be
promotion of mutual interests and friendship between states and
between peoples.’ In this declaration lie the five principles of
peaceful existence, still the basis of China’s foreign policy. This
sentence implied denial of recognition of any agreement not based
on mutual interests’ and ‘national independence and equality’.
We welcome the United Nations Conference on International
Organization in San Francisco’ (a delegation of the CCP was
appointed to the conference and attended it, despite strenuous
objections from Chiang) ‘in order to express the will of the
Chinese people ... We ask the governments of all Allied countries.
THE MORNING DELUGE
484
and of the United States and Britain in the first place, to pay
serious attention to the voice of the Chinese people and not to
impair friendship with them by pursuing foreign policies that run
counter to their will ... IVe maintain that if any foreign government
helps the Chinese reactionaries and opposes the Chinese people^s
democratic cause, it will he committing a gross mistake^ (Author’s
italics.)
The United States was warned. But by that time the die was
already cast.
The emergence at the Seventh Congress and the meteoric rise since
1937 of Liu Shao-chi could be looked upon as inevitable, since
according to dialectics every situation is pregnant with its
opposite within itself From the time of the Seventh Congress,
Liu Shao-chi would be regarded as Mao’s most faithful adherent
and collaborator. More puzzling is the status of ‘Party theoreti-
cian’ he seems to have assumed so swiftly. First reports of Liu
as a ‘philosopher of the Party’ and a ‘rigid theologian of Marxism’
appeared in the foreign press in 1948 and 1949; in the 1950s he
was said to be more ‘Russian-oriented’ than Mao, and hence more
of a ‘Marxist’. Yet his works, until then, including Training of the
Communist Party Member (one of the documents of the Rectifica-
tion campaign, to be reprinted, later, as How To Be a Good
Communist, are not so much theoretical as organizational theses.
But whatever the reputation made or unmade by outside
observers, Liu’s career between 1935 and 1945 demands scrutiny,
because after Mao he was the main speaker at the Seventh
Congress, although both Chou En-lai and Chu Teh also made
speeches. Liu was now elected vice-chairman of the Central
Committee, while Mao was elected chairman.
It seems puzzling that Chou En-lai, who had done so much for
the Revolution and had held so successfully so many important
appointments, was not chief speaker. Chou had been engaged in
the prolonged and difficult negotiations with Chiang Kai-shek —
as recently as January and February 1945 — when he had reiterated
the CCP demands for a coalition government. He had then
questioned Hurley as to whether the United States would give
485
THE SEVENTH CONGRESS, APRIL I945
weapons to Chiang. Hurley had equivocated, saying no arms
would be handed over to the troops of any political party ; (obviously
he did not consider Chiang*s one-party Kuomintang government
a political party). Chou had been successful in rallying third
party and independent personalities and even Kuomintang
adherents. He had been the moving spirit behind the formation of
the Democratic League, which in September 1944 signed an
agreement with the CCP not to negotiate with the KMT or
submit to any KMT dominance without prior consultation with
the CCP. Chou ‘had set the pattern everywhere for a coalition
government, for a national conference*, according to some
observers of the time. He was reaffirmed at the Seventh Congress,
and became also a vice-chairman.
Chang Kuo-tao has left us a clear word picture of Liu Shao-chi,
whom he met in Moscow in 1922. Liu believed in organizing
workers, students, women and ‘the poor masses* to struggle ‘for
improvement of their livelihood*. According to Chang, Liu*s
ideal never was revolution, but ‘social welfare*. A striving for
legal benefits and legal activities’, a liking for law and order, and
rules and regulations (he was to draw a 70-point charter for
industry) mark him as the opposite of Mao in liis vision of how
things should be done. The notion of class struggle was ‘repug-
nant* to Liu, says his friend Chang Kuo-tao. This does not make a
revolutionary. We understand better Liu’s handling of the
Anyuan mine strike, and his habit, as Chang says, always to have
orderly programmes* ready.
In 1925, after the May 30, 1925, incident, Liu appears to have
been on the point of arrest (he was at the time vice-president in
the Shanghai headquarters of the All-China Federation of Labour).
He fled to Changsha and liid in Mao’s Cultural Bookstore. But
he was discovered and arrested; then released, he went to Canton
in June 1925. In 1927, in Wuhan, Liu Shao-chi obeyed the orders
given by Chen Tu-hsiu to disarm the workers, and even presented
a report on this ‘success ... to restore unity*. He was again arrested
by Wang Ching-wei, and it appears that Chen Kung-po, one of
the founders of the Communist Party, who later went over to
Chiang Kai-shek, got in touch with Liu when he was in jail and
486
THE MORNING DELUGE
persuaded him to give up Communism. Liu was then given the
Confucian classics to read and was much affected*. He was
released, but on condition that he would be ‘the Kuomintang
man within the CCP. Whether this is correct or not is not known,
but the personahty of those who talk of this event seems to be a
guarantee that something of the sort did happen.*
In 1928, after turning against Chen Tu-hsiu and denouncing his
line, Liu did underground work in the Northeast and became
secretary of the Party Committee in Manchuria. He also attended
Comintern meetings in Russia and the Sixth Congress of the CCP,
held in Moscow. The Manchurian Party Committee was arrested
in 1930, but Liu escaped, and between 193 1 and 1934 he was at the
Central (Juichin) Base as chairman of the All-China Federation of
Labour. It is said that he did not agree with the ‘ultra-left’ line of
Wang Ming. But he became a member of the provisional
Politburo organized by the twenty-eight Bolsheviks, and one of
the seventeen men elected to the presidium in 1934 — whose
object was to check Mao’s influence as chairman of the local
government of the base.
In 1934 he appears to have done the first stage of the Long
March, going as far as Tsunyi; from there, he went back to the
White areas. He was then several times back in Yenan. Chang
Kuo-tao tells of the episode in which Liu, in June 1937, wrote a
‘letter’ criticizing everything that had been done in the Party as
‘left adventurist’, including the First United Front. Chang seems
to imply that Liu and he were of the same opinion, but without
any consultation, as Liu did not go to see Chang in Yenan. The
letter recommended no less than a complete abandonment of all
the policies which had been followed by the CCP, and complete
surrender to Chiang Kai-shek. Liu especially condemned rural
bases and peasant movements, says Chang. Mao was much
exercised by this and went to see Liu; then Liu withdrew the
letter, went back on what he had written, and adhered to Mao s
line.
Liu returned again to work in the Wliite areas, and with some
success, after 1937; in 1938 he openly espoused Mao’s line on the
* Interviews, and articles in Chinese press.
THE SEVENTH CONGRESS, APRIL 1945 487
united front, and returned to lecture at the Ycnan Marx-Lcnin
Institute in 1939.
And now we come to what has been called *the abjuration case\
Apparently, even at this early stage, certain minor cadres had
already denounced Liu as being a renegade, but these accusations
went unheard. The ‘abjuration* case was brought out in the open
for the first time on April i, 1967, though it happened in 1936.
Apparently Liu Shao-chi advised some Party members who were
prisoners of the Kuomintang to renounce Communism in order
to save themselves. Thus were released, among others, Peng
Chen, Liu Lan-tao, An Tzu-wen, Po I-po; these and others were
used by Liu to build up his own following in the Party, or, as it
is now called, his own bourgeois headquarters* in opposition
to Mao*s ‘proletarian headquarters* within the Party. This might
mean that in the enormous expansion of the Party from 1938
onward, the recruits and adherents of Liu Shao-chi would be in
sizable number; and although the vast majority of those recruited
would know nothing of these intrigues, he would try to place his
own supporters in key positions within the Party.*
Mao Tsetung was uncompromisingly against admitting anyone
to the Party who had at any time abjured or reneged; a wise
decision, for the policy of getting Communist prisoners to sign a
paper whereby they gave up their beliefs had been practised by
Chiang since 1933 ^nd was a way of infiltrating the Party with his
own agents or potential agents. It is at the Seventh Congress
that we see Liu developing, in his speech, certain articles con-
cerning the adimssion of Party members which make us suspect
that he was indeed trying to get people who had abjured into the
organization.
In On the Partyf Liu speaks of the ‘thorough ideological
reform of petty bourgeois Party members, which has ‘changed
their former petty-bourgeois nature and imparts to them the
qualities of the advanced fighters of the proletariat*. This is in
line with his views on human nature, but it is not Marxism. He
* Intervi^ew with French Marxist-Leninists, 1969, who had held discussions in
China on Liu Shao-chi. Also personal talks by author in China, 1969, 1970.
■j* This was the title of Liu*s speech at the Seventh Congress.
488
THE MORNING DELUGE
then goes on to say that the social origin of our Party member-
ship does not determine the character of our Party, just as the
social composition of the membership of the labour parties in
certain European countries does not determine their character’.
In the explanation of the new statutes for Party membership,
more interesting phraseology comes out. Liu divides the member-
ship into four categories, the fourth consisting of ‘persons
who have accepted other political faiths and joined other political
parties or groups . This would mean that a person who had
joined the Kuomintang is eligible; rather a startling admission,
considering what had happened since 1927 (it would be, of course,
quite different for the period 1924 to 1927 of the First United
Front). The statutes add that if a person had joined another
party under coercion, he would be admitted according to his
social status, and not as a person with other political affiliations;
this means he might be eligible without further investigation. A
former member of the Party ‘applying for readmission after
leaving the Party must follow the procedure for the fourth
category, as such a person, having displayed political vacillation,
should have the recommendation of more experienced Party
members’. This opens the door wide for the return of abjurers.
‘His probationary period may generally be shortened,’ is added,
and also that if Party connections ‘have been involuntarily broken
off... he’ (the Party member) ‘must be reinstated immediately
after his application has been verified ... he need not go through
the procedure required of a new member’. In this way, and in a
seemingly reasonable manner, it would be entirely in the hands of
Liu and his own followers, if they were in the position to decide
on admissions, to admit whom they wanted. And it is certain that
the cadre organization bureau was in his control. The charge that
Liu built up his own headquarters in the Party does not seem
therefore excessive.
Mao strenuously opposed the admission of any abjurers, saying
that anyone who had reneged should never be admitted again. But
Mao was never an absolute autocrat witliin the Party; ideological
authority does not mean dictatorial power; and statesmanship is
the art of getting along with opponents or future adversaries.
THE SEVENTH CONGRESS, APRIL 1945 489
This thesis may provide an explanation for Liu’s swift rise, and
for his obvious assumption of power within the next few years, a
power founded on bureaucracy within the Party. But at the
Seventh Congress, Liu extolled Mao Tsetung Thought; and
spoke of Mao in terms almost idolatrous; perhaps this very
verbiage should make him suspect. ‘Long live comrade Mao
Tsetung, our Party leader and the helmsman of the revolutionary
Using the Thought of Mao Tsetung, which unites the
theories of Marxism-Leninism with the actual practice of the
Chinese Revolution ... as the guide in all its work, our Party has
formulated a revolutionary programme ... Our Party is a party
that has a great leader of its own; this leader is none else but
comrade Mao Tsetung ... who ... has raised our national thinking
to an unprecedented height and shown to the suffering nation and
people the only correct and clear road towards complete libera-
tion ... the road of Mao Tsetung.’
Much of this is quite true; but it simply docs not sound sincere,
and we arc compelled to think it was flattery, not the outpourings
of a heart full of real admiration for the undoubted achievements
of Mao. Especially as Liu’s very good friend Chang Kuo-tao*
writes: ‘Liu was never much of an admirer of Mao.’ He
found him ‘illogical, indiscriminate ... lacking in self-culture ...
Generally speaking, those cadres at higher levels who are more
prudent ... are congenial with him... He does not enjoy class
struggle, does not cherish guerillaism.' (Author’s italics.)
As the Seventh Congress proceeded to its triumphal conclusion,
Mao’s warning in the Appendix: Resolutions on Certain Questions
in the History of Our Party, ^ and certain turns of plirasc in his speech
indicate that he was aware of the eternal antithetic twin present
in the Party, the two-line struggle. It was something that would
always be ‘one divides into two’.
The Seventh Congress was, above all, a congress of unity and of
victory. The Party stood poised, on the threshold of a new phase.
* Chang and Liu were very close friends in Shanghai in the 1920s. See preface
by Chang Kuo-tao to Collected Works of Liu Shao-chi, op. cit.
t Adopted on April 20, 1945, by the enlarged Seventh Plenary Session of the
Sixth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. Selected Works,
vol. Ill, p. 177.
490
THE MORNING DELUGE
In between the sessions, carefree and jocular, Mao Tsetung, now
a little bit more fat, his hair much shorter, played pingpong,
joked, and went out for walks, to talk and laugh with the peasants
in the caves just above the Central Committee building where
the congress was taking place, and inquire of the planting and the
prospects for the harvest. In the final contest, it would be the
workers and peasants of China, and not a handful of ambitious
men, who would decide the outcome of the Revolution.
The Conquest of Power; Prelude
Yesterday, in a talk with two Americans who were leaving for
the United States, I said that the United States government was
trying to undermine us and this would not be permitted. We
oppose the United States government’s policy of supporting
Chiang Kai-shek against the Communists. But we must draw a
distinction firstly between the people of the United States and
their government and secondly within the United States govern-
ment between the policy makers and their subordinates.’ In these
words Mao Tsetung expressed, very moderately, the conclusions to
which American action had driven the Chinese Communist Party.*
The Dixie mission had gone, the last of the observers and news-
men too. Some would be arrested, and others, like Colonel
Barrett, because he had recommended equipping the Communist
forces, would be retired from active service. John Paton Davies,
who had recommended the dispatch of the Dixie mission, was
to pay dearly for writing favourable reports about Yenan.
On April 2, 1945, at a press conference in Washington convened
at the State Department, Ambassador Hurley asserted that there
would be no co-operation with the Chinese Communists, and
praised Chiang’s ‘democratic’ government. In spite of the fact
that on April 3 the State Department’s paper called Chiang’s
government ‘unrepresentative’, warned against the outbreak of
civil war, and the unwisdom of total commitment ‘in any way’
to Chiang s government ‘unless and until national political unity
and stability has been achieved [and] the Chinese government
[i.e. Chiang] has obtained the support of the Chinese people’.
Hurley did not reflect the conditional and limited nature of
America s support to Chiang, but flew back to throw himself, and
* Said on June ii, 1945. See The Foolish Old Man Who Removed the
Mountains. Selected Works, vol. III. This was Mao Tsetung*s concluding speech
at the Seventh Congress of the CCP.
491
492
THE MORNING DELUGE
America’s military power, behind Chiang. Before leaving,
Hurley promised Truman that he would bring about ‘unity’ by
the end of April.
Chiang had not been inactive. As a camouflage a People’s
Political Consultative Conference and National Assembly were
announced; for the suggestion had first been put forward by the
Communists. This organization was suggested by Mao Tsetung to
Hurley in January 1945, on one of Mao’s many attempts to
obtain negotiations on a representative basis. Mao proposed the
conference should be attended by delegates of the Kuomintang,
the Communists, and the Democratic League. ‘But Chiang
retained complete control of the government and its power of
ultimate decision of final responsibility,’ as Chou En-lai said.
The National Assembly would be completely KMT-controlled
and ‘would not change the reality of Chiang’s personal dominance’.
In July the Communists reiterated their demand for a Political
Consultative Conference, with KMT, Communist, and Demo-
cratic League and other representatives of independent parties.
Now Hurley blocked this. By that time Hurley’s position in
Cliina had deteriorated. Such was the popular appeal of the
Communist proposal that many non-Communist leaders now
criticized him.* Chiang then again played for time; he would
convoke a National Assembly on November 12, to ‘hand state
power back to the people on that date’. But since the National
Assembly was KMT-picked, all parties except the KMT refused
to attend it. Hurley stated that Chiang was ‘carrying out genuine
reforms’, but this deceived no one, not even Hurley himself, and
certainly not the hard-headed Wedemeyer who had replaced
Stilwell.
The reality was, as always, the ‘reorganization’ of the armed
forces of Yenan, the control of the Red Army. Chiang proposed
that a committee of three, including one American, should be in
charge of this project; but the CCP must hand over its troops
before receiving ‘legal status’, which meant it could not attend the
National Assembly before disarming itself
* Sec Tang Tsou, Americans Failure in China, 1941-1950 (University of Chicago
Press, 1963), p. 288.
THE CONQUEST OF POWER: PRELUDE 493
111 July 1945 Mao warned: ‘The policy of die United States
towards China as represented by its Ambassador Patrick J. Hurley
is creating a civil war crisis in China ... If the Hurley policy of
aiding and abetting the reactionary forces ... and antagonizing
the Chinese people continues unchanged, it will place a crushing
burden on the government and people of the United States and
plunge them into endless trouble.’ The CCP did not want to
fight, said Mao, but ‘the rights the people have ... must never be
lightly given up ... We don’t want civil war . . . this will be a civil
war forced on us.’ During the Sino-Japanese war, Chiang’s
policy had been ‘to look on with folded arms, wait for victory,
conserve his forces and prepare for civil war’, while the Chinese
Communist armies fought. Now Chiang was getting ready for
his kind of war, civil war, and he had dragged America, through
Hurley, into backing him.
So much was to happen in August 1945, when World War II
ended and the era of atomic war began. The USSR entered the
war against Japan on August 8, Russian troops overrunning
Manchuria, disarming Japanese troops, and occupying the main
cities. On the loth, American forces in China began to help
Chiang s armies recapture the cities and lines of communication
in North China. On August ii, Chiang sent a cable to Chu Teh,
ordered the Communist commander-in-chief to keep the Red
armies immobile, and not to accept any Japanese surrenders.
This was against the Potsdam declaration.* Chu Teh, as corn-
man der-in-cliief of the Resist Japan armies in the liberated areas,
had issued seven such commands and orders to advance and
occupy Japanese-held territory, a few hours after the Japanese
notification of surrender had been received by the USSR, China,
the United States and Britain. f
In reply to Chiang’s order to Chu Teh, Mao Tsetung cabled a
* The right to disarm enemy forces and accept surrenders. Since the united
front was still in existence, teclinically the commander-in-chief of the Red Army
had as much right to disarm enemy forces and accept Japanese surrenders as any
other force.
t The notification of surrender was received on August 10. See ‘Two
telegrams from the Commandcr-in-Chief of tlic i8th Group Army to Chiang
Kai-shek (August, 1945). Selected Works, vol. IV.
494
THE MORNING DELUGE
categorical no, pointing out the illegality of Chiang’s order,
since on August ii Chiang had ordered his officers to ‘step up the
war effort . . . push forward without the slightest relaxation’, and
since, according to the Potsdam declaration and the Japanese
government notification of surrender, the Red armies were just as
anti-Japanese and therefore as entitled to receive the surrenders of
Japanese and puppet troops as any other anti-Japanese armies
which also included the Russian armies, in China only since
August 8.
On August 13 Mao issued two statements. The Situation and
Our Policy After the Victory in the War of Resistance Against Japan
was a warning that Chiang was preparing to renew the civil
conflict. Mow Chiang Kai-shek is Provoking Civil War was even
more outspoken and biting. ‘As Chiang is sharpening his swords,
we must sharpen ours too.*
On August 14 Chiang signed the treaty of friendship and
alliance with the USSR so much desired by Hurley; on the
same day General Douglas MacArthur, as United States supreme
commander in Japan, issued the order that only Chiang’s armies
were recognized as the authority to accept the surrender of
Japanese troops in China, and ordered the Japanese garrisons to
stay put until the KMT armies arrived. ‘What swung the balance
in favour of the Nationalist government and averted an imminent
Communist victory was American assistance in expeditiously
transporting the Nationalist forces by sea and air to strategic
points throughout China while Japanese and puppet forces held
these areas against the Communists pending the arrival of
Kuomintang troops . . . The first outlines of these military opera-
tions were laid down ... towards the end of July.’*
Chiang moved swiftly, taking over puppet troops as his own —
for some of them it was only returning to their original commands.
He could now play a game of high diplomacy while completing
his war preparations — with wliich the Americans were helping
him, with spectacular results.
On August 19 Hurley flew back to Yenan to persuade Mao to
* Tang Tsou, Americans Failure in Chindy op. cit., pp. 305» 30^*
THE CONQUEST OF POWER: PRELUDE 495
come to Chungking for talks with Cliiang Kai-shek. Chiang
sent telegrams urging Mao to come, and Mao agreed on August
24. The American guaranteed his personal safety, and it was
Hurley who escorted Mao back to Chungking on August 26.
Chou En-lai went with him, while Liu Shao-chi remained in
Yenan as acting chairman. Meanwhile, beginning on July 21,
Hu Tsung-nan had suddenly attacked the Yenan base and taken a
piece out of it (41 villages). Mao fought back, and the territory
had been recaptured on August 8.
Why did Mao go to Chungking? Because there was a great
desire for peace among the war-wearied millions; because the
issues were unclear to the bulk of the people in Kuomintang
areas, who looked forward to the Communists bringing their
efficiency and honesty and somehow changing Chiang. Because
in the CCP itself the issues were not clear. Because Mao Ihmsclf
would rather not have fought; because he calculated that et^cn if he
had cast away all illusions, a refusal to go would have played
into Chiang’s hands — enabling him to call the Communists
belligerent and rigid, determined to seek warlike solutions.
The Russians also seemed apprehensive of a conflict which
might involve them, and urged unity between the KMT and
CCP. Though Stalin would later, in September 1946, state that
the atom bomb ‘is only feared by weaklings’, the whipping up of
anti-Russian hysteria in Europe, recent talks between British
diplomats and some Nazi commanders in Western Europe, had
made the USSR fearful of a surprise military attack. The Soviet
Union did not have the atom bomb; it needed peace to rebuild its
shattered economy. Pressure upon Mao from Russia for a
peaceful settlement’ was therefore strong, but it was never a
threat as some Western diplomats interpreted it. Li Li-san’s
return was also regarded as a ‘threat* to Mao;* this was typical of
the Hurley type of thinking, but it is not, in a sane perspective, to
be so regarded. Li Li-san had practically no following in the
Party or in China.
Some of our comrades’, said Mao, ‘put their faith in political
* Li Li-san returned with the Soviet troops that came into Manchuria in
August 1945.
THE MORNING DELUGE
496
influence, fancying that problems can be solved merely by
influence.’
Which ‘comrades’ did Mao refer to? Mao Tsetung also now
told his Party of his last meeting with Barrett in December 1944,
a meeting which seared Barrett deeply, for he was doing what he
had no heart to do. Barrett told Mao: ‘You should listen to
Hurley and send a few men to be officials of the Kuomintang
government.’ ‘If we become officials,’ Mao had replied, ‘we must
be free to act ... a coalition government must be set up on a
democratic basis.’ And Barrett: ‘It will be bad if you don’t.’
‘How bad?’ ‘First the Americans will curse you; secondly the
Americans will back Chiang Kai-shek.’ Mao replied: ‘What we
have now is millet plus rifles, what you have is bread plus cannon
... If you want to back Chiang Kai-shek, back him, back him as
long as you want. But remember one thing: To whom does China
belong? China definitely does not belong to Chiang Kai-shek,
China belongs to the Chinese people.**
According to Barrett, j" Mao said about Chiang, ‘that son of a
turtle should have got down from his high scat long ago’, and at
the end of the conference said, very gently, to Barrett: ‘You
really do want peace in China, don’t you?’
But Mao now also mentioned some ‘comrades’ in the Party
who had voiced their terror of the atom bomb. Mao quoted
Mountbatten, who had said that ‘the worst possible mistake is to
think that the atom bomb can decide the war’. The comrades
referred to, he went on, ‘are more backward than Mountbatten ...
What influence has made these comrades look on the atom bomb
as something miraculous? Bourgeois influence ... the theory that
weapons decide everything, the purely military viewpoint ... a
bureaucratic style of work divorced from the masses ... All the
bourgeois influence in our ranks.’ To whom were these words
addressed?
Mao went to Chungking to discuss with Chiang Kai-shek the
great issues of unity and national reconstruction. Unless there was
* The Situation and Our Policy After the Victory in the War of Resistance Against
Japan (August 13 , i945)» Selected Works, vol. IV.
■j* Personal letter to the author.
THE CONQUEST OF POWER: PRELUDE
497
a definite way of making a coalition government work, there
would be civil war; but it must not be a coalition for surrender.
Mao himself had little hope; however, ‘it is possible that the
civil war plot of the Chinese reactionaries may be frustrated ...
We are prepared to make such concessions as arc necessary and as
do not damage the fundamental interests of tlic people.’ This
meant drastic cuts in the size of the liberated areas and the strength
of the Red Army, stopping the issue of Communist currency —
issued in liberated areas since 1940 — and learning to master ‘all
forms of legal struggle’. ‘Without such concessions, we cannot
explode the Kuoniintang’s civil war plot.’ He knew in his own
heart that no matter how much he conceded, Chiang would
take nothing short of complete surrender of armed power, and
would break liis word at the first opportunity. But ‘without
such concessions, we cannot gain the political initiative, cannot
win the sympathy of world public opinion and the middle-of-
the-roaders witliin the country, and cannot obtain in exchange
legal status for our Party and a state of peace ... The Soviet
Union, the United States and Britain all disapprove of civil war in
China.’
Thus, having analysed the various aspects of the contradiction,
Mao, dressed in a quiet grey suit and a topee, enplaned for
Chungking on August 26 with Chou En-lai. Wang Jo-fei, and
Patrick Hurley.
By that time Chiang’s troops had already been conveyed in
United States planes and carried on United States ships to all
points north, and Chiang already controlled all the big cities and
lines of communication in North China as well as in the South.
The Red armies, however, still had 175 medium or small cities as
well as 20 per cent of the rural areas of China in their hands.
‘The Old Boy’ as the peasants of the liberated areas affectionately
called Mao Tsetung,* as he waved his topee to the crowds at
Yenan, then at Chungking airport, looked again much thinner,
alone and quiet. But he had made ‘full preparation’.
Mao’s arrival in Chungking was an enormous event, a triumph;
* The term ‘old’ indicates friendship, affection, and Mao is delighted to be
called thus; it is also found in Chinese newspapers.
THE MORNING DELUGE
498
his presence produced big crowds and small stampedes every-
where, despite Chiang s strict police barricades. He looked so
simple, his gestures so mild ; his smile was slow to come, then very
gentle. He was self-eflacing, so different from the boot-stamping
officers and the purring officials of the Kuomintang. But there
was strength behind this candour, the shrewd, cool-headed con-
fidence of a man in time with his country and his people.
In late August I945» the same time as Mao arrived in Chung-
king, 120,000 men of the Red armies, under Lin Piao with 30,000
cadres, were marching towards Manchuria with mule packs and
horse packs; all the way the people helped them, streamed back
with them, returning to villages wrecked by the Japanese. The
troops made forty to sixty miles a day, sometimes more— a
gruelling trek of forced marches on foot. Since 1942 red guerillas
had been infiltrating into the northeast. These troops came
mostly from North China and from Shantung province; they
were at first inadequately armed, but very shortly large quantities
of surrendered equipment which had belonged to 594,000
Japanese troops, reappeared in the hands of the Chinese Com-
munists.* Kuomintang historians insist that it was the Russian
army who helped locally by simply allowing a takeover of supply
dumps.
With these men would be organized a People’s Liberation
Army in Manchuria; a recruiting programme in Manchuria itself
would be launched, the usual process of mass mobilization,
political arousal, land reform, popular government, establish-
ment of guerilla zones, then of bases in the countryside, surround-
ing the Chiang-held cities.
During the forty-three days that Mao stayed in Chungking,
many tried to see him; hundreds of people waited to catch a
glimpse of him. The liaison office, in a narrow lane in this city of
staircase streets and gullies, perched on a rocky promontory like
an eagle’s eyrie. Mao’s residence on ‘red cliff’, with its winding
pathways between two hills, saw literally thousands go back and
* F. F. Liu, A Military History of Modern China, ig 24 ~ig 4 g (Oxford University
Press, London, 1959)-
THE CONQUEST OF POWER: PRELUDE
499
forth, or just stand, fanning themselves in the torrid noon heat,
waiting for a glimpse of Mao.
Litellectuals, teachers, workers relayed his every gesture, his
habits, what he ate, what he said. In the aeroplane Mao had written
a poem. He now received poems from scholars, from admirers,
and rephed in kind. He was photographed toasting Chiang Kai-
shek and the ‘success’ of the negotiations. At a party he saw again
the old warlord Feng Yu-hsiang, and they exchanged calligraphic
scrolls. He also saw the erstwhile agriculture minister of those
faraway Wuhan days, Tan Ping-shan (who had now formed a
third’ party). Both remembered the massacres of 1927 but
remained silent on the subject of the millions who died because of
Chiang Kai-shek.
The negotiations between the Communists and Chiang Kai-
shek were top secret; Chiang and his advisers were apparently
cloistered with Mao, Chou En-lai and Wang Jo-fei. But the
Americans were kept informed of every word, not only by the
Kuomintang officials but by some of their own interpreters in
attendance. The Americans were impressed by the sincerity of the
Communists; in spite of their dislike of Communism they could
not but respond to their skill, their businesslike ways, their
realistic attitude, and above all their earnest sincerity. They
reported that the Communists gave many signs of wanting to
obtain a settlement.* Mao offered to withdraw all Red Army
troops from the southern areas and in fact did so, withdrawing
the New Fourth Army from around Nanking and other sensitive
spots where their presence worried the Kuomintang officials, who
looked forward to returning to the big coastal cities and their
former luxury. Instead of raising their price for a settlement, the
Communists now diminished the scope of their former demands.
They suggested the holding of a genuine Political Consultative
Conference, not ‘hand-picked’ by Chiang but with representatives
from every party, to exchange views on national affairs prior to
the formation of a coalition government. They were prepared
to retain only 20 divisions, or 200,000 men, in their own armies,
* Tang Tsou, America's Failure in China^ op. cit.
500
THE MORNING DELUGE
about 10 per cent of what Chiang Kai-shek had in hand as his
own elite central troops, not counting 3 million other troops.
At that time the Red armies numbered 910,000 men, so the cut
was important. Meanwhile, the extreme right-wing of the KMT
clamoured about Communist insincerity’, and the words 'total
annihilation of the Red bandits’ (one of the KMT’s favourite
slogans) were still bandied about in Chungking.
Unfortunately for the chances of peace, the moderation of the
Communists, who instead of increasing their demands were dis-
posed to step down, and seemed ready to abandon the hope of
gaining political power over all China and to narrow their aim to
regional influence in the liberated areas of the North, was con-
strued by certain Americans present (Hurley among them) as
evidence of weakness.
The negotiations lasted forty-one days; they ended apparently
on a hopeful note, with banqueting and speeches of peace. On
October 10 a summary of conversations’, also known as the
October 10 agreement, was issued.
Although Chiang Kai-shek agreed to bring political tutelage—
which had lasted since 1928 — to a conclusion, and to reorganize
the government through a Political Consultative Conference
with delegates from all parties as demanded by the CCP, he
refused to recognize a legal status for the CCP and the elected
governments of the Communists’ liberated areas. No agreement
had been reached on the crucial point, the armed forces, although
a maintenance of the status quo on the military fronts pending
further discussions was agreed on. (Chiang’s attacks were going on
during the talks, though limited in scope.) The ‘nationalization’ of
the armed forces, this was to be implemented through a committee
of KMT and CCP representatives. On balance, the summary of
the conference appeared hopeful. But the survey of the military
actions which took place during this conference was not.
But because of the moderation of the Communists, because of
Chiang’s diplomatic ‘victory’ in achieving a treaty of friendship
with the USSR just before Mao’s visit,* because the way the
* Chiang even invited Mao with the Russian ambassador to dinner in order to
impress Mao with his good relations with the USSR.
THE CONQUEST OF POWER! PRELUDE 5OI
Americans and Chiang saw ‘strength’ was to raise the price when
in a strong position and not to climb down, Hurley argued that
the Communists had ‘backed down’ and were ‘in a position of
great weakness, both militarily and politically’ — he said they were
‘disavowed’ by Stalin ! This was a direct encouragement to Chiang
to proceed with military action.
By mid-October, when the negotiations had ended, Chiang
indeed seemed in a position of strength. With the help of the
Americans, his troops had reoccupied most of the cities of the
North. In Manchuria the Russians were holding the cities to turn
them over to his armies, not to the Communists. The only large
Manchurian city captured by the Communists would be evacua-
ted at Russian insistence. Tsingtao on the coast had become a
United States naval base; 90,000 marines had landed in China to
protect and garrison the ports, airports and communication
centres for Chiang Kai-shek. A demand by Chu Teh to Hurley
for 20 million dollars’ aid for the Red armies to induce puppet
troops to surrender had been refused, but Chiang would receive
1*5 billion dollars in equipment and loans in the course of the
next two years. Hurley openly boasted that he had ‘helped’ push
Stalin into the friendship treaty with Cliiang. All United States
officials who had reported favourably on the Communists had
been transferred out of the embassy in Chungking. The United
States policy encouraged Chiang to pursue the course he had in
mind and United States aid accelerated the outbreak of the civil
conflict; for almost immediately after the Chungking negotia-
tions, Chiang ordered an offensive against the Red areas.
But it was precisely the American help to Chiang, to place
cities and coastline and key points within his power, which
paradoxically helped to defeat Hurley, already in a deteriorating
position in August. Hurley hoped to regain influence by the
Chungking negotiations; but now the contradiction in American
policy between the State Department recommendation for
flexibility and ‘peaceful unification’, and the Hurley-dominated
policy of supporting exclusively the government of Chiang Kai-
shek, had arrived at an impasse. The military under General
Wedemeyer were supplying spectacular help to Chiang— 400,000
502
THE MORNING DELUGE
to 500,000 Nationalist troops were moved to new positions and
American marines were occupying Peking, Tientsin, Chefoo,
Changwangtao, Tsingtao, and protecting the coal mines to the
north and the essential railways.
This very help proved Chiang s defeat. The Kuomintang troops
behaved in such an appalling manner that by October, when Mao
went back to Yenan and within only two months of the Japanese
surrender, the recovered areas were seething with resentment.
The Chiang occupation troops were *worse even than the
Japanese’, and the leading newspaper Ta Kung Pao appealed to
the government: Don t lose the confidence of the people com-
pletely ... An infinite number of people once rejoiced dehriously
at the victory over Japan, but now all of us cannot even keep
ourselves alive.’*
Hurley s influence during the KMT-CCP negotiations was to
stick to overall principles’ and unconditional support for the
Kuomintang. No agreement of substance was reached. Meanwhile
an enormous amount of sympathy for the Communists built up
even in Chungking — they had made concessions on many points;
they were sincere; they were logical, cogent, reasonable. No one
in China quibbled because the Communists could not give up
their army ; the Chinese were far more realistic about that point
than Hurley. Also, USSR support to Chiang, which Hurley
counted so much on, failed to materialize in the specific way that
Hurley wanted. The Chinese Communists did not obey the
Russians, and clearly played their own hand. Chiang by now
was so confident of United States help that he had already started
armed clashes with the Communists. Wedemeyer took fright.
On September 14, Truman balked at all-out military assistance
and made it clear that United States aid should not be used Tor
fratricidal warfare or to support all undemocratic administration’.
Hurley then resigned on November 27. But by that time Cliiang
was quite certain that should he persist in his plans the United
States would be bound to help him more and more, and dis-
regarding Truman’s warning he established his campaign
strategy, fully confident the United States would become more
* Tang Tsou, Americans FaiUtre in Chinn, op. cit., p. 313.
THE CONQUEST OF POWER: PRELUDE 5O3
and more involved and in the end fight his war against the
Communists for him.
Hurley’s resignation led to the first official statement in the
United States of the ‘Red conspiracy’ theory, wliich was to
plague the United States for years. Hurley blamed the failure of
his policy on sabotage by the American officials who ‘sided with
the Chinese Communist armed Party’. Hurley went and General
George Marshall came, and after Marshall, Leighton Stuart. But
whoever the man, American policy was by now the policy of
intervention in favour of Chiang Kai-shek, in the internal affairs
of China, in a civil war. Despite the State Department proviso
that Chiang’s government should carry out reforms, the United
States set about backing Chiang Kai-shek.
During those months Chou En-lai had long and anxious talks
with the Americans; he again and again stressed that this policy of
unilateral military and financial aid to Chiang was jeopardizing
the friendship of the Cliinese people, was a deliberate encourage-
ment to Chiang to do his worst. Chiang’s reasoning was that the
more the United States backed him, the more reluctant to see him
defeated they would become. In the shortterm Chiangprovedright.
The weakness of the Communists at the end of 1945, which
Hurley confidently predicted would make them ‘knuckle down’,
was of course deceptive for anyone ‘infected with reality’. Alas,
the Americans did not bother with the theory of contradiction,
they did not read Mao’s works, or even consult their own
China experts any longer, since these were all suspected of pro-
Communism.
By December the Kuomintang had alienated a couple more
hundred of millions of people in areas they ‘liberated’. ‘Neither
military assistance nor diplomatic support could change the
po itical ineffectiveness of the Nationalist government,’ writes
Tang Tsou.* The confiscations, robberies, pillage, rapes, wanton
murders, uncontrolled inflation, widespread terrorism and food
s ortages which followed the KMT troops had already produced
a violent revulsion in the reconquered cities. The miasmic destruc-
tion of morale and of the stability (however precarious) of the
Tang Tsou, Americans Failure in China, op. cit., p. 312.
504
THE MORNING DELUGE
middle cl3.ss due to inflation and corruption escaped the Ameri-
cans, as did the reality of Communist infiltration in the country-
side. Since maps tend to emphasize cities, surrounded by the
unnamed blank of the countryside, Chiang would seem to be in
power for a long time. Neither he nor the American military
thought in terms of people.
In Manchuria the Russian garrisons meticulously stuck to the
treaty agreement with Chiang. Their withdrawal was postponed
twice, at Chiang s own request. The Soviet ambassador had
warned Cliiang that as soon as Soviet forces withdrew from
strategic points, the Chinese Communist forces had always been
present to occupy them. Chiang’s eldest son Chiang Ching-kuo,
Russian-educated, carried out the negotiations for delayed with-
drawal with Marshal Malinovsky whereby the Russians remained
in Manchurian cities until March 1946, while Chiang launched a
conscription drive for a million more soldiers. This co-operation
had given Chiang a feeling of mastery; the Russians had allowed
the airlift of one division of his troops to Manchuria, and guaran-
teed also the security of land transport of two more.
But from August ii to October 10, 1945, the Communist
armies had captured 220,000 puppet and Japanese troops, 197
small towns, and acquired 18,700,000 more people and 315,000
square miles. They had also been able to link up their bases in the
North by a system of porters and even occasional Japanese trucks,
the railroads being, metaphorically, in Chiang’s hands; he was to
hold the railway stations, but the rails would begin to disappear
that summer.
The focus of military action shifted to Manchuria. Manchuria,
with one ninth of the population and an industry which had been
four times that of the rest of the country — but which now had
vanished, since the Russians had stripped it of every macliine in
sight — was the key to the outcome of the war. General Wede-
meyer recommended a trusteeship over Manchuria, manned
by the United States, USSR and Great Britain. But this the
Russians refused. No Americans went into garrison duty in the
Manchurian cities; they would only provide, later, food and
equipment by parachute to the Kuomintang garrisons which took
THE CONQUEST OF POWER: PRELUDE
505
over, when the garrisons became cut off by the 'countryside
surrounding the cities’ tactics of the Red armies.
American ‘mediation’ continued under General George
Marshall when Hurley left. All the characteristic ambiguities of
America’s China policy persisted in Marshall’s policy. Marshall
floundered on, in a mess not of his making, bravely striving not to
see the obvious. The Joint United States Military Advisory Group
(JUSMAG) functioned, as did a programme of aid and relief
But at the same time American business monopolies began a
financial invasion of China to extract economic concessions from
Chiang’s government, and they were helped by United States
government representatives. Chiang signed away in his smug
belief that the Americans would never let him down; and that the
more they paid him, the more they would have to fight for him.
‘I was told by many people I met ... that Chiang Kai-shek is
unreliable and deceitful and that negotiations with him can lead
nowhere ... I told them that what they said was justified ... The
Kuomintang and the Communist Party are sure to fail in their
negotiations, sure to start fighting and sure to break with each
other, but this is only one aspect of the matter.’ Thus Mao had
reported on the outcome of the Chungking negotiations upon his
return to Yenan, on October 17. He had spoken of the concessions
made; the Communists had conceded eight liberated areas in
South China to make the Kuomintang ‘feel easy*. The Kuomin-
tang had 263 divisions, the Communists had proposed cutting
their own divisions down to 48, then 43, then to 20, though *we
could form 200 divisions out of our 1,200,000 by Kuomintang
standards’.*
In January 1946 the People’s Political Consultative Conference
which the Communists had asked for at the talks, consisting of
Kuomintang and Communist delegates, delegates of the Demo-
cratic League and independent parties, was at last convened.
*Note the 300,000 increase from the 910,000 mentioned earlier. Many
Kuomintang divisions were inflated, the officers reporting 10,000 men where
only 6,000 at the most existed, and pocketing the difference in upkeep and
salaries.
THE MORNING DELUGE
506
Chiang reiterated his determination to convoke a National
Assembly wliich would be on his terms. Nevertheless, Marshall
and Chou En-lai appeared to get on well ; and for a while it looked
as if a coalition government might come into being. The Ameri-
cans clung to the hope that the Communists, though a minority in
a coalition government, with Chiang still in power, might re-
furbish the Nationahst image, help to clean up the grosser corrup-
tion and thus render the ‘reformed’ KMT more popular. At the
same time the Communists would be taken in in another way;
they might possibly be weaned away from Communism, es-
pecially if Chiang consented to offer some more high posts to
certain Communists.
But by then another headache for the Americans was beginning.
It had already become clear to intelligence officers of the OSS
(Office of Strategic Services) in Chungking that Communist popu-
larity was so high that free elections had become a dangerous
proposition. Should a truly representative National Assembly
now be elected, a majority of the people would be voting for
Communist representation. The political advantages of a coahtion
for the Communists might even offset the military disadvantages
of the self-retrenchment. Now the Truman doctrine of I947»
with its full-fledged ‘international Red conspiracy’ theology,
would not, could not, allow free elections which would bring in a
Communist government; and therefore the dilemma now
presented itself of how not to have a popularly elected National
Assembly with democratically elected representatives, and yet
still urge democratic reforms.
Within tliis Disneyland of phantasmagoric phrases designed
within the limits of that all-pervading anti-Communist doctrine,
Marshall and his advisers waded in a morass of ambiguoi^
verbosity ‘worse than the sucking mud of the Great Marshes .
It was quite impossible to arrive at anything vaguely resembling a
democratic procedure, since in the very doing they would have
to forgo their now fixed policy of favouring Chiang at all costs.
The unavoidable thus became the inevitable; the astute Chiang
fully realized the mental callisthenics of his ‘allies’. Hence it was a
foregone conclusion that he would torpedo any agreement
THE CONQUEST OF POWER! PRELUDE
507
arrived at, and with impunity. ‘Chiang fundamentally is a
gangster. You must not give way to his threats and bullying ...
then he will press his advantage,’ Mao had warned.* But the
United States had let him get away with it and he would get
away with a great deal more.
The People’s Political Consultative Conference proceeded to
adopt a political programme which Chiang, and some of the
Americans too, regarded with great trepidation and concern; it
was highly unfavourable to his one-man dictatorship. It asked for
a thorough reform of the one-man government, revision of the
constitution, a genuine coalition tlirough free elections.
The overriding preoccupation of the American military
adviser group was now continuing to supply Chiang’s armies
with equipment, continuing to train 39 divisions. The war
potential of Chiang was thus reinforced; he mobilized more
troops; Marshall’s mediation became a farce. Teams set up to
inspect cease-fire violations rushed liither and thither, while
mutual accusations of armed attacks rose in number and scale;
whatever the rhetoric, however, the hard facts were clear. The
next two years became, for United States interests, something
very much like a wild scramble for China, hideous amidst the
dreadful misery, amidst the mounting chaos. Mao Tsetung would
now denouncej' United States ‘mediation’ as a smokescreen and an
attempt ‘to reduce China virtually to a United States colony’.
The impact of American goods, which now began to flood the
Chiang cities, only worsened the economic situation; unsalable
items and luxury leftovers came into the cities through UNRRA,
and turned them into gigantic black markets. All this directly
militated against the American image, aroused hostility where
there had been friendship, and also contributed to sinking Chiang
Kai-shek.
Chiang’s secret police, aided and abetted by the American-
organized OSS (later CIA), was reinforced even while Marshall
* ‘Interview withjolin Service, August 23, 1944, on the Chungking negotia-
tions’ (October 17, 1945), Selected Works, vol. IV.
•f Interview with A. T. Steele, American correspondent, September 24, 1946,
Selected Works, vol. IV.
5o8
THE MORNING DELUGE
spoke of ‘democratizing’ the Kuomintang government. The
police arrested liberals, members of the Democratic League, and
assassinated outspoken critics even while Marshall was asking for
‘independent-minded personalities to serve under the Generalis-
simo . No middle-of-the-road party could emerge when its
emergence was its condemnation. To the very end, the alternative
of replacing Chiang was not seriously considered by the United
States.
Mao Tsetung was proved right, but there still lingered within
the Communist Party itself people who thought it possible to
come to an arrangement with Chiang. Soon after the cease-fire
and truce had been arranged on January lo, the Central Com-
mittee issued a cease-fire order, hailing a ‘new phase of peace and
democracy’. In February, even as the cease-fire was being des-
troyed, Liu Shao-chi wrote a directive quoting again the ‘new
phase of peace and democracy’. ‘The main forms of the struggle
... have become peaceful, parliamentary forms ... ’ He asked the
Party ‘to stop assuming direct command over the Army ... so
that it may be placed under the unified command of the defence
ministry ... We are no longer an opposition party, but a party in
power ... some of us will become officials of a central govern-
ment... This already happened in 1927 ... it failed when the
other side started armed action; however, this will not happen
again.’ Where was the guarantee that the same thing would not
happen again? Even Marshall would say that it was Chiang who
broke the truces and cease-fires arranged, with his mania for a
‘definite use of force under cover of protracted negotiations .
During the six months from January to June 1946, Mao Tsetung
went about quietly preparing for war. There is no word from
him indicating that he engaged in the usual debate within the
Central Committee against the ‘peace at any cost’ party. In
November 1945 had he not written: ‘Countryside civil war is
already a fact. Our Party’s task is to mobilize all forces.’
But hope dies hard. When Chou En-lai flew back from Yenan
at the end of January 1946, at the close of an apparently very
successful People’s Political Consultative Conference, the general
feeling was still a hankering for peace. On February 28, i 94 < 5 »
THE CONQUEST OF POWER: PRELUDE
509
Chou, together with Marshall and a Kuomintang general, formed
the committee of three in charge of supervising the teams sent to
inspect violations along the military lines. Marshall paid a visit to
Yenan and was welcomed with great courtesy, whatever reserva-
tions Mao had as to his role. A song, it appears, was ‘composed’
for the occasion. Marshall was excellently impressed; he reported
on ‘the infectious enthusiasm’ in Yenan. Asked whether he would
go to Nanking to meet Chiang, Mao replied, with tongue-in-
cheek modesty: ‘I shall go whenever Chiang asks me.’ With
Mao’s convictions, the absurdity of the situation cannot have
escaped him; on the other hand he would not be the one to start
the war.
In March 1946 the Kuomintang would launch a large-scale
attack which effectively broke the truce and the cease-fire. ‘If
no new development makes the Kuomintang stop its civil war
quickly, the fighting in the spring of 1946 will be intense,’ Mao
had said in December 1945-
And now he intensified preparations. First of all, to get the
support of the people. ‘It is . . . to defeat the Kuomintang offensive
that rent reduction and production must be stepped up.’ A full-
scale programme of land reform, mass mobilization, getting the
people on the Communist side, for the defence of the liberated
areas. The building of stable base areas in the Northeast (Man-
churia) was now set out in full stage-by-stage detail. The mobiliza-
tion and recruiting for the Red Army, which in that year would
be renamed The People’s Liberation Army, must not interfere
with the planting of crops and the harvests. Great care must be
taken not to recruit at all costs. City work must be reinforced.
‘It has become an important task ... to take control of... cities
and to develop their industry, commerce and finance.’ All quali-
fied persons available should be used and ‘Party members must
learn to co-operate with them and learn techniques and methods
of management from them’.
‘Our people have now tasted democracy in the whole of North
China ... from now on, no despot can triumph any more,’ Chu
Teh said to Anna Louise Strong. ‘Everything must still be con-
sidered from the standpoint of a long-term effort ... everything
510
THE MORNING DELUGE
must be planned on a long-term basis; thus we will be sure to win
victory,’ wrote Mao.
If the United States and Chiang showed they could move in
two directions at once, one in deeds and one in words, Mao would
show a single-minded direction. ‘Cast away illusions, prepare for
war ! It would be April 194^ before Mao would raise criticism
on the danger of unprincipled compromise and ‘pessimism’
among ‘certain comrades ... who overestimated the strength of
imperialism . At that point, there must have been the argument
that the USSR was itself ‘compromising’ with Chiang; were not
the Russians urging prudence and conciliation? Mao tackled this
problem too. It was possible for the imperialist countries and the
socialist countries to reach certain compromises, but such com-
promises, on a state level, did ‘not require the people in the
countries of the capitalist world to follow suit and make com-
promises at home’. The document, not divulged at the time, was
circulated only among ‘some leading comrades’ of the Central
Committee, and not made public till January 1948.
It was in August 1946, almost a year from the day that Mao
Tsetung had gone to Chungking for negotiations with Chiang,
and when the civil war had already started on a country-wide
scale, that Mao gave to the American correspondent Anna Louise
Strong, the famous interview in which he called the atom bomb a
‘paper tiger’.
The background to this interview is interesting. It was meant
as much for outside consumption as for the home front. It was at a
critical juncture, when Mao Tsetung was almost alone in his
conviction that the Kuomintang could be defeated, that Mao had
chosen to call all reactionaries ‘paper tigers’.
‘Of course the atom bomb is a weapon of mass slaughter, but
the outcome of a war is decided by the people, not by one or two
new types of weapons.’ Chiang and his supporters were all paper
tigers ... ‘In the United States there are other who are really
strong ... the American people.’ Nor was this all. The interview
shows that, at the time, a good many Communist Party members
in the world believed an attack on the USSR imminent. This was
not mere fancy. There were in the Pentagon and elsewhere
THE CONQUEST OF POWER: PRELUDE 5II
hawks who clamoured to finish off the Soviet Union. In the CCF
too, the argument that civil war between Mao and Chiang might
escalate into another world war, this time between the United
States and USSR, must have been used very strongly. The
obvious pressure by the USSR on Mao for peace with Chiang,
which continued till 1949, shows this fear of war was very real in
the Soviet Union. Mao’s interview clearly states his own con-
clusion: ‘There will be no war between the United States and
USSR before the United States has conquered or subdued the
“vast zone” of intermediate countries, i.e. the rest of the world,
including the workers and democratic circles in the United
States. This talk of war concealed the real aim,’ said Mao, ‘which
was world hegemony first, before any attack on the Soviet Union
would be launched ... Hence it was correct to fight Chiang. The
people of the world should unite and struggle against the attacks
of the United States and their running dogs, only thus could a
third world war be avoided. Otherwise it is unavoidable.’*
Even President Truman, on August lo, would cable Chiang
that the assassinations of distinguished liberals — Professor Wen
I-to and his son, who were mown down by Cliiang’s gunmen
on the doorsteps of the university — ‘have not been ignored ...
there is increasing belief that an attempt is being made to resort to
force, military or secret police rather than democratic processes’.
He asserted his own ‘violent repugnance’ to such goings-on.
Chiang must have thought that Truman was deliberately playing
dumb; for if the Americans did not want him to fight, why did
the Americans go on giving him guns to fight with and money to
pay soldiers? He therefore replied that these regrettable incidents
were ‘mistakes by subordinates’. And Truman’s qualms of
conscience subsided.
In September, ChouEn-lai told Marshall that since January 13,
when Chiang first broke the cease-fire, the Kuomintaiig had
moved 180 divisions, 206 regular brigades with a strength of
1,740,000 men against the Communists. Marshall announced to
Chiang in October that he would resign unless the fighting
* ‘Talk with the American correspondent Anna Louise Strong* (August,
1946). Selected IVorks, vol. IV.
512
THE MORNING DELUGE
Stopped ; Chiang replied with a list of 'evidence of Comniunist
attacks . ^With the built-in resolution of the United States govern-
ment to stick to Chiang, there could be no solution except war.
The Conquest of Power:
The Civil War and Liberation, 1946-1949
The Revolutionary Self-Defence War, as it is called in China
today, started when Chiang Kai-shek launched a main offensive
on all fronts, beginning with the Kiangsu-Anhwei liberated area,
the previous New Fourth Army stamping ground, which was
attacked by 120,000 soldiers (18 brigades). The Central Committee
issued a circular on July 20, written by Mao Tsetung: Swash
Chiang Kai-shek^s Offensive by a War of Self-Defence. ‘We can
certainly defeat Chiang Kai-shek. The whole Party should be
confident of this.’
Needless to say, the entire strategy was devised by Mao;
throughout, with great meticulousness, he would plan every
military operation and go into the most minute details. Several
campaigns would be fought at once, on several fronts; so that all
China became one vast battlefield, one enormous chessboard on
which the contending armies moved, wheeled, circled, fought,
each with its own strategy. But Mao Tsetung knew Chiang and
Chiang’s style of fighting; he would guess what Chiang would do
months before Chiang announced his intention; hence he always
could ‘lead him by the nose’. Chiang, never a good strategist, had
deteriorated. He was sure of winning, because he was sure the
Americans would not let him fail.
The Communist campaigns were predicated upon the social
revolution; hence we find Mao devoting as much time to writing
about land reform, finance, administration and propaganda work
as about purely military tactics. This was especially important in
newly liberated areas, such as in Manchuria. ‘Mass work will be
the centre of gravity of our Party’s work in the Northeast,’ he
had written in December 1945, expounding why stable base areas
should be set up, a job which might require three to four years.
17
513
514
THE MORNING DELUGE
These bases were not to be built in big cities or along main
communication lines nor in regions close to these.
The only way to study the laws governing a war situation ... is
to do some hard thinking. For what pertains to the situation as a
whole is not visible to the eye... The problems of strategy
include: Giving proper consideration to the relation between the
enemy and ourselves ... to the relation between various campaigns
or between various operational stages ... to the special features
contained in the general situation ... to the relation between
front and rear ... to the distinction as well as the connection
between losses and replacements, fighting and resting, con-
centration and dispersion, attack and defence, advance and
retreat, concealment and exposure, main attack and supplementary
attack ... protracted war and war of quick decision ... military
work and political work, between destroying the enemy and
winning over the masses, fixed front and fluid fronts.’*
By that July, Chiang had received 500 million dollars in aid
and 500 million dollars’ worth of equipment from the United
States. But he had cloistered his best troops in safe Manchurian
cities where they would sit, imprisoned, for the next three years.
He would have to supply them with a painfully inadequate
railway system and now the embattled people would carry away
the rails to the liills, leaving Cliiang in command only of the
railway stations. He had a corps of a hundred United States
advisers, and managed to give them nervous breakdowns. He
did not trust his own commanders, relied only on those ‘loyal
to him, would by-pass the orders given and issue counter-orders,
would demote or promote so that no oflicer felt safe to think or
to act. His armies were still made up of press-ganged, starved,
ill-treated peasants who were chained to each other to be sent to
training camps; often they died of hunger on the way. But now
these peasants knew that ‘life was better on the other side’. Mao
would lay stress on intensifying the disintegration of the Kuomin-
tang troops by propaganda. Very shortly this would produce
* See Problems of Strategy Chitia^s Rei>oUitiotiary War (December 193 *^) ^
Selected Military Writings of Mao Tsetimg (English edition, Foreign Languages
Press, Peking, 1963).
THE CONQUEST OF POWER: I946-I949 5I5
results. Propaganda work was carried on right through the civil
war; whenever within earshot, the Communists broadcast appeals
and exhortations to the Kuomintang soldiers; those captured were
treated decently. Many were to join the Red forces from 1947.
Mao on his side had able commanders; but above all he had the
people with liim, with the Communist Party, And the Party was
united, disciplined, and in the vast majority, honest. Mao ordered
that 1946 should be the year of ‘strategic defensive'; the general
method of fighting would be mobile warfare. That meant letting
Chiang have his victories' against cities -‘temporary abandon-
ment is not only unavoidable but also necessary ... we must use
our manpower and modest resources with the utmost economy’.
Hence to the world looking at the maps, looking at city dots as
‘key points', the impression was created for a whole year that
Chiang was winning and the Communists were losing. This was
quite deliberate on the part of Mao Tsetung.
During that first year of strategic defence, economics would
take much of Mao’s thoughts. Production must be stepped up to
become completely self-sulficient in all necessities, ‘and first of all
in grain and cloth ... promote the extensive planting of cotton ...
encourage every family to spin . . . we should start to promote this
even in the Northeast. The People's Liberation Army — Red
armies — was reminded of Mao’s humorous precept of 1936:
‘We rely on the war industries of the imperialist countries and of
our enemy ... equipment is delivered to us by the enemy's own
transport ... this is the sober truth, not a joke.' As during the
Japanese war, so during the civil war; the weapons given, trans-
ported, later parachuted by United States forces to the Kuomin-
tang were to find their way to the Communists, first in a trickle,
later in a flood. One tliird of all United States equipment was for
Chiang’s armies in Manchuria; all of it was to be found in the
hands of the PLA* three years later.
Mao saw United States aid to Chiang as the main factor which
stimulated civil war, and denounced it with increasing vigour,
but always making a difference between the American people
and those in the government who were ‘reactionaries’. ‘We have
* People’s Liberation Army.
516
THE MORNING DELUGE
only millet plus rifles to rely on, but history will finally prove that
our millet plus rifles is more powerful than Chiang Kai-shek’s
aeroplanes plus tanks. W^ithout loans or lend-lease, and with
weapons picked up on the battlefield, the Communist armies
would win; this would surprise not only the imperialists’, it
would also greatly surprise the USSR.
The compulsions under which Russian foreign policy was
acting are understandable if we refer ourselves to the well-known
fear of attack on two fronts coupled now with the fear of atomic
bombing. The experience of the war in Russia and its devastations
had been a traumatic experience. It seems to have unduly domina-
ted Russian minds — more than any consideration of the obvious
necessity for the war in Cliina. Victory for the Chinese Commun-
ist armies in 1946 looked impossible to the Russian military
observers. No army could possibly win ‘without heavy industry
to produce tanks and other material of warfare’. ‘This under-
estimation of Chinese strategy, and the surprise with which
Moscow met the victories a year later,’ writes Anna Louise
Strong, seem to indicate that Russian experts had little contact
with the Chinese Communist general staff’ Either they had none
— which is the more probable reason — or they ignored what
Mao said. Russian presence in Yenan was scarce; perhaps fearful
prudence dictated this omission — fear of accusation of a Russian-
directed offensive’ in China (for despite Hurley’s desire for
Russian pressure, the United States government was capable of
thinking in two contrary directions at once; much as some
Americans wished to employ Russian pressure to mitigate Chinese
Red militancy, they were also capriciously capable of discovering
Russians, with snow on their boots, behind every national
uprising anywhere in the world at the time).
Mao expected no aid from Russian sources; an attitude of
careful neutrality was the most the Russians would give, and this
was already a contribution to the Chinese war effort. Self-reliance,
and people’s war, would win.
Marshall departed at the end of 1946, clearly chagrined with the
Chiang regime, which ‘had been using negotiations largely for its
own purposes ... waging war on a constantly increasing scale.
517
THE CONQUEST OF POWER: 1946-1949
His successor, Leighton Stuart, was as incapable as his pre-
decessors of a logical policy in a hopelessly illogical position. By
1948 4*5 billion dollars would have been sunk into Chiang Kai-
shek. By the end of 1946, demonstrations and riots against the
Chiang regime were widespread in all Kuomintang-controlled
cities. In the regions under Communist rule, by contrast, there
was relative security and economic stability. The black market
had been virtually stamped out, and production increased through
land reform.
In early 1947, the riots and uprisings against Chiang began to
turn into anti-American demonstrations. This was due to the
obvious spectacle of American fuiancial domination, American
living standards for the very few magnates, and also the attitude
of the GIs in China, who treated the Chinese people in a way only
too reminiscent of previous colonial powers. The August 1946
agreement for sale of United States government surplus property
— weapons, tanks, barbed wire, and so on — from various islands
of the Pacific was called openly a fraud and a swindle in the
non-Communist newspapers. A commercial treaty and a ‘com-
prehensive treaty of friendship, commerce and navigation*, as
well as an aviation agreement, reaffirmed special privileges for
United States business in China and angered the Chinese, whose
national pride was enhanced by the war. The exhibitionism of
GIs who used to openly race rickshaw coolies like horses was
followed on the streets by sullen-faced thousands. The rape in
the open day of a Chinese girl student in a public park by four
GIs was the spark that led to a widespread demonstration by
millions of students and intellectuals.
A protest was to be handed to the United Nations on October
21, 1948, by independent liberals, alleging that the huge sums
given by the United States only enriched corrupt bureaucrats
and helped to make civil war; and that ‘unequal and oppressive*
treaties had turned China into a United States colony. Thus, for
Chiang s sake America forfeited the friendship of most of the
Chinese people — all except a few hundred carpet-bagging officials
round Chiang Kai-shek. Again, Mao*s prediction seemed to liave
come true.
518
THE MORNING DELUGE
And yet, by the end of 1946, it looked as if the Communists
were in full retreat; only Mao would say jocularly, ‘We have
won.’ Not spectacular victories in the field, but the complete
attrition of Chiang s forces and their annihilation was the aim of
the self-defence war. This meant to concentrate an absolutely
superior force ... concentrate the whole or the bulk of our
artillery, select one (not two) of the weak posts in the enemy’s
position, attack it fiercely ... and be sure to win’. He added,
Acting counter to this ... we shall lose.’ Summarizing three
months of war in October 1946, he pronounced it ‘completely
successful . Of 190 brigades of the Kuomintang 25 had been
wiped out and more than half of the 190 were now on garrison
duty, keeping the cities they had conquered. The price had been
the abandonment of a ‘few dozen’ medium and small towns. ‘In
any case we shall be able to recover them.’ This was the practice
of fluidity essential in mobile warfare, and memorized by Red
Army men, who sang;
Keep metij lose land. Land can be taken again.
Keep land, lose men. Land and men both lost.
I have traded seventeen empty cities for sixty thousand of
Chiang s troops, General Liu Po-cheng, the one-eyed dragon of
the Long March (the same who had drunk chicken’s blood with
tribal chieftains in Szechuan to ensure a peaceful passage), said
to Anna Louise Strong.
It was because of its policies of land reform and stabilization of
livelihood that the Communist Party would finally win, said
Mao. The peasants stood with the Party wherever land reform
had been applied correcdy. Although to wipe out 10,000 of the
enemy, the casualties in the Red Army were 2,000 to 3,000, this
price had to be paid. But as a result ‘70 per cent of the peasants
in North China were Communist-oriented’ by 1947.* In May
1946 the land reform policies had been modified because of
peasant demands; confiscation of the land of big landlords was
* Samuel B. Griffith II, The Chinese People’s Liberation Antiy (Weidcnfeld &
Nicolson, London, 1967).
THE CONQUEST OF POWER: I946-I949 519
begun with distribution to poor peasants, but cautiously. This
had produced an upsurge of enthusiasm in newly liberated
countryside areas, and recruiting for the PLA was easy.
With meticulous care, in minute detail, Mao wrote battle plan
directives. This was the supreme contest, and he worked at it
with all his heart and mind. Some of liis military commanders
appear to have recommended a reversal to guerilla warfare in
the face of Chiang's ‘successes’. Mao said the guerilla stage was
past. Apart from the fundamental political and economic con-
tradictions which Chiang cannot resolve and which are the basic
cause rendering our victory certain and Chiang’s defeat inevitable,
a sharp contradiction has arisen in the military sphere between
Chiang’s over-extended battle lines and his shortage of troops ...
that is bound to be the direct cause of our victory.’
Soon, Mao predicted, the People’s Liberation Army would
seize the strategic initiative, when ‘a tremendous change will
surely have taken place in the relative military strength of the
Kuomintang and the Communist Party’. However, the war might
still take a long time; every item in the situation -planning,
financing, production, supplies, unified leadership and decentral-
ized management must be efficient, streamlined for a protracted
conflict. Sparing men, sparing material, was essential, morale was
most important. The troops with the highest efficiency were those
who had ‘intensified military training, production and land
reform at the same time, so that they had become ‘a fighting
force, a work force and a production force’, wrote Mao, harking
back to the threc-in-one combination he had promoted so
vigorously in the past.
And now he would effbet his boldest stroke, the deliberate
abandonment of Yenan, the Red capital itself
In November 1946 Mao predicted that Chiang would do two
things; reconvene a bogus National Assembly packed with his
own hand-picked delegates, and try to capture Yenan. Chiang
by then had ‘taken’ 160 cities from the Communists. ‘Chiang
has taken the road to ruin as soon as he makes these two moves,’
said Mao Tsetung.
In early 1947 Cliiang’s forces and mobility were much reduced
520
THE MORNING DELUGE
by attrition, garrisoning, and surrenders to the Communists,
which began in 1946.
He thus had to abandon all-out offensives on all fronts — and
there had been seven major fronts - for a concentrated offensive on
one or two. His targets were now the province of Shantung and
North Shensi; in a pincer movement seeking to squeeze the
Communist forces in between. How deceptive the military
situation was is made obvious by a three-column article by a
Russian colonel which appeared in August 1947. The article
deplored the loss of Ycnan and explained that the Communists
could not possibly win.
On November 15, Chiang reconvened a National Assembly of
2,000 hand-picked delegates, who listened while Chiang spoke.
At the end Chiang would say; ‘Well, there is nothing to add; just
pass these resolutions. The Communist delegation to the January
194^ Political Consultative Conference did not attend; ChouEn-lai
denounced the ‘one-party National Assembly*. ‘The door of
negotiation has been slammed.’ Chou then left for Yenan on
November 19.
In February 1947 Mao issued a triumphant call, Greet the New
High Tide in the Chinese Revolution^ four weeks before abandon-
ing Yenan to Cliiang Kai-shek. He noted the anti-Cliiang, anti-
American demonstrations: ‘the policies of the United States and
Chiang have forced all strata of Chinese people to unite*. The
Sino-United States treaty of commerce had produced malignant
inflation ; the national bourgeoisie was going bankrupt.
Meanwhile in a typical manoeuvre to which we have already
become blase, Chiang again asked formally for ‘peace talks’, but
cancelled these abruptly; all personnel of the liaison offices of the
CCP were asked to leave.* Chiang then launched 230,000 troops
under Hu Tsung-nan against Yenan, and 450,000 against Shan-
tung province.
Yenan was evacuated March 16-18, 1947, a few days before
Hu Tsung-nan ‘captured* it. Anna Louise Strong describes the
exodus. The caves were emptied in rigorous order; the hospital
* All through the war there had also been a Kuomiiitang liaison office, and
representative, in Yenan. He was recalled in February 1946 by Chiang.
THE CONQUEST Of POWHK: I946-1949 521
patients, oil stretchers, and equipment were carried away first.
Women with babies, children, students, filed out; Mao, Chou
En-lai came out last. Even the small children of Yenan knew that
cities do not matter , that it was only ‘pots and pans’, and that
the job was to annihilate Cliiang brigades, following Mao
Tsetung’s Thought’, wrote Miss Strong.
I spoke to Mao about the loss of Yenan. “If you ask whether it
is better to lose the city or to keep it,” he said, “of course it is
better to keep it. But if we lose it we are still all right. A people’s
war is not decided by taking or losing a city, but by solving the
agrarian problem,” ’
EIuTsung-nan entered Yenan, and then celebrated his wedding.
(He had sworn not to marry before he had captured Yenan.)
Chiang got all the headlines in the newspapers round the world;
but after a year of fighting he had not opened a single continuous
railway line across North China. He predicted the war would be
over in three months.
Mao did not leave the North Shensi base area. He remained,
together with Chou En-lai, Jen Pi-shih and Wang Tung-hsing,
moving within the base itself, among the people. From obscure
unknown villages he directed operations, sent couriers, received
reports. His wife Chiang Ching accompanied him. When they
remained long enough, they cultivated vegetables, hoed, and
Chiang Ching had some spare clothes made by local peasant
girls. Mao went under the name of Li Tc-sheng, while Chou
En-lai adopted the alias of Hu Pi-cheng.* A small number of
bodyguards and troops went with them; they travelled fast and
light. Mao had actually turned himself into a decoy for the
Kuomintang s 230,000 men, who now combed the area. They
were sometimes not more than a dozen miles away from the
enemy, yet never once did Mao feel insecure.
The fact that Mao was among them, thumbing his nose at the
adversary, present, elusive, unreachable, was known to all the
inhabitants by April; it became a gorgeous joke, a real Chinese
peasant joke, sublimely funny. ‘He is leading Hu Tsung-nan by
* Anna Louise Strong, Letter, no. 69 {December 30, 1969). See In His Mind a
MiUion^Dold Warriors, Ta Kung Pao (English edition, Octobcr-Dccembcr 1971).
522
THE MORNING DELUGE
the nose, as a peasant boy leads a water buffalo/ Mao had been
leading Chiang by the nose for a long time now; and Chiang was
also doing precisely what Mao wanted him to do.
Mao took personal command of what he called the Northwest
theatre of operations, the annihilation of Hu Tsung-nan*s 230,000
crack troops in the territory of the base. He led Hu a long and
tiring race, making the enemy forces split, eating them up one by
one, obliging them to rush about in pursuit, keeping them march-
ing around in circles— unless we reduce the enemy to extreme
fatigue and complete starvation we cannot win final victory’.
Footsore and tired, falling into ambushes, facing a hostile popula-
tion, the troops of Hu Tsung-nan were decoyed by small forces,
lured into gullies, trapped and cut off ‘Hu came in like a fist, we
forced him to open like a hand, now we cut the fingers one by
one/*
To facilitate carrying out the work of the Central Com-
mittee, or so it was announced, a ‘working party* of the Central
Committee, with Liu Shao-chi as secretary, proceeded to North
Shensi to ‘carry out tasks entrusted to it by the Central Com-
mittee*, while Mao, Chou, Jen Pi-shih and Wang Tung-hsing
stayed in the base. This division of the Central Committee does
not appear suspect; it was a safety measure in case anything
untoward happened. The working committee went to Hopei
province, where there was a strong base area; the location may
have been selected for the campaign to take the main cities of
Hopei province, Peking and Tientsin, which would happen two
years later. Chu Teh was with the working committee, which
established itself in Hsipaipo village. Land reform had already
been carried out in a rudimentary way. Liu Shao-chi was to take
it in hand; the results would add another episode to the slow-
growing story of the differences between him and Mao Tsetung.
Mao, on the run, pursued and always a little ahead, still
managed to control the overall plans for the campaigns. His
zigzag course through the base, now well documented, looks
like a treasure hunt; and yet all the time he was in touch, received
* Author personaUy consulted documents and maps at the Yenan museum,
August 1971.
THE CONQUEST OP POWER: T946-T949 523
reports, held meetings, wrote directives. Battles were fought on
April 14, 1947, at Sheep and Horse river (Yang Ma Ho) and on
May 4 at Pan Lung, where 6,000 Kuomintang troops were cut to
pieces in a surprise attack. Pan Lung was a Kuomintang depot
site, 12,000 catties (18,000 pounds) of flour, many uniforms, and
ammunition were seized by the Communists. To show how safe
the base was, a mass meeting was held at Chen Wu Tung, a
county fair and market town, to celebrate the Pan Lung victory.
In July 1947 the Central Committee held an enlarged meeting
within the North Shensi base at Hsiao Ho, with Mao presiding.
Most of the political commissars of the various Red armies were
there; at this meeting Mao announced the time was ripe to pass
from the strategic defensive to the strategic offensive.
During this whole year of making Hu run after him, Mao was
happy, confident, joyous. He chatted with the peasants in his
usual way. He also spent his spare time learning *a foreign
language’. Unfortunately we are not told which one. ‘He would
bring out a small stool,’ would sit beneath some tree, and ‘either
study ... or correct the writing in the guards’ diaries’. He had
apparently persisted in teaching himself this foreign language
ever since leaving Yenan, as a relaxation, ‘and he never dropped
it’.
As a result of Mao’s relaxed, amused conduct of this campaign,
the guards round him made a plan ‘to read five novels on the
march, and to keep a diary’. Mao sat often with Chou at the
mouth of whatever cave they were temporarily living in, listened
to the battery radio, and explained its workings to the assembled
peasants, who looked for ‘the talking man inside’.
Mao made the soldiers help the villagers, cut brushwood, collect
water, dig wells, help with the harvesting. ‘The people are our
wall of bronze,’ he said. In September 1947, he issued a statement
on the strategic offensive decided in July and already being
carried out. The fighting had been so far on interior lines. The
price paid had been 300,000 casualties and enemy occupation of
large tracts of territory, but now 1,120,000 KMT troops had
been wiped out and large tracts of territory were being recovered.
Now the offensive was ‘to fight our way to exterior lines’ with
5^4 THE MORNING DELUGE
the main forces and to carry the war to the Kuomintang areas
themselves.
New bases would be set up in the Kuomintang areas; the enemy
forced to spread out even more; wiping them out in mobile war-
fare would continue. Another million men were being drafted by
Chiang Kai-shek, but this would be of no avail. ‘Since its only
methods of recruiting are press-ganging and liiring, to reach a
million will certainly be difficult and many will desert.’ Besides
the continuing basic strategy of concentrating superior forces to
attack smaller, dispersed, tired out and isolated enemy units, the
capture of medium and small cities would be on the programme.
It would no longer be necessary to relinquish these deliberately.
!^e sure to fight no battle unprepared; fight no battle you are
not sure of winning.’^
Replenishment in weapons and even in men would come chiefly
from Kuomintang areas; the old liberated areas were not to fuel
the recruiting now. Land reform, once again, was the key to
success in the establishment of new bases. Thus by the process of
continuous social revolution as the basis of military campaigns,
Mao was absolutely sure of winning. ‘W^hen he yielded Ycnan,
he knew he would finally take all China,’ said Anna Louise
Strong.
It was three weeks after Mao had issued his Strategy for the
Second Year of the War of Liberation* that General Wedemeyer,
who despite the newspaper headlines knew the situation as a well-
trained, able military man, wound up a three-month investiga-
tion he had conducted (directed by President Truman) to appraise
the political, economic, psychological, and military situation.
With the restraint of the professional soldier faced with inept
bungling, he wrote that ‘the oppressive police measures, corrupt
practices and maladministration of the National Government
officials, the deterioration of the economy, the incompetence of
the military, the loss of support from the population’ were
evident. The economy was actually disintegrating, said Wede-
meyer, the financial situation beyond control, commodity prices
increasing more swiftly than new currency could be printed. The
* September i, 1947. Selected IVorks, vol. IV.
THE CONQUEST OF POWER: I946-I949 525
military situation was particularly unpromising ‘in spite of
superiority in weapons and men'.
The subsequent fiction elaborated in the United States that
somehow China had been ‘lost’ through a vast Communist
conspiracy -including Americans who had tried to tell the truth
— is shown for what it is by American reports such as the above.
Can any people have been more consistently deluded and lied to
as the American people have for two decades?
The land reform campaigns, ignored in favour of description of
military campaigns, yet take up more pages in Mao’s writings,
and their strategy is as illuminating of the technique of revolution
as the war strategy.
The modified land reform law passed in May 1946 altered the
rent reduction only’ programme practised in Ycnan till then.
But Mao had urged great care: ‘It is impermissible to encroach on
the land of the middle peasants ... Appropriate consideration in
accordance with the will of the masses should be given to the
ordinary rich peasants and middle and small landlords ... We
must unite with more than 90 per cent of the masses who support
the reform.’ Likewise in the cities the petty bourgeoisie, the
progressive and middle-class elements, were to be protected.
There would be no change in the three-thirds system of administra-
tion practised in Yenan, however, ‘on condition that the policy
of land to the tillers be carried out resolutely and unhesitatingly’.
Mao drew up methods of investigation similar to those he had
carried on before the Long March; they were to be taught to the
cadres in the Red armies who administered land reform. He
advised the cadres to have ‘numbers in their heads’, such as
percentage figures for each class, quantity of land held by each;
to distinguish carefully between rich and middle peasants, and
so on, in order to draw for each locality quantitative limits and
make the correct decisions’. Reprints of his Analysis of Classes in
Chinese Society were circulated. Land reform would affect a
population of 145 million people, and there should be no gross
mistakes. Recruitment must leave an adequate labour force for
production; army expansion was ‘not to interfere with labour
526
THE MORNING DELUGE
requirements’. Co-operatives must be encouraged. The particular
characteristics of each locality must be taken into account. *He
seems throughout to have known more about China, each of its
particularities, its infinite variety and details and the significance
and importance of each, than any other man ahve.’*
In September and October 1947, several conferences on the
subject of land reform as well as other matters were held at Yang
Chia Kou in the county of Michih in North Shensi -a historic
place with a long and glorious history of peasant revolt. Mao made
another long and thorough summing up of the war, bringing it
up to date. Chiang was doomed. Victory was certain for the
Communists, and ‘it is momentous because it is occurring in the
East, where one thousand million people — half of mankind —
suffer under imperialist oppression’. Mao reviewed his military
strategy and tactics which had led to victory; and if he sounds a
little pleased with himself, he certainly had a right to be. But he
then went on again to land reform, and obviously he was anxious
that it should not fail. He also appears to have been worried by a
slackening of discipline in the armies; this was natural, since by
now they were swollen with deserters from the Kuomintang
and new, unseasoned recruits. The three main rules for discipline
and eight points for attention (the three-eight) were again
reissued to tighten control, and a rectification campaign in the
army was planned. In that October Mao issued Alanifesto of the
Chinese People^s Liberation Army, an open declaration to fight to
the end. He dwelt on the economic structure of the new China
to come, ‘developing production, promoting economic pros-
perity, giving consideration to both public and private interests’.
He stressed the necessity of keeping a united ffontf of all the
revolutionary classes against Chiang. ‘The dawn is ahead, we
must exert ourselves.’
But on the matter of land reform he did not have, it appears, a
unified Central Committee. The American William Hinton
* Interview with Rewi Alley and Dr George Hatem, 1969.
f The victory of 1949 is described as a united front of all the revolutionary
classes against the compradore capitalist reactionaries and their United States
backers.
THE CONQUEST OF POWER: I946-I949 527
wrote that ‘not only had [Mao and his supporters] to lead the
people correctly but struggle with leaders at all levels including
the top, who were for coexistence without struggle, for bargain-
ing away basic strength, afraid of land reform ... of its con-
sequences nationally and internationally.’ So closely, however,
did the Party keep the intra-Party struggle secret that William
Hinton, himself physically involved in the land reform, was not
aware of any two-line struggle until twenty years later.* Hinton
seems to think that the division of the Central Committee at the
time of the abandonment of Yenan, with a working committee
under Liu going to North Shensi and Mao staying in the base
with Chou En-lai, Jen Pi-shih, and Wang Tung-hsing, was due
to divergent opinions on the conduct of the war. But it may also
have been, as noted, for safety’s sake.
In September 1947 a national land conference was held by Liu
Shao-chi at Hsipaipo village, and a land law passed in October
1947 wliich was far more deft’ than the land law of May 1946.
This land law made no provision for middle peasants; hence it
led to excesses. It would be December 1947 before Mao became
aware of these abnormalities, and started insisting again on
discrimination and careful performance. Middle peasants should
not be alienated, he said. But already reports of the ‘terror’ in
some areas, due to this ultra-left kind of land reform, had cir-
culated (Jack Beldenf was to report on them) in the White areas;
and this produced a tide of reversal against the Communists. In
January 1948, in Some Important Problems of the Party^s Present
Policy, Mao spoke of those erroneous tendencies in land reform
and mass movements. He was then still at Yang Chia Kou in
North Shensi. The speech was a directive aimed at a high level of
leadership, no less than the Central Committee -and therefore
plainly meant for the working committee under Liu.
Mao spoke out against two divergent trends, but may have been
aiming at the same people, for as we have seen, the ultra-left is
objectively the right, and the two can coexist in the same person.
* William Hinton, Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village
(Monthly Review Press, New York, 1967).
t Jack Bcldcn, China Shakes the (Monthly Review Press, London, 1970).
528
THE MORNING DELUGE
He spoke against ‘some people’ in the Party who ‘feared United
States imperialism, feared wiping out the compradore-feudal
system, feared a long-drawn-out war’, but then went on to
condemn the ultra-left tendency to terrorism in land reform,
alienating the intermediate classes. ‘The interests of the poor
peasant leagues must be our first concern ... Their forward role
consists in forging unity with the middle peasants ... The slogan
The poor peasants and farm labourers conquer the country and
should rule the country is wrong; it is not the poor peasants
and farm labourers alone who conquer the country ... it is the
workers, peasants — including the new rich peasants — small
independent craftsmen and traders, middle and small capitalists,
teachers, students, professors and ordinary intellectuals, en-
lightened gentry, oppressed minority nationalities and overseas
Chinese, all united together under the leadership of the working
class, who conquer the country and should rule the country.’ This
united front of all these against Chiang was endangered by
adventurist left policies, of killing, and brutality. Mao pointed out
that the wiping out of the feudal system meant wiping out ‘the
landlords as a class, not as individuals ... In accordance with the
land law wc must give them [the landlords] means of produc-
tion and means of livelihood, but not more than [to the ordinary]
peasants.’
Now we know, however allusively these remarks read, that
at the time they hit a target. Liu Shao-chi was the *right’ tendency
in international outlook and responsible for the ultra-left in land
reform. Mao sent his loyal and able friend Jen Pi-shih to Hopei to
find out what was happening; Jen came back with a detailed
account. On February 3, 1948, Mao sent a telegram direct to
Liu Shao-chi giving directives on land reform; on February ii
he issued a severe criticism of the ‘left’ line — Correct the Left Errors
in Land Reform Propaganda.^ It was addressed to Communist news
agencies and newsmen for printing reports containing ‘left’
errors. ‘Raslmess has been encouraged.’ To do everything ‘as the
masses want it done’ was not the mass line, but spontaneisni, an
accommodation to ‘wrong views existing among the niasscs’. As
* Selected Works, vol. II.
THE CONQUEST OF POWER: I946-I949 529
a result punishment against minor cadres who had committed
slight errors was much too severe, while the real incumbents, the
leaders, were responsible but untouched. The slogan 'Let no poor
peasant remain poor and leave no landlord in possession of his
property’ was excessive and recked of absolute cqualitarianism.
This had caused terrorism, even execution of middle peasants. All
this must be changed speedily.
Hinton mentions the parallel between the ‘style of work’ of
the work teams organized by Liu Shao-chi at that time to
conduct land reform investigations, and that of the work teams
Liu sent in 1963 to conduct a socialist education movement in the
communes. The work teams Liu sent to the universities in the
first weeks of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in 1965
also conducted an absolute terror. ‘Style makes the man’; as we
find Mao s style again and again in the Chinese Revolution, so do
we find the hallmark and stamp of Liu in his work during the
Revolution. This relationship between person and output in a
cause can help solve many so-called baffling problems of under-
standing the Chinese Revolution; now that we must discard
forever Party monolithism, now that we know the struggle
between two lines is always going on in the Party, we can all the
more appreciate Mao’s stamina and tenacity, his endurance, and
the fact that he was not, could not be, in a position to dictate.
Wc are not surprised, then, when right in the middle of the
military campaigns of the civil war wc find mwthcr rectification
movement taking place, both in the Communist Party and in the
People s Liberation Army, in the winter of 1947-1948.
Mao deplored that there had been erroneous propaganda which
advocates taking account of class origin alone’ and was deleterious
to the forward movement of the social revolution, in con-
sequence endangering the outcome of the civil war. Many cadres
of peasant or of petty bourgeois origin were ‘meritorious’. On
February 15, Mao again wrote to the Central Committee: ‘Do
not be impetuous ... The total scope of attack [for land reform]
should not exceed 8 per cent of the households ... killing without
discrimination is forbidden; the fewer killings the better.’ This
Js repeated, with manifest anxiety, in several different ways.
530
THE MORNING DELUGE
Once again an ‘open door’ rectification is started, calling on the
peasants in the peasant associations for criticism, supervision and
the sifting of cadres. W^ith the inflation in Party membership, a
good many opportunists, ‘riffraff’, again had come into the
Party. The 1,211,128 of 1945 were 2,200,000 in January 1947,
^>759)457 by the end of 1947* 1948 at mid-year the 3 milhon
mark would be reached. Due to the Rectification movement,
by the end of 1948 only 65,000 more cadres had been added to
the Party. But some of the Kuomintang agents planted in the
Party at that time would be found out only at the Great Pro-
letarian Cultural Revolution.*
In April, in a speech to the cadres of the Shensi-Suiyuan base,
Mao praised them for correcting ‘left’ deviations, and indirectly
indicated that Liu had also corrected his mistakes. By then Mao
Tsetung had left the North Shensi base and had crossed the Yellow
river.
It was on March 23, 1948, that together with ChouEn-lai and
Jen Pi-shih, and his wife Chiang Ching, Mao left for Hopei,
where Liu Shao-chi, Chu Teh, and the working committee were
established. W^hen he reached Hopei three or four weeks later,
he had accomplished all he had set himself to do. He had destroyed
the armies of Hu Tsung-nan; yet at no time during this year of
wandering about the base did Mao have more than 20,000 men.
He had also concluded the first phase of the strategic offensive in
the civil war, and now would come the great forward push, the
magnificent design which would scatter Chiang’s strength like dust.
He had been able to correct a dangerous ultra-left trend and set on
foot a vast Rectification movement in the Party and in the Army.
In April 1948 Yenan was retaken by the People’s Liberation
Army, and Hu Tsung-nan and his 230,000 men consigned ‘to the
dustbin of history’.
All over the great land the armies marched, swept forward, locked
in vast encounters in a war to the finish. On June 30, 1947, one
* Han Suyin, ‘Interview with a Brigade Leader’, Eastern Horizon, vol. X, no. 4.
The author collected numerous stories of KMT agents being found out during
the GPCR.
THE CONQUEST OF POWER: I946-I949 53I
field army of the PLA forced the Yellow river, crossed the Limghai
railway in August, thrust into the massive Tapieh mountain
massif, a turning point for switching south, into Middle China.
Three more Red armies made forward drives, cutting off large
portions of Kuomintang forces in vast pincer movements and
shredding their supply and communication routes. Then came the
sweep downward from Manchuria, with 340,000 men, conducted
by Lin Piao and Nieh Jung-chen.
In Manchuria agrarian reform had been carried out. Mass
organizations and a people*s government of the liberated areas of
Manchuria, which rallied many local personalities, including the
brother of Chang Hsuch-liang, had been set up. Since March
I 947 j date of the capture of Yenan, Chiang Kai-shek’s 248
regular brigades had been in swift disintegration; 227 were either
at the fronts or in garrisons in cities — Chiang had no reserves left.
His best troops were still locked up in Manchurian cities.
Already, at the end of 1946, half the population and 300,000
square miles of the Manchurian territory was in Communist
hands. Defections of Kuomintang troops in Manchuria began
later than in other areas because they were crack regiments
rigorously contained in strongholds, from wliich they made
occasional small sorties but otherwise stayed immobile. The PLA
made feints, jabbing at the cities; ‘victories’ by the Kuomintang
were announced when the Communists withdrew. In December
i 947 » Chiang’s troops were confined to a narrow corridor
along cities connected by rail. When the big offensive to take the
cities started at last, they were helpless.
On January 5, 1948, the Manchurian PLA armies began
chewing up the remaining tenuous links around Mukden,
depriving the garrison of all supplies. Mukden was sealed off. The
Americans dropped food and supplies by air. Chiang fired the
commander in Mukden and replaced him with General Wei Li-
huang. The latter, no strategist, began increasing the Mukden
garrison by pulling out troops from other Manchurian cities and
airlifting them— courtesy of the United States — into beleaguered
Mukden! This was not a very bright thing to do, for the
Manchurian Red armies immediately shifted to attack the depleted
53 ^ the morning deluge
cities. The PLA hacked off piecemeal bits of the reinforcements
then hastily sent, like chopping off fingers of an extended hand,
as Mao had described, ‘leaving only a useless stump*.
General W^ei Li-huang and General Tu Yu-ming, stalwarts of
Chiang s, went over to Mao s side. Mao Tsetung now planned
simultaneously two campaigns, one for taking Peking and
Tientsin, and one for controlling the vast plains of the Huai Hai.
On October ii the latter was set to begin, a major and decisive
military action to open up the Yangtze valley north of Nanking,
Chiang*s capital city, and to take it.
Mukden fell in October, and without a pause the armies swept
downwards in point-by-point execution, almost to the day, of
Mao s plans. The armies of other Red commanders were now
irresistible, winning in the west, in the centre, in the east. In the
Manchurian campaign Chiang lost 300,000 soldiers. ‘To me, the
loss of the troops ... spelled the beginning of the end,* wrote
United States General David Barr,* Chiang*s chief American
adviser. They were lost not from battle casualties but from
defection,’ wrote United States ambassador Leighton Stuart.
The Peking-Tientsin campaign, guided by a special directive
from Mao, would end in early 1949. The Peking commander,
Fu Tso-yi, yielded gracefully, and another 200,000 Kuomintang
troops were wiped out’ — went home or joined the Red armies. f
Mao Tsetung entered Peking on March 25, 1949, greeted with
fantastic enthusiasm by the population.
In the Huai Hai campaign, Mao cabled to the commander,
Chen Yi: ‘You are to complete the Huai Hai campaign in tv,'o
months, November and December.’ Nearly half a million
Kuomintang troops were ‘wiped off the map’ in this campaign.
The Americans knew the troops in this area were inferior to
those in Manchuria. ‘There is no reason to believe in their will
or ability to resist an offensive,’ wrote the long-suffering General
Barr. ‘And when they are gone, Nanking has no defences worthy
* Quoted in Samuel B. Griffitli II, The Chinese People’s Liberation Army,
op. cit.
t Fu Tso-yi was to become a minister in tlie government of Mao Tsetung in
1950, and spent peaceful days in Peking, even through the Cultural Revolution.
THE CONQUEST OF POWER: T946-I949 533
of the name,* Only massive United States aid, which meant
Americanization of the war, would save the situation. But by
then President Truman had seen the writing on the wall. ‘The
world’s worst leadership, and many other morale-destroying
factors, led to a complete loss of the will to fight,’ was General
Barr’s disconsolate verdict.
‘Rest and consolidate your forces next January,’ Mao cabled to
Chen Yi. ‘From March to July [1949] you will be fighting ... to
drive the enemy to points along the Yangtze river, where he will
dig in ... By autumn your main force will probably be figlning to
cross the Yangtze. It was as if he knew to the day what was
going to happen. And now victory was near much more
swiftly than expected, almost too swift.
By June 1948, 800,000 Kuomintang soldiers had defected, and
from July 1948 to June 1949, 700,000 more would cross over.
From July 1949 to the end of the year, one million soldiers would
come over to the Red armies. What could be done with them?
Success itself now brought its own contradictions. Would not the
over-swollen Red armies decay with this stuffing of KMT soldiers,
by no means politically trained?
Once again Mao turned to old and proved ways of doing things
which implied trust in people. The democratic movement in the
Army, institutedjanuary 30, 1948) was to reinforce and restore the
soldiers’ committees at company level, Mao had created them on
the way to Chingkangshan in 1927, and they had been abolished
in 1932 at Juichin.*' The ablest old soldiers were turned into
instructors for new recruits. ‘The masses of the soldiers should
have the right to expose the errors and misdeeds of bad elements
among the cadres,’ To prevent a ‘return to warlordisin* among
commanders, and ‘high-handedness’ among political leaders, the
soldiers would form these committees, elect representatives to
assist, but not by-pass, the company leadership in managing
their own food distribution and budgeting, to prevent corrup-
tion. A movement called ‘three check-ups and three improve-
ments was instituted; it was a system by which the individual
* At Yenan soldiers’ clubs had been restored, but they seem to have lapsed
after 1945. ^
534
THE MORNING DELUGE
recruit s class origin, performance of duty and will to fight were
checked, and his improvement in fighting was noted. This was a
way of preventing laxity and weakening from the dilution of
KMT recruits.
But another and far more difficult problem now loomed;
no less than the issue of leadership itself
It is still not clear what in fact determined what seems to have
been a crisis, due to a profound divergence of opinion on the
further conduct of the war, at that moment. But it was certain
that a most important meeting took place in Hopei in the spring
of 1948. Even the recapture of Yenan, the exhilarating triumphs
on the military plane, the total annihilation of so many Kuomin-
tang armies, do not seem to have impressed ‘some people*. Mao’s
criticism of the ultra-left deviation and launching of the Rectifica-
tion movement brought into focus the whole issue of rectification.
Mao asserted that the 1941-1944 Rectification campaign had
achieved a firmer grasp of our basic orientation, which is to
unite the universal truth of Marxism with the concrete practice
of the Chinese Revolution.* Another campaign was urgently
needed before the Party took over power, in order to guarantee a
continuation of success, for ‘many landlords, rich peasants ... have
seized the opportunity to sneak into our Party ... In the rural
areas they control a number of Party, government and people’s
organizations.’
In September 1948 an enlarged plenum was held in Hopei, to
reaffirm ‘the unity of the Party*. Seven members of the Politburo,
fourteen members and alternate members of the Central Com-
mittee, and ten ‘principal leading comrades’ attended. It was then
estimated that there might be five more years of fighting, surely a
very conservative view. ‘In the coming three years we plan to
admit into our forces 1,700,000 captured soldiers — estimated at
60 per cent of the total we shall capture — and to mobilize 2 million
peasants to join ... Because our Party and our Army were long in
a position in which we were cut apart by the enemy . . . we allowed
very considerable autonomy to the leading organs of Party and
Army in different areas ... This gave rise to certain phenomena ...
which were harmful.’
535
THE CONQUEST OF POWEK: I946-1949
The obvious tightening up of central control is here spelled out;
and one does not know whether it was the land reform problem
alone or linked to the problem of pushing on with the war which
led up to it. ‘The present situation demands that our Party should
do the utmost to overcome these phenomena ... so as to bring
about the transition in the form of the war . . . For this purpose we
must do everything possible to repair and to operate modern
means of communications ... to strengthen the administration of
cities and industry, and to shift the centre of gravity of our
Party work step by step from the rural areas to the cities.'
A directive called On Strengthening the Party Committee was
penned by Mao on September 20 for the Central Committee.
‘The Party committee system is an important Party institution for
collective leadership and preventing any individual from mono-
polizing the conduct of affairs.’ This formula of collective leader-
ship, introduced by Mao himself then, was discussed by Mao in
his interviews with Edgar Snow in i960 and 1965. Mao affirmed
that he had done this for the purpose of strengthening Party
unity and democratic centralism. This collective leadership
decision might enable Mao to carry out liis admittedly brilliant
and successful policies; but on the other hand it would, perhaps,
lead to an increase, covert if not open, of Liu’s influence within
the Party, now that the centre of gravity would shift to the cities.
We also know that in mid-1948, or slightly earlier, Stalin had
through Liu Shao-chi definitely advised the Chinese Communist
Party not to proceed onward in their military campaigns, but to
leave South China to Cliiang Kai-shek; not to cross the Yangtze
river, but to revert to guerilla warfare.
However, the decision to cross the Yangtze river was confirmed
in that autumn, and precisely at that meeting; the military
operations destined to take Nanking, the Huai Hai campaigns,
were drafted shortly after by Mao Tsetung.
Tn 1948 the cities controlled by Cliiang Kai-shek experienced an
increasing tempo of starvation, misery, anger, and despair.
Inflation was colossal. The United States dollar was worth
1 ,800,000 Chinese dollars in April ; a pound of rice cost ten million
536
THE MORNING DELUGE
dollars, tea thousand times what it had cost three years previously.
In June 1948, very reluctantly, Chiang was forced to accept Li
Tsung-jen, a militarist from Kwangsi province and often his
opponent, as vice-president. Li was the choice of the more
‘liberaf elements in the Kuomintang.
Li Tsung-jen knew the situation was desperate; so did every
foreign embassy, whose reports always started with the words;
‘The military, political and economic situation is deteriorating ...’
In August, Chiang banned all demonstrations and proclaimed
‘economic reform’ to be performed by his son Chiang Ching-kuo.
The Chinese dollar was pegged at four to the United States
dollar; within three weeks it was at 12 million to the United
States dollar.
Li Tsung-jen then tried to contact the Communists for peace
negotiations, to save what could be saved; in this he obtained
American backing. Cliiang left the initiative to Li and to the
Americans, thus keeping his own ‘face’.
But after the overwhelming victories in December 1948 and the
loss of Manchuria, Chiang himself had to say something. In a
speech so devoid of reality as to provoke general mirth, he
announced that the situation was getting better every day; but he
wanted to be ‘generous’ to his adversaries if they ‘sued’ for peace.
Mao, in a reply to this ‘New Year message’, reviewed the
successes of the People’s Liberation Army, declared it now had
numerical superiority, the four to one ratio at the war’s begin-
ning having vanished. He heaped scorn on Chiang’s homeric
absurdity and quoted the American White Paper itself, stating
that the advantage was now his. He affirmed that the people of
China were on the side of the CCP. And it was not a boast.
‘In 1949, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army will advance
south of the Yangtze river ... In 1949 the Political Consultative
Conference with no reactionaries participating ... will be con-
vened ... The People’s Republic of China will be proclaimed, and
the central government of the Republic will be established.
According to certain documents* there was, within the revolu-
tionary camp, an ‘opposition faction’ to Mao’s decision to carry
* Current Background, no. 884.
THE CONQUEST OF POWER: T946-T949 537
the Revolution through to the end, organized by the ‘United
States-Chiang reactionaries’. It is quite true that American am-
bassador Leighton Stuart was desperately seeking to promote —
at tliis late hour! — a ‘coalition’ government. Liu Shao-chi, ‘an
agent of the United States-Chiang reactionaries hidden within the
Party ...jumped forward without waiting further’ -in the
picturesque, literal translation style of the Chinese broadcasts.
What we do know is that, possibly because the Russians con-
tinued to be so abysmally misinformed about Chinese conditions,
it was not only United States imperialism and Chiang, but also
Stalin, who concurred to try once again for ‘peace’, and advised
Mao to abstain from pushing on to final victory. There was no
danger of world war now, said Stalin, but America could be
bled white’ in China if the war was prolonged. Mao must not
seek a quick conclusion which might bring in the Americans with
massive help. But Mao had never thought, as we have seen, that
the United States would plunge into war with the USSR. He
did not think the United States would go all out for Chiang. His
withering denunciation of Chiang as a ‘war criminal’, and of the
United States as intending to turn China into a colony, was a
retort to those who tried to threaten, pressure, cajole or otherwise
move him. The anti-United States tide in Cliina was at its height
in 1948, and Mao’s words found ‘multitudes of people ... coming
over to the revolutionary camp’. Mao denounced the Sino-United
States air transport agreement of December 20, 1946, the Sino-
United States bilateral agreement ofjuly 1948, as a straightforward
colonial type of treaty. He announced that, come to power, the
CCP would refuse to recognize any of the unequal treaties or
agreements made with Chiang Kai-shek.*
On January 14, 1949, Mao published eight points as pre-
conditions for ‘peace negotiations’, although he knew the latter
would never take place. On the 21st Chiang went into retirement,
leaving Li Tsung-jen to face the Communists. The negotiations,
again conducted by Chou En-lai, lasted till March 1949;
during that time the People’s Liberation Armies rested and
* This also would cover the treaty between the USSR and Chiang signed in
August 1945.
538
THE MORNING DELUGE
consolidated, on Mao’s advice; this respite was exacdy what they
needed.
On February 8, 1949, Mao ordered the army units to keep busy,
by mrning them into a working force for production’. The
soldiers recuperated; hoeing and planting kept them fit, and
among the people their will to fight was kept strong.
Originally, Mao had fixed early April as the date for crossing
the Yangtze; he had then advanced it to March; due to the
peace’ talks, he now put it back to April and wrote: ‘Training and
consolidation must continue; the study of policy must be stressed
... Preparations must be made to take over and administer large
cities ... From now on the formula followed in the past twenty
years First the rural areas, then the cities” — will be reversed and
changed to the formula First the cities, then the rural areas.” ’
The Party had over 3 million members by mid-1948; it would
have 4*5 million at the end of i949* Mao again became concerned
with the loss of quality in the membership and the infiltration of
undesirables. The Army once again had to do political work, to
reinforce Party cadres if the latter proved defective. ‘We are
preparing to send 53,000 cadres south with the Army ... but this
is a very small number. The occupation of eight or nine provinces
and scores of big cities will require a huge number of working
cadres, and to solve this problem the Army must rely chiefly on
itself’
And again: ‘The Army is a school. Our field armies ... are
equivalent to several thousand universities and secondary schools.
We have to rely chiefly on the Army to supply our working cadres. You
must understand this point clearly.^ The problem of cadres was a
very diflicult one. Already at the second plenum of September
1948 it had been decided to enroll cadres from the big cities,
where ‘there are many workers and intellectuals who can take
part ... and who have ... a higher cultural level than the workers
and peasants in the old liberated areas. We should make use of
large numbers of working personnel from the Kuomintang’s
economic, financial, cultural and educational institutions, ex-
cluding the reactionary elements.’ Now the victories had become
landslides, and the evacuation of American personnel from the
539
THE CONQUEST OF POWER: I946-1949
large cities had begun. Chiang had only a million-odd men left
in regular combat troops. Tsingtao was evacuated by the
Americans in November 1948. ‘The march of events in China is
faster than people expected. The Chinese people should quickly
prepare all the necessary conditions for the establishment of a
peaceful, democratic, and independent New China.*
The Red armies crossed the Yangtze river on April 21 ; 300,000
men, using small boats, floats, rafts and junks, went across in one
night. On April 25 Mao proclaimed the eight-point covenant,
which formed a basis for the military takeover of all the regions of
China pending the formation of a government. The covenant
was written in his capacity as chairman of the Revolutionary
Military Council, and thus in the name of the Army. The cove-
nant promised to protect the lives and property of people
irrespective of class, belief or occupation if they maintained order
and co-operated ; to protect all industrial, commercial, agricultural
enterprises of the national capitalists, and gave other guarantees,
which were scrupulously kept. It promised protection for KMT
officials, save those war criminals to be impeached, such as Chiang
Kai-shek. As a result of this measure almost three million officials
of the Kuomintang administration were rehabilitated; they were
to be paid salaries and kept alive, and many of them worked for
years under the Communists. Land reform was not to be started
until the PLA had arrived and had made thorough investigations.
He then envisaged a period of ‘some years . . . maybe three or
four’ before land reform could be completed.
Nanking, Chiang’s capital, fell on April 27, 1949. The KMT
flag was pulled down and the Red flag hoisted. The citizens
swarmed to acclaim the People’s Liberation Army.
The speeches made by Mao in March 1949 and again in June
1949 are fundamental to the understanding of the policies of the
People s Republic of China today. They are both first ‘state of the
nation declarations, fundamental for the transition from the New
Democratic period to socialism. New divergences are already
foreshadowed; Mao speaks of ‘muddle-headed* comrades who
would like to rely on the bourgeoisie in the cities; who would
prefer to consolidate the New Democratic period rather than go
540
THE MORNING DELUGE
forward to the socialist stage. Once again, curiously enough, the
proponent of the go slow’ theory is Liu Shao-chi, and this fact
was well recognized even in 1949; Liu’s speeches gave every
evidence that he would remain at the New Democratic stage’
and did not think it was time to carry out the transition into
socialism.
In that March or April, Liu went to Tientsin to hold talks with
industrial businessmen there. He promised them all help in
running their industries, brushed off the demands of the workers
present, and is quoted as saying, ‘Exploitation has its merits too.’*
It is not possible to verify this report, but it was currently known
and widely reported in China even before the Cultural Revolution
that Liu felt that production must come first, and he spoke for
years of consolidating new democracy. He would defend
himself by saying that the new democratic period was supposed
to last some years; that it was Mao, not he, who had changed his
time-view, but victory had come so swiftly, and the country was
ripe to bursting for revolutionary change. Mao considered that the
country must push on to the socialist stage, for otherwise none of
the problems could be solved. It is interesting that had there been
American help and financial aid, as at one time was thought,
there might possibly have been a longer new democratic stage.
But the necessity for pushing on was very obvious to Mao; for
he who lingered at the crossroads would find the problems
mounting. And so in his speeches Mao clearly states the necessity
for going forward into the next stage.
In industry, Mao pointed out that China’s modern industry was
only 10 per cent of the total value of output of the national
economy and had been concentrated in the hands of ‘the
imperialists and their lackeys, the Chinese bureaucratic capitalists’.
This was now to be confiscated; the state-owned sector would be-
come dominant, and it would be ‘socialist, not capitalist in
character’. The private capitalist industry would be allowed for a
while, when beneficial, ‘but the existence and expansion of
capitalism in China will not be unrestricted and uncurbed’. It
would only exist within the framework of the economic policy
* Interview by the autlior in Tientsin, 1969.
THE CONQUEST OF POWER: T946-I949 54T
and planning of the People’s Republic, a planning directed
towards socialism. ‘It is entirely wrong to think ... we can
discard the slogan “Regulation of capital” ... this is a right
opportunist view.’
The people’s democratic dictatorship to be established meant a
long-term policy of co-operation with non-Party democrats. For
it was in a united front with non-Communist parties, seven in
all, that the first National People’s Congress would be held.
Concerning agriculture, Mao proclaimed the socialization of
agriculture, step by step, but with the final aim unchanged. ‘With-
out socialization of agriculture, there can be no complete,
consolidated socialism.’
Now he warned: ‘With victory certain moods may grow ...
arrogance, the airs of a self-styled hero, inertia and unwillingness
to make progress, love of pleasure and distaste for continued hard
living ... There may be some, not conquered by enemies with
guns ... but who cannot withstand sugar-coated bullets.’ Thus he
warned against the corruption of the cities; and within two years
there was to be another Rectification movement.
But, he ended, ‘We can learn what we did not know. We are
not only good at destroying the old world, we are also good at
building the new.’
Shanghai was captured on May 27, 1949, a month after the fall of
Nanking. Wuhan was captured on May 16. Chiang fled to
Chungking, then to Chengtu, then to Canton, then to Hainan,
and then, on December 9, to Taiwan,
On June 15 Mao addressed the new preparatory committee for
the Political Consultative Conference, heir to the one which had
met so briefly in January 1946. Representatives of all parties,
including the ‘revolutionary Kuomintang’, attended. Madame
Soong Ching-ling and Madame Ho Hsiang-ning, widow of Dr
Sun Yatsen and widow of Dr Liao Chung-kai, both attended. The
former became vice-chairman of the People’s Republic of China a
few months later, a post she has held until today. Li Tsung-jen,
Chiang s unfortunate vice-president, went in December 1948 to
the United States for medical treatment and remained till 1965,
542
THE MORNING DELUGE
when he returned to live in Peking, with his wife, and was
received with honour and consideration by Mao Tsetung. He
died in 1968, of old age, in Peking.
At the Political Consultative Conference, twenty-three
organizations and groups and various parties were represented. It
met in Peking on September 9, 1949. Peking was to be once more
the capital of China, the new China. September 9 was, almost to
the day, twenty-two years since the Autumn Harvest Uprising,
when Mao Tsetung had started on the way of armed struggle,
started the building of an army and of Red power in the country-
side, started the strategy of the countryside surrounding the cities.
On October i. in Peking, standing on Tien An Men -the Gate
of Heavenly Peace — facing south where a large portrait of Dr Sun
Yatsen was displayed, flanked by the Politburo, the members
of the Central Committee, and many an ex-Kuomintang
personality, Mao Tsetung spoke to the delirious and acclaiming
millions milling round the great purple walls and gates of the
Ming palaces of Peking.
‘The Chinese people have stood up ... nobody will insult us
again
In Mao that day, looking at the enormous crowds, hearing the
ocean sound of their acclamations; that night when the fireworks
threw their dazzling meteors of light above the city, there was no
trace of pride, no sensation of arrogance; only a deep humility, a
sense of a great work scarcely begun; all which had gone before
was ‘but the first step ... in a 25,000-li Long March'./ Ah jhe
years of struggle, the millions of dead, the sacrifices ... all but a
beginning. In front lay the future, to be built. What happened in
China would transform China, but it would also transform the
world. ‘Even if this step [winning country-wide victory] is
worthy of pride, it is comparatively tiny ... After several decades
the victory will seem only a brief prologue to a long drama ... the
road ... will be longer, the work greater and more arduous.’^
And indeed, as they met that evening to sip tea and watch the
fireworks, already the past was receding, receding; the future was
rushing to meet Mao Tsetung and the Chinese people. Already
loomed new problems, new contradictions. The United States
543
THE CONQUEST OF POWER: 1946-I949
had withdrawn from China; there had been no massive onslaught
by America, but it was a defeat for the almighty power, a
psychological one, and it would rankle; perhaps they would be
back ... There was, up in Moscow, the Grand Old Man of that
other, that first Revolution, Stalin, with his ambiguous mind.
Mao had already decided to go to see Stalin, face him with the
conscience of a new world emergent, a revolution akin to the
October Revolution, which had fought every inch of the way
to its triumph ... ‘The Chinese people have stood up ... nobody
will insult us again.’
Around Mao Tsetung were his companions, those who had
fought with him, and those who fought him. He knew they were
not all of one mind ; he knew some of them might go against
him, again and yet again. As long as their opinions and their
views were not harmful to the Revolution he would go on with
them. But when they would be a danger to the unswerving aim
of Revolution to which he had dedicated his life, then he woiid be
implacable.
iThcre were the people, standing, walking; millions of them, and
so much to be done. True they were poor, they were backward;
the country was ravaged, a spoiled ragged blanket of a country, a
country full of beggars and starving people. But he had faith and
trust in the people. They were the makers of history; they would
rebuild, they would create prosperity, happiness. And he would
be on their side, always. They were the anonymous millions who
had suffered and died, all along the measureless road they had
come. Never would he lord it over them. 'Serve the people/ /
Perhaps then he thought again of the story he had told the
Party and the Army, in Yenan, in April 1945 at the close of the
Seventh Congress, when he had answered the question Shall tve
dare to win? in the affirmative. He told many stories in his colourful
lectures, in his speeches, in private conversations. He loved
listening to stories, too.
An old man lived in North China long long ago ... His house
faced south and beyond his doorway stood two great peaks ...
obstructing the way. He called his sons, and hoe in hand they
began to dig up these mountains.’ His neighbour had laughed at
544
THE MORNING DELUGE
the foolish old man and his tedious labour, but the foolish old
man went on, replying that when he died his sons and grandsons
and their sons and grandsons would continue the work, and one
day the mountains would be cleared. ‘God was moved, ^ said Mao
Tsetung, and sent down two angels who carried the mountains
away.'*^
And this was the lesson. W^e must persevere and work un-
ceasingly and we too will touch God’s heart. Our God is none
other than the masses of the Chinese people. If they stand up and dig
together with uSj why caidt these two mountains [imperialism and
feudalism] be cleared away?"
And indeed the two mountains had now been cleared away,
God s heart had been touched. But the work had only just begun.
There were more mountains to clear — ignorance, poverty, the
habit of tyranny ...
And the masses would continue to be the god of Mao Tsetung.
In 1949 he was fifty-four years old, and his career was only
beginning; his greatest campaigns were yet to come.
* Tlie Foolish Old Alan Who Removed the Adountains (June ii, i945)» Selected
Works, vol. III.
Mao Tsetung and Stalin
Political power grows from the barrel of a gun. The triumph of
the Chinese Communist Party in 1949, the protracted thirty-year
conflict, had confirmed this saying; but the victory was not only a
military victory, it was also a political one.
Without the people of China, and their solid support, in great
majority; without land reform and social measures which
assured success because they assured security in a time of chaos, the
civil war might have been prolonged for many more years.
Now that the battle was won, tlie time of building had come.
The Party had prepared for this seizure of power and this
total victory since the Seventh Congress of 1945; whatever its
restricted surroundings and its poverty of means, it already had
remarkable methods of administration, including a foreign
policy. In Ycnan Mao Tsetung was already thinking in terms of all
China. His interviews bear this out. His talks with personnel of the
Dixie mission show him completely aware that the Communist
Party was the obvious replacement for Chiang Kai-shek, either
through a coalition or without it. He had already enunciated the
principles upon which today's foreign policies are based.* The
application may vary, but the fundamental precepts have
remained the same throughout the years.
Thus the formulas of peaceful coexistence governing relations
between states are expounded by Mao to Guenther Stein in 1944.
They arc repeated at the Seventh Congress in April 1945; again
repeated in 1949 at the second plenum of the Seventh Congress.
Even in Yenan a foreign affairs department was already existent,
drawn from the members of the liaison offices functioning under
* See On Coalition Gooernnwnt- The Policy of the Chinese Comnnmist Parly the
problem of foreign policy (April 24. 1945), Selected Works, vol. III.
54^ THE MORNING DELUGE
Chou En-lai in Chungking, in Sian, and later in Nanking.
Every base also had its personnel in charge of ‘external affairs’,
even if visitors from outside were few and far between. The
presence of the Dixie mission had stimulated the need for
interpreters, liaison men, all diplomats tn potcntia. The delega-
tions sent to the United Nations by the Communists, in those
early years, to put the case of the People’s Republic of China
before this body were neither without experience nor without
a solid foundation of policy.
It is otiose perhaps to repeat the obvious, that contact between
1943 and 1949 was perhaps more frequent with American than
with Russian personnel; and this would be true even in Manchuria,
where the Russian military and diplomatic personnel adhered to
the friendship and alliance pact with Chiang Kai-shek and avoided
the Communists. Yet there was contact, and especially in 1948,
with the Manchurian people’s government, an administration
similar to that established in many other Red bases, but which was
to singularize itself in its far closer contact with the USSR, for
obvious geographical and later political reasons. Until the very
last days of Chiang’s regime, the Russians were scrupulous in
fulfilling the pact; and negotiations were carried out with Chiang
Kai-shek concerning Russian claims based on the Yalta agreement
well into the spring of 1949. The Russian ambassador was the
only diplomat who accompanied Chiang to Chengtu and to
Kuangchow; he did not, however, make the trip to Taiwan island,
Chiang’s last refuge.
The reticence of the USSR as regards the CCP has had many
and various interpretations. According to the same Guenther
Stein, who travelled both to Moscow and to Yenan in I 943 »
Russian officials had told him that Communism was ‘impossible’
in China. ‘Can you conceive of a Communist growth without a
powerful heavy industry? There cannot be Communism or even
socialism in a country where the industrial element and the
proletariat do not form a sizeable portion of the population; at
the most it will be a petty bourgeois regime with some progressive
tendencies.’* The dearth of knowledge, both military and
* Guenther Stein, The Challenge oj Red China, op. cit.
MAO TSETUNG AND STALIN
547
political, concerning real Communist strength has been analysed
by Harrison Salisbury, the able editor of the New York Times
and renowned expert on the USSR. According to Mr Salisbury,
the great purges in the USSR had decimated the experts on China;
not once, but three times, did Stalin ‘liquidate’ those who really
knew anything about the Chinese Revolution. The dissolution of
the Comintern in 1943 had cut the last links, and certainly not
promoted renewed interest in Chinese affairs. In Stalin’s mind
China had a low priority for many years.
But Stalin’s preference for Chiang Kai-shek is not so easily
explained, unless we suppose that Stalin was already a great-
power chauvinist and preferred Chiang, who would not be in a
position to claim back either Outer Mongolia or other interests
wrested from China- with United States consent -at Yalta. This,
however, supposes that Stalin already feared a strong China under
a strong and powerful national leader as well as a Communist
figure; and there is no indication that Stalin ever thought it
possible for Mao either to win the war or to unite the country
and embark on the prodigious development which the last
twenty years have seen. We remain with enigmas which cannot
be explained by logic, but only by the fact that Stalin, as he grew
older, reverted more and more to a fixity in his opinions which
influenced the whole course of Russian policies. ‘The Chinese
have a habit of exaggerating their strength, they keep on piling
figures of non-existent armies’; ‘You can never believe what they
say.’ These and other remarks by Russian diplomats and officials
betrayed the already quite palpable chauvinism and racial
arrogance which was to grow so fast in the USSR in the following
years. The cavalier way in which, at Yalta, Stalin asked for his
share of booty in China cannot have any other interpretation than
this chauvinism which today the People’s Republic of China
denounces with such vigour in the present Soviet hierarchy.
Because of this defect in Russian intelligence work concerning
Mao and the Chinese Communist Party — obviously they did not
bother to read United States intelligence sources, which until 1945
accurately described the strength of the Reds — Stalin sincerely
thought Mao would lose. As late as March 1949, when the
THE MORNING DELUGE
548
United States Army men stationed in China already had with-
drawn most of their personnel, Stalin continued to direct that talks
with Cliiang, as the ‘legal government of China, should continue.
These talks affected Russian investments and companies in
Sinkiang province; and the most charitable thing that can be said
is that there is no difference between the extraction of concessions
in China practised at that moment by the United States govern-
ment-allied big business and the Russian officials in charge of these
economic talks. Even when Peking and Tientsin had been
captured by the Red armies and Mao had entered the old capital
(March 25, 1949) amid the most obvious enthusiasm and relief, the
talks went on. Sinkiang, the western province of Cliina, had been
the object of czarist cupidity in the later nineteenth century; and
the negotiations with Chiang, under the legal instrument of the
friendship and alliance treaty, cannot be regarded as anything but
an attempt to continue to extort as much as possible from the now
beleaguered Chiang Kai-shek.
It was in April, when the People’s Liberation Army crossed the
Yangtze river, and when Nanking was to fall, that the press in the
Soviet Union switched to calling the Kuoinintang regime
‘reactionary’. Prauda announced its fall in the autumn.
According to Vladimir Dejider,* Stalin told him that he had
advised the Chinese Communists they had no prospects of
victory and shouldjoin Chiang, dissolve their armies and go back
to guerilla warfare. He did not elucidate the reasons he gave for
this advice; we can only think it was fear of massive American
involvement. Mao had disregarded this advice and pitted liis
acumen in foreign policy against Stalin’s, and had been proved
right. Stalin was to say to Kardelj, the Hungarian Communist
Party representative, that the Chinese had been right not to listen
to his counsels. ‘They are beating Chiang’s army... we were
wrong.’ This was a very handsome admission to make; but Stalin
may not have forgiven the man who had proved him wrong.
The advent of the People’s Republic of China, an unexpected
one, immediately threw into disarray the balance of power in the
* Vladimir Dejider, Tito Speaks (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1953).
P- 331 .
MAO TSETUNG AND STALIN
549
Far East which Stalin had conceived at Yalta. Everything had to
be rethought. It was obvious to him, even if his meek hirelings
did not dare to tell him, that the PRC was not only viable, but a
government with the greatest popular backing that had ever
existed in China. Any foreign policy move by the nascent power
would therefore be momentous; Asia was already changed by the
Chinese Revolution on October i, 1949. What China would do
would involve continuously, and in a different manner from the
past, both the United States and the USSR, because both now
claimed their frontiers and interests in Asia.
It is possible, though not proven, that at the momentous
meeting in Hopei in the autumn of 1948 the alliance with the
Soviet Union was decided upon by the assembled Central Com-
mittee of the CCP. Even had there not been American inter-
vention on the side of Chiang Kai-shek, friendship with the
Soviet Union would have been a necessary and strongly affirmed
decision, both because of ideological afhnity and of geographical
proximity. The very speed with which victory had come —
before the United States had time even to pull out completely,
before it could get public opinion prepared for the ‘loss’ of
China, before it could adjust to the fact that this would mean
reassessing all its policies in Asia — had created a vacuum, a gap
wliich only time and patience could fill. The new Chinese
government showed remarkable understanding and skill on these
main issues; and that is why Mao’s speech of July i, 1949, had
left the door open for the United States, so that it might study the
new situation and make the adjustments which reason and good
sense seemed to require. But this in no way invalidated the firm
determination to seek friendship and an alliance with the USSR, if
only because it was absolutely necessary to point out that any
treaties made with Chiang, by Moscow, were now completely
invalid.
Mao Tsetung seems to have again rightly estimated that it
would take the United States some years, maybe ten or twenty,
to make a change of policy; and therefore the choice of the
USSR as the source of aid for the reconstruction of China was the
only one left to him.
550
THE MORNING DELUGE
Throughout the civil war, Mao had stressed the theme of self-
reliance; Anna Louise Strong had indicated that the Communists
had received nothing from the Russians * Reading back to what
she wrote in 1948, one is under the impression that she, as well as
Edgar Snow at about the same time, was trying to convey to
American public opinion that the Chinese would have preferred
to establish relations with both sides at once. But it was not their
fault if they had to turn to the USSR alone. Mao stressed that
all aid , that is, from any quarter, would be welcome, but only
if it did not rob the new China of its ^independence of action\ It
was very obvious that the United States, in its full imperialist
expansion then, would not fulfil these conditions; it would mean
abrogating all those profitable treaties signed with Chiang and
starting on a new basis. The change in Mao’s view towards the
United States from 1944 to 1949 is very clear; it was a change
due to the transformation of the United States itself, from the
image of a great democracy at the close of World War II to one
of a predatory imperialism four years later. During those years
Mao Tsetung became a very careful student of the American
scene; he asked for books on the United States and studied them
with his usual intensity.
In 1944, on August 23, Mao had questioned John Stewart
Service as to the nature of America’s policies in the world. ‘Is
the American government really interested in democracy— in its
world future? ... Does it want to have the government of
China really representative of the people of China? ... America
has intervened in every country where her troops and sup-
plies have gone. This intervention may not have been intended,
and may not have been direct. But it has been nonetheless
real.*
Mao Tsetung expounded to Service, and also to other Ameri-
cans, that Soviet participation in China’s postwar reconstruction
would depend on circumstances in the Soviet Union; evidently
their priorities would be national. ‘We do not expect Russian
help,’ he said. ‘Russia will not oppose American interests in China
* Anna Louise Strong, The Chinese Conquer Chttm^ op. cit., interview with
Anna Louise Strong, 1962.
MAO TSETUNG AND STALIN
551
if they are constructive and democratic. Russia only wants a
friendly and democratic China.' Thus the limits of American and
Russian influence in China were clearly set; in return for help,
Mao offered Chinese friendship. ‘China must industrialize ...
We will be interested in the most rapid development of the
country ... Between the people of China and the people of the
United States there are strong ties of sympathy, understanding
and mutual interest. Both are essentially democratic and in-
dividualistic. Both are by nature peace-loving ... America needs
an export market for her heavy industry and specialized manu-
factures ... America is not only the most suitable country to
assist ... she is also the only country fully able to participate.’*
It was American policy which had changed abruptly, leaving
the Communists puzzled and angry at American ‘perfidy’. But
even then Mao did not change his own foreign policy, though he
condemned American imperialism — a distinction which is very
clear today, even if at the time it was not clear to the United
States State Department. One cannot reasonably expect the
Chinese Communists to thank the Americans for arming their
enemy, Chiang Kai-shek.
It is in this context that the famous June 30, 1949, speech of
Mao, represented in the American Cold War literature of those
emotional days as ‘belligerent’ and ‘hostile’, must be reappraised
as the reasonable pronouncement of a great statesman. *j*
The first point Mao Tsetung made was that China would not
change its goal of socialism. It would not curry favour with the
United States by altering the aim of its Revolution. The date
chosen, July i, 1949, was to mark the 28th anniversary of the
CCP and to reaffirm this dedication.
Externally, too, China reaffirmed struggle against imperialism;
for there could be no other road for the peoples of the world. ‘In
the light of the experience accumulated, all Chinese without
exception must lean either to one side, the side of imperialism,
*John Stewart Service, The Amerasia Papers: Some Problems in the History of
U.S.-China Relations, op. cit., pp. 167-176.
t On the People*s Democratic Dictatorship (June 30, 1949), Selected H'orks,
voi. rv.
552
THE MORNING DELUGE
or to the side of socialism. Sitting on the fence will not do, nor is
there a third road/
The phrase used, dean to one side’, was construed in the
United States to mean submission to Moscow, whereas it was an
affirmation that China must go socialist. Communist conviction
did not, for Mao, mean blind obedience, but this distinction was
not at all clear, either to the Americans or even to the Russians.
Yet how often had Mao repeated: ‘We are Chinese first ... We
did not make the Revolution to hand the country over to Russia
...no blind obedience.’ His leadership of the Revolution had
proved it; but in spite of the very obvious independence of the
CCP, the United States foreign policy makers chose to accuse the
PRC for years of being a satellite of the USSR and not representa-
tive of the Cliinese people.
The phrase was also an answer and a rebuff, both to those in the
Party who wanted to remain in the period of ‘new democracy’,
and to those independent parties who wanted a Western demo-
cratic parliamentary form of government. The CCP, through the
Political Consultative Conference, had organized the govern-
ment on a coalition basis;* and proponents for a ‘tliird road’, both
inside the Party and also outside it, were prominent and vocal.
It was therefore for the internal goal of socialism that Mao used
this phrase, as well as for the definite purpose of an alliance with
the USSR. ‘We are against no one, except the domestic and
foreign reactionaries who hinder us from doing business.’ But the
United States had shown itself an imperialist, aggressive power,
bent on military interference in Asia, and this would probably
continue. There could be no trafficking with imperialism, no
subservience to it; hence China was on the side of all those who
would struggle against imperialism in order to obtain their own
national independence. Even more explicit, on June 15 Mao had
said: ‘We proclaim to the whole world that what we oppose is
* The Political Consultative Conference was a democratic coalition. Of the
142 delegates of political parties who attended, 16 were from the Communist
Party. The Revolutionary Committee of the Kuomintang Party, headed by
Madame Sun Yatsen, had also 16, and so had the China Democratic League.
There were ii other smaller parties represented, with delegates numbering
between 8 and 12 each.
MAO TSETUNG AND STALIN
553
exclusively the imperialist system and its plots against the Chinese
people. We are willing to discuss with any foreign government
the establishment of diplomatic relations on the basis of the
principles of equality, mutual benefit and mutual respect for
territorial integrity and sovereignty, provided it is willing to
sever relations with the Chinese reactionaries.’
Within the next six months, twenty-six nations would recog-
nize the People’s Republic of China.
Having thus stated very clearly the position of the new China,
Mao turned briskly to the only country which could help China
at the time — the USSR. For China was in ruins; it was ‘a blanket
full of holes’, and it needed help urgently. To obtain this, without
sacrificing independence, without giving too many concessions,
was Mao’s difficult task; and to this he would consecrate the
winter of 1949.
The immediate effect of Mao Tsetung’s victory had been to
strengthen Stalin enormously. Suddenly the USSR had, on its
eastern flank, a potential ally and ideological partner. And in that
autumn of 1949, the Russians showed they had the atom bomb by
detonating one. All over Asia, in 1947, 1948 and 1949, were
armed revolts against the reoccupation of Asian territories by
colonial powers — in Indonesia, in Malaya, in Indo-China and the
Philippines. Great Britain had been compelled to leave India.
Whatever gains there had been in Europe — in Greece and in
Italy— by the United States were offset by what was happening
in Asia.
There was one area in international relations where both the
USSR and the PRC would fuid at the time common ground for
an alliance, and that was the tlireat of a Japan once again rearmed
by the United States.
In 1947 Japan was reduced almost to beggary; there were
unemployed people everywhere; the Japanese Communist Party
was becoming quite an influence ... but in a year all had changed.
The United States injected an enormous amount of money into
Japan; the Zaihatsu [big Japanese business monopolies] sprang into
life again; witliin a year the factories were working full time. The
554
THE MORNING DELUGE
United States even subsidized the fisheries. But everything was
American-controlled; for years there were American advisers in
every government department. All the militarists and fascists of
the war came out of jail.’ This graphic description by Prince
Saionji to the author* gives some idea of the speed with which
Japan suddenly became, in American pohcy, its main base in
Asia, spearhead of a possible attack against the USSR and China.
The denunciation of Japanese resurgent militarism in the Soviet
newspapers indicated the great disquiet of Moscow on this
development.
The USSR’s weakness was undeniable, especially when con-
trasted with the might of the United States in those years. This
had dictated the overwhelmingly prudent policies followed by
Stalin. The more, however, the USSR gave in, the more the
United States pressed on. Stalin had not obtained a base in Turkey,
promised by the Allies at Yalta; Winston Churchill made himself
the spokesman of a grand alliance of the West against the USSR,
advocating a partnersliip between Germany and France. This was
tenaciously refused by de Gaulle, who thought that it would
mean subjugation of France in a German-ruled Europe.f The
Truman doctrine, already foreshadowed by the aggressive
United States stance after Roosevelt’s death, was officially con-
firmed in a message on March I2, 1947, a formal American
declaration of the Cold War. It proclaimed that America would
henceforth support any nation resisting Communism, and com-
mitted America therefore to intervention in any national libera-
tion movement, since in all these local Communists were
implicated. Just as Japan was rearmed. West Germany was
rearmed.
The threat against the USSR was therefore very real ; the fear of
nuclear attack deep and persistent. Stalin’s extraordinary pru-
dence and cautionary advice were dictated by fears for Russian
security; and Mao’s pursual of civil war until its complete triumph
and vindication was in Russian eyes a risky gamble. But now that
* Author’s interview with Prince Kinkazu Saionji, Peking, 1964.
j* His rejection of Britain’s entr}' into the European Common Market was
based on a similar fear.
MAO TSETUNG AND STALIN
555
Mao Tsetung had won, the rearmament of Japan was a threat to
be faced in common by the two countries, not by the USSR
alone. It put Stalin in a far better position to counter encirclement
of the USSR planned by the West.
However, if Japanese militarism was a foundation for a com-
mon accord, other problems between the two states were not.
There was, for Stalin, the strategic and ideological weakness, the
breach in the strong fortress of the socialist camp, opened by
Titoism. The Yugoslav Communists had often been quoted as
examples of true Communism; they were considered, until
1948, the strongest supporters of the USSR. But the contradictions
between socialist states and within socialism, which Mao Tsetung
would study and expound so clearly in 1957, were not admitted;
hence Tito s refusal to submit national issues to internationalism^
led to economic and military blockade of Yugoslavia by the
USSR, and the utter condemnation of Tito by all Communist
parties in the world, including the Chinese. Had this blockade
and the damnation of Yugoslavia not occurred, one wonders
whether Tito would have begun the swift slide into capitalism
(for Yugoslavia is not really a consolidated socialist state). But
today there is no point in such arguments considering what is
happening in the USSR itself However, in 1948, and from
Moscow, this ideological break was a grave danger and a gap in
the ring of strategic buffer territory which the USSR drew round
itself, and thus doubly threatening. And now Stalin asked himself
whether Mao Tsetung, who had exhibited such independence,
would also turn out to be a Tito? In the West, many hoped so,
loudly and repeatedly.
There had been, in 1945, the proclamation of Mao Tsetung
Thought, Was this heresy or not? It claimed to be the concrete
application of Marxism-Leninism to Chinese conditions; but
curiously enough, there were others in the CCP who claimed
more for Mao than Mao ever claimed for himself
Now there arc always two ways to sabotage a major argument,
enterprise or thesis; one is to attack it openly, the other is to
exaggerate its scope so that it is destroyed by inflation. The
second way, as we have already seen, was used in a good many
558 THE MORNING DELUGE
hand, it is true the Russian armies held the Manchurian cities for
Chiang Kai-shek and prolonged their stay at his request. Had they
not done so, the cities would have been garrisoned by Americans,
and this would have made it far more difEcult for the Chinese
Communists. It would also ultimately have represented a very
great danger to the USSR itself
It is therefore from another viewpoint that we must understand
the Manchurian problem. There Stalin was fighting a defensive
action ; he needed the railway and the ports, as he told Chiang
Kai-shek, to defend the Siberian provinces; with the Truman
doctrine proclaimed, and the rearming of Japan, he would be
very reluctant to forgo this advantage.
Besides this presence of the USSR, there is also what would
later be known as the Kao Kang affair, a process of internal
influence, which in the next few years would develop into some-
thing amounting to a serious danger to both ideological and
national unity in China.
Kao Kang appears a complex character. A native of north
Shensi, he was closely associated with Liu Chih-tan at the North
Shensi base, and active in guerilla operations. He became a
member of the Central Committee at the Seventh Congress in
I 945 » ^iid was then sent to Manchuria along with Peng Chen and
other important cadres, some 30,000 of them, and 120,000
Communist troops, to begin the infiltration of the countryside
and the countryside surrounding the cities’ strategy which was
so successful. Kao Kang became prominent in Manchuria after
the departure of the PLA in the great campaigns of North China,
as secretary of the Northeast bureau, and in August 1949 chairman
of the local Northeast people’s government. This local govern-
ment was in line with all such local governments founded in
Communist-held territories. In July 1949, under the leadership of
Kao Kang, a delegation of ‘the Manchurian people’s democratic
authorities’ went to Moscow to conclude a one-year trade agree-
ment with the USSR, before the People’s Republic of China was
formally established and offer the Political Consultative Con-
ference had held its first preparatory session in Peking.
How much suspicious dealing must we see in this? Very much,
MAO TSETUNG AND STALIN
559
according to some students of Chinese Ihstory, and because of the
fate which befell Kao Kang in 1954, when he was accused of
having tried to turn the three eastern provinces of Manchuria
into an ‘independent kingdom’. But to interpret this trade mission
as a deliberate attempt by the Russians to utilize Kao Kang in
order to detach Manchuria from the PRC is possibly presuming
too much. Though we cannot deny that a strong Russian in-
fluence within the CCP would come to look increasingly un-
desirable in the years to come, we cannot classify this initial step
for a trade agreement as the beginning of a separatist stance. We
do not know whether it had Mao Tsetung’s approval or not; in
any case, it was only a partial treaty. Kao Kang, however, did
come back to make reports adulatory about the USSR and to
proclaim that ‘we must imitate the Soviet Union ...in every
respect’.
In any tale of suspense, the characters who later turn out villains
appear at intervals, one of a crowd, innocuous, even innocent;
their evil is unveiled only in a startling turnabout at the end. So,
sometimes, is it in revolutionary history. Heroes acclaimed
yesterday are found wanting, and lapse into obscurity. We must
mention again Peng Teh-huai at this moment, both because of his
later downfall — when in 1959 he appears to have been trans-
mitting information about Chinese Central Committee decisions
to Khrushchev and also indulging in other inappropriate be-
haviour— and also for his role in the Korean war and his attempts
subsequently to transform the People’s Liberation Army into
something closely resembling the Russian model. In early 1949
Peng was military governor in Manchuria, since the territory was
now divided into military regions, each under a senior comman-
der, while liberation proceeded. It was then that he appears to
have struck up a friendship with Kao Kang, and to have plotted
with him, either then or later, for some larger role in a conspiracy
designed to oust Mao, Chou, and others and to replace them.
Whatever the amount of truth in this, there can be no under-
standing of what happened during and after the Korean war
unless one keeps in view the overt Russian influence in Man-
churia, which was to continue till 1954.
5^0 THE MORNING DELUGE
The third problem directly concerning Chinese territory in
which Russian expansionism had been felt was Sinkiang; and
Sinkiang continues to be the object of manoeuvres on the part
of the USSR today.
Sinkiang was consolidated against czarist encroachments by
the Chinese in 1880; in 1760 it was already a recognized part of
Chinese domains. The Uighurs, the majority population, had
arrived only seven centuries after the Han Chinese had established
the silk road and their influence on the area (a.d. ioo). During the
czarist annexation of Kazakh territories, tribes fleeing the
Russian massacres had also entered Sinkiang; one of them, a
Turkoman offshoot, the Kazakhs, had requested the Chinese
emperors for protection in the eighteenth century. During the
1930S Sinkiang was held by a warlord ^as were all provinces of
China), Sheng Shih-tsai, whose policies hovered between alliance
with Chiang Kai-shek and alliance with Moscow. Soviet strategy
within the inner lands bordering its Siberian acquisitions is very
poorly documented, but by 1935 Japanese intrigues in Sinkiang
sought to detach the province and promote autonomous rebel-
lions.* Sheng Sliih-tsai found the Japanese invasion of China had
weakened Chiang s regime so considerably that there was no
counterbalance to Moscow’s penetration. As a consequence of
the united front, Sheng then entered into correspondence with
the Communists at Yenan. A line of communication between
Moscow and Yenan was established then, but as we have seen,
Soviet aid went chiefly to Chiang, and there is no record of
military aid from Soviet Russia to Yenan at any time during
I 937 -I 945 't What is more significant is that Chinese Communist
Party members entered into the provincial administration of
Sinkiang, invited to do so by Sheng Shih-tsai.
In tliis connection, Mao Tsetung’s own brother, Mao Tse-min,
* Rebellions of national minorities, due to Han Chinese feudal exploitation and
their own feudality, were not solved until the present regime would devise
autonomous regimes coupled with substantial rises in standards of living,
communications linkage and industrial development.
t A small gift of money is, however, mentioned by Allen Wliiting and Sheng
Shih-tsai in their book Sinkiang: Pawn or Pirol (Michigan State University, I 95 '^)*
which also contains controversial material on the period 1933-1945.
MAO TSETUNG AND STALIN 561
was sent to Sinkiang to restructure the chaotic finances of the
province and also to establish programmes for development.
Mao Tse-min, under the name of Chou Ping, worked in
Sinkiang from 1939 to 1942, promoting not only finances but also
schools. Sheng appears also at one time to have wanted to join the
CCP, but he never did.
From the early 1930s on, the Russian economic hold on
Sinkiang increased swiftly. Oil concessions, Joint ventures (of
stock companies) and economic loans forwarded this extension of
Soviet influence. But after 1940, when the war with Germany
put the USSR in a difficult position, Chiang Kai-shek’s govern-
ment had reasserted itself; and there appears to have been a short
Russian eclipse, with transfer of authority of many concessions,
and their titles, to the Nanking government. This was not of
long duration; by 1945, with the treaty of friendship and alliance
concluded with Chiang Kai-shek, another wave of Russian
ascendancy was to begin in the province. Four years of talks and
negotiations with Chiang Kai-shek would be concerned largely
with the resumption of prospection, with rights for geological
surveys, and other concessions in the area. It was in the midst of
this that Mao Tse-min was to perish, for Sheng Shih-tsai switched
his allegiance to Chiang Kai-shek. Sheng’s own story* is that the
Communists murdered his brother, who was Russian-educated;
hence he imprisoned and later executed Mao Tse-min and other
Communists. Another version, quite as unverifiable and as
likely to be true, is that his Moscow-trained brother was mur-
dered by Sheng himself, who then threw the blame on Com-
munists and killed them, thus also working out a rapprochement
with Chiang Kai-shek. With Mao Tse-min also died Chen
Tan-chiu, a founder member of the CCP.
In 1948 the problem of Sinkiang was still a complex one in the
relations with the new ascendant power, the CCP. In his book
Battle for Asia, Edgar Snow asked the question; ‘Is not Russia
preparing to annex this territory [Sinkiang] as a buffer state?’ In
1948, a national front army of ‘East Turkestan’ was promoting a
* Sec Allen Whiting and Sheng Shih-tsai, Sinkiang, Pawn or Piuot, op. cit.
The author visited Mao Tse-min’s grave in Urumchi, Sinkiang, in 1971.
562
THE MORNING DELUGE
national liberation movement, seeking to make Sinkiang inde-
pendent — and this movement was sponsored by the USSR.
In 1949 the Russians reprinted the constitution of the Chinese
Soviet Republic of Juichin, drawn up in November 1931.* In
this constitution it was explicitly stated that the national minorities
had the right to secede. Although Lenin had defined limits to the
rights of secession, pointing out that this right was subject to the
overall socialist aim in The National Question, a Mongolian
People's Revolutionary Party had similarly been brought into
being in Inner Mongolia. These movements were clearly designed
to attach vast areas of recognized Chinese territory to the USSR.
In 1949 and 1950 the liberation of Sinkiang by the PLA began,
ending in 1951.
This survey gives a brief notion of some of the substantial
problems which were to be discussed in the momentous meeting
between Mao and Stalin in December 1949.
But besides these substantial problems bound up with national
rights, sovereignty issues, national interests, and also frontiers,
there was a major ideological question. The recognition of the
Chinese Revolution as a revolution of the same type as the
October Revolution in Russia; the recognition of the Chinese
Communist Party as a legitimate, truly Communist party.
Mao Tsetung's conversations with Stalin, we must assume,
ranged not only on Mongolia, Manchuria and Sinkiang; they
would also be on a high theoretical level; for Mao was the leader
of a Communist Party now in power, and there was a difference
between this status and that of an ordinary chief of state of any
capitalist country. But what place did the Chinese Revolution
hold in the view of Communist theoreticians in the USSR? Was
Stalin ready to accept a dialogue as between equals, comrades in
arms? How would state relations be distinguished from Party
relations when the assumption of ideological authority in Moscow
had led to subservience on the part of other Communist govern-
ments in power in Eastern Europe? Would Mao accept the leader-
ship of the Soviet Union in all matters, including state affairs, in the
name of ideological solidarity of proletarian internationalism?
* See chapter ii.
MAO TSETUNG AND STALIN
563
This question led back, fmally, to the very difficult definition of
the relations between Communist parties who were also national,
state governments. This question Stalin had not really tackled; for
in Eastern Europe, the satellite role of Communist parties even
when they had formed national governments was accepted;
Tito alone had stood against this continued obedience to Moscow.
That Mao Tsetung was indeed intent on establishing the
Communist Party of China as genuine, and himself as the genuine
leader of such a party, can be gleaned from a series of articles and
broadcasts which appeared during December and January 1949-
1950, that is, during Mao’s visit to Moscow. Although their
author, Chen Po-ta, is now surmised to be in disgrace,* and
although some parts of the articles seem overdrawn, one cannot
escape the conclusion that they were an attempt, which may have
been approved by Mao Tsetung, to prove that his line was
ideologically correct.
The articles are extremely diffuse and verbose; but the aim is to
prove that Mao Tsetung was not acting against Stalin’s views or
directives at any time. The Cliinese Revolution was not only of
national but also of international world order, as had been the
October Revolution in 1917; the People’s Republic of China was
not only an anti-feudal and anti-bureaucratic regime; it was on a
par with the other people’s democracies established in Eastern
European countries. ‘The Chinese people have always considered
the Chinese Revolution as the continuation of the great October
Revolution in new historical conditions.’ It was a successor come
of age; not a subordinate but an equal, even if a respectful and
younger one.
But there had not been for the last twenty years any ideological
discussion, for Stalin, on terms of equality; the Russian Party was
already corrupt with a notion of infallibility ; it had had its way too
long, and no one had ever dared challenge it without being
utterly condemned and cast out. The prestige of the Soviet
Union as a state was bound up with tliis ideological authority;
would Stalin, therefore, admit a junior partner but a potential
equal?
* Probably due to ‘ultra-leftism’ during the GPCU.
THE MORNING DELUGE
Mao’s article on Stalin’s sixtieth birthday in 1939, in which he
wrote, ‘We must learn from him [Stalin] in two respects, his
theory and his work,’ was recalled and reprinted by Chen Po-ta
in his articles; this forced the Russian press to give it coverage,
which It had not done earlier. Panegyrics on Stalin, his leadership
and his greatness, were not spared. The 1927 to 1930 period was
lightly glanced over, and the attack was firmly centred on the
period after 1930, that is, on the period when the twenty-eight
returned students had been sent back to run Communist Party
affain in China. Mao was too well aware that all reports about
him from the time Wang Ming took over the Politburo had been
resoundingly bad. It was necessary to set the record straight. These
comrades, the articles said, had actually distorted the advice and
the ideas of the great Stalin. They had not understood him. There
was no reference to the Second United Front, when again Mao
had rejected the Wang Ming (Moscow) definition of the united
front, but the years of the Rectification movement, which were
the time of the great ideological struggle against the Wang Ming
line, were emphatically dwelt upon to prove that Mao’s thinking
was actually in accordance with Stalin’s and what Stalin would
have done given the same circumstances. Implying that Stalin
had been consistently misinformed, the articles showed that it was
Mao who had recommended Stalin’s The Foundatious of Leninism
and other works as compulsory reading matter for the CCP,
whereas this had not been done by the returned students. These
works of Stalin s had dealt *sevcre blows’ to dogmatism and
empiricism; Stalins contribution to the universal application of
Marxism-Leninism had been supported and spread by Mao
Tsetung, who had been able to ‘apply Stalin’s methods to the
study of Stalin’; that is, ‘the method creative Marxism\ Stalin
himself was quoted on the subject: ‘This group does not derive its
direction and instructions from historical analogies and parallels,
but from a study of surrounding conditions ... It does not base
its activities on quotations ... but on practical experience.’ Mao
was proved a follower of Stalin all along, and no Tito.
On the controversial subject of Mao Tsetung Thought, the
articles stated that this was Bolshevism linked with the practice
MAO TSETUNG AND STALIN $6$
and the special features of the Chinese Revolution, for ‘the
experiences of the Chinese people’s struggle should be noticed’,
sifted and analysed to ‘raise what can be adopted to the level of
revolutionary science and the modern struggle of the working
class’. Tills was validity through practice, adding to knowledge of
revolutionary science. ‘Our Party unfortunately contains certain
leaders who sincerely believe that it is possible to direct the
Revolution in China ... by telegraph ... They do not understand
that the main task of leadership consists of finding out, mastering
and skilfully combining the national peculiarities with the general
principles of the Comintern ... from this comes the attempt to
stereotype the leadership for all countries.’ Who had said this?
Stalin himself Thus had he spoken in 1927. And thus had Mao
done. He had fought against stereotypes. ‘All who opposed
comrade Mao Tsetung were opposed to Stalin’ was withering
comment upon the Russian-trained ‘leaders’ within the CCP,
who had ‘obstructed the dissemination inside the Chinese Party*
of Stalin’s works.
But there is also an assertion in these articles which is puzzling:
they say that Mao had no opportunity to read Stalin until after the
Rectification campaign of 1942 had been launched. This is not
altogether correct, since Mao seems to have quoted Stalin at least
in On New Democracy* and that was 1940. The bombastic assertion
that Mao therefore had been able to reach the same conclusions as
Stalin through ‘independent thinking’, although quite true, was
perhaps an unnecessary sting.
The drift, of these and other publications, was to assert the
validity and genuineness of the CCP, and it was therefore both as
the leader of the nation, the State, and of the Communist Party
that Mao went to Moscow to take up the many problems and
questions that we have described.
Mao Tsetung arrived in Moscow on December 18, 1949, and
the best newsmen in the world strained to catch any wisps of
rumour which would uncover information about the matters
discussed. But the substance of the problems which Mao Tsetung
was determined to broach in his talks with Stalin is conveyed in
* Selected Works, vol. II.
566
THE MORNING DELUGE
his own words. With his usual forthrightness he said: ‘I have
come for several weeks . . . The length of my sojourn . . . depends
on the period in which it will be possible to settle questions of
interest to the Chinese People’s Republic. Among them first of all
are such questions as the existing treaty of friendship and alliance
between China and the USSR, the question of Soviet credits to
the People’s Republic of China, the question of trade and a trade
agreement between our countries, and others.’* By then Mao
Tsetung had been two weeks in Moscow, and he made no
secret of the fact that he would prolong his stay until he had
obtained an answer to these questions’. Such candid diplomacy
and such equable, frank statements had seldom been heard from
the mouth of a Communist in Moscow. They are not the words
of a submissive chief of a minor party, come with reverence to
the all-knowing shrine, but those of an equal head of state and
head of a large Communist Party come to discuss, as an equal,
with profound courtesy but with firmness, matters of great
import.
The meetings between the two must have been quite extra-
ordinary. That Mao Tsetung had made full preparation, had
carefully studied Stalin, we may be quite sure. Probably he had
upon him this great stillness, when he concentrated, absorbed —
almost as if soaking through the pores of his skin— people, what
they said, and what they were. Was Stalin aware that he had an
equal, someone of his stature, before him? I think he was. Bio-
graphers of Stalin have usually been hostile; they have emphasized
his cunning, his suspicion; but is it not possible to think that
greatness calls forth a response in others, and that even if his mind
had been prejudiced against Mao, there would be in Stalin a
recognition and respect for the rich originality, the compelling
honesty of Mao’s mind? At least one hopes so. Stalin was capable
or admitting he was wrong; he despised the small servile men
found him, though he used them. It is not out of character to
think that Mao, having listened to Stalin, seen him drink, quietly
studied the set-up around him, ‘circled round’ the mind of Stalin,
began to speak, and then went on. And he spoke of great ideas
* Tdss interview, January 2, 1950.
MAO TSETUNG AND STALIN
567
and of high aims, not of small objectives. He reminded Stalin of
principles that, perhaps, with time and power had become
obscured for the overpraised master of the Kremlin. It was on this
ideological basis that he would make Stalin surrender what he
had taken at Yalta. For if in terms of power Stalin was stronger,
he cannot, on the other hand, have felt very easy when faced with
one who could remind him so cogently of past promises, of
Lenin’s noble declarations; of what the USSR should mean to the
world of the exploited, who were rising, who had stood up now.
Mao carried on what later he would call ‘struggles’ with Stalin
(meaning ideological debates on a very high and acute level) for
nine weeks. There were also banquets, and opera shows, and visits
to factories and addresses and speeches; it is not known whether
all the men of the Kremlin whom Mao met were impressed by
him, except for Bulganin and Molotov, who openly voiced their
admiration.
Stalin did not want to sign the agreements and the treaty, hence
the negotiations went on; on February 7 Chou En-lai flew into
Moscow, and finally the agreements were agreed and the treaty
signed, to be ratified later in the year. Mao is reported to have
said that Stalin still thought of him, Mao, as ‘another Tito’, and
that it was only after the Korean war that Stalin was convinced he
was not a Tito. Whether this is true or not we do not know; but
it does lend weight to the suggestion that the talk between the two
men also centred on ideology, and was possibly inconclusive. The
acceptance of Mao Tsetung as a great theoretician and practitioner
of Marxism-Leninism came only in 1951 and 1952.
Six agreements and a joint communique were the result of
these weeks of negotiation ; they were ratified in the autumn of
1950* They comprised:
(i) A treaty of friendship, alliance and mutual assistance for
thirty years (instruments of ratification exchanged on Septem-
ber 30, 1950). By this treaty Soviet military support to the
PRC was assured against attack by Japan or any other state co-
operating directly or indirectly in any act of aggression with
Japan. This also protected the Soviet Union from attack in the
same quarter.
568
THE MORNING DELUGE
(2) An agreement regarding the joint administration and future
transfer of the Chinese Eastern Railway in Manchuria and the
ports of Lushun and Dairen (to be returned to China by 1952).
Actually, because of the Korean war, they were not returned until
1955 -
(3) A Soviet grant of credits of 300 million dollars over a five-
year period from January i, 1950. The Russians also transferred
gratuitously the property acquired from Japanese ownership in
Manchuria, and also military compounds in Peking. This took
place in September 1950 also.
(4) Most important was the abrogation of the treaty of friend-
ship and alliance with Cliiang Kai-shek of August 14. 1945; but
the independence of Outer Mongolia was reaffirmed, and accep-
ted by the PRC, whereas Inner Mongolia remained part of China.
(5) As for Sinkiang, joint stock companies for non-ferrous and
rare metals, for petroleum, were to operate for thirty years. The
national army of Turkestan’, Russian-sponsored, ceased to exist.
Saifudin, a prominent Uighur and a Communist, became head
of the New Sinkiang Democratic League, and is still in his post
today as chairman of the revolutionary committee for the
Sinkiang-Uighur autonomous region.
(6) There were also the establishment of a Sino-Soviet civil
aviation joint-stock company, agreements for working conditions
for Soviet experts, trade and exchange agreements, in March and
April of 1950.
Materially, the harvest Mao reaped seemed meagre, especially
as regards credits; but psychologically it was large, for it was
tantamount to a renunciation of the Russian sphere of influence
in a wide belt of Chinese territory which had been under pressure
for over a hundred years. It was a halt to the relentless drive of
Russian expansionism, and a reversal of Yalta.
This cannot have been easy for Stalin to accept. Although the
rouble was revalued two weeks later, which cut down the aid of
300 million dollars by 20 per cent, and although it appears that
attempts to turn Manchuria and Sinkiang into spheres of Russian
influence would only be halted temporarily, yet the treaty which
Mao came back with was a great victory. It enabled the Chinese
MAO TSETUNG AND STALIN
569
Communist Party to carry on the work of reconstruction: it
gave it a voice among the socialist countries. Mao Tsetung recog-
nized the socialist camp as headed by the USSR. ‘The friendship
between China and the USSR', he said, was ‘eternal and in-
destructible’. Although this may sound, today, naive and op-
timistic, history may yet prove that in the long run Mao Tsetung
was right.
The treaty was hailed as China’s first equal treaty, and the
Soviet Union’s unselfish, fraternal help was much praised. The
weeks in Russia were to be for Mao Tsetung a period of valuable
study. Perhaps he did realize then what he had already begun to
think about — that it was possible to have contradictions between
socialist states as well as the antagonistic contradictions between
imperialism and socialism. But he could not have been aware then
(it was too early) that joint-stock companies established in Eastern
European countries were primarily to fuel Russian reconstruction.
However, he was made acutely aware of Stalin’s very real fear of
schism in the socialist camp. ‘Agents’ of imperialism were
everywhere, and during the time that Mao was in Moscow, great
purges went on in Eastern European countries — in Bulgaria and
in Hungary, where the Hungarian Communist Party leaders were
executed in that very December.
Though in September 1949 the Russians had exploded their
first atom bomb, the fear of war, tiredness with war, was very
evident in the USSR. Mao Tsetung would be very conscious of
this too. Did he reassure Stalin with the argument that im-
perialism must first conquer all the ‘intermediate zone’, the other
countries in Asia, must embark first on military domination in
Japan, and in Southeast Asia, before it would attack the Soviet
Union? And was Korea discussed then, as is averred by certain
American historians? Is it true that the Korean war was planned
in Moscow that winter?
For it was only four months after Mao’s return from Moscow to
China that the Korean war broke out, in June 1950.
21
The Korean War
The Korean war may appear to some Americans today an incon-
gruous chapter of unresolved perplexities. It appeared and
continues to appear, to the Chinese, a continuation of the policy
which dictated American interference in China, and was to
dictate American involvement in Vietnam; that is, imperialism.
It to them a logical follow-up of the Truman doctrine
as Mao had explained it in his interview of 1946 with Anna
Louise Strong. Just as Hurley had represented the beginning of
policy in China, Dulles was to represent its full maturity in
Korea and later in Vietnam; this would continue, military in-
volvement in Asia would continue, with the obsessive desire to
stop in its tracks any national liberation movement, in the name
of anti-Communism. To this America was to dedicate her
manpower and resources for two decades.
The simplest and most complete explanation of the Korean war
— which made normalization of relations between China and the
United States impossible— is found in the words of Premier
Chou £n-lai on August 30, i960, to Edgar Snow;
After the liberation of China the United States government
declared that it would not interfere in the internal affairs of China,
and that Taiwan was China s internal affair. Dean Acheson said
so in the White Paper, and it was also admitted by Truman later.
As a matter of fact Taiwan was restored to the then government
of China, Chiang s government, after the Japanese surrender...
After war broke out in Korea in June 1950, Truman changed
the policy and adopted a policy of aggression towards China.
While sending troops to Korea the United States at the same
time dispatched the Seventh Fleet to the Taiwan straits and
exercised military control over Taiwan. Beginning from that
time the United States started new aggression against China ...
570
THE KOREAN WAR
571
‘Shortly afterwards United States troops in Korea showed the
intention of crossing the 38th parallel and pressing on towards the
Yalu river [China’s frontier], and because of this the Chinese
government could not but warn the United States government
that we would not stand idly by if the United States troops
crossed the 38th parallel and pressed on towards the Yalu river.
This warning was conveyed to the United States through the
Indian ambassador.* The United States government disregarded
this warning and United States troops did indeed cross the 38th
parallel and pressed on towards the Yalu river.
‘The Chinese people could only take the action of volunteering
support to Korea in its war of resistance. But this action was not
taken until four months after the United States stationed its
forces in the Taiwan straits and exercised military control over
Taiwan, and not until United States troops had crossed the 38th
parallel and approached the Yalu river.’
In these succinct paragraphs we have the Chinese view of the
Korean war, and of China’s involvement in it, a most unwilling
involvement, as the Chinese made no bones about proclaiming.
The last thing the new government wanted was war.
Korea, once a dependency of the Chinese empire,*}* had been
wrested from it byJapan in the nineteenth century, and colonized,
as had been Taiwan. The Korean people never stopped their
insurgency against Japan, and during the Sino-Japancse war it was
from Manchurian bases, from Manchurian territory in which
there are numerous Korean national minority villages, that Kim
II Sung, now president of the People’s Democratic Republic of
Korea (North Korea) and secretary-general of its Labour Party,
waged a national liberation war against Japan.
In accordance with agreements made at Cairo and Potsdam
between the Soviet Union and America, Korea was to become
independent, but would be occupied ‘temporarily by both
United States and USSR forces when the latter entered the war
* K. M. Pannikar.
No claim was made and no claim will ever be made by the PRC to Korea.
Mao Tsetung never included it in any of his speeches (contrary to some reports)
as part of Chinese territory.
572
THE MORNING DELUGE
against Japan. The temporary line of demarcation would be the
3 8th parallel, and Korea was to be reunited as one country through
free elections held after the war.
But just as United States-avowed policies and agreements
entered into were suddenly cancelled, or ignored while the
United States (and Great Britain, for it was Winston Churchill
who struck the first note of a worldwide Communist conspiracy*
in his speech at Fulton, Missouri, in 1946) went on to discard
unilaterally its commitments, Korea was not to be reunited, since
obviously, had it been so, the national liberation movement
under Communist aegis would have triumphed. The prudent,
albeit comminatory, policies of the Soviet Union were once
more exampled in Korea, where Stalin gave way repeatedly.
The thesis that Stalin and Mao planned the Korean war at their
meeting is not only hardly credible; it is downright incredible.
It presupposes that either or both together were eager for a
military showdown. All evidence is to the contrary.
The rearming of Japan, a top priority undertaking by the
Pentagon and its supreme commander on the spot. General
MacArthur, also involved Korea south of the 38 th parallel, under
American military occupation. In fact the preparation of South
Korea as a bastion of America’s military policies in Asia was
already in evidence in 1948-1949, despite political statements to
the contrary.
American troops and advisers were training and equipping a
large South Korean army, while the United States was resisting
the reunification of the country. Two kinds of governments had
come into being on the two sides of the ‘temporary* demarcation,
the 38th parallel. In North Korea, Premier Kim II Sung was
entirely in charge; from the very beginning, although there were
Russian military advisers with the army and North Korea
benefited from aid for reconstruction. Koreans were in control
of the economy, the administration, and the army. The situation
was quite different in the southern part of Korea. MacArthur
had immediately assumed supreme control and treated South
Korea as part of his Japanese imperium. ‘All powers of govern-
ment will be exercised under my authority ... Persons will obey
THE KOREAN WAR
573
my orders during the military control, English will be the official
language/ The people’s committees which had sprung up in the
wake of the anti-Japanese war were disbanded and their leaders
werejailed; Japanese police and administrators were retained and
ordered to round up Communists and ‘troublemakers’ * But the
popular outcry against this outright colonial occupation was so
intense that MacArthur had to revise, reluctantly, some of his
measures. Pro-Japanese Koreans, well-known collaborators with
the previous colonizer, were used instead of Japanese, but with
the same results.
Once again, it was fairly clear that free elections, wliich had
been pledged by the United States, would have given the Com-
munists a possible 70 to 80 per cent of the votes. In December
1945 the problem of unification was discussed between the
United States and the USSR in Moscow, and a joint commission
was then established, Tass meanwhile explaining that the United
States aim was to secure ‘a permanent division of Korea’. This
was a very bitter blow to the Korean people. The USSR, how-
ever, in line with its policies of prudence, compromised and
accepted that reunification should be postponed. The parallel
with Vietnam, where once again free elections, if held in 1956,
would have given the Communists a majority and hence were
prevented by United States intervention, is plain.
Thus the 38th parallel became frozen into a ‘frontier’. From
1946 onward, the MacArthur administration set about establish-
ing its own regime. Peasant associations, trade unions, youth
leagues, even parties who though right-wing supported re-
unification were disbanded. A ‘government’ was first created
with an American, General Arnold, as chief of government and
an ‘interim’ legislative assembly, half of whose 140 members
were nominated by General Arnold.j* By spring of 1948 Syngman
Rhec had been found the best and most rabidly suitable chief of
the administration to be placed in the seat of government; his
* Wilfred G. Burchett, Again Korea (International Publishers, New York,
1968).
f State Department White Paper on Korea ; see also I. F. Stone, TIte Hidden
History of the Korean War (Monthly Review Press, New York and London, 2nd
edition 1969).
574
THE MORNING DELUGE
accession to high ofEce was marked by copious use of the Japanese-
trained police and wholesale arrests of all liberals. ‘We figure
that if they did a good job for the Japanese they would do a good
job for us*, was one of the choice comments made by an American
official of those days.
The United Nations commission on Korea reported in August
1949 that 89,710 people had been arrested in the eight months
prior to April 30, 1949, by the Rhee government. Chief among
the crimes listed was demanding reunification of the country.
Yet despite police efficiency, clubbings, assassinations, jailings,
and the barring of all opposition parties, in ‘elections’ held on
Alay 30, 1950, Rhee’s candidates got only 20 per cent of the
vote.
In spite of this obvious retention of South Korea as an American
base, MacArthur had implicitly excluded South Korea from the
American defence perimeter in his speeches. ‘Now the Pacific
has become an Anglo-Saxon lake,’ he said in his usual grandiose
manner, ‘and our line of defence runs through the chain of islands
fringing the coasts of Asia. It starts from the Pliilippines and
continues through the Ryukyu archipelago, which includes its
broad main bastion Okinawa; then it bends back through Japan
and the Aleutian chain to Alaska.’
Secretary of State Dean Acheson had gone further, as Premier
Chou En-lai pointed out. Speaking on January 12, 1950, before the
National Press Club in Washington, Acheson had outlined the
defence perimeter of the United States in the Pacific, excluding
South Korea and Taiwan.
From the Chinese point of view, Acheson’s speech was of
considerable significance. The very timing precludes the hypo-
thesis that Mao Tsetung, who was then in Moscow, would plot
with Stalin for action in Korea. What the PRC was interested in
was Taiwan; and Mao would not be foolish enough to entertain
any proposition (supposing there had been one, which is very
unlikely) for starting a war in Korea, which would jeopardize the
liberation of Taiwan. Acheson’s pronouncement in fact gave some
hope that witliin a foreseeable future the United States might,
grudgingly no doubt, recognize that its best interests lay in
THE KOREAN WAR
575
normal relations with China even under a Communist govern-
ment. In fact there were indications that some officials of the
State Department were encouraging a careful reappraisal of
policy towards China.
The hypothesis therefore that Mao and Stalin plotted the
Korean war in Moscow is untenable; the one that Stalin plotted
the war is hardly likely.
The establishment of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO) in Europe, with a rearmed West Germany, was a direct
threat to the Russians, and the possibility of war on two fronts,
even if China were involved, and because of the mutual assistance
treaty with China just signed in Moscow, would not be one Stalin
would contemplate with great equanimity. There was nothing
to gain, and much to lose, in such a gamble, and Stalin was not a
gambler. Even if he was maliciously planning to involve China in
war with the United States (as some cynics aver), one cannot see
him taking such a big risk. The Sino-Soviet treaty of alliance
specifically mentioned the resumption of aggression on the part
ofjapan or any other state that might collaborate in any way with
Japan in acts of aggression : there was no way for Stalin to know
that Japan would not be involved by the Americans in a war in
Korea, if it went on long enough.
We are left with only one more hypothesis: that North Korea,
on its own, invaded South Korea. In The Hidden History of the
Korean War by I. F. Stone, the point is very clearly made that it
was South Korea which started provocations, and that these
provocations were encouraged by John Foster Dulles. ‘Peace
with Russia seemed to be what Dulles feared,’ writes Stone.
Early in March 1950, when it was suggested that Stalin and
Truman should meet, Dulles denounced this as ‘deceptive cold
war strategy’.
The most suspicious event was Dulles’s trip to Korea in that
dramatic June of 1950; prior to it, from evidence accumulated in
the press, he had ‘seemed to feel that something more than the
Cold War was needed’. He spent three days in South Korea with
Syngman Rhee, returned to Tokyo on June 21 for a long meeting
with MacArthur, after which, according to Associated Press
THE MORNING DELUGE
576
dispatches, he ‘predicted ... positive action by the United States
to preserve peace in the Far East*. The positive action that did
occur was the outbreak of civil war in Korea on June 25 and the
commitment of the American government — the United Nations
Security Council assent being obtained with the People’s Republic
of China not seated and the USSR delegation not present— to
armed forces by sea and ground and air, which was a large-scale
intervention in the Pacific area, on June 27.
Actually the record of the Rhee administration is even more
suspicious. The South Korean regime started to agitate for re-
unification by armed force early in 1949, almost eighteen months
before the war occurred. On October 7, Rliee stated categorically
to newsmen that his government troops were able to occupy
Pyongyang easily, as they were ‘militarily prepared’. From then
on Rhee gave many interviews to emphasize the aim of his
regime to ‘regain lost territory ... defend the national borders of
Korea ... unify South and North by our own strength’. This
provocative and bellicose attitude was reinforced by an agree-
ment for joint defence and mutual assistance between the United
States and Syngman Rhee, signed on January 26, 1950.
It could be argued, therefore, with far more credibility, that in
spite of what President Truman, Dean Acheson, and General
MacArthur were saying, the ground was being prepared for
military action to be taken from South Korea. Provocations across
the cease-fire line took place almost weekly, and South Korean
military personnel made statements about their combat readiness.
In the six months from January to June much new equipment was
received from the United States.*
The North Korean government under Kim II Sung was very
worried; it multiplied appeals for peaceful reunification. Its own
forces were equipped by the USSR and had Russian advisers;
but these withdrew in June, when the war began. The North
Korean government sent delegates to Rhee to plead for re-
unification, and on June 16 proposed that the National Assembly
of South Korea Join with the North Korean People’s Assembly to
* American ships, according to Stone {Hidden History, op. cit.), were ready to
evacuate families one week before June 25.
THE KOREAN WAR
577
work out a programme for peaceful reunification. But on June
17 Dulles had arrived. He went straight to the 38th parallel, and
was photographed there peering at maps.* ‘No adversary can
resist you,’ Dulles told the troops he reviewed in a pep speech.
‘The time is not far off when you will be able to display your
prowess.’
In the early hours of June 25, while Dulles was still in Tokyo
with MacArthur, Rhee’s troops launched an attack, so runs the
North Korean account, across the 38th parallel. John Gunther
corroborates this account; he was then in Tokyo, and he was told
by one of the ranking officers of General MacArthur ’s staff that
‘the South Koreans have attacked North Korea’.*}*
The case, therefore, for supposing that it was Syngman Rhee,
with the encouragement of Dulles and MacArthur, who started
military provocation across the 38th parallel is much stronger
than the nebulous hypotheses of plots in Moscow.
But the South Korean army, however magnificently trained
and equipped by the United States, could not keep up the offensive
it had begun. Within days it was in headlong flight as the North
Koreans counter-attacked and swept onward. For the North
Koreans were also prepared, and if one wishes to be very sus-
picious, one might say that the North Korean troops should not
have swept onward. But the demand for reunification was too
strong; the people of South Korea rose to help the North Korean
troops everywhere. Within six weeks it did look as if reunification
would take place, but it would be achieved by Kim II Sung’s
armies.
Meanwhile intervention, under the United Nations flag, had
occurred, with the Security Council members stampeded (except
for the courageous Yugoslavs) into voting sanctions. The North
Korean armies swept far south in the peninsula, but massive
American troop landings by MacArthur at Inchon reversed the
tide and the North Korean army fell back north of the 38th
* Burchett (Again Korea, op. cit.) states that they were maps of actual
operational plans for attack.
t See Wilfred G. Burchett, Again Korea, op. cit. Also ulk with John Gunther
by author, 1954.
>9
578
THE MORNING DELUGE
parallel. Seoul, which had fallen to thjem, was evacuated and
retaken by United States forces.
The decisions which would involve in the end the People’s
Republic of China, and make the sending of Chinese volunteers
irrevocable, would be the crossing of the 38th parallel by the
American and allied forces and the decision to mass for an offen-
sive at the Yalu river, against China proper.
The Yalu river, which divides Korean from Chinese territory,
is a source of hydro-electric power to both countries; because
the hydro-electric stations were Japanese-installed, the Chinese
supply of electricity for the factories of Manchuria came from the
Korean side of the Yalu river. This was well known to the
American military and State Department. They knew that any
attack within a certain perimeter of the Yalu could be construed
as an offensive against China, not to speak of the clear intention
exhibited by MacArthur to cross the Yalu river into Manchuria.
It is not certain that the United Nations, on the day they handed
over forces to a ‘unified command’ under MacArthur, fully
realized to what lengths the General would go. MacArthur had a
blank cheque to do what he wanted, subject only to approval by
the President of the United States; and Truman was as en-
veloped in anti-Communist hysteria as anyone else. It would
only be after some months that responsibility of office and native
prudence would emerge in him. Meanwhile, on July 7, an un-
limited draft on American manpower to prosecute the Korean
war was authorized; this not only encouraged MacArthur’s
plans but it seriously raised the emotional climate in the United
States and created a condition in which only the testimony of
all-out anti-Communism could be heard. But it must be said for
Truman that even in those crisis days he wanted to localize the
conflict; and thought that he could play it safely, as he had been
assured by his advisers, so that neither the PRC nor the USSR
would intervene. The temptation of a military victory, to recoup
the galling disgrace of the fiasco in China, was also a powerful
incentive in the assumptions that were made and the measures
that were taken by the President at that moment.
The story of the Korean war is a story of hysterical headlines,
THE KOREAN WAR
579
deceitful and misleading communiques from the supreme head-
quarters of General MacArthur in Tokyo, a story like that of
Vietnam, which publication of the Pentagon papers fmally
exposed.
Whenever an armistice or cease-fire seemed possible, Mac-
Arthur would seek an extension of the conflict; and in this he
showed excellent political acumen and a good knowledge of the
way to stir the more unreasoning of his fellow countrymen. Had
he not been checked in time, the Korean war could have devel-
oped into a full scale conflict involving both China and the
USSR.
For example, after November 5, 1950, there were moves in the
United Nations for a cease-fire; Americans allies were already
worried over the bellicose statements of MacArthur. Also a
delegation from the People’s Republic of China was due to arrive
at the United Nations to present suggestions for a cease-fire
on November 24. But on that very November 24, the day the
representatives of the People’s Republic of China arrived in New
York to participate in the Security Council debate, MacArthur
launched a 100,000-man offensive towards the Yalu river, thus
putting an end to all possibilities of negotiation. MacArthur had
by then not only crossed the 38th parallel and driven northward,
but had also made it very clear, by an ultimatum to Kim U Sung
couched in the most peremptory terms, that he was treating the
North Koreans as if they had waged war against the United
States, and he was to exact unconditional surrender from them.
Had the Chinese not sent volunteers to North Korea, the Soviet
Union would almost certainly have been involved, not only
because of the treaty binding her to come to China’s help, but
also because her own security would then be threatened, her
frontiers being contiguous to Manchuria and to North Korea.
Chinese involvement in the Korean war was due to a direct
threat to Cliina. The action taken was carefully delimited as a
response to American aggression.
The start of hostilities in Korea was not expected by the
Chinese. One of Mao Tsetung’s first actions on his return from
Moscow was the drastic reduction of the armed forces. Not only
58 o
THE MORNING DELUGE
was the budget heavily weighted with expenditures for four
million PLA men, but there were also four million ex-Kuomin-
tang troops to feed, lodge and employ, and three million ex-
Kuomintang employees, all of whom had to be fed and paid.
The inflation had scarcely been curbed; the country had no
exports, industries were in ruin; nothing worked. All this was a
heavy burden on the administration, and demobilization was the
first measure taken. Hainan island, Sinkiang and Tibet remained
to be liberated — Tibet by September 1950.
Except for forces on the east coast poised for the liberation of
Taiwan, there were no forces in expectancy of an attack in the
east or in Manchuria. Movements of units to the north in May
and June, mentioned by some commentators as ‘preparatory’ to
the Korean war, were nothing of the sort. They were, as some
Americans themselves aver, the return of army units who had
operated from Manchuria down to South China, and now to be
demobilized. They would return to their original provinces for
assignment to state farms and PLA agricultural development
areas, in Inner Mongolia, in Manchuria, and in Sinkiang. Almost
two million men were thus to be shifted in the next two
years.
In June 1950, major economic problems occupied the many and
various sessions of the Political Consultative Conference. Mao
Tsetung’s speeches only a few days before the outbreak of the
Korean war are blithely oblivious of any war. They speak of
hope, of reconstruction; they reaffirm the liberation of Taiwan
but are otherwise mainly concerned with economics, with ‘big
reductions in Army and government expenditure by the State’,
with the necessity, urged by him so many times, of turning soldiers
into ‘productive workers’. The first oudine of the first five-year
plan was to be drafted; there were to be great irrigation projects
and afforestation. The resolution on army demobilization, and
the movement of soldiers to their original provinces or recruit-
ment areas for conversion to production, all took place in June.
The resolution was passed on June 24, and on June 25 the Korean
war broke out.
The problem of Taiwan still remained, and units still remained
THE KOREAN WAR
581
poised on the coast of Fukien to liberate Taiwan. There is no
reason to suppose it could not be taken in an amphibious opera-
tion comparable to the one which had secured Hainan island.
But no precipitate move was made. Some fanciful writers have
stated that the troops training to seize Taiwan all came down with
schistosomiasis while learning to swim in the rivers of South
China, hence the operation was postponed. In any case, the
Korean war put a stop to the operation in June, and for a very
good reason. For on June 27, along with the decision to employ
United States ground, air and naval forces in Korea, also came the
naval deployment of the Seventh Fleet to the straits of Taiwan,
although Taiwan had nothing to do with Korea and was Chinese
territory, and China was not involved in the Korean civil war.
Yet the decision by the Americans to use the Seventh Fleet on
the shores of South China was taken on the very day it was
decided to send United States and UN forces to Korea, and it
was taken ‘to prevent any attack on Formosa [sic]\
Taiwan (Formosa) was thus linked arbitrarily to the Korean
conflict by the United States, and therefore, since Taiwan was
Chinese territory, it immediately involved the People^s Republic
in a military confrontation with the United States. This was
great military provocation, but the Chinese kept cool, though
protesting vigorously. They saw it as a continuation of the
military interference which had occurred in China during the
civil war with Chiang Kai-shek. It was also the opposite of all
that had been authoritatively affirmed as United States policy by
the United States President and Dean Acheson that January.
Could self-contradictoriness go further?
And thus Taiwan as well as South Korea was placed within the
United States defence perimeter in Asia and turned into an
American base against China.
The protection of Chiang Kai-shek, as a puppet regime, to
become the ‘sole representative’ of the ‘Republic of China’ was
confirmed, and this grotesque farce would last two decades.
Yet, as Chou En-lai pointed out in i960, it was four months
before China would be provoked into sending volunteers to
Korea, and then only after the United States military announced
THE MORNING DELUGE
582
their intention of crossing the frontier and proceeded to a massive
build-up of forces to carry out this plan.
The vigorous verbal reactions to the Seventh Fleet patrols
throughout the summer left no one in doubt. Both Mao Tsetung
and Chou En-lai proclaimed in public meetings their determina-
tion to liberate Taiwan, for this was part of China and China’s
domestic affair. But the theme of Taiwan’s liberation was now
linked to the theme of a wider struggle, against imperialism in
Asia, and particularly its armed intervention in Korea. No surprise
therefore if Chairman Mao’s Imperialism and All Reactionaries Are
Paper Tigers interview of 1946 was reprinted in July. When heads
became cooler in the United States, the injustice done to the
People’s Republic of China would become increasingly evident,
even in conservative circles.
Mr McGeorge Bundy, in a Rand report in i960 commissioned
by the United States Air Force, was to conclude that Cliina had
neither planned the Korean war nor intervened under Russian
pressure, but had assumed from the statements and actions of
General MacArthur that the United States intended to invade the
territory of China. General MacArthur himself was to reaffirm,
in that same year, that such had been his intention, and that it
remained his ‘unfulfilled ambition’.
Allen Whiting, in China Crosses the Yalu,'*^ points out: ‘There is
no agreement nor any direct evidence on the degree to which
Communist China participated in the planning, even if the North
Korean attack was planned and directed by the Soviet Union. Mr
Whiting appears convinced that the USSR got the North
Korean government to investigate the Korean war, but a search
through his facts does not validate what remains an assumption.
The proponents of the ‘Russian-instigated’ theory are also
divided on the reasons for this alleged Russian plan : some say the
Russians were ‘testing American strength everywhere, in Iran in
1946, in Berlin in 1948’. This is distortion, to say the least; for
Iran was a withdrawal on the part of Stalin, and only by a
blockade of some sectors of Berlin did he try to evict the forces of
* Allen Whiting, China Crosses the Yalu (Collier-Macmillan, New York, i960).
THE KOREAN WAR
583
his erstwhile allies from the city, an attempt which failed. Berlin
was to remain an unsettled problem for many years; it docs not
stand up to scrutiny as an attempt to test American strength by a
military show of force. The consistent denial of the agreements
made with the USSR by the United States would then also come
within the range of aggressive and provocative action, and of this
there were plenty of instances in the Cold War. Another line of
reasoning is to say that Russia egged on North Korea to attack
precisely in order to get the Chinese involved, so that there would
be no possibility that the PRC would normalize relations with the
United States. This is based on alleged remarks made by Khrush-
chev, expatiating on the great difficulties Mao had in his talks
with Stalin. It supposes that Stalin foresaw massive United States
action in crossing the 38th parallel, foresaw that Mac Arthur
would deliberately — as he did — try to attack China, foresaw that
the Seventh Fleet would be sent to the Taiwan straits, in spite of
the statements made by Truman, Acheson and MacArthur in
January, all three having excluded both South Korea and Taiwan
from the United States frontiers in Asia. All this makes Stalin
almost a seer.
From the beginning, the Chinese view of the Korean war was
that it would be a protracted war. Throughout the summer they
dropped cautious but multiple hints about the necessity for political
mobilization and arousal and for making long-term plans. Utmost
solidarity was shown and pledged very early to the Korean people
in their struggles for liberation. ‘The American imperialists ...
will strengthen their aggressive forces,' the Chinese warned in
July. By July 26 the invading troops were clearly going to be
reinforced, and they warned that Korea would be made *a
foothold of aggression for the United States', obviously for war on
the Chinese mainland later. Chou En-lai warned that the People's
Republic would not tolerate invasion, nor ‘supinely tolerate
seeing their neighbours savagely invaded by imperialism'. He
reiterated that Taiwan would surely be liberated.
Troop movements then did take place, northward, in July and
in August; they were to assure protection of the frontier. The
papers printed maps of Korea, and the Yalu river was described.
5^4 THE MORNING DELUGE
Besides the denunciation of American aggressiveness by Mao
Tsetung on June 28, and the launching of the slogan ‘We shall
surely liberate Taiwan’, it is said that many thoughtful articles on
protracted war were penned by him at the time. He seems to have
also written that American imperialist strategy was ‘to invade
Taiwan, Vietnam, and the Philippines’ as well as Korea, as this
phrase was abundantly quoted. Protracted war, people’s war,
would be a long-term struggle in Asia, and the editorials and
radio broadcasts thus conveyed a larger picture of the Asian
struggle for liberation. For indeed Asia was witnessing a massive
return of colonial domination, with the British back in Malaysia,
the French fighting in Indo-China, and the Dutch in Indonesia!
In the Philippines, too, there was an uprising of the Huks and a
national liberation movement, American policy was now to back
the colonial powers; thus Dulles was to pledge massive American
aid to the French in their colonial war against Vietnamese people.
French military sources today state that their war in Indo-China
would have ended two years sooner had not the United States
insisted on its continuation.
There can be no more uncomfortable experience for a United
States State Department official today than to read the statements
of Dulles, Robertson, UN representative Warren Austin,
Secretary of the Navy Francis P. Matthews, and other hawks of
the Korean war period, calling for all-out preventive war, for war
to compel co-operation for peace, and so on.
At the end ofjuly, MacArthur flew from Tokyo to Taiwan for
forty-eight hours with Chiang Kai-shek. The meeting was
pleasant for both, and a joint communique was issued. Chiang
followed up with a call for an anti-Communist grand alliance in
Asia. In August tension rose sharply. The USSR delegate at the
UN Security Council, Yakov Malik, who had been absent for
seven months from the UN, retiwjed as president and put forward
a conciliatory proposal — that PRC delegates as well as representa-
tives of ‘the Korean people* should attend the UN session to
discuss the Korean question, and also a cease-fire and withdrawal
of all foreign troops.
This was countered by a belligerent speech by Warren Austin
THE KOREAN WAR
585
on August 10, stating that the goal of the UN was ‘a unified
Korea’. A week later he was calling for ‘total victory’ over
North Korea and unification under UN auspices.
Once again the Russian policy of overall prudence expressed
itself; the initial hard verbal stance had a soft core which showed
very quickly. Malik did not insist on the legitimate seating rights
of the PRC in the UN, did not bring up the subject of expelling
the Chiang ‘representative’, tacitly admitted a permanent division
of Korea by speaking of ‘two governmental camps, North and
South’. This greatly disappointed the North Koreans. The
Chinese were far more principled. They continued to call
Syngman Rhee’s government a ‘puppet regime’. Because of this
soft stance, Russian responsibility for the continuation of the
Korean war, even if involuntary, exists.
The ‘style’ of Yakov Malik at the United Nations would be
repeated many times; at first it was not understood as an overall
policy. But it is much clearer now. Even as early as 1950 there
was already, on the part of the USSR, an attempt to impose
solutions in local conflicts, solutions worked out by the USSR and
in the perspective of her own strategic security or interests;
solutions which would not be discussed with and would not
respect the wishes or rights of the nations involved in the conflict,
but would serve as bargaining counters with the United States.
This ‘superpower’ stance was already present in Malik’s speeches
in that August and September. It disappointed the Chinese as well
as the North Koreans very much, although not a word was said
and Malik’s speech was lauded in the Chinese press.
But such a speech, such flexibility, was a signal: it did probably
encourage, even if indirectly, the more bellicose among the
United States military and State Department officials, who now
realized that the USSR would certainly not interfere should the
38th parallel be crossed by the United States-UN forces and
North Korea invaded. And so it was.
By mid-August, and while fighting was going on in South
Korea, Chou En-lai was holding talks with India and other
nations, searching for a negotiated settlement of the war. But the
basis of the negotiated settlement suggested was very clearly
19 *
the morning deluge
different from the Russian one. On August ii, a comfort mission
was sent to North Korea, and expressions of solidarity increased.
But still nothing was said of military intervention ; a campaign
throughout the nation to inform the people of what was happening
emphasized resistance and defence, and especially the inalienable
right of the PRC to liberate Taiwan. But already, in hope of an
imminent American invasion of China, many of the 800,000 or
more Chiaiig adherents, secret police and Blueshirts* left in China
were starting sabotage actions, and the PLA was busy from
August to October against armed gangs which tried to spread
terror in some provinces. Mobilization of the people was, how-
ever, primarily for construction and not for military activity.
In September the North Korean divisions were pushed back
towards the 38th parallel and MacArthur made clear his intention
to cross it.
This seems to have been foreseen in late August by ChouEn-lai,
who had cabled to the United Nations; ‘Korea is Chilians neigh-
bour. The Chinese people cannot but be concerned about solution
of the Korean question ... It must and can be settled peacefully.*
Now the worry became very pronounced, and on September
25 the Chinese issued a warning which was of great importance.
General Nieh Jung-chen, at that time acting chief of staff, in a
quiet and unexcited manner told Indian Ambassador Pannikar
(who had been active in seeking a cease-fire in Korea) that
the PRC would not sit back with folded hands and let the
Americans come to the Chinese border. ‘We know what we are
in for. The American bombers, they can destroy our industries,
but at all costs American aggression has to be stopped.* We may
take it that he was repeating the words of Chairman Mao Tsetung.
On October i MacArthur called upon General Kim II Sung to
surrender unconditionally. In Peking, Mao Tsetung called on ‘the
people of China and the world* to be on the alert to ‘defeat any
provocation by United States imperialism*. The Chinese waited;
their response would be tailored to American military steps taken
towards their own borders. Chou En-lai denounced imperialist
* A fascist secret organization once controUed by Tai Li, hatchet man of
Chiang Kai-shek and head of the KMT secret police.
THE KOREAN WAR 587
aggression and warned the United States to stop advancing.
Throughout September more hints had appeared in various
Chinese publications that the Koreans should envisage a protracted
war with full political mobilization of the population, for this
would achieve the political objective of reunification by politically
directed means. So far, however, the North Korean forces had
fought a regular war because they had been equipped for it by the
Russians, They were thus somewhat handicapped by their very
training in this respect, although their leader Kim II Sung had
successfully led a guerilla war against Japan previously and
guerillas would spring to action soon. But now with the massive
involvement of American forces in the war — there would be up
to 440,000 men — this kind of regular warfare was a handicap to
the small nation of 1 1 million people in the North.
Chou En-lai had reiterated in September: ‘The Cliinese people
are determined to liberate Taiwan ... The Korean people can
surely overcome their many difficulties and obtain final victory on
the principle of persistent, long-term resistance ... The Chinese
people absolutely will not tolerate foreign aggression [on their
own territory], nor will they supinely tolerate seeing their
neighbours being savagely invaded by imperialists,’ On October
2 Chou En-lai informed Pannikar that ‘should the United States
troops invade North Korean territory’, China would be forced to
enter the war. The same warning was repeated through embassies
in Moscow, Stockholm and other capitals. President Truman
thought it was a bluff, and decided that Pannikar was too pro-
Chinese and not an impartial observer. The directive sent by
Truman to Mac Arthur on September 27 had assured the General
that he could conduct operations north of the 38th parallel
provided ‘there has been no entry into North Korea by major
Soviet or Chinese Communist forces, no announcement of
intended entry, nor a threat to counter our operations militarily
in North Korea*. Precisely such a warning had been issued twice by
China’s premier and chief of staff, and twice discounted.
The United Nations had now been pressured into a resolution
calling for a unified, independent and democratic government in
the sovereign state of Korea, thus justifying MacArthur’s invasion
THE MORNING DELUGE
of North Korea. The danger of a mighty base complex consisting
o^apan, Korea and Taiwan in a triangle of forces threatening
China, was now very clear to the Chinese. On October 15
MacArthur assured Truman at a meeting in the Pacific (the Wake
island meeting) that the Chinese would intervene. On October
19 United States forces entered Pyongyang, capital of North
Korea. Before October 19 the frontier territory bordering the
Yalu had been declared by Truman out of bounds to United
States and UN troops, but not to South Korean troops. This
was Truman s first attempt to avoid direct confrontation.
But five days later, on October 24, MacArthur took it upon
himself to lift this restriction and ordered all UN forces to advance
to the Yalu river. Repeatedly he declared that there were no
Chinese units. Actually, the first Chinese people’s volunteers had
crossed on October 16, had been seen by the Americans on the
i8th, but they were not discovered’ till October 31.* Some
writers on the Korean war think that this timing was deliberate
on MacArthur s part, so as to precipitate a confrontation and
by-pass an order to withdraw; for between October 16 and
October 29 MacArthur was mounting a massive offensive to
cross the Yalu. The tide now turned. Between October 29 and
31 the Chinese volunteers, and North Korean troops were to
inflict devastating losses on South Korean troops, repeatedly
punching in weak spots and forcing the UN and United States
forces to withdraw.
By that November, as the tide began to roll back, the demand at
the UN for negotiations and for a cease-fire grew stronger.
A marked lull in the fighting then occurred, the Chinese
volunteers disengaging and withdrawing in order to give an
opportunity for a truce and cessation of military action. This
was not propitious for MacArthur ’s plans. His headquarters ‘did
its best to picture this continued swift withdrawal as infused with
aggressive intent’, writes I. F. Stone, f United States forces began
* They were, however, a small number, sent to protect the hydro-electric
installations.
1 1. F. Stone, The Hidden History of the Korean War, op. cit.
THE KOREAN WAR
589
to exhibit reliance on massive air strikes; heavy bombers carried
out raids within Manchuria and on the frontier. In London and in
Paris questions were raised as to the role of MacArthur and his
objectives.
MacArthur then mounted another offensive towards the Yalu.
This was a most publicized offensive; he postponed it (with
fanfare) from November 15 to November 24, the day PRC
delegates General Wu Hsiu-chuan and Chiao Kuan-hua arrived
at the United Nations. Thus any hope of constructive talks leading
to a cease-fire were obliterated.
But contradictions now began to show up in Truman’s
entourage; some civilians denounced MacArthur; the Wisconsin
Mikado, they said, had assured the President that the Chinese
would not come in. By this November offensive MacArthur was
going against the Wake island decisions.
On November 26 the offensive was smashed; the North
Koreans and Chinese people’s volunteers counter-attacked along
the entire front. MacArthur now called for Chiang’s troops to be
thrown into the war, but the United Nations refused their
consent. Through December, MacArthur, as he retreated farther
and farther, and often without combat, kept calling for more
troops and for permission to destroy ‘sanctuaries’ in Manchuria.
He was trying, and did succeed, to create another panic. Dispatches
from his Tokyo headquarters mentioned vast hordes of Com-
munist Cliinese pouring forth in a torrent. He demanded an
extension of the war to China, otherwise he would evacuate
Korea. There is no doubt that some units, especially the South
Korean troops, now that they encountered a reinforced opposition,
fought poorly. The tactics of North Korean and Chinese units of
biting great chunks out of the line, of chopping up units and
annihilating them, produced a terror out of proportion to the
losses. There were more casualties from the headlong retreat, the
savage selfishness of units who fought each other for the trucks to
leave in (often only the G.I.s would thus benefit), and the guerilla
action than from actual encounters. It was a morale-stricken
army which in December was re-formed in another line north of
Seoul.
590
THE MORNING DELUGE
On December 14 the General Assembly of the United Nations
passed a resolution sponsored by thirteen nations for a cease-fire.
The Chinese delegation had now been able to put forth its
proposals. The speech, called ‘truculent’, was actually eminently
reasonable. It supported the North Korean demand for withdrawal
of all foreign troops, demanded American withdrawal from
Taiwan, and made its claim to its rightful seat in the United
Nations.
On January i an offensive by the North Koreans was reported.
It breached the new line at Seoul, which collapsed; a further
retreat took place. According to I. F. Stone* there was no offen-
sive and the retreat was a planned one. ^Their only thought was
to get away, to put miles between them and the fearful army
that was at their heels, wrote United States General Matthew B.
Ridgway, of his own troops. Meanwhile the Chinese UN
speech, reiterating that China wanted peace and not war, had
impressed a good many delegates. Chinese action to lessen
tension had been taken prior to it, with the release of a hundred
United States and South Korean prisoners and the offer to
release a thousand more. MacArthur continued to justify his
retreat with news of hordes pouring again. Actually there had
been a withdrawal of the Chinese volunteers and North Koreans,
for another lull to take place, and another peace effort. Truman,
however, was pressured by a clamour of senators demanding
that the atom bomb be used on China as the only way to ‘end
the war’. But the British prime minister, Clement Attlee, flew
to the United States to speak to the President, w'hich seems to
have been somewhat effective. In January 1951 a cease-fire
committee went into action. This did not please MacArthur or
the hawks. If peace broke out, could the UN condemn the
Chinese as aggressors? A resolution in that vein brought up
in November was now pressed through; during the second half
of January the United States utilized its Marshall foreign aid
programme, threats, even declared it would withdraw from the
UN unless the latter condemned Peking. On January 30, 1951*
China was branded an aggressor by the Political and Security
* Hidden History, op. cit.
THE KOREAN WAR
591
Committee of the UN and the General Assembly ratified this the
next day.'*'
Thus the retreat — more or less deliberate, for there were no
Chinese hordes, none crossed the 38th parallel, and pretty soon
cynical newsmen would be asking how many hordes there were
to a platoon of volunteers — provoked a stampede and hysteria
which reaped the political goal desired. The United States-UN
armies now reoccupied Seoul. However, Truman had set
limits to MacArthur’s paranoia; he would not be allowed to
bomb Manchurian bases, nor to utilize Chiang Kai-shek’s forces.
On March 13, aware there were now serious indications of a
cease-fire, Mac Arthur again ordered some forces to cross the 38 th
parallel, then issued his own ‘political statement’ for a truce, in an
effort to bring back to himself the power of decision-making in
Korea. Truman once again gave in, and in April the bulk of the
forces once more crossed the parallel. Misjudging Truman,
MacArthur then went on systematically to defy him, com-
municating over the President’s head with Republican leader
Joseph W. Martin, endorsing the use of Chiang Kai-shek’s
forces for the Korean war. This was too much. On April ii
MacArthur was dismissed by President Truman. It was then
obvious that the United States would not attack the PRC, though
it would still seek a local military victory in Korea, for a defeat
was too humiliating for such a great power.
The Korean war would continue for two more years, though it
was really fought to a stalemate around the 38th parallel by the
summer of 1951.
During the first four months that the Chinese volunteers were
in Korea, up to January 1951, they appear to have been armed
with Chinese weapons, cast-off Japanese weapons and American
weapons. The strategy and tactics were of mobile warfare,
following Mao Tsetung’s teachings. Guerilla harassment was also
* See Samuel B. Griffith II, The Chinese People’s Liberation Army, op. cit.,
P- 354-
■f These American weapons were captured by the Communists during the
civil war with Chiang Kai-shek.
592
the morning deluge
successful, pinning down, according to American sources, nearly
30 per cent of United States troops in Korea; and these guerillas
were the Korean people, both North and South. By mid-
January more than twenty incidents caused by guerillas occurred
every day, and this political mobilization of the population was
very important.
But by April 1951 a change was occurring, with important
repercussions later, within the People’s Liberation Army in China
itself. This was a switchover which occurred over that spring and
summer from mobile to positional warfare, with trenches dug,
positions held, tunnel warfare against aeroplane bombing, and
World War I human wave type of assault. This change is supposed
to be due to the type of warfare the Americans were waging; but
was no doubt also impeUed by the type of weapons and equipment,
requiring skilled and regular technical army personnel, which
now came in massively from the USSR. The Chinese now also
acquired an air force, to fight the vastly superior United States
air force. Here, therefore, weapons seem to have compelled, for
use to maximum effect, a change of tactics, and this is puzzling.
It could not have been done unless Peng Teh-huai, who was in
command of the volunteers from October 1950, had deliberately
opted for this change.
All reports praise the high morale, courage, and combat
efSciency of the volunteers; but in the next two years many were
to die and be replaced by less well-trained volunteers, so that the
tendency to train highly efficient and skilled personnel in small
groups increased. In April 1951 Peng was to launch a large
offensive, a week after MacArthur had been dismissed. This was
the beginning of the change from one kind of warfare to another,
the beginning of utilization of Soviet weaponry; it is rumoured
that Mao Tsetung was against the offensive launched, and the
decision was Peng’s alone.
By now, because of the ferocity of the American bombing, there
was also a large refugee problem; of the ii million in North
Korea, almost 2 million had been pushed by obliteration bombings
to flee southward.
Yet by all accounts, the Chinese were aware of negotiations by
THE KOREAN WAR
593
France and Great Britain during February and March, pressing
the United States for a formal declaration of war aims, and of
Truman’s increasing irritation with MacArthur. On March 12 an
article had appeared in the New York Times. UN Dropping
Idea of Unifying Korea by Military Force, Diplomats say U.S.
taking positional task will end round 38?/; line were the headlines.
However, the commanders in the field insisted on a military
victory, and the Truman administration too could not afford to
withdraw on a defeat; such was the great military prestige of the
Chinese volunteers whose advent had turned the tide that all over
Asia there were most favourable comments on their heroism.
Did all this go to Peng Teh-huai’s head, or is there reason to
suspect that deliberately the Russians encouraged a prolongation of
the war? Peng had now most friendly relations with Russian
personnel, and the routing of supplies to Korea through Man-
churia was to increase greatly in volume after summer 1951.
A week after MacArthur’s dismissal came Peng Teh-huai’s
famous offensives, with the proclaimed aim of ‘pushing the
imperialists to the sea . The fighting that followed was entirely
difierent from the Mao style. The battles sec-sawed, but the
result was a prolonged stalemate. Heavy casualties were inflicted
on both sides.
Peng Teh-huai, already a ‘professional’ soldier, impatient with
political precepts, and who had earlier proved his insubordination,
was to evolve into an opponent of Mao’s military principles. He
would emerge from the Korean war as a ‘hero’, and later as
minister of defence would start ‘professionalizing’ the People’s
Liberation Army, following the Soviet model and becoming
reliant on Soviet weaponry to a very high degree. Thus, in a few
short years, the quality of the People’s Liberation Army would be
changed. Political instruction would be at a minimum, input and
technical modernization emphasized. This would lead, later, to a
bitter ideological struggle in the Red Army leadership, and
ultimately to the downfall of Peng Teh-huai.*
Because Mao Tsetung s tit for tat’ line of struggle, which was
* It must be noted that differences in Army policy were not the only cause of
Peng Tch-huai’s downfall.
594
THE MORNING DELUGE
most economical of men and material and also left far more
room for diplomatic manoeuvre, was not heeded, China became
over-dependent upon the USSR for the next two years, through
the flow of military supplies for the Korean war. This at first
might not have appeared a burden, until suddenly, when Sino-
Soviet relations deteriorated, the truth was out. A large part of
overall Soviet loans to China for reconstruction were used up in
the Korean war. In 1962 Khrushchev demanded immediate
repayment for these supplies, and this caused much hardship in
China. However, everything was repaid. 'The Korean people
carried by far the heaviest burden and sustained by far the greatest
losses. The Chinese people too made great sacrifices and incurred
vast military expenses . . . even the war material supplied to
China in the war to resist United States aggression and aid Korea
has not been given gratis.’*
It is possible then to suspect that the lengthening of the Korean
war was due, on the part of the Russians, to a desire to see China
tied up in debt and dependent upon them. If so, the operation
was quite successful. Not only did it increase dependence in a
material way, it also was to leave many ideological problems,
involving such men as Peng Teh-huai and Kao Kang, which
would not be easily solved.
America’s disengagement from Asia, wliich might have
happened — although with Dulles and the Truman doctrine, this is
very doubtful — would have meant more concentration against
Eastern Europe and consequent pressure on the USSR at its more
vulnerable flank. This was dreaded by Moscow. Some cynics have
even felt that the withdrawal of the Soviet delegation from the
UN on the ground that it would not stay while the Chiang
delegation was seated (it returned after seven months despite
the same delegation’s presence) was a deliberate move not to
block by its veto the UN resolution which made the Korean
war possible. But this may be assuming too much.'}'
* Letter of the CCP Central Committee to the CPSU Central Committee,
February 29, 1964.
•f Edgar Snow, The Other Side of the River: Red China Today (Gollancz,
London, 1963); also interview with Edgar Snow by author.
THE KOREAN WAR
595
Durmg 1951 and 1952 the Soviet newspaper Pravda mightily
strove to call the Chinese people’s volunteers the PLA, writing
that Mao had planned and timed the military campaigns. The
Korean war also won for the CCP and for Chairman Mao
ideological recognition in the USSR, where Mao’s works were
now extolled. Mao himself would say, much later, that the
Chinese action in Korea had convinced Stalin that there was no
Tito in China and that China stood solidly in defence of the
socialist camp.
In 1963, when the Sino-Soviet ideological dispute was acute,
the Comment on the Open Letter of the Central Committee of the
CPSU—Tioo Different Lines on the Question of War and Peace
probably penned by Mao Tsetung himself, had this to say; ‘The
leaders of the CPSU ... accuse us of hoping for a “head-on clash”
between the Soviet Union and the United States ... Our answer
is no, friends, the Chinese Communist Party is firmly opposed to a
head-on clash ... and not in words only. In deeds too it has
worked hard to avert direct armed conflict between them.
Examples of this are the Korean war against United States
aggression, in which we fought side by side with Korean com-
rades. We ourselves preferred to shoulder the heavy sacrifice
necessary ... and stood in the first line of defence of the socialist
camp so that the Soviet Union might stay in the second line,’
The inference is that if China had not intervened, but allowed
and even lured the enemy deep into Manchuria, and onward, the
Soviet Union would have been compelled to come into the war
and clash with the United States.
The Korean war also had the result of turning America’s
hatred upon China; Russia had been the enemy number one
until then ; from then onward America became obsessed with ‘Red
China*, who now occupied first place as ‘the enemy’. American
policy for the next twenty years would be coloured by the
Korean episode.
On the other hand, the United States could have stopped the
war in June 1951, had it not been that the build-up of men and
weapons was too high, and the desire for a military victory too
* November 19, 1963.
596
THE MORNING DELUGE
urgent. On June 23, two days before the first anniversary of the
Korean war, Malik proposed cease-fire talks as preliminary to a
peaceful settlement in Korea. The Malik offer was already a
victory for Truman, since Truman had made precisely such an
offer shortly before, (i) The fighting must stop. (2) Concrete steps
must be taken to ensure it would not return. (3) There must be an
end to ‘aggression’.
The North Korean and the Chinese political conditions,
formulated in November 1950, were thus by-passed by the USSR.
The Chinese had asked for withdrawal of all foreign troops
from Korea, return of Taiwan to China and an end to United
States interference in China s domestic affairs, seating of the
PRC in the UN as the legitimate government of China. Malik’s
proposal allowed the United States to go on recognizing Chiang
Kai-shek as the legitimate government of China’, a policy
affirmed by Dean Rusk on May 18 — ‘The Peking regime does
not represent the people of China.’ It allowed the Seventh
Fleet to go on patrolling the South China coast, and Taiwan to
remain within the perimeter of United States defence. It also
legitimized indirectly the 38th parallel and allowed United
States forces to remain in South Korea, where they still are today.
Meanwhile Chiang Kai-shek and Syngman Rhee had both
secured for themselves cover within the perimeter of United
States defence; the United States security treaty with Japan was
drafted and signed.
But by 1952, with mounting casualties in an endless war —
‘What are we here for anyway?’ asked the United States soldiers —
a growing weariness among the American people manifested
itself. The statement made by some rejoicing big businesses that
‘Korea has been a blessing. There had to be a Korea either here
or some place in the world’ no longer sounded acceptable. In
May 1951 the forthright General Omar Bradley had testified,
‘Red China is not the powerful nation seeking to dominate the
world’, and called the Korean war ‘the wrong war, at the wrong
place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong enemy’.
In March 1953 Josef Stalin died. Again, some historians
maintain that he had kept the war going, since an armistice was
THE KOREAN WAR
597
made four months after his demise. But it was the United States
military who kept the war going because they needed a military
victory and it was American public opinion which slowly ground
the Korean war to a halt. The deadly and inconclusive fighting
came to an end at Panmunjon at lo a.m. on July 27, 1953. It had
cost the United States over 300,000 casualties.
At Panmunjon today the demilitarized zone, 2*5 miles wide on
either side of the 38th parallel, still exists. The talks are still going
on, twenty-one years later.
On October 26, 1971, twenty-one years almost to the day when
Chinese volunteers came to North Korea, the People’s Republic
of China was at last given its legitimate seating in the United
Nations General Assembly and Security Council, and Chiang’s
representatives were at last expelled.
That tills ‘conversion of contradiction’ could occur ii^ithout a war
was largely due to Mao Tsetung, to his consummate patience,
vision and effort. And to his often repeated belief that the forces
of history were bound to bring the two peoples together again
in friendship. It was due to his clearly stated principle of peaceful
coexistence, stated in 1944 and in 1949, and carried out the
years through.
During these twenty years, another war, the Vietnam war,
would be fought by the United States with direct American
involvement on the Asian mainland. It would spread to Laos and
to Cambodia. Once again, China had had nothing to do with
this war, and did not provoke it, but the bogey of a ‘Red China’
seeking to engulf all her neighbours had been used to justify the
costly and absurd military presence of American armies to the
American people, and the appalling sufferings inflicted upon the
peoples of Indo-China. Yet now the lie has proved itself a lie.
During those two decades, the people of China, under the
leadership of Mao Tsetung, have carried on the construction of
New China. They have rebuilt their country; have also begun
to change themselves. They have learnt new ways of thought and
behaviour, and made ‘heaven and earth change places’. They have
won by hard work the respect and admiration of the world’s
peoples; they have carried out another cultural revolution, and
598
THE MORNING DELUGE
fulfillca the dream of many, that socialism would not be a
tyranny, but a true liberation. The Chinese people have indeed
removed the mountains of ignorance, exploitation and misery
from their own shoulders.
The story of how this was done is one which will be unfolded
in a second volume. This first volume was essential, in order to
understand the drinking of the man who is also the Revolution in-
carnate, and without whom perhaps it would not have happened as
it did. The name of Mao Tsetung, in these twenty years, has become
a household word, a word known throughout the world. ‘There
IS no conflict of basic interest between the peoples of China and
the United States and friendship will eventually prevail,’ Chou
En-lai had said to Edgar Snow in i960. In this he was quoting
Mao Tsetung. And this sentence would apply, not only to the
American people, but also to all the other peoples of the world.
Note on Sources
A bibliography for this book not only would include the usual
representative material published about China, but would also
reflect numerous personal interviews and talks, and the visits I
have made to China over sixteen years, as well as listing docu-
ments consulted in museums and shown to me elsewhere. It would
amount to sixty pages, if not more, of documentation. I repeat
again how grateful I am to all the scholars and researchers in
Chinese history, economics, and related fields, including many
whose work is not yet published. I am also indebted to the late
Anna Louise Strong, that magnificent and courageous American
writer, for so many conversations which have helped to fill in
the background, to Dr Ma Haiteh (George Hatem) and Mr
Rewi Alley, and to many, many Chinese friends, as well as to
Madame Helene Marchisio, the French economist. Professor
Charles Bettelhcim, the eminent French pliilosopher and writer,
and to numerous other people throughout the world whose many
years of contact with China and study of Chinese problems have
greatly helped me in evaluating the sometimes contradictory
sources at my disposal.
But the main sources still remain the many interviews
with Chinese workers, peasants, soldiers. Long Marchers, and
others throughout the vast land of China who participated in these
events, and whose eye-witness and participant knowledge often
contradicted some of the material enshrined in certain documents.
I feel that some of this published material has acquired sacredness
by repetition, but that the development of the Chinese Revolution
has contradicted some of the assumptions made. Hence it is hoped
that the new material and views incorporated in this book will
also acquire relevance and usefulness.
599
Index
A-B corps. See anti-Bolshevik corps
Acheson, Dean, 570, 574, 576, 581
Advice to Boys and Girls on Marriage Prob-
lems (Mao), 98
Against Idealism (Mao), 124
agrarian revolution, 211, 215, 228, 252,
260, 270, 327, 521, 541
Algeria, 434
All-China Federation of Labour, 115, 116,
120, 138, 146, 155, 160, 175, 180. 186, 188,
189, 320,334, 485
AU-China National Salvation League, 370
All-China Peasant Association, 188
All-China Soviet Congress, 267, 279, 282
All-China Student Federation, 63, 92
All-China United People’s Government of
National Defence, 366
Alley, Rewi, 403. 526n
All-Hunan Federation of Labour, 121
Amerasia (magazine), 481
An Tzu-wen, 487
Analysis of Classes in Chinese Society (Mao),
*52, 153, 165, 525
Anhwei province, red base in, 409
annihilation campaigns against Central
Base, 269, 271, 275, 286, 287, 288-289.
290, 291, 292, 300, 320, 360, 373
Anshunchang, 330
anti-Bolshevik (A-B) corps, 269, 270, 283
y^n, 36, 123, 187; miners’ strikes, 93,
121, 122; first Communist Party cell, 118;
mmers m Red Army, 195, 199, 230, 245,
250, 398
Apa. 339 . 346
A^endix: Resolution on Certain Questions in
the History of Our Party (Mao), 281, 286n,
46on
^t^ The (Sun Tze), 64, 96. 328, 430
^ahi Shimbum (newspaper), 389, 41 1
AKociation for Student Self-Government,
63
Association of Social Organizations, 114
Atlantic Charter, 483
atom bomb. 495, 569, 590; Mao on. 496.
Attlee, Clement, 590
Auguste Comte Institute (French Insti-
tute), 830
Austin, Warren, 584
Autumn Harvest Uprising, 123, 195, 209,
257. 542: Ten Articles of, 199
Awakening (journal), 90
Awakening Society, 104
Axis powers, 3370, 366, 372. See also
Germany; Japan
Barr, David, 532
Barrett, David, 40111, 470lf, 491, 496; last
interview with Mao, 473-474
bases, rural, 190, 218, 267; first, at Ching-
kangshan, 140, 201-240; in 1930, 262;
behind Japanese lines, 383, 390, 399, 409.
See also names of bases
Battle for Asia (Snow), 561
Beldcn, Jack, 470, 527
Berlin, Chinese students in, 108
Bethune, Dr Norman, 4iin, 415, 417
Bethune International Peace Hospital, 411
Bitter Sufferings of the Peasants, The (Mao),
164
Blucher, Vassili (Galen), 256
Blueshirts, 586
Bolshevism, 280, 283, 285, 299. See also
anti-Bolshevik (A-B) corps; twenty-eight
Bolsheviks
Border Area. See Chingkangshan
Border Committee (Chingkangshan), 238
Borodin, Fanny, 158
Borodin, Mikhail, 131, 135-136, 157, 158,
163, 174, 185; and Chiang, 144, 150, 167,
176, 188; return to Russia, 190
Boxer (Righteous Fists) Uprising, 33-34
Bradley, Omar, 598
Braun, Otto (alias Li Teh; Hua Fu; Otto
Stem; M. Fred), 292, 302, 306, 307, 386;
and the Long March, 311-313, 318, 319,
322, 335 , 348
British Concession, Hankow, 175
Bukharin, Nikolai, 1690
Bulganin, Nikolai, 567
601
602
INDEX
Bulgaria, 569
Bundy, McGeorge, 582
Cairo conference, 483, 571
Cambodia, 597
Canton. See Kuangchow
Carlson, Evans, 4690, 470
CC (Central Committee). See Chinese
Communist Party
Central Base, 250-310; conferences, 251,
279; ‘soviet republic’, 261, 278-280, 281,
303; stages of existence, 276-281; evacua-
tion of, 308-309, 320. See also annihilation
campaigns; Comintern; left lines; Kuticn
conference
Central China Base Area, 409
Central Intelligence Agency, 480, 508
Central Alilitary Communique (Chou En-
lai), 262
Chahar province, 380
Chai Tso-chun, 425
Chaling county, 213, 214
Chang Chia Wan. See Anyuan
Chang Ching-chiang, 149
Chang Ching-fu (Chang the Corpulent),
356
Chang Ching-yao, 92, 97, 99-100, 103,
106, 108
Chang Fa-kuei, 21 1
Chang Hsin Tien, 82
Chang Hsuch-liang (the Young Marshal),
360, 361-362, 370, 398; and Chiang, 370-
373
Chang Kan, 59
Chang Kuo-tao, 8i, I95j ipS, 211, 2590,
467; at CCP Congresses, 112-115, 126,
130, 138, 242; and a united front, 126,
159, 162, 163; on the peasantry, 142, 155;
and Mao, 179, 279, 283, 33 ^- 335 * 337 »
349. 357-358, 363. 376. 378. 381. 386;
evacuates Oyuwan base, 290; and the
Long March, 320-321, 333 - 33 * 5 , 346-350;
defection to Chiang, 357-358, 389; and
Liu Shao-chi, 485, 486, 489
Chang Tso-lin, 361
Chang Wen-tien, 274, 300, 306, 323, 357.
439
Changsha (city), 37 , 49 - 52 , 147-U8;
marches and attacks on, 36, 166, 187-188,
267-268; Horse Day massacre, 187. i88
Changsha Normal College. See Hunan
First Normal College
Changting. See Tingchow
Changwangtao, 502
Chao, Miss, 98
Chao Heng-ti, 120-121, 124, I26n, 147
Chefoo, 502
Chekiang province, 301
Chen, Eugene, 88, 126, 297
Chen, Jack, 88n
Chen, Jerome, 288, 400
Chen, Percy, 88n, 126, 188, 190
Chen Chang-fong, 264, 304, 305, 416
Chen Chi-tang, 304
Chen Chih-fang, 3490
Chen Chiung-ming, 143
ChenKung-po, 80-81, 112, 113, 485
Chen Po-ta, 563-564
Chen Shao-yu. See Wang Ming
Chen Tan-chiu, 561
Chen Tu-hsiu, 81, 103, 130, 135, 136-137,
153. 157. 174. 175. 180, 181-185. 190;
and formation of CCP, iii-ii 5 J 2nd a
united front, 126, 154, 162; and the
peasantry, 141, 142, 165, 177 , 186-189;
and Chiang, 150, 160; deposition of,
195
Chen Wu-tung, 523
Chen-Yi, 104, 107, 212, 239, 271, 283, 390-
533
Chen Yuan, 317
Chengchow, 122
Chengtu, 541, 54*5
Chi Ping, 317
Chia Hsing, 114
Chiang Ching (Lan Ping, wife of Mao),
31, 117, 420, 421, 456, 521, 530
Chiang Ching-kuo, 163, 504, 536
Chiang Hsien-yun, 120, 122
Chiang Kai-shek: and Borodin, 13 L U 5 .
163, 174; massacres under, 140, 181-182
(seeaho White Terror); and the peasantry,
141-143: power struggle with Wang
Ching-wei (q.v.), 143 . 158-160, 174; and
the Northern Expedition, 144. 166, 180;
rise to power, I 49 “i 5 <^i and foreign
powers. 157. 176. 181, 182; struggles with
warlords, 261, 266; revolts against, 287,
297, 299, 371; and Japan, 288-290, 335 ,
376, 377 , 3791 and the Long March, 326,
328, 329, 335: and a united front, 362-
364, 386. 388. 437-438; and the USSR,
365, 375 , 381, 477 , 494 , 546 , 547 , 558 .
560, 561, 568; kidnapped, 371 - 373 : and
New Fourth Army, 390, 409. 4 n; and
the United States. 444 . 464. 468-469.
INDEX
472-481, 491-492, 497. 501-512, 513.
515-517. 536; talks with Mao, 495, 498-
499, 500; Manchurian campaign, 532,
533: flight to Taiwan, 541, 546. See
also annihilation campaigns; civil war;
counter-revolution; Kuomintang
Chiang Kai-shek, Madame. See Soong
Mci-ling
Chiao Kuan-hua, 589
Chicherin, Grigori, 126
Chin Pang-hsien (Po Ku), 274, 276, 280,
299, 30J, 306, 462n, 467; and the Long
March, 312, 318, 322, 323. 325
China Crosses the Yalu (Whiting), 582
China Weekly Reuiew, 156
China's Destiny (Chiang Kai-shek), 482
Chinese Communist Party (CCP), 101,
104, 107, 108, 109, III; Party cells, 117,
ii8, 120, 140; Peasant Department, 138,
164, 170; Labour Department, 173; Agri-
culture Department, 186; intellectuals in.
192, 444, 447, 458-459; Propaganda
Department, 244; intra-Party struggle,
251, 274, 356, 367, 368, 379, 382, 387,
443, 468, 527. See also civil war; land
reform; united front, etc.
Chinese Communist Party Congresses:
First (1921), 112-116; Second (1922), 120,
129; Third (1923), 126, 129-130; Fourth
(>925), 137; Fifth (1927), 177, 183; Sixth
(1928), 238, 242-243, 25s, 262, 280-281,
465; Seventh (1945), 243, 308, 462n, 465,
490, 543, 545; Ninth (1969), 421
Chinese Eastern Railway, 127, 256, 377,
478. 557, 568
Chinese Reuolulion and the Chinese Com-
munist Party, The (Mao), 304. 440
Chinese Youth, I53n
Ching Hong Pang, 144
Chingkangshan, 140, 147, 201
ingkangshan base, 201-240; transit
from Autumn Harvest Uprising, 2
202: and the peasantry, 210, 217, 219, ;
present-day, 214; intra-Party strug
^33-234, 236-237, 263; Congre
Of the Border Area (Maoping), 226-:
234, 235, :
rectification in, 236
Cho Kc-chi, 346. 347
OU En-lai, 15, 104, 107, 120, 180-1
183, 192, 280. 362; at Whang!
Academy. X32-133. 135. I43. 150. i
• f 53 n; and Nanchang uprising, ]
603
198, 209, 21 1, 212; and Li Li-san, 242, 244,
255, 261, 262, 266, 268-269; at Central
Base, 302, 306, 307; and Long March,
3U. 318, 319, 322, 338, 339. 353. 359:
and a united front, 370, 378, 380, 391;
at Sian, 373-374; and Rectification move-
ment, 460; and Dixie mission, 469-470,
480-481; and Hurley, 473-474, 484-485,
503; and Chungking negotiations, 495,,
497. 499: and Marshall, 506, 508, 51 1;
and civil war, 521-523, 527, 530, 537;
alias Hu Pi-cheng, 521; and USSR, 559,
567; and Korean war, 570, 574, 581, 587,
598
Chou Fu-hai, 1 12
Chou Ping (alias of Mao Tsc-min), 561
Chou Shui-ping, 165
Chou Yang, 393, 394
Chounan Girls Middle School, 67
Chow Tsc-tung {The May fourth Afove-
ment), 87
Chronicles loiih Imperial Commentaries, 56
Chu Chiu-pai, 130, 192, 208, 217, 218, 227,
235. 237. 242, 243. 307
Chungking, 388, 391. 546; CCP-KMT
negotiations (i945). 497-502
Chungshan incident, 158
Churchill, Winston, 478, 554. 572
Chu Teh, 104, 107, 210-212, 223, 224, 262-
269, 290, 412, 484. 501, 509. 522, 530; at
Chingkangshan and after, 229, 233, 238;
journey to Juichin, 242, 245; and Central
Base, 251, 252, 253. 257. 279-280, 292-
293, 298, 302, 306, 307; and Long March,
311, 318, 319, 333. 336, 338, 340, 341.
347. 348; and united front, 380, 383, 384,
385. 390
CIA. See Central Intelligence Agency
civil w'ar (Revolutionary Self-Defence
War), 411. 464. 482, 493. 50l. 508, 511,
513-544: Mao’s campaign in the North-
west, 522; victory proclamation, 541
Class Basis of Chao Heng-ti, and the Tasks
Before Us, The (Mao), 153
Clear Water Pool House, 106, 109
Cold War, 469, 479. 554. 575. 583
Combat Liberalism (Mao), 386
Cominform, 556
Comintern (Third Communist Inter-
national), 90, 105-106, 1 12, 114-115, 168,
191, 279, 337n. 556: on the peasant
question, 155, 177-178: and Li Li-san,
254-256, 268; united front policy, 366;
INDEX
Comintern (continued)
Far East bureau, 43 in; dissolution, 459-
547
Comment on the Open Letter of the Central
Committee of the CPSU (Mao), 595
Communist, The, 441
Communist International, 317
Communist Manifesto, 100
Communist Monthly, no
Communist Party of China. See Chinese
Communist Party
Communist Party of Japan, 553
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
(CPSU), 595
Communist University for Eastern Toilers,
12
Confederacy of National Minorities, 347
Congress of the Border Area (Maoping),
226, 227, 237
Congress of the Peoples of the Orient, i I5n
Cool Mountains, 330
co-operatives, 118. 295, 400, 401, 402, 526
Correct the Left Errors in Land Reform Propa-
£anda (Mao), 528
Council of People’s Commissars, 300
CPSU. See Communist Party of the Soviet
Union
Cultural Bookstore (Changsha), 109, no,
118, 485
cultural revolution, 86, 92, 95, 440, 442.
See also Great Proletarian Cultural Revo-
lution; May 4, 1919, movement
Dairen, 478, 557, 568
Davies, John Paton, 405, 4670, 470, 491
de Gaulle, Charles, 554
Dejidcr, Vladimir, 548
Deluge and the Beasts, The (Tsai Yuan-pei),
97
Democratic League, 485, 508, 552
Dewey, John, 84, 96
Dimitrov, Georgi, 426
Dixie mission, 401, 469-476, 491, 540, 548
Donald, W. H., 374
Doriot, Jacques, I73n
Dream of the Red Chamber, 430
Dulles, John Foster, 570, 574, 575. 584, 594
‘East is Red, The’ (song), 455
education. See mass education movement;
Rectification movement; Red Army;
Self-Education College
Eighteenth Army Corps, 380, 383
Eighth Route Army (formerly Red Army),
380, 383, 384-385, 390, 395, 412, 426,463,
465; leadership of, 388
Eisenhower, Dwight David, 28
Elder Brother secret society (Kelao), 38
Energy of the Mind (Mao), 66
European Common Market, 13, 544n
Fang Chih-min, 177
Federation of Labour. See All-Cluna
Federation of Labour
Feng Yu-hsiang, 143, 183, 296, 373, 499
First Normal (Teachers) College. See
Hunan First Normal (Teachers) College
First Peasants and Workers Army, 198
First Provincial Middle School (Chang-
sha), 56
First United Front. See United Front, First
Five Wells, 207
Foolish Old Man Who Removed the Moun-
tains, The (Mao), 544n
Foreign Municipal Council (Shanghai).
156
Foreign Power, Warlordism, and Revolution
(Mao), 124
Forman, Harrison, 399, 470
Formosa. See Taiwan
Foundations of Leninism. The (Stalin), 564
Fourteen Points (Woodrow Wilson’s), 87
France, Chinese students in, 73, 75, 82, 91,
97, 107; Socialist Study Group, 120; and
Algeria, 434
Fred, M. See Braun, Otto
French Concession (Shanghai), 116, 275
French Institute (Auguste Comte Insti-
tute), 83
Fu, Dr Nelson, 215, 3540
Fu Liang-tso, 64
Fu Tso-yi, 532
Fukien province, 214, 219, 230, 241, 247,
534
Futien incident, 271, 283
Galen (Vassili Bluchcr), i68n, 256
Gauss, Clarence E., 470, 472, 474
Germany, 108, 117, 300, 554. 582-583. See
also Axis powers
GPCR. See Great Proletarian Cultural
Revolution
Great Heroes of the World, 47, 48
Great Hunan Famine (1906), 117
Great Leap Forward, 98
INDEX
Great Marshes, 339, 343
Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, 28,
57, 70, 71, 98. 119, 122, 308, 324, 341,
357, 368n, 38on, 382n, 383. 393, 394 , 42i,
450. 452. 529, 530
Great Utiion of the Amasses of the People, The
(Mao), 94, 115
Great Well hamlet, 205
Greet the New High Tide in the Chinese
Reuolution (Mao), 520
guerilla warfare, 64, 65, 147, 217, 227-228,
251. 253 . 383, 390. 406. 410. 498
Guide, The, 141, 164, 177
Gunther, John, 577
Haifeng, 142, 143, 151, 152, 211
Haile Selassie, 17
Hainan Island, 409, 580, 581
Hakkas, 206, 214, 234
Han Chinese, 347, 560
Han Wu-ti, 47
Han Yu, 54
Hangchow, 120
Hankow, 175
Harbin, 478
Harriman, Avcrcll, 557
Hatcm, Dr George (Ma Haiteh), 349n,
354 . 526n
Hengshan, 139
Hengyang, 118, 198
Hibiscus Land. See Shaoshan
Hidden History of the Korean War, The
(Stone), 573
Hinton, WiUiam, 526, 527
History of Socialism (Kirkup), 100
History of the Chinese Reuolution (Ho Kan-
chi), 385
Hitler, Adolf, 300, 389, 444
Ho Hsiang-ning, Madame, 132, 193, 370,
541
Ho Kan-chi, 385
Ho Lung, 210, 291, 303, 307, 313. 316, 347 ,
384
Ho Meng-hsiung, 272, 275
Ho Shu-heng, 70, 108, in, 112, 116, 130
Ho Ting-yin, 222
Ho Tzu-chen (wife of Mao), 305, 308, 420
Ho Ying-chen, 286, 372
Hongkong, 145, 157
Hopei, 112, 380, 407, 412, 522; meeting,
534 - 535 , 549
Horse Day massacre, 187, 189
Hou Chang, 318
605
How to be a Good Communist (Liu Shao-
chi), 382n, 484
Hsia Hsi, 190
Hsia Shui Wan, 203, 205
Hsia Tou-ying, 200
Hsia Yen, 393
Hsiang Chiang Middle School, 124. See
also Self-Education College
Hsiang Chiang Pin Lun {Hsiang River
Review), 73. 93, 94, 95, 97
Hsiang Ching-yu, 73, 92, 107
Hsiang Chung-fa, 244, 274
Hsiang Hsiang, 43, 44
Hsiang river, 23, 314
Hsiang River Daily News, 54
Hsiang River Review. See Hsiang Chiang Pin
Lun
Hsiang Ying, 242, 279, 283, 290, 409, 413
Hsiangtan, 23, 42
Hsiao Ho, 523
Hsiao Kc, 303, 348, 384
Hsiao Yu, 69
Hsin Chung-hui, 1320. See also Tung
Mcng Hui
Hsin Min Hsueii Hui, 70. See also New
People’s Study Society
Hsing Chu Shan, 205
Hsingkuo, 248, 249, 271, 295, 303; land
law, 251, 254, 278
Hsipaipo village, 476, 522
Hsiu Yeh Primary School, 91, 106
Hsu Chien, 156
Hsu Chung-chih, 158
Hsu Hai-tung, 291, 345. 35^, 406
Hsu Hsiang-chien, 338, 384
Hsu Kc-hsiang, 187
Hsu Kuang-ping, Madame, 394n
Hsu Te-li, 58, 59, 72, 75. 108, 210, 324;
commissioner of education, 403-404
Hsun Wu, 247
Hu Chiao-inu, 392
Hu Han-min, 134, 136, 144
Hu Pi-cheng (521, alias of Chou En-lai).
See Chou En-lai
Hu Shih, 81, 84-85, 96
Hu Tsung-nan, 342, 374, 395, 495, 520,
521-522, 530
Hua Fu. See Braun, Otto
Huai Hai, 532, 535
Huang Ching-yung, 150
Huang Hsing, 36, 50
Huang Kung-lueh, 31 1
Huang Ping, 317
6o6
INDEX
Huang Yang Chieh, 234; poem, 240
Hui Ning, 349
Huks (Hukbalahap guerillas), 584
humiliation days, national, 85, 89
Hunan, 23, 36, 49-50. 63, 92, 99. 116, 117,
120, 121; peasantry, 123, 139, 142, 147,
166, 169-170, 194; South Hunan expedi-
tion, 233; West Hunan-Hupei Border
Area, 348
Hunan Famine, Great (1906), 117
Hunan First Normal (Teachers) College,
58-75
Hunan Provincial Committee, 198, 209,
223, 233
Hunan Provincial Library, 56
Hunan Special Party Committee, 222, 224
Hundred Flowers, 458
Hundred Regiments offensive, 398, 412,
413
Hungarian Communist Party, 548, $69
Hungary, 96, 569
Hupei, 1 12, 166, 194; massacre, 187; Ho
Lung’s base, 291
Hurley, Patrick J., 471-477, 479-481, 491-
495. 496, 501-503. 516, 571
Imperialism and All Reactionaries Are Paper
Tigers (Mao), 582
Imprecor, 375
Inchon, Korea, MacArtImr landings, 577
India, 48n
Indochina, 328, 584, 596
Indonesia, 584
Indusco scheme, 403
Inner Mongolia, 557, 562, 568
International Settlement (Shanghai), 145.
157, 181
Intervention at the Yenan Forum (Mao), 453
Iran, 582
Irkutsk, il5n
Ironsides (Nationalist Fourth) Army, 192,
210, 224
Isaacs, Harold R., 149
Italy. See Axis powers
Japan, 62, 85, 87, 108, 112, 117, I49. 360,
372-373, 434; treaty of Shimonoseki,
42; Twenty-one Demands, 59, 63, 85;
Lansing-Ishii agreement, 70; invasion of
Manchuria, 275, 280, 287-289: Mukden
incident, 288; Tangku truce, 289; CCP
war against, 290, 383-385, 387-389, 397-
398, 410-415, 444. 453, 466, 468, 477,
478, 482, 483; and Chiang, 375, 379, 380,
381, 383, 389, 468, 476; invasion of North
China, 379; USSR war against, 493, 557;
post-war threat, 554, 558, 572. See also
Axis powers
Japanese Communist Party, 553
Jehol, 407
Jen Pi-shih, 97. 212, 269, 303, 348, 349, 521,
522, 527. 528, 530
Joffe, Adolph, 127
Johnson, Chalmers, 410
Juichin, 247, 248, 249-250
Juichin base. See Central Base
Juichin Red Academy, 311
JUSMAG (Joint United States Miliury
Advisory Group), 505
Kai Feng, 319
Kanchow, 252
Kang Ke-ching (wife of Chu Teh), 271
Kang Pei-chen, 8 1
Kang Yu-wei, 47, 50
Kangu (Kang Jih Ta Hsueh, Resist Japan
University), 357, 404. 425. 440. 447. 4<5l
Kangting, 347
Kansu province, 342, 344, 349
Kao Kang, 558-559, 594
Karakhan, Lev, 126
Karaklian Manifesto, 105, 377
Kazakhs, 560
Ke Ho river, 339
Kelao (Elder Brother secret society), 38
Keng Piao, :99n, 318
Key to Solving the Present Situation, A
(Wang Ming), 387
Khrushchev, Nikita, 28, 559, 583. 594
Ki Peng-fei, 354n
Kian, 269, 270, 278
Kiangsi province, 166, 237, 246, 249, 260,
269
Kiangsi-Fukien Border Area. See Central
Base
Kiangsu- Anhwei liberated area, 5^3
Kim II Sung, 572, 576, 579. 586
Kiukiang, 175, 192
KMT. See Kuomintang
Korea. 574. 575. 576, 593- See also North
Korea; South Korea
Korean war, 567, 569. 570-598; 38th
parallel, 526, 575. 577. 586, 597
Kuangchang, 302
Kuangchow (Canton), 50. 62, 105, 112,
123, 130, 140, 149, 182, 224, 288, 388
INDEX
Kiiangchow-Hankow Railway, Ii8
Kuangchow-Hongkong Workers Strike
Committee, 150
Kucheng, 203, 205
Kuchi-Yi tribe, 329
Kun, Bela, 297
Kunming, 328
Kuo Liang, 190
Kuomintang (Nationalist Party), 114, 115,
131, 141, 143, 144. 152-153. 159. 173,
181, 192-193. 365. 384, 385. 386, 530;
massacres by, 123, 181, 182, 186-187,
409, 414 {see also White Terror); Con-
gresses of, 128, 133, 152, 183, 442;
Propaganda Department, 133, 151;
Peasant Department, 135, 140; Nationalist
armies, 144, l6l, 164, 166, 181-182, 188,
288, 296, 322, 502; Central Revolutionary
Committee, 211, 5520; army revolts, 288,
297. 321, 532, 533: failure of, 422;
National Military Council, 474, 482;
alienation of populace, 476, 503, civil war
(q.v.), 509, 511-512, 515, 522, 539. See
also anti-Bolshevist corps; Chiang Kai-
shek; Japan; united front
Kuticn conference and resolutions, 257-260
Kwangsi province, 315, 371, 409
Kwangtung province, 142, 194, 409
Kweichow province, 316, 328, 348
Kweitung, 234
Kweiyang, 328
Labour World, no
Lake Tungting, 77, 188
Lan Ping. See Chiang Ching
Lanchow, 349
land reform, 178, 217, 228, 271, 284, 295,
518, 522, 523, 524-526, 539; Chingliang-
shan land law, 237, 251; Hsingkuo land
law, 237, 251, 254, 278; 'rich peasant’
policy, 254, 260; ultra-left land policy,
260; Ycnan land law, 401
Lansing-Ishii agreement, 88
Laos, 597
Latzekou (Waxy Mouth Pass), 342
League for the Reconstruction of Hunan
Province, 108
League of Military Youth, 144, 150, I53n
League of Nations, 87
‘left’ lines: first, 191-240; second, 122, 241-
272, 273-310; third, 225, 273-310, 325,
395
Left Writers League, 393, 457
607
Lenin, V. I., 78, 92, 105, no, 115, 127, 140,
184, 377, 437. 562; on die united front,
126; on the peasantry, 141; Li Li-san on,
261, 268
Leningrad, 1150
Lewis, John, 382n
Li Chih-lung, 158, 159
Li Chih-seng, 1730
Li Fu-chun, 107, 152, 177
Li Han-chun, 112, 114, 116
Li Hsien-nicn, 349n
Le Jen Middle School, 201
Li Li-san, 71, 107, 122, 138, 155, 160, 175,
180, 186, 195, 210, 237, 375; early years,
120, 241-244; relationship with Mao,
241-244; and second ‘left’ line, 243-272;
on the peasantry, 244-245; and the
Comintern, 254, 261, 268; as Chinese
‘Lenin’, 261, 268; General Front Com-
mittee, 262, 265; challenged and deposed,
272; return, 495
Li Ping, 316, 317
Li Ta, 112, 113, 116
Li Ta-chao, 77-79. 81, 85, 86, 91, 100, 105,
no; on the peasantry, 95; in KMT, 132,
133; murdered by KMT, 182
Li Tc-sheng (Mao Tsetung), 521
Li Teh. See Braun, Otto
Li Ting-ming, 452
Li Tsung-jen, 371. 536, 537
Li Wen-ling, 248, 254, 270
Liang Chi-chao, 46, 50
Liang Shan-po, 74
Lianghekou, 336
Liao Chen-cliih, I32n
Liao Chung-kai, 126, 127, 132, 135, 158,
193, 541; assassinated, 144. See also Ho
Siang-ning, Madame
Liaoning province, 407
Lienhua, 214
Liling, 195, 200
Lin Piao, 104, 107, I23n, 212, 232, 247,
272, 311; and Red Army Code, 228; and
Long March, 318, 319, 328; at Kangta,
425
Lin Yu-nan, 272, 275
Lin Yu-ying, 348
Linghsicn, 214, 225
Lintimg Hot Springs, 371
literary revolution. See May 4, 1919, move-
ment
Liu Chih-tan, 33<5, 356-357. 360-361, 374.
558
6o8
INDEX
Liu Jen-chung, 112
Liu Lan-tao, 487
Liu Po-cheng (‘One-Eyed Dragon*), 104,
307, 384, 518; and Long March, 311, 315,
316, 319. 332, 338, 341, 348
Liu Shan mountain, 38
Liu Shao-chi, 27-28, 108, 116, 119, 160,
175, 186, 195, 377, 382n, 389, 440, 462,
495 . 508. 522, 527-530, 535 . 537 . 540 , 556;
and Anyuan strike, 121-123; ‘abjuration
case’, 189, 488-489; alias Tchao Kang-
ming, 242; at Tsunyi, 319, 325; rise to
power, 484-485, 486-489
Liu Shih, 202
Liu Ying, Madame, 41
Liupan, 344
Liuyang, 36, 200, 201
Lizouski, delegate to First Congress of
CCP, 112
Lo Hsiao range, 206
Lo Ming, 292, 293
Lochuan meeting, 381
Long March, 57, 274, 282, 285, 292, 310,
311-350, 353-355. 429; first stage, 313:
after Tsunyi, 327; end of, 345-346
Loushan pass, 318, 327
Lu Hsun, Son, 85, 394, 457
Lu Hsun Art Academy, 420
Lufeng, 142, 151, 152, 211
Lukuo-chiao bridge (Marco Polo bridge),
379
Lung Shih, 213
Lunghai railway, 531
Lungyuankou, 232
Lushan, 389
Lushan (Port Arthur), 478, 557, 568
Lutetia Hotel, Paris, 90
Luting, bridge at, 330
Ma Haitch (Dr George Hatem), 349n,
354
Ma Hung-kwei, 345
Ma-lin. See Sneevlict
MacArthur, Douglas, 494, 572, 573 , 575 -
579 , 584, 585, 586-591, 593 . 594
Malaysia, 584
Malik, Yakov, 584, 596
Malinovsky, Rodion, 504
Manchouli, 478
Manchukuo, 289, 361, 377 , 557
Manchuria, 35, 62; and Russia, 127, 493,
504-505, 557-558, 568; Japanese invasion
of, 275, 280, 287, 361; and Chiang, 371,
501; CCP action in, 407, 498, 531; and
Korean war, 578, 579, 591, 596
Manchurian Party Committee, 486
Manifesto of the Chinese People's Liberation
Army (Mao), 524
Mao An-ching (son), 107
Mao An-ying (son), 107
Mao Chu-hsiung (nephew), 308, 41 1
Mao Jen-shen (father), 23, 25-26, 37-38,
40, 42, 143
Mao Tse-chien (adopted sister), 32, 123;
executed, 194
Mao Tse-min (brother), 32, 75, 134; at
Anyuan, 118-119; work with CCP, 138,
151, 278, 281, 293, 308; alias Chou Ping,
560; executed, 561
Mao Tse-tan (brother), 32, 75, 124; at
Anyuan, 195; as liaison, 224; in land
reform, 282, 293; executed, 308
Mao Tsetung, childhood, 22-43; relation-
ship with father, 25-26, 47; and health,
27, 68-69; poetry, 30, 147-148, 240, 249,
325, 327. 332, 345-346. 465. 499; and
reading, 31, 56-57; relationship with
mother, 40-41; marriages, 40, loi, 305,
421; and women’s rights, 40, 67, 72, 98;
youth and school years, 44 - 76 ; as a
teacher, 57, 65-66, I52n, 207-208, 420,
421, 443, 454; pseudonym ‘Twenty-eight
Strokes’, 70; first trip to Peking, 76-82;
becomes a Marxist, 81, 91, 100, 106; sty
as a revolutionary, 93; as a journalist,
loo; birth of the CCP, 103, 108, iii;
in the KMT, 134, 151. 163; and the
peasantry, 164-165, 166-167, 173 . j* 76 ;
and Horse Day massacre, 189; creation of
a new kind of revolutionary war, 195,
222, 227-228; captured, 199; dismissed
from Party positions, 215-216, 284; as a
Leninist, 217; personality, 218, 219;
organizational principles, 221; ‘tempering
in ideological struggle’, 230-232; illnesses,
256, 292, 303, 304-305; description, 263,
416-418; on socio-economic investiga-
tions, 263-264; economic work, 295; was
he imprisoned?, 303; on the Long March,
352-355; Tsunyi conference, 320-325;
attitude towards ideological opponents,
358, 360; and Chiang Kai-shek, 372 - 374 ,
495, 496-497; political acumen, 499-500^
‘Chairman’, 439 ; ‘personality cult’, 462^
and the United States, 470, 473-476, 480^
507, 549; atom bomb a ‘paper tiger’, 510^
INDEX
609
511; strategy for civil war, 513: alias Li
Te-shcng, 521; meetings with Stalin,
563, 566, 567: and Korean war, 572, 574 -
See tj/jo Thought of Mao Tsetung
Maoerhkai, 336
Maoping, 220; conferences, 226, 227, 228,
229, 237. 257
Marco Polo Bridge (Lukuo-chiao bridge^
379 n
Maring (Ma-lin). See Sneevliet
Marshall, George, 503, 505, 50i5, 'O8, su.
517
Martin, Joseph W., 591
Marx-Lcnin Institute (Ycnan), 487
Miirxiitn ivid China (Mao), 124
Marxist study groups, 81, 100. See u/<o pre-
Coininunist groups
Afass I'diiCiilion (journal), 90
mass education movement, 109-110, 124,
403, 404, 451
Matthews, Francis P., 584
May 4, 1919, movement, ''>3, 72, S4-99,
1 17, 442, 455; origins, 86; popularity of
Marxism during, 105
May 30, 1925, incident, 145, 485
McCarthy, Joseph U., 469
Mcng Ching-shu, 280, 391
.\fclhods of Dealitiif with the CY, 7 ' (CHiiang
Kai-shek), 395
Methods of Restridinfi the Activities 0} the
Alien Party (Chiang Kai-shek), 395
Miaos, 315
Mif, Pavel, 274, 276
Migot, Andre, 37311
Miles, Milton, 480
Military Aifairs Council, 373
Military Commission, 291, 302, 322, 365
Military Council, 380. See also Revolu-
tionary Military Council
Min Kuojih Pao (ncsvspaper), 187
Mill Li Pao (newspaper), 50, 134
Miyun reservoir, 28
Molotov, V. M., 567
Mongolia, 62, 407, 557. See also Inner
Mongolia; Outer Mongolia
Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party,
562
Moscow, 90, 108. 191, 238, 483
Moukung, 332
Mountbatten, Louis, first Earl Mount-
batten of Burma, 496
Mukden, 532; ‘incident’, 288
Nam An, 30
Nanchang, 174, 17b, 267, 287; uprising.
192, 198, 209-212
Nanking, 180-182, 372, 380, 3S8, 499 . 539
Nanniwan valley, production at, 400
National Assembly (KMT), 13211, 492, 506
National Humiliation Day, 89
National Military Council, 473, 474, 482
national minorities, 328, 347, 35 j, 5600
National People’s Congress, 541
National Press Club, Washington, 574
Xational Question, The (Lenin), 562
National Salvation League, All-C.hina, 370
Nationalist Party. See Kuomintang
NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organiza-
tion), 575
Needham, Joseph, 422
.Wir (journal), 124
•New Army’ (Republican Army), 52
.Veu’ ('hina (journal), 90
New Culture (journal), 90
New Democracy (Mao), 565
New Fourth Army. See Red Army units
New Hunan (journal), 97
New Learning (journal), 90
AVit/ Life (journal), 85
New People’s Study Society (Hsin Min
Msueh Hui), 70-72, 75 . 82, 86, 92, 100,
104, 108, 109, 1 19
New Sinkiaiig Democratic League, $ 6 $
New Tide Society. 86
.Veil' Voice (journal), 90
New IVoman (journal), 90
New York Times, 593
Youth (journal), 68, 77, 8*. 84 . 86,
Nieli Jung-clicn, 210, 212, 318, 319. 349 .
384, 407. 531. 586
Nine Dragons ridge, 207
Ninghsia province, 375
Ningkang, 203, 213, 214, 215, 225, 238
Ningtu, 247, 249. 284, 288
Nixon, Richard M., 28
Nomoff, S. B., 429
North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO), 575 ,
North Korea (People’s Democratic Repub-
lic of Korea), 57 i, 572 , 575 . 57 ^; People’s
Assembly, 57 ^^
North Shensi base, 345 “ 347 . 355-356, 521-
523, 526. 527- See also Ycnan
Northern Expedition, 144. M 9 . D*. * 52 ,
157, 160, 161, 162, i66, 17 *. * 73 . *80
20
6io
INDEX
Now Chiaiig Kai-shek Is Provoking Civil
War (Mao), 494.
October Revolution of 1917, 78, 95, 105,
127, 563, 564
October 10 agreement (Chungking nego-
tiations, 1945), 500
Office of Strategic Services (OSS), 480,
506, 507
On Coalition Government (Mao), 481, 482
On Contradiction (Mao), 422, 426, 440,449
On Correcting Mistaken Ideas in the Party
(Mao), 258
Om Financial and Eeonomic Problems of the
Border Region (Mao), 401
On New Democracy (Mao), 439, 440, 441
On Practice (Mao), 422, 426-428
On Protracted War (Mao), 390, 41 1, 425,
433 n
On Radicalism (Mao), 97
On Strengthening the Party Committee
(Mao), 535
On Tactics Against Japanese Imperialism
(Mao), 362n
On the Correct Handling of Contradictions
Among the People (Mao), 431
On the Party (Liu Shao-chi), 487
On the Relation Between Knowledge and
Practice, Between Knotving and Doing. See
On Practice
Opium War, first, 19, 5on, 87, I56n
Oppose Book H’orship (Mao), 263, 264, 449
Oppose Stereotyped Party Writing (Mao),
450. 451
Orange Grove Island, 147
OSS. See Office of Strategic Services
Outer Mongolia, 127, 381, 478, 547, 557,
568
Oyuwan base, 290, 326, 340, 356
Pahsi, 342
Pai Chung-hsi, 371
Pai Lou (White Dew) Conference, 238
Paloczi-Horvath, George, 354n
Pan Lung, 523
Pang the Millstone Maker, 38
Panmunjon, Korea, 597
Pannikar, K. N., 586
Pao An, 356, 372. 375
Pao Hui-seng, 1 12, 1 14
Paopi, gunboat, 158
Paris Peace Conference (1919), 88, 89, 90
Payne, Robert, 354
Pearl Harbour, 415, 444, 468
Pearl river, 409
Peasant Department: KMT, 135, 140;
CCP, 138
Peasant Institute, 123, 151, i53n, 155, 163,
164, 307, 355
Peasant Monthly, I53n
peasant movement, 142, 146, 169-170, 178,
186-187, 189. See also agrarian revolu-
tions; Autumn Harvest Uprising; land
reform
Peasants and Workers Army, 198-200. See
also Red Army
Peasants and Workers Congress of Hunan,
167
Peking, 36, 105, 380, 532; Mao’s first trip,
77-82; Papaoshan cemetery, 308; PLA
enters (1949), 532; People’s Republic of
China proclaimed, 541
Peking-Hankow railway, 82, 122
Peking University, 77, 79, 97, 100, 334,
394
Peng Chen, 443, 558
Peng Pai, 142, 131, 152, 177, 194. 21 1
Peng Tch-huai, 238, 249, 251, 267, 291,
3 1 1. 319, 348. 380, 3S3, 385. 390. 398, 412;
in Manchuria, 559; in Korea, 592-593
People’s Councils, 217, 230
People’s Democratic Republic of Korea.
Sec North Korea
People’s Liberation Army (PLA), 498, 599 .
515. 519, 529. 531. 532, 536, 537 . 539 .
559 . 562, 593, 595. See also Red Army
People’s Political Consultative Conference.
See Political Consultative Conference
People’s Republic of China (PRC), 129,
364. 378, 548, 549. 563; proclaimed. 541;
at United Nations (1950). 54 ^, 579 . 590 .
597; and United States, 547 - 597 '. ^nd
USSR, 567: and Korea, 571*1. 578
Philippines, 384
Pinghsiang, 36, 93, 120, 187, 195, 196, 199.
250. 398
Pinghsinkuan, 385, 407
PLA. See People’s Liberation Army
Po-Ai Girls School, 113, 114
Po I-po, 487
Po Ku. See Chin Pang-hsicn
Policies, Measures and Perspectives for Resist-
ing the Japanese Invasion (Mao), 379
Political Consultative Conference, 492,
499 , 500; of January 1946, 505, 506, 507,
INDEX
6ii
508. 520; of June 1949, 536, 541, 5+2,
552; ofjune 1950, 534
Political Weekly, 151
Port Arthur (Lushun), 478, 557, 568
Potsdam declaration, 493, 571
Powell, J. B., 182
Pravda, 548, 595
PRC. See People’s Republic of China
pre-Coinmunist groups: in China, 104,
105; in other countries, 107
Problems of Slratei^y in China's Rei'olnlionary
War (Mao), 379, 390
Problems of Strategy in Gnerilla Renolit-
tionary War (Mao), 43611
Problems o/Strategy in Gurrt7/.J War Against
Japan (Mao), 390, 433n
Problems of War and Slraii’gy (Mao), 390,
43 3 n
Production Drive, 399, 400, 404, 413, 444.
452, 467
Puyi, cx-cinpcror, 289, 361
Pyongyang, 576, $SH
Question of Independence and Initiative
Within the United Proni, The (Mao), 3920
Radek, Karl, 1 30
Random Notes on Red China (Snow), 477
rectification, 258, 526, 541; at Chingkang-
shan, 238; 1947-1948, 529-530. Sec also
Rectification movement
Rectification movement (1941-1944). 323,
426, 444-445, 446-464: reasons, 444. 446-
449; ‘three-style’, 450; principles and
methods, 452-453; art and literature, 453-
457; intellectuals, 458-462; effects, 461,
466-467. 534. 565
Rectify the Party's Style of Work (Mao),
450-451
Red Army, 192, 204, 245, 252, 253, 268,
292; education in, 204, 205, 214, 231-232,
293; code of, 228-229; dcmociacy in,
235, 259; children in, 314; renamed
Eighth Route Army (q.v.), 383; renamed
People’s Liberation Army (q.v.), 509. See
also Revolutionary Council. Groups: First
F^easants and Workers Army, 198; First
Army Corps, 265, 267, 313, 314; First
Front Army, 313; Fourth Red Army, 224,
229, 233, 256, 257, 262, 267 {see also
Ironsides); New Fourth Army, 239, 390,
404, 405, 463, 499; massacre of, 398, 409,
411, 413
Rod Army Day, 209
Red Flag (journal), 263
Red Guards, 70, 214, 215, 229, 239, 251,
255, 266, 286, 38on, 383
Red River, 327
Reform Onr Study (Mao), 4.^9
Report from Red Ch na (Forman), 399
Report on an Investigation of the Peasant
Movement in Hunan (Mao), 169, 149
Republic of Korea Sec South Korea
Resist Japan armies, 494
Resist Japan Univei' ity. See Kangta
‘returned students’, 48, 121, 132, 263, 272,
273, 274, 427, 564. See also twenty-eight
Bolsheviks
Revolt Against the Tang, 3 i
Revolution of 1911, 36, 38, 50, 51-52, 54.
55; Mao’s enlistment, 51-54
Revolutionary Military Council, 307, 311.
317, 323. 326, 335. 365. 374. 539
Revolutionary Self-Defence War. See civil
war
Rhcc, Syngman, 574, 576, 577, 585, 596
Ridgway, Matthew B., 590
Righteous Fists (Boxer) Uprising, 33-34
River of Golden Sands (upper reaches of
Yangtze), 328
Role of the Chinese Communist Party in the
Nationalist War, The (Mao), 392n
Roosevelt, Franklin D., 464, 468, 471, 472,
477-479
Roy, M. N., i69n, 18311, 185-186
Rue, John, 271
I^usk, Dean, 596
Russell, Bertrand, 96 97
Russia, 127. See also Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics
Russian Revolution see October Revolu-
tion of 1917
Russo-Japanese war (1904-1905), 35. 47
Saionji, Prince, 554
Salisbury, Harrison, 547
Sallantin, Xavier, 430n, 432n
Sanwan, 202, 205, 410
Save the Han Yeping Company (Liu Shao-
chi), 122
Second Preface in Village Investigations
(Mao), 448
Second United Front. See United Front,
Second
secret societies, 36, 144, 1.19, 150, 157, 173.
181; Kclao, 38
6I2
INDEX
‘sectarians’. See twenty-eight Bolsheviks
Seekt, Hans von, 300
Self-Education College, 123-124
Seoul, Korea, 578, 590, 591
Service, John Stewart, 470, 480, 550
Shaniecn, 145
Shanghai, 23, 90, 103, 149, 180; pre-
Communist Party group, 103, 106;
founding of CCP, iii; French Conces-
sion, 1 16, 275; International Settlement,
157, 181; Foreign Municipal Council,
157; KMT massacre, 181-182;
attacked by Japanese, 380, 388, 541
Shanghai University, 275-276
Shanghang, 295
Shansi, 361
Shansi-Hopei-Shantung-Honan Base Area,
407
Shansi-Suiyuan base, 407
Shantung, 62, 112, 407, 520
Shao Piao-ping, 81
Shao Shan report, 272. See also Chou En-lai
Shaoshan, 23, 29, 140
Shaoshan Chung, 23, 24
Sheep and Horse River (Yang Ma Ho), 523
Shen-Kan-Ning (Shensi-Kansu-Ninghsia)
Border Region, 357, 374. 381. 395, 397,
402; renamed Special Region, 378, 379.
See also Yenan
Shen Tse-min, 274
Sheng Shih-tsai, 560, 561
Shensi, 370. See also North Shensi base
Shensi-Kansu Independent Border Region,
356-357
Shensi-Kansu-Ninghsia Border Region.
See Shen-Kan-Ning
Shensi-Suiyuan base, 530
Shih Ping, 317
Shimonoseki, treaty of, 42
Shuikoushan, 245
Shun, emperor, 29
Sian, 362, 370. 373, 391. 397; ‘incident’, 37i
Siao Emi, 44, 48, 55
Siao Yu, 40, 44, 69
Sikang province, 347
Sinkiang, 127, 349, 547. 557, 560-561, 568,
580
Sinkiang-Uighur region, 568
Sino-Soviet treaty of alliance, 575
Sino-U.S. agreements, 520, 537
Situation and Our Policy After the Victory
in the War of Resistance Against Japan, The
(Mao), 494
Situation and Tasks in the Anti-Japanese War
After the Fall of Shanghai and Taiynan, The
(Mao), 387
Smash Chiang Kai-shek's Offensive by a War
of Self-Defence (Mao), 513
Smedlcy, Agnes, 211, 219, 230, 266, 341,
3670, 372
Snecvliet, alias Marin (Ma-lin), 105, 112,
126
Snow, Edgar, 27, 28, 50n, 113, 13711, 155,
191. 194. 203, 218, 292, 304. 313, 339.
341, 346, 367n, 369. 373. 4I7. 418, 421.
422, 42711, 440, 477, 535, 550, 561, 570,
598
Snow Mountain, 331
Social Benefit Bookstore (Hupei), 109
Socialist Study Group, 120
Socialist Youth Corps, 103, 108, 120
Society for tlie Propagation of Sun Yat-
senisin, 143, 158
Society for Work and Study in France, 72
Some Important Problems of the Party's
Present Policy (Mao), 527
Some Questions Concerning Methods of
Leadership (Mao), 461
Soong Ching-ling (Madame Sun Yatsen),
127-128, 129. 193, 211, 370, 541. 55211
Soong Mei-ling (Madame Chiang Kai-
shek). 186, 193, 374
Soong, T. V., 186
South Korea (Republic of Korea), 572,
574. 575-576
Soutli Lake, 1 14
Soviet Union. See Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics
soviets. See bases
Special Region. Sec Shen-Kan-Ning
Stalin, Josef, 162, 191, 227, 254, 285, 298,
495. 535. 537, 583, 596; and a united
front, 337n, 366; and the peasantry, 167,
173; telegrams from, 198, 210, 372:
purges, 256, 358; and Chiang, 377, 477.
501; and Mao, 543, 543-569, 563, 567; at
Yalta, 547, 549; and the Korean war, 572,
574
State and Revolution, The (Lenin), 78, no
Steele, A. T., 507
Stein, Guenther, 462, 464, 545
Stem, Otto. See Braun, Otto
Stihvell, Joseph W. (‘Vinegar Joe’), 464,
469. 472, 492
Stone, I. F., 575, 590
Stone Cloud Mountain, 304, 306
INDEX
613
Strategy for the Second Year of the War of
Liberation (Mao), 524
Strife (journal), 90
Struggle in the Chingkang Alountains (Mao),
220
Stuart, Leighton, 503, 517. 532. 537
Student Society for National Sah ation, 87
Student Union (Peking), 100
students abroad, 72, 73. See also ‘returned
students’
Strong, Anna Louise, 175, 180, 188, 244,
359 . 4 t 8 , 441. 509. 521. 524. 550. 576;
in Russia, 190
Su Yu, 303
Suichuan, 214, 301
Sun Chuan-fang, 165, 180
Sun Fo, 1 84
Sum Tzc, 64, 96, 328, 430
Sun Wen. See Sun Yatsen
Sun Yatsen, 19, 35, 36, 38, 41, 50, 55, 59.
60-62, 88, 96, 100, 104, 105, 1 14, 162,
171, 184; and a united front, 126-127,
128-129, 131. 135. H 3 '. death, 144. See
also Society for the Propagation of Sun
Yatsenism; Three People’s Principles;
Tung Meng Hui
Sun Yatsen, Madame. See Soong Ching-hng
Sun Yatsen University (University for the
Far East), 276
Sungpang region, 338, 339
Swatovv, 212, 224
Szechuan, 38, 104, 291, 326, 328, 332, 388
Szechuan-Sikang base, 347
7 tj Kung Pao, 79, loS, 375, 502
M tze pao, 50
T.ii Chi-tao, 144, 151, 152
Tai Li, 357, 480, 5860
Taihang mountains, 407
Taiping peasants uprising (1850-1864), 24,
36, 65, 147, 329, 331
T aiwan (Formosa), 468, 541, 570, 574, 580,
581, 586, 588, 596
laiyuan, 383, 384
Talung, 225
Tang Ping-shan, 81, 133, 16811. 194, 499
Tan Yen-kai, 62, 109
Tanaka Memorial. See Twenty-one
Demands
Tang Sheng-chih, 52n, 166, 174, 190, 199
Tang Tsou, 503
Fangku, 289
Tapich mountain massif, 531
Tapoti, 247-248, 249, 276
Tasks of tife CCP in the Period of Resistance
to Japan, The (Mao), 375
Tass, 573
Tatu river, 329, 330
Tayu, 247
Tchao Kang-ming. 5 ee Liu Shao-chi
Tcliasi, 327
Teaching of .Mao Tsetung. See Thought of
.Mao Tsetung
Teang Fa, 319
Teheran conference, 4S3
Teng Chung-hsia, 98, 100, 152
Feng En-ming, 112
Teng Ying-chao, 317
Third Communist International. See
C Omintern
Thought of Mao Tsetung, 14. U. i 39 .
396, 463. 466, 489. 52r, 565
'I'hrce Kingdoms, 31, 40, 44
Three People’s Principles (Sun Yatsen),
128, 178, 365, 378, 382, 442
Tibet, 62, 331, 344 . 347 . 5«o
Tide Society, 92
Tien An Men (('.ate of Heavenly I^cacc),
542
Tien Han, 393
Tientsin, 289, 372, 3S0. 502, 522, 532
Tingchow (Changting), 24S-249, 250, 266,
303
Tito, Marshal (Josip Broz), 555, 563
Traherne, Thomas, quoted, 20
Training of the Communist Party Member
(Liu Shao-chi), 484
Trans-Siberian Railway, 127
Travels in the West, 3 1
Triumph of Bolshevism, The (Li Ta-chao),
91
Trotsky, Leon, 126, 162, 256, 261
Truman, Harry S., 479, 492, 502, 511, 524,
575 . 578, 581, 583, 587. 590, 591, 593 . 594 .
596
Truman doctrine, 506, 554, 570, 596
Tsai Chang, 67, 71, 73, 92, 107, 120, 164
Tsai Ho-sen, 59, 67, 71, 73, 75 . 92 . 103,
107, 109, 120, 164, 177, 242, 244, 255
Tsai Ting-kai, 288, 297, 299, 363
Tsai Yuan-pei, 97
Tseng Shan, 240, 25c
Tsinan, 108
Tsingtao, 501, 539
Tsunyi, 313. 325. 327. 336; conference,
319, 320-326, 467
INDEX
Tu Yu-ming, 532
Tuan Chi-jui, 62, 87
Tuan Hsi-peng, 81
Tung Meng Hui (Hsin Chung-hui), 36,
48, 50, 105, I32n. See also Sun Yatscn
Tung Pi-wu, 103, 106, 107, III, 112, 187
Tungku, 248, 271
Tungshan Higher Primary School, 44, 48
Tungshan Middle School, 49, 51
Tungtao county, 316
Tungtze, 318, 327
Turkestan, 562, 568
Turkey, 554
twenty-eight Bolsheviks, 263, 269, 272,
284, 285, 299, 300, 319, 323, 43 in, 486,
564
‘Twenty-eight Strokes’ (Mao), 70, 81
Twenty-one Demands (Japan), 57, 62, 63,
Sjn, 85
Tiw Lines, The (Wang Ming), 274, 439
Tze Hsi, Manchu Empress Dowager, 59
Tzeping, 205
Tzuhsi county, 165
Uighurs, 560, 523
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, 96,
105. 378, 444; Far Eastern forces, 256; and
Chiang, 366, 381, 494, 547, 548, 558,
568; in World War II, 493, 558; treaty
with PRC, 567-569
United Front, First, 126-148; CCP policy,
129; CCP-KMT agreement (1923), 131-
133: problems, 133, 153, 162, 366
United Front, Second, 353-395; early
attempts, 297-298; CCP policy, 362-364,
368-369, 375-376, 386-388, 389-390, 437;
relations with KMT, 364-366, 374, 378-
383, 389-390, 394-395
united front in civil war, 528, 541
United Nations, 483, 517; and PRC, 547,
597; and Korean war. 574, 575, 576. 577,
578, 579, 580, 581, 584-591
United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation
Administration (UNRRA), 507
United States, 28, 83, 87, 88, 41 1, 502; and
Chiang, 300, 444, 464, 466-467, 468-480,
also Dixie mission; Office of Strategic
Services
United Students Association of Hunan,
92, 93
University for the Far East (Sun Yatscn
University), 276
UNRRA (United Nations Relief and
Rehabilitation Administration), 507
Upward (journal), 72
Urgent Tasks Following the Establishment of
Kuomintang~Coint?iunist Co-operation
(Mao), 387
USSR. See Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics
Versailles Peace Treaty, 90
Victory of the Common People (Li Ta-ebao),
91
Vietnam, 437, 570, 573. 584, 597
Vladivostok, 478
Wake island, 588, 589
Wales, Nym, 1 12
Wallace, Henry, 468, 469, 471, 472
Wang (Hakka), 239
Wang Chen, 303, 348
Wang Chia-hsiang, 307
Wang Chia-lich, 317
Wang Ching-wei, 134, 136, 161, 189-190,
485: after Sun Yatsen’s death, 143, 144;
and Chiang, 158, 159, 174, 181-1S2, 186,
288, 412
Wang Chun-mci, 112, 116
Wangjo-fei, 497, 499
Wang Ming (Chen Shao-yu), 263, 363,
366-367, 376, 427, 428, 462, 564; and Li
Li-san, 266, 269, 272, 422; and third ‘left’
line, 273-310; intra-Party struggle, 274,
368-369, 439; early years, 275-276; in
Moscow, 276, 296, 298, 302, 334. 378;
and Tsunyi conference, 319; return to
China, 386, 387. 393. 394. 395- See also
twenty-eight Bolsheviks
Wang Ping-nan, 362
Wang Tso, 207, 234
Wang Tung-hsing, 522, 527
491-492, 497, 501-512, 515-518, 596; Wang Yang-ming, 32
anti-Communism in, 479, 578; naval base, IVarm Tide (journal), 90
501; Joint U.S. Military Advisory Group Washington Conference of 1922, 156
(JUSMAG), 505; anti-U.S. feeling, 517, IVater Margin, 31, 40, 44, 74, 201, 430
5371 Sino-U.S. agreements, 520, 537; and Waxy Mouth Pass (Latzekou), 342
PRC, 546, 551; post-war changes in, Wayaopao, 359, 362, 366
549-5501 and Korean war, 549-550. See Wedemeycr, Albert C., 480, 501, 502, 524
INDEX
615
Wei Li-huang, 532
Wen Chi-mei (mother of Mao), 29, 32.
40, 74 - 75 . 82
Wen Chia Shih, 201-202
Wen 1 -to, 51 1
West Munan-Hupci border area, 34S
Western Hills group, 146, 152
Whangpoo Military Academy, 132, 135,
143, 144, 145, 150. i53n, 159, 160, 210
White, Theodore, 470, 472
White Dew (Pai Lou) Conference, 238,
246
White Terror, 107, 140, 189, 200, 212, 221,
268, 297
Whiting, Allen, 56on, 583
IVhy Is It That Red PolitUid Power Civi
I-xist in China? (Mao), 220
Wilson, Woodrow, 87, 88
Win the Masses in Their Millions Jor the
Anti-Japanese United Frotit (Mao). 376
IVotnen's Dell (journal), 90
women’s liberation, 40, 67, 72, 7}, 98, 399 .
402
Women's Revolutionary Army, I'hc (Mao),
72. 98
Work and Study Society, 75, 92:
Women’s, 72, 73
Workers’ and Peasants’ Government, 383
Workers Strike Committee, 159
World War 1 , 62, 85, 87
Wu river, 318, 326, 328
Wu Hsiu-chuan, 589
Wu P’ci-fu, 122, I26n, 129
Wucliichen, 345, 346
Wuhan, 23. 51, loo, 107; KMT in, 174,
181, 186, 194; CCP in, 175, 182, 392;
massacre, 188-189; Li Li-san and, 267-
268; Chiang in, 290, 388; fall of, 391, 41 1 ;
capture of, 541
Wuhsi, 165
Wuping, 247
Wutai. 407, 41 1
Wuyi mountains, 247
Yalta conference, 477. 478, 479, 483, 547 .
554 . 557 , 567
Yalu river, 571, 578, 588
Yang, 226, 333
Yang Chang-chi, 67, 77, 81-82, 100
Yang Chia Kou, 526, 527
Yang Han-shen, 393
Yang Hsicn-chen, 431
Yang Hu-cheng, 360, }6i-}62, 371, 374
Yang Kai-hui (wife of Mao), 4in, 81. 100,
106, 109, 123, 138; executed, 268
Yang Ma Ho (Sheep and Horse River), 523
Yang Ming-chai, 105
Yangtze river, 27, 326, 328, 391, 409, 532,
533 , 535 . 539
Yeh Chion-ying, 311, 318, 319, 340, 370
Yell Ting, 210, 212
Yehping, 278
Yellow Emperor, 50
Yellow river (Huang IJo), 339, 355 , 363,
3S3. 3 ^ 4 , 531
Yen Hsi-shan, 360, 383
Yenan, 374, 396; profile of, 397 - 415 ;
blockade by KMT, 397; women at, 399,
402; co-operatives, 402, 403; blockade by
Japanese, 413; forum of artists, 454 - 457 ;
C:CP Seventh Congress, 465-490; Marx-
Lenin Institute, 487; evacuation of, 520,
521; recapture of, 534; foreign affairs
department, 546. See also Shen-Kan-
Nmg
Yenan Women’s University, 391
Yi tribes, 328-329. 333
Yochow, 188
Young China Study Society, 81
Youth Corps, 146
Yu Shu-tc, 133
Yuan (Hakka), 239
Yuan Li-chin ('Big Beard'), 66
Yuan Shih-kai, 55, 60-61, 62, 108, 126
Yuan Teh-sheng, 232
Yuan Wen-tsai, 207, 226, 234
Yuchpei, 123, 142
Yugoslav Communist Party, 555
Yugoslavia, 555, 577
Yunghsin, 214, 232, 233
Yuiman, 104, 326
Yutou, 249, 295, 304. 306, 309, 313
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