Mao

by Philip Short

  210. Selected Military Writings of Mao Zedong, Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, 1966, p. 117.

  211. Schram, 3, p. 539 (Sept. 25 1930).

  212. Ibid., p. 588 (Oct. 26); pp. 283–4 (March 21); pp. 285–90 (March 29 1930).

  213. Ibid., pp. 289–90 (March 29) and p. 291 (April 1930).

  214. Schram, 3, passim.

  215. Ibid., p. 555 (Oct. 14 1930). See also Schram, 4, pp. 88–9 (May 31 1931) and Nianpu, 1, p. 332.

  216. Nianpu, 1, p. 322; Schram, 3, p. 656 (Nov. 1 1930).

  217. Schram, 3, p. 718 (Dec. 22 1930).

  218. The following account is drawn from Zhongguo gongchangdang huiyi gaiyao, pp. 120–2; Peng Dehuai, p. 308; Nianpu, 1, pp. 321–2. See also Yu Boliu and Chen Gang, Mao Zedong zai zhongyang suqu, Zhongguo Shudian, Beijing, 1993.

  219. Nianpu, 1, pp. 323–30; Schram, 3, pp. 699–703 (Nov. 27 and Dec. 14 1930) and pp. 722–32 (Dec. 25, 26, 28, 29 and 30 1930).

  220. Nianpu, 1, pp. 330–3; Schram, 4, pp. 5–8 (Jan. 1 and 2) and 88–9 (May 31 1931).

  221. In 1997, Zhang's fate was still commented on approvingly by elderly people in Donggu.

  222. Zhongguo gongchangdang huiyi gaiyao, p. 119. The Front Committee discussed the decisions of the Third Plenum at an enlarged meeting at Huangpi in the first ten days of December (Nianpu, 1, p. 327); see also Schram, 4, p. 59.

  223. Nianpu, 1, p. 332. The Politburo had decided to establish the Central Bureau on October 17 1930 and had named Mao acting Secretary eight days later, pending Xiang Ying's arrival (ibid., pp. 319 and 321).

  224. Nianpu, 1, p. 332.

  225. Zhongguo gongchangdang huiyi gaiyao, pp. 123–7; Grigoriev, Revolyutsionnoe Dvizheniye, pp. 227–9; History of the CCP, Chronology, pp. 72–3. See also Thornton, pp. 213–17.

  226. The standard Chinese histories and most early Western accounts maintained that the ‘Returned Students’ had a stranglehold on the Party from the Fourth Plenum until the Zunyi conference in January 1935. Thomas Kampen has argued convincingly that the ‘Students’ never formed a cohesive group and that Mif's protégés achieved dominance not in January but in September 1931, when Bo Gu and Zhang Wentian formed the provisional Party Centre in Shanghai (Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai and the Evolution of the Chinese Communist Leadership, Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, Copenhagen, 2000). From September onwards, however, Bo – backed by Zhou Enlai and Otto Braun – was virtually unchallenged until the Tongdao meeting in October 1934.

  227. Nianpu, 1, pp. 309 and 337. On March 20, Mao wrote of unnamed emissaries having arrived from Shanghai ‘in the last few days’ (Schram, 4, p. 36), presumably bringing the documents discussed at the enlarged Central Bureau meeting at Huangpi from March 18 to 21. These included the Comintern's ‘November 16 letter’, denouncing Li Lisan, but no materials from the Fourth Plenum (see Hsiao Tso-liang, Power Relations, vols 1, pp. 152–3, and 2, pp. 352–60).

  228. ZZWX, 7, pp. 139–42; Nianpu, 1, p. 337. Even earlier, Mao had persuaded Xiang to set up a General Political Department of the Military Commission, with himself as its director (Schram, 4, pp. 12–13, Feb. 17 1931).

  229. The Fourth Plenum sharply criticised the ‘reconciliationist line’ which the Third Plenum leadership, of which Xiang Ying had been part, adopted towards Li Lisan (see Saich, pp. 459–61).

  230. Hu Sheng, Concise History of the Communist Party of China, p. 158; Schram, 4, pp. xxxiv–v.

  231. Nianpu, 1, p. 334; Schram, 4, p. 14 (Feb. 21 1930).

  232. Mao hinted at the dispute in his order of March 20, when he wrote: ‘Victory in the second campaign will certainly be ours, provided only that we are all resolute’ (Schram, 4, p. 38). See also Yu and Chen, Mao Zedong zai zhongyang suqu, pp. 246–50; and Ma Qibin et al., Zhongyang geming genjudi shi, pp. 285–8.

  233. Schram, 4, pp. 42–3 (March 23 1931); Nianpu, 1, p. 337.

  234. Saich, pp. 530–5; Schram, 4, pp. 56–68; and Nianpu, 1, pp. 339–42.

  235. Nianpu, 1, pp. 344–5; Schram, 4, pp. 74–5 (May 14 1931). See also Peng Dehuai, pp. 316–18.

  236. Nianpu, 1, pp. 349–50; Schram, 4, p. xli.

  237. Schram, 4, pp. 92 (June 2), 98–103 (June 22), 107–12 (June 28 and 30) and 115–17 (July 4 1931). Nianpu, 1, pp. 347–9.

  238. This account of the third encirclement is taken from the military orders issued by Mao himself, in Schram, 4, pp. 118–37 (July 12 to Aug. 17) and pp. 142–53 (Aug. 22 to Sept. 23 1931); from ibid., pp. xli–ii; Nianpu, 1, pp. 350–5; and Peng Dehuai, pp. 322–4.

  239. China Weekly Review, Aug. 29 1931, p. 525.

  240. Peng Dehuai wrote that his 3rd Army Group lost about a third of its 15,000 men during the three encirclement campaigns (p. 325). Accounts of the individual engagements suggest most of the losses occurred in the third campaign (see, for instance, Nianpu, 1, p. 355).

  241. Dun Li, pp. 159–76.

  242. Saich, p. 458.

  243. Mif, p. 296. The Comintern's August 26 1931 resolution stated explicitly that the ‘immediate goal’ to which the Party must devote ‘all its strength’ in the White areas was the promotion of ‘a powerful mass movement in defence of the soviet areas’ (ibid., pp. 300–2). This, of course, was the exact reverse of its (and the Party's) opening position four years earlier, which had been that the struggle in the urban areas was primary, and that the rural revolution was merely an adjunct.

  244. See the Comintern's ‘November 16 letter’, in Mif, pp. 284–5. The terms used recall Mao's warning to the Party Centre, eighteen months earlier, not to be concerned if the peasant movement ‘outstripped’ the movement in the cities.

  CHAPTER 8 FUTIAN: LOSS OF INNOCENCE

  1. It is difficult to judge to what extent this mimetism reflected a genuine belief that the CCP's survival required it to follow every twist and turn of Soviet policy and to what extent it stemmed from more venal considerations. In the first eight months of 1930, the Shanghai leadership received more than 70,000 US dollars in financing from the Comintern, without which it would have been unable to function. By 1931, Comintern aid had risen to 25,000 US dollars a month. See Pantsov and Levine, pp. 228 and 247–8.

  2. Qu Qiubai, in Chinese Studies in History, vol. 5, 1 pp. 58–9 and 69.

  3. Schram, Mao's Road, 3, pp. 74 and 172–3.

  4. Ibid., p. 269 (Feb. 16 1930).

  5. Averill, Stephen C., ‘The Origins of the Futian Incident’, in Saich, Tony, and Van de Ven, Hans, New Perspectives on the Chinese Communist Revolution, M. E. Sharpe, Armonk, New York, 1995, pp. 80–3 and 95–9; Nianpu, 1, p. 298; Schram, 3, pp. 270–1.

  6. See Ch'en Yung-fa [Chen Yongfa], ‘The Futian Incident and the Anti-Bolshevik League: The “Terror” in the CCP Revolution’, in Republican China, vol. 19, 2, April 1994, p. 37, n. 30.

  7. Dai Xiangqing and Luo Huilan, AB tuan yu Futian shibian shimuo, Henan renmin chubanshe, 1994, pp. 81–2; Averill, ‘Origins’, pp. 98–9.

  8. Schram, 3, pp. 198–9.

  9. ‘On Contradiction’, in SW1, pp. 343–5; ‘On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People’, February 27 1957, in MacFarquhar, Roderick, Cheek, Timothy and Wu, Eugene (eds), The Secret Speeches of Chairman Mao, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1989, pp. 131–89.

  10. Schram, Mao's Road, 4, p. 105 (June 1931).

  11. Stephen Averill argues, to my mind convincingly, that the AB-tuan was still very much alive in Jiangxi in 1930 (‘Origins’, pp. 88–92 and 109–10). Whether it made any serious attempt to subvert the CCP, let alone on the scale claimed by the communists, is a totally different matter.

  12. See Dai and Luo, pp. 83–9, and Chen Yongfa, pp. 2–6.

  13. See Dai and Luo, p. 167; and Zhongyang geming genjudi shiliao xuanbian, Jiangxi renmin chubanshe, Nanchang, 1982, vol. 1, pp. 222–63, esp. p. 248.

  14. Averill, ‘Origins’, pp. 85, 104 and 111, n. 12. In February 1929, Mao assigned his youngest brother, Zetan, to work with Li in Donggu, and a year later went out of his way to praise Li's policies (Nianpu, 1, pp. 265–6; Schram, 3,
p. 236). See also Dai and Luo, p. 172.

  15. The plenum was held from August 5 to 11, overlapping with a longer work conference which took place in late July and August (Zhongyang geming genjudi shiliao xuanbian, 1, pp. 264–322). With hindsight, Mao saw this meeting as a crucial step in the South-West Jiangxi Party's transition to openly opposing his authority (see Schram, 3, pp. 710–12; Dai and Luo, p. 172).

  16. Schram, 3, pp. 553–4. There is no evidence that Mao tried to prevent Li's appointment, and at this stage he may well have thought they would be able to work together.

  17. Dai and Luo, pp. 89 and 92. See also Zhongyang geming genjudi shiliao xuanbian, pp. 639–51.

  18. Schram, 3, p. 554 (Oct. 14) and p. 560 (Oct. 19 1930).

  19. Ibid., pp. 574–89 (Oct. 26 1930).

  20. Nianpu, 1, p. 322; Chen Yongfa, p. 13; Dai and Luo, p. 94.

  21. The following account is drawn primarily from Dai and Luo, pp. 94–6, and Chen Yongfa, pp. 13–14 and 16–17. Most of the Red Army main forces reached the area around Huangpi on November 30 or December 1 (Schram, 3, p. 700). Although a letter from the General Front Committee (drafted, or at least approved, by Mao) stated on December 3 1930 that ‘in the Red Army, the crisis has already been remedied’ (Dai and Luo, p. 98), the ‘Huangpi sufan’ (Huangpi Elimination of Counterrevolutionaries), as this part of the purge was afterwards called, actually continued for much longer. The figure of 4,400 arrests was given by the Front Committee itself towards the end of December (Schram, 3, p. 705). The total number killed in the military purge that winter was probably of the order of 3–5,000, or roughly 10 per cent of the army's total strength.

  22. See, for example, section 8 of the Front Committee's joint statement of October 26 (Schram, 3, pp. 586–7), where the three terms are used interchangeably.

  23. The SW Jiangxi leaders’ supposed allegiance to Li Lisan became a key part of the indictment against them after the event but it was not the main factor at the time.

  24. This account of the ‘Futian events’ relies heavily on Dai Xiangqing and Luo Huilan (pp. 98–9 and 103–6), who have evidently had access to unpublished documents in Party archives, notably the two letters from Mao's General Front Committee. These letters, written on December 3 and 5, constitute the ‘smoking gun’ linking Mao directly to the Futian arrests. The December 5 letter, which supplemented the original instructions, was sent to Li Shaojiu by military courier while he was en route; I have assumed that it reached him before his arrival at Futian. Li's heavy-handedness undoubtedly made matters worse, but his actions were fully in accord with the Front Committee's orders, which, given their importance, Mao would certainly have drafted or approved himself. I am indebted to the Futian Party Committee for allowing me to visit the buildings where these events took place.

  25. Letter of December 5 1930, quoted in Dai and Luo, p. 99.

  26. Chen Yongfa, p. 48; see also Zhongyang geming genjudi shiliao xuanbian, l, pp. 476–89.

  27. Dai and Luo, pp. 104–8 and 117–21; Chen Yongfa, pp. 15–16. According to Dai and Luo, of the 120 who had been arrested at Futian, Li Shaojiu ordered about 25 to be killed before he left for Donggu. Liu Di's relief column freed ‘more than 70’ on the night of December 12.

  28. Hsiao Tso-liang, Power Relations, 2, pp. 259–62.

  29. For the text of the forgery and of a covering letter from the Action Committee dated December 20, see Ibid., 1, pp. 102–5, and 2, pp. 262–4. See also Peng Dehuai, Memoirs (pp. 308–16), for his own account, fortified by hindsight, of how the forged letter arrived; and Schram, 3, pp. 704–13.

  30. For a discussion of the effects of terror, see Benton, Gregor, Mountain Fires: The Red Army's Three-Year War in South China, 1934–1938, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1992, pp. 478 and 506–7.

  31. Chen Yongfa, p. 17. Despite his ruthlessness towards the Futian rebels, and in purging opponents within the Red Army, Mao did not favour indiscriminate killing (see, for example, Schram, 3, p. 693).

  32. Chen Yongfa, p. 18; ‘Resolution on the Futian Incident, April 16 1931’ in Saich, Rise to Power, p. 534.

  33. ‘Circular No. 2’, in Hsiao Tso-liang, 1, pp. 108–9 and 2, pp. 269–73.

  34. See the Central Bureau's letter to the rebels on February 4, and its ‘Circular No. 11’ of February 19 1931, in ibid., 1, pp. 109–13, and 2, pp. 274–83.

  35. Circulars nos. 2 and 11; see also Saich, pp. 534–5.

  36. Chen Yongfa, p. 42, n. 63; see also Mao's reference (in March 1931) to ferreting out AB-tuan members ‘right now’ (Schram, 4, p. 48).

  37. Hsiao Tso-liang, 1, p. 104, and 2, pp. 262–4.

  38. Chen Yongfa, p. 18; Dai and Luo, pp. 149 and 188; Yu Boliu and Chen Gang, Mao Zedong zai zhongyang suqu, pp. 201–2. See also Hsiao Tso-liang, 1, p. 113, and 2, p. 358.

  39. ‘Resolution on the Futian Incident’; and Schram, 4, pp. 56–66.

  40. Chen Yongfa, pp. 21–5; Yu Boliu and Chen Gang, pp. 202–11; Dai and Luo, pp. 189–200.

  41. ‘Resolution on the Futian Incident’, p. 535; Chen Yongfa, p. 23. For a contemporary description of a typical district soviet government, see Mao's ‘Xingguo Report’, in Schram, 3, pp. 646–9 (October 1930). Of the eighteen members, six lived by gambling, one was a Daoist priest; fewer than half were able to read.

  42. Chen Yongfa, pp. 48–51.

  43. Ibid.

  44. Ibid., pp. 24 and 44, n. 87; Schram, 4, p. xliii; Averill, ‘Origins’, p. 106.

  45. Agnes Smedley described the trial (in China's Red Army Marches, Lawrence & Wishart, London, 1936, pp. 274–9) on the basis of information from a Chinese communist who had returned from the base area to Shanghai (see Braun, Comintern Agent, p. 6). Assuming that her account is correct, it took place at Baisha in the second half of August 1931 (see Nianpu, 1, pp. 353–4).

  46. Smedley, p. 279; Chen Yongfa, pp. 25 and 44, n. 87; Dai and Luo, pp. 192 and 206.

  47. Schram, 4, pp. 171–4 (Dec. 13 1931).

  48. Zhou is often credited with having intervened to stop the purge. In fact, he did not reach the West Fujian base area, on his way to the communist headquarters in Ruijin, until December 15, two days after Mao had approved the new procedures for dealing with counter-revolutionaries. It is true, however, that Mao acted only after being prodded by the Party Centre; and Zhou's concerns about the way the purge was being conducted, expressed forcefully in a letter written from West Fujian on December 18, did help to ensure that the new regulations were (to some extent) implemented. See Nianpu, 1, pp. 362–3; Dai and Luo, p. 205.

  49. ZZWX, 8, pp. 18–28, esp. pp. 21–2.

  50. Ibid.; and Schram, 4, p. 171.

  51. Chen Yongfa, pp. 29–30; Dai and Luo, pp. 217–18.

  52. Kong Yongsong, Lin Tianyi and Dai Jinsheng, Zhongyang geming genjudi shiyao, Jiangxi renmin chubanshe, Nanchang, 1985, pp. 211–17; Benton, Mountain Fires, p. 354.

  53. Saich, pp. 541–50.

  54. Benton, pp. 198 and 239.

  55. Ibid., p. 283.

  56. Wakeman, Frederic, Jnr, Policing Shanghai: 1927–1937, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1995, pp. 138–9 and 151–60.

  57. Snow, Red Star over China, pp. 342–3.

  58. Zhong Wenxian, Mao Zedong: Biography, Assessment, Reminiscences, pp. 222–4 and 236–7; Nianpu, 1, p. 192 pp. 192 & 325; Pantsov and Levine, pp. 198–9 & 249–51.

  59. Benton, pp. 314–22, 327–30 and 357–60; Snow, pp. 341–7.

  60. Benton, pp. 67–8 and passim.

  61. McCord, Power of the Gun, pp. 196–7.

  62. Benton, pp. 316–17, 337–9 and 506–7.

  63. See, for instance, Schram, 3, pp. 668–70 (Nov. 11 1930).

  64. ‘Resolution on the Futian Incident’, p. 533.

  CHAPTER 9 CHAIRMAN OF THE REPUBLIC

  1. An emergency conference of the Centre could change the membership of the Politburo, pending ratification by the next CC plenum, and the membership of the CC, pending ratification by the next Party Congress, but it could not appoint a new Gene
ral Secretary.

  2. Nianpu, 1, p. 354; ZZWX, 7, pp. 355–75.

  3. Nianpu, 1, pp. 357–8. Wireless contact between Ruijin and Shanghai had been established in the first half of October.

  4. Ibid., pp. 359–60; Zhongguo gongchangdang huiyi gaiyao, pp. 127–9. Some Western scholars claim that the Congress removed Mao as acting Bureau Secretary and appointed Xiang Ying in his place (see, for instance, p. xlvii of Stephen Averill's introduction to Schram, Mao's Road 4). The Nianpu specifically states that Mao was still acting Secretary in the second half of December (1, p. 363; see also p. 361).

  5. Hsiao Tso-liang, Power Relations, vol. 1; Agnes Smedley gives a highly coloured account in China's Red Army Marches, pp. 287–311.

  6. Schram, 4, pp. 820–1 (Dec. 1 1931).

  7. Nianpu, 1, p. 359.

  8. Ibid., p. 364.

  9. Ibid.; Peng Dehuai, Memoirs, pp. 326–9.

  10. Nianpu, 1, pp. 365–6; see also Jin Chongji, Mao Zedong zhuan, pp. 167–8; Nianpu, 1, p. 366.

  11. Nianpu, ibid.; Wang Xingjuan, He Zizhende lu, pp. 167–8.

  12. Wakeman, Policing Shanghai, pp. 147–51 and 222; Braun, Comintern Agent, pp. 2–3; Litten, Frederick S., ‘The Noulens Affair’, in CQ, 138, pp. 492–512.

  13. CC Resolution of January 9 1932, in Saich, Rise to Power, pp. 558–9 and 563.

  14. Ibid., pp. 563–4.

  15. Wang Xingjuan, pp. 168–9; Nianpu, 1, p. 367; Peng Dehuai, pp. 328–9.

  16. Nianpu, 1, p. 368; Peng Dehuai, pp. 329–31.

  17. Nianpu, 1, p. 369.

  18. Throughout this period, Mao acted first and sought approval afterwards. There is no evidence, however, that he consciously manoeuvred to stay one step ahead of Zhou. Stephen Averill writes that ‘Zhou Enlai went … to Changting [Tingzhou] … only to find that Mao … had already moved on’ (Schram, 4, pp. lii–iii). But Mao had sent a wireless message to Zhou on April 2, in which he said that he would leave Changting on the 7th. Although the town was only a day's journey from Ruijin, Zhou did not arrive there until the 10th. See ibid., p. 203; Nianpu, 1, p. 370.