Notes

CHINESE VIEWS OF MAO

1. An ’11-dash line’, based on territorial claims dating back to imperial times, had been promulgated by Chiang Kai-shek's nationalist government six years earlier. Zhou removed the two dashes marking the sea border between Hainan and North Vietnam, then China's close ally. In 2013, China added a 10th dash, East of Taiwan.

2. For the record, Roderick MacFarquhar, writing for the Economist three years later, came much closer than anyone else. When China would be able to mobilise its potential, he predicted, ‘a sun will rise in the East by comparison with which Japan will be but a pale shadow’. Truth compels me to say that when I read those lines in Beijing in September 1979, amid the dirt and peeling paint of an economy which was still half-Stalinist, half-Victorian, I raised my eyes to heaven and wondered what on earth he was talking about. Now I know.

3. Cited by Pankaj Mishra in the New Yorker, December 20, 2010.

4. Perry, Elizabeth, Anyuan: Mining China's Revolutionary Tradition, University of California Press, 2013, pp. 290–1.

5. Lifton, Robert Jay, Revolutionary Immortality: Mao Tse-tung and the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Vintage, 1968, pp. 156–61.

6. See Roderick MacFarquhar, ‘The Superpower of Mr Xi’, in New York Review of Books, August 13, 2015.

PROLOGUE

1. Pang Xianzhi (ed.), Mao Zedong nianpu [Chronological Biography of Mao Zedong], Renmin chubanshe, Beijing, 1991, vol. 1, pp. 439–40. The more commonly given date, December 11, is incorrect. The Party History Research Centre of the CCP CC, in its History of the Chinese Communist Party: A Chronology of Events, 1919–1990 (Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, 1991, p. 93), states that the Red Army ‘seized the passage to Hunan on the 11th’. The Tongdao meeting was convened the following day. See also Ma Qibin, Huang Shaoqun and Liu Wenjun, Zhongyang geming genjudi shi, Renmin chubanshe, Beijing, 1986, pp. 528–9; Guofang daxue dangshi zhenggong jiaoyanshi, Changzheng xintan, Jiefangjun chubanshe, Beijing, 1986, pp. 39–40; and Braun, Otto, A Comintern Agent in China: 1932–39, C.M. Hurst, London, 1982, pp. 92–3.

2. Exhibited at the Zunyi Museum, January 1995.

3. Salisbury, Harrison, The Long March, Harper & Row, New York, 1985, p. 109 and p. 364, n. 10.

4. Smedley, Agnes, Battle Hymn of China, Victor Gollancz, London, 1944, pp. 121–3.

5. North China Herald [hereafter NCH], Shanghai, Nov. 14 1934. See also Garavente, Anthony, ‘The Long March’, China Quarterly [hereafter CQ], 22, pp. 102–5; Yang, Benjamin, From Revolution to Politics, Westview Press, Boulder, 1990, p. 103; and Salisbury, pp. 92–3. The nationalists captured Ruijin soon after the communists pulled out on October 10. But while Chiang knew the Red Army was on the move, he could not tell whether it was abandoning the base or merely regrouping for a fresh offensive.

6. The best account of the engagement is in Salisbury, Long March, pp. 91–104.

7. Yang, Benjamin, ‘The Zunyi Conference as One Step in Mao's Rise to Power’, CQ, 106, p. 264.

8. After the meeting ended, at 1900 hours on December 12, the Military Council issued the following order: ‘Top Priority. The Hunan enemy troops and the main force of [the warlord] Tao Guang are closing in on Tongdao. Other enemy forces are continuing to make their way towards Hongjiang and jingxian [on the Guizhou/Hunan border further north]. They are trying to stop us going north. Therefore prepare to enter Guizhou … Tomorrow, the 13th, our Red Army should continue its westward deployment … The First Army should … occupy Liping’ (Nianpu, 1, pp. 439–40).

9. Agnes Smedley, The Great Road, Monthly Review Press, New York, 1956, pp. 313–14.

10. Martynov, A. A., Aleksandr, Velikii Pokhod, 1-go fronta Kitaiskoi raboche-krestyanskoi krasnoi armii: Vospominaniia, Izdatelstvo Inostrannoi Literatury, Moscow, 1959, pp. 170–6.

11. Smedley, Great Road, pp. 315–16.

12. Gu Zhengkun (ed.), Poems of Mao Zedong, Peking University Press, Beijing, 1993, pp. 68 and 70.

13. Nianpu, 1, pp. 440–1. Changzheng xintan, pp. 41–2. Li Weihan, Huiyi yu yanjiu, Zhonggong dangshi ziliao chubanshe, Beijing, 1986, pp. 350–1. Braun, p. 93.

14. Text exhibited at the Liping Museum in January 1995.

15. Changzheng xintan, pp. 43–4; Wenxian he yanjiu, no. 1, 1985, pp. 20–1; Nianpu, 1, p. 442. The text of the Houchang Resolution was exhibited at the Zunyi Museum in January 1995.

16. Exhibited at the Zunyi Museum in January 1995.

17. Much of the detail of the Zunyi meeting is still a matter of controversy. ‘The Zunyi Conference’, CQ106, pp. 235–71; and Thomas Kampen, ‘The Zunyi Conference and Further Steps in Mao's Rise to Power’, CQ, 117, pp. 118–34, provide the most reliable published accounts. See also Zunyi huiyi ziliao xuanbian, Guizhou chubanshe, Guiyang, 1985; Jin Chongji, Mao Zedong zhuan, 1893–1949, Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, Beijing, 1996; and Braun, pp. 94–108.
 The meeting-place is now a museum, as is the house where Mao stayed. Salisbury [Long March, p. 118] was curiously misled about the leaders’ accommodation, stating that ‘Bo Gu and Otto Braun were … living in isolation from the rest’. In fact, Bo and Braun were less than 100 yards from the CCP HQ. Mao, Wang and Zhang were the ones on the far side of town.

18. Braun, p. 96.

19. Jin Chongji, p. 341.

20. Braun, p. 98.

21. No text of Mao's speech has been preserved, but the resolution approved at the meeting is clearly based on it (Yang, ‘The Zunyi Conference’, pp. 262–5; and Chen, Jerome, ‘Resolutions of the Zunyi Conference’, CQ, 40, pp. 1–17).

22. See Kampen, p. 123; and Yang, CQ, 106, pp. 265–71, especially the phrase, ‘Comrade Bo Gu … did not apparently put this factor in a secondary place’ (p. 267).

23. Pantsov, Alexander and Levine, Steven I, Mao, the Real Story, Simon and Schuster, 2012, p. 271; Sheng, Michael, Battling Western Imperialism: Mao, Stalin and the United States, Princeton University Press, 1997, pp. 20–21.

24. Braun, p. 104.

25. Ibid., pp. 108–18; Nianpu, 1, pp. 445–59; Kampen, pp. 124–34.

26. Dangshi ziliao tongxun, no. 10, 1987, p. 39.

27. Li Zhisui, The Private Life of Chairman Mao, Chatto & Windus, London, 1994, pp. 365–9.

28. Ibid., pp. 355–64. See also Salisbury, Harrison, The New Emperors, HarperCollins, London, 1902, pp. 134, 217–19, 221. When I lived in Beijing in the early 1980s, Mao's sexual proclivities were well known and the subject of much amusement (mixed with envy), among the sons and daughters of the communist elite.

29. Dr Li quotes Mao as saying: ‘I wash myself inside the bodies of my women’. According to one of his former partners, Mao used the phrase frequently and not in the bowdlerised form given by Dr Li.

30. Li Zhisui, p. 366.

31. Ibid., pp. 292–3 and 365–69.

32. Yang, CQ, 106, p. 263.

33. The phrase is from Lenin (and Clausewitz). Mao made it one of the central themes of his essay, ‘On Protracted War’ (SW, 2, pp. 152–3) in 1938. His formulation was: ‘War is politics … Politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed.’

CHAPTER 1 A CONFUCIAN CHILDHOOD

1. Bodde, Derk, Annual Customs and Festivals in Peking, Henri Vetch, Peiping, 1936, p. 87.

2. Siao, Emi, Mao Tse-tung: His Childhood and Youth, Bombay, 1953, p. 2.

3. Dore, Henri, SJ, Recherches sur les Superstitions en Chine, vol. 1, Shanghai, 1911 [Variétés Sinologiques no. 32], pp. 8–17; Cormack, A., Chinese Births, Weddings and Deaths, Peking, 1923, pp. 2–5.

4. Pantsov and Levine, p. 13.

5. The main source of information about Mao's home life during his childhood is his own account given to Edgar Snow in the summer of 1936, when he was 42 years old (Snow, Red Star over China [rev. edn], London, Pelican Books, 1972, pp. 151–62). Secondary sources include the books by the Xiao brothers, who became Mao's close friends when he was in his early twenties (Emi Siao, Mao Tse-tung; and Siao [Xiao] Yu, Mao Tse-tung and I were Beggars, Syracuse University Press, New York, 1959). Those parts of Xiao Yu's book dealing with Mao's earliest years appear to be largely fictional. The semi-official biography by Li Rui (The Early Revolutionary Activities of Comrade Mao Tse-tung, M. E. Sharpe, White Plains, NY, 1977) in so far as it deals with Mao's childhood is based on Mao's reminiscences to Snow.

6. He also used the courtesy name Yichang (ibid., p. 12). Edgar Snow, in Red Star over China (Victor Gollancz, 1937), transliterated his father's name as Jen-sheng (in the Wade-Giles system, or Rensheng in pinyin). In the revised edition of Snow's book (Penguin, 1972, p. 152), the name Shun-sheng is added in brackets. Shunsheng appears on Mao's father's tombstone, which dates from the 1950s. The error may well have arisen because in Hunanese dialect the two characters Ren and Shun are pronounced similarly.

7. Xiangtan county was at this time among the most productive in Hunan, itself the third richest rice-growing province in China (McDonald, Angus W., Jnr, The Urban Origins of Rural Revolution, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1978, pp. 7 and 275).

8. Yang Zhongmei, Hu Yaobang: a Chinese biography, M. E. Sharpe, Armonk, New York, 1988, p. 5.

9. The house had an additional wing, comprising a further three rooms, which were occupied by the family of the labourer Mao's father employed.

10. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Chinese dollar, or yuan, fluctuated in value between 50 US cents and 1.4 US dollars, depending on the price of silver.
 On the basis of Mao's figures, the family had a cash income from farming of at least 50 silver dollars a year when they owned two-and-a-half acres of land (25 piculs of surplus rice, at 2,000 cash a picul) and, subsequently, more. In a year of shortage, when prices rose, they probably earned two to three times that amount. This was supplemented by the profits from his father's rice-trading, and interest paid on the mortgages he bought.

11. Mao came close to acknowledging this when he told Red Guard leaders in July 1968: ‘My father was bad. If he were alive today he should be [struggled against].’ (Miscellany of Mao Tse-tung Thought, pt II (JPRS-61269-2], Joint Publications Research Service, Arlington, VA, February 1974, p. 389).

12. O'Sullivan, Mortimer, ‘Report of a Journey of Exploration in Hunan from 14th December 1897 to March 1898’ Shanghai, North China Herald Office, 1898, p. 4. Other sources suggest the population was about 300,000.

13. Quan Yanchi, Mao Zedong: Man not God, Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, 1992, pp. 90–4.

14. Dr Zhisui Li in the 1960s (Private Life of Chairman Mao, pp. 77 and 103) and Edgar Snow in the 1930s both noted that he had ‘the personal habits of a peasant’ (Red Star over China, pp. 112–13). His former bodyguard, Li Yinqiao, described him as ‘a rustic’ (Quan Yanchi, p. 90).

15. Little, Archibald J., Through the Yang-tse Gorges, or Trade and Travel in Western China [3rd edn], London, 1898, pp. 167–8.

16. Li Zhisui, pp. ix, 100 and 107. Li Yinqiao confirms Mao's aversion to washing, stating that he used soap only ‘to remove grease or inkstains from his hands’ (Quan Yanchi, p. 96). See also Siao Yu, pp. 85–6, 152 and 257.

17. Quan Yanchi, p. 65; Siao Yu, p. 86; Li Zhisui, p. 103.

18. Snow, pp. 112–13.

19. Quan Yanchi, pp. 111–12.

20. In Mao's own account of his early life (Snow, pp. 151–62), it is unclear whether his age is counted by the Western or the Chinese system (which adds a year). I have assumed the former. Six is the usual age at which peasant children start helping their parents.

21. Williams, S. Wells, The Middle Kingdom [rev. edn], New York, 1883, vol. 1, p. 525.

22. Macgowan, Rev. John, Lights and Shadows of Chinese Life, Shanghai, North China Daily News and Herald Press, 1909, pp. 57–8.

23. Williams, p. 544. Smith, Arthur H., Chinese Characteristics, Shanghai, 1890, p. 386.

24. Williams, p. 542: ‘Tradesmen, mechanics and country gentlemen … put their sons into shops or counting houses to learn the routine of business with a knowledge of figures and the style of letter-writing; they are not kept at school more than three or four years, unless they mean to compete in the examinations.’

25. Snow, pp. 153–6, 159.

26. Macgowan, pp. 59–63. Smith, Chinese Characteristics, p. 220, also notes that ‘great harshness is certainly common’ among schoolteachers.

27. Snow, p. 153.

28. Emi Siao, p. 15.

29. Chinese Repository, vol. 4, Canton, July 1835, pp. 105–18.

30. Macgowan, p. 64. Chinese Repository, 4, p. 105.

31. Smith, Arthur H., The School System of China, East of Asia, vol. 3, p. 4, Shanghai, 1904.

32. Williams, 1, pp. 526–7.

33. Ibid., p. 541. Macgowan, p. 66. Justus Doolittle, Social Life of the Chinese, New York, 1865, p. 378.

34. Chinese Repository, 4, pp. 153–60, 229–43, 287–91, 344–53; 5, pp. 81–7, 305–16; 6, 185–8, 393–6, 562–8. Williams, pp. 527–41.

35. Smith, Chinese Characteristics, p. 323. Claude Cadart and Cheng Yingxiang, L'Envol du Communisme en Chine (Mémoires de Peng Shuzhi), Paris, 1983, pp. 14 and 36–7.

36. From the Three Character Classic (Chinese Repository, 4, p. 111).
 For the duration of primary schooling, see Williams, 1, p. 541; Macgowan, p. 66; Cadart and Cheng, p. 37. Mao himself recalled that by the time he left the school he was already reading Water Margin and other popular historical romances (Snow, pp. 153–6).

37. Snow, p. 153.

38. Ibid., pp. 154 and 156.

39. From Odes for Children (Chinese Repository, 4, p. 288).

40. Snow, p. 156.

41. Sanziqing, Beijing, 1979 (mimeographed), lines 258–63. This translation is based on Chinese Repository, 4, p. 110.

42. Snow, p. 156.

43. Vsevolod Holubnychy, ‘Mao Tse-tung's Materialistic Dialectics’, CQ, 19, 1964, pp. 16–17.

44. Mao did not read a Marxist book until he was 26.

45. Professor Lucian Pye has based an entire book on the premise that Mao's character and behaviour throughout his adult life were decisively influenced by his feelings of abandonment on the birth of his younger brother. The argument is cleverly pursued, but fails to explain why every other firstborn child in China, deprived of maternal affection by the appearance of a sibling, did not also turn into a revolutionary leader (Pye, Lucian W., Mao Tse-tung: The Man in the Leader, Basic Books, New York, 1976). There is in fact no evidence that Mao was more affected by his brother's birth than any other normal child.

46. ‘Mao Zedong's funeral oration in honour of his mother’ (Oct. 8,1919), in Schram, Stuart R. (ed.), Mao's Road to Power, vol. 1: The Pre-Marxist Period: 1912–1920, New York, 1992, p. 419.

47. Chinese Repository, 6, pp. 130–42.

48. Smith, Chinese Characteristics, p. 202.

49. Snow, pp. 154–5.

50. The strongest evidence for this is Mao's statement that the only way to silence his father was to ensure that he could find nothing to criticise. The same thing is hinted at elsewhere; at one point Mao refers to his father's ‘favourite accusations’ against him, implying systematic fault-finding.

51. Pantsov and Levine, pp. 25–6.

52. ‘A daughter-in-law is regarded as a servant for the whole family, which is precisely her position, and in getting a servant it is obviously desirable to get one who is strong and well-grown’ (Smith, Chinese Characteristics, p. 292).

53. Williams, p. 787.

54. Snow, p. 172. Mao himself says simply, ‘My parents … married me.’ But marriage in China at that time consisted not of a single ceremony but of a whole series of steps, starting with an exchange of horoscopes and the choice of a propitious day, and continuing with exchanges of gifts and the payment, by the bridegroom's family, of the marriage portion. The couple were considered to be married only after the bride had moved into her parents-in-law's home, where she would now live, had sipped wine with her new husband and, together with him, had kowtowed to Heaven and Earth and to the ancestral tablets (ceremonies still practised in rural China in the 1990s). According to the Shaoshan Mao shi zupu [The Chronicle of the Shaoshan Mao Clan], Quanguo tushuguan wenxian sowei fuzhi zhongxin, Beijing, 2002, Vol 7, p. 387, Mao and Luo Yigu had a son named Yuanzhi who was raised by a family named Yang. No other evidence for the existence of such a child has been found, although the name is intriguing: Yuan was the root for given names of the 21st generation of the Mao clan, to which Zedong's children belonged. After the May Fourth movement, that tradition was abandoned and Mao's sons, born in the 1920s, all received given names with the root An.

55. Snow, p. 157.

56. Oral source, Shaoshan, May 1999; Pantsov and Levine, p. 27.

57. In June 1915, Mao told Xiao Yu that he had no particular desire to return home for the summer holiday (Schram, Mao's Road, 1, p. 62); Xiao himself, commenting on this incident, wrote that Mao ‘had no warm sentimental feeling for his home’ (Mao Tse-tung and I, p. 84). His mother fell ill the following year (Schram, 1, p. 92), and apparently returned to Xiangxiang in the autumn of 1917. By August 1918, Mao was writing to his maternal uncles: ‘I am deeply grateful that my mother has lived in your house for a long time.’ She came to Changsha for medical treatment in the summer of 1919 (Ibid., pp. 174 and 317).

58. Ibid., p. 317.

59. Snow, pp. 157 and 159–60. The school, in the neighbouring county of Xiangxiang, was officially classed as an ‘upper primary school’.

60. Ibid., p. 156.

61. Ibid., pp. 160, 168, 170 and 175.

62. O'Sullivan, p. 2.

63. NCH, April 22 1910.

64. O'Sullivan, p. 7.

65. Parsons, William B., ‘Hunan: the Closed Province of China’, in National Geographic Magazine, vol. XI, New York, 1900, pp. 393–400.

66. ‘Hunan: A Record of a Six Weeks’ Trip', NCH, June 12 and 19, July 3, 10 and 17, 1891.

67. O'Sullivan, p. 2; Hillman, Lt.-Com. H.E., RN, Report on the Navigation of Tung Ting Lake and the Siang and Yuan Rivers (Upper Yangtse) with descriptions of the three principal towns, Changsha, Siangtan, Chang Teh, in the province of Hunan, China, London, HMSO, 1902, p. 17. The unanimity of early Western writers about the character of the Hunanese and the contrast with other parts of China is striking.

68. Lettres Edifiantes et Curieuses, vol. 22, Paris, 1736, pp. ix et seq.

69. NCH, April 22 1910.

70. Sir Claude Macdonald, British Minister at Beijing, to the Zongli Yamen, 19 February 1898, quoted in Little, pp. xxi–xxiv.

71. Cadart and Cheng, pp. 28 and 50.

72. Ibid., pp. 42–3; Snow, p. 161. Tongluocun in Shaoyang county in Hunan, the home village of Peng Shuzhi, later one of Mao's colleagues in the CCP Politburo in the 1920s, was smaller and more remote than Shaoshan but apparently no worse informed. Unlike Mao, Peng recalls a proclamation of the Emperor's death being posted up within weeks.

73. Schram, Stuart R., Mao Tse-tung (rev. edn), Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1967, p. 21. Mao probably obtained this book from a cousin (Schram, Road to Power, 1, p. 59).

74. A small, private electricity plant, commissioned by the provincial Governor, functioned intermittently in Changsha from 1897. Telegraph service to Xiangtan was established the same year, despite strong opposition from conservative gentry who feared the poles would disrupt the fengshui, the geomantic harmony of wind and water. The first foreign steamer, the German tug Vorwaerts, reached Xiangtan in 1900. Mao may have heard rumours of the ‘foreign fireboat’, but he cannot have seen it until he first visited the city at the age of 17. Changsha had a telephone system by 1910; the railway came seven years later. (Preston, T. J., ‘Progress and Reform in Hunan Province’, East of Asia, vol. 4, pp. 210–19, Shanghai, 1905; NCH, April 29 1910, p. 249; Hillman, p. 3; O'Sullivan, pp. 6–7.)

75. Snow, pp. 156–7 and 159.

76. Ibid., p. 156.

77. Ibid., p. 158. Mao implies that the riots (of which he gives a somewhat distorted account) took place when he was about 14, in 1908. They were in fact two years later.

78. NCH, June 10 1910, p. 616; July 1 1910, pp. 23–4; Esherick, Joseph W., Reform and Revolution in China: The 1911 Revolution in Hunan and Hubei, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1976, p. 130.

79. NCH, April 22 and 29 1910. A worker's monthly ration of 45 catties of rice then cost two silver dollars, at a time when the poorest labourers earned less than one silver dollar a month, from which they also had to feed their families.

80. Esherick, p. 126.

81. Report from Xiangtan, dated April 22, in NCH, May 6 1910. The same story was reported from Hankou (Wuhan), in NCH, April 29 1910. The best account of the riots is in Esherick, pp. 130–8. The incident involving the water-carrier's suicide is confirmed in contemporary reports from the Japanese consul in Changsha.

82. Esherick, p. 133.

83. NCH, April 29 1910.

84. NCH, May 6 1910.

85. NCH, April 29 and May 13, 1910.

86. Snow, p. 158.

87. Mao says this incident took place in Shaoshan (Ibid., pp. 158–9), but had a rebellion broken out in Mao's own small village, he would surely have described it differently. The North China Herald (June 17 and July 1 1910) reports what are apparently the same events as occurring at Huashi, in Xiangtan county, close to Liushan.

88. Snow, p. 159.

89. Ibid., p. 160.

90. Emi Siao, p. 18; and Xiao Yu, pp. 20–1.

91. Mao says simply, ‘I went to the school with my cousin and registered.’ Xiao Yu (pp. 21–6) gives a highly coloured account of Mao, arriving alone with a bundle of belongings on a carrying-pole and pleading with the headmaster to accept him, if only for a five-month trial period. A more credible explanation is that Mao arrived at the school in August 1909, when only five months of the school year remained. Mao himself says he entered the school at 16, which would date his arrival to the spring of 1910; but since, by his own account, he spent nearly two years there, it must have been earlier than that. Xiao Yu says Mao was 15 when he went there.

92. Xiao Yu's description of Mao's behaviour here has a ring of truth to it (pp. 27–30).

93. Snow, p. 161.

94. Ibid., pp. 161–2.

CHAPTER 2 REVOLUTION

1. Esherick, Reform and Revolution in China, pp. 179–82; NCH, Oct. 14 1911, p. 105.

2. Esherick, pp. 153–5.

3. NCH, Oct. 21 1911, pp. 143 and 152.

4. Ibid., p. 143; The Times, London, Oct. 15 1911.

5. NCH, Nov. 11 1911, p. 354.

6. Ibid., Oct. 28 1911, p. 227.

7. The Times, London, Oct. 14 1911.

8. NCH, Oct. 14 1911, p. 103; Oct. 21, p. 143; and Nov. 11, p. 360 (on the hunting down of Manchu women at Yichang). The seriousness with which the Throne viewed the rising is reflected in the abject imperial edict issued on October 30 (NCH, Nov. 4, p. 289) and cited in Ch. 2.

9. Siao, Emi, Mao Tse-tung: His Childhood and Youth, p. 22. Mao himself claimed that he walked all the way to Changsha (Snow, Red Star over China, p. 163).

10. Snow, p. 163.

11. For accounts of early twentieth-century Changsha, see Hume, Edward H., Doctors East, Doctors West: An American Physician's Life in China, Allen & Unwin, London, 1949; Parsons, William B., An American Engineer in China, McClure, Phillips, New York, 1900; and Hobart, Alice Tisdale, The City of the Long Sand, Macmillan, New York, 1926. Further information appears in O'Sullivan, Mortimer, ‘Journey of Exploration’, and in Stokes, Anson Phelps, A Visit to Yale in China: June 1920, Yale Foreign Missionary Society, New Haven, 1920.

12. Dr Hume says ‘jinrickshas’ arrived in Changsha only after the 1911 revolution (p. 113). According to Stokes, they were still uncommon in 1920 (p. 6).

13. Hume, p. 98.

14. Snow, p. 163.

15. Esherick, pp. 141 and 162.

16. Mao, SW3, p. 73.

17. Snow, pp. 163–4.

18. Esherick, p. 162, quoting Minli bao, Jan. 4 1911.

19. Esherick, pp. 165–8; Snow, p. 164.

20. Schram, Mao's Road, 1, pp. 405–6 (Aug. 4 1919).

21. Hume, pp. 160 and 235.

22. Esherick, pp. 199–201.

23. NCH, Oct. 14 1911, p. 105; Oct. 21, pp. 144–5 and 152.

24. On October 12 the Japanese consul in Hankou reported that the telegraph lines to Changsha were ‘cut off’ (NCH, Oct. 14 1911, p. 104). On October 14 they were still ‘badly impaired’ (NCH, Oct. 21, p. 131).

25. NCH, Nov. 4 1911, p. 295.

26. Bertram Giles, Telegram no. 22 of Oct. 16 1911, F0228/1798, Public Records Office, London.

27. Esherick, p. 200.

28. Giles, Despatch no. 44 of Nov. 2 1911, F0228/1798.

29. Snow, pp. 164–5.

30. Esherick, p. 200; Giles, Despatch no. 44; NCH, Nov. 4 1911, p. 288.

31. Snow, p. 165.

32. Giles. Despatch no. 44.

33. See also Schram, Mao Tse-tung, p. 33.

34. Giles, Despatch no. 44. NCH, Nov. 4 1911, p. 288.

35. Esherick, pp. 182–6.

36. Ibid., pp. 204–10; McCord, Edward A., The Power of the Gun: The Emergence of Modern Chinese Warlordism, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1993, pp. 74–6.

37. Esherick, pp. 58–65 and 155–7.

38. Giles, Despatch no. 44; see also Esherick, p. 209.

39. Giles, Despatch dated Nov. 17 1911, F0228/1798.

40. Snow, p. 166.

41. NCH, Nov. 4 1911, p. 289.

42. NCH, Nov. 11 1911, pp. 361–2, 364 and 366.

43. Up to the end of the first week in November, the revolutionaries had occupied Wuchang, Changsha, Xian (which fell the same day as Changsha) and Yunnan-fu. Fuzhou and Canton followed a week later.

44. NCH, Nov. 11 and 18 1911.

45. Snow, p. 166.

46. McCord, p. 120. The British consul estimated that by the end of November, 50,000 Hunanese soldiers had left Changsha for Wuchang, Shasi, Chenzhou and Sichuan, and 20,000 to 30,000 remained (Giles, Despatch no. 49 of Dec. 1 1911, F0228/1798).

47. NCH, Dec. 2 1911, p. 594.

48. Giles, Despatch no. 50 of Dec. 20 1911, FO228/1798.

49. I have assumed that Mao was attached to the 50th Regiment since, at the time he signed up, the 49th was in Hubei (Esherick, p. 238). Giles (Despatch no. 50) appears to have confused the two units.

50. Li Yuanhong, quoted in McCord, p. 135.

51. Emi Siao, p. 28.

52. McCord, p. 135.

53. This and the following section are drawn from Snow, p. 166.

54. NCH, Feb. 24, p. 506, and May 18 1912, p. 467.

55. Giles, Despatch no. 50.

56. Hume, p. 165.

57. NCH, Jan. 13 1912, p. 105.

58. NCH, Feb. 17 1912, p. 441; Snow, p. 167.

59. McCord, pp. 119–20; McDonald, Urban Origins, pp. 22–3.

60. Snow, p. 167.

CHAPTER 3 LORDS OF MISRULE

1. Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung (SW), vol. 4, Beijing, 1967, p. 412.

2. Esherick, Reform and Revolution, pp. 237–49.

3. NCH, Dec. 30 1911, p. 872.

4. Hume, Doctors East, Doctors West, pp. 159 and 165–6.

5. NCH, Dec. 30 1911, p. 872; Jan. 20 1912, p. 173.

6. This and the following section are drawn from Snow, Red Star over China, pp. 167–70. Mao told Snow he entered the Normal School in 1912 (p. 174), but in this, as in many other cases, he is a year out.

7. Ibid., p. 162.

8. Li Rui, Early Revolutionary Activities, p. 8; Snow, p. 169.

9. Miscellany of Mao Tse-tung Thought, pt II, pp. 496–7.

10. Often translated as the General Mirror for Aid in Government. See de Bary, Theodore (ed.), Sources of Chinese Tradition, Columbia University Press, New York, 1960, pp. 493–5.

11. Mémoires concernant I'Histoire … des Chinois, Tome 1, Paris, 1776, p. 86.

12. Snow, p. 166.

13. Scalapino, Robert A., and Yu, George T., The Chinese Anarchist Movement, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1961, p. 38; Dirlik, Arif, Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1991, pp. 121–3.

14. Snow, p. 170.

15. Schram, Mao's Road, 1, pp. 9n and 487–8.

16. Snow, p. 171.

17. Schram, l, pp. 175–313 (Winter 1917).

18. Ibid., pp. 5–6 (June 1912).

19. Ibid., p. 63 (June 25 1915).

20. Ibid., p. 139 (Sept. 23 1917).

21. Ibid., p. 132 (Aug. 23 1917).

22. Ibid., p. 66 (Summer 1915).

23. Ibid., p. 67 (July 1915).

24. Ibid., pp. 61–65 (May and June 1915).

25. Ibid., p. 103 (July 25 1916).

26. Ibid., p. 113 (April 1 1917).

27. Ibid., pp. 121 and 124 (April 1 1917).

28. Ibid., pp. 117 and 120 (April 1 1917).

29. Ibid., pp. 133–4 (Aug. 23 1917).

30. Ibid., p. 138 (Sept. 16 1917).

31. Ibid., pp. 201; 204–5, 208, 251 and 273 (Winter 1917). [See also pp. 280–1.] These remarks have been conflated from a much broader body of text because Mao repeatedly returned to the same idea from different viewpoints at different points in his notes.

32. Ibid., p. 310 (Winter 1917).

33. Ibid., p. 77 (Sept. 6 1915).

34. Ibid., pp. 263–4 (Winter 1917).

35. Ibid., p. 118 (April 1 1917).

36. Ibid., p. 69 (July 1915).

37. Ibid., pp. 237–8 and 247 (Winter 1917).

38. Ibid., p. 130 (Aug. 23 1917).

39. Ibid., p. 62 (June 25 1915).

40. Ibid., pp. 77–9 (Sept. 6 1915).

41. Ibid., pp. 128–9 (Summer 1917).

42. Ibid.,p. 132 (Aug. 23 1917).

43. Ibid., p. 249 (Winter 1917).

44. Ibid., p. 139 (Sept. 23 1917).

45. The term ‘Xinhai’, like all cyclical year-names, is not normally translated. ‘Xin’ is the eighth of the celestial stems, whose affinity is iron; ‘hai’ is the tenth of the twelve terrestrial branches represented by zodiacal animals and denotes the Year of the Pig.

46. Snow, p. 169.

47. See NCH, May 8 1915, p. 422; June 5, p. 715.

48. Li Rui, p. 25.

49. Ibid., p. 50; Schram, 1, p. 85 (Winter 1915).

50. McDonald, Urban Origins, pp. 26–8. For the mutiny, see also NCH, May 20 and 27 1916; on Tang's disguise, NCH, Sept. 23, p. 617, and Hume, p. 241; on the blood-letting, North China Daily News, Shanghai, July 20 and 21 1916. The same newspaper reported in a despatch dated July 29 that ‘the situation in Hunan has improved’ (July 31).

51. Schram, 1, pp. 92 (June 24), 93 (June 26) and 7 (July 18 1916).

52. Hume, pp. 238–40.

53. McDonald (p. 25) says this took place in ‘the long-disused Provincial Examination hall’. The hall had been demolished years earlier, and new buildings belonging to the Hunan Education Association erected in their place (Hume, p. 160).

54. Li Rui, p. 47. McCord (Power of the Gun, p. 196, n. 125) quotes two Chinese sources as giving figures of 15,000 and 16,000 deaths. Mao (Schram, 1, p. 95) says ‘well over 10,000’.

55. The Shanghai newspaper, Shibao, called Hunan 'a world of terror’ (March 14 1914, quoted in McCord, p. 198, n. 136). Hume (p. 240) said Tang's rule was ‘a reign of terror’. Hunan members of parliament telegraphed President Li Yuanhong after Tang's fall with ‘a very powerful, indeed shocking, indictment’ of his ‘rule with an iron hand’ (North China Daily News, 15 July 1916), and subsequently impeached him (Shibao, Nov. 29 1916).

56. NCH, May 15 1915, p. 449.

57. McCord, pp. 193 and 195–8; see also NCH, Sept. 23 1916, p. 616. The quotation beginning ‘Detectives are everywhere’ is from Shibao, July 31 1914.

58. Li Rui, p. 47.

59. Schram, 1, pp. 94–8 (July 18 1916).

60. Ibid., p. 95.

61. Ibid., p. 6 (June 1912).

62. Ibid., pp. 100–1 (July 25 1916).

63. In 1917, Mao wrote: ‘Those that can be called men today are three in number: Yuan Shikai, Sun Yat-sen and Kang Youwei’ (ibid., p. 131; see also p. 76 [Sept. 6 1915]).

64. In his marginal notes on System der Ethik (ibid., Winter 1917, p. 276), Mao wrote Yuan's name against Paulsen's line: ‘What makes a tyrant a tyrant is that … he seeks only pleasure and power.’ By September 1920, Mao was speaking of ‘Bandit Yuan’ and ‘Butcher Tang’ (ibid., p. 552, Sept. 6–7 1920; see also p. 529, n. 14).

65. Ibid., p. 141, n. l (September 1917).

66. Siao Yu, Mao Tse-tung and I, pp. 37–40.

67. Schram, 1, p. 63 (June 25 1915).

68. Mao told Edgar Snow he inserted it as an advertisement in a Changsha newspaper (Red Star, p. 172). He told friends at the time he had merely ‘posted [it] in several schools’ (Schram, Mao's Road, 1, pp. 81–2 and 84); Snow, p. 172.

69. Li Rui, p. 74; Schram, 1, p. 81 (Sept. 27 1915).

70. This is a quotation from the Shi jing, the Book of Poetry.

71. Snow, p. 172.

72. Li explained later that when he had first met Mao, he had just arrived in Changsha from his village. Mao seemed so well-educated that he felt completely inadequate (Pantsov and Levine, p. 48).

73. Mao wrote that autumn that ‘five or six people responded’ (Schram, 1, p. 84, Nov. 9 1915).

74. Snow, p. 172.

75. Li Rui, p. 29.

76. Snow, p. 173.

77. Schram, 1, p. 69 (July 1915).

78. Ibid., p. 60 (April 5 1915).

79. Beijing daxue yuekan, Jan. 28 1920.

80. Schram, 1, pp. 72 (August) and 84 (Nov. 9 1915).

81. Li Rui, pp. 44–6.

82. Schram, 1, pp. 73–4 (August 1915).

83. Siao Yu, p. 36.

84. Li Rui, pp. 41–2. Snow (p. 175) quotes Mao as saying he spent 160 dollars while at the Normal School (actually in the six-and-a-half years from 1912 to 1918, since he specifically includes the period when he paid his ‘numerous registration fees’).

85. Snow, Ibid. Li Rui, p. 23.

86. See Schram 1, pp. 9–56 (Oct.–Dec. 1913); pp. 141–2 (September 1917) and pp. 175–310 (Winter 1917).

87. Snow, p. 170; see also Schram, 1, p. 62 (June 25 1915).

88. Schram, 1, p. 62 (June 25 1915).

89. Ibid., p. 84 (Nov.9 1915).

90. Ibid., p. 85 (Winter 1915).

91. Ibid., p. 105 (July 25 1916).

92. Ibid., p. 130 (Aug. 23 1917).

93. Li Rui, pp. 52–3.

94. Schram, 1, p. 129 (Summer 1917).

95. Mao told Edgar Snow that he got the idea for this trip, which took them through five counties, from an article in the Minbao (Snow, p. 171; see also Siao Yu, pp. 96–202). Despite Mao's assertion that ‘peasants fed us and gave us a place to sleep’, their contacts were almost entirely with local gentry, merchants and officials.

96. Schram, 1, p. 159 (1917).

97. Ibid., pp. 106 and 131 (Dec. 9 1916 and Aug. 23 1917).

98. Ibid., p. 135 (Aug. 23 1917).

99. This election was apparently separate from the ‘Student of the Year’ contest which took place in June (ibid., p. 145, Nov. 1917). Mao became ‘General Affairs Officer’ of the society, which made him its de facto head under the nominal responsibility of the school proctor (ibid., p. 143n; Li Rui, pp. 54–5).

100. Schram, 1, p. 145 (Nov. 1917).

101. Ibid., pp. 145–6.

102. Ibid., p. 68 (July 1915).

103. Ibid., p. 235 (Winter 1917).

104. Ibid., p. 115 (April 1917).

105. Ibid., p. 157 (Winter 1917).

106. 85 people attended the first day's classes, of whom 30 per cent were adolescents (ibid., pp. 152–3, November 1917).

107. Ibid., pp. 143–56. Even so progressive a publication as New Youth did not switch completely to the vernacular until January 1918.

108. Ibid., p. 142. In planning the evening-school courses, Mao stressed that the history lessons, which he taught himself, should try to inculcate ‘patriotic spirit’ (p. 149).

109. McCord, pp. 245–56; NCH, Sept. 15 1917, p. 594; Oct. 20, p. 85.

110. McCord, pp. 256–7. See also NCH, Oct. 6 pp. 17–18, Oct. 13, pp. 72 and 85–6; Oct. 20, pp. 152–3; Nov. 3, pp. 253–4 and 272–3.

111. Schram, l, p. 144 (Oct. 30 1917).

112. McCord, pp. 257–9; NCH, Nov. 10 1917, pp. 333–4; Nov. 24, p. 463; Dec. 1, pp. 518–20.

113. Li Rui, pp. 48 and 50–1; Schram, Mao Tse-tung, p. 43.

114. Schram, Mao's Road, 1, p. 19, n. 52.

115. Snow, pp. 169–70. In a letter to Xiao Yu during the unrest in July 1916, Mao wrote, ‘I was in Xiangtan and too timid to venture to the capital, so I waited for the reports of friends before making the trip. I was truly frightened.’ (Schram, 1, p. 97).

116. Li Rui, p. 48.

117. McCord, pp. 259–63.

118. NCH, April 6 1918, p. 21; April 13, pp. 78–9.

119. Hume, p. 260.

120. NCH, April 13 1918, p. 80.

121. NCH, April 20 1918, p. 137.

122. Ibid., NCH, April 13 1918, p. 79.

123. NCH, May 25 1918 pp. 452–3; McDonald, pp. 31–2.

124. NCH, June 1 1918, pp. 501–2.

125. McCord, pp. 263–4 and 284.

126. Li Rui, pp. 48–9 and 59; Schram, 1, pp. 167–8 (May 29 1918).

127. NCH, May 18 1918, pp. 398–9.

128. Ibid., Sept. 14 1918, p. 626.

129. Li Rui, p. 85.

130. Schram, 1, p. 136 (Aug. 23 1917). Although this was written nine months before Mao graduated, evidently nothing had happened in the interim to change it.

131. Li Rui, pp. 85–6.

132. Li Rui, pp. 75–6. Mao told Edgar Snow (Red Star, p. 173) that the society was set up in 1917, but this appears to be yet another example of his faulty chronology. Xiao Yu's claim that he was elected secretary is indirectly confirmed by Li Rui, who writes that Mao ‘modestly declined’ the post but omits to say who was appointed instead (Xiao having become in the 1950s a non-person in China). Mao, according to Li, was deputy secretary. See Schram, 1, pp. 81–2 and 164, n.l; Siao Yu, pp. 71–6.

133. Letter from Luo Xuezan to his grandfather (summer 1918), displayed at the ‘Centenary of Mao's Birth’ exhibition, Natural History Museum, Beijing, December 1993.

134. See Li Rui, p. 76.

135. Schram, 1, p. 152 (November 9 1917).

136. In August 1917, for instance, Mao wrote that Confucian good deeds such as building bridges and repairing roads were ‘laudable’; in 1918, that they had ‘no value at all’ (Ibid., pp. 135 and 211).

137. Ibid., p. 208 (Winter 1917).

138. Ibid., p. 208 (Winter 1917).

139. Ibid., p. 132 (Aug. 23 1917).

140. Ibid., pp. 249–50 and 306.

141. Ibid., pp. 131–2 (Aug. 23 1917).

142. Ibid., p. 164, n.l.

143. Li Rui, p. 87.

144. Schram, 1, p. 174 (August 1918).

CHAPTER 4 A FERMENT OF ‘ISMS’

1. Schram, Mao's Road, 1, p. 83 (Nov. 9 1915).

2. Ibid., pp. 172–3 (Aug. 11 1918). See also Siao Yu, Mao Tse-tung and I, pp. 215–16; and Smedley, Battle Hymn of China, p. 123.

3. Snow, Red Star over China, p. 176. See also Li Rui, Early Revolutionary Activities, p. 85.

4. Snow, p. 176; Siao Yu, p. 210.

5. Schram, 1, p. 317 (April 28 1919).

6. Snow, p. 176.

7. Schram, Mao Tse-tung, p. 48.

8. Snow, p. 176.

9. Snow, pp. 176–7; Siao Yu, p. 210. See also Kates, George, The Years That Were Fat, Harper, New York, 1952, pp. 20–2; and Strand, David, Rickshaw Beijing, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1989, pp. 29–30.

10. Snow, p. 177. See also Li Rui, p. 95.

11. Pantsov and Levine, p. 62.

12. Snow, pp. 179–80.

13. Pantsov and Levine, p. 63.

14. Schram, Mao's Road to Power, 1, p. 329 (July 14 1919).

15. Li Rui, p. 93.

16. Snow, p. 177.

17. Ibid., p. 174.

18. Dirlik, Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution, pp. 135–6; Wakeman, Frederic, Jnr, History and Will, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1973, pp. 115–36.

19. Schram, 1, p. 135 (Aug. 23 1917).

20. Ibid., pp. 237–9 (Winter 1917).

21. See Wakeman, pp. 140–6.

22. Ibid., pp. 15–52 (Liang Qichao); pp. 156–7 (liberalism); pp. 238–43, 251 and 257 (Wang Yangming); pp. 82–5 (Wang Fuzhi). See also Li Rui, pp. 17–19 and 24–7.

23. Mao's acceptance and subsequent rejection of Kang Youwei's utopianism in the autumn and winter of 1917 are one example; his views on immortality are another. Having written in December 1916: ‘ [it is] the amount of one's achievement which is really immortal’ (ibid., p. 107), a year later he condemned as ‘stupid’ the idea of trying to leave behind a reputation (ibid., p. 240; see also p. 253).

24. Schram, 1, p. 130.

25. Several articles appeared in the first two issues of Laodong (labour), in March and April 1918 (Luk, Michael Y. M., The Origins of Chinese Bolshevism, Oxford University Press, 1990, pp. 18–19). See also Dirlik, Arif, The Origins of Chinese Communism, Oxford University Press, 1989, pp. 26–8. Li Dazhao published a comparison of the French and Russian revolutions in New Youth in July 1918, but it was less specific and drew less attention than his November article.

26. de Bary, Sources of Chinese Tradition, pp. 863–5. Li, like many of his contemporaries, among them the editor of Chenbao, Chen Puxian, who played a key role in popularising Marxist texts, had studied in Japan and initially obtained most of his knowledge of Marxism from Japanese publications (see Ishikawa Yoshihiro, The Formation of the Chinese Communist Party, Columbia University Press, New York, 2012).

27. Dirlik, Anarchism, pp. 176–7. See also Scalapino and Yu, The Chinese Anarchist Movement; and Zarrow, Peter, Anarchism and Chinese Political Culture, Columbia University Press, New York, 1990.

28. de Bary, pp. 864–5.

29. Dirlik, Anarchism, pp. 172–5; Chow Tse-tung, The May Fourth Movement: Intellectual Revolution in Modern China, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1960, p. 97. See also Li Rui, p. 96. The ‘Society of Cocks Crowing in the Dark’ was founded in 1912. Although Liu Shifu died in 1915, his supporters remained active until 1922; it was they who started the magazine Laodong in the spring of 1918.

30. Scalapino and Yu, p. 40.

31. Snow, p. 177.

32. Schram, 1, p. 380 (July 21 1919).

33. Strand, pp. 1–46; LaMotte, Ellen N., Peking Dust, Century Publishing, New York, 1919, pp. 16–21; Franck, Harry, Wandering in North China, Century, New York, 1923, pp. 196–203. George Kates, in The Years That Were Fat, describes the city in the early 1930s, but in most respects it was little changed.

34. Strand, p. 42.

35. Kates, p. 87.

36. Snow, pp. 177–8.

37. Schram, 1, p. 93 (June 26 1916).

38. Ibid., p. 9.

39. By his own account, Mao left Beijing on March 14 and arrived in Shanghai two days later. He reached Changsha on April 6 (ibid., p. 317). The steamer taking his friends to France reportedly left on March 19 (Li Rui, p. 97), so it is possible that, after leaving Shanghai, Mao stopped for a few days in Nanjing. However, most of the places he told Edgar Snow he saw during this trip (pp. 178–9), he actually visited a year later. See also Zhong Wenxian, Mao Zedong: Biography, Assessment, Reminiscences, Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, 1986, p. 41n.

40. Zhong Wenxian, p. 234.

41. Schram, 1, p. 174 (August 1918).

42. Ibid., p. 317 (April 28 1919).

43. Ibid., p. 504 (March 14 1920).

44. Snow, p. 175.

45. Li Rui, p. 97.

46. The best account of the May Fourth Incident and the events that led up to it is in Chow Tse-tung, pp. 84–116. See also NCH, May 10 1919, pp. 345–9 and May 17, pp. 413–19.

47. Kiang Wen-han, The Chinese Student Movement, New Republic Press, New York, 1948, p. 36.

48. Chow Tse-tung, pp. 107–8.

49. NCH, May 10 1919, p. 348.

50. Chow Tse-tung, p. 108 (translation amended).

51. The following account is drawn from NCH, May 10 1919, pp. 348–9; Chow Tse-tung, pp. 111–15; and Dirlik, Anarchism, pp. 148–9. Westerners in China had grave misgivings about Japan's ambitions, which they saw as a threat to their own interests (NCH, May 17, pp. 418–9).

52. McDonald, Urban Origins, p. 97.

53. 30,000 demonstrated in Jinan; 20,000 in Shanghai; ‘more than 5,000’ in Nanjing; 4,000 in Hangzhou (NCH, May 17 1919, pp. 413–14; Chow Tse-tung, p. 130). According to a Russian account (Deliusin, Lev, ed., Dvizhenie 4 maia 1919 goda v Kitae: Dokumenty i materialy, Izdatelstvo Nauka, Moscow, 1969, p. 107), ‘several thousand’ people demonstrated at Changsha.

54. McDonald, pp. 97–103, and Li Rui, pp. 103–4. See also NCH, May 17 1919, pp. 415–7; May 24, p. 507.

55. NCH, June 28 1919, p. 837. See also NCH, June 21, p. 765.

56. Pantsov and Levine, p. 71.

57. Siao, Emi, Mao Tse-tung: His Childhood and Youth, pp. 69–70.

58. Mao barely mentions either problem in the Xiang River Review. A year later, he would write that movements like the boycott were ‘only expedient measures in response to the current situation’, and that China's real needs went ‘way beyond’ such conjunctural concerns (Schram, 1, p. 611, Nov. 1920).

59. McDonald, pp. 103–4; Li Rui, pp. 104–5.

60. Schram, 1, pp. 318–20 (July 14 1919).

61. Ibid., pp. 378–89 (July 21, 28 and Aug. 4 1919).

62. Chow Tse-tung, pp. 178–82; McDonald, p. 105.

63. Li Rui, p. xxix.

64. Xin chao, vol. 2, no. 4, p. 849 (May 1 1920); See Schram, Stuart R., The Political Thought of Mao Tse-tung, Pall Mall Press, London, 1963, p. 104.

65. Schram, Mao's Road, 1, p. 372 (‘moving inexorably eastward’ and ‘whether or not to retain the nation’); p. 319 (‘oppression’); pp. 379–80 (‘classes of the wise and ignorant’).

66. Ibid., pp. 234–5: ‘Where the river emerges from the Tong pass, because Mount Hua is an obstacle to it, the force of the rushing water is much greater … Great power faces great obstacles, and great obstacles face great powers.’

67. Ibid., p. 367 (July 21 1919). See also pp. 357–66 (July 21); pp. 334, 337–8 and 343 (July 14).

68. Ibid., p. 392 (July 28 1919).

69. Li Rui, pp. 125–6.

70. McDonald, p. 106.

71. Schram, I, pp. 396–8 (July 30 1919).

72. Ibid., p. 377 (July 21 1919).

73. Li Rui, p. 116.

74. Schram, 1, p. 479 (Jan. 19 1920); see also McDonald, p. 106.

75. Schram, 1, p. 418 (Sept. 1919); see also pp. 414–15 (Sept. 5).

76. Ibid., p. 383 (July 28 1919).

77. Ibid., pp. 421–49 (Nov. 16–28 1919), esp. pp. 421–2 (‘darkness of the social system’); pp. 434–8 (‘shattered jade’ and ‘act of courage’).

78. Ibid., p. 428 (Nov. 21 1919).

79. Ibid., pp. 611–12 (Nov. 1920).

80. McDonald, pp. 108–9; NCH, Dec. 20 1919; Li Rui, p. 127.

81. NCH, Oct. 25, pp. 215–16.

82. Ibid., Oct. 4 1919.

83. Ibid., Nov. 22 1919, pp. 482–3.

84. McDonald, pp. 110–12; Li Rui, pp. 127–9.

85. Snow, p. 179; Schram, 1, p. 457 (Dec. 24 1919).

86. Schram, 1, pp. 457–9, 463–5 and 469–71 (Dec. 24 and 31 1919, Jan. 4 1920).

87. Ibid., pp. 457–90 and 496–7 (Dec. 24 1919 to Feb. 28 1920).

88. McDonald, pp. 112–13.

89. Mao initially planned to leave at the end of February (Schram, 1, p. 4 94, Feb. 19 1920), then put it off until March and finally set out in April.

90. NCH, May 29 1919, p. 509, and June 12, p. 649 (Wu Peifu's departure); June 19, p. 708 (million dollars); June 26, p. 774 (munitions dump and ‘greatest day of rejoicing’).

91. Schram, 1, pp. 407–13 (Sept. 1 1919).

92. Meisner, Maurice, Li Ta-chao and the Origins of Chinese Marxism, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1967, pp. 90–5 and 280, n. 2. Dirlik suggests that the first part of the article, although dated May 1919, was not published until September (Origins of Communism, p. 47), in which case Mao could not have read it until after the founding of the ‘Problem Study Society’.

93. Ibid., pp. 432–3 (Nov. 21 1919).

94. Ibid., pp. 453–4 (Dec. 1 1919).

95. Chow, pp. 209–14. The: ‘Karakhan Declaration’, setting out this policy, was issued on July 25 1919, and published in Soviet newspapers three weeks later. But it was not officially confirmed in Beijing until March 21 1920.

96. Snow, p. 181, and Schram, 1, pp. 493–518 passim. Ibid., p. 506, March 14 1920 (‘number-one civilised country’); p. 494, Feb. 19 1920 (talked to Li Dazhao); p. 518, June 7 1920 (to learn Russian); pp. 504–7 (deeply ambivalent … ‘our craving for it’) and pp. 494, 506–7 and 518 (resolved his dilemma).

97. According to Luo Zhanglong, a mimeographed translation circulated at Beijing University before the published version became available and it was this text that Mao saw (Ishikawa, p. 54). He left Beijing on April 11 and reached Shanghai on May 5 (Nianpu, 1, p. 57).

98. Snow, pp. 180 and 182–3.

99. History of the Chinese Communist Party: A Chronology of Events (1919–1990), Party History Research Centre, Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, 1991, pp. 6–7. The timing of the formation of the different provincial communist groups in 1920 and 1921 has been the source of endless scholarly debate both within China and outside. Their existence was secret, the few contemporary Chinese, Russian and Japanese documents are often contradictory and the memoir literature is not always reliable. Ishikawa argues persuasively that after the formation of the Beijing ‘Marxist Study Society’ in March 1920, a ‘Socialist Study Society’ of the same type was founded in Shanghai in May and provided the core of the ‘communist group’ which Chen Duxiu and Li Hanjun created a month later. Communist groups were formed in Beijing by Li Dazhao and Zhang Guotao in October, and in Canton by Tan Pingshan and Wuhan by Dong Biwu in November. In Beijing and Shanghai, the ‘communist groups’ included a majority of anarchists, who, at that time, were also considered socialists. In Canton a violent dispute broke out between the communist and anarchist members which ended only when the anarchists left and the group was refounded in March 1921 with a purely communist membership. A Socialist Youth League, intended to serve as a more broadly based united front organization, was launched after a meeting of progressive groups held in Beijing on August 17 1920, with branches opening there and in Shanghai the same month, and in Tianjin and Canton in November (Ishikawa, pp. 151–215).

100. Schram, 1, pp. 450–6 (Dec. 1 1919). See also pp. 458–500 (March 5 1920).

101. Luk, pp. 30–1. See also Chow Tse-tung, pp. 190–1 and Schram, 1, p. 518 (June 7 1920). Mao's friends, Deng Zhongxia and Luo Zhanglong, participated in the ‘Morning Garden’ community, founded by Beijing University students in the autumn of 1919. It collapsed early in 1920 (see Schram, 1, p. 494, Feb. 19 1920).

102. Ibid., p. 494 and p. 506 (March 14 1920); Womack, Brantly, The Foundations of Mao Zedong's Political Thought, 1917–35, University Press of Hawaii, Honolulu, 1982, pp. 25–6; Li Rui, pp. 170–1.

103. Schram, 1, p. 519, June 7 1920.

104. Snow, p. 181.

105. Schram, 1, p. 505 (March 14 1920).

106. Ibid., pp. 518–9 (June 7 1920).

107. Ibid., p. 505.

108. Schram, 1, pp. 534–5, July 31 1920; pp. 583–7, Oct. 22 1920 and pp. 589–91, Nov. 10 1920; and Womack, p. 25.

109. Snow, pp. 178–9.

110. Schram, 1, p. 501 (March 12 1920).

111. Ibid., pp. 510–11 (April 1 1920) and 523 (June 11). For Peng Huang's role see p. 503 (March 12).

112. Ibid., pp. 526–30 (June 23 1920).

113. lbid., p. 543 (Sept. 3 1920); Nianpu, l, p. 82.

114. McDonald, Angus W., Jnr, ‘Mao Tse-tung and the Hunan Self-government Movement’, CQ, 68, April 1976, pp. 753–4.

115. Schram, 1, pp. 543–53, Sept, 3, 5 and 6–7, and p. 580, Oct. 10 1920.

116. McDonald, pp. 754–5; Schram, 1, pp. 559 (Sept. 27), 565–71 (Oct. 5–6); pp. 573–4 (Oct. 8 1920).

117. Schram, 1, p. 572 (Oct. 7 1920) and 577–8 (Oct 10 1920); McDonald, p. 765.

118. McDonald, p. 765; NCH, Oct. 23 1920, p. 223.

119. NCH, Nov. 6 1920, pp. 387–8.

120. Schram, 1, pp. 544 (Sept. 3), 546 (Sept. 5), 556 (Sept. 26), 558 (Sept. 27), 561–2 (Sept. 30), 572 (Oct. 7) and 578 (Oct. 10).

121. McDonald, pp. 765–6; Li Rui, p. 144.

122. Li Rui, pp. 145–6; McCord, pp. 301–2; McDonald, p. 767.

123. Schram, 1, p. 562 (Sept. 30 1920).

124. Ibid., p. 595 (Nov. 25 1920).

125. Ibid., pp. 608 and 610 (November 1920).

126. Schram, 1, pp. 491–2, Feb. 19 1920 (‘dedicated group’); pp. 505–6, March 14 1920 (common goals); 2, p. 26, Winter 1920 (‘vain glory’); 1, p. 612, Nov 1920 (‘political stage’); p. 524, May 16 1920 (‘overthrow and sweep away’) and p. 556, Sept. 20 1920 (an ‘ism’ required).

127. Ibid., 1, p. 600 (Nov. 25 1920).

128. Ibid., 2, p. 29, Winter 1920 (‘sixteen members’); pp. 5–14, Dec. 1 1920 (Montargis). Li Rui says fourteen members attended (pp. 149–50).

129. Schram, 2, p. 7 (Dec. 1 1920).

130. Van de Ven, Hans J, From Friend to Comrade: The Founding of the Chinese Communist Party, 1920–27, University of California Press, 1991, pp. 21 & 59.

131. Schram, 1, pp. 554–5, Sept, 23 1920. The Society's Executive Director was Jiang Jihuan, a liberal Hunanese politician who had been the first governor of Changsha after the 1911 Revolution and later served as the province's finance minister. Jiang helped to finance the Cultural Book Society.

132. Peng Shuzhi says there were sixteen Hunanese students (Cadart and Cheng, L'Envol du Communisme en Chine, p. 196), but some of these, like Liu Shaoqi, were in Shanghai already.

133. Cadart and Cheng, pp. 153–62. He Minfan's role is contentious. He contributed to the Cultural Book Society in November 1920 and January 1921 (Schram, 2, pp. 49 and 58), and in March 1921 played a leading role in the China-Korea Mutual Aid Society of Changsha, which Mao and others set up to support the Korean struggle for independence from Japan (Nianpu, 1, p. 82). Peng Shuzhi, who detested Mao, described He Minfan as Chen Duxiu's main interlocutor in Changsha. However, Zhang Guotao (Chang Kuo-t'ao), an equally hostile source, says Chen wrote directly to Mao to encourage him to establish the Changsha group (The Rise of the Chinese Communist Party, University Press of Kansas, KC, 1971, vol, 1 p. 129). Since Mao had been in contact with Chen since 1918, had spent time working with him in Shanghai and was well known as a New Youth contributor and as editor of the Xiang River Review, this seems much more likely. Chen may, however, as Peng claims, have asked He Minfan to recruit students to go to Russia. The Russia Study Society, the Wang Fuzhi Society and the Wang Fuzhi Academy were all closely linked.

134. Schram, 1, p. 594, Nov. 21 1920. In November, Chen sent Mao copies of the Youth League's regulations. On December 2 Mao told one of his former students, Zhang Wenliang, that Chen would come to Changsha later that month to inaugurate the League, but in the event the visit did not take place (Ishikawa, p. 192).

135. Schram, 2, p. 9 (Dec. 1 1920). Hans Van de Ven gives a totally different translation of this passage (p. 52).

136. Schram, 2, pp. 62 and 68 (Jan. 1–2 1921).

137. Ibid., pp. 8–11 (Dec. 1 1920).

138. Ibid., pp. 59–71 (Jan. 1–2 1921).

139. Nianpu, l, pp. 73, 75 and 79. There has been much debate over whether a Changsha ‘communist group’, separate from the Youth League and the Marxist Study Circle, was ever formally constituted. Chen wrote to Mao in November 1920 proposing that he establish such a group, but the evidence for its existence comes mainly from memoirs (Zhang Guotao, 1, pp. 130–1; Cadart and Cheng, pp. 155–6), and from the fact that Mao and He Shuheng attended the First Congress in July 1921 as Hunan representatives. However, two delegates from Jinan took part in the Congress even though that province had no formally constituted ‘communist group’, so the same could have been true of Hunan (Ishikawa, pp. 192–4; see also Nianpu, p. 86; Saich, Rise to Power, p. 14). Perhaps the most one can say is that Mao and He Shuheng regarded themselves as representing the Hunan ‘communist group’, whether or not such a body had been formally established.

140. Saich, pp. 11–13.

141. Schram, 2, pp. 35–6 (Jan. 21 1921).

142. Snow, p. 178.

143. Li Rui, p. 134.

144. Nianpu, p. 67 and 76.

145. Dirlik, Anarchism, p. 120 and Scalapino and Yu, pp. 37–8 (Six Noes Society); Schram, 2, p. 20 (New People's Study Society).

146. Schram, 1, pp. 64 (June 25 1915), 256 and 263–4 (Winter 1917).

147. Snow, p. 181.

148. Siao Yu, p. 51.

149. Schram, 1, pp. 445–6 (Nov. 28 1919).

150. Ibid., p. 491; Schram, Mao's Road to Power, 2, p. 25 n. 22; Siao Yu, pp. 52–3. See also Pantsov and Levine, who write that their affair started in the autumn of 1919 and ended in the late summer of 1920 (p. 77). Schram suggests that they parted because of ‘ideological differences’ as Tao Yi did not approve of communism. But while that was certainly true later in her life, in January 1921 Tao Yi voted in favour of the New People's Study Society adopting bolshevism as its guiding philosophy. Moreover in the summer of 1920 Mao still had strong reservations about communism. It appears therefore that they split for other, probably more personal reasons. They apparently remained close, which subsequently became a cause for jealousy on the part of Yang Kaihui.

151. Li Rui, p. 164.

152. Pantsov and Levine, pp. 96–7.

153. Schram, 1, pp. 608–9 (Nov. 26 1920).

154. Ibid., pp. 443–4 (Nov. 27 1919).

155. Nianpu, 1, p. 88.

CHAPTER 5 THE COMINTERN TAKES CHARGE

1. Zhang Guotao, Rise of the Chinese Communist Party, 1, p. 139.

2. Saich, Tony, The Origins of the First United Front in China: The Role of Sneevliet (Alias Maring), E. J. Brill, Leiden, 1991, 1, pp. 31–3.

3. By far the best description of the city in the 1920s is to be found in Harriet Sergeant's splendid book, Shanghai (Crown Publishers, New York, 1990).

4. The notice actually stated: ‘The gardens are reserved for the foreign community’. Several sentences lower down, it added: ‘Dogs and bicycles are not admitted.’

5. Saich, Origins, 1, p. 35.

6. Ibid., 1, pp. xxv, 21, 254 and 263–5.

7. Ibid., 1, pp. 43–7 and 52; Dirlik, Origins of Chinese Communism, pp. 191–5; Saich, Rise to Power, p. 25. Ishikawa, Formation, pp. 88–94. Peng Shuzhi quotes a detailed account by Li Dazhao of a visit to Beijing by a Russian emissary named V. L. Khokhlovkin (Hohonovkine in French, transcribed from the Chinese, Hehenuofujin), who had grown up in Harbin and was a fluent Chinese speaker (Cadart and Cheng, L'Envol du Communisme en Chine, pp. 162–5). Ishikawa (pp. 121–2) questions the dating of the visit on the basis of a report by the Eastern People's Section of the Siberian Bureau, of which Khokhlovkin headed the Chinese division, stating that he was sent to Shanghai to take money and instructions to Voitinsky that autumn (Problemy Dal'nego Vostoka, Moscow, No. 5, 2014, pp. 97–111). However, the Eastern People's Section was not established until August 1920, and the fact that Khokhlovkin travelled to Shanghai later that year does not preclude an earlier visit on behalf of the Far Eastern Bureau, to which Voitinsky belonged. There is independent confirmation that in January 1920 Li and Chen Duxiu discussed the possibility of establishing a communist party (Dirlik, pp. 195 and 293, n. 14). Other Russian envoys active in China that year included: Titov, a graduate of the Eastern Institute in Vladivostok (reportedly a specialist in Japanese affairs), and B. I. Serebryakov, who later became an expert on Korean communism, both of whom accompanied Voitinsky to Shanghai; A. A. Ivanov and Sergei A. Polevoi, two Russian teachers at Beijing University (Polevoi later fled to the United States after being accused of embezzling Comintern funds); and V. D. Vilensky-Sibiryakov, Voitinsky's immediate superior in Vladivostok, who visited Beijing in the summer. Voitinsky's cover in China was as a journalist for the Far Eastern Republic's Dalta News Agency (later part of Rosta, the forerunner of Tass). Dalta's Beijing correspondent, A. E. Khodorov, and M. L. Goorman, one of the editors of the radical Russian-language newspaper in Shanghai, Shankhaiskaya Zhizn, also acted on the Comintern's behalf. K. A Stoyanovich and L. A Perlin worked as Dalta correspondents in Canton, where they helped Tan Pingshan to launch the Guangdong ‘communist group’ in November. Another Russian, Mamayev, was in contact with Chinese radicals in Wuhan, and yet another agent, named only as ‘Grin’, arranged for a Socialist Youth League delegation to go to Russia. Three others were described as ‘secret envoys’ but while they supported the revolutionary cause their links with the Bolshevik movement are unclear. N. G. Burtman was said to have visited China from late 1919 to January 1920: he claimed to have been in contact with Li Dazhao, and when the Eastern People's Section was established in Irkutsk in August 1920, he became its Chairman. M. Popov visited Shanghai four times between 1918 and 1920; and A. P. Agaryov, a Menshevik, was in Shanghai in 1920. The convoluted saga of Russian interactions with the Datongdang and other self-proclaimed communist movements, which involved Vilensky-Sibiryakov, Polevoi, Stoyanovsky and perhaps others, is related by Ishikawa in Formation, pp. 123–50 & 225–6.

8. Zhang Guotao, 1, pp. 137 and 139.

9. Nianpu, 1, p. 85; Li Rui, Early Revolutionary Activities, p. 166; Zhang Guotao, 1, pp. 136–51; Saich, Origins, 1, pp. 60–9; Van de Ven, From Friend to Comrade, pp. 85–90. Ishikawa, Formation, pp. 227–63. Bao Huiseng wrote later that each delegate received 100 yuan for travelling expenses (the equivalent of eight months’ wages for a worker at that time), and a further 50 yuan for the return journey (Ishikawa, Formation, pp. 237 & 411 n. 46). There has been much argument about the number of delegates to the Congress. Mao told Edgar Snow there were 12, and this has since become the official version in China. Other participants remember there being 13, plus Sneevliet and Nikolsky. Zhang Guotao wrote later that He Shuheng returned to Changsha before the Congress opened, but there is no evidence to support this and other participants have described He as being present. The confusion appears to have arisen because Chen Gongbo did not attend the final session, having decided to return to Canton following the police raid on July 31. The complete list of Chinese participants was: Mao Zedong and He Shuheng from Hunan; Dong Biwu and Chen Tanqiu from Hubei; Bao Huiseng and Chen Gongbo from Canton; Zhang Guotao and Liu Renjing from Beijing; Deng Enming and Wang Jinmei from Jinan; Li Hanjun and Li Da from Shanghai; and Zhou Fohai from Tokyo.

10. Ch'en Kung-po (Chen Gongbo), The Communist Movement in China, Octagon, New York, 1966, p. 102. Ishikawa, using a Chinese translation of documents from the Russian archives, gives a slightly different version (pp. 257–63).

11. Saich, Rise to Power, p. 16; Ch'en Kung-po, p. 82.

12. Ibid., p. 105; see also p. 102.

13. Saich, Origins, 1, pp. 12–21.

14. Ishikawa, Formation, pp. 261–3.

15. Ch'en Kung-po, p. 102; see also p. 105.

16. Ishikawa, p. 253.

17. Saich, Origins, 1, pp. 73–7.

18. According to Ishikawa, the CCP's operating expenses in 1922 came to 17,000 yuan, or Chinese silver dollars (9,300 US dollars at that time), of which all but 1000 yuan was provided by the Comintern (Formation, p. 237). By the early 1930s, Comintern subsidies to the Chinese Party reached 30,000 US dollars a month (Pantsov and Levine, pp. 116 & 135–6).

19. On the first day, ‘the Congress listened to reports concerning the activities of the local small groups’ (Saich, Rise to Power, p. 14). Only the reports of the Beijing and Canton groups have survived (Ibid., pp. 19–27).

20. Ibid., p. 14; Zhang Guotao, 1, p. 141.

21. Nianpu, 1, p. 85.

22. Zhang Guotao, l, p. 140.

23. See Saich, Origins, 1, pp. 64–7.

24. Siao Yu, Mao Tse-tung and I, p. 256.

25. Nianpu, 1, p. 87.

26. Ibid., p. 88.

27. Ch'en Kung-po, pp. 102–3; Saich, Rise to Power, pp. 27–8.

28. Saich, p. 77, n. 22.

29. This account is of the 1922 rally (Minguo ribao, Nov, 15 1922, reprinted in Wieger, Leon, Chine Moderne, vol. 3: ‘Remous et Ecume’, Xianxian, 1922, pp. 433–4). It corresponds closely to Mao's description in Snow, Red Star over China, pp. 180–1, the only significant difference being that Mao dates the episode, wrongly, to 1920. A description of the 1921 rally, which had an identical format and was also broken up by the police, is given in the Nianpu (1, p. 89).

30. Li Rui, pp. 170–3; Nianpu, 1, p. 86; Schram, Mao's Road, 2, pp. 88–92 and 93–8.

31. Schram, 2 pp. 91 and 97; see also pp. 156 and 162–3 (April 10 1923).

32. Nianpu, 1, p. 87.

33. He Minfan was deeply shocked when, one particularly hot day, Mao ‘went about his teaching duties and visited his colleagues, wearing nothing but a towel around his waist, in other words virtually naked, walking about our dignified establishment as though it were the most natural thing in the world.’ When He remonstrated with him, Mao allegedly retorted: ‘How can you make such a fuss about such a small thing? What would be so scandalous even if I were naked? Think yourself lucky I'm wearing a towel.’ Although both He himself and Peng Shuzhi, who related the incident in his memoirs, had a strong bias against Mao, the story has the ring of truth (Cadart and Cheng, pp. 159–60).

34. Ch'en Kung-po, p. 103.

35. Chesneaux, Jean, The Chinese Labour Movement: 1919–27, Stanford University Press, 1968, pp. 41–7.

36. Wieger, Chine Moderne, vol. 4: L'Outre d'Eole, Xianxian, 1923, pp. 434–7.

37. Li Rui, pp. 192–4; Shaffer, Lynda, Mao and the Workers: The Hunan Labour Movement, 1920–23, M. E. Sharpe, Armonk, 1982, pp. 45–9.

38. Li Rui, p. 195; Perry, pp. 28–9 & 49–52; Nianpu, 1, p. 86; Saich, Origins, 1, pp. 70–2; Schram, 2, p. 176 (July 1 1923). See also Li Rui, p. 197; Shaffer, pp. 44–5 & 85. Pang's Workingmen's Association had not yet established a presence at Anyuan. However, the rival Mechanics’ Union, a smaller group founded in November 1920, had set up a branch among the railway workers there in September 1921. The railway workers were better educated than the miners and it was their group, the Mechanics’ Union, which hosted Mao's second visit to Anyuan in December.

39. Li Rui, p. 197.

40. Schram, 2, pp. 100–1 (Nov. 21 1921).

41. Li Rui, p. 197; Nianpu, 1, p. 90.

42. Wieger, 4, pp. 441–3; Shaffer, pp. 54–6; Li Rui, p. 197; McDonald, Urban Origins, pp. 164–5; NCH, Feb. 25 1922, p. 512.

43. Shaffer, pp. 56–7; NCH, April 29 1922, p. 299.

44. Nianpu, 1, pp. 92–3.

45. NCH, Feb. 25 1922, p. 512.

46. NCH, April 29 1922, p. 299.

47. Perry, pp. 51–63; Nianpu, 1, pp. 91, 93, 95 & 98; Shaffer, pp. 57–61 & 71–89; Li Rui, pp. 184–7 & 199–206; McDonald, pp. 166–8. In late April, Mao went to the Shuikoushan lead and zinc mines; in May with Yang Kaihui to Anyuan; and ‘in early summer’ to Yuezhou.

48. Pantsov and Levine, p. 112.

49. Saich, Rise to Power, pp. 27–8; Nianpu, 1, pp. 94–5.

50. McDonald, pp. 172–8; Li Rui, pp. 229–38. See also Shaffer, p. 91; Chesneaux, pp. 190–1; and Schram, 2, pp. 122–4 (Sept. 8 and 10 1922).

51. Schram, 2, pp. 125–6 (Sept. 12 1922). Changsha labour groups unleashed a barrage of appeals, including one, apparently not written by Mao, which urged the workers to ‘overthrow the evil and violence of the warlords’ and ‘smash these bone-crushing, marrow-sucking robbers’ (Hunan jinbainian dashi jishu, Hunan renmin chubanshe, Changsha, 1979, pp. 493–4, translation in McDonald, p. 177).

52. Li Rui, p. 234; McDonald, p. 175.

53. Shaffer, p. 91. The following account is taken from Perry, pp. 63–9; Shaffer, pp. 88–98; McDonald, pp. 169–72; and Li Rui, pp. 206–10.

54. McDonald, p. 177; Li Rui, pp. 238–9.

55. Shaffer, pp. 109–43; McDonald, pp. 180–6; Li Rui, pp. 213–29. Unless otherwise indicated, the account that follows is drawn from these three sources.

56. Hunan jinbainian dashi jishu (pp. 496–504) says the workers started petitioning for a wage increase in May 1922, and that notices were posted that it would come into effect on June 1. In fact the workers were using the old lunar calendar, under which ‘the first day of the sixth month’ was July 24 (NCH, Nov. 4 1922, p. 288).

57. Schram, 2, pp. 117–19 (Sept. 5 1922).

58. Shaffer (pp. 116–17) and McDonald (p. 181) claim that the magistrate overruled the increase soon after it was enforced. It was not until October 4, ‘the fourteenth day of the eighth month’, that he issued a notice formally rescinding the increase (NCH, Nov. 1922, p. 288). The aim of the strike then became to get this notice withdrawn (Schram, 2, pp. 129–31, Oct. 24 1922).

59. Schram, 2, p. 127 (Oct. 6 1922).

60. See NCH, Jan. 14 1922, p. 83.

61. Ibid., Nov. 4 1922, p. 288.

62. Ibid., Nov. 11 1922, p. 370.

63. Ibid.

64. Nianpu, 1, p. 103.

65. McDonald, pp, 186–7; Li Rui, pp. 255–9.

66. Nianpu, 1, pp. 103–4. McDonald, p. 188; Pantsov and Levine, p. 110. See also Li Rui, pp. 259–61.

67. Schram, 2, pp. 132–40. See also Li Rui, pp. 263–5.

68. Shaffer, pp. 164–92; McDonald pp. 188–91; Li Rui, pp. 239–44.

69. Zhang Guotao, 1 pp. 271–3. See also Saich, Origins, 1, pp. 148–9.

70. See Schram, 2, pp. 141–4 (Dec. 14 1922). The Dagongbao, in an article which Li Rui says was written by Mao's ally, the editor-in-chief, Long Jiangong, implicitly accused Mao of using the workers for ‘ideological experiments’ (Li Rui, pp. 248–53), a charge which Mao angrily rebutted.

71. Saich, Origins, 1, pp. 121–32 and 149; Zhang Guotao, 1, pp. 273–7; Chesneaux, pp. 191–2. See also Saich, Rise to Power, p. 35.

72. Schram, 2, pp. 111–16 (July 1922).

73. Wilbur, C. Martin, and How, Julie Lien-ying, Missionaries of Revolution: Soviet Advisers and Nationalist China, 1920–1927, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1989, pp. 54–7 and 60–3; Saich, Origins, 1, pp. 126–9.

74. Chesneaux, pp. 206–10; Saich, Origins, 1, pp. 151–4; McDonald, pp. 195–7; Zhang Guotao, 1, pp. 277–91.

75. Chesneaux, pp. 212–19.

76. Schram, 2, pp. 147–54.

77. McDonald, pp. 171–2 (Mao Zemin); Nianpu, 1, p. 111 and Li Rui, p. 244 (Mao Zetan). Perry, pp. 10, 78 & 105.

78. McDonald, p. 201.

79. Ibid., pp. 202–5. Despite the assertions of McDonald (p. 205) and Li Rui (p. 270), it appears that no arrest warrant was issued for Mao (see Hunan jinbainian dashi jishu, pp. 516–20).

80. Nianpu, 1, pp. 109–10 and 113.

81. Saich, Origins, l, pp. 79–85.

82. Pantsov, Alexander, The Bolsheviks and the Chinese Revolution, 1919–1927, University of Hawai'i Press, Honolulu, 2000, pp. 54–5.

83. Saich, Origins, 1, pp. 256–7. Those who approved the resolution are not listed by name, but Mao was the only ‘comrade from Changsha’ then in Shanghai. The Nianpu (1, p. 93) says he returned from there during ‘the second 10 days of April’.

84. Saich, Rise to Power, pp. 34–8. See also Saich, Origins, 1, p. 90, n. 21 and Pantsov, Bolsheviks, p. 55. The question of an alliance of revolutionary forces was discussed at the Socialist Youth League's first Congress held in Canton in May, and in June the Central Committee issued a statement characterising the GMD as ‘relatively revolutionary and democratic’ and proposing a joint conference to establish ‘a democratic united front’ against the warlords.

85. Saich, Rise to Power, pp. 38–40.

86. Ibid., pp. 43 and 49.

87. History of the CCP, Chronology, p. 14.

88. Snow, pp. 184–5. The Nianpu quotes Mao's explanation to Snow without comment (1, p. 96n); it lists no other activities by him between July 5 and August 7. Given that Mao had been in Shanghai only three months earlier, and certainly knew the address of Chen Duxiu's home, it is hard to take his story at face value (Nianpu, 1, p. 109 and Schram, 2, p. 155; Zhang Guotao, 1, p. 296). His old flame, Tao Yi, was then studying at Nanjing, which he passed on his way to Shanghai. A year earlier he had also stopped there for a few days on his way back from the First Congress. It is not known whether he saw Tao Yi on those occasions.

89. Zhang Guotao, 1, p. 247.

90. ‘Instructions to a Representative of the ECCI in South China’ (August 1922), in Pantsov, Alexander, and Benton, Gregor, ‘Did Trotsky Oppose Entering the Guomindang “From the First”?’ (Republican China, XIX, 2, pp. 61–3). The directive, from Karl Radek, instructs the communists merely to ‘set up groups of supporters inside the Guomindang’; the ‘bloc within’ formula, as the CCP eventually adopted it, may in fact have come from Sneevliet himself. See also Saich, Origins, 1, p. 117 (vigorous opposition); Ibid., p. 338 (Sun Yat-sen himself); Ibid., pp. 119–20 (Xiangdao zhoubao); Wilbur and How, pp. 54–7 (Adolf Joffe). Joffe arrived in China in August 1922.

91. Unknown to the Chinese, the Comintern itself was ambivalent about policy for China. In December 1922, three months after the Hangzhou Central Committee meeting, the Fourth Comintern Congress approved a new resolution proposed by Radek, the ‘Supplement to the General Theses on the Eastern Question’, which was much more sceptical about the benefits of a CCP-GMD alliance. It urged the Chinese communists to ‘devote their main attention to the organization of the working masses, to the creation of trade unions and of a strong communist mass party’, called for caution in dealing with Sun Yat-sen because of his reliance on unreliable warlords, and insisted that China would be unified not by military means but by ‘a revolutionary victory of the popular masses’ – all of which would have been much more congenial to the CCP leadership than the directive Sneevliet brought back in August. But by then the united front was already a reality (Pantsov, Bolsheviks, pp. 51–2).

92. ‘Chen Duxiu's Report to the Third Party Congress’ (June 1923), in Saich, Origins, 2, pp. 572–3; see also p. 612. There were two major splits in the summer and autumn of 1922: Zhang Guotao formed what was termed a factional ‘small group’ (ibid., 2, pp. 115–16; Zhang Guotao, 1, pp. 250–2; Cai Hesen, ‘Zhongguo gongchandangde fazhan [tigang]’, in Zhonggong dangshi baogao xuanbian, Zhonggong zhongyang dangxiao chubanshe, Beijing, 1982, p. 43); and the Canton Party committee rejected the decision of the Hangzhou plenum on co-operation with the GMD, leading in November to the resignation of Chen Gongbo and the expulsion of Tan Zhitang (Cai Hesen, p. 69; Ch'en Kung-po, pp. 10–12; Zhang Guotao, 1, p. 249).

93. Saich, Origins, 2, p. 611 (June 20 1923). Earlier he had written to Bukharin that the Chinese movement was ‘very weak and a little artificial’ (Ibid., 2, p. 476, March 21 1923). On Joffe, see NCH Feb 3 1923, p. 289.

94. Saich, Origins, 2, p. 577. Sneevliet also reported to the Comintern the same month that ‘Hunan has the best organisation’ (ibid., p. 617). In a note to Zinoviev in November 1922 (ibid., pp. 344–5), he had described Hunan as having the best Party committee and the best Youth League branch (with 230 members, compared with 110 in Shanghai, 40 in Canton, 20 in Jinan and 15 in Anhui).

95. Ibid., 1, p. 449.

96. Ibid., 2, p. 642 (forty delegates); 2, p. 573 (420 members). See also ibid., 1, pp. 175–86 and 2, pp. 565–6; Zhang Guotao, pp. 296–316; and Van den Ven, From Friend to Comrade, pp. 122–6.

97. This point is contentious. Sneevliet reported that the vote was carried by 21 to 16, and ‘among these 16 [opposition] votes were [the] six from Hunan’; he then identified the Hunan ‘representative’ as Mao (Saich, Origins, 2, p. 616). Zhang Guotao recalled in his memoirs that he, Cai and Mao were Sneevliet's principal opponents (1, p. 308); Mao (and Cai Hesen) submitted to the majority decision, Zhang wrote, only after the vote had been taken (p. 311). Stuart Schram relies on Sneevliet's note of Mao's remark, ‘we should not be afraid of joining [the Guomindang]’, to argue that Mao supported the Comintern line (Mao's Road, 2, pp. xxix–xxx). But the question of ‘joining’ had already been settled at Hangzhou in August 1922; the debate at the Third Congress was over the conditions and consequences of doing so, and here Mao had strong reservations.

98. Schram, 2, pp. 157–61; Saich, Origins, 2, pp. 448–9, 580 and 590; and Zhang Guotao, 1, pp. 308–9.

99. Saich, Origins, 2, p. 590.

100. Ibid., 2, p. 616; Zhang Guotao, 1, p. 310; Pantsov, Bolsheviks, pp. 60–1 and 66–9; Saich, Rise to Power, pp. 76–9.

101. Nianpu, 1, p. 114; Saich, Origins, 2, pp. 642–3.

102. Saich, Origins, 2, pp. 539–40 and 643. Pantsov and Levine, p. 124 (‘personnel matters’) and Saich, p. 576 (‘Chen Duxiu could no longer complain’).

103. Sneevliet told Zinoviev in June 1923 that ‘the only comrade who is able to analyse reality in a Marxist fashion’ was Qu Qiubai, a 23-year-old journalist who had just returned to China after spending two years in Moscow. Qu was elected a Central Committee alternate at the Third Congress (Saich, Origins, 2, p. 615).

104. Nianpu, 1, p. 115.

105. Sneevliet (Saich, Origins, 2, p. 659) and the Nianpu (1, p. 115) both indicate that Mao was a GMD member by June 25 1923. See also Li Yongtai, Mao Zedong yu da geming, Sichuan renmin chubanshe, Chengdu, 1991.

106. Saich, Origins, 2, pp. 657–61, 678, 690 and 696; Nianpu, 1, p. 115.

107. Schram, 2, pp. 178–82 (July 11 1923).

108. Saich, Origins, 2, pp. 554–5, 679 and 695–8; Nianpu, 1, p. 116. The Guomindang at that time had no organisation outside the south.

109. Nianpu, 1, p. 118. The Hunan GMD network Mao built was so strongly pro-CCP that a later GMD historian spoke of its existence as a ‘communist plot’ (cited in McDonald, p. 138).

110. McDonald, pp. 53–8.

111. Hobart, City of the Long Sand, pp. 237–8.

112. McDonald, p. 58.

113. Schram, 2, pp. 192–4 (Sept. 28 1923).

114. Hobart, ibid.

115. McDonald, pp. 58–9; Schram, 2, pp. 183–5 (Aug. 15 1923); and ibid., p. 194. The choice of Shishan may have been an allusion to the name Shi san yazi (‘Third son of stone’), which had been given to Mao by his family after his mother made him bow, as a small boy, before a supposedly miraculous rock on a nearby mountain in order to win the protection of the spirits. He was the ‘third son’ because two elder brothers had died in infancy. See Roux, le Singe et le Tigre, Larousse, Paris, 2009, pp. 36 & 903, n. 39.

116. Mao informed the GMD's General Affairs Department that he and Xia Xi had begun discussing how to establish a provincial Party organisation at the end of September, and that a secret preparatory organ for the Changsha branch would be created ‘within the next few days’ (Schram, 2 p. 193, Sept. 28 1923; see also Saich, Rise to Power, p. 85). According to the Nianpu, the Anyuan, Changsha and Ningxiang branches were founded between mid-September and December, 1923. Pantsov and Levine (p. 129) write that by the end of the year there were 500 GMD members in Hunan, but that figure seems too high.

117. The CPC CC's Directive no. 13, announcing that the GMD Congress would be held in January, was dated December 25. It is not known on what day Mao left Changsha, but he set out from Shanghai for Canton on January 2 1924 (Nianpu, 1, pp. 119–20).

118. Schram, 2, pp. 195–6 (Dec. 1923). One senior Party historian is convinced that this poem was in fact written to Tao Yi. I know of no evidence to support that. It is more plausible – although again there is no evidence for it – that the ‘bitter feelings’ to which Mao alludes were caused by Kaihui's jealousy, either of Tao Yi or another woman.

119. Wilbur and How, pp. 87–92; Holybnychy, Lydia, Michael Borodin and the Chinese Revolution, 1923–25, Columbia University Press, New York, 1979, pp. 212–19; Cadart and Cheng, p. 335 (treated royally) and p. 340 (Counsellor Bao).

120. Nianpu, 1, p. 121; McDonald, p. 137. According to Wilbur and How (p. 97) and other sources, provincial delegations in general comprised three members named by Sun and three members elected from the local branches. The Hunan delegation was apparently larger because it included men like Lin Boqu, who was already working in Canton as deputy head of the Guomindang's General Affairs Department (Lo Jialun et al. [compilers], Geming wenxian, vol. 8, Taibei, 1953, pp. 1100–3).

121. Wilbur and How, pp. 93 and 97–9.

122. Zhang Guotao, 1, p. 332.

123. Wilbur and How, p. 100. The communists, holding 10 of the 41 CEC positions, were disproportionately well represented, given that the Guomindang had more than 100,000 members where the CCP had only about 500. However, Sun saw it as part of the bargain to obtain aid from Russia, which in 1923 had provided him with two million gold roubles (Glunin, V. I., ‘Politika Kominterna v Kitae’, in Ulyanovsky, R. A. (ed.), Komintern I Vostok: Kritika Kritiki – Protiv Falsifikatsii Leninskoi Strategii i Taktiki v Natsionalnovo-osvoboditelnovo Dvizhenii, Glavnaya Redaktsiya Vostochnoi Literaturi, Moscow, 1978, p. 243). Only the full communist CEC members had voting rights, and several of them were his former associates: Tan Pingshan was an old Tongmenghui man, and Lin Boqu, initially an alternate but subsequently promoted a full member, had belonged to Sun's Revolutionary Party, the predecessor of the Guomindang.

124. Nianpu, 1, pp. 118 and 123.

125. Luo Zhanglong, ‘Zhongguo gongchandang disanci quangguo daibiao dagui he diyici guogong hezuo’, pt 2, in Dangshi ziliao, no. 17, 1983, p. 14.

126. Nianpu, 1, pp. 122–3. This body had five full members, led by Wang Jingwei and Hu Hanmin, and five alternates including Mao and Qu Qiubai. See also Cadart and Cheng, p. 374; and Peng Shuzhi, in Evans, Les, and Block, Russell (eds), Leon Trotsky on China, Monad Press, New York, 1976, p. 44.

127. Voitinsky returned to China in April 1924 and attended the CCP plenum in Shanghai a month later (Glunin, V. I., ‘The Comintern and the Rise of the Communist Movement in China’, in Ulyanovsky, R. A., The Comintern and the East: The Struggle for the Leninist Strategy in National Liberation Movements, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1981, p. 267).

128. Wilbur and How, p. 105; Pantsov, Bolsheviks, pp. 65–6.

129. Schram, 2, pp. 215–17 (July 21 1924).

130. Cadart and Cheng, p. 373.

131. Ibid., pp. 374 and 381.

132. Nianpu, 1, p. 130.

133. See Schram, 2, p. 214 (May 26 1924), where Mao speaks of his ‘mental ailment growing worse’. The Nianpu (1, p. 134) quotes a passage from the (apparently unpublished) diary of He Erkang on July 12 1925: ‘After the [GMD branch] meeting ended at 1.15 a.m., Mao wanted to return home to rest. But he said he was suffering from neurasthenia … and he knew he wouldn't be able to sleep. The moon was already high. So we walked two or three li, then we were tired and stopped, and went to [the nearby village of] Tangjiawan to rest.’ He suffered a relapse in September (Ibid., p. 137). See also Li Zhisui's description of Mao's symptoms in Private Life, pp. 109–10.

134. The best evidence for this is Mao's exclusion from the leadership at the Fourth Congress the following January. Zhang Guotao and Qu Qiubai, who were also away when the Congress was held, were both elected to the CC and the Central Bureau in absentia.

135. Van de Ven, pp. 143–4. For Mao's organising role, see Nianpu, 1, pp. 128–9.

136. Nianpu, 1, p. 130. Yang Kaihui had joined him in Shanghai at the beginning of June (Ibid., p. 127).

137. Li Zhisui, p. 110.

138. Nianpu, 1, pp. 131–2.

139. Lenin, V. I., Collected Works, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1966, 31, pp. 241.

140. Saich, Rise to Power, pp. 40–3.

141. Ibid., p. 59.

142. Ibid., p. 77.

143. Galbiati, Fernando, Peng Pai and the Hailufeng Soviet, Stanford University Press, 1985, pp. 44–151.

144. Zhou Enlai wrote, in a memorial article for Peng, that he had engaged in peasant work ‘before entering the Party’, which he joined ‘in 1924’ (Yi Yuan [pseud: Zhou Enlai], Peng Pai tongzhi zhuanlue’, in Beifang hongqi, no. 29, August 1930).

145. Zhang Guotao, 1, p. 309. On July 15 1923, Sneevliet referred to Guangdong merely as one of four provinces (with Hunan, Shandong and Zhejiang) ‘where there are comrades who have contact with the peasant population’ (Saich, Origins, 2, p. 656): clearly he had no inkling of what Peng Pai had achieved.

146. Cited in Perry, Anyuan, pp. 48–9. Although it is unsigned, and neither Pang Xianzhi, in the authoritative Nianpu, nor Stuart Schram, in Mao's Road to Power, cites the text as being by Mao, local historians maintain that he was indeed the author (see Liu Shanwen's essay in Mao Zedong zai Pingxiang, Pingxiang, 1993, pp. 135–50). Mao had visited the area in November 1920 and there are stylistic similarities with some of his subsequent writings.

147. Zhang Guotao, 1, pp. 308–9. Zhang's recollection (which is reproduced without comment in the Nianpu, 1, p. 114) reads too pat. But, given their mutual antagonism, it is hard to see why he should give Mao credit for raising the peasant issue at the Congress unless it were true.

148. Saich, Origins, 1, p. 184; Zhonggong zhongyang wenjuan xuanji [hereafter ZZWX], 1, Beijing, 1992, p. 151.

149. Kara-Murza, G. S. and Mif, Pavel, Strategiia i taktika Kominterna v Natsionalno-kolonialnoi Revolyutsii na primere Kitaia, Moscow, 1934, pp. 114–16, 344.

150. Galbiati, p. 115.

151. Nianpu, 1, pp. 131–2. The first peasant association in Shaoshan was formed in February 1925 (Hunan lishi ziliao, no. 3, Changsha, 1958, pp. 1–10). On Mao Fuxuan, see Li Rui, p. 283.

152. Perry, p. 114.

153. The following account of the May 30th Incident is taken from Wilbur, C. Martin, ‘The Nationalist revolution: from Canton to Nanking, 1923–28’, in the Cambridge History of China [hereafter CHOC], vol. 12, Cambridge, pp. 547–9. See also McDonald, pp. 206–8; Chesneaux, pp. 262–80.

154. McDonald, pp. 209–10.

155. Nianpu, l, pp. 132–5. The drought was clearly the crucial trigger for peasant involvement (see Chesneaux, p. 278, and McDonald, pp. 210 and 231).

156. Jin Chongji, Mao Zedong zhuan, p. 123; Snow, p. 186; Nianpu, 1, p. 132.

157. Nianpu, 1, p. 135.

158. Schram, 2, pp. 225–6. It was evidently written between Mao's arrival in Changsha on August 29 or 30 and his departure for Canton ten days later.

159. See Wilbur, CHOC, 12, pp. 547–53 and 556–7.

160. Nianpu, 1, p. 136.

161. Ibid., pp. 33–5 and 132.

162. Schram, 2, p. 237 (Nov. 21 1925).

163. The Peasant Department was set up at the First GMD Congress in January 1924. The Training Institute followed in July 1924 with Peng Pai as its first principal.

164. Nianpu, 1, pp. pp. 136–7.

165. Ibid., p. 137 and Snow, p. 186.

166. Wilbur, CHOC, 12, pp. 556–9.

167. Schram, 2, pp. 263–7 (Dec. 4 1925). This statement, drafted by Mao on November 27, was approved by the GMD CEC, and issued to ‘all comrades throughout the country and overseas’ as the party's response to the Western Hills Group meeting.

168. Ibid., 2, pp. 237 (Nov 21 1925), 290–2 (Dec 13), 295 (Dec 20) and 321–7 (Jan 10 1926).

169. Ibid., 2, pp. 249–62 (Dec. 1 1925).

170. The following is drawn from Wilbur, CHOC, 12, pp. 553–7.

171. Schram, 2, pp. 342–4 (Jan. 16 1926).

172. The ‘Resolution on the Peasant Movement’ declared that the national revolution was, ‘to put it bluntly, a peasant revolution’ (ibid., pp. 358–60, Jan. 19 1926).

173. Chiang himself, like Tan Yankai, welcomed the peasant movement as a component of the national revolution, but no more than that (see Wilbur and How, p. 797). Borodin acknowledged in February 1926 that there would be tremendous difficulty in persuading the Guomindang to support an agrarian revolution (i.e., a social revolution in the countryside), and that to do so it might be necessary to split the party and drive out the conservatives (ibid., p. 216).

174. Ibid., pp. 248–9 and 250–2. Pantsov, Bolsheviks, pp. 85–92.

175. Vishnyakova-Akimova, Vera V., Dva Goda v Vosstavshem Kitae, Moscow, Izdatelstvo Nauka, 1965, p. 190.

176. This account is drawn from ibid., pp. 237–8; Wilbur and How, pp. 252–7 and 703–5; Zhang Guotao, 1, p. 495; Isaacs, Harold, The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution, Stanford University Press, 1961, pp. 91–4.

177. Nianpu, 1, p. 159. Zhou said later that the coup caught them ‘totally unprepared’ (Zhou Enlai, Selected Works, Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, 1981, p. 179). Zhou was then one of the three leaders of the Canton CCP committee, with Tan Pingshan and the Party Secretary, Chen Yannian (Zhang Guotao, 1, p. 454).

178. This was also the line advanced later by the Party Centre in Shanghai (Saich, Rise to Power, pp. 232–3).

179. Zhang Guotao, 1, p. 498.

180. On December 15 1925, Mao had been named one of seven members of the Council of the GMD Political Study Group, which began work the following February, training party cadres; on February 5 1926, he was appointed to the GMD Peasant Movement Committee; and on March 16, he was named principal of the Peasant Movement Training Institute (Nianpu, 1, pp. 146 and 156–9).

181. In May 1924, a CCP CC resolution stated: ‘The CP's responsibility is to make the GMD unceasingly propagandise the principles of opposing imperialists and warlords … To achieve this objective, we must in practice be able to join the GMD Propaganda Department’ (‘Resolution concerning the problem of CP work in the GMD’, in Saich, Rise to Power, p. 120).

182. Neither the Nianpu (1, pp. 130–8) nor Mao's official biographer, Jin Chongji, Mao Zedong zhuan, pp. 91–106 mentions any contact. Nor technically would there have been any reason for it, since he had held no leadership post since December 1924.

183. Schram, 2, pp. 340–1 (Jan. 16 1926).

184. Snow, pp. 186–7. The editor of Xiangdao was Chen Duxiu's protégé, Peng Shuzhi. He was notorious for his dry scholasticism, and it may well have been Peng that Mao had in mind when he wrote in January: ‘Academic thought … is worthless dross.’

185. Zhang Guotao, 1, pp. 484–93.

186. Ibid., p. 510. See also Evans and Block, pp. 53–4, and Nianpu, 1, p. 164, neither of which refers to Mao playing any part in the discussions.

187. See Wilbur and How, pp. 267–73 and 717–19, Zhang Guotao, pp. 507–19. Pantsov, Bolsheviks, p. 93. The GMD CEC plenum also proposed the establishment of a Joint Conference, comprising five leaders of the GMD, three from the CCP and a representative of the Comintern (Borodin), to resolve future interparty disputes. Tan Pingshan, Qu Qiubai and Zhang Guotao were named from the communist side, but no meeting was ever held (Zhang Guotao, 1, p. 521).

188. Evans and Block, pp. 53–5. Pantsov, pp. 92–3. See also Zhang Guotao, 1, pp. 517–19.

189. Zhang Guotao, 1, p. 519; Evans and Block, p. 601. Trotsky's position is discussed in Pantsov, Bolsheviks, pp. 101–7.

190. Nianpu, 1, pp. 159 and 163–5. He also relinquished his membership of the Political Study Group Council; and of the Propaganda Committee under the GMD Propaganda Department, to which he had been appointed on April 27 (ibid., pp. 162 and 165). The Nianpu makes no reference to his leaving the GMD Peasant Movement Committee and, in March 1927, when that body was re-established in Wuhan, Mao became a Standing Committee member (ibid., p. 183).

191. A senior Soviet adviser noted: ‘Those Guomindang members who reputedly belong to the centre or even to the right … [in some cases] meditate deeply on the solution of the agrarian problem. As an instance, General Chiang Kai-shek may be quoted’ (Wilbur and How, p. 797).

192. Nianpu, 1, pp. 147–8, 157 and 161.

193. Wilbur and How, pp. 216–17; Schram, 2, p. 370 (March 30 1926).

194. Wilbur and How, p. 312.

195. McDonald, pp. 232–6; Wilbur and How, pp. 311–14.

196. Nianpu, 1, p. 166. Apart from the GMD CEC plenum which preceded it, this was the only ‘political’ event Mao attended for four-and-a-half months, from May 31 to October 15.

197. Nianpu, 1, pp. 165–9. Angus McDonald gives a carefully balanced account of peasant support for the Northern Expedition in Hunan and concludes that, while fragmented, it gave the military campaign significant political legitimacy (pp. 264–79).

198. Schram, 2, pp. 387–92 (Sept. 1 1926).

199. Ibid., pp. 256–8 (Dec. 1 1925).

200. Ibid., p. 304 (January 1926).

201. According to Wilbur and How (p. 216), Borodin wrote that ‘the chief bulwark of imperialism in China … was the medieval landowning system, and not the warlords’. Mao's phrase had appeared in Zhongguo nongmin, another GMD Peasant Committee journal, two or three weeks earlier.

202. The following is drawn from ibid., pp. 318–29, 344–5 and 771–6; Wilbur, CHOC, 12, pp. 581–9.

203. ZZWX, 2, pp. 373–6, Saich, Rise to Power, pp. 210–13. Borodin and other Russian advisers shared the Canton group's views (Wilbur and How, pp. 796–7).

204. Saich, Rise to Power, pp. 213–28.

205. See Mao's subsequent criticisms of the GMD-Left's military weakness (ibid., p. 225). All those who worked in Canton, from Borodin down, concluded that the GMD-Left was unreliable: there is no reason to think Mao was an exception. A few weeks later, moreover, he voted with his feet, returning to CCP headquarters in Shanghai instead of accompanying the GMD–Left to Wuhan.

206. Schram, 2, pp. 397–401.

207. Saich, Rise to Power, pp. 213–19.

208. Qu shared Mao's interest in peasant issues, and in August had lectured at the Peasant Movement Institute (Li, Bernadette [Li Yuning], A Biography of Chu Chiu-p'ai, Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, New York, 1967, pp. 178–9); he had been sufficiently impressed by Mao's article to make enquiries about it from the GMD Propaganda Department (Nianpu, 1, p. 169). In the spring of 1927, Qu again supported Mao against Chen on peasant policy (Li Yuning, p. 194).

209. Nianpu, 1, p. 173; Schram, 2, pp. 411–13.

210. Wilbur and How, pp. 359–62 and 375; Zhang Guotao, 1, pp. 556–62.

211. Wilbur and How, pp. 362–3, 373–5 and 393–4; CHOC, 12, pp. 599–603.

212. Saich, Rise to Power, pp. 219–28.

213. Glunin, in ‘Politika Kominterna v Kitae’ (p. 243), based on unpublished Comintern archives, says the CCP had 1,500 members in May 1925; 7,500 in January 1926; and 11,000 in May 1926. According to Samuil Naumov's ‘Brief History of the CCP’, written in November 1926, CCP membership had by then reached ‘approximately 30,000’ (Wilbur and How, p. 444). By the Fifth Congress in April 1927, the Party claimed nearly 58,000 members. See also Wilbur and How, pp. 810–13 (unit commanders).

214. Saich, Rise to Power, p. 225. Although Mao prudently attributed his observation to ‘comrades in Guangdong’, it clearly represented his own view (see also Nianpu, 1, p. 174).

215. Wilbur and How, pp. 806–9.

216. Schram, 2, pp. 420–2 (Dec. 20 1926).

217. Ibid., p. 430 (February 1927).

218. Ibid., p. 425 (Feb. 16 1927).

219. Ibid., p. 429.

220. Ibid., p. 430. See also McDonald, pp. 270–9.

221. This and subsequent citations are from Schram, 2, pp. 431–55. There were recent precedents in Hunan for the kind of peasant behaviour Mao was describing, albeit on a far smaller scale. After the 1910 rice riots, Governor Chen Chunming reported: ‘In Xiangtan, Hengshan, Liling and Ningxiang there have been incidents of poor people occupying rich households and eating the grain, and destroying the rice-mills’ (quoted in Esherick, Reform and Revolution in China, p. 139).

222. Nianpu, 1, p. 165.

223. Mao submitted his report on or about February 18. The Hunan Party journal, Zhanshi, began serialising the full text on March 5. Xiangdao started publishing extracts a week later, on March 12 (Nianpu, 1, p. 184). The pamphlet version of the full text, with a preface by Qu Qiubai, appeared in April. Qu and Peng Shuzhi were by this stage openly at war with each other (Li Yuning, p. 183–7 and 194–8); Chen Duxiu's overriding concern was to appease the GMD-Left so as to keep the united front together. See also Schram, 2, p. 426 (anarchy); and Zhang Guotao, 1, pp. 596–613 (blind Red terror). The rumoured execution of Li Lisan's father was widely believed (including by me in the first edition of this book). According to Alexander Pantsov, who interviewed Li's daughter, Inna, and his widow, Li Sha, the rumours were false (Pantsov and Levine, p. 176 n).

224. In October 1926, Moscow sent a telegram to the CCP leaders, urging them to restrain the peasant movement at least until Shanghai fell to the Northern Expedition, for fear of antagonising the GMD commanders. On November 30, 1926, Stalin attributed this ‘mistaken view’ to ‘certain people’ in the GMD and the CCP. In August 1927, he conceded that it was in fact Moscow's error (Eudin and North, Soviet Russia and the East, pp. 293 and 353).

225. The theses of the Comintern's Seventh Plenum were adopted in Moscow on December 16 1926 and published in its weekly newspaper, Inprecorr (International Press Correspondence), on February 3 1927 (Eudin, Xenia, J., and North, Robert C., Soviet Russia and the East 1920–27: A Documentary Survey, Stanford University Press, 1957, pp. 356–64). It is not clear exactly when a copy reached Shanghai. Cai Hesen says it was ‘approximately January’ (‘Istoria Opportunizma v Kommunisticheskoi Partii Kitaia’, in Problemy Kitaia, Moscow, 1929, no. 1, p. 16), but it may in fact not have been until mid-February, when M. N. Roy and Tan Pingshan, who both attended the plenum, arrived in Canton from Moscow (Zhang Guotao, 1, p. 712, n. 17). Pantsov (Bolsheviks, pp. 127–8) does not mention the 7th Plenum in this context and quotes instead a Soviet Politburo meeting on March 3 1927, which urged the Chinese communists to oust the Guomindang rightists, ‘to discredit them politically and systematically strip them of their leading posts [and to] look toward the arming of workers and peasants’ but stopped short of endorsing a peasant revolution in the countryside.

226. According to Cai Hesen, the theses triggered (yet another) angry debate between himself and Qu Qiubai, on the one hand, and Chen Duxiu, Peng Shuzhi and the Shanghai CCP Committee Secretary, Luo Yinong, on the other (Problemy Kitaia, 1, pp. 16–18).

227. Snow, p. 188.

228. New York Herald Tribune, Feb. 21 1927. The North China Herald found a silver lining: ‘Revolting though the executions have been,’ it noted, ‘they have at least had a quieting effect. Agitators … have [become] conspicuous by their absence’. See also Isaacs, pp. 132–3.

229. Wilbur and How, pp. 385–8 and 392–6.

230. Ibid., pp. 396–8; Zhang Guotao, 1, p. 576; Eudin and North, Soviet Russia and the East, p. 361.

231. Nianpu, 1, pp. 187–9; Schram, Mao Tse-tung, p. 98. See also Schram, Mao's Road, 2, pp. 467–75 (March 16 1927).

232. Nianpu, 1, pp. 190–6; Schram, 2, pp. 485–503.

233. Nianpu, 1, pp. 181 and 192.

234. Isaacs, p. 165, and Zhang Guotao, 1, p. 587.

235. Isaacs, pp. 128 and 163; Chen Duxiu, in Evans and Block, p. 603; North, Robert C., and Eudin, Xenia J., M. N. Roy's Mission to China, University of California, Berkeley, 1963, p. 54.

236. On Wang's part, this was disingenuous to the extent that Chiang had already made clear to him, in private talks earlier that week, that he wanted Borodin removed and the communists expelled. On the other hand, Chiang appeared to accept Wang's counter-proposal that these issues be dealt with by a full CEC plenum, and on April 3 had issued a public statement explicitly pledging obedience to Wang's leadership (CHOC, 12, pp. 623–4).

237. North, Robert, Moscow and Chinese Communists, Stanford University Press, 1963, p. 96; North and Eudin, Roy's Mission to China, pp. 54–8.

CHAPTER 6 EVENTS LEADING TO THE HORSE DAY INCIDENT AND ITS BLOODY AFTERMATH

1. The Times, London, April 13 1927; Isaacs, Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution, pp. 175–85. See also Clifford, Nicholas R., Spoilt Children of Empire: Westerners in Shanghai and the Chinese Revolution of the 1920s, Middlebury College Press, Hanover, 1991, pp. 242–75; and Martin, Brian G., The Shanghai Green Gang: Politics and Organized Crime, 1979–37, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1996, ch. 4, especially pp. 100–7.

2. NCH, April 16 1927, p. 103.

3. Or perhaps longer: Harold Isaacs viewed Bai Chongxi's failure to send troops to aid the Shanghai workers during the first insurrection on February 19 as a deliberate ploy by Chiang to weaken the workers’ movement in the city (p. 135). The Indian communist M. N. Roy, then in Canton, took a similar view (North and Eudin, Roy's Mission to China, p. 157).

4. If not earlier: the communist head of the General Labour Union in Ganzhou (Jiangxi), Chen Zanxian, was executed on March 6 on the orders of one of Chiang's subordinates (Nianpu, 1, p. 189). See Isaacs, pp. 143–4 and 152–3; Martin, pp. 93–5; Wilbur, CHOC, 12, pp. 625–34; Wilbur and How, Missionaries of Revolution, pp. 398 and 404–5.

5. Sokolsky, George E., ‘The Guomindang’, in China Yearbook, 1928, Tianjin Press, Tianjin, p. 1349.

6. The Times, London, March 25, 1927. At that time most foreigners in Shanghai made little distinction between the communists and the GMD: both were regarded as ‘Reds’, the difference being a matter of degree, and in March they were still allies against the northern warlords. Members of secret societies like Du Yuesheng's Green Gang, from which the ‘black-gowned gunmen’ were drawn, joined the insurrection alongside the workers. It was only when Chiang Kai-shek decided to move against the communists in April that the Green Gang – which wanted above all to retain its monopoly on labour recruitment and racketeering – threw in its lot with the Guomindang. See Steven A. Smith, A Road is Made: Communism in Shanghai, 1920–27, Curzon, 2000, pp. 179–87 & 191.

7. Strother, Rev. Edgar E., ‘A Bolshevized China – The World's Greatest Peril’, North China Daily News and Herald Press, Shanghai, 1927 (11th edn), pp. 4 and 14–15.

8. Sokolsky, p. 1349.

9. The Times, London, March 25 and 29, 1927; Wilbur and How, pp. 400–1.

10. North China Daily News, March 28 1927.

11. This is not to suggest an orchestrated campaign. The evidence indicates that the Chinese loan, the Powers’ authorisation of the Beijing raid, the restrictions on the Soviet consulate; and the Shanghai Municipal Council's decision to allow passage to Du Yuesheng's ‘armed labourers’ to reach their staging points, were all separate consequences of the situation that had been created by early April 1927 (see Clifford, pp. 255–9); Sokolsky, p. 1360; Isaacs, pp. 151–2; Wilbur and How, pp. 403–4; Martin, pp. 101-4; and The Times, London, April 7, 8 and 9, 1927.

12. Vishnyakova-Akimova, Dva goda v Kitae, p. 345. In Shanghai, the CCP District Committee, meeting on April 1, was told that Chiang Kai-shek had paid the Green Gang 600,000 Mexican dollars to make trouble for the labour movement in Jiangxi, and that similar moves were afoot in the city itself. But while its Secretary, Luo Yinong, spoke of an ever more serious conflict ‘between revolution and counter-revolution’ with Chiang at its centre, he appeared to believe that, for the time being, it could be contained at the political level without developing into armed confrontation (Xu Yufang and Bian Xianying, Shanghai gongren sand wuzhuang qiyi yanjiu, Zhishi chubanshe Shanghai, 1987, pp. 227–8; Smith, A Road is Made, p. 190). Subsequently the General Labour Union received warnings that gangsters were planning an attack on the pickets, but clashes with gangs were not unusual, and the GLU apparently did not believe they would be part of a broader clamp-down (Diyici guonei geming zhanzheng shiqi di gongren yundong, Renmin chubanshe, Beijing, 1954, pp. 492–3); see also Chesneaux, Chinese Labour Movement, pp. 367–71. In Hankou, Borodin's main concern was not Chiang's intentions towards the communists, but the news that he planned to transfer his headquarters to Nanjing. On April 7, the GMD Political Council met in emergency session and resolved (too late for any action to be taken) that the Hankou government should move there first to forestall him. Events in Shanghai were not discussed (Wilbur, CHOC, 12, pp. 632–3). It seems to have been a case of everybody looking the wrong way.

13. Martin, pp. 104–5; Clifford, p. 253.

14. Wilbur and How, pp. 806–9. See also Borodin's anxieties in late March (Ibid., p. 400).

15. North China Daily News, April 8 1927.

16. In Nanjing, for instance, Zhang Shushi, a communist member of the Jiangsu provincial GMD committee, did not realise that Chiang Kai-shek himself was behind the repression until he was arrested on April 9 and held overnight by GMD security officials (Wilbur, CHOC, 12, p. 633). According to Zhou Enlai, the Shanghai Party leaders first learned that Chiang was responsible for the killings at Jiujiang and Anqing (which occurred on March 17 and 23) only on April 14 (Zhou Enlai, SW1, pp. 18 and 411, n. 7), although how this can be reconciled with the Shanghai CCP committee meeting of April 1 (which Zhou himself attended), where they discussed Chiang's financing of Green Gang violence against the Left in Jiangxi, is unclear. Similarly, Roy spoke in mid-April of having ‘just received reports that Chiang Kai-shek has sent his agents to Sichuan’ (North and Eudin, p. 169), where fierce repression had begun at the end of March (Wilbur, pp. 626–7).

17. Pavel Mif, who became Comintern representative in China in 1930, wrote later: ‘The Shanghai comrades were hypnotised by the old line, and could not imagine a revolutionary government without the participation of the bourgeoisie’ (Kitaiskiya Revolutsiya, Moscow, 1932, p. 98). As Harold Isaacs noted, Mif tactfully omitted to mention that the ‘old line’ had been laid down by Stalin (p. 170).

18. Nianpu, 1, pp. 192–3, and Kuo, Thomas C., Ch'en Tu-hsiu (1879–1942) and the Chinese Communist Movement, Seton Hall University Press, South Orange, 1975, p. 161.

19. See North and Eudin, M. N. Roy's Mission to China, pp. 160–82. According to this source, Roy, Borodin, Chen Duxiu and ‘others’ spoke between April 13 and 15; on April 16, the CC passed a resolution based on Roy's speech. It was annulled, however, on April 18, and a new resolution passed on April 20.

20. No text of Borodin's speech is available, but its tenor is evident from Roy's rejoinder (North and Eudin, esp. pp. 160, 163 and 172). A few days later, Borodin told Guomindang leaders there was ‘no choice but to make a temporary, strategic retreat’ by damping down the revolutionary movement both among the peasants in Hubei and Hunan and among the workers in Wuhan (Li, Dun J., The Road to Communism: China since 1912, Van Norstrand, New York, 1969, pp. 89–91). For a retrospective account, see Fischer, Louis, The Soviets in World Affairs: A History of the Relations between the Soviet Union and the Rest of the World, Jonathan Cape, London, 1930, vol. 2, pp. 673–7.

21. North and Eudin, pp. 163–72.

22. History of the CCP, Chronology, p. 46; Zhou Enlai, SW1, pp. 18–19; North and Eudin, pp. 63 and 170.

23. North and Euden, pp. 176–7; Wilbur, CHOC, 12, p. 639. The Wuhan government had decided on April 12 (before the news of Chiang's coup arrived) to press for a resumption of the Northern Expedition. This decision was publicly reiterated with much fanfare on April 19. If Roy's dating of the CPC CC resolutions is correct, it must have been confirmed by the Left-GMD leadership on April 17 (North and Eudin, p. 75).

24. The Nianpu (1, p. 193) states that Mao took part in a three-day meeting of the CPC Peasant Committee ‘in the second 10 days of April’, but otherwise lists no activities by him from April 13–17.

25. Accounts of these important but ultimately irrelevant negotiations may be found in Schram, Mao Tse-tung, pp. 99–102, Wilbur, CHOC, 12, pp. 648–9; and Nianpu, 1, pp. 191–9. See also Schram, Mao's Road, 2, pp. 487–91 and 494–503. Three regular meetings, six enlarged meetings and four sub–committee meetings were held between April 2 and May 9 1927.

26. Snow, Red Star over China, p. 188; Nianpu, 1, pp. 197–8. In his report to the Fifth Congress, Chen criticised Mao and Li Lisan by name (Saich, Rise to Power, p. 241; see also pp. 243–51). For the background to Mao's draft resolution, see Carr, Edward Hallett, A History of Soviet Russia: Foundations of a Planned Economy, 1926–7929, vol. 3 pt 3, Cambridge University Press, 1978, p. 788.

27. Snow, p. 188.

28. History of the CCP, Chronology. Zhongguo gongchandang huiyi gaiyao (Shenyang chubanshe, Shenyang, 1991, pp. 54–60) gives slightly different figures.

29. Nianpu, 1, p. 199. Conrad Brandt (Stalin's Failure in China, Harvard University Press, 1958, p. 128) identifies Qu Qiubai as Mao's successor. Peng Pai, who had joined Mao at the Fifth Congress in opposing Chen Duxiu's agrarian policy, also left the committee at this time (Nianpu, ibid., and Galbiati, Peng Pai and the Hailufeng Soviet, p. 258).

30. Schram, 2, pp. 504–17. For Mao's role in the association, see ibid., pp. 485–6.

31. Wilbur, CHOC, 12, pp. 630 and 636–8. Steven Smith estimates that up to 2,000 communists and worker militants were killed in Shanghai between April and December 1927 (A Road is Made, p. 204).

32. Wilbur, CHOC, 12, pp. 637 and 640–1; The Times, London, March 30 1927; and Kuo, p. 161.

33. Wilbur, CHOC, 12, pp. 641–3.

34. Ibid., pp. 651–3, and Zhang Guotao, Rise of the Chinese Communist Party, 1 pp. 627–32. Chiang's forces, under Li Zongren and Bai Chongxi, separately resumed their Northern Expedition at about the same time. Each side announced that it would not attack the other while the conflict against the northerners was under way.

35. McDonald, Urban Origins, pp. 314–15 (also pp. 290–9 and 304); Wilbur, CHOC, 12, pp. 638 and 653–4; Li Rui, Early Revolutionary Activities, pp. 313–17.

36. Xu Kexiang, ‘The Ma-jih [Horse Day] Incident’, in Dun Li, Road to Communism, pp. 91–5.

37. Liu Zhixun, ‘Ma ri shibian di huiyi’ [Recollections of the Horse Day Incident, in Diyici guonei geming zhanzheng shiqi di nongmin yundong, Renmin chubanshe, Beijing, 1952, pp. 81–4 (partial translation in Li Rui, pp. 315–16).

38. Xu Kexiang, pp. 93–4. Xu himself, according to Zhang Guotao, had only about 1,000 rifles (1, p. 615). Liu Zhixun claimed that there was ‘a plan for a counter-attack’, but it was too vague to be of any practical use. ‘We knew the coup was coming … [but] the Communist Party of that time … had no experience in struggle … Thus when the coup broke, we were disorganised and confused, and all our plans failed’ (‘Ma ri shibian di huiyi’, p. 383; see also Zhonggong Hunan shengwei xuanchuanbu, Hunan geming lieshi zhuan, Tongsu duwu chubanshe, Changsha, 1952, p. 96).

39. Hunan geming lieshi zhuan, p. 96 (translated in McDonald, p. 315).

40. Xu Kexiang, p. 94.

41. McDonald, p. 316. Isaacs reports 20,000 dead ‘in the course of the next few months’ (pp. 235–6). Both figures are consistent with available primary accounts. Mao reports ‘well over 10,000’ deaths in Hubei, Hunan and Jiangxi by June 13, with some supporting figures for individual counties (Schram, 2, p. 516). See also Minguo ribao, Hankou, June 12 1927 (quoted in Isaacs, pp. 225–6).

42. Liu Zhixun, ‘Ma ri shibian di huiyi’; Wilbur, pp. 656–7. The order to call off the attack was given by Li Weihan, who had succeeded Mao as Hunan Party Secretary in April 1923, and held the post until the end of May 1927 (Brandt, Conrad, Schwartz, Benjamin and Fairbank J. K., A Documentary History of Chinese Communism, Harvard University Press, 1952, pp. 112–13). See also Zhang Guotao, 1, p. 636.

43. Wilbur quotes a report in GMD archives as estimating that ‘four to five thousand persons were killed and many villages devastated’ by Xia's troops in Hubei (p. 654, n. 220). See also Isaacs, pp. 225–7. In Jiangxi, the death-toll was lower (Wilbur, pp. 660–1; see also Schram, 2, pp. 514–17).

44. Schram, 2, pp. 514–17 (June 13 1927).

45. McDonald, p. 316.

46. Zhang Guotao, 1, p. 615. Wang Jingwei's adviser. T'ang Leang-li [Tang Liangli], also saw the Horse Day Incident as the moment of realisation ‘that the time had arrived for the Guomindang and the Communist Party to separate’ (The Inner History of the Chinese Revolution, E. P. Dutton, New York, 1930, p. 279).

47. Wilbur, CHOC, 12, p. 655; North and Eudin, Roy's Mission to China, pp. 100–6 and 293–304; ZZWX, 3, pp. 138–41. See also Roy, M. N., Revolution and Counter-Revolution in China, Renaissance Publishers, Calcutta, 1946, p. 615.

48. ZZWX, 3, pp. 136–7.

49. North and Eudin, p. 104; Wilbur, p. 655.

50. North and Eudin, p. 103. Mao was then responsible for drafting most of the association's directives. How, and to whom, he sent it is unclear, since both the provincial peasants association and the provincial labour union had been suppressed.

51. Ibid., p. 104.

52. Ibid., pp. 314–17. The appeal was issued on June 3 1927.

53. Schram, 2, pp. 504–8 (May 30) and pp. 510–13 (June 7 1927); Nianpu, 1, pp. 201–5. Mao's appointment was announced on June 7.

54. Isaacs, pp. 190–6. Eudin and North, Soviet Russia and the East, pp. 301–2. For Trotsky's side of the argument, see Evans and Block, Trotsky on China, pp. 443–61.

55. History of the CCP, Chronology, p. 49; North, Robert. C., Moscow and Chinese Communists, Stanford University Press, 1963, pp. 100 and 104–6. The resolution the Comintern approved on May 30 is translated in Eudin and North, pp. 369–76 (see also 379–80).

56. Zhang Guotao, I, pp. 637–8; Evans and Block, p. 606. See also ‘Gao chuandang tongzhi shu’, Shanghai, 1929.

57. Evans and Block, p. 601.

58. Schram, 2, p. 426; Cai Hesen, Problemy Kitaia, 1, p. 39.

59. Wilbur, CHOC, 12 pp. 661–2; North and Eudin, pp. 110–18; T'ang Leang-li, pp. 280–3; Zhang Guotao, 1, pp. 638–46. Roy's attitude may be inferred from his speech to the Politburo on June 15 1927: ‘We must place the Guomindang in a position where it must of necessity give a direct answer. We must force it to give an explicit declaration before the masses as to whether it is prepared to lead the revolution forward or wants to betray it.’ (North and Eudin, p. 355).

60. North and Eudin, pp. 338–40.

61. The Central Committee stated: ‘There is a risk of immediate armed conflict with the enemy. This is not desirable for our Party’ (ZZWX, 3, p. 138).

62. After Mao's death, it was acknowledged that ‘although the Comintern had made a series of errors in its advice to the Chinese revolutionaries, this particular directive correctly addressed the crucial question of the time: how to save the revolution’ (Hu Sheng [editor], A Concise History of the Communist Party of China, Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, 1994, p. 103).

63. From June 7, when Mao was first appointed Secretary of the Hunan Committee, to June 24, when the appointment was made for a second time, the CC's policy on ‘the Hunan problem’ was in flux (Nianpu, 1, pp. 203–4). Cai Hesen wrote later that the CC and the Comintern delegates (Borodin and Roy) set up a special commission to plan armed peasant uprisings in Hunan, and that ‘a large group of army comrades was sent to Hunan’ for this purpose (Problemy Kitaia, 1, p. 44). Mao addressed this group in Wuhan in the second ten days of June (Nianpu, 1, pp. 203–4). Zhou Enlai, as director of the CC Military Committee, submitted to the Politburo Standing Committee on June 17 ‘a plan for dealing with the [consequences of] the massacre in Hunan’, and Qu Qiubai later confirmed that the CC that month took a ‘final decision’ for an offensive in Hunan (Qu, ‘The Past and Future of the Chinese Communist Party’, in Chinese Studies in History, 1971, 5, 1, pp. 37–8). When Mao travelled to Hunan a week later, he briefed Party cadres there on the commission's plan (Nianpu, ibid.).

64. Wilbur, CHOC, 12, pp. 664–5 and p. 668; Vishnyakova-Akimova, p. 362.

65. Cai Hesen, Problemy Kitaia, pp. 56–7. See also Qu Qiubai, pp. 41–2.

66. North and Eudin, pp. 361–9; Wilbur, CHOC, 12, pp. 665–7. Chen Duxiu claimed later that he twice proposed (apparently in June) that the CCP leave the united front, but that the rest of the Politburo, with the exception of the Youth League leader, Ren Bishi, were against it (Evans and Block, p. 604). Zhang Guotao also claimed to have proposed a break in mid-June, but found the rest of the leadership cautious (1, p. 647).

67. Wilbur, CHOC, 12, p. 667.

68. Nianpu, 1, pp. 203–4; Snow, p. 189. Tang Shengzhi had issued a statement on June 29, supporting Xu Kexiang (North and Eudin, pp. 120–1), which meant that the planned uprising would be opposed by the GMD-Left's military forces. Borodin had therefore ordered the plan aborted.

69. Nianpu, 1, p. 204; Schram, 3, pp. 5–12.

70. According to the Nianpu, Mao and Cai discussed these issues at length in the first ten days of July; afterwards Cai wrote to the Politburo, accusing it of paying insufficient attention to military planning (1, p. 205).

71. Pantsov, Bolsheviks and the Chinese Revolution, pp. 152–3; Pravda, July 10 & 16 1927; History of the CCP, Chronology, p. 50; Wilbur, CHOC, 12, pp. 669–71; and Pantsov and Levine, p. 187.

72. Wilbur, pp. 669–70; Isaacs, p. 270; Nianpu, 1, p. 206; Zhang Guotao, 1, pp. 656–9.

73. Wilbur, pp. 671–2.

74. It is not known exactly when Yang Kaihui left Wuhan, but given Anlong's birth in April and the chaos in Hunan after May 21, it is unlikely that she departed before late July. According to the Nianpu (1, p. 209), Mao was briefly reunited with her in Changsha in August, when he was organising the Autumn Harvest Uprising, but the months in Wuhan would be the last time they lived together as a family.

CHAPTER 7 OUT OF THE BARREL OF A GUN

1. Zhang Guotao, Rise of the Chinese Communist Party, 1, pp. 669–72. I have substituted the word ‘spiv’ for the anachronistic ‘teddy boy’ which Zhang's English translator has employed.

2. They included Vladimir Kuchumov, who acted as Soviet consul and Comintern representative in Changsha, and Heinz Neumann, 26, a German who worked for the Youth International (Ristaino, Marcia R, China's Art of Revolution: The Mobilization of Discontent, 1927 and 1928, Duke University Press, Durham, NC, 1987, pp. 41 and 103–4; Pantsov and Levine, p. 194). Both shared Lominadze's strongly leftist views.

3. Zhang Guotao, 1, pp. 657–60.

4. Schram, Mao's Road, 3, pp. 13–19.

5. Nianpu, 1, p. 206. This was a re-run on a larger scale of the aborted Hunan uprising project in which Mao had been involved.

6. See Zhang Guotao, 1, pp. 660–76 and 2, pp. 3–16; Hsiao Tso-liang, Chinese Communism in 1927, City vs Countryside, Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1970, pp. 81–90; Ristaino, pp. 21–38; Guillermaz, Jacques, ‘The Nanchang Uprising’, CQ, 11 (1962), pp. 161–8; and Wilbur, C. Martin, ‘The Ashes of Defeat’, CQ, 18 (1964), pp. 3–54. Initial discussion of the Nanchang Uprising, involving Li Lisan in Jiujiang and Zhou Enlai in Wuhan, was under way by July 20 if not earlier.

7. Quoted by Zhang Guotao in Wilbur, CQ 18, p. 46.

8. Presumably on the strength of the reports from Nanchang, the Soviet Politburo on August 11 and 18 approved the despatch of an agent to Shanghai with US $300,000 (equivalent to more than $3 million in today's terms) for the CCP, and the shipment of 15,000 guns, 30 machine guns and 10 million cartridges (Taylor, Jay, The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and the Struggle for Modern China, Harvard University Press, 2009, pp. 72 & 611 n. 99). Whether the weapons were ever sent is doubtful: there is no record of them having been received.

9. Schram, 3, p. 25 (Aug. 1 1927). The Nianpu says the decision to make Guangdong the final destination was taken by the Standing Committee on July 24 or 25 (1, p. 206).

10. Goodman, David S. G., Deng Xiaoping and the Chinese Revolution, Routledge, 1994, p. x; Evans, Richard, Deng Xiaoping and the Making of Modern China, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1995, p. 44; and Saich, Rise to Power, p. 308.

11. Ristaino, p. 41. Two foreigners were present: Lominadze, and a ‘representative of the Youth International’, whom Li Yuning suggests was Chitarov (Biography of Ch'u Ch'iu-p'ai, p. 227, n. 4).

12. Li Ang, Hongse wutai, Chongqing, 1942 [no page number]. ‘Li Ang’ (a pseudonym for Zhu Xinfan) did not attend the conference and later defected to the Guomindang. None the less, in 1927 he was in a position to know what transpired there so his account is not to be dismissed out of hand.

13. ZZWX, 3, p. 302.

14. Saich, pp. 296–313.

15. Ibid., pp. 296–308. The resolution censured, for example, a directive which had been drafted by Mao on May 30 1927 for the All-China Peasants’ Association (Schram, 2, p. 506).

16. Brandt et al., Documentary History, p. 119.

17. Schram, 3, p. 33 (Aug. 9 1927).

18. History of the CCP, Chronology, pp. 52–3.

19. That Zhou Enlai was responsible may be inferred from Zhang Guotao's account (1, p. 659) and is consistent with Mao's later blame of Chen Duxiu (Snow, Red Star over China, p. 189). In 1936, after all, he could hardly have named Zhou as the culprit. Mao was not a native of Sichuan and had had no experience in that province (see also Nianpu, 1, p. 206).

20. See Qu's comment on 28 September 1927: ‘We must have Zedong … If you're looking for someone who is independent-minded in our Party, it's Zedong’ (Nianpu, 1, p. 221). After the August 7 Conference, Qu had thought of assigning Mao to work for the Centre in Shanghai. But Mao had demurred, claiming whimsically that he did not like tall buildings and preferred a life in the countryside among ‘the heroes of the greenwood?. The idea was quickly dropped (Saich, Rise to Power, p. 209).

21. Nianpu, 1, p. 206; Schram, 3, pp. 27–8.

22. Saich, pp. 317–19.

23. See ibid., pp. 319–21; Nianpu, 1, pp. 207–9; and Schram, 3, pp. 33–4 (Aug. 9 1927). From the fragmentary evidence available, it seems that on August 3, only hours after the Standing Committee issued the new ‘Outline … of the Autumn Harvest Uprising’, Mao was told he would not be returning to Hunan after all but should stay in Wuhan (possibly in connection with Qu's suggestion that he should be assigned to Shanghai). He apparently had no input into the revised proposal drafted by the Hunan committee. Kuchumov is referred to in Party documents as ‘Comrade Mayer’ (or, incorrectly, ‘Meyer’); his Chinese name was Ma Kefu (Pantsov and Levine, p. 194).

24. Mao's outspokenness was all the more striking because, as Lominadze hinted and Peng Gongda later confirmed, Yi Lirong was really being punished for demanding that the Comintern take part of the blame for the ‘opportunist errors’ of the past (Schram, 3, pp. 33–4 and Saich, p. 322).

25. Nianpu, 1, p. 209.

26. Schram, 3, pp. 39–40 (Aug. 20 1927).

27. Ibid., and Nianpu, 1, p. 210. See also Li Lisan's vitriolic comments on the Nanchang rebels’ continued use of ‘the flag of the White Terror’ (Wilbur, CQ, 18, p. 23). Qu Qiubai later admitted that the initial decision in August to keep the flag had been wrong (Chinese Studies in History, 5, 1, p. 53).

28. ZZWX, pp. 369–71. See also Stalin's speech to the Comintern of Sept. 27 (Eudin and North, Soviet Russia and the East, p. 307).

29. ZZWX, 3, pp. 294–7; and Schram, 3, p. 32 (Aug. 7 1927).

30. Schram, 3, p. 35 (Aug. 18) and p. 40 (Aug. 20 1927).

31. Pak, Hyobom (ed.), Documents of the Chinese Communist Party, Union Research Institute, Hong Kong, 1971, pp. 91–5.

32. Schram, 3, pp. 30–1 (Aug. 7 1927).

33. Saich, Rise to Power, p. 310. A week earlier, the Standing Committee had approved Mao's proposal that a regiment of regular troops be the core force in the southern Hunan uprising (Schram, 3, p. 28).

34. Saich, pp. 319–21; Qu Qiubai, pp. 21 and 70; Nianpu, 1, p. 212. For a similar debate over the use of military forces in the Hubei uprisings, see Roy Hofheinz, ‘The Autumn Harvest Insurrection’, in CQ, 32, 1967, p. 47.

35. Saich, p. 315.

36. Ibid., p. 324; Hofheinz, CQ, 32, p. 48; Schram, 3, p. 36 (Aug. 18 1927).

37. Nianpu, 1, p. 212; Schram, 3, pp. 37–8 (Aug. 19 1927).

38. Zhongyang tongxin, 3, pp. 38–41 (Aug. 30 1927). Differing translations appear in Pak, pp. 91–2, and Hofheinz, p. 65.

39. Nianpu, 1, p. 213. See also Saich, p. 504, n. 90.

40. Hofheinz, pp. 49–57.

41. Nianpu, 1, p. 213; Schram, 3, pp. 41–2 (Aug. 30 1927).

42. Pak, pp. 99–101.

43. Ibid., pp. 60–6; Hofheinz, pp. 37–87. An almost complete Chinese text is in Zhongyang tongxin (December 1927). In Hunan, four centres were specified: Changsha, Hengyang, Changde in the west and Baoqing in the south-west. Hofheinz mistakenly dates Qu Qiubai's plan to the beginning of August, which invalidates much of his chronology. See also Hsiao Tso-liang, pp. 44–80, and Ristaino, pp. 56–74.

44. Nianpu, 1, p. 213; Saich, p. 504, n. 90.

45. Nianpu, 1, p. 214.

46. Ibid., p. 215; Hofheinz, pp. 67–70.

47. Nianpu, 1, p. 216; Hofheinz, pp. 71–2.

48. Snow, p. 193.

49. Nianpu, 1, pp. 217–18; Hsiao Tso-liang, pp. 67–77; and Hofheinz, pp. 72–9.

50. Nianpu, 1, pp. 218–20; Schram, 3, p. 34 (Aug. 9 1927). See also He Changgong, ‘The deeds of Jinggangshan will be remembered for thousands of years’, BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, June 18 1981, FE/6752/BII/1.

51. Hofheinz, pp. 51–60.

52. Wilbur, CQ, 18, pp. 33–4; Ristaino, p. 35.

53. Ristaino, pp. 127–9.

54. Saich, pp. 331–41; ZZWX, 3, pp. 478–84. See also Zhou Enlai, SW1, p. 194.

55. Ristaino, pp. 97–108; Hsiao Tso-Liang, pp. 135–48; Wilbur, ‘The Nationalist Revolution’, CHOC, 12, pp. 692–5; Isaacs, Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution, pp. 282–91; and North, Moscow and Chinese Communists, p. 120. History of the CCP, Chronology, lists some twenty-five uprisings, almost all of them short-lived, between November 1927 and June 1928 (pp. 56–9).

56. History of the CCP, Chronology, pp. 56–9, and Ristaino, pp. 126–39.

57. Most Chinese accounts, including the Nianpu, place Mao's enunciation of the ‘Three Rules’, as they became known, at Sanwan at the beginning of October. Stephen Averill, relying on two accounts by local writers, suggests that it came 10 days later, after the failure of Mao's probe into southern Hunan, when his troops stole food from peasant families along the route of their retreat (Revolution in the Highlands: China's Jinggangshan Base Area, Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham, Md, 2006, p. 163).

58. Schram, 3, p. 59. The dating of the letter in which Mao refers to these changes appears to be incorrect; it was probably written early in June 1928, not in August.

59. This section is drawn largely from the Nianpu (1, pp. 220–44) – which itself is based on oral accounts given to a CCP CC Commission which visited the Jiangxi base areas in 1951 (Grigoriev, Revolyutsionnoe Dvizhenie, p. 62), on later researches by Party historians, and on memoir material; from my own visits to the area in 1979/80, 1997 and 2004; from Stephen Averill's Revolution in the Highlands, especially pp. 155–330; and from four major monographs on the period: Gui Yulin, Jinggangshan geming douzheng shi (History of the Revolutionary Struggles on Jinggangshan), Jiefangjun chubanshe, Beijing, 1986; Jinggangshande wuzhuang geju (The Armed Independent Regime on Jinggangshan), Jiangxi renmin chubanshe, Nanchang, 1979; Jinggangshan geming genjudi shiliao xuanbian (Selected Historical Materials on the Jinggangshan Revolutionary Base Area), Jiangxi renmin chubanshe, Nanchang, 1986; and Jinggangshan geming genjudi (The Jinggangshan Revolutionary Base Area), Vols 1 & 2, Zhonggong dangshi ziliao chubanshe, Beijing, 1987. See also Averill's introduction to Stuart Schram's ‘Mao's Road to Power? (3, pp. xxiv–xxix).

60. The text of this letter, like all of Mao's speeches and writings between September 1927 and April 1928, has been lost.

61. Schram, 3, p. 102 (Nov. 25 1928).

62. Ibid., p. 119.

63. Qu told a Jiangxi Party official on February 17 1928 that the development of the revolution in south-western Jiangxi would have a ‘very important’ knock-on effect in Hunan, so ‘should Mao, then, be [Party] secretary in southwestern Jiangxi?’ (Nianpu, 1, p. 234). In the end, nothing came of this proposal, but it showed the way Qu was thinking.

64. Carr, Foundations of a Planned Economy, 3, pt 3, p. 867 (quoting Stenograficheskii Otchet VI Siezda KPK, vol. V, Moscow, 1930, pp. 12–13.)

65. Schram, 3, p. xxvi; ZZWX, 4, pp. 56–66.

66. Nianpu, 1, p. 229 (31 Dec. 1927). As head of the CC's Military Committee, Zhou was responsible for enforcing the Centre's military policy, and quickly developed a reputation as a stickler for Party discipline. It is tempting to see Zhou's attacks on Mao in the winter of 1927 as an early instance of his lifelong practice of seeking the winning side (in this case, the Qu–Lominadze military line) and aligning himself behind it. But the fact that he was still criticising Mao in June 1928, when the line had already changed, suggests a deeper animus, perhaps reflecting earlier clashes, either in Canton at the time of the March 20 Incident in 1926, or in Wuhan in June 1927, when they worked together on the first, aborted Hunan uprising plan.

67. Schram, 3, p. 52 (May 2 1928).

68. Ibid., p. 84.

69. History of the CCP, Chronology, p. 58. Agnes Smedley's account (The Great Road, Monthly Review Press, New York, 1956, pp. 212–25) conveys vividly the reality of the struggle but makes the Party's efforts seem far better organised than they actually were. Contemporary documents show that most of the time the Party leaders in Shanghai did not know even in which province Zhu's forces were operating (Pak, pp. 183–94).

70. Smedley, p. 2 (Mao) and 226 (Zhu).

71. Ibid., pp. 9–186. See also Jin Chongji, Zhu De zhuan, Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, Beijing, 1993.

72. Zhu brought with him a copy of the November plenum's resolution (Schram, 3, pp. 83–4). See also ibid., pp. 52 and 54, and Nianpu, 1, pp. 236, 238 and 240.

73. In a report to the Jiangxi Party Committee, Mao said they had altogether 18,000 soldiers, of whom 10,000 were ill-disciplined peasant troops from southern Hunan who had accompanied the Red Army when it returned to the Hunan-Jiangxi border region (Schram, 3, pp. 49–52, May 2 1928). The latter soon returned to their home villages, and in the second half of 1928, the core of the Zhu-Mao Army was gradually whittled down by deaths, injuries and desertions to some 6,000 men.

74. He Changgong, FE/6752/BII/1.

75. The text of Mao's speech at the 1st Border Area Party Congress has never been published (and may have been lost). He dealt with the same theme twice later in the year, on both occasions in very similar terms. This and the following extracts are from the resolution he drafted for the Second Congress on October 5 1928 (Schram, 3, p. 65).

76. Averill, Revolution in the Highlands, pp. 66–7 & 72; Nianpu, 1, p. 229; Smedley, pp. 232–3. His real name was Zhu Kongyang. A former army officer, he deserted from a warlord unit in 1920, taking with him a dozen of his men. They extorted money from landlord families and engaged in what was known locally as ‘lamb-hanging’ – kidnapping for ransom. According to Averill, he was ‘a laconic, somewhat hard-of-hearing man with chronic habits of womanizing and conspicuous consumption but also a crack shot and an effective leader’. His fate is not known, but he had evidently left Jinggangshan long before Mao arrived in the winter of 1927.

77. According to the Nianpu, Mao put forward a twelve-character formula – ‘[When the] enemy advances, we withdraw; enemy rests, we harass; enemy withdraws, we attack’ – in mid-January 1928 (1, p. 232). The full sixteen-character version appeared in May that year.

78. Schram, 3, p. 85 (Nov. 25 1928).

79. Averill, Revolution in the Highlands, pp. 202–14.

80. Mao began to formulate these rules in October 1927 (Nianpu, 1, pp. 222 and 226). The first formal version of the ‘Six Points’ appeared on January 25 1928 (ibid., p. 233). It was modified on April 3 (ibid., p. 238), to avoid overlap with the ‘Three Rules’. The orthodox rendering of the ‘Eight Points’ is given in SW4, pp. 155–6.

81. Schram, 3, pp. 93, 104 and 115 (Nov. 25 1928) and 173 (June 1 1929). Nianpu, 1, p. 231.

82. Nianpu, 1, p. 236; see also Schram, 3, p. 115 (Nov. 25 1928).

83. Chinese Studies in History, 5, 1, pp. 69–70. Although Qu's speech was delivered in June, it was evidently prepared two months earlier (see p. 53).

84. Saich, pp. 322–3. Nianpu, 1, pp. 209–10 and 243; Schram, 3, p. 5.

85. Letters between Jinggangshan and Shanghai passed through Anyuan, where a young Hunanese cadre on the local party committee was charged with liaison. Documents from Shanghai usually arrived hidden in a wine bottle or a phonograph record carrier and were then transcribed onto rice paper and carried to Jinggangshan in the bamboo handle of an umbrella. From June 1928, the new Hunan provincial committee, which the previous month had moved from Changsha to Xiangtan to escape the authorities’ repression, based itself at Anyuan.

86. Useful accounts of the congress in English include Grigoriev, A. M., ‘An Important Landmark in the History of the Chinese Communist Party’, in Chinese Studies in History, 8, 3 (1975), pp. 18–44; Carr, 853–75; and Ristaino, pp. 199–214.

87. ZZWX, 4, pp. 71–5 and 239–57; Pak, Documents, pp. 371–2; and Nianpu, 1, p. 244.

88. Grigoriev, Revolyutsionnoe Dvizheniye, p. 81; Zhongguo gongchangdang huiyi gaiyao, p. 79; Zhang Guotao, 2, pp. 68–9; Saich, pp. 341–58. See also pp. 358–86; and Chinese Studies in History, 4, nos 1–4 (1970 and 1971).

89. Thornton, Richard, The Comintern and the Chinese Communists, 1928–31, University of Washington, Seattle, 1969, pp. 32–8. Although approved in Moscow on February 25 1928, the Qu Qiubai leadership began publicising the new strategy only on April 30, and the Party journal, Buersheweike (which had replaced Xiangdao in October 1927) did not publicise it until July (Grigoriev, Revolyutsionnoe Dvizhenie, p. 78).

90. Nikolai Bukharin, speech to the Sixth Congress, in Chinese Studies in History, 4, 1 (1970), pp. 19–22.

91. Saich, pp. 374 and 355–7.

92. Bukharin, speech, p. 21.

93. Ibid., p. 13: ‘It is the peasants themselves who are just now rising up, and it is the workers who are oppressed and blocked, who still cannot straighten their backs.’ The theme of proletarian leadership, with the peasants as the main revolutionary force, runs through all the resolutions.

94. Mao Zedong, SW1, p. 196 (December 1936).

95. The following account is drawn from Wang Xingjuan, He Zizhende lu, Zuojia chubanshe, 1988, pp. 1–23, 44–5, 60, 67–9, 78–9 and 87–8; and from Liu Xianong ‘Mao Zedong dierci hunyin neiqing’ (‘Inside Information on Mao Zedong's Second Marriage’), Jizhe xie tianxia, no. 21, May 1992, pp. 4–11.

96. Other local sources offer a more prosaic account of how they came together. That autumn Yuan Wencai's concubine, a woman in her mid-twenties, convinced (wrongly) that her partner was falling in love with He Zizhen, started making jealous scenes whenever she saw them together. After one particularly ugly incident, in December 1927, Yuan and Wang Zuo decided that the best way of dealing with the situation would be to encourage a romance between He and Mao, which would have the further advantage of forging a longterm commitment between him and the base area's inhabitants. The following month Yuan, acting as a traditional go-between, suggested to Mao that He would make a good partner. Mao initially demurred, but in February she began working as his secretary. In late May or early June, they married in a small ceremony at Xiangshan'an, a nunnery near Maoping. Wang Zuo, Yuan Wencai and a dozen or so local people attended, and Yuan afterwards cooked them a nuptial supper (see Averill, Revolution in the Highlands, pp. 179–81 and 188 nn. 40–41; Wang Xingjuan, p. 90.)

97. Wang Xingjuan, p. 45; Smedley, pp. 137, 223–4 and 272–3.

98. Pantsov and Levine (p. 226) suggest that Mao may not have been completely callous: in November 1929, he asked Li Lisan to send a message to his brother, Zemin, saying that he missed Kaihui and his three sons and asking how to contact them (Schram, 3, p. 192). However, that seems to have been an attempt to ingratiate himself with Li – who by then had become the new Party leader – by reminding him of their former personal ties, rather than a serious enquiry. Had Mao wished to, he could easily have contacted her through her cousin, Kaiming, or other Hunan comrades. There is no evidence that he did so, either then or later.

99. The welter of conflicting messages to Jinggangshan at this time reflected the efforts of a new, very young and very inexperienced provincial leadership to assert its authority. The first envoy, Du Xiujing, arrived in Jinggangshan on May 29 and reported back to the Provincial Committee that the base was poorly organised and the leadership was not doing enough to expand the territory under its control. The Committee responded by sending a second envoy, Yuan Desheng, with two letters dated 19 June, calling for a tripling of the size of the Red Army and a policy of aggressive expansion into southern Hunan. A week later Du Xiujing followed him with two further, yet more insistent, directives in the same sense. Whereas the initial directives stressed the need also to retain the Ninggang base, the later ones did not. The following section is drawn from Jinggangshan geming genjudi, 1, pp. 133–44; Schram, 3, pp. 50, 52, 55 and 117; Nianpu, 1, pp. 243 and 247–8; and Pak, pp. 369–77). Averill, in Revolution in the Highlands, pp. 265–82, gives an excellent overview of the period.

100. Nianpu, 1, pp. 247–8; Jinggangshan geming genjudi, 1, p. 511. Yang Kaiming, who had left Changsha with Du, did not join Mao until some days after the June 30 meeting (Jinggangshan geming genjudi, 1, p. 425). See also Schram, 3, pp. 55–8 (July 4 1928).

101. Nianpu, 1, pp. 248–51. See also Schram, 3, pp. 86 and 117.

102. Nianpu, 1, pp. 252–3; Schram, 3, pp. 87–8.

103. Mao Zedong shici duilian jizfiu, Hunan wenyi chubanshe, 1991, pp. 23–5; see also Schram, 3, p. 61.

104. Nianpu, 1, pp. 249–50 and 252; Schram, 3, pp. 85–6 and 113; and Jinggangshan geming genjudi, 1, pp. 471–2.

105. See Schram, 3, p. 178. Zhu had at first been reluctant to join up with Mao's forces (as the CC had been urging since December 1927, but which did not happen until April 1928); and Mao was careful not to exacerbate tensions ahead of the Guidong meeting in August 1928 (Nianpu, 1, p. 252).

106. Mao afterwards referred to ‘a bizarre view’ held by ‘a minority of comrades’ that it had been ‘wrong to stay in the border area’ (Schram, 3, p. 183).

107. Jinggangshan geming genjudi, 1, pp. 471–2 and 523; Schram, 3, p. 711 (Oct. 5 1928); Nianpu, 1, pp. 228 and 254.

108. Nianpu, 1, p. 254.

109. Ibid., p. 256.

110. Schram, 3, pp. 80–1 and 113–14 (Nov. 25 1928); Nianpu, 1, pp. 228 and 254; Jinggangshan geming genjudi, 1, pp. 472 and 523.

111. Ibid., pp. 80–121; see also 70–1 and 75 and Nianpu, 1, p. 256. The text contradicts itself at several points. Thus, on pp. 96–7, Mao refers to acute shortages of food and clothing, but then declares on p. 118 that ‘food and clothing are no longer a problem’; on p. 115, he says there are ‘hardly any cases of mutiny or desertion’ among the enemy troops, but on p. 119 asserts that ‘more and more of them will defect to our side’. It is possible that he wrote the first part before the battles in Ninggang and Yongxin on November 9 and 10, and the remainder later. A shortened and heavily revised version was published in SW1, pp. 73–104, under the title ‘The Struggle in the Chingkang Mountains’.

112. Schram, 3, pp. 92–7.

113. Schram, 3, pp. 92–7, 151 and 154–5; Peng Dehuai, Memoirs of a Chinese Marshal, Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, 1984, p. 231; Averill, Revolution in the Highlands, pp. 307–12; Smedley, p. 235.

114. Schram, 3, pp. 96–7; see also He Changgong, FE/6752/BII/1.

115. Schram, 3, p. 139 (Feb. 13 1929).

116. Mao acknowledged the Red Army's dealing in opium in 1928 and 1929 (ibid., 3, pp. 57 and 173–4); see also Peng Dehuai, p. 248. For the communists' trade in opium at Yan'an in the 1940s, see Chen Yung-fa, ‘The Blooming Poppy under the Red Sun’, in Saich and Van de Ven, New Perspectives on the Chinese Revolution, pp. 263–98; also Slack, Edward R., Opium, State and Society: China's Narco-Economy and the Guomindang, 1924–1937, University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 2001.

117. Schram, 3, pp. 105 and 119.

118. Peng Dehuai, pp. 193–229 and 233–4; Nianpu, 1, pp. 259–61. Averill, p. 316. Where the figures given by these accounts differ, I have followed Averill.

119. Nianpu, 1, pp. 261–2.

120. Smedley (p. 236) says they ‘overpowered the enemy garrison’ at Dafen, but that does not seem credible since the town was the base for a powerful government militia.

121. Ibid.; Nianpu, 1, p. 263.

122. In the mid-1960s, Peng complained: ‘If the Fourth Army [had] manoeuvred well, it could have destroyed or routed the enemy brigade. [But instead] it pushed on to Dayu … [and] lost contact with the Jinggang Mountains completely’ (Peng Dehuai, p. 233).

123. Ibid., p. 234–7.

124. Schram, 3, pp. 159 (April 5 1929) and 150.

125. Wang Xingjuan, pp. 118 and 135–6. He Zizhen remembered that the baby was born in Longyan, in Fujian. Mao's forces stopped there briefly in late May 1929 (Nianpu, 1, p. 276; Schram, 3, p. 166).

126. Smedley, p. 237.

127. Nianpu, 1, pp. 265–6 and 270; Schram, 3, p. 150.

128. Schram, 3, pp. 117, 119–20 (Nov 25 1928), 151 (March 20), 161 (April 5) and 172 (June 1 1929).

129. Ibid., pp. 117 and 120 (Nov. 25 1928).

130. Ibid., p. 161 (April 5 1929). For Mao's efforts to obtain newspapers on Jinggangshan, see Averill, pp. 161, 185 n. 14, 200 and 310.

131. Ibid., p. 151 (March 20 1929).

132. The elections at the Sixth Congress were decidedly eccentric. This was partly because the meeting was unrepresentative (held in Moscow in the absence of key Party figures, such as Mao, Peng Pai and Li Weihan; and packed with Chinese students from Soviet universities to make up the delegate count), and partly because there was no single Chinese leader capable of uniting the Party behind him. As a result, when the Comintern produced a slate of candidates for Central Committee membership, all were duly elected – but not in the intended order. Of the new Politburo, Xiang Zhongfa was listed 3rd in CC rank order; Su Zhaozheng, 9th; Mao, 12th; Zhou Enlai, 14th; Cai Hesen, 16th; Xiang Ying, 17th; and Zhang Guotao, 23rd. Li Lisan ranked 22nd in the CC and just scraped into the Politburo as a non-voting alternate member; he did not become a full member until November 1928. Russian stage-management evidently left a good deal to be desired (Zhongguo gongchangdang huiyi gaiyao, p. 84).

133. It may reasonably be assumed, although it cannot be proved, that Mao received a list of the new Central Committee and Politburo members in January at the same time as the (incomplete) set of Sixth Congress documents that reached Jinggangshan. He may first have got a sense of the real shape of the new leadership when a CC envoy, Liu Angong, reached the Fourth Army in May 1929. However, Mao's first (known) written comment on the leadership changes came in late November 1929, when he told Li Lisan: ‘Only with Comrade Chen Yi's arrival [two days earlier] did I learn of your situation’ (ibid., pp. 151–2 and 192; and Nianpu, 1, pp. 274 and 289–90).

134. Nianpu, 1, pp. 264–5; Saich, pp. 472–4. ZZWX, 5, pp. 29–38.

135. Schram, 3, p. 100.

136. Saich, pp. 473–4.

137. Ibid., pp. 147–52; Nianpu, 1, pp. 264–70; Smedley, pp. 237–9 and 248–51.

138. The CC messenger arrived in Ruijin on April 3 (Schram, 3, p. 153).

139. Ibid., pp. 153–61 (April 5 1929), 168 and 172; Peng Dehuai, p. 250.

140. Schram, 3, pp. 244–5 (Jan. 5 1930).

141. ZZWX, 5, p. 30.

142. Schram, 3, p. 154.

143. Ibid., p. xli; Jin Chongji, Zhou Enlai zhuan, 1898–1949, Zhongyang wenxian yanjiushi chubanshe, Beijing, 1989, p. 193; Nianpu, 1, pp. 272 and 278–9; Saich, p. 395.

144. Schram, 3, pp. 243–4 (Jan. 5 1930); Nianpu, 1, p. 272.

145. Nianpu, 1, pp. 275–8. See also Mao's letters to Lin Biao of June 14 1929 and January 5 1930 (Schram, 3, pp. 177–89 and 234–46); the CC's ‘Directive to the Front Committee of the Fourth Red Army’, Section 8, ‘The Zhu-Mao Problem’, in ZZWX, 5, pp. 488–9; and Schram, 3, pp. 178–9, 184 and 187.

146. Wang Xingjuan, p. 139.

147. Nianpu, 1, p. 277; Schram, 3, pp. 171, 181 and 185–7.

148. Schram, 3, pp. 156, 159 and 171; Nianpu, 1, pp. 264 and 268–9.

149. Nianpu, 1, p. 274.

150. Ibid., pp. 276–7; and Schram, 3, pp. 180–5.

151. Nianpu, 1, pp. 274 and 276–8; Schram, 3, p. xliv; Jin Chongji, Zhu De zhuan, pp. 175–80.

152. Schram, 3, p. 182 (June 14 1929); Nianpu, 1, pp. 280–1; Zhongguo gongchangdang huiyi gaiyao, pp. 88–90; Xiao Ke, ZhuMao hongjun ceji, Zhonggong zhongyang dangxiao chubanshe, Beijing, 1993, pp. 88–102.

153. Wang Xingjuan, pp. 135–7.

154. Ibid., pp. 140–2. He was almost certainly suffering from neurasthenia.

155. Nianpu, 1, pp. 281–3.

156. Wang Xingjuan, p. 143.

157. Ibid.; the Nianpu (1, pp. 283–4) gives a slightly different sequence of events.

158. Mao wrote in late November that he had been ‘very ill for three months’ (Schram, 3, p. 192). According to the Nianpu, his malaria was cured by the end of October (1, p. 288). Both are consistent with his having contracted the disease around the beginning of August (see also Nianpu 1, pp. 284–5).

159. It is not clear how the letter setting out Mao's views (which he had sent privately to Lin Biao on June 14) came to reach Shanghai. Presumably Lin or Mao himself arranged for it to be included with the Congress resolutions.

160. Nianpu, 1, p. 285. Smedley reported that Zhu De remembered Liu with affection (Great Road, p. 266).

161. Nianpu, 1, pp. 286 and 289; ZZWX, 5, pp. 473–90.

162. Nianpu, 1, pp. 288–90.

163. Schram, 3, p. 194.

164. Nianpu, 1, pp. 291–2; see also Zhongguo gongchangdang huiyi gaiyao, pp. 98–102.

165. Schram, 3, pp. 195–210 (December 28 1929).

166. SW2, p. 224 (Nov. 6 1938).

167. Schram, 3, pp. 207–30.

168. Ibid., pp. 234–46 (Jan. 5 1930).

169. See Zhou, SW1, p. 44, and Saich, pp. 388–9.

170. Saich, pp. 400–7, esp. p. 406; Thornton's analysis (pp. 96–101) is marred, as throughout his otherwise very useful book, by the false assumption that communications between Moscow and Shanghai were virtually instantaneous.

171. Saich, pp. 400 and 406.

172. For a contrary (but partisan) view, see Grigoriev, Revolyutsionnoe Dvizheniye, pp. 170–4.

173. ZZWX, 5, pp. 561–75 (esp. Section 8, pp. 570–1). Much sinological ink has been spilled, in China, the West and Russia, to try to determine the degree of Moscow's responsibility in promoting the policies that became known as ‘the Li Lisan line’. The most plausible explanation is that a summary (though probably not the full text) of the Comintern letter was received in Shanghai early in December, and quickly led to the writing of the CC Circular which proclaimed the coming of the new ‘revolutionary high tide’. Li Lisan was longing to pursue a more aggressive, urban-based strategy, and the ambiguities of the Comintern's stance that winter gave him the opportunity he was looking for.

174. Nianpu, 1, pp. 297–8; Zhongguo gongchandang huiyi gaiyao, pp. 102–4; and Peng Dehuai, p. 265. That the December 8 circular arrived in January can be inferred from Mao's ‘Letter … to the Soldiers of the Guomindang Army’ which was plainly written after he received it (Schram, 3, pp. 247 and 249).

175. Schram, 3 pp. 268–9 (Feb. 16 1930).

176. Nianpu, 1, pp. 299–300; Schram, 3, pp. 263 (Feb 16 1930), pp. 273–9 (March 18) and 280–2 (March 19 1930).

177. Schram, 3, p. 269.

178. Ibid., pp. 204 and 206.

179. Ibid., pp. 192–3 (Nov. 28 1929).

180. ZZWX, 6, pp. 25–35, esp. Section 3, and 57–60; Nianpu, 1, p. 300.

181. Jin Chongji, Zhou Enlai zhuan, pp. 210–13; Grigoriev, p. 186.

182. ZZWX, 6, pp. 15–20; Nianpu, 1, pp. 303–8; Hsiao Tso-liang, Power Relations within the Chinese Communist Movement, 1930–34, University of Washington Press, Seattle, 1961–67, vol. 1, pp. 16–18, and vol. 2, pp. 28–9; Schram, 3, pp. 420–1 (May 1930).

183. See Grigoriev, pp. 181–7; and Thornton, pp. 123–54. The points which follow are taken from Buersheweike, April 1930; ZZWX, 6, pp. 57–60 and 98–110; Nianpu, 1, pp. 304–6; and Saich, pp. 428–39.

184. Saich, pp. 428–39 (June 11); Nianpu, 1, pp. 308–9 (June 9); and ZZWX, 6, pp. 137–41.

185. Smedley, p. 276; Peng Dehuai, pp. 286–99.

186. Grigoriev, pp. 201–2; Thornton, pp. 165–6.

187. Jin Chongji, Zhu De zhuan, p. 205; Nianpu, 1, pp. 305 and 310–11. The Politburo had decided on Zhu's promotion in April, but he did not learn of the decision until Tu Zhennong's arrival.

188. Mao Zedong shici duilian jizhu, pp. 35–7 (translation adapted from Schram, 3, p. 460). The poem was apparently written on the march, between Mao's leaving Tingzhou and the army's arrival near Nanchang. The Chinese editors describe it as ‘obscurely conveying [Mao's] complicated feelings at the time’.

189. Nianpu, 1, pp. 311–12.

190. Ibid., pp. 312–13; Schram, 3, pp. 482–4 (Aug. 19 1930).

191. Saich pp. 439–45. For timing, see Grigoriev, p. 190.

192. Saich, p. 431.

193. Grigoriev, p. 202; Saich, pp. 439–45; ZZWX, 6, p. 595.

194. Peng Dehuai, pp. 294–7.

195. Mao's letter to the South-West Jiangxi Special Committee on August 19 indicated that he began moving towards Hunan after learning of the capture of Changsha. Even so, he again demanded urgent reinforcements in order to be able to take advantage of the ‘increasingly intense revolutionary situation’ (Schram, 3, pp. 482–4; Peng Dehuai, p. 299).

196. Nianpu, 1, p. 314; Peng Dehuai, pp. 300–1; ZZWX, 6, pp, 178–80 and 248–9. Mao had been named General Front Committee Secretary of the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Armies (commanded by Zhu De, Peng Dehuai and Huang Gonglue) at Pitou in February 1930. He continued to hold this post through the reorganisations of the summer, but in practice acquired real authority over the three forces only after the Liuyang meeting in August. Similarly, in April, the Politburo had named Zhu as Commander-in-Chief of the three armies, but that appointment, too, took on practical significance only after the First Front Army was formed.

197. Schram, 3, pp. 488–9 (Aug. 24 1930).

198. Nianpu, 1, p. 315. See also Schram, 3, pp. 490–502, 508–21 and 524–5.

199. Schram, 3, pp. 526–8 (Sept. 13 1930) and documentation at Jian Revolutionary Museum.

200. Nianpu, 1, p. 318; Schram, 3, pp. 552–3 (Oct. 14 1930).

201. Nianpu, 1, pp. 318 and 326; Schram, 3, pp. 553–4; Shihua, 2, Dec. 9 1930, pp. 3–4 (extracts quoted in Grigoriev, p. 215, and Schram, 3, p. lx).

202. See Grigoriev, pp. 202–3 and 208.

203. This message, sent on August 26, marked a key turning-point in Moscow's assessment of Li's policies. The full text has not been published, either in China or Russia, but extracts are given by Grigoriev (pp. 206–7).

204. Ibid., p. 206; Jin Chongji, Zhou Enlai zhuan, pp. 218–20.

205. Nianpu, 1, p. 317; Saich, pp. 445–57. See also Thornton, pp. 187–200; Grigoriev (Revolyutsionnoe Dvizheniye), pp. 208–14; and Grigoriev, ‘The Comintern and the Revolutionary Movement in China’, in Ulyanovsky, Comintern and the East, p. 372. During the plenum none of those present – not even the local Comintern representative – regarded Li's errors as a problem of line (see Saich, p. 470, quoting a letter from the Comintern's Shanghai bureau). Qu, writing from prison in 1935, just before his execution, remembered seeing no ‘fundamental difference’ at that time between Li's position and that of the Comintern (Dun Li, Road to Communism, p. 169). The paradoxical result was that Li and his supporters, despite the criticisms aimed against them, emerged from the meeting with a stronger presence in the Politburo (and the Central Committee) than when it began.

206. Li discussed Manchuria in Politburo meetings on August 1 and 3 (Grigoriev, Revolyutsionnoe Dvizheniye, pp. 203–4 and 216), but his statements may not have reached Stalin's ears until October. That month the Comintern began drafting its ‘November 16 letter’ (so-called because that was the date when it reached Shanghai) which ended ‘the Li Lisan line’ (Mif., Kitaiskiya Revolutsiya, pp. 283–90). Li almost certainly left Shanghai in mid- to late October since, according to Grigoriev (p. 218), he was interrogated by the Comintern in Moscow in the last ten days of November. Pavel Mif probably also set out in late October (Ibid., p. 216), for he arrived in Shanghai shortly after the Comintern letter.

207. Schram, 3, p. 667 (Nov. 11 1930); see also pp. 574 and 579–82 (Oct. 26). Even after ‘the Li Lisan line’ was publicly repudiated at the end of 1930, Mao continued to use this phrase, though it became increasingly a ritual incantation: thus on April 19 1931, he prefaced an order for the troops to assemble before a battle with the words, ‘The tide of the Chinese revolution rises higher every day’ (Schram, 4, p. 67).

208. Nianpu, 1, p. 319. See also Schram, 3, pp. 558 and 577.

209. After abandoning the attack on Changsha, Mao constantly sought to refocus his colleagues’ attention on the provincial, rather than the national, struggle (see Schram, 3, pp. 552–3, Oct. 14; p. 558, Oct. 19; p. 572, Oct. 24; p. 574, Oct. 26, and so on).

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 General 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.

19. Schram, 4, pp. 204–5 and 215–16; Nianpu, 1, pp. 370–2.

20. Nianpu, 1, pp. 371–5, quoting a Central directive of April 14, amplified by subsequent articles by Bo Gu and Zhang Wentian in Hongqi zhoubao (Red Flag Weekly) later that month, and by a Central telegram of May 20.

21. Ibid., p. 375.

22. Schram, 4, pp. 217–18 (May 3 1932).

23. See, for example, Saich, pp. 558–66.

24. Nianpu, 1, pp. 376–9.

25. Ibid., p. 379; Schram, 4, p. 244 (July 25 1932).

26. Nianpu, 1, pp. 379–80.

27. Ibid., pp. 380–1; Schram, 4, pp. 247–8 (Aug. 15 1932).

28. Nianpu, 1, pp. 381–4. See also Schram, 4, pp. 249–53 (Aug. 28 and 31), and the order of September 5 (p. 254), stressing the need for mobility and ‘swift operations’.

29. Schram, 4, pp. 275–7 (Sept. 23) and pp. 280–9 (Sept. 25 and 26 1932); Nianpu, pp. 386–8.

30. A near contemporary account of this crucial meeting, from which the following account is largely drawn, is given in ZZWX, 8, pp. 528–31. See also Jin Chongji, Mao Zedong zhuan, pp. 296–8; Nianpu, 1, pp. 389–90; and Schram, 4, pp. lix–lx.

31. Wang Xingjuan, pp. 163–6; Nianpu, 1 p. 391.

32. Nianpu, 1, pp. 389–90; Jin Chongji, pp. 297–8. There was apparently a continuing groundswell of support for Mao among military cadres at the front, for an order dated October 14, two days after Zhou's appointment, was issued over the names of ‘Commander-in-Chief Zhu De, Chief Political Commissar Mao Zedong and Acting Chief Political Commissar Zhou Enlai’ – designations in flagrant violation of the Ningdu conference decisions, both before and after the Centre's intervention (Schram, 4, pp. lx, 303–7).

33. Wang Xingjuan, p. 170; Fu Lianzhang, Zai Mao zhuxi jiaodaoxia, Zuojia chubanshe, Beijing, 1959, pp. 6–9.

34. Zhou was harshly criticised by the rear echelon leaders for his support of Mao (see Ma Qibin et al., Zhongyang geming genjudi shi, pp. 367–8). This caused concern in Shanghai lest the Central Bureau become irremediably split (Nianpu, 1, p. 391).

35. Wang Xingjuan, pp. 167 and 172.

36. Ibid., p. 171; Nianpu, 1, pp. 391 and 393–4.

37. See Saich, pp. 596–602; Nianpu, pp. 393–4 and 398–400; Schram, 4, pp. lxi–iii; Deng Maomao, Deng Xiaoping, My Father, Basic Books, New York, 1995, pp. 211–15.

38. Nianpu, 1, p. 394.

39. Ibid., p. 398. Pantsov and Levine, pp. 261–6.

40. The ‘CC building’, as it was called, has been preserved as part of the Yeping historical site. This description of the living arrangements in 1933 is based on the recollections and memoirs of those who lived and worked there.

41. Jin Chongji, Mao Zedong zhuan, pp. 333–4.

42. Wang Xingjuan, pp. 172–3.

43. Ibid., pp. 114–15; Chen Changfeng, On the Long March with Chairman Mao, Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, 1972, p. 5.

44. See Schram, 4, pp. 783–960.

45. Ibid., for instance, pp. 328–9 (Nov. 25 1932), pp. 348–9 (Dec. 28 1932) and pp. 382–3 (April 22 1933).

46. Ibid., passim. An overview of the economic policies of the Soviet Republic is given in Mao's ‘Report to the Conference on Economic Construction of the 17 Southern Counties’ (pp. 479–90) and his ‘Report … to the Second National Congress’ (pp. 656–713, especially pp. 688–94 and 705–7). See also Lötveit, Trygve, Chinese Communism, 1931–1934, Scandinavian Institute of Asian Studies, London, 1979, pp. 185–209; and Hsu King-yi, Political Mobilization and Economic Extraction: Chinese Communist Agrarian Policies during the Kiangsi Period, Garland Publishing, New York, 1980, pp. 279–305.

47. Schram, 3, pp. 128–130 (December 1928). In the land reform movement after 1947, a similar system was used until moves towards collectivization eliminated individual land-holding altogether. When, after Mao's death, collectivization was reversed, it led initially to a return to the system used on the Jinggangshan: the amount of land contracted out for farming by each peasant family was directly proportionate to the number of mouths to be fed.

48. For a discussion of the different communist land policies in the early 1930s, see Hsiao Tso-liang, The Land Revolution in China, 1930–34: A Study of Documents, University of Washington, Seattle, 1969, pp. 3–77; and Schram, 3, pp. xli–iii and 4, pp. xlv–vii.

49. Schram, 3, pp. 102–6 (Nov. 25 1928).

50. Mao spent much time from 1930 to 1933 studying these issues, in the process producing a series of rural investigation reports of which the most important were: The Xunwu Investigation, May 1930 (Schram, 3, pp. 296–418); The Xingguo Investigation, October 1930 (pp. 594–655); Investigations in Dongtang and Mukou, November 1930 (pp. 658–66 and 691–3); The Changgang and Caixi Investigations, November 1933 (Schram, 4, pp. 584–640); and the protracted investigation around Ruijin in the spring and summer of 1933 which culminated in the ‘Decision Regarding Certain Questions in the Agrarian Struggle’ of October 10 1933 (4, pp. 550–67).

51. Thompson, Roger R. (trans.), Mao Zedong: Report from Xunwu, Stanford University Press, 1990, pp. 178–81.

52. Ibid., pp. 64–5.

53. The complete text is given in Thompson, pp. 45–217.

54. Schram, 3, p. 610 (October 1930).

55. Ibid., p. 436 (June 1930).

56. This formula first appeared in June 1930 (ibid., p. 445), and was included in the new land law promulgated that August (pp. 503–7).

57. ZZWX, 7, pp. 355–75 and pp. 500–11; and Hsiao, Land Revolution, pp. 47–77. The Comintern endorsed this policy in a resolution addressed to the CCP CC on July 31 1931 (Pantsov and Levine, pp. 258–9).

58. The initial decision was announced on February 8 1932 (Schram, 4, p. lxvi) but not acted on until a year later.

59. Ibid., 4, pp. 546–9 and 550–67 (Oct. 10 1933).

60. Ibid., p. 437 (June 1933).

61. Ibid., pp. 425–6, 434 and 507.

62. Ibid., p. 511.

63. Ibid., p. 368 (March 15 1933).

64. Ibid., pp. 394–5 (June 1 1933).

65. Braun, p. 31; Benton, Mountain Fires, p. 132.

66. ‘Instruction No. 7 of the State Political Security Bureau’, Summer 1933, in Hsiao, Land Revolution, pp. 231–2; Schram, 4, pp. 427–8 and 471.

67. Ibid., pp. 369–70; see also Hsiao, Land Revolution, pp. 233–4.

68. Schram, 4, pp. 368 (March 15) and 378 (April 15 1933).

69. Ibid., 4, pp. 954–7.

70. Bodde, Derk, Law in Imperial China, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 11, 517–33 and 541–2.

71. ‘Emergency Law for the Suppression of Crimes against the Safety of the Republic’, January 31 1931, in Tang, Leang-li, Suppressing Communist-Banditry in China, China United Press, Shanghai, 1934, pp. 111–13. Where the communist law referred to ‘counter-revolutionary intent’, the nationalists employed the equally vague formula, ‘with a view to subverting the Republic’.

72. Schram, 4, pp. 794–9 (Nov. 1931); 469–78 (Aug. 9) and 533 (Sept. 6 1933). The extremely detailed regulations on the formation of election committees, issued in December 1931, said nothing about how, or by whom, the lists of candidates should be drawn up (ibid., pp. 827–9). In January 1934, Mao stated that, in practice, the work should be done by CCP branch committee staff members. The lists, which were promulgated a few days before the vote was taken, might contain the same number of names as there were deputies to be elected, or a larger number (pp. 591–4, 626–7 and 672–6).

73. Ibid., p. 533.

74. Ibid., 2, p. 454 (February 1927).

75. Professor Thompson translates this phrase as: ‘couples had dates freely in the hills’ (pp. 216–17). The sense of the Chinese is of couples ‘sporting together’, rather than merely meeting (Mao Zedong wenji, Renmin chubanshe, Beijing, 1994, 1, p. 241).

76. Ibid., 4, pp. 791–4 (Nov. 28 and Dec. 1 1931).

77. Thompson, pp. 216–17; Schram, 4, p. 616.

78. Schram, 4, p. 715 (Jan. 27 1934). See also ‘Regulations on Preferential Treatment for the Chinese Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army’, Nov. 1931, Article 18 (p. 785); and the revised Marriage Law enacted on April 8 1934 (pp. 958–60).

79. Ibid., p. 698.

80. Schram, 4, p. 367 (March 5 1933).

81. Nianpu, 1, p. 403.

82. Although the Comintern's ability to influence CCP policy weakened after Bo Gu and Zhang Wentian left Shanghai (and was reduced still further in the summer of 1934, when Arthur Ewert returned to Moscow and no replacement was named), the Chinese Party was still bound by Comintern directives and its leaders remained highly dependent on Moscow's support. Shortly after Mao's election to the Politburo, Bo Gu proposed that, in view of his supposed ‘illness’, he be sent to Moscow for medical treatment. In April 1934, the Comintern replied that the journey was too risky. A similar proposal in June was likewise rebuffed. That year, for the first time, Moscow gave public backing for Mao's position in the Chinese Party – publishing two editions of his speeches in Russian and Chinese and a flattering biographical sketch in the monthly journal, Za rubezhom. Wang Ming, as Chinese representative to the Comintern, tried to alert Bo to these developments, of which Mao himself was apparently unaware (Pantsov and Levine, pp. 266–7 and 270–1).

83. Zhongguo gongchangdang huiyi gaiyao, pp. 134–7; Nianpu, 1, p. 420.

84. Braun, p. 49.

85. Saich, p. 1168.

86. Ibid., pp. 609–22.

87. Wei, William, Counter-revolution in China, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 1985, pp. 104–25.

88. Braun, pp. vii–ix.

89. Ibid., pp. 266–9; and Saich, pp. 627–35.

90. He proposed heading towards Zhejiang in January 1934 and towards Hunan in July (Wang Xingjuan, p. 171; SW1, pp. 247–8; Nianpu, 1, p. 432).

91. Manfred Stern, who had been working with Ewert in Shanghai, suggested a break-out towards north-west Jiangxi (Braun, pp. 63–4); Peng Dehuai wanted to head for Zhejiang (Memoirs, pp. 344–5).

92. Geng Biao, Reminiscences, China Today Press, Beijing, 1994, pp. 205–7.

93. See Zhang Wentian's directives of March 20 and June 28 1934, in Hsiao, Land Revolution, pp. 282–90.

94. Benjamin Yang, From Revolution to Politics, pp. 81–2; Peng Dehuai, pp. 352–8.

95. The decision to evacuate the base area was taken in May by the ‘Central Secretariat’ (Nianpu, 1, p. 428). This consisted of Bo Gu (Party affairs), Zhang Wentian (government) and Zhou Enlai (military). It appears, however, that Zhang was not party to the initial discussions (see Benton, pp. 13–14 and p. 524, n. 51).

96. Braun, pp. 49 and 70–1; Nianpu, 1, pp. 426–30. See also Yang, pp. 93–99.

97. Nianpu, 1, p. 432; Wang Xingjuan, pp. 183–4.

98. Nianpu, ibid.; see also Chen Changfeng, pp. 19–20.

99. Chen Changfeng, pp. 20–1; Fu Lianzhang, pp. 29–37.

100. Fu Lianzhang, p. 31; Braun, p. 71; Nianpu, 1, p. 434; oral sources.

101. Nianpu, 1, p. 434.

102. Wang Xingjuan, pp. 194–5; Yang, p. 81.

103. Nianpu, 1, pp. 429, 433 and 435; Chen Changfeng, p. 20; Tan Nianqing (ed.), Changzheng diyidu, Neibu chuban, Yudu, 1996, pp. 31–2.

104. Chen Changfeng, pp. 22–3; Salisbury, Long March, p. 15.

105. Wang Xingjuan, pp. 185–9.

CHAPTER 10 IN SEARCH OF THE GREY DRAGON

1. Fest, Joachim C., Hitler, New York, 1974, p. 470.

2. Mitter, China's War with Japan, pp. 58–60.

3. Schram, 4, pp. 361–3 (March 3 1933).

4. Ibid., pp. 206–8 (April 15 1932) and 355–6 (Jan. 17 1933); Nianpu, 1, p. 431.

5. Tang Leang-li, Suppressing Communist-Banditry, p. v, and China Weekly Review, Feb. 16 1935.

6. China Weekly Review, Feb 16 and May 4 1935.

7. Salisbury, Long March, pp. 93–4, 109, 127 and 150. See also Braun, Comintern Agent, p. 92, and Yang, From Revolution to Politics, p. 104.

8. Yang, pp. 111–12.

9. Salisbury, pp. 147–50; Nianpu, 1, p. 445.

10. In her own account. He Zizhen confuses Mao's whereabouts at the time of the baby's birth and at the time she was wounded, two months later. In 1950, she returned to the area in a fruitless search for the child (Wang Xingjuan, He Zizhende lu, pp. 199–200 and 206; Salisbury, pp. 151–3).

11. Salisbury, pp. 154–6; Yang, p. 126.

12. Mao Zedong shici duilian jizhu; this translation is adapted from Mao Tse-tung, Nineteen Poems, Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, 1958, p. 16.

13. Nianpu, 1, pp. 450–2.

14. In January 1934, it had been renamed the Central Red Army. The First Front Army designation was in official use again by June 1935 (Nianpu, 1, pp. 423 and 459–61).

15. Salisbury, pp. 160–72 and 178–87. See also Braun, pp. 112–16.

16. Nie Rongzhen huiyi lu, Beijing, 1983, 1, p. 256.

17. China Weekly Review, April 13 1935, p. 220. After this admission, the Review went on to predict that Mao, having made a feint to the west, would now head east. Chiang Kai-shek had reached the same conclusion. Mao, of course, did just the opposite.

18. Wang Tianxi, quoted in Salisbury, p. 165.

19. China Weekly Review, April 13, pp. 214–15; April 20, p. 247; April 27, pp. 283–4; May 4, p. 318, and May 18 1935, p. 385.

20. Nianpu, 1, p. 455; Yang, pp. 127–8; Salisbury, pp. 192–5; Peng Dehuai, Memoirs, pp. 366–71; Nie Rongzhen huiyi lu, 1, p. 13. According to Braun (pp. 116–18), Mao's critics included Zhang Wentian.

21. Braun, p. 116.

22. Nianpu, 1, p. 455; Braun, p. 118.

23. Salisbury, pp. 196–200; Braun, pp. 116–17; Snow, Red Star Over China, pp. 225–6.

24. Nianpu, 1, p. 457; Braun, p. 119; Yang Dezhi [Yang Teh-chih], ‘Forced Crossing of the Tatu River’, and Yang Chengwu, ‘Lightning Attack on Luting Bridge’, in Recalling the Long March, Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, 1978, pp. 79–100.

25. Snow, p. 224.

26. Grace Service, quoted in Salisbury, p. 222.

27. Yang Chengwu, pp. 95–8.

28. Snow, pp. 229–30.

29. Both Snow and Otto Braun, who also wrote of men swinging from the chains, ‘hand over hand’ (Braun, p. 119), relied on second-hand accounts. Yang Chengwu, who was there, said the men ‘crept along the chains’ (Recalling the Long March, p. 98). So did surviving eyewitnesses in the town.

30. Nianpu, 1, p. 457; Salisbury, p. 231.

31. Nianpu, 1, p. 457.

32. Braun, p. 120.

33. Snow, p. 231.

34. Quoted in Smedley, Great Road, pp. 325–6.

35. Wang Xingjuan, pp. 204–8; Salisbury, pp. 172–3. She had been wounded at Panxian, on the Yunnan–Guizhou border, at the beginning of April 1935.

36. Nianpu, 1, p. 458; Yang, p. 140. According to Otto Braun (p. 120), Mao first heard unconfirmed reports of the Fourth Army's whereabouts when he reached Tianquan, at the southern foot of the Jinjiashan. Zhang Guotao knew even less about the First Army's movements (Rise of Chinese Communist Party, 2, pp. 372–3; Salisbury, pp. 232–3 and 239–40).

37. The account that follows of the reunion and subsequent separation of the First and Fourth Armies, covering the period from June to September, 1935, is drawn principally from the Nianpu, 1, pp. 458–74; Zhang Guotao, 2, pp. 374–428; Braun, pp. 129–39; Nie Rongzjien huiyi lu, passim; Yang, pp. 129–61; Jin Chongji, Mao Zedong zhuan, and Salisbury, pp. 240–82. Where specific references are called for, they are given below.

38. The official Chinese estimate today is that Mao had 20,000 men at Dawei and that Zhang had 80,000 (see, for instance, Zhongguo gongchandang huiyi gaiyao, p. 156). Both figures appear inflated. Zhang himself put the strength of the Fourth Army at only 45,000 men, and the First Army at 10,000 (2, pp. 379 and 382–3). If Braun is correct in saying that the First Army had about 20,000 men at Huili, the number must have been much smaller two months later. Stuart Schram, in Mao's Road to Power, Vol. 5, M. E. Sharpe, Armonk, 2004, p. xlii, estimates that the First Army had between 7,000 and 10,000 men. The likeliest figure, taking into account all the information currently available, is that the two armies’ total strength at Dawei was about 60,000 men. with the Fourth Army outnumbering the First by four or five to one.

39. China Weekly Review, Oct. 20 1934, p. 256; Schram, Mao's Road to Power, 5, p. lxiii; Zheng Yuyan, ‘Liu Changsheng tongzhi huiyilu’ in Shanghai wenshi ziliao, 10, pp. 68–9; Yang Yunruo and Yang Guisong, Gongchanguoji he Zhongguo geming, Shanghai renmin chubanshe,1988, p. 367.

40. Yang, p. 141, and Braun, p. 121; see also Zhang Guotao, 2, p. 383.

41. Nianpu, 1, pp. 458–60; Yang, p. 142.

42. Nianpu, 1, pp. 460–1; Zhongguo gongchandang huiyi gaiyao, pp. 156–9; Jin Chongji, Mao Zedong zhuan, pp. 355–6; Zhang Guotao, 2, pp. 383–9. The text of the decision approved at Lianghekou is available in ZZWX, 10, pp. 516–7.

43. The changes were proposed at a Military Commission meeting at Shawo on August 3, and ratified by the Politburo at its meeting there from August 4 to 6 (Nianpu, 1, pp. 464–5; Saich, Rise to Power, pp. 677–85; Zhongguo gongchandang huiyi gaiyao, pp. 164–7). The left column probably contained 45,000 men, the right column about 15,000.

44. Nianpu, 1, pp. 467–8; Zhongguo gongchandang huiyi gaiyao, pp. 167–70.

45. Mao interviewed by Edgar Snow in Beijing in 1960 (Red Star over China [rev. edn], Grove Press, New York, 1969, p. 432).

46. Salisbury, p. 263.

47. Braun, p. 136.

48. The troops were so hungry that when they traversed the Tibetan areas of Sichuan the long-standing prohibition against taking food from the population was violated. According to Xie Juezai, who headed the Border Region Council in Yan’an in the 1940s, Mao said later that, although it had been wrong, if they had not stolen Tibetan barley from the villages they passed through the whole Red Army would have perished (Chen Yung-fa, ‘The Blooming Poppy under the Red Sun?, in Saich, Tony and van de Ven, Hans [eds.], New Perspectives on the Chinese Communist Revolution, M. E. Sharpe, Armonk, 1995, p. 275; see also Sun Shuyun, The Long March, HarperCollins, 2006).

49. Salisbury, pp. 269–70. Chinese prisoners ate grains recovered from horse manure during the famine years in the early 1960s (Bao Ruo-wang [Jean Pasqualini] and Rudolph Chelminski, Prisoner of Mao, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1976, pp. 241–2).

50. Zheng Shicai, ‘Battle for Pao-tso [Baozuo]’, in Recalling the Long March, pp. 156–62; see also Yang, p. 156.

51. Yu Jinan, Zhang Guotao he ‘Wode huiyi’, Sichuan renmin chubanshe, Chengdu, 1982, p. 218.

52. Nianpu, 1, pp. 470–2; Peng Dehuai, pp. 372–8.

53. The text of the second telegram has never been made public, prompting some historians to suggest that Mao may simply have invented it in order to persuade the rest of the leadership to press on towards the north regardless (Yang, pp. 158–61 and p. 294, n. 88; Salisbury, pp. 279–80; see also Braun, pp. 137–8). However, Peng Dehuai's account makes clear that the leadership was concerned about a coup de force by Zhang even before the second telegram arrived, and that Zhang himself, by withdrawing the First Army's codebooks, had given grounds for such suspicions (pp. 374–6). Moreover, at least one near-contemporary Party document accused him of having ‘gone as far as to use his armies to threaten the Party Centre’ (‘Politburo Decision Concerning Zhang Guotao's Mistakes’, March 31 1937, in Saich, p. 755).

54. Snow, Red Star over China (rev. edn), p. 432, and The Other Side of the River, Random House, New York, 1962, p. 141.

55. Yang, p. 294, n. 92.

56. Yang, p. 159. Although exchanges continued between the two armies after Mao's forces left Baxi, this signal, sent on September 10, marked the Politburo's final attempt to dissuade Zhang from going south.

57. Even Zhang Guotao, in his memoirs, acknowledged that Zhu was ‘depressed’ at the situation in which he found himself (2, p. 427). But short of slipping away on his own and trying to rejoin Mao (which would have been suicidal), or inciting the small First Army units in the left column to break out under his leadership (which would have been equally foolhardy), Zhu and his Chief of Staff, the ‘One-eyed Dragon’, Liu Bocheng, had no choice but to accept the fait accompli. Mao evidently recognised this. In July 1936, the Politburo told the Comintern: ‘Zhu is under constraint by Guotao and has no freedom to show his opinion independently’ (Nianpu, 1, p. 470).

58. Yang, p. 163.

59. Nianpu, 1, p. 458; Braun, p. 121; Schram, 5, p. xlvii. In September 1934, shortly before the Long March began, there had been discussion in Moscow of offering the Chinese communists temporary refuge on Soviet territory and of providing direct military aid, including aeroplanes and artillery. A year later, in August 1935, Stalin told Lin Biao's cousin, Lin Yuying, a member of the Chinese delegation to the Comintern, that he was in favour of the Chinese Red Army basing itself closer to the Soviet Union, although Mao did not learn this until November, when Lin reached northern Shaanxi. By then, Mao had long since abandoned the idea of relocating to the Soviet border. Instead that winter he proposed that the base area in the north-west be expanded in order to ‘complete the task of becoming one with the Soviet Union and [Outer] Mongolia’ (Schram, 5, pp, liv–lv and ‘The Zhiluozhen Campaign, and the Present Situation and Tasks’, November 30 1935). In April 1936 he sent Deng Fa to Moscow for talks on procuring Soviet military aid, including ‘rifles, ammunition, machine guns, anti-aircraft guns, canons and bridging equipment to cross the Yellow River’ and in the months that followed he repeatedly stressed the importance of opening a direct route to the Soviet Union (ibid., p. lxiii). By October 1936, however, Stalin began to backtrack, evidently fearing that if the USSR were seen to be directly aiding the Chinese communists, Chiang might seek a separate peace with Japan. 600 tons of military supplies which Moscow had promised to send via Outer Mongolia failed to materialize, though the Soviet Union did provide 550,000 US dollars in cash (equivalent to roughly 10 million dollars today) of which 150,000 dollars was sent via Soong Chingling in Shanghai (Sheng, Battling Western Imperialism, pp. 23 and 28–9; Yang Kuisong, ‘Sulian da guimo yuanzhu zhongguo hongjunde yici changshi’, in Jindaishi yanjiu, 1995, 1, p. 260).

60. Salisbury, pp. 282–4; see also Hu Bingyun, ‘How we captured Latzukou [Lazikou] Pass’, in Recalling the Long March, pp. 111–17.

61. Nianpu, 1, p. 476–7; Peng Dehuai, p. 381; Yang, pp. 167–9.

62. Nianpu, 1, p. 484; see also Salisbury, pp. 288–93, and Yang, pp. 176–81.

63. Nianpu, 1, p. 482. Although the Politburo's declaration that the march was at an end was not made until the 22nd, they actually arrived at Wuqi three days earlier.

64. Slogans illustrated in photographs in the Zunyi Museum; see also Mao's speech at Zunyi on Jan. 12 1935 (Nianpu, 1, p. 443).

65. Ibid., pp. 458 and 461; Braun, p. 122.

66. Coble, Parks M., Facing Japan: Chinese Politics and Japanese Imperialism, 1931–1937, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1991, pp. 182–225.

67. Yang, p. 167; Zhongguo gongchandang huiyi gaiyao, pp. 173–5.

68. Mao Zedong shici duilian jizhu; this translation is adapted from Mao, Nineteen Poems, p. 19.

69. Saich, pp. 692–8.

70. Nianpu, 1, pp. 483–9; Peng Dehuai, pp. 384–7.

71. Saich, pp. 709–23; Nianpu, 1, pp. 497–9.

72. Oral sources.

73. SW1, pp. 164–8 (Dec. 27 1935).

74. See Mao's instructions to Lin Biao on November 26, urging ‘positive and honest methods to win over [the NE Army]’; his overtures to Zhang Xueliang's ally, Yang Hucheng, in early December, and his repeated orders to release captured officers (Nianpu, 1, pp. 490–1 and 493; Yang, p. 187).

75. See, for instance, Mao's letters to GMD commanders in Nianpu, 1, pp. 490 (26 Nov.), 494–5 (Dec. 5 1935), and 506 (Jan. 1936).

76. Ibid., pp. 483, 502 and 505; Peng Dehuai, pp. 387–9.

77. Nianpu, 1, pp. 506–8, 512 and 514.

78. Ibid., pp. 516–17 and 519.

79. Ibid., p. 534. See also pp. 522, 527–8 and 532–3; and Saich, pp. 741–2. Formal guidelines on dealings between the Red Army and the North-East Army were issued on June 20 (Saich, pp. 742–8).

80. Saich, p. 705; Nianpu, 1, p. 493; Peng Dehuai, pp. 385–6 and 389.

81. Nianpu, 1, pp. 499, 504 and 506; Peng Dehuai, pp. 390–3.

82. Nianpu, pp. 508–39; Yang, pp. 187–9; Peng Dehuai, pp. 394–7.

83. Yang, pp. 191–3, 195 and 299, n. 10; Nianpu, 1, p. 495. See also Salisbury, pp. 311–12, and Zhang Guotao, 2, pp. 424–8.

84. Nianpu, 1, pp. 472–3 and 484–5; Saich, pp. 685–6 and 741; Yang, pp. 160 and 164–5.

85. Nianpu, 1, p. 508; Pantsov and Levine, pp. 291–3.

86. Yang, pp. 193–8.

87. Nianpu, 1, pp. 541–2.

88. Yang, pp. 211–18; Salisbury, pp. 319–21; Peng Dehuai, pp. 401–5; History of the CCP, Chronology, pp. 108–9.

89. Nianpu, 1, p. 619.

90. Ibid., p. 467 (Aug. 19 1935).

91. Ibid., p. 519.

92. Saich, pp. 699 (October 1935) and 711 (Dec. 25 1935). The CCP continued to describe Chiang as a traitor well into the summer of 1936 (ibid., p. 742, June 20 1936; Nianpu, 1, pp. 527–8).

93. Nianpu, 1, p. 519. The unfolding of the various peace overtures between November 1935 and May 1936 is discussed in detail in Schram, 5, pp. li–lii & lvi–lxii.

94. See Coble, Facing Japan, Ch 8; Nianpu, 1, pp. 527–8.

95. The contacts with Wang Ming were independent of Mao's initiatives. Several meetings were held in Moscow in January 1936, but Stalin, despite his interest in an alliance with Nanjing, was unconvinced of Chiang's sincerity and the talks fizzled out (Chinese Law and Government, vol. 30, 1, pp. 13–15 and 79–100; Nianpu, 1, p. 568).

96. Nianpu, 1, pp. 516, 519, 594, 596 and 607.

97. Ibid., pp. 533, 541 and 551. Mao's attitude evidently evolved faster than Moscow's. The Soviet Union began to take seriously the possibility of a united front between the CCP and the GMD only in July 1936 (Kommunisticheskii lnternatsional i Kitaiskaya Revolutsiya, Dokumenty i Materialy, Moscow, Izdatelstvo Nauka, 1986, pp. 263–6).

98. Nianpu, 1 pp. 552–6. Unknown to Snow, Mao reached Bao'an on July 12, only a day before he did.

99. Snow, pp. 126–32.

100. Domes, Jürgen, Vertagte Revolution: Die Politik der Kuomintang in China, 1923–1937, de Gruyter, Berlin, 1969, pp. 641–44.

101. Nianpu, 1, pp. 544 and 553. In telegrams to the CCP on July 23 and August 15, the Comintern urged that these efforts be intensified (Garver, John W, ‘The Soviet Union and the Xian Incident’, Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs [hereafter AJCA], no. 26, pp. 158–9). See also Nianpu, 1, pp. 568–618 passim; and Saich, pp. 764–8.

102. Saich, p. 572 (Aug. 25 1936). Ten days earlier Stalin had sent Mao a message, conveyed by Georgi Dimitrov, the Comintern chief, over the radio link from Moscow to CCP headquarters which had been restored the previous month. In it he said that it was ‘wrong to place Chiang Kai-shek on the same plane as the Japanese invaders’, a conclusion which Mao himself had drawn four months earlier (Kommunisticheskii Internatsional, pp. 266–9).

103. Snow, p. 439.

104. Nianpu, 1, pp. 589 (September) and 608–9 (Nov. 12–13 1936).

105. Schram, 5, pp. lxxvi–lxxvii.

106. Nianpu, 1, Ibid., pp. 607 and 619–20; Taylor, The Generalissimo, pp. 125–6.

107. Bertram, James, First Act in China, Viking Press, New York, 1938, pp. 110–12.

108. Snow, p. 430; Wu Tien-wei, The Sian Incident: A Pivotal Point in Modern Chinese History, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 1976, pp. 66–71; Coble, p. 343.

109. Bertram, pp. 114–15; Wu, pp. 72–3; Snow, Helen Foster (Nym Wales) The Chinese Communists: Red Dust, Greenwood Publishing, Westport, CT, 1972, pp. 194–6.

110. Nianpu, 1, pp. 619–20; Wang Fan, Yu lishi guanjianrenwude duihuao (Zhe qing zhe shuo, vol. 2), Zhongguo qingnian chubanshe, Beijing, 1997, pp. 212–13. A slightly different version is given in Ye Zilong huiyilu, Zhongyan wenxian chubanshe, Beijing, 2000, pp. 38–9.

111. Braun, pp. 182–3.

112. Bertram, pp. 115–23; Wu, pp. 75–80.

113. Ibidems; Kuo, Warren, Analytical History of the Chinese Communist Party, vol 3, Institute of International Relations, Taibei, 1970, pp. 228–9; Zhang Guotao, 2, pp. 480–1.

114. Ye Yonglie, Mao Zedong yu Jiang Jieshi, Fengyun shidai chubanshe, Taibei, 1993, vol. 1, pp. 168–77; Nianpu, 1, p. 621. Jin Chongji, Mao Zedong zhuan, pp. 415–16. See also Zhang Guotao, pp. 480 and 482–3. The main difference in these accounts is over the position of Zhang Wentian, whom Zhang Guotao says wanted Chiang killed and Ye says wanted him spared. All agree that Mao wanted Chiang brought to trial. Mao called for ‘the judgement of the people’ in a telegram from the Red Army high command to the GMD national government on December 15 1936 (ZZWX, 11, pp. 123–5), but five weeks later, on January 24 1937, he told the Politburo Standing Committee that the use of the phrase had been ‘incorrect’ (Nianpu, 1, pp. 645–6). The term ‘prime culprit’ was used in Mao's telegram to Zhang Xueliang sent shortly after the Politburo meeting (Schram, 5, p. 539).

115. The Nianpu records five telegrams from Mao to Zhang Xueliang from December 12–15 (1, pp. 621–3). Three of these are translated in Schram, 5, pp. 539–42 & 544–6.

116. Quoted in Bertram, pp. 126–7.

117. Nianpu, 1, p. 624; see also Warren Kuo, 3, p. 228. On December 13 Mao stressed that the CCP's quarrel with Chiang was not ‘on the same level’ as its opposition to Japan (Nianpu, 1, p. 621). The last communist reference to putting Chiang on trial appeared on December 15.

118. Snow, Edgar, Random Notes on Red China, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1957, pp. x, 21. See also Zhang Guotao, 2, p. 484. Schram quotes Party historians confirming that Mao was greatly angered by Moscow's intervention (Schram, 5, p. lxxxvii).

119. Yang, pp. 224–5; Garver, AJCA, 26, pp. 153–4, 157–8 and 164–73; Jin Chongji, Mao Zedong zhuan, pp. 418–19 and 422–3. See also Mao's report to the Politburo on December 27, quote in Nianpu, 1, pp. 631–2. Mao used the term ‘revolutionary event’ at the Politburo meeting of December 13 (Nianpu, l, p. 621). On December 14, Pravda and Izvestia denounced the arrest of Chiang as a Japanese plot. According to Zhang Guotao (pp. 482–3), Stalin's telegram was sent in response to a telegram which Mao sent to Moscow on the 12th, but its timing is unclear. Dimitrov's telegram was written in Moscow on the 16th, but given transmission difficulties and the time needed for coding and decoding, it did not reach Mao in Bao'an until late on the 17th or the morning of the 18th. That day the CCP requested that it be retransmitted because part of the text was garbled. A complete version was received on the 20th (Yang Yunruo and Yang Kuisong, Gongchanguoji, p. 392), when it was passed on to Zhou Enlai in Xian (Nianpu, 1, p. 626).

120. The editorial which appeared in Jiefang bao on December 17 (and which must therefore have been written on the 16th, before Dimitrov's telegram arrived) already pointed towards a peaceful resolution (see Yang, p. 303, n. 25).

121. July 23 1936, in Schram, 5.

122. See Zhou Enlai's telegram to Mao on December 18 1936 (Nianpu, 1, p. 624).

123. Bertram, pp. 143–52; Wu, pp. 135–53.

124. Schram, 5, p. 566.

125. Chiang Kai-shek, General Chiang Kai-shek: The Account of the Fortnight in Sian when the Fate of China Hung in the Balance, Doubleday, Garden City, 1937, pp. 149–50; Zhou, SW1, pp. 88–90 (Dec. 25 1936).

126. Zhou, SW1, pp. 569–72.

127. Wu, pp. 155–65; Bertram, pp. 205–6 and 219–20; Nianpu, 1, p. 639.

128. Kommunisticheskii Internatsional i Kitaiskaya Revolutsiya, pp. 270–2.

129. Wu, pp. 170–2; Coble, pp. 356–8.

130. Nianpu, 1, pp. 651 (Feb. 9); 657 (March 1); 657–9 (March 5 and 7); 674 (May 9); 676–7 (May 25); Nianpu, 2, pp. 9 (Aug. 4), 13 (Aug. 18) and 23 (Sept. 22 1937). See also Mao's interview with Nym Wales, Aug. 13 1936 in My Yenan Notebooks, privately published, 1961, pp. 151–3.

131. Nianpu, 1, p. 633 (Dec. 28 1936). Mao told a Party conference: on August 9 1937 that Chiang's change of policy had been ‘forced on him by the Japanese’ (Nianpu, 2, p. 12).

132. Sun, Youli, China and the Origins of the Pacific War, 1931–1941, St Martin's Press, New York, 1993, pp. 87–90; Nianpu, 2, p. 4; Schram, 5, p. 695.

133. Nianpu, 2, p. 3.

134. Zhou, SW1, pp. 93–5; Yang, p. 241.

135. Nianpu, 2, p. 6.

136. Ibid., pp. 6 and 16; Sun, pp. 91–2; Yang, pp. 242–4; Wales, My Yenan Notebooks, pp. 151–3.

137. Nianpu, 2, p. 23.

CHAPTER 11 YAN'AN INTERLUDE

1. The decision to move to Yan'an was taken in late December 1936. Mao himself arrived there on January 13 (Nianpu, 1, pp. 633 and 641).

2. For contemporary accounts of Yan'an, see Band, Claire and William, Two Years with the Chinese Communists, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1948, pp. 258–9; Cressy-Marcks, Violet, Journey into China, Dutton, New York, 1942, pp. 157–9; Forman, Harrison, Report from Red China, Henry Holt, New York, 1945, pp. 46–7; Hanson, Haldore, Humane Endeavour, Farrar & Rinehart, New York, 1939, pp. 292–5; Snow, Helen Foster, The Chinese Communists, p. xiv, and My China Years, William Morrow, New York, 1984, pp. 231–3 and 257–86; Payne, Robert, Journey to Red China, Heinemann, London, 1947, pp. 7–11.

3. Wales, My Yenan Notebooks, p. 135.

4. Bisson, T. A., Yenan in June 1937: Talks with the Communist Leaders, University of California, Berkeley, 1973, p. 71.

5. Helen Snow, Chinese Communists, p. 251.

6. Lindsay, Michael, The Unknown War: North China 1937–1945, Bergstrom & Boyle, London, 1975, unpaginated; Stein, Gunther, The Challenge of Red China, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1945, pp. 88–9; and Bisson, pp. 70–1.

7. Helen Snow and William Band both noted the proliferation of armed guards. See also Fitch, George, My Eighty Years in China, privately printed, Taibei, 1967, p. 150. For a hostile account purportedly from a Russian eyewitness, see Vladimirov, Pyotr Y., China's Special Area, 1942–1945, Allied Publishers, Bombay, 1974. Vladimirov (whose real name was Pyotr Vlasov), an agent of the GRU, died in 1953, allegedly poisoned on the orders of Beria. His ‘diary’, published in Moscow in 1973, of which the Bombay edition is the English translation, was written by his son, Yuri, on instructions from the CPSU Central Committee Secretariat, ‘in the context of worsening relations with China’, and underwent high-level editing and censorship. Its purpose was propagandistic. No contemporary diary ever existed, but it was based, at least in part, on Vlasov's radio messages to Moscow, conserved in the Soviet archives; on information from two other Russians who were with him in Yan'an; and on the son's recollections of conversations with his father before his death. The information it contains must be treated with caution but, while extremely slanted, is in certain instances revealing (see Heinzig, Dieter, The Soviet Union and Communist China: 1945–1950, M. E. Sharpe, Armonk, 2003, pp. 17–20).

8. Westad, Odd Arne, Decisive Encounters: The Chinese Civil War, 1946–1950, Stanford University Press, 2003, p. 6.

9. Nianpu, 1, p. 525; Snow, Red Star over China, pp. 504–5.

10. Snow, p. 547.

11. Interviews in Bao'an, June 1997.

12. The original is translated in full in Schram, Mao's Road to Power, 5, where it is dated December 1936, that being the date of the first mimeographed version. The revised text is in SWl, pp. 179–249.

13. Liu Shaoqi nianpu, 1, Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, Beijing, 1996, pp. 173–7; Saich, Rise to Power, pp. 773–90; Nianpu, 1, pp. 677–9.

14. Nianpu, 1, pp. 615–17; Mao Zedong zhexue pizhuji, Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, Beijing, 1988; Shi Zhongquan, ‘A New Document for the Study of Mao Zedong's Philosophical Thought', in Chinese Studies in Philosophy, vol. 23, 3–4, pp. 126–43; For a detailed discussion of Mao's use of the these texts, see Knight, Nick (ed.), Mao Zedong on Dialectical Materialism: Writings on Philosophy, 1937, M. E. Sharpe, Armonk, 1990; Stuart Schram's introduction to Mao's Road to Power, 6, M. E. Sharpe, Armonk, 2004; and Pantsov and Levine, pp. 317–8 & 631 n. 33.

15. Nianpu, 1, p. 671; Knight, p. 78, n. 154.

16. Mao's talks were based on written notes, first circulated in 1937 as a mimeographed study text under the title ‘Dialectical Materialism, Lecture Outlines’ (Gong Yuzhi, ‘On Practice: Three Historical Problems’, in Chinese Studies in Philosophy, vol. 23, 3–4, p. 145). The opening section deals with ‘Dialectical Materialism’, and in the West – though not in China – it is usually referred to by that title. The second section contains the text of ‘On Practice’, and is followed by Mao's essay on ‘The Law of the Unity of Contradictions’, hereafter referred to by its more familiar title, ‘On Contradiction’. A complete translation may be found in Schram, Mao's Road to Power, 6, pp. 573–670.

17. Mao told Edgar Snow in 1965 ‘he had never written an essay entitled “Dialectical Materialism”. He thought he would remember if he had’ (The Long Revolution, Hutchinson, London, 1971, p. 207).

18. Wylie, Raymond, F., The Emergence of Maoism: Mao Tse-tung, Ch'en Po-ta and the Search for Chinese Theory, 1935–1945, Stanford University Press, 1980, pp. 55–8. Stuart Schram argues, on the contrary, that some of the passages in ‘Dialectical materialism’ are at variance with Mao's subsequent insistence on the need to make Marxism relevant to Chinese conditions (Mao's Road to Power, 6, p. xxx). On this point I find Wylie's interpretation more convincing.

19. Schram, 3, pp. 419–21.

20. Knight, pp. 132–48; rev. version, SW1, pp. 295–308.

21. Schram, 1, p. 306.

22. Knight, pp. 154–203; rev. version, SW1, pp. 311–46.

23. For example, Zhang Wenru, in ‘Mao Zedong's Critical Continuation of China's Fine Philosophical Inheritance’, Chinese Studies in Philosophy, vol. 23, 3–4, pp. 122–3.

24. Knight, p. 186.

25. Nianpu, 2, p. 10; Knight, p. 78, n. 154.

26. Fogel, Joshua A, Ai Ssu-ch'i's Contribution to the Development of Chinese Marxism, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1987, p. 30; Wylie, p. 13; and Gong Yuzhi, pp. 161–2.

27. Even the revision of ‘On Contradiction’ for publication in 1951 took Mao far longer than he expected (Schram, Thought of Mao Tse-tung, p. 64), and when eventually it appeared, half the text was new (Schram, Mao's Road to Power, 6, p. xxxii).

28. Nianpu, 2, p. 40. See also Braun, Comintern Agent, pp. 217–18. John Byron and Robert Pack give a colourful account of Wang's return in The Claws of the Dragon (Simon & Schuster, New York, 1992, pp. 135–6). Chen Yun had originally been sent from Zunyi to inform the Comintern representative in Shanghai, Arthur Ewert, of the decisions the meeting had taken, but on arrival there he found that Ewert had left and the representation had been closed. Chen reached Moscow in the spring of 1935 and remained there for a year, before travelling to Xinjiang where he served as liaison officer to the local warlord, Sheng Shicai, at that time a Soviet ally (Ezra F. Vogel, ‘Chen Yun: his life’, Journal of Contemporary China, Vol 14, No 45, November 2005, pp. 741–759).

29. Shum Kui-Kwong, The Chinese Communists’ Road to Power: the National United Front, 1935–1945, Oxford University Press, 1988, p. 114; and Teiwes, Frederick C, The Formation of the Maoist Leadership: From the Return of Wang Ming to the Seventh Party Congress, Contemporary China Institute, London, 1994, pp. 5–7. Many early accounts of Wang's return, apparently based on Taiwanese sources, allege that he brought with him a directive from Stalin, endorsing Mao's claims to be Party leader while at the same time sharply criticising his ignorance of Marxism. No such directive ever existed.

30. The Politburo held an enlarged session at Luochuan, attended by the principal military commanders, from August 22–25, 1937. This was followed by a Standing Committee meeting, at which Mao also spoke, on August 27. He was reappointed Chairman of the Military Commission, with Zhu De (replacing Zhang Guotao) and Zhou Enlai as his deputies. The same meeting named Zhu Commander-in-Chief of the Eighth Route Army. The full texts of Mao's speeches are not available, but a summary is given in the Nianpu (2, pp. 14–17). See also ‘For the Mobilization of All Our Forces to Achieve Victory in the War of Resistance’, August 25 1937, in Schram, Mao's Road to Power, 6, pp. 27–32.

31. On September 12, Mao warned Peng Dehuai, then Zhu De's deputy, ‘they [the GMD] want to force our Red Army to fight the tough battles’ (Nianpu, 2, p. 20).). See also his telegram to Zhu De, Zhou Enlai and others on August 5 (in Schram, 6, pp. 12–13).

32. Saich, pp. 792–4 (Sept. 21 and 25); Nianpu, 2, pp. 17 (Aug. 27), 21 (Sept. 14), 26-7 (Sept. 30) and 31-2 Oct. 13 and 22); and Saich, Rise to Power, pp. 792–4 (Sept. 21 and 25), 1937.

33. Saich, p. 668; History of the CCP, Chronology, pp. 116–17; CHOC, 13, pp. 639–40. See also Mao's telegram of October 1, in Schram, 6, p. 78.

34. ‘Urgent Tasks of the Chinese Revolution Following the Establishment of Guomindang-Communist Cooperation’, September 29 1937, in Schram, 6, p. 71 [translation modified].

35. Nianpu, 2, pp. 26–7. See also Benton, Mountain Fires.

36. Nianpu, 2, pp. 31 (Oct. 13), 33 (Oct 19) and 37 (Nov. 11 1937).

37. Saich, pp. 795–802; Nianpu, 2, p. 40; Peng Dehuai, Memoirs, pp. 415–19; Shum Kui-Kwong, pp. 115–16.

38. Nianpu, 2, pp. 40–1.

39. Peng Dehuai, p. 418; Teiwes, pp. 7 and 44–5; History of the CCP, Chronology, pp. 120–1. See also Saich, p. 667.

40. Teiwes, p. 8.

41. Ibid., pp. 5–8; Saich, pp. 668–70; Fei Yundong and Yu Guihua, ‘A Brief History of the Work of Secretaries in the Chinese Communist Party (1921–1949)’, Chinese Law and Government, vol. 30, 3 [May–June 1997], pp. 13–14.

42. Shum Kui-Kwong, pp. 122–5.

43. Nianpu, 2, p. 51. See also Saich, pp. 802–12.

44. Nianpu, 2, p. 51; Saich, p. 670. The Politburo met from February 27 to March 1.

45. Mao, SW2, pp. 79–112.

46. Ibid., pp. 113–94. See also Schram, Thought of Mao Tse-tung, pp. 206–9.

47. Saich, Rise to Power, p. 670.

48. Nianpu, 2, p. 51. According to Schram, Ren had taken Mao's side at the February Politburo meeting (Mao's Road to Power, 6, p. xlii). Wang none the less agreed that he should be chosen as the emissary.

49. Wang's actual words were: ‘The comrades attending the Politburo meeting had the same views concerning the current situation.’ (Saich, p. 802). See also Shum Kui-Kwong, p. 126.

50. Shum Kui-kwong, p. 126. See also Mao's criticisms of ‘unhealthy phenomena’ under the GMD (SW2, p. 131), and his insistence at the February Politburo meeting (and on other occasions) that the communists ‘should mainly depend on ourselves’ (Nianpu, 2, pp. 48 and 51); Nianpu, 2, p. 66; ZZWX, 11, pp. 514–15 and 518–19; Shum Kui-kwong, p. 134; Liuda yilai – dangnei mimi wenjian, Renmin chubanshe, Beijing, 1981, vol. 1, pp. 946–64. See also Garver, John W. Chinese Soviet Relations, 1937–1945, Oxford University Press, 1988, pp. 74–5.

51. Lary, Diana, ‘Drowned Earth: The Strategic Breaching of the Yellow River Dyke, 1938’, War in History, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2001, pp. 191–207. Two earlier attempts, on June 5 and 7, failed: a breach was finally opened in the early hours of June 9. The figure of 900,000 dead is given by Edward J. Drea and Hans van de Ven in ‘An Overview of Major Military Campaigns’, p. 34 (Peattie, Mark, Drea and van de Ven [eds.], The Battle for China: Essays on the Military History of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937–1945, Stanford University Press, 2011).

52. Saich, p. 671; Shum Kui-kwong, pp. 134–8.

53. Garver (pp. 76–7) gives the best account but compresses the chronology. Teiwes (Formation of the Maoist Leadership, pp. 28–30) regards a Comintern resolution of June 11, criticising ‘the capitulationist tendency of right opportunism’ (which could be taken as referring to the policies of Wang Ming) as marking the crucial shift. In July, Pravda for the first time published Mao's photograph, together with that of Zhu De.

54. Teiwes, p. 29.

55. Nianpu, 2, p. 90. Mao had evidently received word of Moscow's decision by August 3, for on that date the Standing Committee proposed that the full Politburo should meet in enlarged session (the first gathering of the entire leadership since December 1937). When more details arrived, it was decided to hold a CC plenum instead (ibid., p. 84; Saich, p. 671). Wang Ming was told that a new directive had come from Moscow, but not what it contained (Garver, p. 78; Renmin ribao, Dec. 27 1979).

56. Nianpu, 2, p. 90–1.

57. Schram, Mao's Road to Power, 6, pp. 458–541, and Schram, Political Thought, pp. 113–14; For the revised version, see SW2, pp. 209–10.

58. Saich, Rise to Power, p. 672; Nianpu, 2, p. 92. The defence of Wuhan did, however, give Chiang's forces a five-month breathing space to organise their retreat upriver to Chongqing in relatively good order, unlike the undisciplined rout that followed their defeat at Shanghai and Nanjing (see MacKinnon, Stephen R., Wuhan, 1938: War, Refugees, and the Making of Modern China, University of California Press, 2008).

59. SW2, pp. 213–17 and 219–35.

60. Teiwes, pp. 8–10; Nianpu, 2, p. 98.

61. Nianpu, 2, p. 96.

62. Ibid., p. 97. See also Ye Yonglie, Jiang Qing zhuan, Shidai wenyi chubanshe, Changchun, 1993, pp. 164–5; Wang Fan, Zhe qing zhe shuo, 2, pp. 217–18.

63. Snow, pp. 107, 124 and 132–3.

64. Wang Xingjuan, He Zizhende lu, pp. 224–6.

65. Snow, Helen Foster, Chinese Communists, pp. 250–61; Wales, Yenan Notebooks, pp. 62–4. See also Smedley, Battle Hymn of China, p. 123.

66. Wang Xingjuan, p. 226.

67. MacKinnon, Janice R. and Stephen R., Agnes Smedley: The Life and Times of an American Radical, University of California Press, 1987, pp. 190–1, citing a paper in the archives of Edgar Snow relating Smedley's account of the evening. The wording differs slightly from that given by Ross Terrill in The White Boned Demon, William Morrow, New York, 1984, pp. 144–5, apparently because the former is taken from a Japanese translation of Snow's paper (which appeared in Chūo Kōron, Vol 69, No 7, July 1954), whereas Terrill's version is from the original. In this case, exceptionally, I have preferred the translation for two reasons: firstly because it is virtually complete whereas Terrill quotes only brief extracts – and in the parts that can be compared, there is no difference in meaning; and secondly, because some of Terrill's other claims about this period are mistaken – for example his assertion that Jiang Qing's presence in Yan'an and He Zizhen's ‘overlapped by several months’. I find Smedley's account of the fight between He and Lily Wu, as related by Snow, to be broadly credible both because she was an eyewitness and participant, and because it is consonant with what is known from other sources. Other statements in Snow's paper – whether directly attributed to Smedley or his own comments – are much more doubtful.

68. Ibid., p. 227; see also Ye Yonglie, Jiang Qing zhuan, p. 157. By this time, two months had elapsed since the fateful evening in Smedley's cave. Mao had apparently assumed that He Zizhen would get over it, unaware of her deeper frustration at the way their relationship had changed.

69. Wang Xingjuan, pp. 227–45. For the expulsion of Smedley and Lily Wu, see Snow, Red Star Over China, p. 532. The exact date of He's departure is uncertain, but Zhang Guotao's wife, Ye Ziliao, met her in Xian in September (Zhang Guotao, Rise of the Chinese Communist Party, 2, p. 562); Ye's own account of the meeting (Zhang Guotao furen huiyilu, Hong Kong, 1970, pp. 333–4) is suspect. Jiang Qing's claim to Roxane Witke that He Zizhen beat her children – like much else in her account of those years – was untrue (Witke, Comrade Chiang Ch'ing, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1977, pp. 160–1).

70. Mao's secretary, Ye Zilong, has confirmed Jiang Qing's claim to have arrived in Luochuan during the Politburo conference of late August, 1937, though her description of the entire leadership turning out to greet her is pure fantasy. She was presented to Mao in Yan'an a few days later by the wife of the veteran Jinggangshan commander, Xiao Jingguang (Wang Fan, Zhe qing zhe shuo, 2, pp. 213–15; Witke, p. 146).

71. The foregoing is drawn mainly from Ye Yonglie, Jiang Qing zhuan; Byron and Pack, Claws of the Dragon: Witke, Comrade Chiang Ch'ing, and Terrill, The White Boned Demon. Much of Jiang Qing's early life has been deliberately obscured. During the Cultural Revolution, she devoted an immense amount of time and energy to trying to suppress all record of her activities in Shanghai in the 1930s. This does not, in itself, prove the claims made by her enemies (and, shortly before his death, by Kang Sheng) that she bought her way out of prison by agreeing to work for the GMD. But it is clear that she was concerned about unsavoury episodes in her past which might have caused political embarrassment had they come to light.

72. It was actually not quite so clear-cut. In the spring or early summer of 1938, Mao sent a telegram to He Zizhen in Moscow, asking her, yet again, to return to Yan'an. In her reply, she indicated for the first time that she might be prepared to do so, but not until she had completed her studies in two years’ time. Mao was not prepared to wait (Wang Xingjuan, He Zizhende lu, p. 234).

73. Snow, Helen Foster, Chinese Communists, p. 251.

74. Ye Yonglie, pp. 161–5; Wang Fan, pp. 217–18.

75. Ye Yonglie, pp. 162–3. By dint of repetition, this story has become established truth (see, for example, Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals, Mao's Last Revolution, Harvard University Press, 2007, p. 14; Terrill, White Boned Demon, p. 154). There is no contemporary evidence for it and the story only surfaced when Nym Wales referred to it in her 1972 book, The Chinese Communists (p. 252). Significantly she did not mention it in her earlier account, My Yenan Notebooks. November 1938, when Mao and Jiang Qing started openly living together, was the same month that the Comintern formally anointed him as leader of the Chinese Party. Mao was hardly the kind of man to allow others to dictate to him conditions for his own marriage, least of all at the very moment when his political primacy was at last formally confirmed. Moreover Tao Zhu's wife, Zeng Ziyi, quoted him as telling her that Jiang Qing could be more useful to him politically than He Zizhen, which would make no sense if he had already agreed that she would play no political role (Wang Xingjuan, Li Min, He Zizhen yu Mao Zedong, Zhongguo wenlian chuban gongsi, 1993, p. 188). That Mao should have decided for his own reasons that she should remain in the background is another matter.

76. Wang Fan, pp. 217–18.

77. Ibid.; Ye Yonglie, pp. 148, 162 and 173. Byron and Pack (pp. 147–9) give a highly coloured and often exaggerated account of Kang's role, but their thesis that Kang promoted Jiang Qing's cause to serve his own interests is undoubtedly correct.

78. This is implicit in Jiang Qing's own account of her life to Roxane Witke. See also Ye Yonglie, p. 166.

79. Ye Yonglie, pp. 159–61 and 167.

80. Lyman van Slyke, in the introduction to Schram, Mao's Road to Power, 7, p. xxxix n. 4, claims that Jiang Qing gave both Mao's daughters the family name, Li, because her own original name was Li Shumeng. However, Jiang's relations with Mao's children by his earlier marriages were not close and Mao was sufficiently traditional in his attitudes on such matters to have wanted his children to bear, in some shape or form, his own name rather than his wife's. Li Min herself, in her autobiography, Moi otets Mao Tszedun, says her family name derived from Mao's Party alias. The Confucian phrase from which Mao took the girls' given names is in the Analects, Book IV, 24.

81. Ye Yonglie, pp. 168–9.

82. Ibid., pp. 165 and 171–3.

83. Ibid., pp. 175–7.

84. Ibid.

85. Pantsov and Levine, pp. 329 and 349–50; Wang Xingjuan, He Zizhende lu, p. 239.

86. ‘On the Problem of Cooperation between the GMD and the Communist Party’, April 5 1938, in Schram, 6, pp. 280–86.

87. Yang Kuisong, ‘Nationalist and Communist Guerrilla Warfare in North China’, in Peattie, Drea and van de Ven, The Battle for China, pp. 308–27. The one major exception was the ‘Hundred Regiments’ offensive from August to December 1940, when communist armies under Peng Dehuai launched conventional attacks on Japanese forces in north China (‘Overview of Major Military Campaigns’ in ibid., p. 39). Mao had approved the campaign, whose initial successes helped rebut GMD criticism that the communists were not doing their fair share of the fighting. But it proved to be over-ambitious, and triggered murderous Japanese reprisals in the shape of ‘kill all, burn all, loot all’ operations which devastated the north Chinese countryside for the next two years (see van Slyke in Mao's Road to Power, 7, pp. lxii–lxiv, and pp. 320–21 & 324). By early 1941, the communists had reverted to guerrilla tactics.

88. Shum Kui-kwong, pp. 149 and 154.

89. Yang Kuisong, idem.

90. Mao first used this phrase, which became the Party guideline for communist forces in their dealings with GMD military units, at a Secretariat meeting on January 12 1939 (Nianpu, 2, p. 103). It was not made public, however, until eight months later (History of the CCP, Chronology, p. 132).

91. Ibid., p. 739.

92. Interview with Edgar Snow, September 26 1939, in Mao's Road to Power, 7, p. 222.

93. Nianpu, 2, passim; Shum Kui-kwong, pp. 153–4.

94. The following account of the South Anhui Incident and the context in which it occurred draws heavily on Benton, Gregor, The New Fourth Army: Communist Resistance Along the Yangtse and the Huai, 1938–1941, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1999, esp. Chs 13–16 and Appendix, and on Lyman van Slyke's introduction to Mao's Road to Power, 7, pp. xlii–xlviii & lv–lxi. See also Shum, pp. 184–88; Saich, Rise to Power, pp. 860–3; and History of the CCP (Chronology), pp. 140–2.

95. Benton, p. 592, citing Mao's reaction on January 13. See also the telegram to Zhou Enlai and Ye Jianying, January 15 1941, in Mao's Road to Power, 7, p. 637.

96. Yang, From Revolution to Politics, p. 307, n. 3; Saich, pp. 888–90 and 906–12.

97. Benton, New Fourth Army, pp. 590–96.

98. ‘Relations between the Guomindang and the Communist Party at Present; February 14 1941, in Mao's Road to Power, 7, pp. 686–9.

99. Cited in Benton, p. 593.

100. This point is made by van Slyke in Mao's Road to Power, 7, p. lxii.

101. Saich, pp. 910–12 (Oct. 4 1939). By then, a campaign to collect historical texts had been under way for more than a year in preparation for the Seventh Congress, which was to make a ‘basic summation’ of Party history from 1928 onward (Wylie, pp. 74–5).

102. Shum Kui-kwong, pp. 214–15. See also Teiwes, Formation of the Maoist Leadership, p. 10, n. 31.

103. SW2, pp. 441–2.

104. Teiwes, p. 10; Dai Qing, Wang Shiwei and ‘Wild Lilies’, M. E. Sharpe, Armonk, 1994, p. 155.

105. Nianpu, 2, pp. 326–7; Zhongguo Gongchandang huiyi gaiyao, pp. 216–17; Saich, Rise to Power, pp. 1008–1011. See also Saich, Tony, ‘Writing or Rewriting History? The Construction of the Maoist Resolution on Party History’, in Saich and Van de Ven, New Perspectives on the Chinese Communist Revolution, pp. 312–18; Teiwes, pp. 11–16; SW3, pp. 17–25 and 165–6. A week before the meeting opened, the Yan'an Party newspaper, Jiefang ribao, published an editorial lamenting the fact that Mao's calls over the last three years for the ‘sinification of Marxism’ had still not been put into effect (Wylie, p. 167).

106. Shum Kui-kwong, p. 218; Saich, Rise to Power, p. 972; Peng Dehuai, Memoirs, pp. 424–5.

107. ‘Rectify the Party's style of work’, Feb. 1 1942, and ‘Oppose stereotyped Party writing’, Feb. 8 1942, in Compton, Boyd, Mao's China: Party Reform Documents, 1942–44, University of Washington Press, Seattle, 1952, pp. 9–53, and SW3, pp. 35–68.

108. Ibid., p. 42, and Compton, p. 21.

109. Compton, pp. 13–14.

110. Ibid., pp. 16–17 (translation amended).

111. ‘How should we study the history of the Chinese Communist Party?’, March 30 1942, Dangshiyanjiu, 1, 1980, pp. 2–7, translated in Schram, Stuart R., Foundations and Limits of State Power in China, University of London, 1987, p. 212.

112. Teiwes, Formation of the Maoist Leadership, pp. 17–18.

113. Saich, p. 722.

114. These issues are discussed in Shum Kui-kwong, pp. 164–73, 189–211 and 224; Wylie, pp. 162–5; and Saich, 855–9 and 974–7. Excerpts from the original text of ‘On New Democracy’ are translated in Saich, pp. 912–29; see also SW2, pp. 339–84, esp. pp. 353–4 and 358.

115. Nianpu, 1, p. 489. See also SW2, p. 441.

116. Compton, p. 11.

117. SW3, p. 12 (March 17 1941).

118. Ibid., p. 119 (June 1 1943).

119. Compton, pp. 24 and 31; Saich, p. 1007 (July 1 1941).

120. Compton, p. 37 (Feb. 8 1942).

121. The following account of Wang's persecution is based mainly on Dai Qing's splendid book, Wang Shiwei and ‘Wild Lilies’. See also Apter, David E., and Saich, Tony, Revolutionary Discourse in Mao's Republic, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1994, pp. 59–67; Benton, Gregor, and Hunter, Alan, Wild Lily, Prairie Fire, Princeton University Press, 1995, pp. 7–13; Byron and Pack, Claws of the Dragon, pp. 176–83; Fu Zhengyuan, Autocratic Tradition and Chinese Politics, Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp. 269–74; Goldman, Merle, Literary Dissent in Communist China, Harvard University Press, 1967, pp. 23–50; Saich, Rise to Power, pp. 982–5; Teiwes, Frederick C, Politics and Purges in China: Rectification and the Decline of Party Norms, 1950–1965, M. E. Sharpe, New York, 1979, pp. 74–5; and Wylie, Emergence of Maoism, pp. 178–90.

122. Dai Qing, pp. 37 and 39.

123. SW3, pp. 69–98, esp. pp. 90–93. For a translation of the unrevised text, see McDougall, Bonnie S., Mao Zedong's ‘Talks at the Yan'an Conference on Literature and Art’, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1980, esp. pp. 79–83.

124. Byron and Pack, pp. 176–82; Teiwes, Formation of the Maoist Leadership, pp. 54–7.

125. Mao, Nineteen Poems, p. 22. Many Chinese regard this as Mao's best poem..

126. Wylie, pp. 41 and 62.

127. Ibid., p. 75.

128. Braun, p. 249.

129. Smedley, Battle Hymn of China, p. 123.

130. Rittenberg, Sidney, The Man Who Stayed Behind, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1993, p. 72.

131. Cressy-Marcks, pp. 162–7.

132. Ibid., See also Band, pp. 251–2.

133. Terrill, Ross, Mao, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1993, p. 184.

134. Wylie, pp. 110–13, 155–7 and 190–203’; SW3, pp. 103–7.

135. Saich, pp. 1145–52 (July 6 1943).

136. Wylie, pp. 207–18; White, Theodore H., and Jacoby, Annalee, Thunder out of China, William Sloan, New York, 1946, pp. 229–34.

137. Deane, Hugh (ed.), Remembering Koji Ariyoshi: An American GI in Yenan, US-China People's Friendship Association, Los Angeles, 1978, p. 22.

138. Schram, Foundations and Limits of State Power in China, p. 213.

139. I have not been able to establish exactly when this began, but by the early 1950s it was standard practice in Chinese kindergartens (Liang Heng and Shapiro, Judith, Son of the Revolution, Random House, New York, 1983, pp. 6–8).

140. Schram, p. 213.

141. Saich, ‘Writing or Rewriting History?’, pp. 302–4 and 317; Wylie, pp. 226–8.

142. This account of Mao's campaign to win acceptance of his new version of Party history draws on Saich, ‘Writing or Rewriting History’, pp. 299–338; Saich, Rise to Power, pp. 985–91; Teiwes, Formation of the Maoist Leadership, esp. pp. 19–23 and 34–59; and Wylie, pp. 228–33, 237–8 and 272–4.

143. It was evidently this episode that led Georgi Dimitrov, the former Comintern chief, to telegram Mao in December 1943 with a plea to keep Zhou (and Wang Ming) in the leadership. According to Party historians who specialise in the period, the original text of Mao's criticisms are held in the Central Archives. Mao sent for them twice to re-read after 1949: once in the 1950s, when Zhou had angered him by trying to slow the pace of economic growth; and the second time in the last months of his life, when he was becoming concerned that his policies might not survive him.

144. Snow, Random Notes on Red China, p. 69.

145. Carlson, Evans Fordyce, Twin Stars of China, Dodd, Mead & Co. New York, 1940, p. 167.

146. Rittenberg, p. 77.

147. Peattie, Drea and van de Ven, pp. 392–402.

148. Barrett, David D., Dixie Mission: The United States Army Observer Group in Yenan, 1944, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1970, pp. 13–14, 29–30.

149. Carter, Carolle J., Mission to Yenan, University Press of Kentucky, Lexington, 1997, p. 35. See also ‘Directive of the CC on Diplomatic Work’, Aug. 18 1944, in Saich, Rise to Power, pp. 1211–15.

150. Barrett, pp. 19–28; Westad, Odd Arne, Cold War and Revolution, Columbia University Press, New York, 1993, pp. 7–30; Carter, pp. 106–16.

151. Barrett, pp. 56–7; Deane, pp. 21–3.

152. Barrett, pp. 57–76.

153. Saich, p. 1234. See also van Slyke, Lyman, The Chinese Communist Movement during the Sino-Japanese War, 1937–45, in CHOC, 13, p. 709. Most estimates place communist military strength in 1944–5 at between 700,000 and 900,000 regular troops and two million militia (see Lew, Christopher R., The Third Chinese Revolutionary Civil War: 1945–1949, Routledge, 2009, p. 2).

154. According to Pantsov and Levine (pp. 315–21), Stalin began urging the Chinese communists publicly to play down their communist aspirations in November 1937, shortly after the conclusion of the CCP-GMD united front. In interviews with Violet Cressy-Marks and the American diplomat, Evans Carlson, the following spring, Mao obliged. Carlson, in particular, came away convinced that the Chinese Party was different – ‘not communistic in the sense that we are accustomed to use that term … I would call them a group of Liberal Democrats.’ Pantsov argues that Stalin hoped to persuade Roosevelt to remain neutral between the GMD and the communists, allowing the Chinese Party to edge the GMD out of power peacefully after the war's end (ibid., pp. 343–6).

155. Westad, Cold War and Revolution, p. 14. See also Molotov's conversation with Hurley, quoted in Carter, pp. 107–8.

156. Shum Kui-kwong, pp. 227–9; Garver, pp. 254–5; Roderick, John, Covering China, Imprint Publications, Chicago, 1993, p. 34.

157. Garver, pp. 257–8.

158. From February 1945 to mid-1946, US and Soviet policy towards China was in flux. Mao's views during this complex and confusing period are a matter of intense controversy, with scholars disagreeing over even such basic questions as whether he was seeking a military or a diplomatic solution to CCP–GMD rivalry. The most detailed treatment of the period is found in Harold Tanner, The Battle for Manchuria and the Fate of China: Siping, 1946, University of Indiana Press, 2013, pp. 33–191, which, although bedevilled by editing errors, offers intriguing insights into the interplay of military and diplomatic imperatives among the four players: the US, the USSR, the GMD and the communists. John Garver (esp. pp. 209–30 and 249–65), Odd Arne Westad (Cold War and Revolution and Decisive Encounters) and Michael M. Sheng (Battling Western Imperialism) provide carefully researched accounts of the period (but divergent interpretations). see also Goldstein, Steven M., ‘The CCP's Foreign Policy in Opposition, 1937–1945’, in Hsiung, James C., and Levine, Steven I. (eds), China's Bitter Victory, M. E. Sharpe, Armonk, 1992, pp. 122–9; Hunt, Michael H., The Genesis of Communist Chinese Foreign Policy, Columbia University Press, New York, 1996, pp. 159–71; Niu Jun, ‘The Origins of Mao Zedong's Thinking on International Affairs’, in Hunt, Michael H., and Niu Jun (eds), Towards a History of Chinese Communist Foreign Relations, 1920s–1960s, Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington, 1997, pp. 10–16; Lu Xiaoyu, A Partnership for Disorder, Cambridge University Press, 1996; and the pioneering though now somewhat dated account by James Reardon-Anderson (Yenan and the Great Powers, Columbia University Press, New York, 1980).

159. ‘On Coalition Government’, and ‘Speech to the Seventh Congress’, 24 April, 1945, Saich, pp. 1216–43. See also van Slyke, CHOC, 13, p. 717.

160. On June 15, 1945, Mao wrote that a renewed civil war was ‘possible’; on July 22, that the danger of civil war was ‘unprecedentedly serious’; and on August 4 that it was ‘inevitable’. See Zhang, Shu Guang and Chen, Jian (eds), Chinese Communist Foreign Policy and the Cold War in Asia, Imprint Publications, Chicago, 1996, pp. 22–3 and 25–6. On August 13, he told a meeting of cadres in Yan'an that Chiang Kai-shek's ‘policy is set’; the most that would be possible would be to keep the civil war ‘for a time … restricted in size and localised’ (SW4, p. 22).

161. The full text may be found at http://www.chinaforeignrelations.net/node/242.

162. Tanner, Battle for Manchuria, pp. 48–9.

163. Heinzig, Soviet Union and Communist China: 1946–1950, p. 75.

164. When, later that year, Chinese communist commanders protested about Soviet support for the nationalists, their Russian counterparts retorted: ‘Moscow's interests ought to be the highest interests of the communists of the entire world’ (ibid., pp. 74–5).

165. Vladimirov, p. 491. Three Russians, describing themselves as Tass correspondents, arrived in Yan'an some time after Braun's departure in the summer of 1939 and stayed until October 1943; their identities remain unknown. Vlasov; a second GRU agent, the physician Dr Andrei Orlov; and a third Russian arrived in 1942 and remained until 1945. Orlov returned during Mao's illness at the beginning of 1946 and stayed until mid-1949 (Ibid., pp. 17, 20, 124 & 157).

166. Jin Chongji, Mao Zedong zhuan, pp. 727–35.

167. Westad, Cold War and Revolution, p. 109.

168. China White Paper, US Department of State, Washington, 1949, pp. 577–81. See also SW4, pp. 53–63.

169. Nianpu, 3, p. 49; Jin Chongii, p. 749. See also Rittenberg, pp. 106–10.

170. Westad, Decisive Encounters, p. 69.

171. Roderick, p. 32.

172. Shi Zhe, Zai lishi juren shenbian, Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, Beijing, 1991, p. 313.

173. Westad, Cold War and Revolution, pp. 118–39.

174. Nianpu, 3, p. 50.

175. Westad, pp. 143–7.

176. Zhang and Chen pp. 58–62 (Feb. 1 1946).

177. Roderick, pp. 32–4.

178. Westad, Cold War and Revolution, pp. 150–58 and Decisive Encounters, pp. 35–6; Sheng, pp. 123–33.

179. Nianpu, 3, pp. 62–3; Sheng, p. 133; Westad, Cold War and Revolution, pp. 159–61. See also Reardon-Anderson, p. 151.

180. Westad, ibid.; Zhang and Chen, pp. 67–8 (May 15 1946). This period is well discussed in Sheng, pp. 134–44.

181. Tanner, p. 200.

182. Zhang and Chen, pp. 68–70 (May 28 1946). See also Reardon-Anderson, pp. 157–9.

183. During his illness, his colleagues sent a panic-stricken appeal to Stalin to send a Russian doctor (the Soviet leader obliged and Dr Andrei Orlov came to Yan'an by special plane). See Shi Zhe, p. 313.

184. Westad, p. 155 and p. 216, n. 59.

185. SW4, p. 89 (July 20 1946).

186. Westad, Decisive Encounters, p. 60.

187. Shi Zhe, pp. 337–8.

188. Nianpu, 3, p. 176.

CHAPTER 12 PAPER TIGERS

1. The following account is drawn from Pepper, Suzanne, ‘The KMT-CCP conflict, 1945–1949’, in CHOC, 13, pp. 758–64, and Westad, Decisive Encounters, pp. 49–50 & 61.

2. SW4, pp. 103–7 (Sept. 16 1946).

3. Ibid., pp. 119–27 (Feb. 1 1947).

4. History of the CCP, Chronology, p. 183.

5. Rittenberg, pp. 118–9.

6. SW4, pp. 133–4 (April 15 1947).

7. SW4, p. 114 (Oct, 1 1946); Pepper, CHOC, 13, pp. 758 and 764.

8. Pepper, CHOC, 13, p. 728; Eastman, Lloyd E., Seeds of Destruction: Nationalist China in War and Revolution, 1937–1949, Stanford University Press, 1984, p. 210.

9. Pepper, CHOC, 13, pp. 766–7.

10. Ibid., pp. 764–6 and 770–4; Hu Sheng, Concise History of the CCP, pp. 346–51.

11. SW4, pp. 160 and 162–3 (Dec. 25 1947).

12. Pepper, CHOC, 13, pp. 772–4; History of the CCP, Chronology, pp. 192 and 194–5.

13. SW4, pp. 223–5 (March 20 1948). See also Saich, Rise to Power, pp. 1319–20 (Oct. 10 1948).

14. SW4, p. 288 (Nov. 14 1948).

15. On October 10, 1948, Mao still expected it would take until mid-1951 to overthrow GMD rule. Only three weeks later, on October 31, he revised that estimate to the autumn of 1949 (Nianpu, 3, p. 378). See also his remarks to Anastas Mikoyan in February 1949 (Shi Zhe, Zai lishijuren shenbian, p. 375).

16. The following is based largely on Lloyd Eastman's classic account in his book, Seeds of Destruction (especially chs 6, 7 and 9). See also Pepper, CHOC, 13, pp. 763 and 737–51 and Westad, Decisive Encounters, pp. 186.

17. For Barrett's bleak appraisal of the nationalist armies, see Dixie Mission, pp. 60 and 85–7.

18. Deane, Remembering Koji Ariyoshi, p. 29.

19. The shift to a more radical land policy was signalled in a CC Directive, drafted by Liu Shaoqi and issued on May 4, 1946. In December 1947, Mao still called it ‘the most fundamental condition for the defeat of all our enemies’ (SW4, p. 165). But by then it was recognised that it had become excessively leftist and efforts were already being made to rein it in (Saich, pp. 1197–1201 and 1280–1317). See also Westad, Decisive Encounters, pp. 62 & 116–18.

20. SW3, pp. 271–3 (June 11 1945).

21. SW4, pp. 100–1 (August 1946).

22. Ibid., pp. 261–4 (Sept. 7 1948).

23. Ibid., pp. 289–93 (Dec. 11 1948).

24. Pepper, CHOC, 13, p. 784; Barnett, A. Doak, China on the Eve of the Communist Takeover, Praeger, New York, 1963, pp. 304–7.

25. For Mao's defence of ‘bumpkins’, see Saich, p. 1069 (Feb. 1 1942).

26. Sheng, Battling Western Imperialism, pp. 100 and 102–4.

27. SW4, p. 144 (Sept. 1 1947).

28. Saich, p. 1321 (Oct. 10 1947).

29. See SW4, pp. 361–75 (March 5 1949) and Saich, pp. 1338–46 (March 13 1949); Barnett, pp. 83–95.

30. ‘On the People's Democratic Dictatorship’, June 30 1949, in Saich, pp. 1364–74. A revised text is included in SW4, pp. 411–23. In January 1948, when Mao was trying to maximise the Party's support in the countryside, he offered a different gloss, stating: ‘Our task … is to wipe out the landlords as a class, not as individuals’ (SW4, p. 186). Individual landlords and rich peasants, he argued, should be ‘saved and remoulded’.

31. Winnington, p. 103.

32. Bodde, Derk, Peking Diary: A Year of Revolution, Henry Schuman, New York, 1950, p. 99.

33. Winnington, p. 106.

34. SW4, p. 374 (March 5 1949) [translation amended]. See also Saich, pp. 1346 and 1374.

35. Quan Yanchi, Mao Zedong: Man not God, pp. 119–23; see also Li Zhisui, Private Life, pp. 51–2.

36. SW5, pp. 16–17 (Sept. 21 1949).

37. Ibid., p. 19 (Sept. 30 1949).

38. Kidd, David, Peking Story, Aurum Press, 1988, pp. 64–73.

39. Jianguo yilai Mao Zedong wengao (Mao Zedong's Manuscripts since Liberation) [hereafter JYMZW], Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, Beijing, 1993, 1, pp. 17–18.

40. Kau, Michael Y. M. and Leung, John K. (eds), The Writings of Mao Zedong, M. E. Sharpe, Armonk, 1986, 1, pp. 16 and 31.

41. Pepper, CHOC, 13, pp. 783–4; Zhang, Shu Guang, Deterrence and Strategic Culture, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, 1992, pp. 70–1; Shi Zhe, p. 432.

42. Mao's ‘lean to one side’ policy, his evolving attitude to the United States and his decision to delay diplomatic relations with the West, are discussed at length in Chen Jian, China's Road to the Korean War, Columbia University Press, New York, 1994, pp. 15–23, 33–57 and 64–78; Hunt, Genesis of Communist Chinese Foreign Policy, pp. 171–80; Sheng, pp. 158–86; and Zhang, pp. 13–45. For relevant documents, see also Zhang and Chen (eds) Chinese Communist Foreign Policy, pp. 85–126. The crucial period was the first half of November 1948, when the capture of Shenyang forced Mao for the first time to confront the practicalities of dealing with US diplomats. At that point his emphasis shifted abruptly from an overriding desire to avoid provoking the West to an aggressive assertion of New China's sovereign rights.

43. Shi Zhe, p. 379.

44. Saich, pp. 1368–9.

45. Westad, Decisive Encounters, pp. 167, 217 & 232–3. Pantsov and Levine (p. 354) speculate that a further reason for Stalin's reluctance to meet him was to avoid giving the impression, at the start of the Cold War, that Mao was already a close Soviet ally.

46. This remains contentious. Michael Sheng, among others, argues that having erred in 1945, Stalin would have not tried, four years later, to hold Mao back a second time (p. 169). Chinese Party historians, however, insist that the Russians had strong reservations about the PLA advancing into southern China lest it provoke American intervention (Salisbury, New Emperors, p. 15). Mao himself, in 1956, told the Soviet Ambassador: ‘When the armed struggle against the forces of Chiang Kai-shek was at its height, when our forces were on the brink of victory, Stalin insisted that peace be made with Chiang Kai-shek, since he doubted the forces of the Chinese Revolution’ (Cold War International History Project Bulletin [hereafter CWIHP], nos 6–7, Winter 1995, p. 165). See also Chen Jian, pp. 67 and 245–6, n. 13, for later comments by Mao and Zhou Enlai. Russia's decision to maintain its ambassador to the national government through the summer of 1949, often cited as evidence of Stalin's reluctance to abandon his ties with Chiang Kai-shek, is not directly relevant. It reflected, above all, Moscow's desire for continuity regarding the Sino-Soviet Friendship Treaty, which enshrined Chinese recognition of the independence of Outer Mongolia and gave the USSR special privileges in Manchuria.

47. Shi Zhe, p. 385.

48. Ibid., pp. 414 and 426; for a slightly different version, see Chen Jian, pp. 72–3.

49. Shi Zhe, p. 433.

50. George Kennan and others in the US State Department argued in the late 1940s that Mao, like Tito, would prove resistant to Soviet control, and that it was in the US interest to promote their differences. Mao himself later accused Stalin of having viewed him as ‘a second Tito’ in 1949 (Zhang, Deterrence and Strategic Culture, p. 36; CWIHP, 6–7, pp. 148–9 and 165).

51. Detailed and conflicting accounts of Mao's stay in Moscow, may be found in: Chen Jian, pp. 78–85; Goncharov, Sergei N., Lewis, John W., and Xue Litai, Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao and the Korean War, Stanford University Press, 1993, pp. 76–129; Shi Zhe, pp. 433 et seq.; Zhang, pp. 29–33. Mao's own recollection of the visit, in his conversation with Pavel Yudin in March 1956, is published in CWIHP, 6–7, pp. 165–6, as are the Russian minutes of Mao's meetings with Stalin on December 16 1949, and January 22 1950 (ibid., pp. 5–9).

52. Shi Zhe, pp. 434–5.

53. Mao had used an almost identical phrase to describe his living conditions in disgrace at Ruijin, 16 years earlier.

54. Westad, Decisive Encounters, pp. 119–21, 128, 175, 216–18, 253, 263 & 265–8.

55. ‘Speech to the Chengdu Conference’, March 10 1958, Mao Zedong sixiang wansui, Beijing, 1969, pp. 159–72.

56. Shtykov to Zakharov, June 26 1950, in CWIHP, 6–7, pp. 38–9.

57. Shtykov to Vyshinsky, May 12 1950, in ibid; Goncharov, Lewis and Xue, pp. 145–6.

58. Goncharov, Lews and Xue, p. 146. At a meeting with the North Korean Ambassador, Li Zhouyuan, in late March, Mao had treated the question of American intervention in characteristically elliptical fashion, stating that, on the one hand, the US ‘would not get into a Third World War for such a small territory [as Korea]’, but, on the other hand, if a world war did break out, North Korea would not escape it and should therefore begin to prepare itself (CWIHP, 6–7, pp. 38–9).

59. Roshchin to Stalin, May 13, and Stalin to Mao, May 14 1950, in CWIHP, 4, p. 61.

60. Chen Jian, pp. 106–9; Zhang, Shu Guang, Mao's Military Romanticism, University Press of Kansas, 1995, pp. 44–5.

61. Goncharov, Lewis and Xue, pp. 152–4.

62. Zhang, Deterrence and Strategic Culture, pp. 51–73. Mao wanted to invade Taiwan in the summer of 1950, but preparations took longer than expected and, at the beginning of June, the attack was postponed until mid-1951 (Goncharov, Lewis and Xue, pp. 148–9 and 152). On August 11 the CCP CC Military Commission directed that the invasion be delayed further, until 1952 or later, as a result of developments in Korea (Zhang and Chen, Chinese Communist Foreign Policy, pp. 155–8; Chen Jian, p. 132).

63. US policy on Taiwan was in any case hardening in the spring and early summer of 1950 (Chen Jian, pp. 116–21). Even so, military action to support the Chinese nationalists would have been far more difficult for America to justify than the defence of South Korea.

64. This account is based on documents from the Chinese archives, memoirs by Chinese participants and Russian materials declassified after the fall of the USSR in 1990. See, in particular Chen Jian, pp. 131–209; Goncharov, Lewis and Xue, pp. 130–99; Hunt, Genesis of Communist Chinese Foreign Policy, pp. 183–90; Zhang, Mao's Military Romanticism, pp. 55–94, and Deterrence and Strategic Culture, pp. 90–100; Pantsov and Levine, pp. 376–85.

65. Stalin to the Soviet Ambassador to Czechoslovakia, Mikhail A. Silin, for Klement Gottwald, August 27 1950, in Novaia i noveishaia istoriia, Moscow, Vol 5, pp. 96–7.

66. A handwritten copy of Mao's unsent original draft is held in the Chinese Central Archives (oral sources; and Chen and Zhang, pp. 162–3). A copy of the second draft – reversing the decision in the first – which was sent via the Soviet Embassy in Beijing and received by Stalin on October 13, is held in the Russian Presidential Archive in Moscow. Mao recalled later having threatened not to send troops (discussion with Kim Il Sung, 1970, quoted in Chen Jian, p. 199). For Stalin's cables to Mao on October 1; to Kim on October 8; and the second version of Mao's October 12 cable to Stalin, see CWIHP, 6–7, pp. 114–17 and 106–7, n. 30.

67. The best, and fullest, account of Chinese military strategy and tactics in Korea, and of Mao's pre-eminent role in defining them, is given by Shu Guang Zhang in Mao's Military Romanticism, pp. 95–244.

68. See Domes, Jurgen, Peng Dehuai: The Man and the Image, Hurst, London, 1985, pp. 65–70.

69. SW5, pp. 115–20 (Sept. 12 1953).

70. Chen Jian, p. 104; Zhang, Military Romanticism, pp. 253–4.

71. Mao claimed in later years that Stalin came to trust the Chinese communists only after the Korean War (CWIHP, 6–7, pp. 148–9 and 156). On the other hand, Xu Xiangqian, in Moscow in 1951 to negotiate arms supplies for the war, concluded that the Russians were holding back military aid because they did not want China to become too strong (Zhang, Military Romanticism, p. 222). The two are not mutually exclusive. See also Goncharov, Lewis and Xue, pp. 217–25 and 348, n. 9.

72. The official Chinese figures are 147,000 dead and 300,000 wounded. Other sources give much higher figures. See Zhang, Military Romanticism, p. 247; Pantsov and Levine, p. 387.

73. Zhang, pp. 193–4; Liu Jiecheng, Mao Zedong yu Sidalin, Zhonggong zhongyang dangxiao chubanshe, Beijing, 1996, pp. 645–7; Pantsov and Levine, p. 349. Quan Yanchi, quoting Mao's bodyguard, Li Yinqiao, says that Jiang Qing and Ye Zilong broke the news to Mao (Mao Zedong: Man not God, pp. 43 and 172). The two are not necessarily contradictory: Mao may have been informed by Jiang and Ye, but still reacted with intense emotion when the meeting with Peng confronted him with his loss again. See also Kau and Leung, 1, pp. 147–8.

74. Quan Yanchi, pp. 168–72. For Anying's clash with Mao at Xibaipo, see Pantsov and Levine, pp. 350–1, quoting documents from Mao's personal file in the Russian archives (Lichnoe delo Mao Tszeduna, Vol 1, 26).

75. Teiwes, Frederick C., ‘Establishment and Consolidation of the New Regime’, CHOC, 14, p. 84.

76. Yang Kuisong, ‘Reconsidering the campaign to suppress counter-revolutionaries’, CQ 193, pp. 102–21.

77. Kau and Leung, 1, pp. 97–103 (June 6 1950). Mao's statement that ‘[we must not] execute a single secret agent and not arrest the majority of them’, usually dated September 27 1950, was actually made seven years earlier. None the less, he had wanted the campaign kept within bounds.

78. Chen Jian, pp. 139–40 and 193–4; and Teiwes, Frederick C., Elite Discipline in China: Coercive and Persuasive Approaches to Rectification, 1950–1953, Australian National University, Canberra, p. 54.

79. Chen, Theodore, H. E., Thought Reform of the Chinese Intellectuals, Hong Kong University Press, 1960, pp. 24–7; Lum, Peter, Peking, Robert Hale, 1958, p. 60.

80. Zhang, Military Romanticism, pp. 201–2.

81. Lum, pp. 33–9, 67–74 and 83–92.

82. Zhang, Military Romanticism, pp. 181–6; Lum, pp. 177–84.

83. Chen Jian, p. 194. See also Teiwes, Elite Discipline, p. 55, and CHOC, 14, pp. 88–92; and Yang Kuisong, supra.

84. Kau and Leung, 1, pp. 162–3 (Jan. 17); SW5, pp. 54–6 (March 30, May 8 and June 15 1951); Yang Kuisong, p. 108.

85. Teiwes, CHOC, 14, pp. 83–8.

86. SW5, p. 72 (Jan, 1 1952).

87. For the ‘Three Antis’ and the ‘Five Antis’, see ibid., pp. 88–92; Teiwes, Elite Discipline, pp. 17–48 and 115–48; and Chen, Thought Reform, pp. 51–3.

88. SW5, p. 77 (June 6 1952).

89. Chen, Thought Reform, pp. 54–71.

90. Chen Jian, pp. 215 and 220–23.

91. This is a conservative figure. Nearly 150,000 died in Korea; 710,000 counter-revolutionaries had been executed by May 1951 (in a campaign which continued until 1953); at least a million landlords and family members died; and ‘several hundred thousand’ citizens perished in the ‘Antis’ campaigns.

92. Bo Yibo, Ruogan zhongda juece yu shijiande huigu, Zhonggong zhongyang dangxiao chubanshe, Beijing, 1993, 1, p. 155.

CHAPTER 13 THE SORCERER'S APPRENTICE

1. ‘I am an outsider in the field of economics,’ he told businessmen in December 1956 (Kau and Leung, Writings of Mao, 2, p. 200).

2. Thompson, Mao Zedong: Report from Xunwu, p. 64.

3. Saich, Rise to Power, pp. 976–7.

4. SW5, pp. 73–6 (April 6 1952).

5. Chen Jian, China's Road to the Korean War, pp. 77 and 84; Goncharov, Lewis and Xue, Stalin, Mao and the Korean War, p. 95.

6. Saich, p. 1374 (June 30 1949); SW4, p. 423.

7. Teiwes, CHOC, 14, pp. 92 and 96–7. Stalin, who was in no great hurry to help develop China's economy, urged Mao to modernise at a cautious pace and approved Russian aid for only 50 industrial projects (out of 147 the Chinese had proposed). Soon after his death, in May 1953, Malenkov and Khrushchev approved 91 more (Pantsov and Levine, pp. 390–1 & 401–2). In October 1954, after Khrushchev emerged as the dominant Soviet leader, Soviet aid was further increased.

8. Talk at the Chengdu conference, March 10 1958, in Schram, Stuart R., Mao Tse-tung Unrehearsed, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1974, p. 98.

9. Kau and Leung, 1, p. 318 (Feb. 7 1953).

10. Friedman, Edward, Pickowicz, Paul G. and Selden, Mark, Chinese Village; Socialist State, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1991, pp. 112–84; Teiwes, CHOC, 14, pp. 110–11. For Mao's subsequent acknowledgement that in agriculture, China did not follow the Soviet lead, see Schram, Unrehearsed, p. 98.

11. SW5, pp. 93–4 (June 15) and 102 (August 1953).

12. Ibid., pp. 93, 101 (July 9) and 110 (Aug. 12 1953); Teiwes, Frederick C., and Sun, Warren (eds), The Politics of Agricultural Cooperativization in China, M. E. Sharpe, Armonk, 1993, p. 49.

13. Teiwes and Sun, pp. 28–32 and 53–4; Teiwes, Frederick C., Politics at Mao's Court: Gao Gang and Party Factionalism in the Early 1950s, M. E. Sharpe, Armonk, 1990, pp. 42–3, 62–71 and 187–212; Teiwes, CHOC, 14, pp. 99–101. Mao's criticisms of Bo may be found in SW5, pp. 103–11 (Aug 12 1953).

14. Paul Wingrove, in ‘Gao Gang and the Moscow connection: some evidence from Russian sources’ (Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, Vol 16, No 4, 2000, pp. 88–106) states that Gao Gang had already clashed with Liu in July 1949 when the latter led a CCP delegation to Moscow.

15. SW5, p. 92 (May 19 1953). Liu Shaoqi was criticised implicitly, because he was in charge of the day-to-day running of the Secretariat.

16. The definitive account of the Gao Gang affair, from which the following is largely drawn, is Frederick Teiwes's study, Politics at Mao's Court. Teiwes concludes that Mao had no intention of replacing Liu and Zhou but leaves open the key question of how far the Chairman may have gone in encouraging Gao's ambitions. Oral sources, knowledgeable about the history of the period, insist that Mao did lead Gao on and that the latter's suicide was a mute protest against his betrayal. That ties in with the idea that Mao deliberately set a trap for the younger man. Paul Wingrove (supra), citing documents in the Russian archives and the recollections of Soviet officials, states that in the winter of 1949 Stalin gave Mao a dossier showing that Gao had sent unauthorised messages to Moscow discussing internal CCP matters. Wingrove speculates that Stalin did so in order to prove to Mao his good faith. A more plausible explanation is that Stalin was testing him: had Mao acted against Gao, the Soviet leader would have interpreted it as an unfriendly act, aimed at one of the most pro-Soviet elements in the Chinese Politburo. Instead, by ‘promoting’ Gao, Mao detached him from his regional power base. Then, after Stalin's death, his hands were free to deal with him as he thought fit.

17. Ibid., p. 162 (March 21 1955).

18. In the mid-1980s, Hu Yaobang, then CCP General Secretary, proposed to Deng Xiaoping that the case of Gao Gang and Rao Shushi be reopened. Deng was reportedly furious and forbade any further discussion. Key documents, including the minutes of the December 24, 1953, Politburo meeting, are still sealed, and published accounts within China remain silent about Mao's role. It is not clear whether Deng's reluctance to reexamine the case was a result of the post-Mao leadership's decision to treat the years prior to 1957 as a period when Mao made no major errors; or whether it was because of the light it might throw on Deng's own conduct during Gao's purge (see Quan Yanchi, Mao Zedong: Man not God, pp. 152–5).

19. This section is based on documents contained in Teiwes and Sun, especially pp. 82–154; and Teiwes, CHOC, 14, pp. 110–19.

20. Teiwes and Sun, p. 42 (May 9 1955).

21. Ibid., p. 107 (July 11 1955).

22. Ibid., p. 136.

23. SW5, p. 184 [translation amended] (July 31 1955).

24. Teiwes and Sun, pp. 47–8 and 107–18.

25. SW5, pp. 249–50 (December 1955).

26. Teiwes, CHOC, 14, p. 113.

27. SW5, p. 214 (Oct. 11 1955).

28. Roderick MacFarquhar deserves the credit for spotting this revealing little fable, which is recounted in Karl Eskelund's The Red Mandarins (Alvin Redman, London, 1959, pp. 150–1). See MacFarquhar, Origins of the Cultural Revolution, Vol. 1, Oxford University Press, 1974, p. 327, n. 51.

29. Loh, Robert, and Evans, Humphrey, Escape from Red China, Michael Joseph, London, 1963, p. 136; Teiwes, CHOC, 14, p. 120.

30. MacFarquhar, 1, pp. 22–5; History of the CCP, Chronology, p. 254.

31. MacFarquhar, 1, p. 27; SW5, p. 240 (Dec. 27 1955); Kau and Leung, 2, p. 13 (Jan. 20 1956).

32. MacFarquhar, 1, pp. 27–9.

33. Ibid., pp. 30–1; Teiwes and Sun, p. 49.

34. Ph.D. thesis by Michael Schoenhals (University of Stockholm, 1987).

35. Short, Philip, The Dragon and the Bear, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1982, pp. 265–76. A text of the Secret Speech was issued by the US State Department on June 4, 1956.

36. MacFarquhar, 1, pp. 43.

37. Conversation with Yugoslav Communist Delegation, September 1956, CWIHP, 6–7, p. 151.

38. Conversation with Pavel Yudin, March 31 1956, in ibid., pp. 164–7.

39. Bowie, Robert and Fairbank, J. K. (eds), Communist China 1955–1959: Policy Documents with Analysis, Harvard University Press, 1962, pp. 144–51 (April 5 1956).

40. MacFarquhar, Origins, 2, p. 194.

41. Wu Lengxi, Shi nian lunzhan, 1956–1966, Zhong Su guanxi huiyilu, Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, Beijing, 1999; see also John Garver's review article, ‘Mao's Soviet policies’, CQ 173, 2003, pp. 197–213. In September 1956 Mao described Sino-Soviet relations as ‘more or less … brotherly, but the shadow of the father-and-son relationship is not completely removed (CWIHP, 6–7, p. 151). Two years later the shadow was omnipresent as Mao raged at the Soviet Ambassador about Moscow's paternalism and contempt for Chinese abilities (ibid., pp. 155–9).

42. Zagoria, Donald, S., The Sino-Soviet Conflict, 1956–1961, Princeton University Press, 1962, p. 44.

43. CWIHP, 10, pp. 152–5; MacFarquhar, Origins, 1, pp. 169–71.

44. ‘More on the Historical Experience of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat’, in Bowie and Fairbank, pp. 261 and 270 (Dec. 29 1956). See also ‘Zhou Enlai to Mao Zedong’, CWIHP, 10, p. 153.

45. SW5, pp. 341–2 (Nov. 15 1956). Mao had earlier used the ‘sword’ analogy at a meeting with the Soviet Ambassador, Pavel Yudin, on October 23 (CWIHP, 10, p. 154).

46. Bowie and Fairbank, pp. 257–72 (Dec. 29 1956).

47. CWIHP, 10, p. 154.

48. Kau and Leung, 2, p. 114 (Aug. 30 1956). The same formula appears in the version of Mao's speech, ‘On the 10 Great Relationships’ (April 25 1956), published in SW5 (p. 304), but this appears to be a later addition, not in the original version.

49. Bowie and Fairbank, pp. 257–9 (Dec. 29 1956).

50. Ibid., p. 258 (Dec. 29 1956).

51. MacFarquhar, 1, p. 176.

52. CWIHP, 10, pp. 153–4.

53. Kau and Leung, 2, p. 71 (April 1956); see also p. 114 (Aug. 30 1956).

54. Chen, Thought Reform, pp. 37–50 and 80–5; see also Kau and Leung, 1, pp. 481–4 (Oct. 16 1954), on Yu Pingbo, and 506–8 (Dec. 1954), on Hu Shi.

55. Kau and Leung, 1, pp. 72 (March 1950), 196–201 (May 20 1951) and 496 (Oct. 1954).

56. SW5, pp. 121–30 (Sept. 16–18 1953). See also Zhou Jingwen, Fengbao shinian, Shidai piping chubanshe, 1962, pp. 434–7.

57. Goldman, Merle, Literary Dissent, pp. 129–57; Chen, Thought Reform, pp. 85–90.

58. MacFarquhar, 1, p. 84.

59. Kau and Leung, 2 pp. 66–75 (April 1956).

60. Ibid., p. 255 (Jan. 27 1957).

61. MacFarquhar, 1, pp. 33–5; Chen, Thought Reform, pp. 104–16; Goldman, pp. 158–60.

62. Guangming Ribao, May 7 1986; MacFarquhar, Cheek and Wu (eds), Secret Speeches of Chairman Mao, p. 43.

63. MacFarquhar, Origins, 1, pp. 37–8 and 75–7.

64. Ibid., p. 47. The People's Daily specifically affirmed that ‘leaders play a big role in history’ and said it was ‘utterly wrong’ to deny this (Bowie and Fairbank, p. 147). See also CWIHP, 6–7, p. 149.

65. Liu Shaoqi, whom Mao had delegated to take charge of the Congress proceedings, sent him the amended text of the constitution for approval. However, he received it in the early hours of the morning – after he had already taken his nightly sleeping pill – and evidently did not notice the deletion (Oral sources, Beijing, 1997). Mao had himself on several occasions called for the suppression of references to his ‘thought’, but proposing it and having others taking him at his word were not necessarily quite the same thing. During the Cultural Revolution, this became a key charge against Liu.

66. Kau and Leung, 2, p. 19 (Jan. 26 1956).

67. MacFarquhar, 1, pp. 99–109 and 149–51; see also Terrill, Mao, pp. 272–3.

68. See Kau and Leung, 2, pp. 203 and 233 (Dec. 8 1956 and Jan. 18 1957).

69. Ibid., pp. 158–95 (Nov. 15 1956). Like most of Mao's speeches in his later years, this is a discursive, rambling text, made the more so because it is available only in two (significantly different, but overlapping) Red Guard versions.

70. Ibid., p. 205, Dec. 8 1956.

71. MacFarquhar, 1, pp. 178–9; Goldman, pp. 165–82; Teiwes, Politics and Purges, pp. 232–4.

72. Kau and Leung, 2, pp. 223–4 (Jan. 12 1957).

73. Ibid., p. 243 (Jan. 18 1957); see also MacFarquhar, Cheek and Wu, pp. 168–9.

74. Kau and Leung, 2, pp. 255 and 279–81 (Jan. 27 1957). He later backtracked on Chiang's works, saying that they should be published only in a restricted edition (ibid., p. 356, March 1 1957).

75. Ibid., pp. 260–1 and 290 (Jan. 27 1957).

76. Ibid., p. 256.

77. Ibid., p. 253.

78. Ibid., pp. 258–9 and 289.

79. MacFarquhar, Cheek and Wu, pp. 121 (Feb. 16) and 241 (Mar. 8 1957).

80. Kau and Leung, 2, p. 303 (Feb. 16 1957).

81. Ibid., p. 258 (Jan. 27 1957).

82. Ibid., pp. 253 and 292 (Jan. 27). See also the revised version of Mao's February 27 speech (Ibid., p. 317).

83. This message is spelt out, in somewhat disjointed fashion, in Mao's two speeches on February 16 1957 (MacFarquhar, Cheek and Wu, p. 117; Kau and Leung, 2, pp. 302–5). See also Kau and Leung, p. 260 (Jan. 27 1957); and SW5, pp. 313–14 (Aug. 30 1956).

84. MacFarquhar, Origins 1, p. 184.

85. MacFarquhar, Cheek and Wu, pp. 113–89 (Feb. 27 1957).

86. MacFarquhar, Roderick, The Hundred Flowers Campaign and the Chinese Intellectuals, Praeger, New York, 1960, p. 19.

87. Loh and Evans p. 222.

88. MacFarquhar, Hundred Flowers, pp. 24–5.

89. Ibid., pp. 27–8.

90. MacFarquhar, Cheek and Wu, p. 156 (great progress) [Feb. 27]; Kau and Leung, 2, pp. 229–30 (untrustworthy) [Jan. 18]; MacFarquhar, Cheek and Wu, p. 144 (loving their country) [Feb. 27]; p. 257 (nothing strange) [Jan. 27]; MacFarquhar, Cheek and Wu, p. 173 (allowing poisonous weeds to grow) [Feb. 27]; Kau and Leung, 2, p. 234 (fertiliser) [Jan. 18]; MacFarquhar, Cheek and Wu, p. 144 (only very, very few) [Feb. 27]; Kau and Leung, 2, p. 243 (resolutely suppressed) [Jan. 18]; MacFarquhar, Cheek and Wu, pp. 175–6 (disturbances) [Feb. 27]; Kau and Leung, 2, p. 233 (expose and isolate) [Jan. 18].

91. Ibid., p. 256 (Jan. 27 1957).

92. Malraux, André, Anti-mémoires, Paris, 1968.

93. Roderick MacFarquhar discusses at length purported leadership differences over the Hundred Flowers campaign (Origins, 1, chs. 13–16), and many later writers have followed his lead. At the time his book appeared (1974), published Chinese statements were virtually the only source available and were subjected to Kremlinological analysis which all too often produced faulty conclusions. Today we know that a number of Mao's colleagues had reservations about the Hundred Flowers, but there was no leadership split and the doubters, as usual, went along with Mao's wishes.

94. MacFarquhar, Cheek and Wu, p. 321 (March 19).

95. Ibid., p. 359 (calm and unhurried) [March 20]; pp. 300 and 329–30 (‘In the past … who can they argue with?’) [March 18 and 19]; pp. 292–4 (think for themselves) [March 17]; p. 305 (vitality) [March 18]; p. 303 (sarcastic) [March 18]; Kau and Leung, 2, p. 517 (scolded) [early April].

96. MacFarquhar, Cheek and Wu, pp. 366–7 (April 30). See also p. 229 (March 8) and Kau and Leung, 2, p. 522 (early April).

97. MacFarquhar, Cheek and Wu, pp. 351–62 (March 20).

98. Ibid., pp. 201 and 210 (March 6); Kau and Leung, 2, p. 517 (early April).

99. MacFarquhar, Cheek and Wu, pp. 210, 240, 336 and 357 (March 6, 8, 19 and 20).

100. Ibid., pp. 50–2; Kau and Leung, 2, p. 515; and interviews with Wang Ruoshui, Beijing, June 1997.

101. Liu Shaoqi nianpu, 2, p. 398; JYMZW, 6, pp. 423–3.

102. MacFarquhar, Cheek and Wu, p. 365 (April 30); Wu Ningkun, A Single Tear, Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1993, pp, 50–1.

103. Kau and Leung, 2, p. 519 (early April).

104. JYMZW, 6, pp. 417–18 (April 27).

105. Wu, p. 54.

106. Liang and Shapiro, Son of the Revolution, pp. 8–9.

107. This was Gu Zhen.

108. The following is taken from MacFarquhar, Hundred Flowers, pp. 44–109, esp. pp. 51–3 (Chu Anping); 87–9 (economics lecturer); 65 (dog-shit) and 68 (no one dares).

109. JYMZW, 6, pp. 455–6.

110. Ibid., pp. 469–76; see also SW5, pp. 440–6.

111. Kau and Leung, 2, p. 524.

112. MacFarquhar, Hundred Flowers, pp. 130–73.

113. SW5, p. 447 (May 25).

114. MacFarquhar, Hundred Flowers, pp. 94–5, 108–9 and 145–61.

115. Kau and Leung, 2, pp. 566–7.

116. Ibid., pp. 562–4.

117. SW5, p. 412.

118. Kau and Leung, 2, pp. 592–6.

119. Ibid., p. 596.

120. MacFarquhar, Cheek and Wu, pp. 203 and 247 (March 6 and 8).

121. Mao's statements for the next six months were riddled with inconsistencies. In the editorial of July 1, for instance, he accused the Rightists of trying ‘to unseat the Communist Party and take its place themselves’, but then insisted: ‘We can be lenient and not mete out punishment … We should allow them to retain their own views. [They] will still be allowed freedom of speech’ (Kau and Leung, 2, pp. 593 and 595). A few days later, he wrote of an ‘irreconcilable, life-and-death contradiction’ with the Rightists, but then stated that ‘some of them’, perhaps a majority, would be able to reform (pp. 654 and 659). In October, he was still ambivalent, declaring that ‘there are bothersome problems. This business of revolution is troublesome’ (p. 742).

122. MacFarquhar, Cheek and Wu, p. 204 (March 6). Mao said: ‘Now it's an ideological struggle, it's different … We should not over-estimate the enemy and under-estimate ourselves.’

123. Kau and Leung, 2, pp. 510 (April 30), 524 (April, undated) and 631 (July 9).

124. Mao's claim in July that ‘we had anticipated these things’ was fictive (ibid., p. 602).

125. The clearest indication of this came in Mao's editorial of July 1, where he wrote that a new round of struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie had been ‘independent of people's will. That is to say, it [was] unavoidable. Even if people wanted to avoid it, it couldn't be done. The only thing to do then was to follow the dictates of the situation and obtain victory’ (Ibid., pp. 594–5). See also his insistence, later the same month, that ‘blooming and contending’ should not be completely abandoned (p. 640).

126. Kau and Leung, 2, p. 639 (July 17); MacFarquhar, Hundred Flowers, pp. 167–70 (June 6 and 7).

127. Kau and Leung, 2, pp. 654–5 and 662 (July).

128. In October, Mao drew an explicit comparison with earlier campaigns, declaring: ‘We are not going to handle them the way we did the landlords and counter-revolutionaries in the past’ (ibid., p. 732).

129. Teiwes, Politics and Purges, pp. 300–20.

130. Wu, pp. 72–173.

131. Liang and Shapiro, pp. 9–15.

132. Kau and Leung, 2, p. 596 (July 1).

133. Ibid., p. 655 (July).

134. A well-informed oral source dates the move to November 1949. Li Zhisui, who later became Mao's physician, says it occurred in February 1950, after the Chairman's return from Moscow (Private Life, p. 52). For Li's description of Zhongnanhai, see pp. 76–80.

135. Quan Yanchi, pp. 84–9; Li Zhisui, p. 60.

136. Li Zhisui, pp. 56–8.

137. Ibid., pp. 140–5, 187–8 and 190; Witke, Comrade Chiang Ch'ing, pp. 254–62.

138. Li Zhisui, p. 85.

139. Quan Yanchi, pp. 107 and 134–41.

140. Ye Yonglie, Jiang Qing zhuan, pp. 239–42.

141. Mao, Nineteen Poems, p. 30 [translation amended]. See also the version in Terrill, Mao, pp. 276–7. For Mao's meeting with Chen Yuying, see Peking Review, Oct 14 1977.

142. Van Gulik, Robert, Erotic Colour Prints of the Ming Period, privately published, Tokyo, 1951 [Taiwan Reprint], p. 39.

143. Oral sources; see also Li Zhisui, pp. 355–64, and Salisbury, New Emperors, pp. 134, 217–19, 221. Some of those who worked with Mao in the 1950s and ’60s, including Wang Dongxing and Lin Ke, have sought publicly to cast doubt on Dr Li's account, alleging that it is exaggerated and sometimes inaccurate. Minor details apart, however, his version has been confirmed, under conditions of anonymity, by several of the Chairman's former partners. Its essential veracity is not in doubt.

144. Li Zhisui, p. 363.

145. Quan Yanchi, pp. 12 and 137.

146. Ibid., pp. 88 and 153–5.

147. MacFarquhar, Hundred Flowers, p. 306.

148. Kau and Leung, 2, pp. 255 and 262 (Jan. 27 1957).

149. MacFarquhar, Origins, 1, pp. 59–61, 86–91 and 126–9. Wu Lengxi quoted Mao as saying later, ‘Why should I read something which insults me’ (Yi Mao zhuxi: Wo qinshen jingli de ruogan lishi shijian pianduan, Xinhua chubanshe, Beijing, 1995, p. 57).

150. Kau and Leung, 2, pp. 159 and 179–80 (Nov. 15 1956).

151. MacFarquhar, 1, pp. 293–4 and 2, pp. 2–4, 19, 40 and 179–80; Kau and Leung, 2, pp. 660 (July) and 702 (Oct. 9 1957). Although Mao began emphasising the need for a corps of proletarian intellectuals from the summer of 1957 onward, he did not entirely abandon the possibility of utilising the skills of the bourgeoisie, and this idea resurfaced at intervals throughout the late 1950s.

152. MacFarquhar, Cheek and Wu, pp. 280, 285, 288, 301, 308, 352, and especially 371. Liu Shaoqi would later be accused of having fabricated this notion in his report to the Eighth Congress (MacFarquhar, Origins, 1, pp. 119–21 and 160–4). However, Mao did not object at the time either to Liu's report or to the Congress resolution. On November 15 1956, he told the Second Plenum of the Eighth CC: ‘In today's China, the class contradiction has already been basically resolved, and the primary domestic contradiction is the contradiction between an advanced social system and backward forces of production’ (Kau and Leung, 2, p. 184). This corresponds precisely to the incriminated section of the resolution Liu drafted. Mao emphasised from the start that ‘basically’ meant ‘not yet entirely’ (ibid., p. 197, Dec. 4 1956), but this was also made clear in Liu's report, which stated that class struggle would continue until socialist transformation was completed (see text in Bowie and Fairbank, p. 188). It was only after the spring of 1957, when Mao began to revise his ideas about the struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, that the position taken at the Eighth Congress was put in question.

153. SW5, p. 395 (June 19). For intermediate formulations as the new line was emerging, see Kau and Leung, 2, pp. 566–7 (June 8) and p. 578 (June 11 1957).

154. Kau and Leung, 2, pp. 809–12 (undated, but probably September 1957).

155. Ibid., pp. 696–713. Mao's vision of future plenty led him to imagine a time when a peasant could feed himself from ‘several fen of land’ (p. 700); a fen is one sixtieth of an acre, or an area roughly eight yards square.

156. Klochko, Mikhail A., Soviet Scientist in Red China, International Publishers, Montreal, 1964, p. 68.

157. MacFarquhar, Origins, 2, p. 23.

158. I cannot, alas, pretend to have invented this magnificent neologism: the term is Roderick MacFarquhar's, but it deserves wider currency, which is my excuse for borrowing it here.

159. Ibid., p. 10; Kau and Leung, 2, p. 720 (Oct. 9 1957).

160. MacFarquhar, 2, p. 16; Kau and Leung, 2, p. 702 (Oct. 9 1957).

161. MacFarquhar, ibid; Kau and Leung, 2, p. 787 (Nov. 18 1957).

162. Kau and Leung, 2, pp. 783 and 786.

163. MacFarquhar, 2, pp. 17–19.

164. MacFarquhar, Cheek and Wu, pp. 377–91 (Jan. 3–4 1958).

165. Miscellany of Mao Zedong Thought, 1, pp. 80–84 (Jan. 13 1958).

166. Bo Yibo, Ruogan zhongda juece yu shijiande huigu, 2, p. 639. Yanhuang chunjiu, No. 2, 2000, pp. 6–11; Yang Jisheng, Tombstone, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, New York, 2012, p. 107.

167. MacFarquhar, 2, pp. 36–41.

168. Miscellany, 1, p. 89 (Apr. 6 1958).

169. MacFarquhar, 2, p. 34. The original target had been to irrigate seven million acres in 12 months.

170. Miscellany, 1, pp. 95–6 (May 8 1958).

171. MacFarquhar, 2, p. 43.

172. Miscellany, 1, p. 105 (May 17 1958).

173. MacFarquhar, 2, pp. 33, 82, 85 and 90; Miscellany, 1, p. 123 (May 18 1958). Before the Leap, Mao had predicted it would take fifty years for China to reach US production levels.

174. Ibid., p. 115 (May 23 1958). See also MacFarquhar, Cheek and Wu, p. 409 (Aug. 19 1958).

175. MacFarquhar, Cheek and Wu, p. 432 (Aug. 30 1958).

176. MacFarquhar, Origins, 2, p. 84. More than 50 years later, most if not quite all of Tan Zhenlin's vision has been realised in China, with the one difference that it is available not ‘according to needs’ but ‘according to ability to pay’. Even Mao's call for French city planning has found an echo: gated housing estates all over China now boast French-style villas and gardens. Whether Tan would regard it as conforming to his conception of communism is another matter.

177. MacFarquhar, Cheek and Wu, p. 430 (Aug. 21 1958).

178. Kau and Leung, 2, p. 740 (Oct. 13 1957).

179. MacFarquhar, Origins, 2, p. 85.

180. Kau and Leung, 2, p. 720 (Oct. 9 1957).

181. See, for instance, Miscellany, 1, p. 113 (May 20 1958).

182. Ibid., p. 96 (May 8 1958); Kau and Leung, 2, p. 720 (Oct. 9 1957).

183. Vogel, ‘Chen Yun: his life’, p. 753.

184. JYMZW, 6, pp. 457–8; MacFarquhar, 2, pp. 173–80.

185. The ‘small groups’ were established on June 10 1958 (Chung, Yen-lin, ‘The CEO of the Utopian Project: Deng Xiaoping's Roles and Activities in the Great Leap Forward’, China Journal, No 69, January 2013, pp. 154–73).

186. Miscellany, l, pp. 120–1 (May 18 1958).

187. MacFarquhar, 2, p. 77.

188. Ibid., pp. 78–80. Schram, Mao's Road, 2, pp. 365–8 (March 18 1926).

189. MacFarquhar, 2, p. 81; History of the CCP, Chronology, p. 273.

190. History of the CCP, Chronology, p. 274.

191. MacFarquhar, 2, p. 103.

192. MacFarquhar, Cheek and Wu, p. 414 (Aug. 21 1958).

193. Ibid., p. 419. See also MacFarquhar, Origins, 2, p. 104.

194. Kau and Leung, 2, p. 812 (September 1957). See also MacFarquhar, 2, pp. 130–1.

195. Speech to the leading party group of the All-China Women's Federation, June 14 1958, quoted in Yang Jisheng, Tombstone, pp. 175–6.

196. MacFarquhar, Cheek and Wu, p. 419 (Aug. 21 1958).

197. MacFarquhar, Origins, 2, pp. 103–8, 115–16, 119–20, 137–8 and 148–9.

198. See Mao's Beidaihe speeches (MacFarquhar, Cheek and Wu, especially pp. 434–5).

199. MacFarquhar, Origins, 2, pp. 67-8, 75–6 and 100–2.

200. Rittenberg, Man Who Stayed Behind, p. 231.

201. Karnow, Stanley, Mao and China: A Legacy of Turmoil, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1990 (3rd rev. edn), p. 93.

202. MacFarquhar, 2, p. 115.

203. Ibid., p. 114.

204. Ibid., pp. 86 and 119–27.

205. MacFarquhar, Cheek and Wu, p. 403 (Aug. 17 1958).

206. ‘A summary report … regarding food shortages and riots’, April 25 1958, in Zhou Xun, The Great Famine in China, 1958–1962, Yale University Press, 2012, pp. 10–16.

207. The best account of the famine provoked by the Great Leap is Yang Jisheng's Tombstone (an abridged version of the two-volume Chinese edition, Mubei: Zhongguo liushi niandai da jihuang jishi, Cosmos Books, Hong Kong, 2008), from which many of the details in the following pages are drawn. Much useful information is also to be found in Zhou Xun's documentary collection, The Great Famine in China, 1958–1962. See also Dikötter, Frank, Mao's Great Famine, Bloomsbury, 2010, and Becker, Jasper, Hungry Ghosts, John Murray, 1996.

208. MacFarquhar, Cheek and Wu, pp. 484–6 (Nov. 21) and 502–5 (Nov. 23 1958); MacFarquhar, Origins, 2, pp. 121–2 and 128–30; Miscellany, pp. 141, 144–5 and 147 (Dec. 19 1958).

209. Yang, Tombstone, pp. 249–51.

210. Speech to the Sixth Plenum of the 8th Central Committee, December 1958, in https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-8/mswv8_23.htm

211. Internal party communiqué, April 29 1959, cited in Yang, Tombstone, pp. 205–6.

212. On May 26 and June 11 1959, cited in ibid., p. 208.

213. Speech to Sixth Plenum, supra; Speech at Zhengzhou, February 27 1959, in https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-8/mswv8_27.htm. See also Yang, p. 180.

214. MacFarquhar, Cheek and Wu, pp. 449–50 (Nov. 6 1958).

215. Ibid., pp. 474–5 (Nov. 10 1958).

216. Kau and Leung, 2, p. 13 (Jan. 20 1956).

217. Schram, Political Thought, p. 253 (April 15 1958).

218. MacFarquhar, 2, pp. 7–15.

219. Kau and Leung, 2, pp. 788–9 (Nov. 18 1957).

220. SW5, p. 152 (Jan. 28 1955).

221. CWIHP, 6–7, pp. 155–9 (July 22 1958). When Yudin first told Mao of Khrushchev's proposal the previous day, the Chairman assumed that it was a quid pro quo for Soviet aid in modernising the Chinese navy, which was then under discussion. This may have been partly Yudin's fault, for in his presentation he implicitly linked the two. Mao concluded, wrongly, that ‘their real purpose is to control us.’ He later repeated this publicly, accusing Khrushchev of ‘unreasonable demands designed to bring China under Soviet military control’ (Wu Lengxi, Shi nian lunzhan, pp. 158–61; Li Zhisui, Private Life, p. 261; The Polemic on the General Line of the International Communist Movement, Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, 1965, p. 77). See also John Garver (‘Mao's Soviet Policies’, pp. 203–10).

222. Talbott, Strobe (ed), Khrushchev Remembers, Little, Brown, Boston, 1974, p. 290.

223. Ibid., p. 259.

224. The following account is taken mainly from Zhang, Shu Guang, Deterrence and Strategic Culture, pp. 235–7 and 250–65; and from MacFarquhar, 2, pp. 92–100.

225. MacFarquhar, 2, pp. 132–5; Zagoria, pp. 99, 126.

226. MacFarquhar, 2, pp. 136–80 and 201.

227. Miscellany, p. 157 (Feb. 2 1959).

228. MacFarquhar, 2, p. 153.

229. See Miscellany, 1, pp. 130–1 and 138 (Nov. 1958).

230. MacFarquhar, 2, pp. 187–92.

231. The following account of Peng's visit to Niaoshi, the build-up to the Lushan conference and the conference itself draws on: Li Rui, Lushan huiyi shilu, Henan renmin chubanshe, 1995; Domes, Peng Dehuai; The Case of Peng Dehuai, 1959–1968, Union Research Institute, Hong Kong, 1968; Teiwes, Politics and Purges, pp. 384–440; MacFarquhar, 2, pp. 187–251.

232. MacFarquhar, 2, pp. 328–9; Dikötter, Famine, p. 41.

233. Miscellany, 1, p. 176 (April 1959). Mao had first used this formulation a year earlier at the Second Session of the Eighth Party Congress, when he criticised a speech by one of his more sycophantic followers (the Shanghai First Secretary, Ke Qingshi) who had urged the Party to follow him unconditionally. ‘We follow whoever has the truth in his hands,’ Mao told him. ‘Even if he should be a manure carrier or a street sweeper, as long as he has the truth he should be followed … Wherever truth is, we follow. Do not follow any particular individual … One must have independent thinking’ (Ibid., p. 107, May 17 1958).

234. Case of Peng Dehuai, p. 12.

235. Li Rui, p. 177.

236. MacFarquhar, 2, pp. 225–8. See also Zhihua Shen and Yafeng Xia, ‘The Great Leap Forward, the People's Commune and the Sino-Soviet Split’, Journal of Contemporary China, Vol 20, No 72, November 2011, pp. 861–880.

237. MacFarquhar, 2, pp. 222 and 228–33.

238. Li Rui, pp. 192–207.

239. Case of Peng Dehuai, pp. 31–8.

240. Ibid., pp. 39–44.

241. Ibid., p. 30.

242. Chinese Law and Government, vol. 29, no. 4, p. 58.

243. Li Rui, pp. 73 and 181.

244. Chinese Law and Government, vol. 29, no. 4, p. 58.

245. Teiwes, Politics and Purges, pp. 428–36.

246. MacFarquhar, 2, 298.

247. Ibid., pp. 328–9.

248. In Guangxi, in 1955, the provincial First Secretary was dismissed for failing to prevent widespread starvation. In Anhui, 500 people starved to death in one county even during the bumper harvest of 1958 (Ibid., 3, p. 210).

249. According to Wu Lengxi (Shi nian lunzhan, pp. 236–47) the Politburo approved Mao's decision to go public in January 1960.

250. The public recriminations, leading up to the split, are detailed in MacFarquhar, 2, pp. 255–92.

251. Ibid.

252. In his speech to the ‘7,000-cadre big conference’, Liu Shaoqi did not even mention the withdrawal of Soviet aid as a factor in the famine.

253. Bernstein, Thomas P., ‘Mao Zedong and the famine of 1959–1960: A Study in Wilfulness’, CQ 186, 2006, pp. 442–3; Dikötter (Famine, pp. 105–7 & 112–14) and Yang (Tombstone, pp. 456–8). The Chinese Foreign Ministry archives do not give figures for 1961, so calculations of how much money was repaid during the three years from 1960 to 1962 are an estimate. The figures for Chinese foreign aid are likewise approximations.

254. Yang Jisheng argues convincingly that weather conditions were not the essential factor at any point during the famine, and that was certainly the case in 1959 and 1961. However, in 1960, the combination of drought and floods – either of which on its own might have been manageable – was particularly deadly. This was notably the case in Sichuan. None the less, it was a contributory factor, not the prime cause of the tragedy (Tombstone, pp. 452–6; Chris Bramall, ‘Agency and Famine in China's Sichuan province’, CQ 208, 2011, pp. 990–1008).

255. Interview with Yang Jisheng, December 8 2004. See also Tombstone, p. 429, and MacFarquhar, Origins, 3, pp. 1–8.

256. Mao's speech to the Central Committee Work Conference, June 12 1961, cited in Yang, Tombstone, p. 393.

257. Ibid., p. 483.

258. Ibid., p. 486.

259. Dikötter, Mao's Great Famine, pp. 314 & 319.

260. Yang, Tombstone, p. 192.

261. The true figure may have been even higher. Felix Wemheuer quotes a local Party historian with access to the provincial archives as saying that more than 2 million peasants were starved or beaten to death in Xinyang (CQ 201, 2010, p. 187).

262. Yang, Tombstone, pp. 57–60.

263. Comments on November 15 1960, in JYMZW, Vol. 9, pp. 349–50.

264. Yang, Tombstone, p. 433.

265. Wang Renzhong, speech to the Henan Standing Committee on December 6 1960, cited in ibid., p. 63.

266. Ibid., pp. 60 and 64.

267. Ibid., p. 406.

268. Ibid., p. 430. In private, Yang has suggested that a figure of 38 million deaths may be realistic (interview, December 8 2005), the same total proposed by Jung Chang in Mao: The Unknown Story. Other estimates by Chinese researchers point to a death toll of between 35 and 37 million. Jasper Becker, in his book Hungry Ghosts: Mao's Secret Famine (Free Press NY, 1996, pp. 271–2), cites an investigation ordered by Zhao Ziyang after he became Premier in 1980, which allegedly concluded that between 43 and 46 million died. Frank Dikötter (Famine, pp. 324–37) proposes ‘a minimum of 45 million’. However, his calculation supposes that the official figures his colleagues discovered in provincial archives were systematically underestimated, and while that may well be true, estimating by how much can only be guesswork. Both Becker and Dikötter raise the possibility that the actual death toll might even be as high as 60 million. But here we are in the realm of hearsay and speculation. Not only is there no archival evidence to support a figure of that magnitude, but demographic calculations appear to confirm a total closer to 30 million (see Judith Banister, China's Changing Population, Stanford University Press, 1987, pp. 118–20).

CHAPTER 14 MUSINGS ON IMMORTALITY

1. Teiwes, Politics and Purges, pp. 443 and 678, n. 4.

2. Ibid., pp. 455–7; MacFarquhar, 3, pp. 60–1.

3. Cong Jin, Quzhe fazhande suiye (1949–1989 niande Zhongguo, vol. 2), Henan renmin chubanshe, Zhengzhou, 1989, p. 382.

4. MacFarquhar, 3, pp. 23–9 and 32–6.

5. Ibid., pp. 43–4.

6. Ibid., pp. 45–8.

7. JYMZW, 9, pp. 467–70.

8. MacFarquhar, 3, pp. 49–55 and 66.

9. Bao and Chelminski, Prisoner of Mao, p. 269.

10. Liu Shaoqi xuanji, 2, Renmin chubanshe, 1985, p. 337; Mao Zedong wenji, 8, p. 273.

11. Zhou Xun, The Great Famine in China, 1958–1962, pp. 163–4.

12. MacFarquhar, Origins, 3, pp. 69–71; Dong Bian, Mao Zedong he tade mishu Tian Jiaying, Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, 1996, pp. 59–60 and 68–9; JYMZW, 9, pp. 565–73 and 580–3.

13. Zhou Enlai, SW2, p. 345.

14. MacFarquhar, 3, pp. 62–3; Liu Shaoqi xuanji, 2, Renmin chubanshe, Beijing, 1985, p. 337.

15. MacFarquhar, 3, pp. 209–26.

16. Ibid., p. 65.

17. Liu Shaoqi xuanji, 2, p. 355. Pantsov and Levine, p. 481.

18. MacFarquhar, 3, pp. 156–8; Bo Yibo, Ruogan zhongda juece yu shijiande huigu, 2, pp. 1026–7.

19. Schram, Unrehearsed, pp. 167 and 186.

20. MacFarquhar, 3, pp. 172–8.

21. Li Zhisui, Private Life, pp. 386–7.

22. MacFarquhar, 3, pp. 163–4.

23. Schram, Unrehearsed, p. 167; see also Li Zhisui, p. 386.

24. Dong Bian, p. 62.

25. MacFarquhar, 3, pp. 63–5 and 74–5.

26. Dong Bian, pp. 63–8; MacFarquhar, 3, pp. 226–33 and 263–8.

27. Yang Jisheng (Tombstone, p. 231) gives an example of earlier use of Deng's proverb; in English, ‘yellow’ is often rendered as ‘white?.

28. Bo Yibo, Ruogan zhongda juece yu shijiande huigu, 2, p. 1078. Tian Jiaying estimated it at 30 per cent, a figure which Mao also cited [MacFarquhar, 3, pp. 226–7 and 275].

29. Dong Bian, pp. 65–6.

30. MacFarquhar, 3, pp. 281–3.

31. Ibid., p. 267.

32. Ibid., p. 276.

33. This and the following section are drawn from ibid., pp. 269–81; and Yang, Tombstone, pp. 509–11. Mao attacked Wang Jiaxiang's initiative as ‘three appeasements and one reduction’ (appeasing India, the Soviet Union and the United States, and reducing support for liberation movements), and the proposals for economic adjustment as ‘three freedoms and one contract’ (more freedom for peasants to choose what crops to grow, more free markets and more self-management for enterprises, and the contracting out of land for household farming). Together they amounted to a ‘programme for capitalist restoration’. At Beidaihe Deng Zihou, who had clashed with Mao over collectivization in 1955, was removed as the Party's agricultural supremo, and the theme of the conference shifted to criticism of what were called the ‘Wind of gloom’ and the ‘Individual farming wind’.

34. Schram, pp. 189–90.

35. Ibid., p. 194. See also Yang, pp. 508 and 509–11. Peng's case was still very much in Mao's mind at Beidaihe. In June, six weeks before the work conference opened, the disgraced marshal had written an 80,000 character memorial to Mao, asking for his case to be reopened. That prompted a movement against what was termed the ‘Verdict-reversing wind’. Although the campaign against right-opportunism had ‘for the most part targeted the wrong people’, Mao acknowledged, it was necessary to maintain the movement against Peng and his allies on the grounds that they had conspired with foreigners and attempted to usurp power. At the plenum afterwards, an investigation group was formed to seek out incriminating materials on Peng, Zhang Wentian and Huang Kecheng.

36. Ibid., pp. 192–3.

37. Cong Jin, p. 519.

38. MacFarquhar, 3, pp. 298–323 and 349–62.

39. Garver, ‘Mao's Soviet Policies’, p. 200.

40. Quoted in Sheridan, Mary, ‘The Emulation of Heroes’, CQ 33, 1969, pp. 52–3.

41. MacFarquhar, 3, pp. 334–48 and 399–415; Teiwes, Politics and Purges, pp. 493–600. See also Baum, Richard, and Teiwes, Frederick C., Ssu-Ch'ing: The Socialist Education Movement of 1962–1966, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1968.

42. Baum and Teiwes, p. 70.

43. Siu, Helen F., Agents and Victims in South China: Accomplices in Rural Revolution, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1989, pp. 201–2.

44. Current Background, no. 891, US Consulate General, Hong Kong, pp. 71 and 75.

45. Sunday Times, Oct. 15 1961.

46. MacFarquhar, 3, pp. 262–3.

47. At an enlarged Standing Committee meeting on February 21 1962 (known afterwards as the Xilou conference), Liu said the 7,000-cadre conference ‘didn't disclose the difficulties thoroughly enough… We don't need routine measures but rather emergency measures to readjust the economy.’ On March 14, after further discussions by the Politburo, Mao accepted the readjustment programme and appointed Chen Yun to be in charge of financial work, while warning against painting the situation uniformly black. When a Central Committee work conference in May proposed additional measures, Mao dug in his heels and called a halt (Yang, Tombstone, pp. 505–6).

48. Wang Guangmei and Liu Yuan, Nisuo bu zhidao de Liu Shaoqi, Henan renmin chubanshe, 2000, p. 90.

49. In fact the idea did resurface 10 years later: in August 1973, on the eve of the 10th Party Congress, Mao himself proposed the creation of a Central Advisory Commission with himself as Chairman. But the rest of the Politburo demurred and he did not insist (Teiwes and Sun, End of the Maoist Era, p. 100).

50. Chinese Literature, no. 5, 1966.

51. MacFarquhar, 3, ch. 17.

52. From Jiang Qing's evidence at her trial, November 1980–January 1981.

53. MacFarquhar, 3, pp. 289–96; Byron and Pack, Claws of the Dragon.

54. MacFarquhar, 2, p. 320; 3, pp. 435–7.

55. There was one further straw in the wind, had any of Mao's colleagues cared to notice. From the early 1960s, Chinese military aid to North Vietnam was sharply increased and support for the Vietnamese struggle against the US-backed South became more prominent in the Chinese media. During both the Korean War and the Taiwan Straits crisis in 1958, Mao had used external conflict to promote the radicalization of policy at home. As would later become clear, the Vietnam War served the same purpose during the build-up to the Cultural Revolution (see Qiang Zhai, China and the Vietnam Wars, 1950–1975, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 2000).

56. Huang Zheng, Liu Shaoqi yi sheng, Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, Beijing, 1995, p. 374.

57. Evans, Deng Xiaoping, p. x.

58. There can, of course, be no certainty as to Mao's innermost thoughts in the spring and early summer of 1964. What follows is an attempt to point to some of the factors that may have influenced him in reaching the conclusions set out in the CCP's letter to the Russians in July.

59. Quoted in Wang Ruoshui, Mao Zedong wei shenme yao fadong wenge, privately circulated, Beijing, October 1996, pp. 12–14.

60. Yang, Tombstone, p. 510.

61. Ibid., p. 515.

62. Wang Ruoshui, p. 10.

63. The Polemic on the General Line of the International Communist Movement, Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, 1965, pp. 477–8.

64. MacFarquhar, Cheek and Wu, Secret Speeches, pp. 270–1 (March 10 1957).

65. Cong Jin, p. 602.

66. JYMZW, 11, pp. 265–9.

67. Miscellany, 2, pp. 408–26.

68. Ibid., pp. 429–32; MacFarquhar, Origins, 3, pp. 419–28.

69. Mao told Edgar Snow in 1970 that it was during the discussions on the ‘Four Clean-Ups’ in January 1965 that he decided Liu would have to be purged (Snow, Long Revolution, p. 17). Wang Guangmei wrote that he was enraged when Liu started treating him as an equal, and quoted him as telling the younger man: ‘All I have to do is lift a finger and you are finished’ (Nisuo bu zhidao de Liu Shaoqi, p. 118). Frank Dikötter ignores these accounts and speculates – without any basis, in my view – that ‘the defining moment’ when Mao decided to get rid of Liu was in July 1962, when they argued over Liu's attempts to get the economy back on track after the Great Leap (Famine, p. 377).

CHAPTER 15 CATACLYSM

1. MacFarquhar, Origins of the Cultural Revolution, 3, p. 440.

2. Ibid., 2, pp. 207–12 and 3, pp. 252–3.

3. Barnouin, Barbara, and Yu Changgen, Ten Years of Turbulence: The Chinese Cultural Revolution, Kegan Paul, London, 1993, p. 52.

4. See Mazur, Mary G., Wu Han, Historian: Son of China's Times, Lexington Books, Lanham, 2009. On the parallels and differences between Mao and Zhu Yuanzhang, see Stuart Schram's review of Autocracy and China's Rebel Founding Emperors: Comparing Chairman Mao and Ming Taizu, by Anita M. Andrew and John A. Rapp (Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham, 2000) in CQ 167, 2001, pp. 768–70.

5. MacFarquhar, 3, p. 645, n. 67.

6. Ibid., p. 441; Yan Jiaqi and Gao Gao, Turbulent Decade: A History of the Cultural Revolution, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, 1996, p. 27.

7. MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, Mao's Last Revolution, p. 17.

8. Miscellany of Mao Tse-tung Thought, 2, p. 383 (April 28 1966). See also Cong Jin, Quzhe fazhande suiye, p. 611; and Milton, David and Nancy, and Schurmann, Franz (eds), People's China, Random House, New York, 1974, p. 262.

9. Shuai Dongbing, ‘Peng Zhen zai baofengyu qianye’, in Mingren zhuanyi, nos. 11–12, 1988, p. 11. See also Zheng Derong (ed.), Xin Zhongguo lishi (1949–1984), Changchun, 1986, p. 381.

10. Liao Gailong (ed.), Xin Zhongguo biannianshi (1949–1989), Renmin chubanshe, Beijing, 1989, p. 267; Ma Qibin (ed.), Zhongguo gongchandang zhizheng sishinian, Zhonggong dangshi ziliao chubanshe, Beijing, 1989, p. 264. See also MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, pp. 19–20 & 36–7.

11. Cong Jin, pp. 631–4; Ma Qibin, p. 265; Teiwes, Frederick C., and Sun, Warren, The Tragedy of Lin Biao, University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 1996, pp. 24–32; Li Zhisui, Private Life, pp. 435–6.

12. Ye Yonglie, Chen Boda qiren, Shidai wenyi chubanshe, Changchun, 1990, pp. 222–3.

13. Cong Jin, p. 613; Hao Mengbi and Duan Haoran (eds), Zhongguo gongchandang liushi nian, Jiefangjun chubanshe, Beijing, 1984, p. 561. See also Ye Yonglie, pp. 228–30.

14. MacFarquhar, 3, pp. 451 and 453.

15. Ibid., p. 388. The other members were Kang Sheng and Lu Dingyi, both then alternate members of the Politburo; the editor of the People's Daily, Wu Lengxi; and the literary commissar, Zhou Yang.

16. Kuo, Warren (ed.), Classified Chinese Communist Documents, National Chengchi University, Taibei, 1978, pp. 225–9.

17. Cong Jin, p. 616; Wu Lengxi, Yi Mao zhuxi: Wo qinshen jinglide ruogan zhongda lishi shijian pianduan, Xinhua chubanshe, Beijing, 1995, pp. 150–1.

18. MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, pp. 26–7; Cong Jin, pp. 633–4.

19. Li Ping, Kaiguo zongli Zhou Enlai, Zhonggong zhongyang dangxiao chubanshe, 1994, p. 436; MacFarquhar, 3, p. 56.

20. MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, pp. 30–31; History of the CCP, Chronology, pp. 320–1; Peking Review, June 2 1967.

21. MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, p. 32. He had raised some of these issues at a Standing Committee meeting in Hangzhou ten days earlier. See also Cong Jin, p. 625; History of the CCP, Chronology, pp. 320–1.

22. Cong Jin, pp. 623–5.

23. MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, pp. 34–5; Wang Nianyi, Da dongluande niandai, Henan renmin chubanshe, Zhengzhou, 1988, pp. 18–19.

24. Wang Nianyi, pp. 9–11.

25. MacFarquhar, 3, pp. 459–60.

26. Kuo, Classified Chinese Documents, pp. 646–61.

27. This point is discussed in MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, pp. 48–51.

28. Ibid., pp. 230–6; Renmin ribao, May 17 1966.

29. Kuo, Classified Chinese Documents, p. 230; Yan and Gao, p. 38; Schoenhals, Michael, The CCP Central Case Examination Group (1966–1979), Centre for Pacific Asia Studies, Stockholm University, 1995.

30. MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, pp. 47–8.

31. Ibid., pp. 39–41.

32. Renmin ribao, May 11 1966. Yao's charges against Deng Tuo are discussed at length by MacFarquhar (3, pp. 249–58). My own exchanges with prominent Chinese intellectuals, including some of Deng's colleagues, appear to confirm that no one saw them at the time as being aimed at Mao (not least because his prestige was such that it was unthinkable he should be the target). For a contrary view, see Goldman, Merle, China's Intellectuals: Advise and Dissent, Harvard University Press, 1981, pp. 27–38.

33. Yan and Gao, p. 40; Wang Nianyi, p. 28; MacFarquhar, 3, p. 652, n. l.

34. Renmin ribao, June 2 1966.

35. Jin Chunming, Wenge shiqi guaishi guaiyu, Qiushi chubanshe, Beijing, 1989, p. 155.

36. Zhongguo Qingnian, 10, 1986.

37. Kuo, Classified Chinese Documents, pp. 658 and 661.

38. Yan and Gao, pp. 60–1.

39. MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, p. 42.

40. Lin Zhijian (ed.), Xin Zhongguo yaoshi shuping, Zhonggong dangshi chubanshe, 1994, p. 307.

41. Ma Qibin, pp. 272–3.

42. History of the CCP, Chronology, p. 326.

43. Jin Chunming, p. 135; Liu Guokai, A Brief Analysis of the Cultural Revolution, M. E. Sharpe, Armonk, 1987, p. 18.

44. Yan and Gao, pp. 46–7.

45. JYMZW, 12, pp. 71–5.

46. Roux, Le Singe et le Tigre, p. 763.

47. Renmin ribao, July 25 1966.

48. Yan and Gao, pp. 49–52; History of the CCP, Chronology, pp. 327–8.

49. Dittmer, Lowell, Liu Shao'chi and the Chinese Cultural Revolution: The Politics of Mass Criticism, University of California, Berkeley, 1974, pp. 89–90. MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, p. 85 (which gives a slightly different translation).

50. History of the CCP, Chronology, pp. 328–9; Barnouin and Yu, pp. 78–81.

51. Barnouin and Yu, p. 80.

52. MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, pp. 88–9.

53. Peking Review, Aug. 11 1967 (translation amended).

54. MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, p. 91. Teiwes and Sun, pp. 63–4.

55. Milton et al., pp. 272–83.

56. Intriguingly, all 74 CC members present (including Mao) voted for Deng which would normally have made him third in the rank order after Mao himself and Lin Biao. But that was not what Mao wanted, so he overturned the results of the vote and imposed a rank order of his own: Mao, Lin Biao (as Vice-Chairman and heir apparent), Zhou, Tao Zhu, Chen Boda, Deng, Kang Sheng, Liu Shaoqi, Zhu De, Li Fuchun, Chen Yun. In formal terms Liu, Zhou, Zhu and Chen Yun retained their vice-chairmanships, but from then on the title was used only for Lin Biao. Soon afterwards, the very concept of rank order was abandoned, except for Mao and Lin Biao. By the end of August both the Secretariat and the Politburo Standing Committee, while continuing to exist in name – as did the Politburo itself – had ceded their practical functions respectively to the Cultural Revolution Small Group and to an ad hoc group known as the Central Caucus, both chaired by Zhou Enlai, who also continued to head the State Council. Most Central Committee departments also ceased to function. The head of the Organization Department, An Ziwen, and all his deputies were purged that month. The United Front Department, which answered to Zhou Enlai, passed under military control in 1968, as did the Investigation Department, which dealt with security matters. The International Liaison Department, which handled relations with foreign parties, was the only one to continue working more or less normally (MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, pp. 94–101).

57. Ibid., pp. 87–8; Yan and Gao, p. 59.

58. Yan and Gao, pp. 62–3; Rittenberg, Man Who Stayed Behind, pp. 317–19.

59. Her father, Song Renqiong, had been a political commissar in the Eighth Route Army and after 1949 played a key role in pacifying south-west China.

60. Schoenhals, Michael, China's Cultural Revolution, 1966–1969: Not a Dinner Party, M. E. Sharpe, Armonk, 1996, pp. 148–9.

61. Ibid., p. 150.

62. Yan and Gao, pp. 68–9.

63. Ibid., pp. 76–7.

64. Surprisingly, no serious research appears yet to have been undertaken on the parallels between the revolutionary movements which broke out in the mid-1960s in China, Europe and the United States. In each case both the underlying cause and the fundamental motivations were the same. There were also more lateral connections than might have been expected: many of the leaders of the May 1968 movement in France described themselves as Maoists; some of the Red Guards who set out to re-enact the Long March had earlier read an abridged Chinese translation of Jack Kerouac's On the Road.

65. MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, p. 103.

66. See Milton et al., p. 265, where Mao is quoted as telling an Albanian delegation in [May] 1967: ‘Some people say that the Chinese people deeply love peace. I don't think they love peace so much. I think the Chinese people are warlike.’

67. The ‘Sixteen Points’ quoted Mao's 1927 ‘Report on the Peasant Movement in Hunan’ to the effect that revolution cannot be ‘refined, leisurely and gentle, “benign, upright, courteous, temperate and complaisant”.’ Although it did not cite the next sentence, which defines revolution as ‘an act of violence’, the Red Guards – as Mao certainly intended – interpreted it that way (see, for example, Ling, Ken, The Revenge of Heaven, G. P. Putnam, New York, 1972, p. 19).

68. Yan and Gao, p. 76.

69. Ibid., pp. 124–5.

70. SW4, p. 418 (June 30 1949).

71. Ling, pp. 20–2.

72. Jing Lin, The Red Guards’ Path to Violence, Praeger, New York, 1991, p. 23.

73. Milton et al., p. 239 (Dec. 21 1939). It was quoted in Renmin ribao on Aug. 24 1966.

74. Yan and Gao, p. 77.

75. Gao Yuan, Born Red: A Chronicle of the Cultural Revolution, Stanford University Press, 1987, pp. 289–90 and 307–10.

76. Schoenhals, pp. 166–9.

77. Yan and Gao, ch. 5.

78. Millions of others took advantage of the free transport to go sightseeing, travelling to scenic spots like the Three Gorges, and to Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia. That, Mao understood. He had done the same himself, while travelling from Beijing to Shanghai in the spring of 1919, and afterwards accounted the experience one of the more worthwhile undertakings of his youth.

79. Yan and Gao, ch. 4; Ling, pp. 42–59; Gao Yuan, pp. 85–94; Bennett, Gordon A, and Montaperto, Ronald N., Red Guard: The Political Biography of Dai Hsiao-Ai, Doubleday, New York, 1971, pp. 77–83.

80. In his ‘Report on the Peasant Movement in Hunan’, he wrote: ‘It is the peasants who made the idols, and when the time comes they will cast the idols aside with their own hands; there is no need for anyone else to do it for them prematurely’ (Schram, Mao's Road, 2, p. 455). Qu Qiubai, at the Sixth Congress in 1928, likewise excoriated ‘those romantic petty-bourgeois revolutionaries who, instead of concentrating on how to seize political power … resorted to forcible means to destroy the ancestral tablets of peasant families, to cut off the pigtails of old women, and to undo the foot-bindings of women – what thorough and brave cultural revolutionaries they were! … Marx said that in a revolution there is no lack of foolish things done’ (Chinese Studies in History, 5, 1, p. 21 [Fall 1971]). Unfortunately, by 1966, such strictures had been forgotten.

81. Oral sources; see also Yan and Gao, pp. 76–81.

82. Schram, Mao's Road, 1, p. 139 (Sept. 23 1917).

83. Ling, pp. 52–3.

84. Yan and Gao, p. 74.

85. Ibid., pp. 248–51; Short, Dragon and Bear, pp. 148–9; Urban, George [ed.], The Miracles of Chairman Mao, Nash Publishing, Los Angeles, 1971, passim; Perry, Anyuan, pp. 244–5; oral sources.

86. Schoenhals, p. 3, n. l. A different version is given by Wang Li in ‘An Insider's Account of the Cultural Revolution’, Chinese Law and Government, vol. 27 no. 6 (November–December 1994), p. 32.

87. Schoenhals, p. 27.

88. Milton et al., p. 270.

89. Rittenberg, p. 329.

90. MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, pp. 135–9; Dittmer, pp. 97–9; Kuo, Classified Chinese Documents, pp. 237–44.

91. Schram, Unrehearsed, pp. 270–4.

92. Ibid., pp. 264–9.

93. MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, p. 146.

94. Schram, Mao Zedong: A Preliminary Reassessment, p. 67.

95. Renmin ribao, Jan, 1, 1967; Yan and Gao, pp. 101–11. See also Barnouin and Yu, pp. 97–106.

96. Yan and Gao, ch. 8.

97. Mitter, China's War with Japan, p. 115. The use of struggle meetings dated from the Yan’an rectification campaign in the early 1940s, but it, too, had antecedents in much earlier practices.

98. Yan and Gao, p. 218.

99. Ibid., pp. 379–84; MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, pp. 140–44; Barnouin and Yu, pp. 106–12.

100. The following account is drawn from Barnouin and Yu, pp. 100 and 133–6; and MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, p. 147.

101. MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, pp. 123–4 & 147–9. The public denunciation rallies against veteran leaders began on December 12 1966. See Mao, une histoire chinoise, Part 3, ARTE, 2005.

102. Schram, Unrehearsed, pp. 275–6.

103. Milton et al., pp. 298–9; History of the CCP, Chronology, p. 335; MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, p. 175.

104. Wang Li, pp. 38–9.

105. Milton et al., p. 279.

106. MacFarquhar, Cheek and Wu, Secret Speeches, p. 419.

107. Schram, Unrehearsed, pp. 277–9.

108. Miscellany, 2, pp. 451–5.

109. Ibid., p. 460.

110. Kau and Leung, Writings of Mao Zedong, 2, p. 639.

111. Kuo, Classified Chinese Documents, pp. 54–7.

112. See, for instance, the long essay entitled, ‘Whither China?’, in ibid., pp. 274–99.

113. Wang Nianyi, p. 187.

114. Ibid., pp. 150–1; Yan and Gao, p. 202.

115. The following draws on Liu Guokai, p. 61; Wang Nianyi, pp. 202–4; MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, pp. 175–81; Peng Cheng (ed.), Zhongguo zhengju beiwanglu, Jiefangjun chubanshe, Beijing, 1989, pp. 3–4; Yan and Gao, pp. 123–4; Barnouin and Yu, pp. 131–41.

116. Yan and Gao, pp. 125–6; Barnouin and Yu, pp. 116–19; MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, pp. 185–94; Wang Li, pp. 41–2.

117. Zhou Ming, Lishi zai zheli chensi, Huaxia chubanshe, Beijing, vol. 2, pp. 66–7; Yan and Gao, p. 127.

118. MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, pp. 193–4.

119. Quoted in Yan and Gao, p. 129.

120. Wang Nianyi, ‘Guanyu eryue niliude yixie ziliao’ in Dangshi yanjiu ziliao, 1, 1990, p. 4.

121. Ibid.

122. History of the CCP, Chronology, p. 336.

123. Ibid.; Wang Li, pp. 52–4; Barnouin and Yu, pp. 119–20.

124. Wang Nianyi, ‘Guanyu eryue niliude yixie ziliao’, p. 6.

125. Wang Li, p. 54.

126. Wang Nianyi, Da dongluande niandai, p. 218.

127. Liang and Shapiro, Son of the Revolution, pp. 133–7.

128. Jin Qiu, The Culture of Power: The Lin Biao Incident in the Cultural Revolution, Stanford University Press, 1999, pp. 108–9; Zhang Yunsheng, Maojiawan jishi, Chunqiu chubanshe, Beijing, 1988, pp. 113–23. MacFarquhar and Schoenhals (pp. 298–301) claim that the alliance between Jiang Qing's and Lin Biao's clans began to crumble around the time of the Ninth Congress. It is true that at that point their rivalry became more pronounced. However, Jin Qiu's argument that the beginnings of the split date back at least to mid-1967, if not earlier, is persuasive.

129. The following account is drawn from Wang Nianyi, Da dongluande niandai; Peng Cheng, Zhongguo zhengju beiwanglu; Barnouin and Yu, esp. pp. 144–6; and Yan and Gao, pp. 235–7.

130. Wang Li, pp. 65–6.

131. Yan and Gao, pp. 237–9.

132. MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, pp. 214–15. In a more detailed account (‘“Why don't we arm the Left”: Mao's culpability for the “Great Chaos” of 1967’, CQ 182, 2005, pp. 277–300), Michael Schoenhals plausibly suggests that Mao's remarks about arming the Left may have been leaked to the leaders of the Wuhan Military Region, who proceeded to provide weapons to the ‘Million Heroes’ the following day.

133. Wang Li, p. 75; Renmin ribao, July 22 1967.

134. History of the CCP, Chronology, p. 338.

135. Wang Li, p. 75.

136. Hongqi, no. 12, 1967.

137. Wang Li, p. 76; Yan and Gao, p. 239; MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, pp. 231–2.

138. Wang Li, p. 81; Dong Baocun, Yang Yu Fu shijian zhenxiang, Jiefangjun chubanshe, Beijing, 1988, pp. 74–5; MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, pp. 222–31. Zhou suffered a minor heart attack on August 17 after a meeting with Foreign Ministry leftists who were threatening to kidnap Chen Yi and organise a struggle meeting against him (Gao Wenqian, Zhou Enlai, p. 175).

139. Wang Li, p. 82; Barnouin and Yu, pp. 192–8; Yan and Gao, pp. 252–6; MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, pp. 221–2 & 235–8.

140. In May 1967, students in Tianjin found copies of Shanghai newspapers dating from 1932, which reported that Wu Hao (one of Zhou's aliases in Shanghai) had defected from the Communist Party. The reports had originally been planted by the Guomindang to try to demoralize the CCP underground in the city. Zhou had been exculpated during the Yan'an rectification campaign. However, Mao now allowed the issue to fester for a while before declaring that it had been ‘cleared up a long time ago’ (see Gao Wenqian, pp. 167–70 & 176).

141. Renmin ribao, Sept 8 1967; Barnouin and Yu, pp. 194–5.

142. When Mao met Xu Shiyou in Shanghai on August 18, he was already worrying about the ‘really desperate’ situation which ‘arming the Left’ had created. A week later he approved a directive severely restricting the conditions under which arms could be distributed (Schoenhals, ‘Why don't we arm the left’, pp. 294–5).

143. Ibid., p. 297; Domes, Jurgen, Myers, James T., and von Groeling, Erik, Cultural Revolution in China: Documents and Analysis, n.p., n.d., pp. 307–15. The new directive was issued on September 5. By then thousands had died in armed clashes since the beginning of August. Despite Mao's order, many groups refused to hand in their weapons and in some provinces violence continued through much of 1968. However, the worst was over by the end of October 1967.

144. See Goldman, China's Intellectuals, pp. 146–7.

145. Barnouin and Yu, p. 91; Yan and Gao, p. 138; Schoenhals, pp. 101–16.

146. Yan and Gao, p. 139.

147. Zhou Ming, 1, pp. 27–30; Yan and Gao, pp. 153–7; Li Zhisui, Private Life, pp. 489–90.

148. Barnouin and Yu, p. 185; Kuo, Classified Chinese Documents, pp. 20–4.

149. Jin Chunming, p. 78.

150. Schoenhals, pp. 122–35.

151. Yan and Gao, p. 211.

152. Ibid., pp. 223, 252 and 266; Barnouin and Yu, pp. 187–9.

153. Renmin ribao, Dec. 22 1967; see also Milton et al., pp. 356–60.

154. Wang Nianyi, Da dongluande niandai, p. 271.

155. Wang Li, p. 82.

156. Barnouin and Yu, p. 198.

157. Ibid., pp. 181–4. MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, Ch 15.

158. Ibid., pp. 164–5.

159. This account draws on Jin Qiu, pp. 110–15; Barnouin and Yu, pp. 165–71; Dong Baocun, Yang Yu Fu shijian zhenxiang. Gao Wenqian suggests a simpler explanation, that the purge was ‘part of Lin Biao's struggle to secure control over the army’ (Zhou Enlai, p. 177). That could not have applied to Fu, whose loyalty to Lin was unquestioned. However, the removal of Yang Chengwu and Yu Lijin certainly strengthened his hand, whether or not he had played a role in their dismissal, and by the summer of 1968 Lin had come as close as he ever would to achieving mastery over the PLA. The previous year he had succeeded in removing the head of the PLA's General Political Department, Xiao Hua, and Mao now agreed that the functions of the Standing Committee of the CPC Military Commission should be transferred to its General Office, headed by Wu Faxian and staffed by Lin's followers. After that, Ye Jianying, Xu Xiangqian and the other marshals lost any role in military decision-making. The size of the Chinese military – five million men – and its growth from different base areas, each with its own chain of command and its own network of historical loyalties, meant that, with the exception of Mao, no single person could control it completely. But, at a time when the PLA was playing an unprecedented role in national affairs, Lin's influence was pre-eminent.

160. Liu Guokai, p. 118; Yan and Gao, p. 393; MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, pp. 244–5.

161. Zheng Yi, Scarlet Memorial: Tales of Cannibalism in Modern China, Westview Press, Boulder, Co, 1996. Similar incidents took place in Cambodia under Khmer Rouge rule in the mid-1970s. In both countries, part of the motivation was to obtain from the participants a physical proof of loyalty that went beyond conventional constraints. Eating a dead opponent was assimilated to class struggle. In Yunnan in June 1968, after a peasant named Zhou was executed, his penis and testicles were cut off, boiled and eaten. In Khmer Rouge Cambodia, executioners ate the livers of their victims, believing that to be the seat of courage. The practice was by no means limited to communist regimes. Chiang Kai-shek's secret police agents also on occasion ate parts of their victims (Galbiati, Fernando, ‘Peng Pai: The Leader of the First Soviet’ (D. Phil. thesis), Oxford, June 1981, pp. 829–31; Short, Philip, Pol Pot: The History of a Nightmare, John Murray, 2004, p. 371; MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, pp. 258–9; Wakeman, Frederick, Spymaster: Dai Li and the Chinese Secret Service, University of California Press, 2003, p. 165).

162. Zhang Yunsheng, Maojiawan jishi, pp. 113–23; Hinton, William, Hundred Day War: The Cultural Revolution at Tsinghua University, Monthly Review Press, New York, 1972, pp. 226–7; Li Zhisui, pp. 502–3; and oral sources.

163. MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, pp. 249–51.

164. Unger, Jonathan, Education under Mao, Columbia University Press, New York, 1982, pp. 38–45 and 134.

165. Yan and Gao, pp. 393–4; MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, pp. 268–9.

166. CHOC, 15, p. 189, n. 120; see also Unger, p. 162.

167. Yan and Gao, pp. 270–6.

168. See Mao's speech to the First Plenum of the Ninth CC, in Schram, Unrehearsed, p. 288.

169. Jin Chunming, pp. 243–4.

170. Teiwes and Sun, Tragedy of Lin Biao, p. 128, n. 47.

171. Barnouin and Yu, p. 160; Peking Review, Sept. 13 1968.

172. Zhou was especially vehement. In a statement appended to the report of the Central Case Examination Group, which recommended Liu's expulsion, he wrote: ‘The criminal Liu is a big traitor, big scab, big spy, big foreign agent and collaborator who sold out the country. He is full of the five poisons and a counter-revolutionary guilty on more than ten accounts’ (Gao Wenqian, Zhou Enlai, p. 181).

173. Yan and Gao, pp. 356–62. Kuo, Classified Chinese Documents, p. 40.

174. CHOC, 15, p. 195.

175. Wang Nianyi, Da dongluande niandai, pp. 311–15; Yan and Gao, pp. 159–60; Barnouin and Yu, pp. 171–5; MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, Ch 16; History of the CCP, Chronology, pp. 344–5. In July 1967, Mao had told Wang Li: ‘If Lin Biao's health doesn't hold out, then it will be Deng Xiaoping who comes forward’ (Teiwes, Frederick C. and Sun, Warren, The End of the Maoist Era, M. E. Sharpe, Armonk, 2007, p. 25). Mao's remark about Deng having a great future was made to Khrushchev in Beijing in October 1959 (not to Kosygin, as Ross Terrill insisted when reviewing the first edition of this book [CQ 163, 2000, p. 872]).

176. Barnouin and Yu, pp. 175–8; MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, Ch 17.

177. MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, pp. 280–81.

178. There is now broad agreement that the total death toll from political violence in the period 1966–76 was between two and three million. In 1980 Hu Yaobang had suggested a figure of one million. Earlier estimates (for example, CHOC 15, pp. 213–14) were even lower. But in 1982, Ye Jianying told a discussion meeting during the 12th Party Congress that the true figure was of the order of 2.1 million dead with an estimated 557,000 unaccounted for.

179. The following account is drawn principally from Zhang Yunsheng, Maojiawan jishi.

180. CHOC, 15, p. 198.

181. Milton et al., p. 264.

182. Kuo, Classified Chinese Documents, p. 54; Schram, Unrehearsed, p. 283.

183. Teiwes and Sun, Tragedy of Lin Biao, p. 18.

184. Clubb, O. Edmund, China and Russia: The Great Game, Columbia University Press, New York, 1971, p. 488.

185. CHOC, 15, pp. 257–61; Garver, John W., China's Decision for Rapprochement with the United States, 1968–1971, Westview Press, Boulder, CO, 1982, pp. 54–6; Kissinger, Henry, The White House Years, Little, Brown & Co., New York, 1979, pp. 171–2.

186. See CHOC, 15, pp. 261–75, and Clubb, ch. 36. The centrality of the US dimension is now widely acknowledged. Lyle Goldstein, in ‘Return to Zhenbao Island: Who started shooting and why it matters’ (CQ 168, 2001, pp. 985–97) has argued that Mao manufactured the conflict to divert attention from the problems of winding down the Cultural Revolution. But the chronology does not support that. While it is certainly true that the border clashes provided a useful backdrop to the Ninth Congress, by March 1969 the active phase of the Cultural Revolution was over.

187. History of the CCP, Chronology, p. 348; Yan and Gao, p. 162.

188. Goodman, Deng Xiaoping, pp. 78–9.

189. Yan and Gao, pp. 162–4; MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, pp. 277–8; Perry, Anyuan, pp. 232–3; Dittmer, Lowell, ‘Death and Transfiguration: Liu Shaoqi's Rehabilitation and Contemporary Chinese Politics’, Journal of Asian Studies, Vol 41, No 3, May 1981, pp. 459–60.

CHAPTER 16 THINGS FALL APART

1. Li Zhisui, Private Life, p. 517.

2. Ji Dengkui, quoted in Teiwes and Sun, Tragedy of Lin Biao, p. 21.

3. Ibid., pp. 13 and 109.

4. In the 1980s, Deng Yingchao asked Hu Yaobang, then General Secretary of the CCP, to authorise the destruction of the offending minute, which had been preserved in Zhou's personal files in the secret section of the Central Archives. Hu agreed, and the original was destroyed. But, unknown to him, a copy was kept. Deng Xiaoping himself was aware of Zhou's conduct, but in 1979 exonerated him on the grounds that he would otherwise have been overthrown, which would have made the situation still worse. That has remained the official view ever since. In private, however, Zhou's colleagues were more ambivalent. After the February Adverse Current, Tan Zhenlin wrote: ‘How long does [the Premier] plan to wait before he's willing to speak out? Until all the cadres have been struck down?’ Even Deng, while acknowledging Zhou's role in mitigating the Cultural Revolution's excesses, was reported to have added that ‘without [him], it wouldn't have dragged on for such a long time’ (Oral sources; Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping, 1975–1982, Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, 1990, pp. 329–30; and Gao Wenqian, Zhou Enlai, p. 162).

5. Oral sources.

6. Li Zhisui, p. 510.

7. Yan and Gao, Turbulent Decade, ch. 23.

8. Wang Li, ‘Insider's Account of the Cultural Revolution’, p. 44.

9. Wang Nianyi, Da dongluande niandai, pp. 384–8; Zhang Yunsheng, Maojiawan jishi, pp. 163–5 and 222–4.

10. Jin Qiu, The Culture of Power, pp. 116–18.

11. MacFarquhar, Roderick (ed.), The Politics of China: The Eras of Mao and Deng (2nd edn), Cambridge University Press, 1997, pp. 256–7; Barnouin and Yu, Ten Years of Turbulence, pp. 215–16; Lin Qingshan, Lin Biao zhuan, Beijing, 1988, pp. 686–8. Gao Wenqian (Zhou Enlai, pp. 196–7) quoting ‘inside accounts’, claims that ‘soon after the Ninth Congress’ – presumably in the winter of 1969 – Mao met Lin in Suzhou and suggested to him that, given Lin's poor health, he might wish to think of Zhang Chunqiao as his eventual successor. Lin's response is not known: presumably he expressed interest in the Chairman's suggestion. But, the key point, according to Gao, is that Lin then followed up with a suggestion of his own – namely that Mao should consider becoming Head of State. Gao then quotes Wu Faxian as saying that Mao's initial refusal in March 1970 to re-establish the post was less clear-cut than subsequent accounts made it appear – which may well be true. Such a sequence of events is plausible and might help to explain why Lin was so persistent in pushing the Head of State issue. However, corroborative evidence is lacking.

12. This is one of the least understood episodes in the whole of Mao's long career. There are two main scholarly interpretations: that summarised by MacFarquhar in The Politics of China (pp. 256–62), which holds that Lin was a victim of his own ambition; and the ‘revisionist’ view, advanced by Teiwes and Sun in The Tragedy of Lin Biao (pp. 134–51), and by Wu Faxian's daughter, Jin Qiu, that Lin was a victim of Mao's paranoia. Neither version is completely satisfactory although the second appears closer to the truth. The episode becomes comprehensible if Mao became involved much earlier than these writers suggest. This would have been in character: we now know that Mao manoeuvred Gao Gang, Peng Dehuai and Peng Zhen into the actions which caused their respective downfalls. He had already tested Lin once at the Ninth Congress (just as he had tested Liu Shaoqi at the CC work conference in December 1964), by proposing that the Defence Minister, rather than himself, should chair the Congress Presidium – a bait which Lin had wisely refused. Mao's handling of the state chairmanship issue eventually turned it into a similar test, but this time Lin's instincts let him down.

13. Teiwes and Sun, Tragedy, pp. 1 and 11.

14. Li Zhisui, p. 518.

15. That may be putting it too mildly. MacFarquhar and Schoenhals (pp. 318–20) say: ‘Mao hit the roof?. Lin evidently thought he was acting in accordance with Mao's instructions, but either he went further than Mao had intended or, inadvertently, he trespassed on what Mao, as the PLA's Commander-in-chief, regarded as his own domain.

16. Ye Yonglie, Chen Boda zhuan, p. 493. See also Li Zhisui, p. 511 for a description of Zhou Enlai's anxiety during this period lest Mao suspect him of forming an alliance with Wang Dongxing.

17. Normally when Mao spoke, that was the end of the matter. His disavowal of the campaign to root our ‘capitalist-roaders’ in the PLA in August 1967 is a typical example; the moment he hinted at a change of heart, his subordinates scattered in panic. This time he expressed his disagreement on four separate occasions without his words being heeded. (According to Gao Wenqian, a Standing Committee meeting held in Mao's absence immediately before the plenum also called on Mao to assume the State chairmanship. See Zhou Enlai, p. 204). The only logical explanation is that the Chairman hedged the issue. That ties in with the fact that the CC's General Office, which took its orders from Mao, circulated two versions of the draft constitution – one with, and one without, a state chairman (Teiwes and Sun, Tragedy, p. 139). Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals speculate that from the outset Mao was setting a trap for Lin (Mao's Last Revolution, pp. 326 & 336). But to what purpose? Having just got rid of one successor, he had no reason to wish to overthrow another. Doing so would discredit both himself and the Cultural Revolution in which he put such store. If his goal was to weaken the role of the military, it was a very strange way of going about it. The familiar mixture of paranoia and suspicion of his successor's motives is much more credible.

18. Teiwes and Sun, Tragedy, p. 140; Wang Nianyi, pp. 392–6.

19. Teiwes and Sun, p. 141.

20. Ibid., p. 142; Hao and Duan, Zhongguo gongchandang liushi nian, p. 614. Mao afterwards denied having approved Lin's remarks in advance, but that appears to be untrue.

21. Teiwes and Sun, Tragedy, p. 144.

22. Ibid., p. 151.

23. Cited in Jin Qiu, p. 125.

24. The evidence here is fragmentary. Mao had been grumbling about the number of soldiers holding positions of power in the provinces. He had been alarmed by the ease with which Lin had placed the PLA on ‘red alert’ the previous autumn. He was aware that Chen's draft for the report to the Ninth Congress, emphasising economic development rather than the pursuit of the Cultural Revolution, reflected Lin's ideas. Shortly after Lushan, he took the first of a series of measures to place the army more firmly under Party control. None of that proves that the power which the military had acquired was a factor in Mao's attitude, but it is plausible.

25. Jin Qiu, pp. 126–7; Teiwes and Sun, Tragedy, Ibid., p. 148; Classified Chinese Documents, pp. 162–3.

26. Kuo, Classified Chinese Documents, pp. 162–3.

27. Wang Nianyi, pp. 406–9.

28. Schram, Unrehearsed, p. 294.

29. Teiwes and Sun, Tragedy, p. 153; Lin Qingshan, p. 716; Barnouin and Yu, p. 222: Yan and Gao, p. 313.

30. Hao and Duan, p. 618; Schram, Unrehearsed, p. 295.

31. Jin Qiu, pp. 132–5; Barnouin and Yu, p. 223; Hao and Duan, p. 618; Wang Nianyi, p. 415; Schram, Unrehearsed, p. 295.

32. Li Zhisui, p. 530.

33. Teiwes and Sun, Tragedy, p. 155.

34. MacFarquhar, Politics of China, p. 266.

35. Kuo, Classified Chinese Documents, p. 180.

36. Ibid., pp. 181–5.

37. Wang Nianyi, pp. 411 and 415.

38. Perry, Anyuan, p. 234. It is not clear exactly when they were removed, but they were no longer there in May.

39. Barnouin and Yu, p. 225.

40. Teiwes and Sun, Tragedy, p. 157.

41. Wang Nianyi, p. 415.

42. Barnouin and Yu, p. 226.

43. Schram, Unrehearsed, pp. 290–9; Jin Qiu, pp, 135–6, 194–5 and 198; MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, pp. 318–20. See also Barnouin and Yu, pp. 216–17. Whether Mao intended at this stage to treat Lin in the same way as Peng Dehuai and Liu Shaoqi, to whom he compared the Defence Minister in at least one speech to army commanders during his southern tour, is unclear. He may not have known himself. Zhou Enlai said later that Mao had been ready to allow Lin to remain in the Politburo if he confessed his mistakes. Certainly it would have been politically to the Chairman's advantage not to strike down his successor publicly. On the other hand, such campaigns inevitably developed a momentum of their own. The charge that Lin wished to become Head of State became a key theme in the subsequent campaign against him. The only known evidence for it is a confession by Wu Faxian, obtained under duress, parts of which have been shown to be false and which, even if it were true, was based on hearsay from Ye Qun. Given Lin's dislike of ceremonial, it appears highly improbable. The likeliest explanation is that Mao felt the charge of trying to usurp power would resonate more strongly than a claim that Lin had been trying to nudge him into honorific idleness, which would hardly justify such a dramatic fall from grace.

44. Yan and Gao, pp. 321–2; Barnouin and Yu, p. 235.

45. The most detailed account of this period is to be found in Jin Qiu, pp. 163–199 and 205. As Wu Faxian's daughter, she was able to interview most of the surviving participants, including Lin Liheng [Lin Doudou] and Lin Liguo's fiancée, Zhang Ning. See also Yan and Gao, pp. 322–33; Barnouin and Yu, pp. 228–9 and 235–42; MacFarquhar, pp. 271–5; Li Zhisui, pp. 534–41; Teiwes and Sun, Tragedy, p. 160; and oral sources. Additional details may be found in Wang Nianyi, Da dongluande niandai; and in Zhang Yunsheng, Maojiawan jishi.

46. Several witnesses, including Lin Liheng's fiancé, an army doctor, who treated him for his wounds, maintained that the bodyguard had shot himself, perhaps in an attempt to prove that he not been colluding with Lin.

47. Whether Mao actually used those words at the time, or whether this is a later embellishment, is open to question. However, it is a fact that no attempt was made to intercept Lin's plane, let alone to shoot it down.

48. Li Zhisui, p. 536.

49. Ibid., pp. 542–51.

50. Oral sources; see also Schram, Unrehearsed, p. 294.

51. History of the CCP, Chronology, p. 354; Kuo, Classified Chinese Documents, pp. 165–85; Wang Nianyi, p. 437.

52. Li Zhisui, pp. 551–2.

53. The following account is drawn from Kissinger, White House Years, pp. 163–94, 220–2, 684–787 and 1029–87; Li Zhisui, pp. 514–6; Garver, China's Decision, passim; Holdridge, John H., Crossing the Divide, Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, MD, 1997; Foot, Rosemary, The Practice of Power: US Relations with China since 1949, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1995. US officials give the credit to Nixon, rather than Mao, for initiating the U-turn in policy. In fact, both men had decided independently that a change was desirable, but it was Mao, by triggering the border clashes, who made the process possible.

54. Oral sources; and Kissinger, White House Years, pp. 702–3. Nixon, in his memoirs, claims that he was aware of Snow's interview ‘within a few days’, but it appears that on this occasion his memory played him false (The Memoirs of Richard Nixon, Grosset & Dunlap, New York, 1978, p. 547).

55. Barnouin and Yu, p. 226.

56. This was the formula used in the Shanghai communiqué, signed on February 28 1972.

57. Li Zhisui, pp. 557–63; Salisbury, New Emperors, pp. 306–10; Zhang Yufeng, ‘Mao Zedong yu Zhou Enlaide yixie wannian qushi’, in Guangming Ribao, December 26 1988 to January 6 1989.

58. Kissinger, White House Years, p. 164.

59. Teiwes and Sun, End of the Maoist Era, p. 87.

60. Kissinger, pp. 1062–3; Nixon, p. 563.

61. Schram, Unrehearsed, p. 299.

62. History of the CCP, Chronology, p. 354; Yan and Gao, p. 407.

63. Gao Wenxian, p. 235.

64. Mao ordered the medical team not to carry out surgery but to emphasize instead ‘care and better nutrition’. In part this may have reflected Mao's scepticism about the merits of modern medicine – he frequently refused treatment for himself – but the decision quickly became a weapon in the hands of Zhou's leftist opponents, who hoped his illness would remove him from the scene. In March 1973, Mao authorized a surgical examination, during which cancerous growths were removed from the Premier's bladder, but a year later the cancer flared up again and soon metastasised into other parts of his body (Li Zhisui, p. 572; Yan and Gao, p. 412; Barnouin and Yu, pp. 235–6 and 259–62).

65. Renmin ribao, April 24 1972.

66. History of the CCP, Chronology, p. 356.

67. Yan and Gao, pp. 410–11.

68. Ibid., p. 410; Barnouin and Yu, p. 253.

69. In private, Mao told the Sri Lankan Prime Minister on June 28 1972 that Lin Biao was the ‘chief backstage backer’ of ‘that “Left” faction’ which had tried to unseat Zhou Enlai and Chen Yi, but his remarks were not publicised (Teiwes and Sun, End of the Maoist Era, p. 25).

70. Renmin ribao, Oct. 14 1972; Yan and Gao, pp. 412–16; Barnouin and Yu, pp. 253–5; MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, p. 355.

71. Renmin ribao, Jan. 1 1973.

72. Ye Yonglie, Wang Hongwen xingshuailu, Changchun, 1989, passim.

73. Barnouin and Yu, p. 249.

74. Gardner, John, Chinese Politics and the Succession to Mao, Macmillan, 1982, p. 62; Short, Dragon and Bear, p. 196; Evans, Deng Xiaoping, pp. 189–90; History of the CCP, Chronology, p. 359.

75. MacFarquhar, p. 279, n. 114; Jia Sinan (ed.), Mao Zedong renji jiaowang shilu, Jiangsu, 1989, p. 319; Yan and Gao, p. 454.

76. Barnouin and Yu, pp. 249–51.

77. For an account of the Central Committee meeting, including the travails of ‘Mr Wetpants’, see Teiwes and Sun, End of the Maoist Era, p. 106.

78. Evans, p. 197.

79. Peng Cheng, Zhongguo zhengjiu beiwnglu, p. 47; Evans, p. 198; History of the CCP, Chronology, pp. 361–2; Hao and Duan, p. 632; Yan and Gao, p. 455. MacFarquhar and Schoenhals (pp. 363 &379) suggest that the reshuffle of the Military Region commanders was initially proposed by Ye Jianying.

80. History of the CCP, Chronology, p. 363; Evans, pp. 199–200.

81. Cited in Yang Jisheng, Tombstone, pp. 483–4. The poem, written on August 5 1973, has not been published in China, but it was transmitted orally at study meetings during the anti-Confucius campaign.

82. Mao's judgement that the Cultural Revolution was 70 per cent correct, laid down in December 1975, marked a retreat from his assessment during the February Adverse Current in 1967, when he held that the movement was 90 per cent achievements and only 10 per cent mistakes.

83. The following section draws on Teiwes and Sun, End of the Maoist Era, pp. 118–35; and Barnouin and Yu, pp. 263–4. As evidence of the foreign policy conflict, MacFarquhar and Schoenhals (pp. 365–6) highlight the differences between Zhou's speech to the 10th Congress and that of Wang Hongwen (which they assume reflected Mao's views) in attitudes to the United States.

84. Kissinger, Henry, Years of Upheaval, Little, Brown, Boston, 1982, pp. 687–8 and 692–3.

85. Mao had noted that the governments-in-exile of the three Baltic States maintained embassies in Washington, as did the Soviet Union of which those countries now formed part. Kissinger, who was seeking a breakthrough on diplomatic relations with China – the Watergate scandal was then at its height and Nixon was desperate for a foreign policy success – took that as a hint that Mao might accept a similar scheme for China. In fact, the reverse was true. Mao had told him that China was ready to wait 100 years if Washington refused to break relations with Taipei, but Kissinger failed to understand that the two statements were complementary.

86. Wang Nianyi, p. 471. Frederick Teiwes and Warren Sun argue that Jiang Qing would not have called for a ‘line struggle’ against Zhou had she not believed that Mao himself was contemplating one. Mao's nephew, Mao Yuanxin, also thought Mao was considering an ‘11th line struggle’ against Zhou. Mao himself, later in December, echoing Jiang's accusations before the Politburo, asked rhetorically: ‘Who is colluding with foreigners [and] wants to be the emperor?’ The difficulty, as always, is to know whether Mao was seriously considering purging Zhou or whether, like his cri de coeur in January 1972, urging Zhou to take over from him, it was a speculative gambit, a trial balloon, which he would never have followed through on. To judge by Mao's actions, he was never serious about Zhou's removal, but his grumbling and, at times, his obvious contempt for the Premier, led those around him to believe that he might be considering it (Teiwes and Sun, End of the Maoist Era, pp. 138–9 & 142).

87. Evans, p. 198.

88. Yan and Gao, pp. 422 and 430–2; Barnouin and Yu, pp. 265-6 and 258.

89. Yan and Gao, pp. 416–20 and 432–42; Barnouin and Yu, pp. 264–5 and 267–8.

90. Hao and Duan, pp. 636–7.

91. Li Zhisui, pp. 578–9.

92. Ibid., 569–70, 573–4 and 576–7.

93. Kissinger, White House Years, p. 1059.

94. Li Zhisui, pp. 580 and 604–5. Mao was operated on for cataracts in August 1975.

95. Ibid.; Pantsov and Levine, pp. 489–90; Zhang Yufeng, interview with the author, June 1997; oral sources.

96. Peng Cheng, pp. 42–3; History of the CCP, Chronology, p. 364.

97. Li Zhisui, pp. 580–6.

98. Teiwes and Sun, pp. 189–217; Yan and Gao, pp. 445–8 and 455–9; Guangming Ribao, Nov. 12 1976; Ye Yonglie, Wang Hongwen xingshuailu, pp. 413–15; Hao and Duan, p. 638.

99. Teiwes and Sun, p. 221.

100. History of the CCP, Chronology, p. 366.

101. There were two exceptions: a Politburo meeting on February 15 1975, called to discuss Mao's health, which Zhou chaired (Li Zhisui, pp. 597–9); and a meeting on May 3 1975, which was the last that Mao himself chaired (Barnouin and Yu, pp. 282–3 and 286). Li Zhisui (p. 600) disputes Mao's presence on the latter occasion, but his information is second hand and appears to be incorrect. Although Wang Hongwen remained formally in charge of the work of the Party Centre until July 2, in practice Deng was the leading figure throughout the first half of the year. Deng chaired the Politburo meetings of May 27 and June 3, and in mid-June Mao told him that from now on he must ‘take control of [all] work’, adding presciently: ‘The tallest tree in the forest will surely face the storm.’

102. Yan and Gao, p. 458.

103. Kissinger, Years of Upheaval, p. 68.

104. Yan and Gao quote Mao as saying of his wife in early 1975: ‘Sooner or later she will break with everyone … After I die, she will create disturbances’ (p. 460).

105. Teiwes and Sun, End of the Maoist Era, p. 231.

106. History of the CCP, Chronology, p. 365.

107. Ibid., p. 366. It is a measure of the extraordinary degree of mistrust that reigned at Mao's court that Zhou, having drafted the preparatory documents for the National People's Congress by hand, then had copies printed and ordered the originals burnt lest the wind turn and papers in his own handwriting be used as evidence against him (Teiwes and Sun, End of the Maoist Era, p. 220).

108. Li Xiannian, Hua and Ji Dengkui were Standing Vice-Premiers, responsible for the day-to-day running of the government. Ji, like Hua, was part of the middle generation of leaders who had come to Mao's attention in the 1950s, had been classed as moderates in the Cultural Revolution, were promoted to the Politburo afterwards and viewed by the Chairman as possible successors after the flight of Lin Biao (ibid., pp. 310–12).

109. The following account is drawn from ibid., pp. 253–263 & 283–304.

110. Barnouin and Yu, p. 281. In this connection it is noteworthy that in mid-1976, Mao asked to re-read the texts of the criticisms of Zhou for empiricism which he had made at Yan'an. By then Zhou had died, so at that stage his concern must have been with the policy (empiricism), and how it might affect his legacy, rather than with the person (the Premier) who had promoted it.

111. MacFarquhar, Politics of China, p. 291.

112. Ibid., p. 282; Gardner, p. 106.

113. Barnouin and Yu, pp. 282–3; Peng Cheng, pp. 50–1 and 56.

114. So did Zhou Enlai. On June 16 he sent Mao a report of humiliating self-abasement entitled, ‘My mistakes and crimes in the 40 years from the Zunyi conference until today’, accompanied by a pathetic note to Mao's secretary, Zhang Yufeng, urging her to show it to the Chairman ‘when he is feeling good and relaxed, has a full stomach and has had a good sleep. Be sure not to show it to him when he is tired. Please, please.’ At the May 3 Politburo meeting Mao had conspicuously ignored Zhou. Others present that day found him more than usually enigmatic and intimidating. (Teiwes and Sun, End of the Maoist Era, pp. 3 & 295–6).

115. Yan and Gao, p. 471. See also the wall poster illustrated in Witke, Comrade Chiang Ch'ing (opposite p. 335).

116. Teiwes and Sun, pp. 73–4, 232–4 & 306. Already in 1973, Kang had told both Deng Xiaoping and Zhou Enlai of his suspicions of the two radicals’ treason. At a meeting with Mao in Changsha, in December 1974, Zhou raised Kang's concerns about Zhang Chunqiao, though not about Jiang Qing. Mao apparently dismissed the allegations, saying that in the absence of proof the matter should be shelved. The issue continued to obsess Kang, and in May 1975, after he learned of Mao's reaction, he insisted on being taken on a stretcher to see Zhou Enlai, who was also then in hospital, to urge him yet again to convey the accusations against Jiang Qing to Mao. Zhou refused, prompting Kang's letter in August. Kang was evidently aware that the message had not got through, for in October 1975, only weeks before his death, when his illness allowed him a brief remission, he had a final meeting with Mao during which he did not mention the allegations, evidently recognising that, by then, Jiang's political situation had improved. In April 1976, Foreign Minister Qiao Guanhua reportedly told Mao that Kang had ‘slandered’ Jiang Qing and Zhang Chunqiao, but without giving details. The most plausible among the various charges Kang levelled against Jiang was that she had betrayed the Party while imprisoned in Shanghai in 1934. According to a senior Chinese Party historian, Zhang Chunqiao's wife was indeed a traitor and Zhang had covered up for her. See also Byron and Pack, Claws of the Dragon, pp. 405–7.

117. Barnouin and Yu, pp. 283–5.

118. Peng Cheng, p. 57.

119. Ibid.

120. The following account is drawn principally from Teiwes and Sun, pp. 363–415 and MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, pp. 402–12.

121. Barnouin and Yu, pp. 279–80; Evans, pp. 206–7.

122. An additional factor may have been that the same month, October 1975, Deng had approved a document on the reform of science and technology which turned out to include an adulterated version of one of Mao's quotations. The Chairman had been quoted as saying: ‘Science and technology is a force of production’. Mao had actually said: ‘Without doing science and technology, the forces of production cannot be improved’. The article was later denounced as one of ‘three poisonous weeds’ which Deng had allegedly promoted (Teiwes and Sun, End of the Maoist Era, pp. 321–39).

123. Jia Sinan, pp. 376–8; Hao and Duan, pp. 648–9; MacFarquhar, p. 296.

124. Barnouin and Yu, p. 280.

125. Li Zhisui, p. 605.

126. Yan and Gao, p. 480.

127. Ibid., p. 479. See also Wang Nianyi, p. 560.

128. Hao and Duan, p. 560.

129. Evans, p. 210.

130. It was launched in the Foreign Ministry and at the ‘Two Schools’ (Qinghua and Beijing Universities) in the second half of November.

131. Barnouin and Yu, p. 286.

132. Yan and Gao, pp. 482–5; Li Zhisui, pp. 609–10.

133. Teiwes and Sun, End of the Maoist Era, p. 439.

134. Yan and Gao, pp. 485–6.

135. On March 2, Jiang Qing denounced Deng by name at a meeting of provincial and military region leaders, describing him as a ‘counter-revolutionary commander’ and ‘Han traitor’, terms which Mao criticised as excessive. From the beginning of that month, Deng was named in Party documents circulated to county and regimental level. In the public media, the emphasis switched from attacking the ‘rightist wind’ to the ‘unrepentant capitalist roader’, but outside the Party, he was still not identified. As during the movement to criticise Lin Biao and Confucius in 1974, factional fighting broke out in a number of provinces – most notably Henan, Sichuan, Yunnan and Zhejiang. By the spring of 1976 this had caused serious economic disruption.

136. On January 21 1976, the day Mao named Hua as Zhou Enlai's successor, he commented that Deng might still have ‘useful work to perform’.

137. Nixon, Richard, In the Arena: A Memoir of Victory, Defeat and Renewal, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1990, p. 362.

138. Zhang Yufeng, ‘Mao Zedong yu Zhou Enlaide yixie wannian qushi’, in Guangming Ribao.

139. Zhang Yufeng, ‘Mao Zedong Zhou Enlai wannian ersanshi’, Yanhuang zisun, No 1, 1989.

140. Evans, pp. 207–8.

141. The following is drawn from Garside, Roger, Coming Alive: China after Mao, New York, 1981, pp. 115–36; Yan and Gao, pp. 489–503; MacFarquhar, Politics of China, pp. 301–5; and oral sources.

142. At the time, it was assumed that the Wenhui bao article, which attacked that ‘capitalist roader within the Party [who] wanted to help the unrepentant capitalist roader regain power’ had been ordered by Zhang Chunqiao. Thirty years later, in 2005, a former editor of the paper claimed that, rather than being politically inspired, the problem was of clumsy drafting: the ‘capitalist roader within the Party’, he maintained, was Deng, not Zhou, and the ‘unrepentant’ capitalist roader, or roaders, referred to Deng's supporters. Teiwes and Sun argue that this is plausible since by this time attacks on Zhou could serve no useful purpose (End of the Maoist Era, pp. 468–71). However, that sits ill with Mao's comment that mourning for Zhou was a cover for ‘restoration’ – ie. for negating the Cultural Revolution – and for his re-reading, in the last three months of his life, when he was so ill that he could not attend to any other business, the texts of his criticisms of Zhou at Yan'an. Zhou, even dead, was no small matter for Mao. In any case, whether a blunder in drafting or a deliberate attack, the article was a crucial trigger for the unrest that followed.

143. At the time it was widely believed that a number of protesters were killed. In fact, it appears that there were no deaths. 38 arrests were made that night. Over the whole period of the protests, 388 people were detained, most of whom were released soon after Mao's death.

144. Yan and Gao, p. 502.

145. MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, p. 430. It was widely, but incorrectly, reported – including by me in the first edition of this book – that Deng was sheltered by Xu Shiyou in Guangdong. That was the generally accepted version in Beijing when I arrived there a year later. In fact Xu would not have had the power to protect Deng: only Mao could do that.

146. MacFarquhar, Politics in China, p. 305. Mao had used the same phrase about both Deng and Zhou Enlai. There has been much speculation since that it was spurious or exaggerated (see, for instance, MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, pp. 434 & 603 n. 14). However, none of Hua's senior colleagues disputed it, and it is logical that Mao should have wished to make clear, once and for all, that Hua was his anointed successor, as indeed was the case.

147. Li Zhisui, pp. 614–23: Yan and Gao, pp. 510–15.

148. Wang Nianyi, p. 601.

149. Yan and Gao, pp. 487 and 516.

150. MacFarquhar, Politics in China, p. 300.

151. Ibid., pp. 306–7; Li Zhisui, p. 621; Evans, pp. 214–15; Wang Nianyi, p. 591.

152. Li Zhisui, pp. 624–5; Yan and Gao, pp. 516–19.

153. Xiu Ru, 1976 nian dashi neimu, Beijing, 1989, pp. 403–4.

EPILOGUE

1. Liu Wusheng (ed.), Zhonggong dangshi fengyunlu, Renmin chubanshe, Beijing, pp. 439–40.

2. MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, pp. 443–9.

3. Schram, Unrehearsed, p. 190.

4. Kuo, Classified Chinese Documents, p. 57.

5. Oral sources; Chen made his comment at a CC work conference in November 1978. See also Ming bao, Hong Kong, Jan. 15 1979.

6. Barmé, Geremie R., Shades of Mao, M. E. Sharpe, Armonk, 1996, p. 34.

7. Chavannes, Edouard, Les Mémoires Historiques de Se-ma Ts'ien, Adrien-Maisonneuve, Paris, 1967, vol. 2, pp. 144–5.

8. Miscellany of Mao Tse-tung Thought, 1, p. 98.

9. If the death-toll from the Great Leap Forward is taken as 38 million (the figure given privately by Yang Jisheng), and it is estimated that a further three million died in the land reform and the political movements of the early 1950s, and between 2.5 and three million in the Cultural Revolution – all of which are minimum figures – the number of people who died in China as a direct result of Mao's policies was of the order of 46 million. By comparison, the total death-toll in the Second World War is estimated at 55 million; in the Taiping Rebellion, 20 million; and in the First World War, eight million. None of those events, however, can be ascribed to the will of a single man.

10. Oral sources. I have been unable to track down the reference, but Mao expressed the same thought less colourfully at a CC meeting on Dec. 20 1964 (Miscellany, 2, p. 426).

AFTERWORD

1. Washington Post, Dec. 12 2014.

2. New York Times, Oct. 2 2015.

3. ChinaFile, May 4 2016.

4. Martin Bernal of Cornell University frankly acknowledged in the New York Review of Books (February 25 1971): ‘When writing on China in the 1940s we are really thinking about Vietnam today. I further admit that … it affects my judgment of events there – and my interpretation of Chinese history.’

5. Lest it be thought that this characterization is unjust, given Halliday's subsequent stance, it may be helpful to recall his articles for the New Left Review, founded in 1960 as a vehicle for the Marxist Left in Britain. In 1974, he began an account of Hong Kong like this: ‘There are 300,000 hard drug addicts; 80,000 triad gang members; several hundred thousand squatters; sickness and squalour all round.’ The colony, he continued, was a ‘fantastic concentration of wretchedness and cunning’, administered by ‘Whitehall scum’ with a police force that was ‘a criminal octopus… working on behalf of the ruling class’. The British government, he said, should ‘terminate its aggression against China’. ‘Revolutionaries in Britain’, despite their ‘lamentable record’ in matters pertaining to the colony, had a special responsibility to fight against ‘the continuing and horrendous exploitation of four million Chinese’ (‘Hong Kong: Britain's Chinese Colony’ in New Left Review, Sept–Dec 1974, pp. 91–112). Stripped of inflammatory language, some of Halliday's criticisms might have been true, but overall it was extraordinarily warped, the same criticism that would afterwards be made of Mao: The Unknown Story, albeit in that case from an opposite standpoint. Seven years later, writing about the Korean War, Halliday again advanced a far Left thesis: ‘The starting point has to be this,’ he wrote, ‘South Korea was not invaded by North Korea on June 25 1950; it was invaded by US imperialism in September 1945 [italicised in the original].’ The United States, with Soviet acquiescence, he went on, ‘forcibly overthrew a demonstrably popular national organization… The DPRK [North Korea] has a strong case to rule the [whole] country.’ (‘The North Korean Enigma’, ibid., May–June 1981, pp. 18–52).

6. Perry, Anyuan, p. 3.

7. Chang and Halliday, pp. 504 & 533.

8. Benton, New Fourth Army, pp. 645–6, 683–4 & 696, referring to the Chinese Party's scapegoating of Xiang Ying after the New Fourth Army Incident in 1941, which he described as ‘historical character assassination … a case study in distortion’. The same words might be applied to Jung Chang's treatment of Mao.

9. Private communication from Professor Timothy Cheek, University of British Columbia.

10. The Chinese phrase which Schram translated as ‘the irresistible sexual desire for one's lover’ reads 如好色者之性欲发动而寻其情人 (ru haosezhe zhi xingyu fadong er xun qi qingren). The key terms are haosezhe, which means literally ‘a man who loves women’, a sensualist or, in a pejorative sense, a lustful person; xingyu, ‘sexual desire’; and fadong er xun, ‘to be aroused and to seek out’. The closest one could get to Jung Chang’s translation while remaining faithful to the original would be: ‘as the sexual desire of a lustful person is aroused and seeks out a lover’. The Chinese for sex maniac, xingkuang, literally ‘sex mad’, is not there. Nor can fadong er xun be read as meaning ‘prowl’.

11. Chang and Halliday, p. 395, where the source is given as ‘a family member’. On the previous page, she writes that when Mao learned that Anying wished to marry Songlin, he ‘flew into a ferocious rage and bellowed at him so terrifyingly that Anying fainted’, information which she attributes to ‘a member of the household’. From this she deduced Mao's ‘sexual jealousy (the beautiful and elegant Si-qi had been around Mao for much of her teens)’. In fact, Songlin had been adopted into Mao's household at Yan'an when she was six years old. Her father had been executed by the nationalists and her mother was an underground Party worker in Shanghai: as a child, Songlin was terrified that she would never see her again. Mao was moved by her plight, she said, after seeing a play in Yan'an where she acted the part of a foundling, which reminded him of the time when Anying and his brother, Anqing, lived as street children in Shanghai after the execution of Yang Kaihui. Both Mao and her mother welcomed the match, she said: ‘Chairman Mao was very happy. He and my mother talked it over for hours … My mother thought that if I married Anying he would be a trustworthy husband. Chairman Mao thought we were in love and that I would not turn out to be a bad person’ (Liu Songlin, interview with the author, January 2005). As for sexual jealousy, whatever the teenage Songlin's qualities, she was not, as photographs of the time make clear, ‘beautiful and elegant’.

12. This may help to explain why Stuart Schram, of the Fairbank Centre at Harvard, who was famed for his volcanic outbursts against colleagues with whom he disagreed, treated the book with kid gloves, attributing what he called its ‘rather one-sided views’ to the tribulations of Jung Chang's family in China. Mao: The Unknown Story, Schram wrote, was ‘a valuable contribution to our understanding of the man and his place in history. It is desirable, however, in order to form a more complete and balanced picture, to read one or both of the other relatively recent 600 page books, that by Philip Short and that by Mao's doctor, Li Zhisui.’

13. ‘I'm so Ronree’, in Benton and Lin, p. 82.

14. ‘Science, now under scrutiny itself’, New York Times, June 15 2015.

15. Among those who have succeeded best at this delicate exercise, Geremie Barmé, Rana Mitter and Jeffrey Wasserstrom – and from an earlier generation, Jonathan Spence – come to mind in the field of China studies. Ross Terrill is a case apart: his biographies of Mao and Jiang Qing use some of the techniques of the historical novel (and need to be read accordingly), but like the best of that genre, convey a sense of period that more academic works often fail to achieve. The reader simply needs to remind himself that at times, as Terrill acknowledges, his account is ‘an artistic piecing together of material’ (The White Boned Demon, William Morrow, 1984, p. 401 n. 21) rather than a conventional scholarly text. Others, less gifted, not only Western but Chinese, have tried to use the same technique only to end up producing ‘page-turners’ of distressing shallowness.

16. ‘The New Dictators Rule by Velvet Fist’, New York Times, May 24 2015.

17. Eastman, Lloyd, Seeds of Destruction: Nationalist China in War and Revolution, Stanford University Press, 1984, p. 3.

18. Rawski, Thomas G., Economic Growth in Pre-War China, Oxford University Press, 1989, and Strauss, Julia C., Strong Institutions in Weak Polities: State Building in Republican China, 1927–1940, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1998. Franz Michael made some of the same points in 1962, writing of the first decade of Chiang's rule as ‘a time of great progress in many fields – in economic development, in social and educational transformation, in political unification and in the elevation of China's standing in international relations’ (CQ 9, 1962, pp. 124–48). By the 1970s that view had been pushed aside in favour of Barbara Tuchman's portrayal of Chiang's regime as incompetent, dictatorial and corrupt.

19. See also the collection of essays published a year earlier: Defining Modernity: Kuomintang Rhetorics of a New China, 1920–1970, edited by Terry Bodenhor, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 2002.

20. Fenby, pp. 501–4.

21. Taylor, pp. 2–3 & 591–2.

22. Foreign Policy, March 24 2014.

23. Cited in Richard Bernstein, ‘Assassinating Chiang Kai-shek’, in Foreign Policy, Sept. 3 2015.

24. See Denton, Kirk A., Exhibiting the Past: Historical Memory and the Politics of Museums in Postsocialist China, University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 2014, and Rana Mitter, ‘1911: The Unanchored Chinese Revolution’, in CQ 208, 2011, esp. pp. 1019–20.

25. Tanner, The Battle for Manchuria and the Fate of China: Siping, 1946, pp. 214–21.

26. Dikötter, Frank, The Age of Openness: China before Mao, Hong Kong University Press, Hong Kong, 2008, p. 3.

27. Estimates of the deathtoll caused directly by warfare range from 8 to 10 million (Meng Guoxiang, in KangRi zhanzheng yanjiu, No. 4, 2006), to 14 million, including 2 million combat deaths (Odd Arne Westad, Restless Empire: China and the World since 1750, 2012, p. 249), to 18 million, based on demographic trends before and after the war (Diana Lary, The Chinese People at War: Human Suffering and Social Transformation, 1937–1945, Cambridge University Press, 2010, p. 173). Peattie, Drea and van de Ven speculate that the figure may have been more than 20 million (Battle for China, p. 46). Rana Mitter (China's War with Japan, 1937–1945, Allen Lane, 2013, p. 387) posits 14 to 20 million dead and 80 to 100 million refugees.

28. Since the publication of Mao's Great Famine, it has become clear that part, if not most, of the materials from the Chinese archives on which Dikötter relies, were obtained on his behalf by Chinese colleagues, a point rather glossed over in the presentation of his research. The distinction is not anodyne. To the extent that Dikötter was working not with original documents, which he viewed in the archives himself, but with copies made for him by others, it could help to explain some of the errors in the texts he cites.

29. Dikötter, The Tragedy of Liberation, Bloomsbury, 2013, p. 74.

30. Ibid., p. 87 and Yang Kuisong, CQ 193, 2008, p. 117. The citation is from a letter of which a copy is held in the Sichuan provincial archives, addressed by Mao to Deng Xiaoping and other leaders on April 20 1951. The following month Mao ordered that ‘mass executions should be halted immediately’. According to Li Changyu, a former ‘rightist’ from Shandong, quotas were used because Mao ‘feared that once the killing started, it would be difficult to prevent unrestrained bloodshed [and that this] would give rise to popular indignation’ (China Rights Forum, 2005, No 4, pp. 41–4; see also the CC directives of May 8 and May 16, cited in Yang, pp. 117–19). That might sound self-serving, but Li, himself a victim of the quota system, was no friend of the Chairman, whom he condemned as ‘evil and ruthless’. If it was indeed Mao's aim to limit the number of deaths, it failed abysmally, for local officials systematically over-fulfilled the quotas to try to prove themselves to their superiors. Yang Kuisong argues that blame for excessive killing should be apportioned equally between Mao, who presided over the command system which made it possible, and the zeal of grassroots cadres. All sources agree that the campaign ended armed opposition to the regime but at the cost of hundreds of thousands of innocent lives.

31. In the first edition of this book there were a number of ‘howlers’, which Ross Terrill and Alain Roux, among others, were good enough to point out. I would like to hope that they have been corrected in this new edition but it is all too probable that a few undetected bloopers have managed to get through beneath the radar. That is true of almost every non-fiction book that any of us reads. Jay Taylor's The Generalissimo, whose account of the Chinese nationalists draws on meticulous research in the Russian and Guomindang archives, is bedevilled by factual errors when he strays from his main subject and discusses the communists’ role. In most cases such mistakes are due to that most common of human failings, carelessness, and have little or no effect on the underlying argument. In Dikötter's case, they systematically reinforce it.

32. He writes, for instance, that Mao ‘abandon[ed] his third wife for younger company’, when, as we have seen, it was the other way round. He describes Mao living in Yan'an ‘in a large mansion with heating specially installed for his comfort’, whereas in fact he shared a courtyard with other leaders. He claims that Luo Ruiqing, who would become Mao's Security Minister, won the Chairman's trust by the ‘crudeness, savagery and maliciousness’ with which he purged the Fourth Front Army, led by Mao's one-time rival, Zhang Guotao. The less than objective source turns out to be Zhang himself in an interview with Time magazine. Nor was Luo in the 1950s a sinister-looking individual who never smiled because a wartime injury had left ‘his mouth frozen in a permanent rictus’. His facial paralysis was the result of his suicide attempt during the Cultural Revolution. In Mao's Great Famine, Dikötter describes Mao's bedroom at his home in Zhongnanhai as being ‘the size of a ballroom’. The bedroom, which also served as a study and salon, was the size of a reception room in a Chinese ministry at that time or a large sitting room in a country house in Europe. Big as a ballroom it was not. The book ends with a description of a tense meeting in July 1962, after Mao ‘had been urgently called back to Beijing by Liu [Shaoqi]’. Not only was it the other way round – Mao had summoned Liu – but the Chairman had returned to Beijing on the warpath without even informing his colleagues. The error is consistent with Dikötter's mistaken claim that Mao had lost power in 1962, but it shows a curious misunderstanding of the relationship between the Chairman and those Dikötter calls his ‘underlings’. No one summoned Mao to go anywhere: the others went to see him, wherever in China he might happen to be, and then only if he agreed to receive them.

33. Mao's Great Famine, p. 41.

34. Ibid., pp. 56–8.

35. Ibid., p. 299.

36. Ibid., pp. 116–17. Yang Jisheng, in Tombstone (p. 61), gives a slightly different version.

37. Mao's Great Famine, p. xii.

38. So do most other serious studies of the period. Professor Robert Ash of the China Institute at SOAS in London, who has studied the Great Leap from an economic rather than a political standpoint, has noted that whereas the famine in the Soviet Union in the early 1930s ‘reflected a knowing wilfulness on the part of Stalin, famine conditions in China … had their origin in misguided extraction policies based on serious misinformation about the true level of the grain harvest in 1958’ (‘Squeezing the Peasants: Grain Extraction, Food Consumption and Rural Living Standards in Mao's China’, CQ 188, 2006, pp. 959–98).

39. Mao's Great Famine, p. xvi and 236–8.

40. Ibid., p. 292.

41. White, Theodore H. and Jacoby, Annalee, Thunder Out Of China, William Sloane, New York, 1946, pp. 166–78.

42. ‘Memory, Loss’, New York Times, November 30 2012.

43. Mao's Great Famine, pp. xi & 85.

44. Ibid., p. 71.

45. Dikötter wrote: ‘Mao ordered that a third of all grain be procured, far above previous rates.’ What Mao actually said, according to the text Dikötter cites, which has been published by Zhou Xun (The Great Famine, pp. 23–5), was: ‘As long as the amount of grain being procured does not go above a third [of grain produced], peasants will not rebel (emphasis added).’ Thomas Bernstein points out that he did not make clear whether he was referring to gross or net procurements (the latter term denoting the grain initially seized less that subsequently returned to the communes from state granaries). The context suggests the former, in which case – at a time when some rural cadres were seizing more than half the grain crop – Mao's remarks were a call for moderation, or, as he put it himself, to be ‘relentless … but not vicious’, rather than an exhortation to take more (China Perspectives, 2013, No 2, pp. 80–2). It was certainly not ‘far above previous rates’: 25 per cent had previously been the official target but in practice it had frequently been exceeded. Robert Ash has argued that throughout Mao's time in power, Chinese peasants were living at a marginal subsistence level and that Mao, like Stalin, systematically demanded a higher proportion of extraction from agricultural production to finance industrial development than the rural population could reasonably bear. Only after Mao's death, he writes, did this pattern change. The Great Leap, in this sense, carried to an extreme a problem of over-extraction that existed both before and afterwards (‘Squeezing the Peasants’, supra).

46. Ibid., p. 88.

47. Dikötter cites as his source the ‘Minutes of Mao's talk, Gansu [archives], 25 March 1959’ (p. 374, n. 16). In fact the remark was made, not during Mao's speech on the 25th, but during the discussion which followed on March 26 and 28.

48. Quoted in ‘Hard facts and Half-truths: The new archival history of China's Great Famine’, by the Australian scholar, Anthony Garnaut (China Information, Vol. 27 No. 2, pp. 223–46, esp pp. 235–8 & nn. 61–2).

49. Dikötter himself cites another statement conveying a similar thought in March 1958, in which Mao mused on the extravagant plans of two radical provincial leaders for huge irrigation projects. If they were implemented, Mao said, they would cause tens of thousands of deaths; on the other hand, with a more modest objective ‘maybe nobody would die’ (Famine, p. 33).

50. According to Thomas Bernstein (China Perspectives, 2013, No 2, pp. 74–6), despite the insistence on maintaining secrecy, Mao's comment about ‘letting half of the people starve’ soon appeared in a wallposter in Shandong. A county Party secretary in Sichuan was quoted as saying: ‘A few dead is nothing …. Our socialist system determined that death is inevitable. In the Soviet Union, in order to build the socialist system, about 30% of the people died.’ Ralph Thaxton, in a study of the Great Leap in a small village in northern Henan, has argued that the brutality of the local leadership there, and its indifference to the suffering of the population, was directly linked to the extreme violence they had endured in the war against the Japanese and the subsequent civil war (Catastrophe and Contention in Rural China: Mao's Great Leap Forward, Cambridge University Press, 2008).

51. Mao's Great Famine, p. 347. His criticisms are all the harder to understand because, as Garnaut notes in his critical review of the two books (idem.), Dikötter has made substantial, unacknowledged (and not always accurate) use of Yang's research, published two-and-a-half years earlier. He goes out of his way to praise the work of other, inferior, writers and gives the impression that he regards Yang as his one serious rival whom he wishes to discredit at all costs.

52. Yang, Tombstone, p. 12.

53. Ibid., p. 125 and 495–6.

54. Ibid., pp. 398–9.

55. Ibid., p. 133.

56. There are exceptions to the rule. Felix Wemheuer, in a remarkable essay in The China Quarterly (No. 201, 2010, pp. 176–194, ‘Dealing with Responsibility for the Great Leap Famine in the People's Republic of China’). discusses memories of the famine and attributions of blame by elderly peasants and retired local cadres whom he interviewed in Henan. The peasants blamed the Party; the local cadres blamed each other or the provincial leaders, and were often bitter that the higher-ups in the provincial committees were never held to account.

57. The 40th anniversary of the launching of the Cultural Revolution in 2006 was passed over in silence in China. A small group of foreign and Chinese scholars, including some from the Academy of Social Sciences and its offshoots, met for an unofficial three-day symposium in March, the minutes of which were later published abroad (Hao Jian [ed.], Wenge sishi nian ji, 2006, Beijing. Wenhua dageming yantaohui quanjilu, Fellows Press of America, Fort Worth, 2006). But no official conference was held and there was no reference to the anniversary in the mainstream Chinese press. For a different view of Chinese attitudes to the Cultural Revolution, see Suzanne Weigelin-Schwiedrzik, ‘In Search of a Master Narrative for 20th-Century Chinese History’, CQ 188, 2006, pp. 1070–91.

58. Gao Wenqian, Zhou Enlai, p. 165.

59. New York Review of Books, May 28 2009.

60. Tsoi Wing-mui, who speculates in her book Zhou Enlaide mimi qinggan shijie [The Secret Emotional World of Zhou Enlai] (New Century Press, Hong Kong, 2015) that Zhou may have been a closet homosexual and was married ‘in name only’ was evidently unaware that their only child died at birth in 1927.

61. More informative than Gao's book, but unfortunately not available in English and therefore less well-known, is Xin faxian de Zhou Enlai, a much longer, highly critical account by two gifted non-professional Chinese historians, using the pseudonyms Sima Qingyang and Ouyang Longmen (Mirror Books, Hong Kong, 2009).

62. Pantsov and Levine, p. 1.

63. For example, Pantsov writes that Mao and his fellow students in Changsha in 1921 ‘were unable to comprehend that all of Bolshevism [is] founded on a lie’. As a post-communist perspective that is certainly a defensible proposition – and only too understandable coming from a Russian writer – but somewhat anachronistic when applied to China in the early 1920s. Similarly Pantsov's use of the Russian term kulak – which, as he acknowledges, has no direct equivalent in the Chinese language or in Chinese society – to designate small landlords, rich (and, on occasion, middle) peasants can be confusing: whatever else Mao may have called the AB-tuan in the early 1930s, he did not refer to them as ‘kulak scum’! That said, and despite his evident detestation of totalitarian regimes, he is at pains to distinguish Mao from Stalin. Mao, he concludes, for all the crimes he committed, was ‘a national hero who … compel[led] the entire world to respect the Chinese people … That is why he reposes in an imperial mausoleum … He will be there for a long time, perhaps forever.’

64. A partial exception is Liu Liyan's Red Genesis: The Hunan First Normal School and the Creation of Chinese Communism, 1903–1921, State University of New York Press, 2012. Ms Liu's book adds much new information about Mao's teachers, notably Yang Kaihui's father, Yang Changji, about his close friends, Cai Hesen and Xiao Yu, and about the intellectual climate of the time, but it does not break significant new ground about the role of Mao himself.

65. Cited by Roderick MacFarquhar.

66. Davin, Delia, ‘Dark Tales of Mao the Merciless’, in Benton and Lin, Was Mao Really a Monster?, p. 20.

67. Pankaj Mishra, ‘Staying Power: Mao and the Maoists’, New Yorker, Dec 20 2010.

68. Mitter, Rana, China's War with Japan, 1937–1945, Allen Lane, 2013, pp. 13 & 229.

69. Cited in Tanner, p. 86; Guo Tingyi and Jia Tinghi, eds., Bai Chongxi xiansheng fangwen jilu, Zhongyang yangjiuyuan jindaishi yanjiusuo, Taipei, 1984, Vol 2, p. 874.

70. Pankaj Mishra, idem.

71. Jay Taylor has speculated that, were Chiang alive today, he would see the current Chinese leaders as ‘modern neo-Confucianists’ like himself, with the same goals for China that he would have adopted had he been in a position to do so (The Generalissimo, p. 592). The implication is that Mao's successors have succeeded in implementing Chiang's vision where the Generalissimo himself failed. If one accepts Taylor's premise – which I find debatable – it can be interpreted either way: as showing that Chiang's ideas have triumphed (‘lost the battle but won the war’); or as vindicating the system Mao founded which has put those ideas into effect (‘game, set and match’).

72. Pantsov and Levine, p. 8.