41 The People's Republic of China 1949-76

Introduction: China Under Mao 1949-76 ] 5

Summary diagram: China before 1949

Traditional China China 1911-49

. 1
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Fall of the Qing dynasty

Profile: Mao Zedong (up to 1949)

Born in Hunan province Attended primary school Joined anti-Qing army in Hunan Trained as a teacher Joined the Hunan independence movement Worked as a librarian at Beijing University Helped to organise strikes in Hunan 1921 Became a founder member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) 1923 Joined Guomindang (GMD) 1924-7 Involved in planning CCP-GMD alliance against the warlords 1927-34 Created the Jiangxi Soviet 1930 Suppressed a mutiny in the Red Army at Futian 1934-5 Led the Long March to Yanan 1935-45 Created the Yanan Soviet 1942 Crushed opposition within the CCP 1945-9 Led the CCP to victory over Chiang Kaishek and the Nationalists 1949 Declared the creation of the People's Republic of China 1893 1901-6 1912 1912-18 1918 1919

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Confucianism

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Conformity - Deference - Obedience

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Interna! turmoil - The warlords

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Hierarchy Imperial authority

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GMD v CCP

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Mao in Jiangxi and Yanan

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China: an enclosed society Disruptive impact of the West on China

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Japanese occupation

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Victory of the CCP in the civil war 194S-9

2 [ Mao's Career Before 1 949

'A clean sheet of paper has no blotches, and so the newest and most beautiful pictures can be painted on it.' This was Mao Zedong's poetic description of the opportunity that lay before the new China in 1949. But behind the fine words was a fierce resolution. The picture that Mao intended to paint would allow no space for brushwork other than his own. He intended to create China in his own image. He would continue to use the methods that had brought him to power in 1949. Mao had been shaped by the brutal world in which he grew up. The lessons that Mao learned as a young man in China were violent ones. All his experiences as a young revolutionary convinced him that unless he was prepared to use unyielding methods he could achieve litde. He despised his countrymen who were not willing to use extremism in pursuing their goals for China. In the end, as he saw it, it was force which made things happen. Mao believed in the dialectic as the explanation of life. That was why he had become a Marxist and a founder member of the CCP in 1921. He held that all change, all progress, resulted from suppression of the weaker by the stronger. It was a belief that characterised his behaviour in all the major episodes of his career.

Key question
What were the main influences that shaped Mao as a revolutionary?

Dialectic 0 The Marxist notion (!) that historical development occurs 3 to through a progressive series of conflicts between social classes. Marxist A believer in the theories of the German revolutionary Karl Marx (1818-83), who used the notion of the dialectic to explain history as a continuous conflict between the 'haves' and the 'have-nots', the exploiters and the exploited.

teenager, Mao played a small role as a volunteer soldier in Changsha in the Chinese revolution of 1911, which saw the collapse and abdication of the Qing. He then moved to Beijing where he furthered his education and in 1919 took up a post as librarian in Beijing University. It was there that he was introduced to Marxist ideas and developed the conviction that if China was to be truly regenerated it would have to undergo a profound social and political revolution.

Mao as a Chinese revolutionary 1911-27

Mao's belief was strengthened by his awareness that the 1911 revolution had brought China little benefit. Although a republican government had replaced the imperial system, it exercised only nominal power. Throughout China local warlords and factions struggled to assert authority. Mao recorded the savagery that became commonplace:
During my student days in Hunan, the city was overrun by the forces of rival war lords - not once but half a dozen times. Twice the school was occupied by troops ahd all the school funds confiscated. The brutal punishments'inflicted on the peasants included such things as gouging out eyes, ripping out tongues, disembowelling and decapitation, slashing with knives and grinding with sand, burning with kerosene and branding with red-hot irons.

Mao's early years

Mao was born into a relatively well-to-do landed family in Hunan province. He was what might be termed a 'natural rebel'. Doted on by his mother, he fell out with his father and refused to show him the respect traditionally expected of a Chinese son. As a

The barbarity Mao witnessed greariy affected him, but it was not the cruelty that moved him so much as his realisation that it was the strongest and most ruthless who always won. He concluded

6 | The People's Republic of China 1949-76

Introduction: China Under Mao 1949-76 \ 7

that the only way to gain power was through violence. This helps to explain why throughout his career he was so ready to use brutal means in crushing political opponents. One of his most revealing sayings was, 'all power grows out of the barrel of a gun'. Another was, 'a revolution is not a tea-party; it is an act of violence, by which one class overthrows another'. He was impressed by the extreme methods used by the Bolsheviks in the Russian revolution that began in 1917.

strategy meeting took place at Zunyi. Mao outmanoeuvred his opponents in the CCP and imposed on the party his idea that to be successful the revolution in China must be based on the peasants in the countryside, not on the workers in the towns.

The Yanan years 1935-45

Bolsheviks Communist revolutionaries who seized power in Russia in 1917.
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Mao at Jiangxi 1927-34

In 1924 China's two major revolutionary parties, the Nationalists and the Communists, had formed a united front against the Soviet warlords, but the GMD-CCP unity was more apparent than real. A system of The GMD's main aim under Chiang was to destroy the government Communists. In 1927 it launched a systematic extermination organised on campaign against them. Mao survived by taking his CCP forces to Communist the mountains of jiangxi province, where he organised guerrilla principles. resistance against the Nationalists. Comintern During the next 7 years Mao helped to establish the Jiangxi Soviet, dedicated to achieving a peasant revolution. While there, he Communist International, the showed himself unwilling to accept dictation from the Comintern. body set up in He frequendy rejected the orders from Moscow that instructed the Moscow in 1919 to CCP to base its activities in the towns rather than the countryside. organise world-wide It was also during the Jiangxi period (1927-34) that Mao revolution. revealed the calculated ferocity that marked his whole career. In the notorious 'Futian incident' in 1930 he had no qualms in Red Army torturing and executing some 4000 Red Army troops whom he The title given to regarded as rebels. the Communist [TJhey were brought out to be tortured, women as well as men ... troops that Mao led, later to be They were tortured to make them speak and they were tortured on known as the Mao's orders. There is a document in the party archives which Mao People's Liberation approved which says, 'do not kill the important leaders too quickly, Army (PLA). but squeeze out of them the maximum information; then from the
dues they give you can go on to unearth others'.
3

Rectification of conduct campaigns A series of ferocious purges by which Mao removed any member of the CCP he suspected of opposing him. Stalin's USSR Between 1929 and 1953, the Soviet Union (USSR) was under the rule of Joseph Stalin.

During the Yanan period Mao, by a combination of political and military skill and brutal suppression, succeeded in imposing his personal authority on the CCP. At the same time he fought off attempts by the Comintern to dominate the party. In the early 1940s he launched a series of'rectification of conduct' campaigns to consolidate his hold. It was also while he was at Yanan that Mao wrote his major political works setting out his revolutionary ideas.

Victory over the GMD 1945-9

With the surrender of Japan at the end of the Second World War in 1945, Mao turned on the GMD in a renewal of the civil war that had lasted intermittently since the late 1920s. A fierce 4-year struggle for supremacy ended with the complete victory of the Communists. Chiang and the GMD were driven from the Chinese mainland to their one remaining stronghold, the offshore island of Taiwan. In October 1949 Mao triumphantly declared that a new Communist society had come into being - the People's Republic of China (PRC).

Mao's policy in the countryside 1945-9

One of the most remarkable features of the civil war period was the brutal treatment of the peasants by Mao's Communists in the areas they controlled. Between 1945 and 1949, the CCP, continuing the policies that they had followed during the Jiangxi and Yanan periods, committed fearful atrocities against the peasants in order to force them to join the struggle against Chiang Kaishek's Nationalists. It is interesting that Mao sent his son, Anying, to take part in the suppression of the peasantry. Mao thought his son needed toughening up. What Anying then experienced came close to unhinging him mentally. One incident illustrates the type of horror he witnessed. In one set of villages which the Red Army had seized, the locals were rounded up and made to attend an anti-landlord rally. It was the middle of winter with temperatures well below zero. For five days the villagers were not allowed to leave the unsheltered area they had been herded into. They were forced to chant Maoist slogans and denounce the landlords who were publicly paraded before them. Some people froze to death standing up. The climax came on the fifth day when the condemned landlords were kicked and punched to death as the crowds shouted 'Kill, Kill, Kill'. Anying recorded in his diary that the barbarity was worse than anything he had seen or heard of while studying Soviet Communism in Stalin's USSR. His attempt to come to terms with what he now saw in China caused him agonies of doubt. He was 'so full of pain' that he wept. What particularly disturbed him was

The Long March 1934-5

Although the GMD became the official government of China in the early 1930s, it was weakened by the Japanese military occupation, beginning in 1931, of many parts of the Chinese mainland. Chiang Kaishek was seen to be more intent on crushing his Communist enemies within China than resisting the Japanese invader. In 1934 Chiang encircled the CCP's base in Jiangxi with a view to destroying it altogether. Again Mao survived, this time by joining and eventually leading the besieged Communists in their escape north to Yanan in Shaanxi province. The journey to Yanan, which took over a year to complete, was later elevated by CCP propaganda into one of the great epics of Communist folklore: the Long March. It was never as glorious as the propagandists made out; of the 100,000 who fled from Jiangxi, scarcely 20,000 survived to reach their destination. Nevertheless, the march was certainly an important stage in the development of Chinese Communism. It was during the March that a critical

Anying (1922-50) Mao Anying was Mao Zedong's oldest son. Pie led a lonely and unhappy life in his father's shadow before dying in 1950, aged 28, in the Korean War.

81 The People's Republic of China 194S-76 the realisation that the party cadres carrying out the land policies were among the worst types of people in China. Anying described them as 'thugs' and 'the dregs of society'. The reason why the savage policies of the CCP did not lose it the support of the peasants as a whole was that the record of the Nationalists was little better. Both Communists and Nationalists treated the Chinese peasants with deep contempt. The great difference was that while this might be understandable in the GMD since it was the party of the exploiting propertied classes, it defied sense for the CCP a party that had come into being to liberate the people of China, to engage in their savage oppression. It was their embarrassment over this that led many members of the CCP to protest against the appalling things being done in their name in the countryside. Mao, as he invariably did when his policies became excessive, simply blamed the mistakes on the failings of others. He declared himself guikless and told Liu Shaoqi to shoulder the blame. Liu did as he was told, confessing to the party that he had let things slide until corrected by Mao. Summary diagram: Mao's career before 1949
Born into a violent age Mao angered by China's weakness and subjection to foreign control Became a revolutionary and turned to Marxism Helped to found the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1921 Helped to organise the CCP-GMD alliance that destroyed the warlords, 1924-7 Escaped the White Terror by fleeing to Jiangxi where he set up a soviet, 1927-34 Used brutal means to crush rivals in the CCP

Introduction: China Under Mao 1949-761 9 Key question

What basic changes occurred in China under Mao's leadership?

3 ] The Reshaping of China under Mao 1949-76 The consolidation of Communist authority 1949-57
During the Jiangxi and Yanan periods of the 1930s and 1940s, Mao Zedong had remorselessly enforced his authority on the CCE His dominance became even greater with the creation of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Between then and his death in 1976, he was revered by the mass of the Chinese people as a living god. But the adulation that was lavished on him could not hide the huge problems he faced as leader of the new China. Mao's most demanding task was to bring stability to a nation that had been riven by decades of turmoil. His approach was a simple one; he would tolerate no opposition to the CCP. All other parties were oudawed and the total obedience of the nation to the new government was demanded.

I
Liu Shaoqi CD (1898-196S) A gifted part)' c organiser who was to become President ofthePRCinl959.

-a

PRC established under Mao Zedong: 1949

i 2 'Anti-movements' launched: 1951

Korean War: 1950-3

Removal of officials S Class enemies o Those reactionaries

who refused to accept the new China that the Communist government was creating. Initially, the officials and public figures who had previously served the GMD Nationalist government but had not fled to Taiwan were asked by the Communist authorities to stay in their posts. They were promised that if they pledged themselves to the new China they would suffer no retaliation for their past behaviour. For a short period this undertaking was honoured, but, once the officials had served their purpose by providing the young PRC with the necessary continuity of administration, they were turned on and persecuted as class enemies.

The 'anti-movements'
The concept of class enemies was basic to the social and political strategies of the Communists in government. Invoking the traditional Chinese duty of respecting authority, Mao and the CCP leaders began public campaigns against anyone in public life who opposed official policy. From 1950 onwards an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty was systematically ^created by a series of 'antimovements', launched against those whom the CCP regarded as socially or politically suspect. The Chinese people were encouraged to expose all who had co-operated with the former GMD government. China became a nation of informers. It was enough for individuals to be charged by their neighbours with having belonged to the privileged classes for them to be publicly denounced and to have their property seized. Their pleas of loyalty to Mao's new China were ignored. The vengeful atmosphere was inte'nsified by China's being drawn into the Korean War of 1950+-3 (see page 28). This struggle placed great demands on the young PRC and made those who were less than whole-hearted in supporting it open to the charge that they were imperilling the nation's existence. Some of the worst excesses occurred in the countryside where millions of landlords were brutally dispossessed of their lands, which were then redistributed among the peasants.

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Set out on the Long March to escape the GMD encirclement Created the Yanan Soviet 193S Led a military resistance to the Nationalists while at Yanan -jWrote his major political works and planned a peasant revolution while at Yanan Launched the rectification campaigns to suppress opposition within the CCP Defeated Chiang Kaishek and the Nationalists in the civil war 1945-9 Used terror tactics to control the countryside X Declared the creation of the People's Republic of China in 1949

INVESTIGATION P f:rw:sriRiT o f CHANCI: CHINMN K T O L W C T J _

EtEVOUJTrONAIVi' IDEAS AND LEADERS

the tatter's family circle, in the good old feudal way, another disciple of the late founder could claim, with would he have the right to speak in the name of Sun, equal justice, a share of Sun's influence, the right to occupy his position ... otherwise many Source: Han Suyin. A World Flmcr, pp. t

* 7,2.3
V U G used in this source

AN ASSESSMENT OF JIANG'S GOVERNMENT and is leader of an incompetent and corrupt civil service Over the years Chiang has alienated every economic inapeasants,workersibusinessmen.and and army. All these things have combined to deliver group in Chinapeasants,! evenhisownsoldiers.Hehasrefusedtoundertakeland China into the waiting arms of the Communists. even his own soldiers. He ha! reforms,has been unable to establish a sound currency Source: The Shanghai correspondent of an American j ournal, 1948

QUESTIONS
1 What qualities of Jiang's are revealed in these sources? 2 What leadership problems are identified? 3 How reliable is the information in these sources'?

MAO ZEDONG
Mao Zedong was born on 26 December 1893 in Shaoshan village, Hunan province. He was the eldest of three sons bom into apeasant family. At the age of eight he attended a traditional primary school where reciting Confucian teachings was the basis of education. He avidly read the popular novels about earlier Chinese heroes and bandits and their struggles against corruption and bureaucracy. He left school at the age of thirteen to work on the land and assist his father with the accounts. His continual reading stimulated a great desire for further education. He enrolled in the Dongshan Higher Primary School at the age of sixteen. Mao read with interest ab out the reform movement of 1898 and the ideas of KangYouwei. In 1911 Mao secured aplace at the Xiangxiang Middle School in Changsha where he came into contact with the revolutionary ideas of Sun Yixian. He was attracted to Sun's nationalistic ideas. Inspired by the Wuhan revolutionaries' action against the Qing he enlisted in the revolutionary army in Hunan in 1911. After deciding to become ateacher, in 1913 Mao enrolled in the Fourth Provincial Normal School in Changsha which merged with the Hunan First Normal School the following year. He graduated from there in the spring of 1918. During this time Mao had studied both the 'old learning' of Chinese feudal culture and the modem 'new learning' of the western democracies. An article written by Mao entitled 'A Study of Physical Culture' was published in the Neu/Youth magazine in April 1917. He assisted in establishing the NewPeople's Society in Changsha in 1918 which organised its members into studying progressive and revolutionary ideas, as well as undergoing energetic physical activities to train the body. Mao moved to Beijing in 1918 and with the help of his former teacher, a professor of philosophy (soon to become Mao's father-in-law), he was found a position as a librarian's assistant under LiDazhao, one of the co-founders of the Communist Party. Mao continued his work for the New People's Study Society's project to send students to study in France. Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping were two students to benefit from this project.

It was during 1919 and through his involvement with the May Fourth movement and the influence of LiDazhao that Mao began to take Marxism seriously. In 1921 he attended the First meeting of the Chinese Communist Party at Shanghai. He became the secretary of the Hunan Regional Party Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. In 1924 he worked in Guangzhou as acting head of the Central Propaganda Department of the Guomindang Cat that time united with the Communist Party). In November 1926 he was appointed secretary of the Peasant Movement Commission of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee. Then, in 1927, he went to Shanghai to occupy the position of Director of the Peasant Department of the Communist Party. He investigated peasant conditions and reported on the peasant movement. Mao led a peasant uprising in Hunan the following autumn in protest against the landlords' taxes. Although initially successful it failed to gain the support of workers in Changsha (capital of Hunan province) and was put down by Guomindang troops. Mao and his supporters fled to the Jinggangshan (mountains) on the border of the provinces of Jiangxi and Hunan. A Chinese Soviet Republic was established there at Ruijin and Mao was elected to the standing committee of the politbureau. It was during this time that Mao, with the able assistance of Zhu De, honed the Red Army into an effective fighting force using guerilla tactics and a strict code of behaviour to achieve its goals. Mao believed strongly that the military arm was essentia! to achieving the political goal. Political control during the Jiangxiperiod to 1934 was initially in the hands of Li Lisan who, as an orthodox Marxist, believed in city-based revolution. Li was replaced in 1931 by Wang Ming and Bo Gu and the Bolshevik trained clique, who also focused on cities as the key to revolution. Mao and Zhu De opposed the Red Army attacking key citiesa strategy which had not met with success. Mao was dismissed from his post as political commissar of the Red Army. It was not until the crucial meeting during the Long March at Zunyi in January 1935, when errors and failures to thwart the Guomindang's final and successful 'encirclement and suppression campaign' were discussed and criticism of Communist tactics made, that Mao Zedong assumed the leadership role. Thus the orthodox Marxists within the parry were defeated and political and military leadership fell to Mao, Zhou Enlai, Zhu De and Wang Jiaxiang. The Long March ended with the establishment of a new Soviet (Red base) in Yanan in the far north-west in Shaanxi province. From there under Mao's leadership the Communist Party launched its anti-Japanese war. It united with the Guomirfdang in 1936 to fight die lapanese, until this united front collapsed in 1941. The Communists controlled the countryside and gained recruits for the Red Army and support and intelligence from the peasant population. Mao Zedong's rules of conduct were clearly followed and agrarian land reform took place in the areas under Communist control. In the Civil War that followed the withdrawal of the Japanese, the Communists under Mao's leadership and without foreign assistance were victorious. Mao proclaimed the People's Republic of China on 1 October 1949. From then unti| 1959 Mao concentrated his attention on bringing socialism to China. Although the setback of the Great Leap Forward led to Mao's resignation as head of state, he still remame'd. chairman of the Chinese Communist Party. However, this resulted in a right wing influence on policy, which to Mao indicated the presence of a Leninist Russian influence where 'elitism' and incentives featured, and this was not to his liking. Mao saw this Leninist influence as revisionism and a betrayal of true Marxist principles. Using the power of the masses, in particular the youth of China (Red Guards) who had not experienced revolution, Mao, with a call to 'never forget class struggle', launched the Proletarian Cultural Revolution. During the period of the Cultural Revolution the writings and thoughts of Mao Zedong were promoted and a strong personality cult evolved which was centred on Mao. 'Mao Zedong Thought' was to provide the guidance for action (economic, political and social) during this period and the years immediately following his death.

103 102

THE SP1SIT0F CHANGE

CHINA IN REVOLUTION

[NVESTlGAnON 6

REVOLUTIONARY IDEAS AND LEADERS

.
Tiananmen: WG T'ien An Men or Tien An Men

Mao Zedong died in Beijing on 9 September 1976. A week of mourningwas announced 1 while Mao's body lay in state in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. Mao's own funeral i a r r a n g e m e n t s were ignored a n d his body, like Lenin's, was mummified for future > generations of Chinese to pay their respects. A mausoleum was built in the centre of T i a n a n m e n Square to house Mao's body. Although t h e era of Mao, 'the people's greatest saviour', had ended with the singing of the 'East is Red' at the funeral rally 'His [Mao's] spirit dwelt within itself, isolating him' (Agnes Smedley) and: his place in the history of China and the world will be large. He led a revolution that killed old China, pushed the country into a process of transformation perhaps more trenchant than any previous sudden social change in any major nation, and restored the independence and status in the world of the oldest and largest polity. (Ross Terrill) Recollections of Li Yinqiao, Mao's bodyguard, give an insight into Mao, the m a n .

The Dalai Lama, the former religious leader of Tibet, described Mao in the following way,

7.3-4

DALAI LAMA'S OPINION OF MAO

His appearance gave no sign of his intellectual power. He did not look healthy, and was always panting and breathing heavily. His dress was just the same style as everybody else's, although it was usually a different colour; but he did not pay much attention to his clothes, and once I noticed that the cuffs of his shirt were torn. His shoes looked as though they had never been polishSource: D. Wilson,Mao, p. 264 ed. He was slow in his movements, and slower stilt in speech; he was sparing of words and spoke in short sentences, each full of meaning and usually clear and precise; and he smoked incessantly while he talked.Yct his manner of speech certainly captured the minds and imagination of his listeners, and gave the impression of kindness and sincerity.

7.3.1

MAO'S LIFESTYLE AND BEHAVIOUR

In Mao's case the word 'rustic' can be used to describe some of his living habits which had their origins in his early life as the son of a Chinese peasant, as well as his spartan life-style as a revolutionary. In these one can see the history and culture of a nation, these qualities which go to make a revolutionary and constitute his hopes and aspirations... Like the peasants he was a practical man; to him the bes t clothes were the ones in which he felt the most comfortable ... Mao's behaviour was often unconventional, and he would not allow convention to inhibit his personality in any way. He did not work according to a schedule; he ate when he was hungry, which could be any time ... He did not always eat at the dinner-table but wherever was convenient, as was his custom during the years of tumult... Mao was a man of superhuman energy. No one could keep a record of how many hours he worked a ''. dav, because the difference between night and day did not exist for him... I have the impression that deep in his heart Mao ; must have felt lonely sometimes. He had a family, but he didn't see them very often. We were the only ones he saw every day.

MAO'S NATIONALISM
Mao's greatest service to China was to give his country what it longed for after a century of chaos and indecisionthe revolutionary leadership, the strategy and the doctrine that could inspire its rebirth. Mao could never have done this simply as an importer of Marxism. Marxism had to be remad e m a Chinese image before it could serve China's cause, and it was Mao who did it. All that he did for Chinahe did as a nationalist. The Source: Obituary o F Mao in the Times, 10 September 1976 Mao's bodyguard Li Yinqiao recalls more about Mao's personality. old imperial system had disappeared in 191 l.What had remained for Mao to attack was a social and economic order in which the hated class were not the capitalists but the landlords whose oppression of the peasants had fired Mao's earliest sense of injustice. But Mao the nationalist was also Mao the revolutionary who believed that revolution should be continuous.

Source: QuanTfitnehkAfoo ZedongMan, N& Gctff,pp,90-118

MAO ENJOYS A CHALLENGE

7.3.2

MAO'S LEADERSHIP DURING THE 1930s

Mao was the accepted leader in his g roup of experienced soldier-politicians because by 1936 he had proved himself a master of political a nd military st rategy. They worked under him almost like a normal cabinet under a premier. Zhu De, Lin Biao and other generals were organizing! training and commanding the armies. Liu Shaoqi directed all underground communist activity in the vastness of Guomindang China. Zhou Enlai dealt with foreign policy and was the number-one diplomat of the Red state. As events generally showed Mao's overall policies to be right, there was no need to question his supreme leadership.

WO used in this source

Lin Biao: Sii?6 Lin Piao

The most outstanding trait in Mao's character, as his writings attest,was his readiness totakeona challenge. He responded to the challenges from the Kuomintang with counter-challenges, never conceding an inch. A winner all his life, Mao, as far as I know, never admitted to feeling overwhelmed by his adversaries ,nor retreated in the face of heavy odds against him. Whatever he did, he never quit, short of total victory. Source: Quan Yanchi, Mao Zedong Man, Not God, p. 13

Throughout the warjwifh the Kuomintang, he displayed enormous courage in the face of danger, when confronting the enemy. His contempt for them originated in his confidence in his own strength and his conviction that they were doomed. Such confidence and conviction often prompted him to do extraordinary things.

Source: G. Paloczt-Horvath, Mao Tse-turtg. Emperor of the Blue Ants In 1936 Edgar Snow, an American journalist, described Mao in the following way after meeting with him in Yanan.

73.7

MAO'S STRENGTH
The story of Mao is not one of steady, inexorable progress against uncomprehending foes, but of the repeated exertion of will on the part of an original prejudiced, vain leader... Mao not only controlled and awed most of his Source: R. Terrill, China in OUT time, pp. 452-3 colleagues, but also established a perso ital hold over the nationthis explains why the disaster of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution did not result in uprisings against Mao's rule of the type that punctuated the Qing dynasty and the Republican period.

7.33

SNOW DESCRIBES MAO

He appears to be quite free from symptoms of megalo- decision when he deems it necessary. I never saw him mania,but he has a deep sense of personal dignity, and angry; but I heard from others that on occasion he has something about him suggests a power of ruthless been roused to an intense and withering fury. Sou cce: E. Snow, Red Star Over Chim

104

105

THESPlRITOr-CHANOE

CHINA IN REVOLUTION

REVOLUTIONARY IDEAS AND LEADERS

73.8

MAO'S PRESENCE
'Zhou [Enlai] isa nobodybeforeMao'.Tanaka (Japanese man.' It was an interesting comment, even if one feels Prime Minister] told some Japanese politician friends that what Tanaka said of Zhou in Mao's presence was on his return to Tokyo.'Me behaves in front of Mao like truer of himself in Moo's presence. a clumsy secretary attending an outstanding congressSource: R. Terrill, China in our time, p. 390

QUESTIONS
1 What personal qualities of Mao do these sources reveal? 2 What leadership qualities did Mao possess according to these sources? 3 Are any of these sources likely to be more biased than others? Identify the biases of the writers. 4 What are Mao's strengths and weaknesses? 5 What was Mao's contribution to the revolution?

fl

7.3.9

MAO AND THE PEOPLE

6 How is Mao presented in the visual evidence?

ZHOU EN1A1
Zhou Enlai, a diplomat, consummate statesman and the most respected leader in the Communist Party, was born into a family of the gentry in Jiangsu province in 1898. After graduahngfromTianjin Middle SchooIinl917he moved to Japan to continue his studies. On his return to Tianjin in 1919 he supported the May Fourth movement through publications and demonstrations. An active student protest leader he was arrested and jailed in 1920. On release from jail he travelled to France with many other Chinese students to participate in a Marxist work study program. Zhou returned in 1924 and his support of Sun Yixian's national revolution saw his appointment as the political director of the Huangpu Military Academy which was under Jiang Jieshi's command. Zhou became Director of the Military Department of the Communist Party Centra] Committee in 1927. Zhou's troops were successful against the northern warlord Sun Chuangfang and were able to clear the way for Jiang's revolutionary army in Shanghai. Shortly after this Zhou was lucky to escape death during the April 1927 purge of Communists in Shanghai. Zhou fled to Wuhan and, with Zhu De, He Long and 30 000 troops, launched a counterattack on the Guomindang at Nanchang in Jiangxi province on 1 August 1927. Since that time 1 August has been celebrated as the birthday ofthePeopIe'sLiberationArmy.Althoughinitially successful, Guomindang reinforcements eventually caused the Communists to withdraw. Zhou Enlai escaped to Shanghai. In 1928 he attended the Sixth National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party which was held in Moscow. He was invited back to Moscow in 1930 to address the Sixteenth Congress of the Communist Party Soviet Union. He moved to Jiangxi rural base in 1931 as the underground Shanghai Communists were under great pressureof exposure from the Guomindang secret police. Zhou succeeded Mao as political commissar of the Red Army. t During the Long March, Zhou supported Mao at the Zunyi meeting in 1935 where the mistakes of previous military strategies were criticised. Mao took over the leadership of the party with the backing of Zhou Enlai and Zhu De. Zhou was instrumental In negotiating the second united front with the Nationalists at Xian in 1936 and became the chief negotiator for the Communists and the Communist representative in Chongqing during the Second World War. He returned to Yanan injune 1943 after the breakdown of the second united front. In 1945 Zhou accompanied Mao Zedong to Chongqing after the Japanese surrender, for peace talks with Jiang Jieshi, and remained there to further the negotiations after Mao's return to Yanan. Zhou worked on US General George Marshall's committee of three which unsuccessfullyattempted to negotiate a cease fire settlement during the Civil War. Zhou had the respect of the Americans for his efforts. In talks given at Nanjing and Shanghai, Zhou won over Chinese intellectuals and politicians (former Guomindang supporters) who were disgruntled with the Nationalist government. This support was crucial to the Communist victory in the Civil War.
107

A young Mao talking wilh peastmtf, 1939

Source: Sally and Richard Greenhill

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7.3.10

MAO AND ZHU DE

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/Hoc Zedong and Zhu Be during the years of the Red Army command

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Source: David King Collection 106

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