by Philip Short
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, Verta
gte 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 t
ranslation, 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.