by Philip Short
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 Revoluti
on, 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.