Red Star over China

by Edgar Snow

  1953 Stalin dies. Korean armistice signed. U.S. forms alliance with Chiang Kai-shek, making Taiwan U.S. protectorate. Peking announces First Five-Year Plan. Soviet grants support for 156 large-scale Chinese projects. Moscow agrees to liquidate Soviet-Chinese joint enterprises and withdraw all troops from China. Rosenbergs executed in the U.S.

  1954 Khrushchev first visits Peking. Land reform (redistribution) completed. Agricultural cooperatives lay basis for collectivization (1957). State establishes partnerships with remaining private enterprise, preliminary to complete nationalization (1957). Geneva Accords end French power in Indochina and recognize independence of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Under the influence of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, the Eisenhower administration takes “note” of Geneva Accords, but begins intervention in support of Ngo Dinh Diem.

  1955 At Bandung Conference (twenty-nine Afro-Asian nations) China seeks broader anti-imperialist role against U.S. and allies. China’s “foreign aid” program competes with that of U.S.S.R. Warsaw Pact signed by U.S.S.R. and East European satellites.

  1956 Khrushchev denounces Stalin at Twentieth Congress of CPSU. He proclaims end of personality cult and beginning of collective leadership. “Hundred Flowers” period invites criticism of CCP from dissatisfied Chinese intellectuals. Hungarian revolt; Peking backs suppression. China publishes important Maoist thesis, On the Historical Experience of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, acknowledging continued “contradictions” within and between socialist states.

  1957 Mao’s On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People defines limitations of criticism in relation to the Party; advances thesis of “unity-criticism-unity” as dialectical process to isolate “enemies of socialism” and peacefully resolve “nonantagonistic” conflicts of interest between the state, the Party, and “the people.” Russia agrees to supply sample atom bomb to China and help in nuclear weapons development. Sputnik launched. At November conference in Moscow, Mao discerns a “turning point”: the “East Wind is prevailing over the West Wind.” He contends socialist forces outbalance capitalist forces. Thesis disputed by Russians. Breakup of Sino-Soviet unity begins.

  1958 China announces Second Five-Year Plan. Year of the “Great Leap Forward” and People’s Communes. Peking’s threat to liberate Taiwan provokes Sino-American crisis. Khrushchev withholds unconditional nuclear support for China, and Peking declines to place Chinese forces under Soviet military command. Sino-Soviet differences develop. First U.S. space satellite launched.

  1959 During October anniversary celebrations Khrushchev again visits Peking, where he declares “imperialist war is not inevitable.” His advocacy of “peaceful coexistence” with “American imperialism” is sharply rejected by Chinese. China gets no A-bomb and Mao loses confidence in Khrushchev. Tibetan rebellion. Dalai Lama flees to India. During China’s disputes with India and Indonesia, Khrushchev offers aid to the latter. He disparages Chinese people’s communes. Castro takes power in Cuba. As U.S. increases armed intervention, aimed to separate South Vietnam from the Republic, President Ho Chi Minh backs People’s Liberation War in the South.

  1960 In July, Moscow recalls all Soviet advisers from China, cancels more than 300 contracts, withdraws technical help. At Moscow international Party conference (November), Sino-Soviet “contradictions” intensify. Chinese openly identify Khrushchev as “revisionist.” Russians accuse Mao of seeking “world holocaust.” Massive crop failure and industrial dislocation in China. As Sino-Indian frontier incidents grow serious, Khrushchev plays neutral role, continues economic aid to India. John F. Kennedy elected U.S. President.

  1961 At Twenty-second Soviet Party Congress in Moscow, Chou En-lai walks out when Khrushchev bans Albanian Party. Using texts from the newly published (1960) Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, Vol. IV, Peking’s Party press proclaims Maoist and antirevisionist theses “true Marxism-Leninism.” Chinese replace Soviet advisers in Albania. Berlin Wall built.

  1962 Sino-Soviet clashes on both state and Party levels foreshadow wide international ideological fight. Kennedy-Khrushchev duel over Cuba. When Khrushchev withdraws missiles from Cuba, Peking ridicules him for “adventurism” and “capitulationism.” Sino-Indian border incidents climaxed by Chinese assault, driving Indians from 35,000 square miles of territory. Chinese troops withdraw, unilaterally create “demilitarized zone,” call for peaceful negotiation. U.N. intervenes in the Congo.

  1960–63 Following the disruption of the Chinese economy caused by dislocations during the “Great Leap Forward,” by withdrawal of Soviet aid, and by a series of natural calamities, the People’s Republic slowly recovers from near-famine conditions.

  1963 In final defiance of Peking’s demand for a militant international “united front against American imperialism,” Moscow signs nuclear test-ban treaty with United States, makes “peaceful coexistence” cardinal aim of Soviet foreign policy. Sino-Soviet split now reflected in intraparty cleavages in many countries. Mutual recriminations reinforced by open publication of past charges and countercharges by CCP and CPSU. Peking steps up drive for ideological leadership among “third world” Asian-African-Latin American revolutionary forces; Moscow strives to hold following among European parties. Premier Chou En-lai visits African countries. Mao Tse-tung issues declaration calling upon “the people of the world” to unite against American imperialism and support American Negro struggles. President Kennedy assassinated.

  1964 Breakdown in Soviet-Chinese party and state relations becomes nearly complete. As France recognizes China, Communist split paralleled by Western split. Chinese offensive on two fronts—American imperialism and Soviet revisionism—has some success in dividing both camps. Two years of good harvests and new trade ties with Europe and Japan strengthen Chinese economy. Foreign Minister Ch’en Yi publicly expresses doubts concerning value of Sino-Soviet military alliance; China may no longer count on Russian aid. Mao urges Japanese socialists to recover territories lost to Russia and criticizes Soviet “imperialism” for encroachments on Chinese territories.

  After fifteen years, achievements of Chinese revolution in uniting and modernizing China widely conceded even by enemies. In rivalry with Russia, and despite exclusion from United Nations, China becomes major power with which—according to General de Gaulle—United States must negotiate in order to end war in Southeast Asia. Mao Tse-tung, following a century of China’s humiliation as a weak and backward nation, emerges as the first Asian political leader to attract significant world following. China explodes its first “nuclear device.”

  South Vietnamese Government, backed by the United States and badly defeated by growing forces of the National Liberation Front, verges on disintegration before proneutralist and propeace elements.

  1965 President Johnson, soon after his January inauguration, moves American combat troops into Vietnam to prevent a neutralist coup in Saigon. In February he orders massive bombing of North Vietnam. Peking announces its readiness to intervene in support of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam if President Ho Chi Minh demands it, but in an interview with the author in January, Chairman Mao declares that China will not go to war against the United States unless China is directly attacked. In July, Lin Piao, China’s Minister of Defense, publishes a declaration, “Long Live the Victory of the People’s War!” which calls upon the underdeveloped nations, likened to the “rural areas of the world,” to join forces against American and Western imperialism, the “cities of the world.”

  China explodes its second nuclear device.

  The United Nations vote on the admission of the People’s Republic ends in a 47–47 tie, with Great Britain for the first time voting in favor of seating Peking. Lacking majority support, the move is once more defeated.

  1966 U.S. forces in Vietnam approach 500,000 men, and American bombing of North Vietnam spares few tagets except inner metropolitan areas of Hanoi and Haiphong. Russia sends North Vietnam aircraft, weapons, and technical personnel; China supplies small arms and food.

  Chi
na launches a “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” (GPCR) under Mao Tse-tung, with Lin Piao named as his “close comrade-in-arms.” China prepares for an expected American invasion. An unprecedented purge attacks “bourgeois” and “revisionist” elements in the CCP. Chinese agriculture continues to improve, while scientific advances include the world’s first synthesis of protein (insulin) and benzine.

  1967 Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution develops into an attack on Liu Shao-ch’i, chairman of government and former first deputy Party leader, and on Teng Hsiao-p’ing, general secretary of the Party, as foremost among “those in the Party in authority who are taking the capitalist road.” Profound intraparty struggle intensifies.

  As the GPCR took foreign political experts on China by complete surprise, so China’s explosion of a hydrogen bomb—twenty-six months after atomic fission was achieved—nonpluses foreign military and scientific savants. The same step had taken the U.S. more than seven years; France, after eight years of effort, had yet to test its first H-bomb.

  Dean Rusk, U.S. Secretary of State, appeals for world sympathy for Johnson’s armed intervention and massive bombing in Vietnam as necessary in order to contain “a billion Chinese armed with nuclear weapons,” but no European power offers to help Rusk. China’s own official policy still calls for an international agreement to destroy all nuclear weapons—an invitation ignored by the U.S. On December 19, in a message to Vietnam’s National Liberation Front presidium, Mao advises “the fraternal South Vietnamese people” to “rest assured that your struggle is our struggle.” China detonates its seventh nuclear device, in the rapid development of a system of deterrents which could enhance her immunity from nuclear attack if China became directly engaged with U.S. ground forces in eastern Asia.

  1968 In January, during an intelligence-gathering tour off the North Korean coast, the U.S. ship Pueblo is boarded by North Korean sailors and surrenders. In the ensuing crisis China calls for a united front among revolutionary parties in Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and North Korea in support of the Vietnamese. (North Korea has a military alliance with the U.S.S.R. and the CPR.) The Pueblo incident makes it manifest that durable peace between China and the U.S. remains impossible while any part of Asia is subject to armed American intervention.

  A Note on Chinese Pronunciation

  It is not necessary to strangle over the pronunciation of Chinese names if one observes a few simple rules in the rather arbitrary but workable Wade-Giles System of transliteration (romanization) of the language into English. Each Chinese character represents only one sound and homonyms are innumerable. Chinese is monosyllabic, but combinations of characters in the spoken language may form a single idea or equivalent of one foreign word, and thus in a sense the spoken language is polysyllabic. Chinese surnames come first, given names (usually two words) follow, as in Teng Hsiao-p’ing. Aspirates are represented in this book by apostrophes; they indicate a soft consonantal sound. Examples:

  Chi (as in Chi Chao-t’ing) is pronounced “Gee,” but Ch’i (as in Liu Shao-ch’i) sounds like “Chee.” Chin is exactly our “chin.”

  Chu is like “Ju,” in Chu Teh, but Ch’u equals “Chew.”

  Tsung is “dzung”; ts’ung with the “ts” as in “Patsy.”

  Tai is our word sound “die”; Tai— “tie.”

  Pai is “buy” and p’ai is “Pie.”

  Kung is like “Gung” (-a Din); Kung with the “k” as in “kind.”

  J is the equivalent of “r” but roll it, as rrrun.

  H before an s, as in hsi, is the equivalent of an aspirate but is often dropped, as in Sian for Hsian. One may ignore the “h” and still be understood.

  Single Chinese words are always pronounced as monosyllables. Thus: Chiang is not “Chee-yi-ang” but a single sound, “Geeang.” Mao is not “May-ow” but pronounced like a cat’s “miaow” without the “i.” Chou En-lai is “Joe Un-lie,” but the last syllable of his wife’s given name, Ying-ch’ao, sounds like “chow.”

  Vowels in Chinese are generally short or medium, not long and flat. Thus T’ang sounds like “dong,” never like our “tang.” Tang is “tong.”

  a as in father

  e—run

  eh—hen

  There is also a “ü” as in German and an “ê” as in

  i—see

  French. I have omitted Wade’s umlaut and circumflex

  ih—her

  markings, which are found in European

  o—look

  latini-zations of Chinese.

  ou—go

  u—soon

  These sounds indicate Chinese as spoken in kuo-yu, the northern (Peking, mandarin) speech, which is now the national language, taught in all schools. Where journalism has already popularized misspellings or variants in other dialects, such as Chiang Kai-shek for Chiang Chieh-shih, etc., I have followed the familiar version.

  Chinese words frequently encountered in place names are: sheng—province; hsien— county; hsiang—township; ching (or king)—capital; ch’eng—city; ts’un—village; chiang (kiang)—great river; ho—river; hu—lake; k’ou—mouth; pei—north; nan—south; tung—east; hsi (or si)—west; chung—central; shan—mountain. Such words combine in the following examples: Peking (properly, Pei-ching, pronounced “Bay-ging”), meaning “northern capital.” Peking was renamed “Pei-p’ing (Peiping or, erroneously, Peping), “northern peace” (or tranquillity), by the Kuomintang regime, which made its seat in Nanking (southern capital), but the historic name remained in general use and was formally restored in 1949.

  Shantung means East of the mountains.

  Shansi— West of the mountains.

  Hankow—Mouth of the Han (river).

  Sian—Western Peace (tranquillity).

  Hopei—North of the (Yellow) river.

  Hunan—South of the lakes.

  Yunnan—South of the clouds.

  Kiangsi—West of the river.

  There is also a “ü” as in German and an “é” as in French. I have omitted Wade’s umlaut and circumflex markings, which are found in European latini-zations of Chinese.

  Part One

  In Search of Red China

  1

  Some Unanswered Questions

  During my seven years in China, hundreds of questions had been asked about the Chinese Red Army, the Soviets, and the Communist movement. Eager partisans could supply you with a stock of ready answers, but these remained highly unsatisfactory. How did they know? They had never been to Red China.

  The fact was that there had been perhaps no greater mystery among nations, no more confused an epic, than the story of Red China. Fighting in the very heart of the most populous nation on earth, the Celestial Reds had for nine years been isolated by a news blockade as effective as a stone fortress. A wall of thousands of enemy troops constantly surrounded them; their territory was more inaccessible than Tibet. No one had voluntarily penetrated that wall and returned to write of his experiences since the first Chinese soviet was established in southeastern Hunan, in November, 1927.

  Even the simplest points were disputed. Some people denied that there was such a thing as a Red Army. There were only thousands of hungry brigands. Some denied even the existence of soviets. They were an invention of Communist propaganda. Yet Red sympathizers extolled both as the only salvation for all the ills of China. In the midst of this propaganda and counterpropaganda, credible evidence was lacking for dispassionate observers seeking the truth. Here are some of the unanswered questions that interested everyone concerned with politics and the quickening history of the Orient:

  Was or was not this Red Army of China a mass of conscious Marxist revolutionaries, disciplined by and adhering to a centralized program and a unified command under the Chinese Communist Party? If so, what was that program? The Communists claimed to be fighting for agrarian revolution, and against imperialism, and for soviet democracy and national emancipation. Nanking said that the Reds were only a new type of vandals and marauders led by “intel
lectual bandits.” Who was right? Or was either one?

  Before 1927, members of the Communist Party were admitted to the Kuomintang, but in April of that year there began a great “purgation.” Communists, as well as unorganized radical intellectuals and thousands of organized workers and peasants, were executed on an extensive scale under Chiang Kai-shek, the leader of a Right coup d’état which seized power, to form a “National Government” at Nanking. Since then it had been a crime punishable by death to be a Communist or a Communist sympathizer, and thousands had paid that penalty. Yet thousands more continued to run the risk. Thousands of peasants, workers, students, and soldiers joined the Red Army in armed struggle against the military dictatorship of the Nanking regime. Why? What inexorable force drove them on to support suicidal political opinions? What were the fundamental quarrels between the Kuomintang and the Kungch’antang?*

  What were the Chinese Communists like? In what way did they resemble, in what way were they unlike, Communists or Socialists elsewhere? The tourist asked if they wore long beards, made noises with their soup, and carried homemade bombs in their briefcases. The serious-minded wanted to know whether they were “genuine” Marxists. Did they read Capital and the works of Lenin? Had they a thoroughly Socialist economic program? Were they Stalinites or Trotskyites? Or neither? Was their movement really an organic part of the World Revolution? Were they true internationalists? “Mere tools of Moscow,” or primarily nationalists struggling for an independent China?

  Who were these warriors who had fought so long, so fiercely, so courageously, and—as admitted by observers of every color, and privately among Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek’s own followers—on the whole so invincibly? What made them fight like that? What held them up? What was the revolutionary basis of their movement? What were the hopes and aims and dreams that had made of them the incredibly stubborn warriors—incredible compared with the history of compromise that is China—who had endured hundreds of battles, blockade, salt shortage, famine, disease, epidemic, and finally the Long March of 6,000 miles, in which they crossed twelve provinces of China, broke through thousands of Kuomintang troops, and triumphantly emerged at last into a new base in the Northwest?