Red Star over China

by Edgar Snow

  So much for Kiangsi. During the next two years of the Long March the Reds were almost entirely cut off from contact even with their own Party members in the coastal cities of China, and the Comintern only infrequently got into direct communication with the Red Army. Wang Ming (Ch’en Shao-yu),* the Chinese Party’s chief delegate in Moscow, must have found it very difficult at times to get accurate information even on the location of the main forces of the Red Army for his reports to the Comintern, and some of his articles in lnprecorr† seemed to reflect that. I happened to be in Pao An one day when some copies of Inprecorr arrived, and I saw Lo Fu, the American-educated secretary of the Central Committee of the Party, eagerly devouring them. He mentioned casually that he had not seen an Inprecorr for nearly three years.

  And not until September, 1936, while I was still with the Reds, did the detailed account of the proceedings of the Seventh Congress of the Communist International, held just a year previously, finally reach the Red capital of China. It was these reports which brought to the Chinese Communists for the first time the fully developed thesis of the international anti-Fascist united-front tactics which were to guide them in their policy during the months ahead, when revolt was to spread throughout the Northwest, and to shake the entire Orient. And once more the Comintern and Stalin were to assert their will in the affairs of China, in a manner that would sharply affect the development of the revolution. I was to view that episode from the sidelines again in Peking.

  6

  Farewell to Red China

  Two interesting things happened before I left Pao An. On October 9, radio messages from Kansu reached us telling of the successful junction at Huining of the vanguard of the Fourth Red Army with Ch’en Keng’s First Divison of the First Army Corps.1 All the regular Red Army forces were now concentrated in Northwest China with good lines of communications established. Orders for winter uniforms poured into the factories of Pao An and Wu Ch’i Chen. The combined forces of the three armies reportedly numbered between 80,000 and 90,000 seasoned, well-equipped warriors. Celebrations and rejoicing were held in Pao An and throughout the soviet districts. The long period of suspense during the fighting in south Kansu was ended. Everyone now felt a new confidence in the future. With the whole of the best Red troops in China concentrated in a large new territory, and near-by another 100,000 sympathetic troops of the Tungpei Army, whom they had come to think of as allies, the Reds now believed that their proposals for a united front would be heard with keener interest at Nanking.

  The second important event was an interview I had with Mao Tse-tung just before I left, in which, for the first time, he indicated concrete terms on the basis of which the Communists would welcome peace with the Kuomintang and cooperation to resist Japan. Some of these terms had already been announced in a manifesto issued by the Communist Party in August. In my conversation with Mao I asked him to explain the reasons for his new policy.2

  “First of all,” he began, “the seriousness of Japanese aggression: it is becoming more intensified every day, and is so formidable a menace that before it all the forces of China must unite. Besides the Communist Party there are other parties and forces in China, and the strongest of these is the Kuomintang. Without its cooperation our strength at present is insufficient to resist Japan in war. Nanking must participate. The Kuomintang and the Communist Party are the two main political forces in China, and if they continue to fight now in civil war the effect will be unfavorable for the anti-Japanese movement.

  “Second, since August, 1935, the Communist Party has been urging, by manifesto, a union of all parties in China for the purpose of resisting Japan, and to this program the entire populace has responded with sympathy, notwithstanding the fact that the Kuomintang has continued its attacks upon us.

  “The third point is that many patriotic elements even in the Kuomintang now favor a reunion with the Communist Party. Anti-Japanese elements even in the Nanking Government, and Nanking’s own armies, are today ready to unite because of the peril to our national existence.

  “These are the main characteristics of the present situation in China, and because of them we are obliged to reconsider in detail the concrete formula under which such cooperation in the national liberation movement can become possible. The fundamental point of unity which we insist upon is the national-liberation anti-Japanese principle. In order to realize it we believe there must be established a national defense democratic government. Its main tasks must be to resist the foreign invader, to grant popular rights to the masses of the people, and to intensify the development of the country’s economy.

  “We will therefore support a parliamentary form of representative government, an anti-Japanese salvation government, a government which protects and supports all popular patriotic groups. If such a republic is established, the Chinese soviets will become a part of it. We will realize in our areas measures for a democratic parliamentary form of government.”

  “Does that mean,” I asked, “that the laws of such a [democratic] government would also apply in soviet districts?”

  Mao replied in the affirmative. He said that such a government should restore and once more realize Sun Yat-sen’s final will, and his three “basic principles” during the Great Revolution, which were: alliance with the U.S.S.R. and those countries which treat China as an equal; union with the Chinese Communist Party; and fundamental protection of the interests of the Chinese working class.

  “If such a movement develops in the Kuomintang,” he continued, “we are prepared to cooperate with and support it, and to form a united front against imperialism such as existed in 1925–27. We are convinced that this is the only way left to save our nation.”

  “Is there any immediate cause for the new proposals?” I inquired. “They must certainly be regarded as the most important decision in your Party’s history in a decade.”

  “The immediate causes,” Mao explained, “are the severe new demands of Japan,* capitulation to which must enormously handicap any attempts at resistance in the future, and the popular response to this deepening threat of Japanese invasion in the form of a great people’s patriotic movement. These conditions have in turn produced a change in attitude among certain elements in Nanking. Under the circumstances it is now possible to hope for the realization of such a policy as we propose. Had it been offered in this form a year ago, or earlier, neither the country nor the Kuomintang would have been prepared for it.

  “At present, negotiations are being conducted. While the Communist Party has no great positive hopes of persuading Nanking to resist Japan, it is nevertheless possible. As long as it is, the Communist Party will be ready to cooperate in all necessary measures. If Chiang Kai-shek prefers to continue the civil war, the Red Army will also receive him.”

  In effect, Mao made a formal declaration of the readiness of the Communist Party, the Soviet Government, and the Red Army, to cease civil war and further attempts to overthrow Nanking by force, and to submit to the high command of a representative central government, provided there was created the political framework in which the cooperation of other parties besides the Kuomintang would be possible. At this time also, though not as part of the formal interview, Mao indicated that the Communists would be prepared to make such changes in nomenclature as would facilitate “cooperation,” without fundamentally affecting the independent role of the Red Army and the Communist Party. Thus, if it were necessary, the Red Army would change its name to National Revolutionary Army, the name “soviets” would be abandoned, and the agrarian policy would be modified during the period of preparation for war against Japan. During the turbulent weeks that lay ahead, Mao’s statement was to have an important influence on events.*

  In the middle of October, 1936, after I had been with the Reds nearly four months, arrangements were finally completed for my return to the White world. It had not been easy. Chang Hsueh-liang’s friendly Tungpei troops had been withdrawn from nearly every front and replaced by Nanking or other hostile forces. There w
as only one outlet then, through a Tungpei division which still had a front with the Reds near Lochuan, a walled city a day’s motor trip north of Sian.

  I walked down the main street of Defended Peace for the last time, and the farther I got toward the gate, the more reluctantly I moved. People popped their heads out of offices to shout last remarks. My poker club turned out en masse to bid the maestro good-by, and some “little devils” trudged with me to the walls of Pao An. I stopped to take a picture of Old Hsu and Old Hsieh, their arms thrown around each other’s shoulders. Only Mao Tse-tung failed to appear; he was still asleep.

  “Don’t forget my artificial arm!” called Ts’ai.

  “Don’t forget my films!” urged Lu Ting-yi.3

  “We’ll be waiting for the air fleet!” laughed Yang Shang-k’un.

  “Send me in a wife!” demanded Li K’e-nung.

  “And send back those four ounces of cocoa,” chided Po Ku.

  The whole Red University was seated out in the open, under a great tree, listening to a lecture by Lo Fu, when I went past. They all came over, and we shook hands, and I mumbled a few words. Then I turned and forded the stream, waved them a farewell, and rode up quickly with my little caravan. I might be the last foreigner to see any of them alive, I thought. It was very depressing. I felt that I was not going home, but leaving it.

  In five days we reached the southern frontier, and I waited there for three days, staying in a tiny village and eating black beans and wild pig. It was a beautiful wooded country, alive with game, and I spent the days in the hills with some farmers and Red soldiers, hunting pig and deer. The bush was crowded with huge pheasants, and one day we even saw, far out of range, two tigers streaking across a clearing in a valley drenched with the purple-gold of autumn. The front was absolutely peaceful, and the Reds had only one battalion stationed here.

  On the 20th I got through no man’s land safely and behind the Tungpei lines, and on a borrowed horse next day I rode into Lochuan, where a truck was waiting for me. A day later I was in Sianfu. At the Drum Tower I jumped down from beside the driver and asked one of the Reds (who were wearing Tungpei uniforms) to toss me my bag. A long search, and then a longer search, while my fears increased. Finally there was no doubt about it. My bag was not there. In that bag were a dozen diaries and notebooks, thirty rolls of film—the first still and moving pictures ever taken of the Chinese Red Army—and several pounds of Red magazines, newspapers, and documents. It had to be found.

  Excitement under the Drum Tower, while traffic policemen curiously gazed from a short distance away. Whispered consultations. Finally it was realized what had happened. The truck had been loaded with gunnysacks full of broken Tungpei rifles and guns being sent for repairs, and my bag, in case of any search, had been stuffed into such a sack also. Back at Hsienyang, on the opposite shore of the Wei River, twenty miles behind us, the missing object had been thrown off with the other loads. The driver stared ruefully at the truck. “T’a ma-ti” he offered in consolation.

  It was already dusk, and the driver suggested that he wait till morning to go back and hunt for it. Morning! Something warned me that morning would be too late. I insisted, and I finally won the argument. The truck reversed and returned, and I stayed awake all night in a friend’s house in Sianfu wondering whether I would ever see that priceless bag again. If it were opened at Hsienyang, not only would all my things be lost forever, but that “Tungpei” truck and all its occupants would be huai-la—finished. There were Nationalist gendarmes at Hsienyang.

  The bag was found. But my hunch about the urgency of the search had been absolutely correct, for early next morning all traffic was completely swept from the streets, and all roads leading into the city were lined with gendarmes and troops. Peasants were cleared out of their homes along the road. Some of the more unsightly huts were simply demolished, so that there would be nothing offensive to the eye. Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek was paying a sudden call on Sianfu. It would have been impossible then for our truck to return over that road to the Wei River, for it skirted the heavily guarded airfield.

  This arrival of the Generalissimo made an unforgettable contrast with the scenes still fresh in my mind—of Mao Tse-tung, or Hsu Hai-tung, or Lin Piao, or P’eng Teh-huai nonchalantly strolling down a street in Red China. And the Generalissimo did not have a price on his head. But the precautions taken to protect him in Sian were to prove inadequate. He had too many enemies among the very troops who were guarding him.

  Part Twelve

  White World Again

  1

  A Preface to Mutiny

  I emerged from Red China to find a sharpening tension between the Tungpei troops of Young Marshal Chang Hsueh-liang and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, who was now not only commander-in-chief of China’s armed forces, but also chairman of the Executive Yuan—a position comparable to that of premier.

  I have described* how the Tungpei troops were gradually being transformed, militarily and politically, from mercenaries who had been shipped to half a dozen different provinces to fight the Reds into an army infected by the national patriotic anti-Japanese slogans of its enemy, convinced of the futility of continued civil war, stirred by only one exhortation, loyal to but one central idea—the hope of “fighting back to the old homeland,” of recovering Manchuria from the Japanese who had driven them from their homes and abused and murdered their families. These notions being directly opposed to the maxims then held by Nanking, the Tungpei troops had found themselves with a growing fellow feeling for the anti-Japanese Red Army.

  The estrangement had been widened by important occurrences during the four months of my travels. In the Southwest a revolt against Nanking had been led by Generals Pai Chung-hsi and Li Tsung-jen, whose chief political demands were based on opposition to the Nationalist Government’s nonresistance policies. After weeks of near-war, a compromise settlement had finally been reached, but the interim had provided a tremendous stimulus to the anti-Japanese movement throughout China. Three or four Japanese had been killed by angry mobs in various parts of the interior, and Japan had presented to Nanking strong demands for apologies, compensations, and new political concessions. Another Sino-Japanese “incident,” followed by a Japanese invasion, seemed a possibility.

  Meanwhile the anti-Japanese movement, led by the left-wing National Salvation Association, was, despite stern measures of suppression, rising in strength everywhere, and considerable mass pressure was being indirectly exerted on Nanking to stiffen its attitude. Such pressure multiplied when, in October, Japanese-led Mongol and Chinese puppet troops, equipped and trained in Japan’s conquered Jehol and Chahar, began an invasion of northern Suiyuan (Inner Mongolia). But the widespread popular demand that this be considered “the last extremity,” and the signal for a “war of resistance” on a national scale, was ignored. No mobilization orders were forthcoming. Nanking’s standing reply remained. “Internal unification”—i.e., extermination of the Reds—must come first. Many patriotic quarters began to urge that the Communists’ proposals for an end to civil war, and the creation of a national front on the basis of “voluntary unification,” be accepted by Nanking, in order to concentrate the entire energies of the people to oppose the common peril of Japan. Proponents of such opinions were arrested as “traitors.”

  The highest degree of emotional excitement centered in the Northwest. Few people realized then how closely the anti-Japanese sentiment of the Tungpei Army was connected with the determination to stop the war against the Reds. Sian seemed a long way off to most Chinese as well as to foreigners in the big treaty ports of China, and it was little visited by journalists. An exception was Miss Nym Wales, an American writer, who in October journeyed to Sian and interviewed the Young Marshal. Miss Wales reported:

  “The serious anti-Japanese movement in China is formulating itself not in the various ‘incidents’ ranging from North to South, but here in Sianfu among the Northeastern exiles from Manchuria—as one might expect that it logically should.
While the movement is being suppressed in other parts of China, in Sianfu it is under the open and enthusiastic leadership of Young Marshal Chang Hsueh-liang—ardently supported by his troops, if not compelled by them to act in this direction.”*

  Reflecting on the significance of her interview with the Young Marshal, Miss Wales wrote:

  “In effect, and read in relation to its background, this interview may be interpreted as an attempt to influence Chiang Kai-shek to lead active resistance … implying a threat (in his statement) that ‘only by resistance to foreign aggression [i.e., not by civil war] can the real unification of China be manifested,’ and that ‘if the Government does not obey the will of the people it cannot stand.’ Most significant, this Deputy Commander-in-Chief (second only to Chiang Kai-shek) said that ‘if the Communists can sincerely cooperate to resist the common foreign invader, perhaps it is possible that this problem can be settled peacefully.’ …”

  But Chiang Kai-shek plainly underestimated the seriousness of the warning. In October he sent the First Army—his best—to attack the Reds in Kansu, and when he arrived in Sianfu it was for the purpose of completing preliminary plans for his sixth general offensive against the Reds. In Sian and Lanchow arrangements were made to accommodate more than 100 bombers. Tons of bombs arrived. It was reported that poison gas was to be used. This was seemingly the only explanation of Chiang’s queer boast that he would “destroy the remnant Red bandits in a couple of weeks, or at most a month.”*