The Tragedy of Liberation: A History of the Chinese Revolution 1945-1957

by Dikötter, Frank

  But then Mao was whisked off to a dacha outside the capital and made to wait several weeks for a formal audience. Meetings were cancelled, phone calls never returned. Mao lost patience, ranting about how he was in Moscow to do more than ‘eat and shit’. Stalin was wearing down his guest, insisting that the Yalta accords were binding – including Soviet control over the ports of Port Arthur and Dalian as well as the Chinese Eastern Railway in Manchuria.

  Zhou Enlai came to the rescue, but even with his diplomatic skills it took another six weeks to reach an agreement. Russia insisted on keeping all the concessions that the nationalists had been forced to make at the end of the Second World War. Anastas Mikoyan and Andrey Vyshinsky were brutal negotiators, laying down their conditions in blunt terms. While they agreed to return the ports and the railway by the end of 1952, they insisted that their troops and equipment be allowed to move freely between the Soviet Union and Manchuria as well as Xinjiang. Mao was also quickly disabused about Mongolia, which he viewed as just another part of the Qing empire to be reclaimed by the People’s Republic of China. The independence of Mongolia, arranged by Stalin and accepted by Chiang Kai-shek in 1945, was beyond debate. Zhou also had to concede exclusive rights on economic activity in Xinjiang and Manchuria. Rights to mineral deposits in Xinjiang were granted for fourteen years. Mikoyan repeatedly badgered Zhou for ever higher quantities of tin, lead, wolfram and antimony, all to be delivered by the hundreds of tonnes a year to the Soviet Union. When Zhou meekly countered that China did not have the means to extract such large amounts of special metals, Mikoyan cut him off by offering help: ‘Just say what and when.’51

  On 14 February the Treaty of Friendship, Alliance and Mutual Assistance was finally signed, but all Mao obtained was $300 million in military aid over five years. For this modest sum Mao had to throw in major territorial concessions, so heavily reminiscent of the unequal treaties concluded with foreign powers in the nineteenth century that they were contained in secret annexes. China also agreed to pay thousands of Soviet advisers and technicians high salaries in gold, dollars or pounds. As the historian Paul Wingrove notes, ‘Mao’s victorious, independent, revolutionary state was being treated in much the same way as the captive territories of Eastern Europe, from which the Soviet Union also extracted the standard tariff in exchange for services of “experts”.’ And in an echo of the extraterritorial rights that had been abolished under Chiang Kai-shek in 1943, none of the Russians would be subject to Chinese law. Mao’s hands were tied. China was weak and needed a strong protector as international positions were hardening in an unfolding Cold War. The treaty provided just that, extending the Soviet Union’s protection in the event of aggression by Japan or its allies, in particular the United States. But despite all the fanfare around the treaty, Mao and Zhou must have left Moscow feeling aggrieved at how they had been treated.52

  New foreigners started arriving in 1950, flocking to Beijing, Shanghai and other cities by the hundreds, some with their families, others on their own. These were the Russian advisers and technicians. At first they formed new communities in the old concessions, but soon they dominated the foreign scene. In Shanghai they were concentrated in a special compound in the city’s most luxurious suburb, several kilometres west of town. A beautiful, unspoilt area with landscaped parks and opulent villas where foreigners shot duck, played golf and strolled along the creeks, the garden city of Hongqiao was soon requisitioned by the military. Foreigners were expelled, Russians moved in. Residents in the area were given twenty-four hours’ notice of the requisitioning of their property and ordered to move out. ‘Those who objected were forcibly evicted, and their furniture was carried out and placed in trucks.’ Technicians, pilots, fitters and others working at the airport, built in the area in 1907, occupied the vacant properties. Sentinels guarded the compound day and night. A bamboo fence went up, tall and solid. Locals soon referred to the area as the Russian Concession.53

  In every major city Russian advisers were isolated from the local population and quartered in closely guarded compounds. In Guangzhou the island of Shameen, where foreign companies and consulates had built stone mansions along the waterfront, became the centre of official life. Russian advisers were billeted in the Canton Club, once an exclusive domain for British members with private gardens, tennis courts and a football field. In Tianjin some took up quarters in the Jubilee Villas on London Road, where armed guards with tommy guns patrolled the entrance. Others stayed in the old Soviet consulate, where the facilities were updated with a three-metre brick wall topped by electrified barbed wire.54

  Russians were rarely seen, except when they came out on shopping expeditions, sullen-looking, wearing long leather coats, wide-bottomed trousers, leather boots and large-brimmed felt hats. ‘When they enter a shop all other customers are asked to leave.’ Their very high rate of pay, combined with restrictions on the export of currency, meant that they tended to buy luxury goods that were too expensive for the general population. ‘The Soviet experts were seen everywhere in the Shanghai shopping area; they avidly bought up all the American and European watches, pens, cameras and other luxury imports which were still available but which no Chinese could afford,’ noted Robert Loh. Soon they were spotted snapping up antique furniture, Oriental carpets, Limoges porcelain and other objets d’art, loaded by the crateful at the airport to be sent back to the Soviet Union.55

  By October 1950, as China was about to enter the Korean War, the Soviet presence included some 150,000 soldiers and civilians. In Port Arthur, where Stalin had a naval base and port privileges, the Russians had an army numbering 60,000. Along the railways linking the port to Vladivostok were another 50,000 troops, most of them railway guards. There were air force units in the north of Manchuria. Everywhere in China batches of uniformed men arrived as army and air force instructors.

  But the Soviet reach went well beyond the military. Thousands of civilian technicians helped build roads, bridges, factories and industry all over the country. In the ministries in Beijing, hundreds of them shadowed their local counterparts, coaching them in Soviet ways. The largest group – 127 specialists – was in the Ministry of Higher Education.56

  The flow went both ways, as one delegation after another visited the Soviet Union. A few were trade missions, but most went to learn the techniques of running a one-party state. Wang Yaoshan and Zhang Xiushan, for instance, spent four months touring the Soviet Union with a large delegation to study political organisation, from the training of urban cadres to the composition of the Central Committee in Beijing. Zhou Yang, vice-minister of culture, headed a team of fifty that inspected every aspect of propaganda, filing no fewer than 1,300 formal questions during their three-month stay, which included six visits to the newspaper Pravda. In every domain – from state security, city infrastructure, cadre training, economic construction and ideological work to heavy industry – China was copying the Soviet Union.57

  Trade with the Soviet Union shot up, a trend accelerated by the Western blockade during the Korean War. As China had limited foreign currency and gold reserves, it also paid for loans through exports. The basic trade pattern was the exchange of credit, capital goods and raw materials for special metals, manufactured goods and foodstuffs. Pork was bartered for cables, soybeans for aluminium, grain for steel rolls. Since the supply of such metals as antimony, tin and tungsten was limited, most Chinese exports to the Soviet Union consisted of agricultural commodities, ranging from fibres, tobacco, grain, soybeans, fresh fruit and edible oils to tinned meat. Soon the vast majority of exports were destined for Moscow.58

  As ‘Learn from the Soviet Union’ became the motto, cadres and intellectuals studied Stalin’s The History of the All-Union Communist Party: A Short Course. It was read like the Bible. Russian became compulsory in schools. One British woman living with her Chinese husband at Xiamen University noted: ‘Training camps and training centres were established and Russian became the first foreign language (actually the only foreign language) in all schoo
ls at various levels. On the education front every minute detail was copied from the Russians without discrimination, even the lunch hour was pushed back to three in the afternoon in order to ensure the practice of having six classes in succession in the morning.’59

  The Sino-Soviet Friendship Association – with its 120,000 branches – distributed books, magazines, films, lantern slides and plays, as well as generators, radios, microphones and gramophones to spread the message. Dozens of exhibitions were organised on themes from ‘Soviet Women’ and ‘Soviet Children’ to ‘Construction in the Soviet Union’. Even news in Chinese originated from the Soviet Union, as TASS, the official Soviet news agency, rapidly became the main source of information. As everybody was told again and again, ‘The Soviet Union’s Today is our Tomorrow’.60

  7

  War Again

  Liberation had come with the promise of peace. In 1949 most of the population had welcomed the People’s Liberation Army with a mixture of relief and wariness, hoping that they would be allowed to go about rebuilding their lives, families and businesses after more than a decade of warfare. Mao instead threw his people into a prolonged war in Korea in October 1950.

  At the Yalta conference in February 1945, Stalin not only wrangled secret concessions on Manchuria from Roosevelt, but also negotiated over the joint occupation of Korea, which had become a Japanese colony in 1910. The Korean peninsula extends for about 1,000 kilometres southwards of Manchuria, from which it is divided, for the greatest part, by a natural border formed by the Yalu River. In the extreme north-east, not far from Vladivostok, is a border of less than 20 kilometres with the Soviet Union. The Red Army marched into the northern half of the Korean peninsula in August 1945 with almost no resistance, halting at the 38th parallel for the American troops to arrive from the south. The Russians installed Kim Il-sung as the head of their provisional government.

  Born in 1912, Kim could barely speak Korean. His family had settled in Manchuria when he was still a young boy. He joined the Chinese Communist Party in 1931, carrying out guerrilla raids against the Japanese north of Yan’an. In 1940 he was forced to flee across the border into the Soviet Union, where he was retrained by the Red Army, rising through the ranks to become a major by the end of the Second World War.

  When he arrived in Pyongyang on 22 August 1945, Kim had been in exile for twenty-six years. He immediately supported Mao, sending tens of thousands of Korean volunteers and wagonloads of military supplies across the border to help the communists fight Chiang Kai-shek in Manchuria. Kim also used Soviet advisers to build up the Korean People’s Army. Stalin equipped it with tanks, lorries, artillery and small weapons. But Kim was bound by his protector, unable to send his troops south to attack the American-backed Syngman Rhee without the permission of the Soviet Union. Kim had to watch in frustration as Mao took over China, bringing a quarter of humanity into the socialist camp while Korea remained partitioned.1

  Kim pushed repeatedly for an assault on the south, but Stalin was in no rush for an open conflict involving the United States. Yet by the end of 1949 Stalin started to waver. The Americans had not intervened in the Chinese civil war and had all but abandoned Chiang Kai-shek on Taiwan. In discussions with Mao, who was in Moscow in late 1949, Stalin suggested moving some of the Korean troops in the People’s Liberation Army back across the Yalu River. Mao agreed, and sent over 50,000 veterans back to North Korea. Then, in January 1950, the United States indicated that Korea no longer fell within its defence perimeter in the Pacific. Kim badgered Moscow again on a number of secret trips to Moscow. Stalin now went along with the idea of an assault on the south, but was wary of becoming entangled in a costly adventure. He refused to commit any troops: ‘If you should get kicked in the teeth, I shall not lift a finger. You have to ask Mao for all the help.’ In April Kim went to see Mao.2

  Mao, in turn, needed Stalin. He could not invade Taiwan without the requisite sea and air power, which had to come from Moscow. And he could hardly deny the Koreans the opportunity to unify their own country now that most of China stood under one flag. Mao pledged to support Kim with troops if the Americans entered the war.3

  Military deliveries to North Korea from the Soviet Union jumped dramatically, including tanks and planes. Russian generals took over planning for the attack, setting the date for 25 June 1950. Under the pretext of a border skirmish, a comprehensive air and land invasion with a massive force of North Korean troops was launched. The south was ill prepared, with fewer than 100,000 soldiers. Alarmed at calls for a march north to overthrow the communists, the Americans had deliberately denied Syngman Rhee armour, anti-tank weapons and artillery heavier than 105 mm. His troops crumbled within weeks.4

  President Truman acted rapidly, warning that appeasement would be a mistake and vowing to repel the North Koreans. On the day of the invasion, the United Nations passed a resolution committing troops to support South Korea. The Soviet Union’s ambassador to the United Nations, who had been boycotting proceedings since January over Taiwan, was expected to return to the Security Council and vote against the resolution, but Stalin told him to stay away. Two days later tacit agreement was received from the Soviet Union that American intervention would not lead to an escalation. Stalin did nothing to prevent Western involvement in the conflict. He alone knew that Mao had made a commitment to sending troops to Korea. Perhaps he hoped that China would destroy large numbers of Americans in the conflict.5

  Truman ordered US troops based in Japan to assist South Korea. Determined to fight global communism, the president obtained $12 billion from Congress for military expenditure. Soon American soldiers were joined by troops from fifteen UN member nations, including Great Britain and France. In August the tide turned, as the United Nations counter-offensive retaliated with tactical superiority in tanks, artillery and air power. General Douglas MacArthur reached the 38th parallel in October 1950. He could have stopped there, but so confident was he that Mao would never dare to enter the conflict that he decided instead to push all the way to the Yalu River, ignoring the most basic security concerns of the People’s Republic.

  On 1 October Stalin wired Mao a message asking him for five or six divisions to assist the North Koreans. He suggested that they be called ‘volunteers’ to maintain the pretence that China was not formally involved in the war. Mao had already moved some of his troops up to the border and the next day he asked them to ‘stand by for the order to go into [Korea] at any moment’.6

  The Chairman spent the following days convincing his senior colleagues to back him. Only Zhou Enlai offered cautious support. Lin Biao, who had won the day in Manchuria during the civil war, feigned illness to turn down command of the troops. The other leaders, including Liu Shaoqi, strongly opposed entering the war, fearing that the United States might bomb the country’s cities, destroy its industrial base in Manchuria and even drop atomic bombs on China. Marshal Nie Rongzhen recalled that those who opposed the decision felt that after years of warfare ‘it would be better not to fight this war as long as it was not absolutely necessary’. Peng Dehuai only reluctantly agreed to assume command of the offensive after a sleepless night tossing and turning on the floor of his hotel room in Beijing, as the bed was too soft for comfort. ‘The tiger always eats people,’ he explained, ‘and the time when it wants to eat depends on its appetite. It is impossible to make any concessions to a tiger.’7

  Mao took a huge gamble. He hoped that America would not expand the war to China for fear of provoking the Soviets. He was also convinced that the Americans had no stomach for a prolonged war and would be no match for the millions of soldiers he was prepared to throw into the conflict. He believed that he would have to fight the Americans at some point, all the more so since Truman had sent the Seventh Fleet to protect Taiwan at the start of the Korean War. Fighting the imperialists in Korea would be easier than launching an amphibious assault on fortress Taiwan. Most of all, a hostile Korea on the Manchurian frontier would represent a serious security threat to the People’s
Republic.

  There was also quiet rivalry with Stalin. Korea was the arena where Russia and China were competing for dominance over Asia. Stalin was ahead of the game, having so far gone to great lengths to keep the Chinese communists out of North Korea. But once Russia’s satellite forces started to disintegrate, Mao was ready to march in from Manchuria, reverse the rout and assume the leadership of the communist camp in Asia.

  But Mao sought to extract a price from the Kremlin, and on 10 October 1950 sent Zhou Enlai and Lin Biao to negotiate with Stalin in his Black Sea dacha. Stalin committed ammunition, artillery and tanks, but reneged on an earlier promise to provide air cover, as the planes would not be ready for another two months. Stalin even wired Mao to let him know that China did not have to join the war. But Mao persisted: ‘With or without air cover from the Soviet Union,’ he replied, ‘we go in.’ Zhou Enlai buried his head in his hands after he read the cable. On 19 October, hundreds of thousands of Chinese troops surreptitiously began entering North Korea.8