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

by Dikötter, Frank

  5: The Great Terror

  1 Mao Zedong quoted in a speech by Deng Zihui on the spirit of the Third Plenum of the Seventh Central Committee of the CPC, 10 July 1950, Hubei, SZ1-2-15, pp. 19–47; needless to say, these uncensored quotations are substantially different from the published speech in Mao’s collected writings.

  2 Mao Zedong, ‘Don’t Hit Out in All Directions’, 6 June 1950, Selected Works of Mao Zedong, vol. 5, p. 34.

  3 Report from the South China Bureau, 21 Dec. 1950, Guangdong, 204-1-34, p. 50; Report on Guangxi, March 1951, Guangdong, 204-1-34, pp. 16–24; the quotation is from Mao Zedong, ‘A Single Spark Can Start a Prairie Fire’, 5 Jan. 1930, Selected Works of Mao Zedong, vol. 1, p. 124.

  4 Instructions from Mao Zedong, 3 Jan. 1951, Sichuan, JX1-836, p. 10; Report on Guangxi from inspection team, March 1951, Guangdong, 204-1-34, pp. 16–24 and 69–70; the telegram Tao wired to Mao is quoted in Yang, Dai ci de hong meigui, p. 111; while this telegram may be apocryphal, the figure of 430,000 pacified and 40,000 killed appears in Report from Guangxi Provincial Party Committee, 7 July 1951, Sichuan, JX1-836, pp. 78–82.

  5 Report by Luo Ruiqing, 23 Aug. 1952, Shaanxi, 123-25-2, p. 357.

  6 The quotation comes from Zhang Guotao, an ex-Politburo member and military leader who fell foul of Mao and was interviewed in Hong Kong in ‘High Tide of Terror’, Time, 5 March 1956; on Dzerzhinsky, see Faligot and Kauffer, The Chinese Secret Service, p. 345.

  7 Hubei, 21 Nov. 1950, SZ1-2-32, pp. 7–13; Report on Labour Camps, 8 June 1951, and Report from Li Xiannian on the Campaign against Counter-Revolutionaries, 1951, Hubei, SZ1-2-60, pp. 51 and 115; Report by Luo Ruiqing, 23 Aug. 1952, Shaanxi, 123-25-2, p. 357.

  8 Orders from Ye Jianying to Tao Zhu and Chen Manyuan, 10 May 1951, Guangdong, 204-1-34, pp. 1–5 (Ye Jianying was Tao Zhu’s immediate superior as leader of the Central and South China Bureau); Mao Zedong to Deng Xiaoping, Rao Shushi, Deng Zihui, Ye Jianying, Xi Zhongxun and Gao Gang, 20 April 1951, Sichuan, JX1-834, pp. 75–7.

  9 Mao’s Comments on Report from Henan, 11 March 1951, Sichuan, JX1-836, p. 17; Mao’s instructions to Luo Ruiqing, 30 Jan. 1951, Sichuan, JX1-834,p. 9; see also Comments by Mao, 20 Jan. 1951, Shaanxi, 123-25-2, p. 40.

  10 Orders by Mao Zedong transmitted to Li Jingquan, 18 Feb. 1951, Sichuan, JX1-807, pp. 89–91; this form of government in Nazi Germany has been called ‘working towards the Führer’ by Ian Kershaw, and Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals have proposed calling it ‘working towards the Chairman’ in the case of the Cultural Revolution, Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals, Mao’s Last Revolution, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006.

  11 Order from Mao, 14 April 1951, Shandong, A1-5-29, p. 124; this comment is different from the version printed in Mao Zedong, Jianguo yilai Mao Zedong wengao (Mao Zedong’s manuscripts since the founding of the People’s Republic), Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, 1987–96, vol. 2, pp. 215–16, as is the case in many other of Mao’s directives used in this chapter; the central directive dated 21 May 1951 is in Mao, Jianguo yilai, vol. 2, p. 319.

  12 Mao Zedong to Deng Xiaoping, Rao Shushi, Deng Zihui, Ye Jianying, Xi Zhongxun and Gao Gang, 20 April 1951, Sichuan, JX1-834, pp. 75–7; the exact formulation is three out of five military regions that encompassed several provinces each; in Guizhou the number given was 29,000; see Investigation Report on Guizhou, 7 July 1951, Sichuan, JX1-839,pp. 250–2.

  13 Minutes of the Third National Conference on Public Security, 16 and 22 May 1951, Shandong, A1-4-9, p. 38; see also Shandong, A51-1-28,p. 215; Luo Ruiqing’s talk at the Government Administration Council,3 Aug. 1951, Shandong, A51-1-28, p. 212.

  14 Sichuan, 20 March 1953, JK1-729, p. 29; this document is dated 1953, when the judicial authorities looked into some of the most egregious abuses that took place during the terror in 1951.

  15 Report from Qian Ying, secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, to Zhu De, 25 March 1953, Sichuan, JK1-730, p. 35.

  16 Report on infringements against minority policy, Sichuan, 24 July 1952, JX1-880, pp. 82–3.

  17 Statistics and detailed examples about false arrests in Guizhou can be found in a report circulated in Sichuan, 18 June 1951, JX1-839,pp. 227–9.

  18 Sichuan, 25 April 1951, JX1-839, pp. 159–60; Report by Deng Xiaoping to Mao Zedong, 13 March 1951, Shandong, A1-5-20, pp. 16–19.

  19 Report from Yunnan, 29 April 1951, Sichuan, JX1-837, p. 74.

  20 Hu Yaobang, Report on West Sichuan, 29 April 1951, Sichuan, JX1-837, p. 190.

  21 Sichuan, 28 May 1951, JX1-837, pp. 105–8; Report by Luo Zhimin, Sichuan, July 1951, JX1-37, pp. 1–2.

  22 Comments by Mao, 16 May 1951, Shandong, A1-5-20, p. 134; see also Mao, Jianguo yilai, vol. 2, p. 306.

  23 Report from Fuling, 5 April and 28 May 1951, Sichuan, JX1-837, pp. 141–2 and 147–8; Report on capital executions in Wenjiang, 28 June 1951, Sichuan, JX1-342, p. 115; Report from the East China Bureau, including details on west Sichuan, 12 May 1951, Shandong, A1-5-29,p. 189; on mass killings in west Sichuan, including Dayi, Mianyang and other counties, see also Sichuan, JX1-342, 7 June 1951, p. 32.

  24 Guo Ya, ‘Kaifeng de zhenya’ (The campaign to suppress counter-revolutionaries in Kaifeng), in Jiao Guobiao, Hei wulei jiyi (Memories from the five black categories), 2010, vol. 8, Beijing: Jiao Guobiao, pp. 57–8.

  25 Greene, Calvary in China, p. 96.

  26 Zhang Yingrong interviewed by Liao Yiwu, God is Red: The Secret Story of How Christianity Survived and Flourished in Communist China, New York: HarperCollins, 2011, pp. 121–2; Zhang was classified as a landlord because his eldest brother had been a county chief under the nationalist government.

  27 Instructions from the Provincial Party Committee, 3 April 1951, Hebei, 855-1-137, p. 23; Zhang Mao’en interviewed by Liao Yiwu, God is Red,p. 136.

  28 Instructions from the Provincial Party Committee, 3 April 1951, Hebei, 855-1-137, p. 23; Sichuan, 25 Feb. 1953, JK1-745, p. 67.

  29 Report on the killing of Huang Zuyan, 12 April 1951, Comments by Mao Zedong, Shandong, 19 April 1951, A1-5-20, pp. 38–43; a witness at the time also sees this incident as critical in the triggering of ‘revenge killings’ by Mao: see Li Changyu, ‘Mao’s “Killing Quotas” ’, China Rights Forum, no. 4 (2005), pp. 41–4.

  30 Comments by Mao, 18 March 1951, Shandong, A1-5-20, pp. 63–4; also in Mao, Jianguo yilai, vol. 2, pp. 168–9.

  31 Reports from Shandong with Comments by Mao, 3, 4 and 7 April 1951, Shandong, A1-4-14, pp. 30, 43 and 50; the reference to ‘faint-hearted comrades’ is not included in the Jianguo yilai, vol. 2, pp. 225–6; Report from Jinan to the Centre, 13 April 1951, Sichuan, JX1-835, pp. 33–4.

  32 Report on Preparations for the Raid from the East China Bureau to the Centre, 27 April 1951, Sichuan, JX1-834, pp. 83–4; Robert Loh, Escape from Red China, London: Michael Joseph, 1962, pp. 65–6.

  33 Loh, Escape from Red China, pp. 65–6 and 68.

  34 Noel Barber, The Fall of Shanghai, New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1979, p. 223.

  35 ‘Speech by Mayor Peng Zhen’, Renmin ribao, 22 June 1951, p. 1; the original is much longer and is abbreviated here.

  36 Cheo, Black Country Girl in Red China, p. 60.

  37 Chow Ching-wen, Ten Years of Storm: The True Story of the Communist Regime in China, New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1960, p. 110; Instructions from the Provincial Party Committee, 3 April 1951, Hebei, 855-1-137, p. 23.

  38 Instructions from Mao, 30 April 1951, Sichuan, JX1-834, pp. 92–3; see also Mao, Jianguo yilai, vol. 2, pp. 267–8.

  39 Luo Ruiqing’s report to Mao Zedong, 20 March 1951, Sichuan, JX1-834, pp. 50–2.

  40 Kou Qingyan, Report on Border Defence and the Campaign against Counter-Revolutionaries, 28 Oct. 1951, Guangdong, 204-1-27,pp. 152–5; Report by Wang Shoudao to the Centre, 26 Dec. 1952, Shandong, A1-5-85, pp. 120–5.

  41 Report by Luo Ruiqing, 2 Jan. 1953, Shandong, A1-5-85, pp. 49 and 62; see also Report by Luo Ruiqing, 22 Ap
ril 1953, Shandong, A1-5-85,p. 43.

  42 Report by Luo Ruiqing, 23 Aug. 1952, Shaanxi, 123-25-2, p. 357.

  43 Report from Fuling, 5 April and 28 May 1951, Sichuan, JX1-837, pp. 141–2 and 147–8; Report on capital executions in Wenjiang, 28 June 1951, Sichuan, JX1-342, pp. 113–14; General report by Deng Xiaoping,30 Nov. 1951, Sichuan, JX1-809, p. 32.

  44 Report from the Eastern China region, Shandong, 12 May 1951, A1-5-29, pp. 183–4.

  45 Report on counter-revolutionaries, Hebei, 1962, 884-1-223, p. 149.

  46 Minutes of the Third National Conference on Public Security, 16 and 22 May 1951, Shandong, A1-4-9, p. 14.

  47 Liu Shaoqi, Report at the Fourth Plenum of the Seventh Central Committee, 6 Feb. 1954, Guangdong, 204-1-203, pp. 3–8; Mao Zedong, ‘On the Ten Great Relationships’, 25 April 1956, circulated on 16 May 1956, Shandong, A1-2-387, pp. 2–17; this figure was probably based on the statistics gathered by Xu Zirong, the deputy minister for public security, and submitted in a report dated 14 January 1954. The report is referred to in Yang Kuisong’s article entitled ‘Reconsidering the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries’, China Quarterly, no. 193 (March 2008), pp. 102–21.

  48 Georg Paloczi-Horvath, Der Herr der blauen Ameisen: Mao Tse-tung, Frankfurt am Main: Scheffler, 1962, p. 249.

  49 On the outcasts and their social function see Yang Su, Collective Killings in Rural China during the Cultural Revolution, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011, pp. 114–20.

  50 Loh, Escape from Red China, p. 70.

  51 Li, ‘Mao’s “Killing Quotas” ’, p. 41.

  52 Cheo, Black Country Girl in Red China, p. 73.

  6: The Bamboo Curtain

  1 Peter Lum, Peking, 1950–1953, London: Hale, 1958, p. 84; Peter Lum was the pen name of Eleanor Peter Crowe, the wife of Colin Crowe and sister of Catherine Lum, Antonio Riva’s wife; ‘Old Hands, Beware!’, Time, 27 Aug. 1951; see also L. H. Lamb, British Embassy Report, 29 Aug. 1951, PRO, FO371-92332, p. 155.

  2 ‘Old Hands, Beware!’, Time, 27 Aug. 1951; the drawing and other evidence of the affair appear in PRO, FO371-92333, pp. 2–25.

  3 Lum, Peking, 1950–1953, pp. 90–2.

  4 Hao Yen-p’ing, The Commercial Revolution in Nineteenth-Century China: The Rise of Sino-Western Mercantile Capitalism, Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 1986; Philip Richardson, Economic Change in China, c. 1800–1950, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, p. 42.

  5 On the foreign community in the republican era, see Frank Dikötter, China before Mao: The Age of Openness, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008; a wonderful book on the expatriate communities is Frances Wood, No Dogs and Not Many Chinese: Treaty Port Life in China, 1843–1943, London: John Murray, 1998; see also Nicholas R. Clifford, Spoilt Children of Empire: Westerners in Shanghai and the Chinese Revolution of the 1920s, Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1991; John K. Fairbank, Chinabound: A Fifty-Year Memoir, New York: Harper & Row, 1982, p. 51.

  6 See the seminal work of Albert Feuerwerker, The Foreign Establishment in China in the Early Twentieth Century, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1976, pp. 106–7.

  7 Elden B. Erickson interviewed by Charles Stuart Kennedy, 25 June 1992, The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project; ‘Angus Ward Summarizes Mukden Experiences’, Department of State Bulletin, 21, no. 547 (26 Dec. 1949), p. 955, quoted in Herbert W. Briggs, ‘American Consular Rights in Communist China’, American Journal of International Law, 44, no. 2 (April 1950), p. 243; see also, among others, Sergei N. Goncharov, John W. Lewis and Xue Litai, Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao, and the Korean War, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993, pp. 33–4.

  8 Mao Zedong, ‘Farewell, John Leighton Stuart’, 18 Aug. 1949, Selected Works of Mao Zedong, vol. 4, p. 433.

  9 David Middleditch interviewed by Beverley Hooper, 21 Aug. 1971, quoted in Beverley Hooper, China Stands Up: Ending the Western Presence, 1948–1950, London: Routledge, 1987, p. 47; on the emergency evacuation see also Hooper, China Stands Up, p. 48.

  10 Ezpeleta, Red Shadows over Shanghai, p. 173; Eleanor Beck, ‘My Life in China from 2 January 1946 to 25 September 1949’, unpublished manuscript quoted in Hooper, China Stands Up, pp. 47–9.

  11 Hooper, China Stands Up, p. 50.

  12 Van der Sprenkel, ‘Part I’, pp. 5–6.

  13 Hooper, China Stands Up, pp. 73–4.

  14 Ibid., pp. 57 and 77; Edwin W. Martin, Divided Counsel: The Anglo-American Response to Communist Victory in China, Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1986, p. 42.

  15 Doak Barnett, letter no. 38, ‘Chinese Communists: Nationalism and the Soviet Union’, 16 Sept. 1949, Institute of Current World Affairs; Bodde, Peking Diary, pp. 219–20; David Middleditch interviewed by Beverley Hooper, 21 Aug. 1979, in Hooper, China Stands Up, p. 73.

  16 Hooper, China Stands Up, pp. 78–9, quoting Beck, ‘My Life in China’.

  17 Ibid., pp. 80–1.

  18 American Embassy to Foreign Service, 15 March 1951, PRO, FO371-92331, pp. 29–34; Control of American Assets, Jan. 1951, PRO, FO371-92294, pp. 81–7.

  19 William G. Sewell, I Stayed in China, London: Allen & Unwin, 1966, p. 126.

  20 Rossi, The Communist Conquest of Shanghai, pp. 100–1; Liliane Willens, Stateless in Shanghai, Hong Kong: China Economic Review Publishing, 2010, pp. 253–4.

  21 Godfrey Moyle interviewed by Barber, The Fall of Shanghai, p. 226.

  22 Memorandum and Letter from the British Consulate General in Shanghai, 2 and 6 March 1951, PRO, FO371-92260 pp. 99–101 and 128–9.

  23 Rossi, The Communist Conquest of Shanghai, pp. 72–3; see also Aron Shai, ‘Imperialism Imprisoned: The Closure of British Firms in the People’s Republic of China’, English Historical Review, 104, no. 410 (Jan. 1989), pp. 88–109.

  24 Rossi, The Communist Conquest of Shanghai, pp. 67–70.

  25 Peitaiho Beach, 11 Sept. 1952, PRO, FO371-99238, pp. 13–15, and British Embassy to Foreign Office, 21 Jan. 1952, PRO, FO371-99345, p. 31.

  26 On Harriet Mills, who later wrote about her experience and became a sinologist, see J. M. Addis, Conversation with Sardar Panikkar, 4 Dec. 1951, PRO, FO371-92333, pp. 135–6; Testimony by Father Rigney,7 March 1956, PRO, FO371-121000, pp. 26–7; in an interesting case of Stockholm syndrome, Harriet Mills proclaimed after her deportation from the country in 1955 that ‘New China is a peace-loving nation’ and stuck to her official confession as a spy as well as to her denunciations of several other Americans; see Arrests and Trials in China, 1955, PRO, FO371-115182, pp. 54–70; the Ricketts also justified their incarceration; see Allyn and Adele Rickett, Prisoners of Liberation, New York: Cameron Associates, 1957; both cases gave rise to allegations of brainwashing; on the sweep see Lum, Peking, 1950–1953, p. 71.

  27 Orders on the Treatment of Foreigners, Shandong, 14 Aug. 1951, A1-4-9, p. 85; Lum, Peking, 1950–1953, p. 21.

  28 Lum, Peking, 1950–1953, p. 99.

  29 Walker, China under Communism, p. 19; on the pitiable state of many White Russians in 1953, see Parliamentary Question, 28 Jan. 1953, PRO, FO371-105338, pp. 61–2 and 116–22.

  30 ‘14 Chinese Trappists Dead, 274 are Missing’, Catholic Herald, 19 Dec. 1947; R. G. Tiedemann, Reference Guide to Christian Missionary Societies in China: From the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Century, Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2009, p. 25; Theresa Marie Moreau, Blood of the Martyrs: Trappist Monks in Communist China, Los Angeles: Veritas Est Libertas, 2012; Hooper, China Stands Up, p. 38.

  31 Creighton Lacy, ‘The Missionary Exodus from China’, Pacific Affairs, 28, no. 4 (Dec. 1955), pp. 301–14; ‘New China Hands?’, Time, 17 Jan. 1949.

  32 Hooper, China Stands Up, p. 115.

  33 British Legation to the Holy See, 22 Aug. 1950, FO371-83535, p. 70.

  34 Foreign Office, The Treatment of Christian Institutions under the Present Regime in China, 29 Aug. 1951, PRO, FO371-92368, pp. 112–17.

  35 International Fides Service, 22 Sept. 1951, PRO, FO371-
92333,pp. 29–32; Rossi, The Communist Conquest of Shanghai, pp. 137–8.

  36 Orders from the Bureau of Public Security, Shandong, 14 Aug. 1951, A1-4-9, p. 85; on Mao’s fascination with the Vatican, see Chang and Halliday, Mao, p. 327; see also Rossi, The Communist Conquest of Shanghai, pp. 144–5.

  37 W. Aedan McGrath, Perseverance through Faith: A Priest’s Prison Diary, ed. Theresa Marie Moreau, Bloomington, IN: Xlibris Corporation, 2008.

  38 ‘On the King’s Highway’, Time, 15 Sept. 1952; ‘US Bishop Died in Red Jail’, New York Times, 3 Sept. 1952; see also Jean-Paul Wiest, Maryknoll in China: A History, 1918–1955, Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1988,pp. 395–400.

  39 A. Olbert, ‘Short Report about the Diocese of Tsingtao’, 17 July 1953, AG SVD, Box 616, pp. 4440–6; ‘The Struggle of the Archbishop of Lan Chow’, 1953, AG SVD, Box 631, pp. 5878–86.

  40 ‘The Suspicious Butterflies’, Time, 3 Nov. 1952; China Missionary Newsletters, Oct. 1952, PRO, FO137-105336, p. 9.

  41 Hooper, China Stands Up, p. 119.

  42 Christianity in Communist China, 1954, PRO, FO371-110371, p. 43; Arrest of Canadian Nuns at Canton, 20 April 1951, PRO, FO371-92331, pp. 49–54; Foreign Office, 19 Dec. 1951, PRO, FO371-92333 p. 130; André Athenoux, Le Christ crucifié au pays de Mao, Paris: Alsatia, 1968, pp. 127–8.

  43 Catholic Herald, 14 Dec. 1941, p. 1; Walker, China under Communism, p. 191; see also Arrest of Canadian Nuns at Canton, 20 April 1951, PRO, FO371-92331, p. 49.

  44 Christianity in Communist China, 1954, PRO, FO371-110371,pp. 43–5; the 1954 numbers are from Report from the Centre, Shandong, A14-1-16, 7 May 1954, p. 2; Letter from Qingdao missionaries in Hong Kong to Rome, 23 March 1953, AG SVD, Box 616, p. 4424.

  45 Barnett, letter no. 38, ‘Chinese Communists’; Knight Biggerstaff, Nanking Letters, 1949, Ithaca, NY: China–Japan Program, Cornell University, 1979, pp. 50–1; the monument in Shenyang went up in 1946; see Gray, ‘Looted City’, Time, 11 March 1946, and also J. A. L. Morgan, Journey to Manchuria, 30 Nov. 1956, PRO, FO371-120985, p. 129; ‘Leaning to One Side’, Time, 19 Sept. 1949.