Red Star over China (74 page)

Ma Hai-teh
(p. 377n), an American named George Hatem, was born in Buffalo, New York, in 1910, the son of Syrian immigrants. He completed his medical studies at the University of Geneva and went to practice in Shanghai. In 1936 he volunteered to serve in the Red areas. Dr. Hatem entered the Communist districts with the author, but asked him not to mention it when he left and wrote of the trip. That story, with an account of Dr. Hatem's subsequent career, was related in
TOSOTR.

Mao An-ch'ing
(p. 425), Mao's second son by Yang K'ai-hui, was born in Changsha
(circa
1921), and was hidden by friends when his mother was arrested. He was sent to Shanghai with his brother and later went on to Russia, where he was educated, reportedly as an engineer. On his return to China he worked as a Russian-language interpreter and translated some textbooks. Mao An-ch'ing and Mao's two daughters by Chiang Ch'ing were his only surviving children, Mao said in 1965. When the author asked Mao about reports that his son was an engineer, Mao replied that he did not know what “they” had taught him in Russia and implied his disappointment that An-ch'ing had not been educated in China.

Mao An-ying
(p. 425) was Mao's first son by Yang K'ai-hui, born in 1920. In 1930 he was arrested in Changsha with his mother, who was executed. Released, he was taken into hiding by other members of the family, who fled from Changsha. During the Second World War he studied in Russia. In 1948 he returned to China and for a few months worked on a commune in Shansi. Later he entered a higher Party school. Among the first of the Chinese to reach Korea during the intervention, he was in command of a division in the “Chinese People's Volunteer Corps” when he was killed on October 25, 1950.

Mao Tse-min
(p. 159n), younger brother of Mao Tse-tung and Mao Tse-t'an, early followed them into the Party. In 1923 he worked with Mao and Liu Shao-ch'i in Hunanese labor organizations. When Mao was deputy director of the Kuomintang Peasant Movement Training Institute in 1925, Mao Tse-min was a student there. He participated in the Northern Expedition, joined Mao at Chingkangshan, took part in the Kiangsi Soviet struggles and made the Long March. In Pao An and Yenan he was, under Lin Tsu-han, deputy director of finance and economy. In 1938 he was sent to Sinkiang province to serve as a financial adviser to General Sheng Shih-ts'ai, who then followed a pro-Communist policy. When Sheng reversed himself, and initiated an anti-Communist purge, Mao Tse-min was arrested and in 1942 he was executed.

Mao Tse-t'an
(p. 175) worked with his two brothers in organizing labor unions
in 1925. During the Kiangsi Soviet period he specialized in “building the economy.” He was criticized for sympathizing with the “Lo-Ming line”—reliance on guerrilla tactics (Mao Tse-tung's)—during the 1933–34 era, when the Politburo adopted a strategy of “meeting the enemy beyond the gates” and positional warfare. At the start of the Long March he was entrusted with the “State treasure.” He was killed in action in 1935. Mao Tse-tung adopted and educated his children, as well as the children of Mao Tse-min.

Mao Tse-tung
(p. 37).
Part Four
of this book, “Genesis of a Communist,” tells Mao's own story to the age of forty-three. I presented Mao with many questions concerning himself, the history of the Party, and his own leadership. The personal questions were used as a frame of reference; there were many flashbacks and flash-forwards, and various sidelong excursions elicited by further queries. I did extensive reorganization of my notes, and then gave the draft to Wu Liang-p'ing, who wrote a full translation. Mao read it over, corrected, reorganized, and amplified or condensed. The script was put into English again by Wu Liang-p'ing and myself, and then done into Chinese once more. Mao provided a revised text which Mr. Wu and I rendered into the final English.

On my return to Peking from the Northwest late in 1936 I quickly wrote up part of my notes. Early in 1937 I gave copies of my newspaper and magazine reports (about twenty-two articles) to some Chinese professors who translated and published them (semilegally) in a volume entitled
Chung-kuo Hsi-pei Yin-hsiang Chi,
“Impressions of Northwest China.” In July, 1937, I gave the same professors a copy of the completed manuscript of
Red Star Over China,
which they smuggled to Shanghai (the Japanese had occupied Peking), where they organized a translation team to secure speedy publication. They were patriotic members of the National Salvation Association, to which I granted translation rights, with earnings assigned to the Chinese Red Cross. Their volume was called
Hsi-hsing Man-chi
, or “Travels in the West.” It was the only authorized Chinese version of Mao's interviews.

Later on, various chapters and biographies were pirated from
RSOC
and reprinted in pamphlet form, in both English and Chinese. One of these, with the imprint of the “Truth Book Co.,” of Canton, in 1938 appeared under the title, “The Autobiography of Mao Tse-tung,” which omitted my own interpolations, questions and comments. In Hongkong, in 1949, the same company reprinted that English-language pamphlet as “dictated by Edgar Snow” and “revised” and “annoted” by “Tang Szu-chen,” someone unknown to me. The 1949 pamphlet contained numerous footnotes in Chinese presumably intended to guide readers seeking to follow the English text. Some of the Chinese names and terms were given correctly, some were not, and the “annoter” added a number of errors. (Mr. T'ang explained that “tramped” meant “trampled” in Chinese, that “peach” meant “pear,” that “militancy” meant “military strength,” and so on.)

A few American scholars evidently accepted the Canton piracy, “The Autobiography of Mao Tse-tung,” or other Chinese translations, as “new sources,” independent from RSOC.

In 1960, when I was in Peking, Mao Tse-tung told me that he had never written an “autobiography” and that the story of his life as told to me was the only one of its kind. None is included in his official works. Mao added that he did not intend to write an autobiography.

At the end of the Long March all the archives of the Red Army were held in two dispatch boxes in Mao's cave. The details he related to me were almost entirely from memory and no man's memory is perfect. Besides unintentional (or intentional) omissions, he made a few mistakes in names and dates. For another thing, Mao spoke in a southern (Hunan-ese) dialect in which a northern “Hu” becomes a “Fu,” a “Shih” becomes “Ssu,” etc. The names of many Communist leaders now famous in China were then unknown, I did not always copy down every name in Chinese characters, and when it came to transliterating—miles away from the Red areas, in Peking—I often failed to get a correct version even with the help of politically sophisticated Chinese. Benefiting from the research literature now available, I have been able to correct some errors, but it is not improbable that others still remain in this text.

Except for such minor corrections as are acknowledged above, or in footnotes, I have left Mao's personal recollections untouched, but in some annotations I have attempted to widen the perspective and sharpen the focus of his account of events. Biographical data here about Mao's coworkers and rivals may also help to illuminate certain happenings. For the reader's immediate convenience some highlights of Mao's career down to 1968 are summarized below.

Following the Sian Incident (1936) Mao moved his headquarters to Yenan. In January, 1937, he became chairman of the directorate of K'ang Ta (“Resist-Japan University”), a key post in that transitional period. In the same year he wrote
On Practice
and
On Contradiction,
followed in 1938 by
On Protracted War.
Prior to publication all were delivered as lectures at K'ang Ta (he told me in 1960) attended by PB and CC members. In August, 1937, at a meeting of the PB, enlarged by CC members (the Lochuan Conference), Mao's leadership as chairman was confirmed. Chang Kuo-t'ao, condemned for his “rightism” and violations of PB orders, was invited to confess his errors. He did so only superficially; in the following year he voluntarily left the Red areas to work for Chiang Kai-shek. With his departure practically the last open knowledge of any serious challenge to Mao's supremacy vanished until some intraparty controversies were publicly exhumed in 1966–67.

During the decade 1939–49 Mao wrote more political essays and evolved his military concepts, many originally expounded first as lectures at Kang Ta and the Party school of which he was president. (See Bibliography.) At the Seventh CCP Congress, in 1945, Mao was elected chairman of the CC and PB. After writing
On Coalition Government
he went
to Chungking with Chou En-lai (August, 1945) but failed to realize his ideas there. Civil war was resumed in June, 1946, and Mao became PLA C-in-C, with Chu Teh as field commander. Retreating from KMT-occupied Yenan to the mountains of Shansi in 1947, Mao planned operations with Chou En-lai, Jen Pi-shih, Ch'en Yi, P'eng Teh-huai and others, then recovered Yenan and the whole Northwest region in 1948.

In 1949, Mao's
On the People's Democratic Dictatorship
provided the framework for the provisional people's government (of various classes), set up in Peking, of which he became chairman. Late in 1949 he went to Moscow (his first trip abroad), where he and Chou En-lai negotiated the thirty-year Sino-Soviet treaty of alliance signed in 1950. Following the Korean War (in which Mao's full role has yet to be revealed) adoption of the constitution formally established the CPR, and in 1954 the NPC elected Mao chairman and chief of state. At the Eighth Congress of the CCP (1956) Mao was re-elected chairman of the CC and the PB; thus he became both the titular head of the governmental superstructure and the leader of the Party.

In 1957 Mao led China's delegation to Moscow's fortieth-anniversary celebrations of the October Revolution and there signed the manifesto of the Communist and Workers' parties of sixty-four countries. While in Moscow, Mao made a speech in which he proclaimed Communist world strategic superiority, which he described as a “turning point” of an “East Wind prevailing over the West Wind.” Tacit rejection of Mao's “turning point” theses by Khrushchev—whose “thaw” in the cold war was already well advanced—marked the beginning of the end of Sino-Soviet collaboration against U.S. imperialism, which became an open split by 1960.

Meanwhile the CCP CC had carried through an agrarian revolution in accordance with Mao's
Outlines of Agrarian Reform Law,
which phased agriculture through various stages of land distribution, cooperatives, and basic collectivization. Major industry was nationalized and capitalism was transformed, with private ownership of small enterprises merging into full state ownership and operation. CC directives under Mao revolutionized the social, cultural, and political life of the country and introduced state planning. In 1957, Mao's
On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People
(which recognized the continuation of class contradictions after a proletarian seizure of power) launched the brief-lived “Hundred Flowers” period of free speech and free criticism—to reveal widespread Party and extra-Party dissatisfaction with the “democratic dictatorship.” A drastic purge of “rightists” soon followed.

Hard upon the “rectification” came Mao's Great Leap Forward and the communes. Some experiments of the controversial GLF (such as backyard steel-making) were later acknowledged as errors. The communes were soon abandoned in the cities but they persisted, in form, in the countryside. Khrushchev ridiculed both the GLF and the communes as
“adventurism” and attributed China's food crisis and the “disaster years” of 1959–62 to Mao's innovations.

At the Lushan Conference of the CC, in August, 1959, Defense Minister P'eng Teh-huai was dismissed from office. It was known that he had opposed Mao's “general line,” the GLF, communes, and “politics in command” (vs. “economism” or pragmatism) and had sought to heal the break with the U.S.S.R. Not until a year after the launching of the GPCR (1966) and its attack on President Liu Shao-ch'i, however, did the Maoist press reveal something of the depth of the Party crisis of that period, and the ill-repaired split it had occasioned. Only at that time, also, did it become apparent that Mao had not altogether voluntarily retired from his post of chairmanship of the government in favor of Liu Shao-ch'i at the end of 1959. Evidently Marshal P'eng's dismissal (he was succeeded by Lin Piao) had been compensated for by some modifications in Mao's powers and policies, and loss of prestige within the CC.

China's partial economic recovery in 1963 and 1964, accompanied by Lin Piao's egalitarian army reforms and a “socialist [re] education” campaign in the countryside and among youth, foreshadowed the GPCR, the Red Guards, and a renewed contest between what may be inadequately termed Party ideologues versus pragmatists, or revolutionary purists versus politician technocrats, in dispute over whether the Party machine would command the Mao cult or Mao would command the machine. Pragmatists could be seen as “revisionists” of Maoist doctrine both at home and abroad, especially of its total irreconcilability with post-Stalinist Soviet doctrine, called “Khrushchevism.” Achievement of the atomic bomb (October, 1964), was acclaimed as a fruit of “self-reliance” by the Maoists and China's hydrogen bomb, in 1967, was likewise a product of the Thought of Mao. In 1965 there were unprecedented demonstrations of adoration and veneration of Mao and other
signs
of a coming all-out coun-teroffensive against revisionists. No doubt the American armed intervention in Vietnam also helped detonate the raw materials of internal combustion in a struggle for power which broke fully into the open in China in 1966.

Circumstances under which Mao managed to put through a resolution at the eleventh plenary session of the Eighth Party Congress which launched the GPCR, later utilized to attack many leaders who voted for it, were paradoxical. Evidently the meeting followed attempts by a CC group at a coup intended either to secure Mao's effective retirement or at least to bring the Cult under their control. Those involved included the PLA chief of staff, Lo Jui-ch'ing, a vice-premier; Ulanfu, the Mongol leader who was the only non-Han vice-premier in the PB; Li Ching-ch'uan, Party and PLA leader in Southwest China; former defense minister P'eng Teh-huai; Wang En-mao, commander of the Sinkiang region; Mayor P'eng Chen, boss of the North China CC and high in the PB; Vice-Premier Lu Ting-yi, PB member and CC propaganda chief; and various other CC leaders later alleged to have had support from President Liu Shao-ch'i, first vice-chairman of the Party and Mao's designated successor, and
Vice-Premier Teng Hsiao-p'ing, general secretary of the CC and the PB standing committee. Subsequent developments singled out Liu Shao-ch'i and Teng Hsiao-p'ing as prime targets of GPCR resolution. Yet at the CC meeting itself their supporters were sufficiently powerful to re-elect them to the PB, albeit in downgraded positions.