Wide Angle 31 - Mao - Part 1

Another day, another dictator. Since the Maoists are creating havoc in India and finally coming to the notice of the “people like us”, I decided to read up a bit on Mao to understand what this is all about. I have known and disliked communism for long because it ultimately leads to tyranny all under the false garb of being for the “people” and also had vague idea of Mao and that he was not such a nice person. I therefore read a very celebrated book called “Mao: The Unknown Story” by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday which like the book on Stalin that I wroteonuncovers a lot of papered over facts of Mao’s life. My feeling after reading the book was simply of being “stunned”. The whole world criticizes Hitler and stops at that. If you ask me, after reading about the three “top” dictators, Hitler is 1 * X in terms of tyranny, Stalin 20* X while Mao is probably 100*X. About 70 million deaths are attributed to Mao and this is through the mainstream channels. All this while being venerated all over the communist world and having movements in his name. The book exposes many myths about him and shows us the true person – one who was only interested in power for self and glory. If Hitler did what he did for the German people and the Aryan race, Stalin for Marxism and probably paranoia later on, Mao lived only for himself and sacrificed millions for his power and ambition.
Through this write up, I will write about a few main events in his life and the way he grew from being a peasant’s son to ruler of quarter of the world’s population and then all the foolish schemes that he launched to kill millions of his countrymen. I have split the write up into two parts so that I can keep each part short and can cover the story in detail, today it is part 1, next weekend will be part 2.

Origins and early days:
Mao was born in 1893 into a peasant family in a valley called Shaoshan in the province of Hunan in the heartland of China. He grew up in relative comfort and went off to study in college. He came in contact with Communist party set up in China in 1921. He doubled up as a college lecturer and a worker in the Communist movement but never showed any conformance to beliefs always showing his skills as an opportunist. The Soviets had identified the CCP as the future of their movement in China and had it helped through their international branch called the Comintern. The Soviets were interested in the Outer Mongolia area of China and the existing rulers of China i.e. the emperors were not too inclined to support this position. There was another party called the Nationalists in fray who was mostly comprised of the army generals and nobles. These folks were supportive of Soviet claims and this got them support from Stalin to capture power in 1925. Mao joined the Nationalists by aligning party members under him to join the Nationalists.
Mao had shown his bloodlust during these days when he was made the leader of the Hunan province where he was asked to arrange for revolution against the landlords. He unleashed a brutal regime by liquidating anyone with surplus land and encouraging torture and indiscriminate terror. The specialty of this regime was denunciation meetings where the suspects would be denounced and abused by the entire village for hours and then often tortured and killed in public. This regime was ultimately broken by the Nationalists.

Road to recognition:
The Nationalist leadership ultimately went to a dynamic general Chiang Kai Shek who was not only able but passionately patriotic. He was also against the Communists and acted to destroy the rising communist enclaves in the country. During this time, Mao aligned himself with two prominent bandits in the Jiangxi province and outwitted them to become the leader of their band and a red army in this province. It was in this province that he would rule for many years till the Long March forced him out. The description of his regime again stands out as being totally brutal and typically dictatorial with the locals and peasants squeezed out of every grain of corn they had and the leadership especially Mao rolling in luxury.
Mao had the central CCP leadership in Shanghai send more armies southwards on one pretext or another and simply took over these armies to simply increase his power base. This continued till the fabled Long March happened.

Long March:
Chiang’s armies were squeezing the CCP armies everywhere and this led to the Communists having to flee to the safe areas of Manchuria. History talks about the Long March being the defining moment of Mao’s life when he led the Red Army with lot of bravery away from the Nationalists to safety. Actually, all he was trying to do was to make sure he became Number one in the party by preventing his army merging with that of another formidable red general Peng De Huai. Peng had a much stronger army and a much better relation with Stalin. If the two had merged, Mao would have been overshadowed. Chiang expected these armies to merge too but Mao simply kept marching his armies around very bad terrain to prevent the merging and this led to more than 75% of the army dying along the way. They finally reached Tibet and Mao quickly liquidated the leadership there to become in charge. From there he took another arduous march to the northern province of Manchuria which was next to Soviet Union. Once he reached there, he could connect and get aid from Stalin and thus become the top leader of the CCP. He sacrificed thousands more and achieved this.

Japanese invasion and Mao’s benefit:
The Japanese had a base around Manchuria and ruled a part of China. They had no intention of getting into war with entire China. Neither did Chiang want to fight them because he knew the Chinese army was not as strong as the Japanese. Stalin was scared that if the Japanese did not fight the Chinese, they would invade the Soviet Union. The Reds had a mole in the Nationalist army (called ZZZ) who provoked the Japanese by repeatedly attacking them despite Chiang ordering him not to. Finally, the Japanese had enough and a full blown war started with the Japanese attacking multiple areas of China in 1937. This war lasted 8 years and took some 20 million Chinese lives. It weakened Chiang’s state and enabled Mao to gather an army of 1.3 million. At the beginning of this was, the ratio of Chiang’s army to Mao’s was 60:1, at the end, it was 3:1.
The strategy that Stalin had dictated to the CCP was to cooperate with Chiang against the Japanese so that they stayed occupied in China. Chiang also wanted this to keep the country together. However, Mao ignored Stalin’s diktat and participated minimum in the fight against the Japanese. What the communists did was to fight and drive the Nationalists out of the areas they had won from the Japanese by attacking their rear. Thus, the people who fought and died against the Japanese were the Nationalists while the Communists gained in power and areas. Finally, the war with Japan after the Second World War weakened Japan.

Defeating Chiang:
The Nationalist forces were in much better shape than the Red Army and with renewed vigor, they beat Mao’s forces almost out of China. It was at this moment that America intervened and saved Mao by forcing Chiang to stop the civil war and negotiate with the Reds. Mao used this time to secure Manchuria and link with Soviets who built railways, trained the Red Army and supplied them with armaments. When the war restarted, the Reds could match Chiang’s army and could defeat it at places especially the border areas with Soviet Union which they could not throw the Reds out of. The advantage was with Chiang though but this time Red Moles who were in the top echelons of Chiang’s administration delivered. These moles were placed in Nationalist regime in the early 1920s and nothing was asked of them till this time. One of them was Hu Tsun-nan. He was Chiang’s favorite and trusted General and it was to him that Chiang assigned the task of taking Yenan province which was the capital of Mao.
Hu simply showed as if he was fighting but sacrificed entire divisions to the Communists by informing them of troop movement and having them ambushed. Chiang had blind faith in his men and did not sack Hu till it was too obvious that betrayed after the whole army was destroyed after a year. Another general was Wei Li-huang who was given 550,000 troops in Manchuria to beat the Reds. He too sacrificed the entire army to the Reds. Slowly and steadily, the Reds captured the entire China and Chiang had to flee to Taiwan where he ruled for many years with American support. Chiang lost because he was nicer and less ruthless than Mao. Mao was now the supreme ruler of China – this was 1949, China had fallen to the Communists.

What Mao did after gaining power will be covered in the next Wide Angle. Hope you enjoyed the story so far.