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Stalin, the ghost who haunts China
Times Online ^ | July 24, 2005 | Jonathan Fenby

Posted on 08/21/2005 4:30:17 AM PDT by Tailgunner Joe

Three decades after his death the face of Mao Tse-tung still stares out over the huge expanse of Tiananmen Square in central Beijing. Though the authorities now admit that the founder of Communist China was “70% right, 30% wrong”, the man who led the greatest revolution since the second world war remains a sacrosanct figure in the world’s most heavily populated nation.

This summer, though, his reputation has been comprehensively demolished in the West by the bestselling biography, Mao: The Unknown Story, by Jung Chang, author of the perennial bestseller Wild Swans, and her historian husband, Jon Halliday. It blames Mao for 70m deaths — far more than Hitler or Stalin.

Though travellers have brought in copies in their luggage, and it has been reviewed in newspapers in Hong Kong, the book is not on sale in mainland China. English-language newspapers in the Far East that carried articles about it were banned. On internet chat sites the censors have moved in to delete any postings critical to the man hailed as the Great Helmsman of China.

Chang’s book, published by Jonathan Cape, has attracted most attention for its portrayal of Mao as an utterly ruthless, evil figure who eliminated enemies by purges, poison and murderous traps, abandoned three wives and was driven by ambition, not ideology. But the shock might not be so great in China as in the West, given the killings and disasters the country suffered in the 20th century, the general absence of humanity among its leaders, and the personal experience so many people had of the disasters of the past half-century.

In its 70-30 valuation of Mao, Beijing is willing to admit to one major fault — the Cultural Revolution he launched in 1966 to assert his authority by unleashing the Red Guards on the political establishment, which he feared was escaping his control. But this disavowal is used for a political purpose, to argue how important it is to maintain stability and how dangerous political reform would be.

Otherwise, Mao remains untouchable in China, though it has become increasingly clear he is a figure surrounded by self-created myths that no longer hold water. There is a very good reason for this, which explains why the new biography and other recent research represent a real and present danger for the rulers of the last leading state run by a Communist party. Remove the props of Maoist history and you bring into question the foundations of the party’s legitimacy to govern 1.3 billion people and head an emerging global economic superpower.

Four elements lie at the heart of the Mao story. All are totally or largely false.

A key assertion is that he was a pure nationalist who put his country first and led the only true resistance to the Japanese invasion of China from 1931 to 1945. This is particularly important today, when the wilting appeal of communism has led the authorities to promote nationalism to win public support, particularly against Japan. Mao as patriotic hero is a potent recruiting sergeant.

But this new biography shows how a foreign leader, Joseph Stalin, aided and directed Mao’s rise. Halliday is a Russian expert, and has extracted a wealth of documentation from the Moscow archives. The Soviet role in establishing the Chinese Communist party around 1920 was already known, but what is new is how, despite some divergences, Mao followed Stalin’s dictates to win power.

Only the Kremlin could provide the political backing, money and arms he needed. Since Stalin played a double game in China, maintaining relations with the Nationalists and supplying Mao’s great opponent, Chiang Kai-shek, with arms, Mao’s greatest fear must have been that Moscow would desert him in the name of realpolitik. To avoid that, he kowtowed to Moscow — even after he achieved power he rose to his feet during a visit by a Soviet envoy to cry out three times “ May Stalin live ten thousand years”.

Another big hole in the Mao-as-patriot story comes during the full-scale war that broke out with Japan in 1937. Apart from one offensive, of which the Chairman disapproved, the Red Army avoided conflict, saving its resources for civil war with the Nationalists after Tokyo’s defeat. Petr Parfenovich Vladimirov, the main Soviet adviser at Mao’s headquarters, makes this evident in his diary, which was published in 1974 in India but escaped attention until recently.

Communist forces, Vladimirov noted in 1942-43, “have long been abstaining from both active and passive action against the aggressors”. Instead, they were ordered to retreat and seek truces. Visiting battle areas a little later, a US unit found that Communist units had struck non-aggression agreements with the invaders. Trade flourished across the lines.

Nor was this all. The Communists maintained contacts with the collaborationist regime set up by Japan. Mao even floated the idea of a ceasefire with Japan in northern China.

Similarly, the base from which the Chairman operated during the war years at Yenan in north China turns out to have been very different from the model society of selfless idealists portrayed in official writing, and reproduced by many western accounts. The truth was that the base writhed with political intrigue as Mao used terror and mass indoctrination to get unquestioning allegiance.

On top of this, the politburo decided to go into the opium trade. Vladimirov records a cadre telling him narcotics would “play a revolutionary vanguard role”. Trading as the Local Product Company and describing its output as “soap” in its records, the Communist drug enterprise exported millions of boxes of opium a year, supplying it to itinerant merchants or using the Red Army for transport through enemy lines. A Taiwanese researcher estimates this provided 40% of the base’s revenue.

The war against Japan over, the orthodox story is that, led by the all-wise Chairman, China’s peasants overthrew the reactionary Nationalists in a template of rural revolution. In fact, Mao had a low opinion of the peasantry, amounting to contempt. While the masses in the Communist rural areas were needed to provide manpower and act as bearers, the Chairman preferred attacking cities to waging war in the fields as the Chinese civil war unfolded after Japan’s defeat in 1945. Initially, he was not very successful. Though it was exhausted by the long war with Japan, Chiang’s regime pushed the Communists to the far north of the country, and was poised to finish them off. At that moment, a powerful American emissary, the future secretary of state George Marshall, forced Chiang to call a truce, which allowed the Red Army to escape.

Stalin then came through as Moscow provided large quantities of supplies to the Chinese Communists. Using Russian arms and tactics, Communist forces swept south, crossed the Great Wall, took Beijing and defeated the Nationalists in an epic battle involving millions of men in east China. Despite the peasant legend, this was the victory of a modern army using American equipment captured from the Nationalists, as well as Soviet supplies — the first troops to enter Beijing rode in US trucks.

A hidden element in that victory, as Chang and Halliday lay out, was that key Nationalist generals were secret Communist agents or switched sides. These defections hammered the final nail in the Nationalist coffin and, at the end of 1949, Chiang flew to Taiwan to dream fruitlessly of reconquering the nation he had lost.

It is also clear that the most important plank in the Maoist platform is deeply worm-eaten. The year-long Long March out of southeast China to a safe haven in the north of the country in 1934-35 is extolled as one of the great heroic feats of the 20th century, in which the Red Army, under Mao’s leadership, scaled mountains, forded torrents and crossed murderous swamps as it fought off Chiang’s troops. Fanned by uncritical reports from western writers, the trek became proof of the Chairman’s genius and his natural-born aptitude to lead the cause.

The reality was that regional warlords allowed the Red Army to escape for fear that Chiang’s central government troops would set up permanent camp in their domains. The Communists killed huge numbers of peasants along the way.

Far from trekking with his men, Mao was carried on a litter. When his wife was severely wounded by shrapnel, he paid her no attention. Chang and Halliday even report that the most celebrated incident of the journey, in which intrepid soldiers were said to have climbed across the chain links of a demolished bridge above a foaming river, simply never happened. They also say that Chiang let the Communists escape because he hoped that, in return, Stalin would release his son, who was being held in Moscow.

Confronted with such a charge sheet, what would Beijing be left with if it allowed the myths to be stripped away? An inhuman dictator who cared nothing for the ideology on which the post-1949 state is supposed to be based. A revolution achieved by armed force, not popular support. A wartime leader who dealt with the enemy, and presided over a drug empire. A serial murderer who dreamt up torture methods and exulted in the suffering of victims. A man for whom relationships had no meaning, who despised the masses and who fabricated his own image for posterity.

Given that, it is no wonder the government and party hold back from allowing the founding myths of the regime to be brought into serious question. The party is intent on controlling any move towards openness for fear of being engulfed by a tide of change. But if China is to become a modern state, its leadership will have to recognise that, so long as it does not come to terms with history, it will be moored to the past and to a deeply distorted account of events.

Still, behind the censorship, there are some openings in the curtain. Mao’s misdeeds are becoming better known among the Chinese people. Jung Chang is working on a Chinese version of her book, which she hopes will be smuggled into the mainland. Last month a Chinese publisher said it wanted to bring out a translated edition of my book Chiang Kai-shek and the China He Lost.

Given its warts-and-all picture of the generalissimo, this may not seem surprising: he is still officially regarded on the mainland as an enemy of the people. But I wait with interest to see what the publisher does with the passages on the Red Army’s hands-off approach to the Japanese, the Communist opium business, the Long March, and the nature of the Communist victory.


TOPICS: Books/Literature; Chit/Chat; History
KEYWORDS: jungchang

1 posted on 08/21/2005 4:30:17 AM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
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To: Tailgunner Joe
Though it was exhausted by the long war with Japan, Chiang’s regime pushed the Communists to the far north of the country, and was poised to finish them off. At that moment, a powerful American emissary, the future secretary of state George Marshall, forced Chiang to call a truce, which allowed the Red Army to escape.
if you believe that you believe that the Truman Administration was riddled with commies at the highest level who prevented the defeat of Mao.

This is a bunch of McCarthyism (not that there is anything wrong with that . . .)


2 posted on 08/21/2005 4:47:07 AM PDT by conservatism_IS_compassion (The idea around which liberalism coheres is that NOTHING actually matters but PR.)
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To: Tailgunner Joe

Sunlight is the best disinfectant!


3 posted on 08/21/2005 4:50:44 AM PDT by Huber (For a leftist to become open-minded, they must first come to know Christ)
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To: conservatism_IS_compassion
Speech delivered by Senator Joseph McCarthy before the Senate on June 14, 1951

How can we account for our present situation unless we believe that men high in this Government are concerting to deliver us to disaster? This must be the product of a great conspiracy, a conspiracy on a scale so immense as to dwarf any previous such venture in the history of man. A conspiracy of infamy so black that, when it is finally exposed, its principals shall be forever deserving of the maledictions of all honest men.

Who constitutes the highest circles of this conspiracy? About that we cannot be sure. We are convinced that Dean Acheson, who steadfastly serves the interests of nations other than his own, the friend of Alger Hiss, who supported him in his hour of retribution, who contributed to his defense fund, must be high on the roster. The President? He is their captive. I have wondered, as have you, why he did not dispense with so great a liability as Acheson to his own and his party's interests. It is now clear to me. In the relationship of master and man, did you ever hear of man firing master? Truman is a satisfactory front. He is only dimly aware of what is going on.

I do not believe that Mr. Truman is a conscious party to the great conspiracy, although it is being conducted in his name. I believe that if Mr. Truman bad the ability to associate good Americans around him, be would have behaved as a good American in this most dire of all our crises.

It is when we return to an examination of General Marshall's record since the spring of 1942 that we approach an explanation of the carefully planned retreat from victory, Let us again review the Marshall record, as I have disclosed it from all the sources available and all of them friendly. This grim and solitary man it was who, early in World War II, determined to put his impress upon our global strategy, political and military.

It was Marshall, who, amid the din for a "second front now" from every voice of Soviet inspiration, sought to compel the British to invade across the Channel in the fall of 1942 upon penalty of our quitting the war in Europe.

It was Marshall who, after North Africa had been secured, took the strategic direction of the war out of Roosevelt's hands and - who fought the British desire, shared by Mark Clark, to advance from Italy into the eastern plains of Europe ahead of the Russians.

It was a Marshall-sponsored memorandum, advising appeasement of Russia In Europe and the enticement of Russia into the far-eastern war, circulated at Quebec, which foreshadowed our whole course at Tehran, at Yalta, and until now in the Far East.

It was Marshall who, at Tehran, made common cause with Stalin on the strategy of the war in Europe and marched side by side with him thereafter.

It was Marshall who enjoined his chief of military mission in Moscow under no circumstances to "irritate" the Russians by asking them questions about their forces, their weapons, and their plans, while at the same time opening our schools, factories, and gradually our secrets to them in this count.

It was Marshall who, as Hanson Baldwin asserts, himself referring only to the "military authorities," prevented us having a corridor to Berlin. So it was with the capture and occupation of Berlin and Prague ahead of the Russians.

It was Marshall who sent Deane to Moscow to collaborate with Harriman in drafting the terms of the wholly unnecessary bribe paid to Stalin at Yalta. It was Marshall, with Hiss at his elbow and doing the physical drafting of agreements at Yalta, who ignored the contrary advice of his senior, Admiral Leahy, and of MacArtbur and Nimitz in regard to the folly of a major land invasion of Japan; who submitted intelligence reports which suppressed more truthful estimates in order to support his argument, and who finally induced Roosevelt to bring Russia into the Japanese war with a bribe that reinstated Russia in its pre-1904 imperialistic position in Manchuria-an act which, in effect, signed the death warrant of the Republic of China.

It was Marshall, with Acheson and Vincent eagerly assisting, who created the China policy which, destroying China, robbed us of a great and friendly ally, a buffer against the Soviet imperialism with which we are now at war.

It was Marshall who, after long conferences with Acheson and Vincent, went to China to execute the criminal folly of the disastrous Marshall mission.

It was Marshall who, upon returning from a diplomatic defeat for the United States at Moscow, besought the reinstatement of forty millions in lend-lease for Russia.

It was Marshall who, for 2 years suppressed General Wedemeyer's report, which is a direct and comprehensive repudiation of the Marshall policy.

It was Marshall who, disregarding Wedemeyer's advices on the urgent need for military supplies, the likelihood of China's defeat without ammunition and equipment, and our "moral obligation" to furnish them, proposed instead a relief bill bare of military support.

It was the State Department under Marshall, with the wholehearted support of Michael Lee and Remington in the Commerce Department, that sabotaged the $125,000,000 military-aid bill to China in 194S.

It was Marshall who fixed the dividing line for Korea along the thirty-eighth parallel, a line historically chosen by Russia to mark its sphere of interest in Korea.

It is Marshall's strategy for Korea which has turned that war into a pointless slaughter, reversing the dictum of Von Clausewitz and every military theorist since him that the object of a war is not merely to kill but to impose your will on the enemy.

It is Marshall-Acheson strategy for Europe to build the defense of Europe solely around the Atlantic Pact nations, excluding the two great wells of anti-Communist manpower in Western Germany and Spain and spurning the organized armies of Greece and Turkey-another case of following the Lattimore advice of "let them fall but don't let it appear that we pushed them."

It is Marshall who, advocating timidity as a policy so as not to annoy the forces of Soviet imperialism in Asia, had admittedly put a brake on the preparations to fight, rationalizing his reluctance on the ground that the people are fickle and if war does not come, will hold him to account for excessive zeal.

What can be made of this unbroken series of decisions and acts contributing to the strategy of defeat? They cannot be attributed to incompetence. If Marshall were merely stupid, the laws of probability would dictate that part of his decisions would serve this country's interest. If Marshall is innocent of guilty intention, how could he be trusted to guide the defense of this country further? We have declined so precipitously in relation to the Soviet Union in the last 6 years. How much swifter may be our fall into disaster with Marshall at the helm? Where Will all this stop? That is not a rhetorical question: Ours is not a rhetorical danger. Where next will Marshall carry us? It is useless to suppose that his nominal superior will ask him to resign. He cannot even dispense with Acheson.

What is the objective of the great conspiracy? I think it is clear from what has occurred and is now occurring: to diminish the United States in world affairs, to weaken us militarily, to confuse our spirit with talk of surrender in the Far East and to impair our will to resist evil. To what end? To the end that we shall be contained, frustrated and finally: fall victim to Soviet intrigue from within and Russian military might from without. Is that farfetched? There have been many examples in history of rich and powerful states which have been corrupted from within, enfeebled and deceived until they were unable to resist aggression. . . .

It is the great crime of the Truman administration that it has refused to undertake the job of ferreting the enemy from its ranks. I once puzzled over that refusal. The President, I said, is a loyal American; why does he not lead in this enterprise? I think that I know why he does not. The President is not master in his own house. Those who are master there not only have a desire to protect the sappers and miners - they could not do otherwise. They themselves are not free. They belong to a larger conspiracy, the world-wide web of which has been spun from Moscow. It was Moscow, for example, which decreed that the United States should execute its loyal friend, the Republic of China. The executioners were that well-identified group headed by Acheson and George Catlett Marshall.

How, if they would, can they, break these ties, how return to simple allegiance to their native land? Can men sullied by their long and dreadful record afford us leadership in the world struggle with the enemy? How can a man whose every important act for years had contributed to the prosperity of the enemy reverse himself? The reasons for his past actions are immaterial. Regardless of why he has done what be did, be has done it and the momentum of that course bears him onward. . . .

The time has come to halt this tepid, milk-and-water acquiescence which a discredited administration, ruled by disloyalty, sends down to us. The American may belong to an old culture, he may be beset by enemies here and abroad, he may be distracted by the many words of counsel that assail him by day and night, but he is nobody's fool. The time has come for us to realize that the people who sent us here expect more than time-serving from us. The American who has never known defeat in war, does not expect to be again sold down the river in Asia. He does not want that kind of betrayal. He has had betrayal enough. He has never failed to fight for his liberties since George Washington rode to Boston in 1775 to put himself at the head of a band of rebels unversed in war. He is fighting tonight, fighting gloriously in a war on a distant American frontier made inglorious by the men he can no longer trust at the head of our affairs.

The America that I know, and that other Senators know, this vast and teeming and beautiful land, this hopeful society where the poor share the table of the rich as never before in history, where men of all colors, of all faiths, are brothers as never before in history, where great deeds have been done and great deeds are yet to do, that America deserves to be led not to humiliation or defeat, but to victory.

The Congress of the United States is the people's last hope, a free and open forum of the people's representatives. We felt the pulse of the people's response to the return of MacArthur. We know what it meant. The people, no longer trusting their executive, turn to us, asking that we reassert the constitutional prerogative of the Congress to declare the policy for the United States.

The time has come to reassert that prerogative, to oversee the conduct of this war, to declare that this body must have the final word on the disposition of Formosa and Korea. They fell from the grasp of the Japanese empire through our military endeavors, pursuant to a declaration of war made by the Congress of the United States on December 8, 1941. If the Senate speaks, as is its right, the disposal of Korea and Formosa can be made only by a treaty which must be ratified by this body. Should the administration dare to defy such a declaration, the Congress has abundant recourses which I need not spell out. - LINK

4 posted on 08/21/2005 5:02:42 AM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
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To: Tailgunner Joe

Condi Rice irked me when she posted all over her office stuff on G Marshall


5 posted on 08/21/2005 5:19:08 AM PDT by JudgemAll (Condemn me, make me naked and kill me, or be silent for ever on my gun ownership and law enforcement)
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