Philip Short - Mao: A Life

A L I F E

PHILIP SHORT

A J O H N M A C R A E B O O K

H E N R Y H O L T A N D C O M P A N Y | N E W Y O R K

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Henry Holt and Company, LLC.

Copyright 1999 by Philip Short

Originally published in 1999 in Great Britain by Hodder & Stoughton.

All rights reserved.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Short, Philip.

Mao: a life / Philip Short.1st ed.

p. cm.

"John Macrae book."

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-8050-3115-4

1. Mao, Tse-tung, 1893-1976. 2. Heads of stateChinaBiography.

L Title.

DS778.M3 S548 2000

951.05f092dc21 99-041839

[B]

Henry Holt books are available for special promotions and premiums. For details contact: Director, Special Markets.

First American Edition 2000

Printed in the United States of America

1 3 5 7 9 1 0 8 6 4 2

CONTENTS

*

Maps

X

List of Illustrations

xi

Note on Spelling and Pronunciation

Xll

A Confucian Childhood

Revolution

Lords of Misrule

A Ferment of 'Isms'

The Comintern Takes Charge

Events Leading to the Horse Day Incident

and its Bloody Aftermath

Out of the Barrel of a Gun

Futian: Loss of Innocence

Chairman of the Republic

In Search of the Grey Dragon:

The Long March North

Yan'an Interlude: The Philosopher is King

Paper Tigers

The Sorcerer's Apprentice

Musings on Immortality

Cataclysm

Things Fall Apart

Dramatis Personae

Notes

Index

A book of this kind is the cumulation of many people's goodwill.

Some I am able to thank publicly here, including Zhang Yufeng, thecompanion of Mao's last years; Li Rui, Mao's former secretary; andWang Ruoshui, courageous former deputy editor of the People's

Daily.

Many others I cannot name. China is a far more tolerant andliberal country today than when I made my home there twentyyears ago, and its people now take for granted freedoms which wereunthinkable when Mao was alive. But it has yet to reach the stagewhere its citizens can be quoted on-the-record on sensitive politicaltopics without fearing the wrath of their superiors or inquiries fromthe police.

No one has a monopoly of wisdom about Mao. CCP officials,Party historians, Chinese academics and former members of theChairman's household who shared with me their private insightsdisagreed on many key points. Sometimes I found all their viewsunpersuasive (as they did mine). But, together, they helped to illuminate areas of Mao's life that, until now, have remained artfullyobscured, in the process demolishing much conventionalmythology. To all of them I express my gratitude.

The writing of this book was greatly aided by Karen Chappelland Judy Polumbaum, who enabled me to spend a blissful year inscholarly retreat in Iowa; by Yelena Osinsky; and by Dozpoly Ivan,of Sophia University in Tokyo. Special thanks are due to my friendand colleague, Mary Price, whose blue pencil sought valiantly (ifsometimes unavailingly) to impose on my drafts a corset of brevityand intellectual rigour. My editors, Roland Philipps in London andJack Macrae in New York, deserve credit for sustaining a project towhich, at times, neither they nor I could see an end. JacquelineKorn, who never lost faith, provided life-saving resuscitation.

My wife, Renquan, has not only lived with this book for sevenyears - which was hard enough - but spent much of that time poringover the Chinese texts of Mao's speeches and Central Committeedocuments, helping me unravel their ambiguities. To her, morethan anyone, and to our six-year-old son, Benedict, who forwentdays on the beach and bedtime stories to allow me to wrestle with

'blank sheets of paper', my deep appreciation.

Beijing - La Garde-Freinet, June 1999

List of Maps

China

The Long March, 1934 - 1935

The Autumn Harvest Uprising in Hunan, 1927

The Central Soviet Base Area in Southern Jiangxi, 1931 - 1934

List of Illustrations

Photographs courtesy of Xinhua (New China News Agency) unlesslisted below.

Section 1

Queue cutting - Harlingue- Viollet,ParisSlow Execution - Joshua B. Powers Collection, Hoover Institution,Stanford University

Mao's family home - Marc Riboud, Magnum Photo Agency

He Zizhen, Mao's third wife - Courtesy of Maoping RevolutionaryMuseum, Jiangxi

Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek - Sygma,ParisMao and Zhou Enlai - Peabody Museum of Archeology andEthnology, Harvard University (Owen Lattimore Foundation)Section 2

Yan' an - Edgar Snow's China, by Lois Wheeler Snow, reprinted bypermission of Random House

Wang Shiwei - Courtesy of China Youth Press

Mao and Khrushchev - Courtesy of Du Xiuxian, BeijingZhang Guotao - United Press International Photos,New YorkSection 3

Magic Talisman - Paolo Koch, Rapho Agency

Note on Spelling and

Pronunciation

Chinese names drive all who are unfamiliar with them to despair.

Yet it is impossible to write about China and its leaders withoutidentifying the protagonists. This book employs the pinyintranscription, which was officially adopted by Beijing in 1979 and hasthe merit of being simpler and more accessible than the olderWade-Giles romanisation. Nevertheless, a few basic rules need tobe observed.

The consonants C,Qand Xaxeused to represent Chinese soundswhich have no precise English equivalent. Cis pronounced similarly to Ts[in Tsar]; like Ch;Zlike Sh [Hsin the Wade-Gilessystem].

Vowels are trickier. Terminal - arhymes with car; -aiwith buy.

-an[as in tan, fan,etc.] rhymes with man, except after -/and y [lian,

xian, yan,etc.], when it rhymes with men; and after w [wan],whenit is sounded as in 'want', -flwgrhymes with sang, except after -uand

w [huang; wang, etc.], when it rhymes with song, -aorhymes withcow.

Terminal -e[as in HeZizhen, Li De,Li Xuefeng, etc.] rhymes withher, except after -/and