3. From the Pen to the Gun

At the mention of guns, people immediately think of Mao Zedong's famous words, “Political power comes out of the barrel of a gun.” Many credit this aphorism to Mao's creative genius.

Yuan Shikai was the first man to bring the gun into Chinese politics. Thanks to his skillful use of the gun, the court of the Qing Dynasty had no choice but to let him into the empire's power center. Later, those who staged the Revolution of 1911 had to let him in too.

Sun Yat-sen was the first man to bring military force into the equation of Chinese revolutions. With few exceptions, everything his Chinese Revolutionary League did was to plot and carry out armed riots.

Dai Jitao, Sun's secretary and referred to as “chief council of the state” by the KMT, once said, “A single Mauser is better than a million fine essays.”

On May 20, 1912, Dai published an essay “Kill” in Democracy , a newspaper in Shanghai. He wrote, “Xiong Xiling is a traitor to the nation. Kill him! Tang Shaoyi cheats the public. Kill him! Yuan Shikai is a dictator. Kill him! Zhang Binglin curries favor with the Powers. Kill him! These four are enemies of the citizens of the Republic of China. There will be no salvation for China unless and until these four are killed. Kill these four and save the entire nation. That is benevolence. The original purpose of the revolution will be served. That is courage. The fallen heroes will be comforted. That is justice. Future threats will be mitigated. That is wisdom.”

Right from the start, China's revolution and counterrevolution had features sharply different from revolutions and counterrevolutions in other lands.

Dai was arrested by the foreign settlement police for “incitement to murder.” When his cellmates asked why he was in prison, Dai hung his head and said, “Because the invention of writing has become my curse, and the opium treaties have made me sick… I live in a foreign settlement. I am not an official. I am weak, and I am Chinese. These are the reasons for me being here.”

Dai was fully aware that even his inflammatory text about killing was no more than “one of a million articles.”

The man to seize the gun and skillfully use it to his own advantage was Chiang Kaishek, introduced to Sun Yat-sen by none other than Dai Jitao.

Chiang's climb to the top was because he capitalized on the opportunity Borodin gave him. It was also because he had arms.

The primary factor had its origins in the secondary one: Borodin mistakenly took Chiang to be a gun for revolution.

Mao's understanding of the power of guns took a long time to develop.

Unlike Sun, Dai or Chiang, Mao was no fan of violence at the start. He actually leaned towards the anarchism of Peter Kropotkin, not Karl Marx's dictatorship of the proletariat. Inspired by the May 4th Movement, Mao founded the Xiangjiang Review in Changsha in 1919. The editorial in the inaugural issue called for an end to violence, and a more temperate theory.

One, we recognize that those in power are all human beings, just like us. Their abuse of power is a mistake and tragedy that they unwittingly perpetuated. They are also victims of the old society and its old ideology. Two, defeat violence with violence, and you get nothing but violence at the end. This is not only self-contradictory but also futile. The war in Europe and the war of the south versus the north in our country both fall in this category. It is our view, therefore, that there must be thorough academic works, in pursuit of the truth and free from the bondage of all myths and superstition. When it comes to people, we argue that the public must come together to engage in a sustained effort of counseling to those in power. Let there be a “voice revolution” where we make our voices heard, calling for bread, freedom and equality. Let there be a “bloodless revolution.” We are against disruptions or the so-called “bomb revolution” or “bloody revolution,” which will not produce anything good.

At the time, Mao abhorred all violence, including violence wielded by Sun's government in the south in its fight with the warlords in the north.

In 1920, Mao was pouring all his energy into the Hunan autonomy movement. He viewed the self-governing and self-determination of each province as the only way to save China. He said, “Mr. Hu Shizhi said people should stop talking about politics for 20 years. I now propose that we stop talking about central politics for 20 years while every province focuses on its own internal affairs and adopts the Monroe Doctrine. The provinces should close their borders; anything that happens outside of their borders is none of their business.”

Seven years later, Mao said, “A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.” What happened to make Mao go from a “voice revolution” or “bloodless revolution” to a violent one?

The man who taught Mao about guns was Chiang Kai-shek. In the Zhongshan Warship Incident of 1926 and the Shanghai Massacre of April 12, 1927, Chiang demonstrated to the Communists the power of guns. Mao later described feeling “lost and disheartened”in the days before the failure of the Great Revolution. Then at the August 7th Meeting, he “found the way, which was to decide on armed resistance.”

Chiang's use of guns showed Mao his true colors. And now Mao realized that the way out for the Communists was to get armed.

And Mao was not the only one who learned this lesson.

On July 9, 1926, the National Revolutionary Army embarked on the Northern Expedition. Chen Duxiu had seen the danger of Chiang using military campaigns to establish his military dictatorship. When the Soviet military advisor Galen asked him if the Communists should help Chiang or undermine him, Chen could suggest nothing but “to oppose Chiang Kai-shek and not oppose Chiang Kai-shek.”

Chiang was armed to the teeth. Against his dangerous ambition, the defenseless Chen Duxiu could do little but adopt a passive attitude.

Another man to spot danger coming was Zhang Tailei, one of the few within the CPC to see the dark side of Chiang early on. He had had some major disputes with Chiang back in 1923, when both were on a delegation to Moscow. The two fought almost every day and there was no hiding their difference in front of their Russian hosts. Chiang hated his guts and almost kicked him out of the delegation. As a man who had long understood what Chiang was capable of, Zhang wrote an article in his own defense against Chiang's questions following the Zhongshan Warship Incident and the “Party Purge.” He wrote, “If I had actually said ‘the KMT is going to oust its communist members,’ I would say it was total nonsense on my part. But I never said anything of the sort and I never will.” He continued, “Comrade Chiang Kai-shek will not oust the CPC and everybody knows it.”

Today's readers will find it hard to appreciate the bitterness and pain Zhang must have felt as he made such a statement. He and his party wielded no power but had to depend on the power wielded by another, someone he had seen through long since. As the executioner raised his axe, he could do nothing but assume a smile and say, “Comrade Chiang Kai-shek will not oust the CPC.”

Zhang later fell under the executioner's axe.

Time and again, the Communists yielded to Chiang like this. It was submission to power and to guns. Shortly after the Shanghai Massacre, Chen Duxiu made this bitter observation: “Our concessions over the past year or more have turned out to be delusional; more than that, they were the price we paid for him to slaughter us!” Even Nikolai Bukharin had to admit at the CPC's Sixth National Congress, “The Comintern has armed the Chinese warlords, but it has not helped the CPC to arm the peasants and factory workers. As a result, bullets manufactured by our proletariat have ended up in the heads of Chinese peasants and factory workers.”

Without an armed force, the Communists could hardly achieve anything in a society in which those waving the biggest sticks always got their way. It mattered not one iota how well the Communists knew their revolutionary theories, how sharp their political judgment, or how large their organization: The weapon of argument was never any substitute for the fight of weapons.

And hence the emergency meeting held on August 7, 1927, where Mao gave a passionate speech:

We faulted Sun Yat-sen for engaging exclusively in military actions and we went the opposite way, focusing on populist activities and never military ones. Both Chiang and Tang obtained power by first taking control of guns and we looked the other way. Now they finally have our attention, albeit half-hearted. The Autumn Harvest Uprising ²² could not have been carried out without a military force. This is a fact that this meeting should take seriously. The new members of the Politburo Standing Committee must be firm about this. Hunan's failure is the result of some bookish theorists' misjudgment. In the future we must focus on the military. We must realize that political power comes out of the barrel of a gun.

That speech became encapsulated as his famous maxim “Political power comes out of the barrel of a gun.”

But to understand the great importance of guns is one thing; it is quite another matter to work out a strategy for an armed independent political power and encircling the cities from the countryside.

It is not that the Communists did not like cities. After their first uprising against the KMT in Nanchang on August 1, 1927, they made for their second target of Guangdong.

When they staged the Autumn Harvest Uprising, which opened the door to the armed independent political power of workers and peasants, their goal was to attack Changsha.

In the Guangzhou Uprising, the first time the Chinese Communists rallied under the Soviet banner, they staged revolts in the urban areas, working word for word from the Russian Revolution textbook.

The troops that stormed out of Nanchang were quickly scattered before they could make it to Guangdong. The troops from the Autumn Harvest Uprising could not even hold Liuyang County and were forced to retreat. The revolt in Guangzhou continued for just three days and its impact was contained within the urban area.

Mao first took what was left of the rebel army into the Luoxiao Mountains. The decision was no divinely inspired choice but the result of hard thinking in a dark time of failure. It was a choice rooted in reality and an understanding of the unique nature of the Chinese revolution.

It was a decision by human beings, not a divine choice.

At the August 7th Meeting, Mao was elected an alternate member of the Politburo of the CPC Central Committee. He turned down the opportunity to work from the center of the power structure and opted to “go join the bandits.” As a result, the troops from the Autumn Harvest Uprising did not head to Changsha as originally planned, but went into the Jinggang Mountains. Vissarion Lominadze, a Comintern representative, recommended stripping Mao of his alternate membership, and Qu Qiubai, the responsible central committee official, did so. But when the order reached the base area, it was to expel Mao from the CPC altogether. For a long period Mao could participate in none of its activities at all.

But these problems did not stop him setting up a peasant base in the Luoxiao Mountains.

Mao's base was in the Jinggang Mountains, not in the White area or the Comintern. One cannot imagine him walking the streets of the foreign settlements in Chinese cities, hat pulled down to the eyebrows. One cannot picture him sitting in a Comintern conference hall trying to memorize lengthy resolutions like a schoolboy. This land was where he belonged. Within the rural villages of the armed peasant region, he was like a fish in water, completely in his element.

As the first to establish a stronghold for the Red power in rural China, by picking up the gun Mao provided the Chinese Communists with the most powerful argument they had wielded. It also gave “the Mao Zedong way” to world revolution.

For this alone he won a permanent place in history.

Mao was not the Comintern's choice as leader.

Historical circumstances dictated that all Chinese communist leaders had had to be anointed by Moscow at that time, since the CPC was also a branch of the Comintern. At the CPC's First National Congress, Chen Duxiu had to be endorsed by Maring, the Comintern representative, before he could be elected general secretary. Chen's successor, Qu Qiubai, was hand-picked by Borodin. Xiang Zhongfa, made general secretary at the Sixth Congress, owed his elevation to Stalin's liking for his worker's background. Wang Ming was able to take power after the Fourth Plenary Session of the Sixth CPC Central Committee only because he had Mif, the Comintern special delegate, at his back.

Mao was the only one without Comintern backing.

For a long time, Comintern had no idea who Mao was.

Until recently, I believed the first ever Comintern profile of Mao was in issue 33-34, 1935 of the Communist International , under the title “Mao Zedong, Leader of the Toiling Chinese People.” In fact, this was not the first article. The first one was a Comintern communiqué that appeared in the March 20, 1930, issue of International Press Bulletin :

News from China: Comrade Mao Zedong, one of the founding members of the CPC who helped build a force of guerrillas and the Chinese Red Army, died on the front in Fujian after suffering pulmonary tuberculosis for years. Comrade Mao was the most dreaded enemy of the landed gentry and big bourgeoisie. The KMT, which represents the interests of the two groups, have had a high price on his head since 1927. Comrade Mao died from the worsening of the disease. It is a great loss for the CPC, the Chinese Red Army and the Chinese revolution.

……

As a Bolshevik of the international community and a strong warrior of the CPC, Comrade Mao Zedong fulfilled the duty that history placed on him. The Chinese working class will forever remember what he has done and will complete the job he started.

This obituary was the Comintern's first article on Mao.

Some say it shows how disconnected the Comintern, with its headquarters located thousands of miles away in Moscow, was from the realities of China. Why else would they make such a ridiculous mistake?

But things were not that simple. The CPC held two or three memorials for the rumored death of Li Lisan, with Zhou Enlai, Li's close associate, presiding every time. It was not that the Party leadership or Zhou himself did not know Li well. In a period when armed revolutionary and armed counterrevolutionary forces were locked in deadly struggle, the unpredictable could happen at any time to anyone.

Which is why the Comintern ran Mao's obituary.

Even so, for this famous leader to be introduced via his obituary is admittedly a matter of great regret for the history of the international communist movement.

As a matter of fact, the Comintern had first noticed Mao in 1927.

In May 1927, Nikolai Bukharin cited Mao's “The Peasant Movement in Hunan: A Case Study” in his argument against Trotsky's claim that the Northern Expedition strengthened the bourgeoisie and weakened the working class. The Comintern publication Communist International ran the article the same month. Bukharin said, “This is a very good, significant report.” In his view “the most important contribution of the Northern Expedition is that it has woken up the masses, who are now organizing and becoming a new, great force of the society. The people have been empowered during the Northern Expedition and that is the most important thing to us. Comrade Trotsky ignores this point.”

The Comintern became aware of the man Mao Zedong among the ranks of the CPC.

Being aware of was still a long way from acknowledging. Mao had put forward a theory radically different from that of the Comintern, but he had yet to put his theory into practice and, above all to acquire the power necessary to carry out his experiment.

Once he had tested his theory in practice and acquired some power, the Comintern started to pay Mao more attention. But it never went further than urging the CPC Central Committee to get along with Mao and use his work and influence to their advantage.

Just as Lenin had favored Sun Yat-sen over Li Dazhao and Chen Duxiu, Stalin favored Chiang Kai-shek over Mao.

For a long time, Stalin trusted Chiang. At first he thought of Chiang as a KMT leftist. He revised his view in 1926, after the Zhongshan Warship Incident, placing him at the political center. When Chiang's true anti-Soviet and anti-Communist colors became clear, all Stalin would admit was that he was “center-right.” When finally everyone else saw Chiang as a rightist, Stalin said, “We need rightists now. There are some very capable people among the right. They run an army in the fight against imperialism. Chiang may not be a revolutionary sympathizer, but he is in charge of the military. He won't do anything other than fight imperialism.” He even sent Chiang a signed photograph of himself.

Then he launched the Shanghai Massacre of April 12, 1927.

The incident showed Stalin that Chiang was capable of far more than fighting imperialism. It was a strike at the heart.

Yet Stalin's long held doubts about Mao persisted. He regarded the CPC under Mao as nothing more than a few “land revolutionaries.” In June 1944, he told the US special envoy W. Averell Harriman, “The Communists, you mean the Chinese Communists? They are to communism what margarine is to butter.”

Even after the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Stalin suspected that Mao might go the way of Yugoslavia and become the Tito of China.

His view did not change until the War of Resisting US Aggression and Aiding Korea, when the Chinese volunteer army entered Korea to fight the Americans in 1950.

This was less than three years before Stalin's death.

How to understand the CPC and its leader Mao Zedong was always a test for the Comintern and Stalin. It was a tough one and they never had all the right answers.

The Comintern did not pick Mao Zedong. History chose him.

Sun Yat-sen did not pick Chiang Kai-shek, and Borodin eventually lost control of him. Chiang, too, was a man chosen by history.

Mao and Chiang both had an ideology in their heart and a gun in their hand. History picked them as the best examples of their party and their class, then pitted them against each other in a most dramatic power clash in modern China. Armed with guns and ideologies, inspired by history and a vision, they waged one heroic fight after another.

Chiang enjoyed a long winning streak. His tactics included resignation, backing out of the political arena, bribery, ousting his rivals, assassination and waging war. One after another his opponents fell like dominos. He drove Xu Chongzhi away, put Hu Hanmin under house arrest, isolated Tang Shengzhi, had Deng Yanda killed by firing squad, tried to assassinate Wang Jingwei, crushed Feng Yuxiang, Yan Xishan, Li Zongren, Bai Chongxi and Chen Jitang with canons and machine guns, and bought off Shi Yousan, Han Fuqu and Yu Hanmou with rank and money. He had the entire inventory of weapons at his disposal to play the game of Chinese politics and he had learned by heart every political trick played since antiquity. Powerful men who originally thought little of this nobody from Fenghua, Zhejiang Province, all fell victim to his advance, like trees falling in the path of a moving bulldozer.

On September 8, 1930, the eve of the war between Chiang, Feng and Yan (the Central Plains War), Yan Xishan tried to raise the spirits of the anti-Chiang alliance at the Eighth Sun Yat-sen Memorial Week Ceremony. He saw four reasons why Chiang was doomed:

One, he had become the enemy of the party;

Two, he had become the enemy the country;

Three, he had become the enemy of the people; and

Four, he had become the enemy of the universal principle.

Yan, “undefeated for 19 years,” nailed it. For a long time to come, no one would produce a more accurate, pithy or profound assessment of Chiang Kai-shek.

And yet Chiang managed to outmaneuver them all.

The Beiyang old warlords and the KMT new generals never figured out why.

From an objective, historical perspective, they did not understand that Chiang represented a more progressive force than they. He was less involved with dying feudal institutions and more with the rising bourgeoisie.

And they overlooked subjective factors such as emotion, passion and belief.

In 1906, Chiang enrolled in a military academy in Baoding. One day, in a class about hygiene, a Japanese instructor placed a piece of earth on his lectern and told the students, “About 400 million microbes live in this square inch of earth.” He paused a while, then said, “This square inch of earth is like China, home to 400 million people, just like microbes.” The words were barely out of his mouth before an angry student rushed up to the platform and knocked the earth to the floor, yelling, “There are 50 million people living in Japan. Would you call them 50 million microbes inhabiting one-eighth of a square inch of earth?” After the lecturer recovered his composure, he saw it was Chiang Kai-shek, the only one among his students not to wear a queue. “Are you one of the revolutionaries?” he asked, pointing at Chiang's shaved head. News of the incident swept through the academy.

Chiang first read The Revolutionary Army by Zou Rong in 1908. Zou had died in a Qing prison five years earlier. Chiang was “captivated” by the book. He “read it out loud from morning until sundown and clutched the book to his chest while he slept. His passion for revolution and revolt is hard to adequately describe in words.

In 1912, Chiang founded the Military Voice magazine in Japan. He personally wrote the editorial for its first issue and also published “Thoughts on the Invasion of Mongolia,”an angry response to Tsarist Russia's attempt to create an independent Mongolia. In it he voiced his desire “to lead a brigade to Mongolia and build a career on securing that territory.”

As a young man, his strong and persistent character is undeniable.

On June 24, 1924, in a speech to Whampoa Academy cadets, Chiang said, “Yuan Shikai and his gang have ruined Chinese soldiers for the past 13 years. The only thing they did was to bribe the soldiers and make them their personal assets, their own house dogs.…When a commanding officer's power gets great enough, he can betray his party and his country.” He also said: “Our revolution has a doctrine at its heart. We follow that doctrine and we study it to make revolution. We don't follow any one man or study any individual. To do so can't be called revolution. It's blind obedience. And so the party becomes someone's private asset and the soldiers become someone's personal servants. To this day, the Chinese way of thinking remains as it was millennia ago when the only relationship we understood was that between emperor and slave.”

The ideas expressed in this speech, “A Revolutionary Soldier Does Not Blindly Follow His Officer,” were rather provocative. There have been different readings of it, with some saying that its first half was aimed at Chen Jiongming and the second at Sun Yat-sen. Chen had set up an independent military government in Guangdong while Sun had nurtured a personality cult in the same province.

Maybe Chiang had a point. And it is an undeniable fact that to give such a speech a man must have true beliefs in his locker and great strength of spirit.

Do not love money. Do not fear death. That was his mantra for a revolutionary soldier.

When Chiang visited Petrograd in 1923, the Winter Palace was on his tour schedule. The splendor and brilliance of the Tsar's residence left him indifferent: “All the gold, silver and jade rooms were nothing but a gilded shell. I saw no value in there.… But the new history chamber had on display the bloodied past of the revolutionary party, which was both stunning and inspiring.” Chiang later participated in a Soviet memorial event in Moscow. “There I heard speeches from Kamenev and Bukharin. And the two officers and the sailor who started the navy revolution came up to the stage and described their heroic action. It was heart-moving.”

From this, it is not hard to imagine the revolutionary fervor that burned in his chest.

Hence the paired couplet at the gate of Whampoa, with its resonating words:

Those who seek power and money, please find another way; Those who fear death, do not come in.

Chiang's power did not come solely from military and financial strength. Which is why Feng Yuxiang, Yan Xishan, Tang Shengzhi and Li Zongren were no match for him.

In his 1968 memoir The Northern Expedition of the Chinese National Revolution Army: A Military Advisor's Notes, the Russian advisor Chelepanov wrote this description of Chiang: “Of all the military affairs workers, he was the closest to us. He understood politics and had awesome self-esteem. He read Napoleon's works in Japanese.… He was quick to make decisions but he did not always think them through, so he often changed his mind. He was stubborn and never easily let go of his opinions. In his political advances he would take things to their logical extreme.”

The Communists had never encountered an opponent like him.

From April 18, 1927, when the Nanjing National Government was founded, until April 23, 1949, when the city was liberated, Chiang ruled China for 22 years and five days. He rose to power three times and stepped away three times. Every time he came back from the dead with the help of guns.

The first time he stepped down was August 14, 1927. He did so because of internal power struggle in the KMT. But within five months, he was asked back.

The second time was December 15, 1931. After the September 18th Incident (also known as the Mukden Incident and the Manchuria Incident), Northeast China fell to the Japanese. And his military campaign against the Communists was not going well. But he returned to power in just 44 days.

Stepping away became a tactic for him to grab more power. As long as it was he who controlled the guns, people were bound to invite him back. And with every comeback, he grew stronger and became better at the game. The KMT could do without him for shorter and shorter periods, and it grew ever more dependent on this extraordinary figure.

But Mao made him step down for a third time.

On January 21, 1949, Chiang announced his resignation from his presidential residence in Nanjing. It was the end of his 32-year rule over the Chinese mainland. He suffered a fatal defeat.

In Mao, Chiang encountered a Communist like no other before him.

He had known of Mao for years. After the Zhongshan Warship Incident, Mao was among the Communists purged from the KMT Central Committee.

Mao was not the first communist leader that Chiang had met. Before Mao, Chiang had dragged Chen Duxiu into court, executed Xiang Zhongfa, and put a bullet though Qu Qiubai's chest. He did not even have to handle the three Communists personally. His subordinates did the dirty work for him, dutifully placing Chen's trial statements on his desk, and photographic evidence of the executions of Xiang and Qu.

What helped Chiang get some real understanding of Mao were the five encirclement campaigns against the Central Soviet Area that he directed personally. And of course the world-famous Long March.

He finally got to know Mao through the Red Army's use of guns.

Which is why, in 1945, he had to invite Mao to his Chongqing residence as an honored guest, and exchange toasts to each other's health.

There is need for mutual respect between rivals.

Chiang put a bounty of 50,000 silver coins on Mao's head during the very first encirclement campaign he launched.

In an article written in July 1934, Mao mockingly asked, “Might we ask what that idiot Chiang Kai-shek understands?”

But there was mutual respect between them.

In 1945 after the Allied victory over Japan, Chiang, the man who had put a bounty on Mao's head, sent his former quarry three cabled invitations to join him in Chongqing to discuss “all important matters, international and domestic.” Twice he entertained Mao as his houseguest. Mao, for his part, refrained from smoking in the presence of “the idiot”Chiang Kai-shek, a non-smoker, despite the fact that he himself smoked like a chimney. Mao never again extended that courtesy to any other political bigshot.

They showed their respect for the other in their individual styles.

Their respect was more for their respective power and their places in history than any individual respect. Ideologies aside, they did have one thing in common: Both had a strong sense of historic mission. Each man saw himself as chosen to carry through to the end some inexpressible but self-evident task of history.

In the end, Chiang was defeated by Mao.

When he lay dying and looking back on his life, Mao said he had accomplished two things, the first of them was to drive Chiang onto an island.

Why was he defeated? Was it ideology or guns that brought him down? Was it his grasp of history, or his plans for the future? Chiang died without finding the answer.

Chiang's great misfortune was to share the same age as Mao, an outstanding example of China's Communists.

What Chiang never understood was where the CPC got such great pulling power, such tenacity and such vitality.

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