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The center of New China is Beijing.
The center of Beijing is Tian'anmen.
What is the center of Tian'anmen?
The enormous portrait of Mao Zedong.
Year in year out, by day and by night, from the top of the largest square in the world, the eyes of Mao Zedong look down at the people of the newly founded People's Republic. Practically everyone in China, and the world for that matter, associates Tian'anmen with Mao Zedong.
Yet how many people are aware that Mao did not like the Tian'anmen Rostrum at the beginning? He said it was too tall and it was not good to be so high above everyone else. He wanted a two-level platform built straddling the Golden River Bridge at the foot of the Tian'anmen Rostrum so that he could be closer to the people when watching them march through during the national day parade. As for the Forbidden City, the old imperial palace behind Tian'anmen Gate, he never set foot inside it. The closest he ever came was three walks taken in April 1954 on top of the encircling walls.
Why his platform was never built?
It would have wrecked the integrity of the antique structure and everyone was against that plan.
Why did Mao never set foot in the palace, which was, after all, just across from Zhongnanhai, his residence for the rest of his life? No one today knows the answer. The only insight into his thinking is perhaps this line he wrote in his early years: “We counted the might no more than muck.”
No matter what Mao wanted for Tian'anmen and for himself, the many, many parades and gatherings that took place here in ensuing years would eventually pin him to the gateway, metaphorically and literally.
You can no longer see Mao elsewhere, but you can at Tian'anmen. And as long as Tian'anmen is here, so will Mao Zedong.
In the past, portraits of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin, Josef Stalin and Sun Yat-sen were displayed on the Tian'anmen Square at every big occasion, and the positioning of these portraits was always so that they were visible to Mao on the Tian'anmen Rostrum.
Later, Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin stopped appearing. Only Sun Yat-sen's picture continued to be put out in front of the Monument to the People's Heroes on the square.
Thus, Sun Yat-sen and Mao Zedong, two of the greatest men in the history of the Chinese revolution, keep looking at each other across the world's biggest square.
One was born in 1866, the other in 1893 - a difference of 27 years.
One died in 1925, the other in 1976 - 51 years apart.
Could these revolutionary giants and founders of modern China have really understood each other?
Mao was 18 when he first heard about Sun.
In 1936, in an interview with Edgar Snow, an American journalist, after the Long March 2 , Mao recalled coming across the Minli Bao , a newspaper run by the Tongmenghui 3 or Chinese Revolutionary League, in 1911 when he enrolled in a local junior high school in Changsha. It contained news about the Guangzhou Uprising 4 and the deaths of 72 martyrs. That was when Mao heard of Sun and the Chinese Revolutionary League's political program.
It was also the very first newspaper Mao had ever read. “I was so excited that I wrote an article and posted it on a wall at school. That was the first time I had expressed a political view.”
What was this first political view inspired by his first newspaper?
Years have long eroded away what this 18-year-old country boy from Shaoshan wrote on that wall. Thanks to Snow and his venture into northern Shaanxi, we know something about this political opinion: “I argued for the return of Sun Yat-sen from Japan. I said he should be made president of the new government while Kang Youwei should be the prime minister and Liang Qichao should be the foreign minister!”
Kang and Liang were Mao's idols as a young man. He read Liang's writing so many times that he knew his words by heart. In the margin of one of Liang's essays, the young Mao wrote down what he thought: “In a constitutional state, the people write the constitution and the people endorse their monarch.”
In those years, Mao looked up to Kang and Liang, and he supported the idea of a constitutional monarchy.
But then Sun Yat-sen came on the scene and Mao had a new hero. In his “first political view,” he turned his back on constitutional monarchy in favor of a republic. He was no longer proposing a monarch but president, prime minister and foreign minister. He had yet to distinguish Sun from Kang and Liang, still picturing the three of them in one government. However, it is clear how deeply Sun must have impressed and inspired him.
Did Sun know of Mao?
Sun was 27 years older than Mao. At the time of Sun's death in Beijing in March 1925, Mao was conducting a social survey far away in his hometown in Hunan Province, running a form of peasants' association of local villagers. What years later came to be known as the Hunan peasant's movement was now just fire waiting to erupt from under the ground and take China and the world by surprise.
But Sun did know of Mao. In fact, when the KMT convened their first national congress, committing to a policy of “Allying with Russia, allying with the Communists and supporting the peasants and factory workers,” the senior party official heard two young Communists, recent recruits to the KMT, address the meeting and were impressed by their passion and eloquence.
One was Li Lisan (1899-1967, one of the early Communist Party leaders), the other was Mao Zedong.
Li got straight to the point in his wide-ranging speech and did not shy away from criticizing the KMT. Mao, on the other hand, based most of his argument on Sun's words, using Sun to make his points.
Many KMT leaders listened in awe. Even Wang Jingwei (1883-1944, a top KMT leader who later became head of the puppet regime during Japanese aggression) commented admiringly: “Young men of the May 4th Movement 5 indeed!”
Sun looked at Li and Mao in approval. He made Mao a member of a committee charged with reviewing the draft of the KMT charter.
But the young, firebrand Mao that Sun knew was not the Mao Zedong destined to become the leader of a party, an army and a government.
Were it not for Russia's October Revolution, given the very different backgrounds and personalities of these two giants, the paths of Sun and Mao would probably never have crossed.
The gunshots of the October Revolution changed everything.
But the first person to hear them was not Sun. Nor was it Mao. It was Liu Jingren, the Chinese ambassador to Russia.
On November 7, 1917, Liu reported in a cable to his government: “Tension is mounting in Russia as the Maximalists (referring to the Bolsheviks) grow even more powerful. They are demanding the mandate to run the government and to negotiate a peace deal. They have been staging riots to ensure their demands are met. The government is weakened and finds it hard to crack down on the violence. I feel drastic change is imminent.”
This was the first message sent to China about the revolution. As Liu duly fulfilled his duty as government envoy by reporting back what he saw, he did not grasp that a huge historical event was unfolding under his nose, an event that would shake and shape the 20th century.
The next day, Liu wrote in a second cable that “the Maximalists are allying with the army and factory workers in their fight against the government. The newly established revolutionary military council has ordered the suspension of all government decrees unless the council gives permission. Following yesterday's uprising, the treasury, transport hubs… have all been lost. Now the revolutionaries have taken every department in the city. There have been no reports of civil unrest.”
This was the first news the Chinese had that the October Revolution was underway.
These cables did not arrive at the foreign ministry of the Chinese Beiyang (Northern Warlords) Government 6 until 20 days later because of difficulties in translation and communications. Ministry officials gave them a quick read and put them aside. China's foreign policy was in line with that of the Allied Powers on this matter and its official position was to deny recognition of the post-revolution Russian government and to recall Ambassador Liu. Nobody realized that his cables, which were quickly filed to archive, would prove to be the harbinger of big changes in Asia.
Without the October Revolution would there be the Communist Party of China?
Without the Communist Party of China would there have been Mao Zedong?
Without the October Revolution would there have been Sun's policies of allying with Russia, allying with the Communists and supporting the peasants and factory workers?
Without these policies would the paths of Sun and Mao ever have crossed?
The fascinating thing about history is its endless what-ifs.
The cruel thing about history is that what-ifs will remain what-ifs forever.
The verdict is clear: The October Revolution caused the fire burning underground in China to burst forth like lava from a volcano. The historic force unleashed by the Russian revolution now pushed the Chinese Communists and the Nationalists towards each other.
But the Communists and the Nationalists, though pushed closer by the revolutionary development, had totally different ideas about where that revolution was taking China.
Including Sun himself.
Sun's judgement of the direction of China's revolution was largely summed up in the joint manifesto he signed in early 1923 with Adolph Joffe, the Soviet Union's ambassador to China.
The Sun-Joffe Manifesto would be frequently cited by the Nationalists, but rarely by the Communists. It foreshadowed the rift between the two Chinese parties and the Soviet-and Comintern-led interference in the Chinese revolution.
A veteran Communist from the Crimea, Joffe worked with Trotsky as Pravda editors in 1908 in Vienna. In 1917, after the revolution broke out, he was made a member of the military revolutionary committee in Petrograd. While serving as Deputy People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, he came to China in August 1922 as ambassador plenipotentiary with a twofold mission.
In the north, he was to build diplomatic ties with the Beijing government, which was controlled by Wu Peifu, to solve the unresolved questions between the two governments relating to the Chinese Eastern Railway 7 and Outer Mongolia.
Should he be thwarted in the north, he was to explore ways to help Sun's revolutionary government in southern China.
Prior to coming to China, he certainly did not expect to sign a manifesto with Sun.
And his opinion did not initially change after arriving in China. In August 19, 1922, Joffe wrote to Wu Peifu telling him that General Wu “had made a very favorable impression on Moscow,” and suggesting cooperation between them.
Wu was obdurate on the question of the railway and Outer Mongolia. After six months in Beijing and achieving nothing, Joffe turned to work with the southern regime. His plan was to use the south to pressure the north.
On January 17, 1923, Joffe traveled to Shanghai on the pretext of medical needs. He spent almost every one of his 10 days there talking with Sun or Zhang Ji, Sun's envoy. They issued the joint manifesto on January 26.
The first clause in the document was of far-reaching significance:
Dr. Sun Yat-sen believes that the communist organization and the Soviet system cannot be adopted in China, since China does not have the conditions to make this adoption a success. Mr. Joffe completely agrees with this analysis, believing that the most urgent problem China faces today is the successful unification of the republic and the completion of national independence. Mr. Joffe also suggests that China can rely on Russia's assistance in this great undertaking.
Neither of the two - Sun, the great Chinese revolutionary, and Joffe, the Soviet and Comintern envoy to China - believed conditions in China to be ready for Marxism and Leninism or for a Soviet regime.
Sun's skepticism came partly from his belief in the “Three Principles of the People,”but partly too from concerns about the newly established CPC. For this reason he was set on establishing in the joint manifesto that “the communist organization and the Soviet system cannot be adopted in China, since China does not have the conditions to make this adoption a success.”
Joffe's stance served the interests of Soviet Russia. The plan was to have Sun concede on the Chinese Eastern Railway and Outer Mongolia. It was to use Sun to pressure Wu, to use the south to pressure the north. After all, Sun had to “rely on Russia's assistance” if he wanted to succeed.
This also explains the third and fourth points in the agreement. The two agreed that the dispute over the Chinese Eastern Railway should be solved through mutual understanding, respecting each party's interests and rights. On Outer Mongolia, Soviet Russia said it did not intend to separate it from China and Sun agreed that the Soviet Red Army need not immediately withdraw from the region.
What Sun cared most about was the first point, and Joffe made a compromise there.
What Joffe cared most about were the third and fourth points, and Sun conceded there.
The Sun-Joffe Manifesto was an important document in the history of modern China. Without it neither the restructuring of the KMT nor the KMT-CPC cooperation would have happened. There would have been no Whampoa Military Academy 8 or Northern Expedition 9 . The agreement reflected Sun's decision on where the Chinese revolution was going. It also marked the beginning of a shift in the newborn Soviet Union's international policy away from promoting revolution around the world to promoting its own national interests as it engaged with foreign countries. Through this agreement, the Soviet Union closed its first deal in China in which it traded for its national interests with its ideology.
The new Communist Party of China was kept in the dark. Nobody thought it necessary to consult the Communists over the agreement.
Sun was drawn to socialism in his early days. He learned about Karl Marx in 1896 while in London. He later introduced Marx to Jiang Kanghu, the founder of the Chinese Socialist Party, saying:
“There is this German named Marx. He assiduously studied the question of capitalism, devoting 30 years to it and published a book called Capital . Thanks to his painstaking work in search for truth, theories hitherto incohesive are now put into a coherent framework so that researchers have something to refer to as they study socialism and will no longer be receptive to the crude and radical ideas of their time.”
Sun was drawn to socialism and, in his naive understanding of it, believed he had become a socialist himself, despite not knowing the difference between Marx-Engels and Bernstein-Kautsky.
Just like Mao could not distinguish between Sun, Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao, Sun could not tell the difference between Marx-Engels and Kautsky-Bernstein. In early 1905, Sun traveled to Brussels, where he visited the secretariat of the Second International and asked to be enrolled as “a member of the party.” While in Brussels, he met with Emile Vandervelde, the chairman of the Second International, and Camille Huysmans, the head of the secretariat, and explained “the objectives and guidelines of the Chinese socialists.”Sun presented to these veteran socialists his bold vision that China would move from the medieval mode of production straight into a socialist economy and its workers would not have to suffer the exploitation of capitalists.
Sun was a nobody at the time.
As a nobody, Sun favored socialism. After becoming a somebody, he stopped believing socialism was right for China. It was not because the Second International rejected him. He simply believed that his Three Principles of the People suited China better.
But believing socialism not possible for China did not stop him admiring Lenin.
Three days after Ambassador Liu Jingren dispatched his cables, Minguo Ribao , a Shanghai-based daily newspaper, broke the news on November 10, 1917. “The Maximalists (the Bolsheviks) have taken the capital,” the story went. It was the first newspaper to bring news of the Russian revolution to Sun Yat-sen. Later he wrote to Lenin to praise the Bolsheviks on behalf of the Kuomintang and expressed a wish for revolutionaries in China and Russia to join hands in their struggles.
Lenin called his letter “dawn in the East,” and G. V. Chicherin, People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs in the Soviet government, wrote back on behalf of Lenin:
“At this time of hardship, the working classes of Russia are calling out to their Chinese brothers, urging them to join the fight. Our victory is your victory and if we are destroyed so too will you be.”
Sadly, the letter was delayed, so Sun never read the words that surely would have stirred him.
But then, in November 1920, he met with Lenin's first envoy, G. N. Voitinsky.
Voitinsky arrived in China in April 1920, his primary mission being to “unite all revolutionary groups and form a centralized organization.” Part of the mission involved promoting the founding of the Communist Party of China. Another part was helping the KMT to develop further. The desire to unite “all revolutionary groups” foreshadows later cooperation between the CPC and KMT.
Sun seized the opportunity to push for some of his ideas. According to Voitinsky, he made a straightforward proposal: Guangzhou being too far away to establish any direct contact with Russia, a powerful radio station should be built at Vladivostok or Manchuria to allow communication between the two sides.
Lenin's second envoy to China was Maring (the alias of Henk Sneevliet).
A member of the Executive Committee of the Comintern, Maring was in the good graces of Lenin. He also played an important role in the formation of the Communist Party of China. At the founding congress of the CPC in Shanghai, July 1921, Maring addressed the meeting with a four-hour-long speech and congress delegates were very impressed. Mao Zedong described him as “very energetic and eloquent.” Bao Huiseng said he was “quite an orator, powerful and articulate.” But the admiration was not mutual. In Maring's report to the Comintern, he called the Chinese Communists “students who aspire to socialism” but “know nothing about Marxism and lack experience in socialist practice.”Moreover, “they've never had any close connection with the working class.” Maring was way more optimistic and hopeful about the KMT, calling their party “a cross-class league of intellectuals, expatriate Chinese bourgeoisie, soldiers in the south and factory workers.”The Comintern representative concluded “I have a very pessimistic view of the Chinese movement and its future in Shanghai. In the south I see a lot of work to be done and a very good chance of succeeding.”
So Maring left Shanghai, venue of the CPC's founding congress, and made his way south.
In December 1921, he made his three-point proposal to Sun Yat-sen in Guilin, Guangxi Province:
One, reorganize the KMT and expand to include factory workers and peasants;
Two, found a military academy and build an army for the revolution; and
Three, cooperate with the CPC.
Sun believed this to be the voice of Lenin.
Maring's proposal would eventually inspire Sun's policy to “ally with the Russians and the Communists and support the peasants and factory workers.”
Sun learned about Lenin because of Russia's October Revolution. Lenin learned about Sun because of China's Revolution of 1911 10 .
When Sun resigned the post of acting president in April 1912, in his farewell speech he remarked about the West that although the Western countries were affluent, “the gulf between the rich and the poor there is conspicuous. That is why the people in these countries are being stirred by revolutionary thoughts. Most of them will not have happiness without a social revolution and the so-called happiness there now is just for a handful of capitalists.”
Lenin was so impressed by the speech that he called it “a great program of the Chinese democrats… some truly great thoughts from a truly great people.” It “has forced us to take a new look at the relations between democracy and populism in the modern bourgeois revolution in Asia, based on latest developments in world events.”
Lenin's hopes for the Chinese revolution were pinned primarily on Sun Yat-sen.
In 1918, the new Soviet leadership was struggling for breath because of imperialist interference and the route to China was blocked by the Czechoslovak Legion, the Socialist Revolutionary Party and the forces of Alexander Kolchak. Lenin asked if there were any Chinese workers in Russia who had been awakened by the October Revolution and would help establish contact with Sun.
Lenin and Sun never actually met, but their interest was somehow mutually connected.
Sun decided on “allying with the Russians and the Communists and supporting the peasants and factory workers.” But this was not without any problem.
The least problematical aspect of his new policy, however, was alliance with the Russians.
Sun's exceptional determination to ally with Soviet Russia stemmed from the countless failures he had had to swallow. He had failed in his fight against the Qing government, his sworn enemy; he had failed in his fight against Yuan Shikai and the Beiyang warlords. The governments of Britain, the US and Japan and the politicians in China, all people he had considered his friends, had failed him. Then, in June 1922, even Chen Jiongming, his comrade and follower for over a decade, had turned against him.
And to make things even worse for Sun, Chen took and made public in Hong Kong three top-secret letters written by Sun about his plan to make a deal with the Germans and Russians. Public opinion in China and overseas was outraged. “For 30 years I have led my comrades to fight for the republic,” he would lament. “I put my life on the line and I have failed so many times that I have lost count. Yet never have I failed as bitterly as in this battle.”
Chen was not the only one to kick Sun on his way down. Li Shizeng and Wu Zhihui were among 49 top KMT officials to issue a joint statement publicly repudiating Sun and urging him to step down.
At this time of crisis, the only unwavering support he could still count on came from Soviet Russia under Lenin.
A friend in need is a friend indeed. After decades of failed alliances, Sun realized where his true friends were. He had Chen Youren deliver a message to Peter J. Dahlin, the Soviet Russian ambassador, that “the only true friend of the Chinese revolution is Soviet Russia.”
The biggest problem with Sun's three-point policy was allying with China's Communists.
Sun admired the Communists. As he later told Wang Jingwei, Hu Hanmin and Zhang Ji, “Our revolutionary campaigns at Huanghuagang and Chaozhou had very small crowds. Fewer than 200 people fought in the battle of Zhennanguan 11 . A little over 100 were at Qinlian. By contrast, every time the Communists mobilize the public they are able to gather a crowd of thousands. Their campaigns such as the strike at Kailuan Coal Mine and the February 7th Strike were on a massive scale and shook the world. They're a power to be reckoned with!”
He was very impressed by the Communists' organizational capability and the momentum built for their cause.
And that further convinced him that the KMT, now corrupt and weakened, had to be restructured.
When his wife Soong Ching-ling asked why he needed the Communists in the KMT, he said, “The Kuomintang is degenerating and dying. It needs new blood to survive.”
He needed new blood to revive the KMT, not to replace it. Sun, who believed in the “Three Principles of the People” and that the country should have one party and one leader, did not want to see a political force emerging outside his own party. He did not want competition.
In January 1923, when the Sun-Joffe Manifesto was released, he gathered together his core officials to hear their opinions.
They had no objection to alliance with Soviet Russia, since they needed Russia for moral support, funding, munitions and advice. The question that divided them was allying with the Chinese Communists.
Wang Jingwei supported allying with Russia but not with the Chinese Communists.
Liao Zhongkai favored allying with both Russian and Chinese Communists, arguing that you could not have the former without the latter.
Hu Hanmin's position was somewhere between Wang and Liao.
It is worth taking a closer look at Hu.
In the KMT hierarchy, he was second only to Sun.
This was not the first time for him to stand between two opposing positions. When Sun founded the Chinese Revolutionary League in Japan in September 1913 and required that party members be fingerprinted and swear allegiance to Sun himself, this provoked bitter division. It was Hu that tried to mediate between those who fell in line and those who resisted Sun.
But at heart, Hu was always an admirer of Sun. He first met Sun in Japan in 1905 and was immediately won over by his arguments, joining the Chinese Revolutionary League along with his wife and sister. Just as the Russian Revolution changed Sun, so it did Hu. Starting in September 1919 he published 10 essays and started studying and popularizing the materialist theory of history. “Since this theory was put forward,” he wrote, “major changes have happened to sociology, economics, historical studies and socialism. Almost a new era has come.”
Despite his high opinion of Marxist historical materialism, Hu did not think much of the newly established CPC. His position on Communists cooperating inside the KMT was quite particular: Since anarchists were permitted to join the Kuomintang, there was no reason to stop those who studied Marxism. He suggested that the Communists should be allowed in on the condition that “they sincerely believe in our party's ideology and will work with us for our national revolution.” Once accepted into the KMT, he proposed, the Communists could be expelled if “they are found to play any other roles or engage in any other actions that may harm our party.”
Hu's thinking held sway with Sun. He was the main reason that Sun later adopted the plan of conditional cooperation with the Communists, believing the ideal way forward to be first using the Communists' strength to change the KMT and then using the KMT's disciplinary power to keep the Communists on a tight rein.
He wanted alliance with Soviet Russia but did not believe China could go the Russian way. He supported allying with the Chinese Communists, but doubted the possibility that a Red regime could be set up, survive and grow in China.
The great revolutionary pioneer had some hard choices to make.
In November 1923, before the first KMT national congress, 11 party officials including Deng Zeru and Lin Zhimian filed an impeachment of the Communists on behalf of the KMT Guangdong branch. In this document submitted to Sun, they accused the Communists of “infiltrating our party in a systematic and organized fashion.” They argued that by joining the KMT the Communists “desire to use the influence of Russia to sway our premier (referring to Sun) and surreptitiously bring our party under the command of the Communists without us knowing it. If we succeed, they reap the benefits. If we fail, it is we who pay the price.”
But letting the Communists in was Sun's idea. So, his response to the impeachment was to defend them and called Deng and other KMT officials paranoid. However, Sun made other comments that are rarely seen in the historical records compiled by us.
In a paragraph rarely quoted today, Sun wrote that the Communists had “done everything in their power to hurt and slander us since they wanted to keep contact with the Russians into their own hands, and prevent the Russians from having contact with us, all in order to be the only recipient of Russian assistance and to rise as an independent force in competition with us. However, the Russian revolutionaries were experienced in party politics, not to be played by a bunch of kids. They saw through their juvenile tricks, did not agree with them and corrected their course in our favor.” Apparently when Maring talked to Sun, his remarks were all viewed as evidence that “the Russian revolutionaries were experienced in party politics not to be played by a bunch of kids so they corrected their course in our favor.” As a result, Sun wrote back to Deng and his associates that the Communists should “fall into line” and “I will cast them out if they don't.”
It was in the context of such psychological and organizational complexity that the first KMT-CPC cooperation began.
In January 1924, the First KMT National Congress convened in Guangzhou. Sun Yat-sen presided the meeting. Ten Communists, including Li Dazhao, Tan Pingshan, Mao Zedong, Lin Zuhan and Qu Qiubai were elected members or alternates on the central executive committee, accounting for nearly a quarter of all the members elected. Tan Pingshan was also made chief of the organizational department. Lin Zuhan was appointed head of the department of farmer affairs. Mao Zedong was made secretary to Hu Hanmin, head of the organizational department in the Shanghai executive bureau, the most powerful bureau within the KMT. Yun Daiying was made secretary to Wang Jingwei, chief of the communications department. Mao was also acting secretary-in-chief to the executive bureau until Shao Yuanchong took up the office.
Their ostensible success notwithstanding, the Communists overlooked a new organization established by the KMT congress. To put it more accurately, that organization overlooked them.
And that was the KMT central supervisory committee.
The loosely organized KMT had never previously had an organ devoted to discipline inspection. Neither the judicial department of the Chinese Revolutionary League nor the judicial and supervisory offices of the Chinese Revolutionary Party had really exercised their powers. What they had done was no more than “assist the premier and the local branch chiefs in conducting party affairs.” When the KMT was formed in 1912, no official document contained even a brief mention of judicial and supervisory functions.
When the First KMT National Congress was convened, however, the party charter passed by the delegates contained a chapter, Chapter Eleven, devoted entirely to party discipline. Sun and Hu Hanmin went out of their way to stress the importance of discipline. Hu made the emphatic explanation, “In the future when party members commit disciplinary offences or betray our ideology, they shall be penalized by the most severe measures possible.”
This chapter was inserted specifically for the Communists.
And the enforcer of party discipline was the central supervisory committee.
The KMT congress elected five members to the committee - Deng Zeru, Wu Zhihui, Li Shizeng, Zhang Ji and Xie Chi; it also elected five alternates - Cai Yuanpei, Xu Chongzhi, Liu Zhenhuan, Fan Zhongxiu and Yan Shukan.
Not one of them was a Communist.
Sun opened up his central executive committee and other top-level departments to the Communists, but not the central supervisory committee. He thought to use that office to guard against communist entrants to the KMT, hence the committee was carefully arranged to be composed of KMT members exclusively.
The policy of allying with the Chinese Communists was essentially a by-product of allying with Russia. Sun hoped that, as time went on, the small number of Communists inside the KMT would be absorbed into it.
And what if that did not happen?
On October 9, 1924, Sun sent a letter to Chiang Kai-shek, about the forming of a revolutionary committee. In this he wrote, “[Hu] Hanmin and [Wang] Jingwei are good at maintaining the status quo but not very good at thoroughly fixing it. That's why they are in charge of running the current situation. If it ever comes to the point where the status quo is unsustainable and we face total fallout, some decisive measures must be taken to clear up the mess, comes what may. In that event, the revolutionary committee will be our decisive means and Hanmin and Jingwei are not the right men for it.”
Sun was by no means unprepared for a possible split with the Communists: He believed the only way to prevent the Communists from waging class war was to bring them under the leadership of the KMT. Once the Northern Expedition against the northern warlords succeeded, he reasoned, the Communists would not be able to wreck the national revolution even if they wanted to.
“If the Communists plot to sabotage our party, then the only thing to do is to cut the support and cast them out.” Who do you think uttered these words? Can you believe it was Sun Yat-sen?
The Communists, their leader Chen Duxiu included, had not the slightest knowledge of the KMT's calculations.
After joining the KMT, in his capacity as a KMT member, Chen published his opinions in Guidance to criticize Sun's three-way alliance with the warlords in Liaoning and Anhui against those from Hebei, calling it a reversion to old ways. He hoped the party would return to the course of relying on the peasant-factory worker revolution. Sun was angered by Chen's criticism. He required absolute obedience from the new recruits and would not tolerate their so-called “views.” On several occasions he said to Maring, “Now that the Communists have joined the KMT, they should follow our party line and abstain from publicly criticizing the party. If the Communists do not obey orders of the KMT, I will expel them. If Soviet Russia takes the side of the Chinese Communists, I will oppose Soviet Russia.”
It came to the point where Sun contemplated kicking Chen Duxiu out of the KMT.
Although things did not actually reach this extreme, Sun did call a meeting of the KMT top brass to discuss impeaching the Communists, thus suppressing Chen and sending him a warning.
Chen was surprised. After some reflection, he wrote to G. N. Voitinsky on July 14, 1924, “We should not support the KMT unconditionally and without any limits. Instead we should only support certain ways of action by the KMT leftists. Otherwise we are just helping our enemy and creating opposition to ourselves.”
Chen's opinion was seen as extreme at the time; later, to the point; today, incisive. Being a great democratic pioneer is not the same as being a Communist. Sun's ultimate goal was a China under the “Three Principles of the People,” not socialism or communism. Today Sun is very often portrayed as virtually a Communist but that is a gross distortion of historical facts.
Sun never saw for himself how a Red power was later born in China, grew and spread right across the land. He died in Beijing in March 1925.
Adolph Joffe, co-author of the Sun-Joffe Manifesto, did not witness it either. He went to Japan shortly after the manifesto was published and thence back to Russia. There, caught up in the opposition to his friend Trotsky, he committed suicide on November 16, 1927.
Sun left three testaments: “Testament on Politics,” “Testament on Family Affairs”and “Last Letter to the Government of the Soviet Union.”
Joffe left no last words before killing himself.
The Sun-Joffe Manifesto remains as an important historical document.
But history went a different way. In 1949, The Red force in China achieved nationwide victory.
The turbulent 20th century came to an end and life became more relaxed and calmer; as for people enjoying a stroll on Tian'anmen Square, how are they supposed to understand those stirring years and the pioneers who rode the storms?
Sun would never know that “the kids” who tried to “compete with our party” never cast him aside, even after founding the People's Republic of China (PRC). Indeed, they placed his portrait on Tian'anmen Square. His portrait remained there every year, even after portraits of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin stopped being displayed. Nor would he ever know that the suit he personally designed would become the standard wear for leaders including Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping.
Sun wrote in “Testament on Politics,” “I have been committed to the national revolution for 40 years. Its goal is to achieve freedom and equality for the Chinese. What I have learned over the 40 years is that for us to achieve this goal we must awaken the people and work with any people in the world who will treat us as their equals as we fight the same battle.” In his “Last Letter to the Government of the Soviet Union,” he wrote, “Dear comrades! As I say my last words with you, I wish to express my strongest hope. I hope it will not be long until dawn and I hope when the time comes that the Soviet Union will welcome a strong and independent China as a good friend and ally. May the two countries join each other in the great war for freedom for all the repressed in the world. May they fight in this war side by side until victory is theirs.”
He had been convinced that “the communist organization and the Soviet system cannot be adopted in China, since China does not have the conditions to make this adoption a success.” Had he lived to see that the Chinese Communists, a group of people of a younger generation, did manage to “awaken the people and work with any people in the world who will treat us as their equals as we fight the same battle” to forge “a strong and independent China,” surely this would be most gratifying for him.