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China 1911 ~ 1979
China 1900 ~ 1976 China 1900 to 1976 Links for more information
Mao's revolution: caught on camera. guardian.co.uk, 2009.09.30. Dan Chung, Tania Branigan, Chen Shi and Xiaoli Wang
Hou Bo was there when the People's Republic of China was founded 60 years ago, capturing it on camera as Mao Zedong's personal photographer.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2009/sep/30/china-mao-hou-bo-photographer
Click Image to begin slideshow
| Second Sino-Japanese War Synopsis from 'Colombia Encyclopedia' |
Second Sino-Japanese War, 1937–45, conflict between Japanese and Chinese forces for control of the Chinese mainland. The war sapped the Nationalist government's strength while allowing the Communists to gain control over large areas through organization of guerrilla units. Thus, it was an important factor in the eventual Communist defeat of the Nationalist forces in 1949. In its early stage, the war was often called the China Incident.
Origins
Following the Manchurian Incident (Sept., 1931), the Japanese Kwantung army occupied Manchuria and established the puppet state of Manchukuo (Feb., 1932). Japan pressed China to recognize the independence of Manchukuo, suppress anti-Japanese activities, and form autonomous regional governments in N China. The Japanese were partially successful in 1933 and 1935 when they forced China to form two demilitarized autonomous zones bordering Manchuria.
Outbreak of War
Growing domestic opposition to the Nationalist government's policy of self-strengthening before counterattacking in N China and Manchuria led to the kidnapping of Chiang Kai-shek was kidnapped at Xi'an in Dec., 1936, by Chang Hsüeh-liang. Chiang was forced to agree to a united anti-Japanese front with the Communists as a condition for his release. The situation was tense, and in 1937 full war commenced. A clash (July, 1937) between soldiers of the Japanese garrison at Beijing and Chinese forces at the Marco Polo Bridge was the pretext for Japanese occupation at Beijing and Tianjin. Chiang Kai-shek refused to negotiate an end to hostilities on Japanese terms and placed crack troops outside the Japanese settlement at Shanghai. After a protracted struggle Shanghai and the national capital, Nanjing, fell to the Japanese. The Chinese broke the Huang He dikes (June, 1938) to slow the enemy advance. In late 1938, Hankou and Guangzhou were taken.
Japanese strategy was aimed at taking the cities, the roads, and the railroads, thereby gaining a net of control. Thus, although the Japanese by 1940 had swept over the eastern coastal area, guerrilla fighting still went on in the conquered regions. The Nationalist government, driven back to a temporary capital at Chongqing, struggled on with little help from outside. Chinese resources were inadequate, and the supplies sent over the Burma Road were far from sufficient. The Chinese cause continued to decline despite vast resistance and bloody fighting. Dubious of China's ability to sustain a protracted war, Wang Ching-wei broke with Chiang Kai-shek and established a collaborationist regime at Nanjing (1940).
World War II
The Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor brought the United States into the war and merged the Sino-Japanese War into World War II as China declared war on Japan, Germany, and Italy. American and British loans and supplies, the establishment of military air bases in China, and the aid of an increasing number of U.S. and British advisers helped relieve China as Japan diverted armies elsewhere. Nevertheless, China's military position continued to deteriorate until Apr., 1945. In May the Chinese launched a successful offensive at Zhijiang (Chihkiang) that lasted until Japanese capitulation on Aug. 14. The Japanese troops in China formally surrendered Sept. 9, 1945. By the provisions of the Cairo Declaration, Manchuria, Taiwan, and the Pescadores were restored to China.
Bibliography
See H. Feis, The China Tangle (1953); F. C. Jones, Japan's New Order in East Asia (1954); D. J. Lu, From the Marco Polo Bridge to Pearl Harbor (1961); J. H. Boyle, China and Japan at War, 1937–1945 (1972); L. Li, The Japanese Army in North China (1975).
 Dr Sun Yat-Sen (1866 -1925)
Early years
Sun Yat-sen (back row, fifth from left) and his family.
On November 12, 1866, Sun Yat-sen was born to a peasant family in the village of Cuiheng, Xiangshan county, Guangzhou prefecture, Guangdong province (26 km, or 16 miles, north of Macau). When Sun Yat-sen died in 1925, the name of Xiangshan was changed to Zhongshan in his honor.
After studying for a few years at a local school, at age thirteen, Sun went to live with his elder brother, Sun Mei, in Honolulu. Sun Mei, who was fifteen years Sun Yat-sen's senior, had emigrated to Hawaii as a laborer and had become a prosperous merchant. Though Sun Mei was not always supportive of Sun's later revolutionary activities, he supported his brother financially, allowing Sun to give up his professional career. Sun Yat-sen studied at the prestigious Iolani School, located at 563 Kamoku Street in Honolulu, where he learned English, mathematics, and science. Originally unable to speak the English language, Sun Yat-sen picked up the language so quickly that he received a prize for outstanding achievement in English from King David Kalakaua. He became a citizen of the United States and was issued an American passport. It is unclear whether or not he maintained his original citizenship as a subject of the Qing empire. After graduation from Iolani School in 1882, Sun enrolled in Oahu College (now Punahou School) for further studies for one semester. He was soon sent home to China because his brother was becoming afraid that Sun Yat-sen was about to embrace Christianity. While at Iolani, he befriended Tong Phong, who later founded the First Chinese-American Bank.
When he returned home in 1883, he became greatly troubled by what he saw as a backward China that demanded exorbitant taxes and levies from its people. The people were conservative and superstitious, and the schools maintained their ancient methods, leaving no opportunity for expression of thought or opinion. Under the influence of Christian missionaries in Hawaii, Sun had developed a disdain for traditional Chinese religious beliefs. One day, Sun and his childhood friend, Lu Hao-tung, passed by Beijidian, a temple in Cuiheng Village, where they saw many villagers worshiping the Beiji (literally North Pole) Emperor-God in the temple. They broke off the hand of the statue, incurring the wrath of fellow villagers, and escaped to Hong Kong.
Sun studied English at the Anglican Diocesan Home and Orphanage (currently Diocesan Boys' School) in Hong Kong. In April 1884, Sun was transferred to the Central School of Hong Kong (later renamed Queen's College). Sun was later baptized in Hong Kong by an American missionary of the Congregational Church of the United States, to his brother's dismay. Sun pictured a revolution in China as something like the salvation mission of the Christian church. His conversion to Christianity was related to his revolutionary ideals and his desire for advancement. His baptismal name, Rixin, literally means "daily renewal."
Photograph of Sun Yat-sen and his friends, the so-called "Si Da Kou" (Four Great Gangs, ËÄ´ó¿Ü) in the Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese (from left to right: Yang Heling, Sun Yat-sen, Chen Shaobai and You Lie. The one standing was Guan Jingliang.).
Sun studied medicine at the Guangzhou Boji Hospital under the medical missionary John G. Kerr. Ultimately, he earned a license to practice as a medical doctor from the Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese (the forerunner of The University of Hong Kong) in 1892, of which he was one of the first two graduates. He subsequently practiced medicine in that city briefly in 1893. At the age of twenty, he had an arranged marriage with fellow villager Lu Muzhen; the couple had a son Sun Fo, who would grow up to become a high ranking official in the Republican government, and two daughters, Sun Yan and Sun Wan.
During and after the Qing Dynasty rebellion, Sun was a leader within Tiandihui, a social and political society which was a precursor to modern triad groups, and which provided much of Sun's funding. His protégé, Chiang Kai Shek, was also a member of Tiandihui.
Transformation into a revolutionary
Sun, who had grown increasingly troubled by the conservative Qing government and its refusal to adopt knowledge from the more technologically advanced Western nations, quit his medical practice in order to devote his time to transforming China. At first, Sun aligned himself with the reformists Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao, who sought to transform China into a Western-style constitutional monarchy. In 1894, Sun wrote a long letter to Li Hongzhang, the governor-general of Zhili and a reformer in the court, with suggestions on how to strengthen China, but he was refused an interview. Since Sun had never been trained in the classics, the gentry did not accept Sun into their circles. This incident apparently turned Sun against the Qing dynasty; from then on, Sun began to call for the abolition of the monarchy and the establishment of a republic.
Sun went to Hawaii, in October 1894, and founded the Revive China Society to promote the goal of a prospering China, and as the platform for future revolutionary activities. Members were drawn mainly from fellow Cantonese expatriates and from the lower social classes.
From exile to Wuchang Uprising
Plaque in London marking the site of a house where Sun Yat-sen lived while in exile
Sun returned to Hong Kong and set up a similar society under the leadership of Yang Ch'ü-yün. In 1895, after an attempt to capture Canton failed, Sun sailed for England. For the next sixteen years Sun was an exile in Europe, the United States, Canada, and Japan, raising money for his revolutionary party and bankrolling uprisings in China. In 1897 he went to Japan, where he was known as Nakayama Sh¨ (Kanji:, The Woodcutter of Middle Mountain). He joined dissident Chinese groups (which later became the Tongmenghui and soon became their leader. After the collapse of the Hundred Days of Reform in September 1898, Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao also fled to Japan. A division developed between the revolutionaries and the reformists, who received more support from the expatriate Chinese and the Japanese. Sun was regarded as a secret society gang member and a ruffian, and was eventually obliged to leave Japan and go to the United States. While in Japan, Sun met and befriended Mariano Ponce, then a diplomat for the First Philippine Republic. Sun also supported the cause for Philippine Independence.
In 1899, Kang Youwei's followers organized the Tzu-li chün (Independence Army) at Hankou and planned an uprising, but the scheme ended unsuccessfully. Early in 1900, revolutionaries of the Revive China Society formed a kind of alliance with the Brothers and Elders, also known as the Revive Han Association. This new organization nominated Sun as its leader, giving him, for the first time, the leadership of the Revive China Society. The Revive Han Association started an uprising at Hui-chou, in Gwangdung, in October 1900, which failed after two weeks' fighting against the Imperial forces.
In November, 1899, an anti-foreign, anti-imperialist, peasant-based movement in northern China began the Boxer Movement (Traditional Chinese: literally "The Righteous and Harmonious Society Movement") or Boxer Rebellion, against foreign influence in areas such as trade, politics, religion and technology. They attacked foreigners, who were building railroads and violating feng shui, as well as Christians, who were held responsible for the foreign domination of China, until they were finally suppressed on September 7, 1901. After the Boxer disaster, Empress Dowager Cixi reluctantly issued a series of reforms, which included abolishing the civil service examination, establishing modern schools, and sending students abroad. But these measures could not restore the status of the throne. Anti-Manchu feeling increased. A growing number of journals and pamphlets published in Tokyo, Shanghai, and Hong Kong diffused revolutionary ideas, and the young students returning from abroad brought new concepts, such as the social Darwinism introduced by Yen Fu after the Sino-Japanese War. Nationalists and revolutionists were enthusiastically supported by the Chinese students in Japan, whose numbers increased rapidly between 1900 and 1906.
On October 10, 1911, a military uprising at Wuchang in which Sun had no direct involvement (at that moment Sun was still in exile and Huang Xing was in charge of the revolution), began a process that ended over two thousand years of imperial rule in China. When he learned of the successful rebellion against the Qing emperor from press reports, Sun immediately returned to China from the United States. Later, on December 29, 1911, a meeting of representatives from provinces in Nanjing elected Sun as the provisional President of the Republic of China and set January 1, 1912, as the first day of the First Year of the Republic. This republic calendar system is still used in Taiwan today.
Republic of China
After taking the oath of office, Sun Yat-sen sent telegrams to the leaders of all provinces, requesting them to elect and send new senators to establish the National Assembly of the Republic of China. The Assembly then declared the provisional government organizational guidelines and the provisional law of the Republic as the basic law of the nation.
The provisional government was in a very weak position. The southern provinces of China had declared independence from the Qing dynasty, but most of the northern provinces had not. Moreover, the provisional government did not have military forces of its own, and its control over elements of the New Army that had mutinied was limited; there were still significant forces which had not declared against the Qing.
The major issue before the provisional government was gaining the support of Yuan Shikai, who was in command of the Beiyang Army, the military of northern China. After Sun promised Yuan the presidency of the new Republic, Yuan sided with the revolution and forced the emperor to abdicate. Eventually, Yuan proclaimed himself emperor. (Afterwards, opposition to Yuan's dictatorial methods escalated, leading him to renounce the throne shortly before his death in 1916.) In 1913, Sun led an unsuccessful revolt against Yuan, and was forced to seek asylum in Japan, where he reorganized the Kuomintang. He married Soong Ching-ling, one of the Soong sisters, in Japan, on October 25, 1915, without divorcing his first wife Lu Muzhen, due to opposition from the Chinese community. Lu pleaded with him to take Soong as a concubine but this was also unacceptable to Sun's Christian ethics.
Guangzhou militarist government
In the late 1910s, China was deeply divided by different military leaders without a proper central government. Sun recognized the danger of this, and returned to China in 1917 to advocate unification. He started a self-proclaimed military government in Guangzhou (Canton), Guangdong Province, southern China, in 1921, and was elected as president and generalissimo.
In a February 1923, speech presented to the Students' Union at Hong Kong University, he declared that it was the corruption of China and the peace, order, and good government of Hong Kong that turned him into a revolutionary. That same year, he delivered a speech in which he proclaimed his Three Principles of the People as the foundation of the country and the Five-Yuan Constitution as the guideline for the political system and bureaucracy. Part of his speech was made into the National Anthem of the Republic of China.
To develop the military power needed for the Northern Expedition against the militarists at Beijing, he established the Whampoa Military Academy near Guangzhou, with Chiang Kai-shek as its commandant, and with party leaders such as Wang Ching-wei and Hu Han-min as political instructors. The Academy was the most eminent military school of the Republic of China and trained graduates who later fought in the Second Sino-Japanese War and on both sides of the Chinese Civil War.
Sun Yat-sen (middle) and Chiang Kai-shek (on stage in uniform) at the founding of the Whampoa Military Academy in 1924.
However, as soon as he established his government in Guangzhou, Sun Yat-sen came into conflict with entrenched local power. Sun's militarist government was not based on the Provisional Constitution of 1912, which the anti-Beiyang forces vowed to defend in the Constitutional Protection War. In addition, Sun was elected president by a parliament that did not meet quorum following its move from Beijing. Thus, many politicians and warlords alike challenged the legitimacy of Sun's militarist government. Sun's use of heavy taxes to fund the Northern Expedition to militarily unify China was at odds with the ideas of reformers such as Chen Jiongming, who advocated establishing Guangdong as a ¡°model province¡± before launching a costly military campaign. In sum, Sun's military government was opposed by the internationally-recognized Beiyang government in the north, Chen's Guangdong provincial government in the south, and other provincial powers that shifted alliances according to their own benefit.
Path to Northern Expedition and death
In the early 1920s, Sun received help from the Comintern for his reorganization of the Kuomintang as a Leninist Democratic-Centrist Party and negotiated the First Chinese Communist Party-Kuomintang United Front. In 1924, in order to hasten the conquest of China, he began a policy of active cooperation with the Chinese Communists.
By this time, Sun was convinced that the only hope for a unified China lay in a military conquest from his base in the south, followed by a period of political tutelage that would culminate in the transition to democracy. Sun then prepared for the later Northern Expedition, with help from foreign powers, until his death.
On November 10, 1924, Sun traveled north and delivered another speech to suggest gathering a conference for the Chinese people and the abolition of all unequal treaties with the Western powers. Two days later, he again traveled to Peking (Beijing) to discuss the future of the country, despite his deteriorating health and the ongoing civil war of the warlords. Although ill at the time, he was still head of the southern government. On November 28, 1924, Sun traveled to Japan and gave a remarkable speech on Pan-Asianism at Kobe, Japan. He left Guangzhou to hold peace talks with the northern regional leaders on the unification of China. Sun died of liver cancer on March 12, 1925, at the age of 58, in Beijing.
Legacy
Sun Yat-sen tribute in Tiananmen Square, 2005.
One of Sun's major legacies was his political philosophy, the Three Principles of the People. These Principles included the principle of nationalism, democracy and the people's livelihood. The Principles retained a place in the rhetoric of both the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party, with completely different interpretations. This difference in interpretation is due partly to the fact that Sun seemed to hold an ambiguous attitude to both capitalist and communist methods of development, and partly to his untimely death, in 1925, before he had finished his now-famous lecture series on the Three Principles of the People.
Power struggle
After Sun's death, a power struggle between his young protégé Chiang Kai-shek and his old revolutionary comrade Wang Jingwei split the KMT. At stake in this struggle was the right to lay claim to Sun's ambiguous legacy. In 1927, Chiang Kai-shek married Soong May-ling, a sister of Sun's widow Soong Ching-ling, and subsequently he could claim to be a brother-in-law of Sun. When the Communists and the Kuomintang split in 1927, marking the start of the Chinese Civil War, each group claimed to be his true heirs, a conflict that continued through World War II.
The official veneration of Sun's memory, especially in the Kuomintang, was a virtual cult, which centered around his tomb in Nanking. His widow, Soong Ching-ling, sided with the Communists during the Chinese Civil War and served from 1949 to 1981, as Vice President (or Vice Chairwoman) of the People's Republic of China and as Honorary President shortly before her death in 1981.
Father of the nation
Sun Yat-sen remains unique among twentieth-century Chinese leaders for being highly esteemed both in mainland China and in Taiwan. In Taiwan, he is seen as the Father of the Republic of China, and is known by the posthumous name Father of the Nation, Mr. Sun Chungshan. His likeness is still almost always found in ceremonial locations such as in front of the legislatures and in classrooms of public schools, from elementary to senior high school, and he continues to appear in new coinage and currency.
The official history of the Kuomintang (and for that matter, the Communist Party of China) emphasizes Sun's role as the first provisional President, but many historians now question the importance of Sun's role in the 1911 revolution and point out that he had no direct role in the Wuchang uprising and was in fact out of the country at the time. In this interpretation, the choice of Sun Yat Sen, a respected but rather unimportant figure, as the first provisional President served as an ideal compromise between the revolutionaries and the conservative gentry.
However, Sun is credited for the funding of the revolutions and for keeping the spirit of revolution alive, even after a series of failed uprisings. Also, he successfully merged minor revolutionary groups into a single larger party, providing an organized political better base for all those who shared the same ideals.
Sun is highly regarded as the National Father of modern China. His political philosophy, known as the Three Principles of the People,, was proclaimed in August 1905. In his Methods and Strategies of Establishing the Country completed in 1919, he suggested using his Principles to establish ultimate peace, freedom, and equality in the country. He devoted all his effort throughout his lifetime for a strong and prosperous China and the well-being of its people.
Mainland China
Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum in Nanjing
On the mainland, Sun is also seen as a Chinese nationalist and proto-socialist, and is highly regarded as the Forerunner of the Revolution. He is mentioned by name in the preamble to the Constitution of the People's Republic of China; this is a unique honor, as even Mao Zedong is only mentioned indirectly in connection with "Mao Zedong thought." In most major Chinese cities, one of the main streets is named "Zhongshan" to memorialize him, a name even more commonly used than other popular choices such as "Renmin Lu", or The People's Road, and "Jiefang Lu", or Liberation Road. There are also numerous parks, schools, and geographical features named after him. The city of Zhongshan in Guangdong, where Sun was born, is named after Sun, and there is a hall dedicated to his memory at the Temple of Azure Clouds in Beijing.
In recent years, the leadership of the Communist Party of China has been increasingly invoking Sun, partly as a way of bolstering Chinese nationalism in light of Chinese economic reform and partly to increase connections with supporters of the Kuomintang on Taiwan, which the PRC sees as allies against Taiwanese independence. Sun's tomb was one of the first stops made by the leaders of both the Kuomintang and the People First Party on their trips to mainland China in 2005. A massive portrait of Sun continues to appear in Tiananmen Square for May Day and the National Day.
Sun and the Overseas Chinese
Sun's notability and popularity extends beyond the Greater China region, particularly to Nanyang, where a large concentration of overseas Chinese reside in Singapore. Sun recognized the contributions that the large number of overseas Chinese could make, beyond the sending of remittances to their ancestral homeland. He therefore made multiple visits to spread his revolutionary message to these communities around the world.
Sun made a total of eight visits to Singapore between 1900 and 1911. His first visit made on September 7, 1900, was to rescue Miyazaki Toten, an ardent Japanese supporter and friend of Sun's, who had been arrested there, an act which also resulted in his own arrest and a ban from visiting the island for five years. Upon his next visit in June 1905, he met local Chinese merchants Teo Eng Hock, Tan Chor Nam and Lim Nee Soon in a meeting which was to mark the commencement of direct support from the Nanyang Chinese. Upon hearing their reports on overseas Chinese revolutionists organizing themselves in Europe and Japan, he urged them to establish the Singapore chapter of the Tongmenghui, which came officially into being on April 6 of the following year, during his next visit.
The chapter was housed in a villa known as Wan Qing Yuan and donated for the use of revolutionists by Teo. In 1906, the chapter grew in membership to 400, and in 1908, when Sun was in Singapore to escape the Qing government in the wake of the failed Zhennanguan Uprising, the chapter had become the regional headquarters for Tongmenghui branches in Southeast Asia. Sun and his followers traveled from Singapore to Malaya and Indonesia to spread their revolutionary message, by which time the alliance already had over twenty branches with over 3,000 members around the world.
Sun's foresight in tapping in to the help and resources of the overseas Chinese population was to bear fruit in his subsequent revolutionary efforts. In one particular instance, his personal plea for financial assistance at the Penang Conference held on November 13, 1910, in Malaya, launched a major drive for donations across the Malay Peninsula, an effort which helped finance the Second Guangzhou Uprising (also commonly known as the Yellow Flower Mound revolt) in 1911.
The role that overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia played during the 1911 Revolution was so significant that Sun himself recognized "Overseas Chinese as the Mother of the Revolution."
Today, Sun's legacy is remembered in Nanyang at Wan Qing Yuan, which has since been preserved and renamed the Sun Yat Sen Nanyang Memorial Hall, and was gazetted as a national monument of Singapore on October 28, 1994.
In Penang, the Penang Philomatic Union which was founded by Sun in 1908, has embarked on a heritage project to turn its premises at 65 Macalister Road into Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Museum. The project is expected to be completed in late 2006.
Names
According to one study, Sun Yat Sen used at least thirty different names, courtesy names and aliases during his lifetime. The name inscribed in the genealogical records of his family, is S¨±n Démíng. The first Chinese character of the given name, dé, is the generation character which he shared with his brother and his relatives on the same generation line. Many Chinese people wrongly assume that Deming was his courtesy name - zì.
The name that Sun Yat-sen received at birth was Sun Dìxiàng. When he was ten years old, he entered the village Confucian school, and he received a so-called "school name," Wén ( meaning "literary"). When he became known by Chinese authorities for his revolutionary activities, he was listed as "Sun Wen," and this is how he was known by Chinese authorities until his death. After attaining public office, Sun consistently used this name, Sun Wen, to sign official documents.
On the occasion, of his Christian baptism, he chose a pseudonym: Rìx¨©n (meaning "renew oneself daily"). This is the name he used while a student in Hong Kong. Later, his professor of Chinese literature changed this pseudonym into Yìxi¨¡n. Unlike in Standard Mandarin, both pseudonyms are pronounced similarly in the local Cantonese: Yat-sen. As this was the name that he used in his frequent contacts with Westerners at the time, he has become known under this name (with Cantonese pronunciation) in the West. In the Chinese world, however, almost nobody uses the Mandarin version Sun Yixian, nor the Cantonese version Sun Yat-sen.
Later, Sun Yat-sen chose a courtesy name (×Ö) which was Zàizh¨© (meaning "conveying it"). In 1897, Sun Yat-sen arrived in Japan, and when he went to a hotel he had to register his name. Desiring to remain hidden from Japanese authorities, his friend wrote down the Japanese family name Nakayama on the register for him, and Sun Yat-sen chose the given name Sh¨. For the most part of his stay in Japan, he was known as Nakayama Sh¨. The kanji for Nakayama can be read in Chinese as Zh¨ngsh¨¡n in pinyin. After his return to China in 1911, this alias (only the family name Nakayama/Zhongshan, not the given name Sh¨) became popular among Chinese republican circles, and so a Japanese family name became his new Chinese given name. Nakayama/Zhongshan literally means "central mountain" (and can even be interpreted as meaning "China's mountain"), which holds very positive and dignified connotations in Chinese. Today, the overwhelming majority of Chinese people know Sun Yat-sen under the name Sun Zhongshan (Sun Chung-shan). Often, it is shortened to Zhongshan (Chung-shan).
In 1940, the Kuomintang party officially conferred on the late Sun, the title Kuo Fu, meaning "Father of the Nation." This title is still frequently used in the Republic of China on Taiwan and Hong Kong. In mainland China, the title "Forerunner of the Revolution" is sometimes used instead.
Direct Link.
- Born: 26 December 1893
- Death: 9th September, 1976
- Best Known As: Head of the People's Republic of China, 1949-76
Mao Zedong (also Mao Tse-Tung) was the world's most prominent Chinese communist during the 20th century. Mao's Red Army overthrew Chiang Kai-Shek in 1949, and the communists seized power of mainland China. Ruthless and ambitious, Mao turned China into a world military power and created a cu: XiangTan, Hunan Province, China. After his death, leaders like Deng Xiaoping steered the country away from pure communism, and the Cult of Mao began to disappear.
(b. Shaoshan, Hunan Province, 26 Dec. 1893; d. 9 Sept. 1976) Chinese; chairman of the Chinese Communist party 1935 ¨C 76, paramount leader of the People's Republic of China 1949 ¨C 76 Mao Zedong was the single most influential figure in Chinese politics in the twentieth century. Even after his death, his legacy for Chinese politics was immense ¡ª indeed the continued use of the term "post-Mao" China to define the current epoch is testimony to his importance and standing. As Mao was also a crucial player in global politics for three decades, he was quite simply one of the most important leaders in the world.
While many other Chinese Communist leaders spent some time in France or Moscow, Mao's formative political experiences were all in China. The young Mao spent much of his spare time travelling in the local countryside, talking to the local peasants about their problems. Like many of his generation, he was later inspired by opposition to the oppressive Confucian family system. Indeed, Mao did not have a particularly good knowledge of the major Communist texts, and in later life often made a virtue out of his experiences with the Chinese people, extolling the importance of "seeking truth from facts" at the expense of book-learned socialism.
Whilst enrolled as a mature teacher-training student in Changsha in 1913, Mao first became involved in political organization and mobilization under the influence of his first mentor, the philosopher Yang Changji. In 1918, Yang helped Mao secure a job under the Marxist theoretician, Li Dazhao in the Beijing University library, which marked Mao's conversion from liberal to Marxist. Nevertheless, Mao was a founder member of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921.
On Moscow's instructions, the Communists joined a United Front with the Nationalists in the early 1920s, and Mao was placed in charge of the peasant work department where he undertook a study of the situation in rural Hunan. Mao became convinced that the peasantry and not the urban proletariat would be the source of revolution in China. This view was antithetical to the official party line, and resulted in much criticism from both Moscow and the party leaders in Shanghai. Mao retained a fierce grudge against his critics during this period, particularly those who he felt were isolated from the real revolution and struggle in the Chinese countryside.
When the Nationalists installed a new national government in Nanjing, Chiang Kai-shek abandoned the united front and moved against the Communists. Mao led one of a number of failed Communist uprisings (in Changsha), and the defeated troops escaped to the mountains of Jiangxi Province. Joined over the years by other sympathizers, and the remnants of another abortive set of rebellions in 1930, the Communists established a Soviet headquarters at Ruijin, where Mao devised the strategy that was later to bring the Communists to power. In addition to his formula for rural-based revolution, Mao developed a mobile warfare guerilla strategy built on a cohesive, disciplined, and democratic Red Army.
Mao was temporarily displaced from power as the Nationalists increased their attacks and forced the Communists to retreat. The heavy losses of the early days of the Long March out of Jiangxi proved the wisdom of Mao's mobile strategy, and although Wang Ming still claimed the mantle of Communist leadership from the safety of Moscow, Mao was effectively leader of the Chinese Communists from the Zunyi Conference of January 1935 to his death in 1976.
From the end of the Long March in 1935 throughout the subsequent war against Japan, Mao and his colleagues planned their military and revolutionary strategy from Yanan in Shaanxi Province. Through a combination of exploiting their nationalist credentials, moderate social and economic reform, political cohesion and mobilization, effective guerilla military tactics, and the concomitant failings of the nationalists, the Communists surprised perhaps even themselves by establishing a new People's Republic on 1 October 1949.
Having won the revolution in the face of apparently insurmountable odds, Mao became convinced that there was nothing that the Chinese people could not achieve if they were correctly educated and mobilized. Whilst other leaders argued for a slow and stable process of economic development based on Soviet Leninist principles, Mao argued for a Chinese solution entailing mass mobilization to bring about the simultaneous political development of the Chinese people, and rapid economic change.
Mao's first radical experiment saw the rapid collectivization of the countryside. The early successes of this policy led on to the Great Leap Forward ¡ª a mass campaign to communize the Chinese population as soon as possible, and in the process unleash the enthusiasm of the masses in economic production. China would surpass Britain's level of development in fifteen years and China would be pushed to the verge of real Communism. The result was somewhat different. The Great Leap collapsed into a great famine, resulting in the deaths of 40 million Chinese between 1961 and 1963.
Instead of accepting the errors of his strategy, Mao instead blamed the failings of local officials, the peasants' poor understanding of socialism, and the failings of some of his leadership colleagues. When these leaders, notably Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping, intervened to marginalize his Socialist Education Campaign from 1962 to 1964, Mao became convinced that if his correct vision of the Chinese revolution was to succeed, then the party had to get rid of these "capitalist roaders".
Thus, Mao unleashed the revolutionary enthusiasm of the Chinese students who had been indoctrinated in loyalty to his name in a Cultural Revolution against class enemies. The result was chaos. Communist leaders at all levels were arrested, and many lost their lives. Countless others also died as the student Red Guards became ever more vindictive and imaginative in defining ways to identify class traitors, and parts of the country descended into virtual civil war. By 1971, Mao had been forced to rely on the military to restore order, and purged two of his closest political allies, Lin Biao and Chen Boda, as the system lurched uncertainly back towards a semblance of stability.
Mao grew ever more ill during the 1970s, and his political role in these years remains unclear. Many believe that his radical followers, the Gang of Four, exercised power in Mao's name, although it is likely that he still had the final word on major issues. Despite the arrest of the Gang of Four, and Deng Xiaoping's ascension to power in 1978, the party did not feel able to criticize Mao directly for the Cultural Revolution until 1981. Even then, the party took great care to show that his many great deeds vastly outweighed his errors. Chen Yun's appreciation of Mao's career is closer to the truth: if he had died in 1956, the party could have remembered Mao as a great revolutionary hero. As he died in 1976, "there is nothing that we can do about it".
Mao Ze Dong
Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-Tung), the son of a peasant farmer, was born in Chaochan, China, in 1893. He became a Marxist while working as a library assistant at Peking University and served in the revolutionary army during the 1911 Chinese Revolution. Inspired by the Russian Revolution the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was established in Shanghai by Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao in June 1921. Early members included Mao, Zhou Enlai, Zhu De and Lin Biao. Following instructions from the Comintern members also joined the Kuomintang.
Over the next few years Mao, Zhu De and Zhou Enlai adapted the ideas of Lenin who had successfully achieved a revolution in Russia. They argued that in Asia it was important to concentrate on the countryside rather than the towns, in order to create a revolutionary elite.
Mao worked as a Kuomintang political organizer in Shanghai. With the help of advisers from the Soviet Union the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party) gradually increased its power in China. Its leader, Sun Yat-sen died on 12th March 1925. Chiang Kai-Shek emerged as the new leader of the Kuomintang. He now carried out a purge that eliminated the communists from the organization. Those communists who survived managed to established the Jiangxi Soviet.
The nationalists now imposed a blockade and Mao Zedong decided to evacuate the area and establish a new stronghold in the north-west of China. In October 1934 Mao, Lin Biao, Zhu De, and some 100,000 men and their dependents headed west through mountainous areas.
The marchers experienced terrible hardships. The most notable passages included the crossing of the suspension bridge over a deep gorge at Luting (May, 1935), travelling over the Tahsueh Shan mountains (August, 1935) and the swampland of Sikang (September, 1935).
The marchers covered about fifty miles a day and reached Shensi on 20th October 1935. It is estimated that only around 30,000 survived the 8,000-mile Long March.
When the Japanese Army invaded the heartland of China in 1937, Chiang Kai-Shek was forced to move his capital from Nanking to Chungking. He lost control of the coastal regions and most of the major cities to Japan. In an effort to beat the Japanese he agreed to collaborate with Mao Zedong and his communist army.
During the Second World War Mao's well-organized guerrilla forces were well led by Zhu De and Lin Biao. As soon as the Japanese surrendered, Communist forces began a war against the Nationalists led by Chaing Kai-Shek. The communists gradually gained control of the country and on 1st October, 1949, Mao announced the establishment of People's Republic of China.
In 1958 Mao announced the Great Leap Forward, an attempt to increase agricultural and industrial production. This reform programme included the establishment of large agricultural communes containing as many as 75,000 people. The communes ran their own collective farms and factories. Each family received a share of the profits and also had a small private plot of land. However, three years of floods and bad harvests severely damaged levels of production. The scheme was also hurt by the decision of the Soviet Union to withdraw its large number of technical experts working in the country. In 1962 Mao's reform programme came to an end and the country resorted to a more traditional form of economic production.
As a result of the failure on the Great Leap Forward, Mao retired from the post of chairman of the People's Republic of China. His place as head of state was taken by Liu Shaoqi. Mao remained important in determining overall policy. In the early 1960s Mao became highly critical of the foreign policy of the Soviet Union. He was for example appalled by the way Nikita Khrushchev backed down over the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Mao became openly involved in politics in 1966 when with Lin Biao he initiated the Cultural Revolution. On 3rd September, 1966, Lin Biao made a speech where he urged pupils in schools and colleges to criticize those party officials who had been influenced by the ideas of Nikita Khrushchev.
Mao was concerned by those party leaders such as Liu Shaoqi, who favoured the introduction of piecework, greater wage differentials and measures that sought to undermine collective farms and factories. In an attempt to dislodge those in power who favoured the Soviet model of communism, Mao galvanized students and young workers as his Red Guards to attack revisionists in the party. Mao told them the revolution was in danger and that they must do all they could to stop the emergence of a privileged class in China. He argued this is what had happened in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev.
Lin Biao compiled some of Mao's writings into the handbook, The Quotations of Chairman Mao, and arranged for a copy of what became known as the Little Red Book, to every Chinese citizen.
Zhou Enlai at first gave his support to the campaign but became concerned when fighting broke out between the Red Guards and the revisionists. In order to achieve peace at the end of 1966 he called for an end to these attacks on party officials. Mao remained in control of the Cultural Revolution and with the support of the army was able to oust the revisionists.
The Cultural Revolution came to an end when Liu Shaoqi resigned from all his posts on 13th October 1968. Lin Biao now became Mao's designated successor.
Mao now gave his support to the Gang of Four: Jiang Qing (Mao's fourth wife), Wang Hongwen, Yao Wenyuan and Zhange Chungqiao. These four radicals occupied powerful positions in the Politburo after the Tenth Party Congress of 1973.
Mao Zedong died in Beijing on 9th September, 1976.
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The Long March
 
The Long March saved Mao Zedong and the Communist Party from the attacks by the Guomingdang. The Long March came about when the Chinese Communists had to flee a concerted Guomingdang attacked that had been ordered by Chiang Kai-shek.
In the autumn of 1933, the Guomindang leader Chiang Kai-shek launched a huge attack against the Communists who were then based in the Jiangxi and Fujian provinces in south-east China. The Guomindang was advised by the German general, Hans von Seeckt. He advised Chiang Kai-shek not to launch a full frontal attack on Jiangxi. 500,000 Guomindang troops surrounded Jiangxi in an attempt to strangulate the Communists. The Guomindang had a policy of making a slow advance building trenches and blockhouses as they went to give the Guomindang troops there places of protection. Seeckt wanted a war of attrition but with minimal contact with the Communists as Seeckt wanted to starve them out rather engage in combat with them.
Seeckt was a skilled soldier and his strategy worked very well. His ¡®slow-but-sure¡¯ process lead to the area controlled by the Communists shrinking quite rapidly. Within 12 months, the Communists had lost 50% of the territory they had controlled in 1933 and 60,000 Communist soldiers (the Red Army) were killed. The Guomindang had the clear ability to fully destroy the Communists.
It was then that the Communists changed tactics. Against the advice of Mao, the Communists used full-scale attacks against the Guomindang. They were advised by Russian agents lead by Otto Braun. It was Braun who advised full-frontal attacks and he convinced the Communist hierarchy that Mao was wrong. He also branded Mao as being politically wrong because peasants in Jiangxi were being killed by the Guomindang and the Red Army did nothing to assist them. Mao was expelled from the Chinese Communist Party¡¯s Central Committee.
The strategy of Braun was very costly for the Communists. They lost men and equipment and because Jiangxi was surrounded by blockhouses held by the Guomindang, they could get no supplies through from the other Communist base at Hunan.
Mao tried to win back support by pushing for a breakout by the Red Army followed up by an attack on the Guomindang in their rear. This was rejected in favour of Braun¡¯s idea for a full-scale retreat from Jiangxi with a push for a communist base in Hunan where the Chinese Communist¡¯s Party Second Army was based. The retreat ¨C which was to be called the Long March ¨C started in October 1934.
The Red Army started to Long March carrying whatever it could. 87,000 soldiers started the retreat carrying such items as typewriters, furniture, printing presses etc. They also took with them 33,000 guns and nearly 2 million ammunition cartridges. It took the Red Army 40 days to get through the blockhouses surrounding Jiangxi but no sooner had they done this than they were attacked at Xiang by the Guomindang. In the Battle of Xiang, the Red Army lost 45,000 men ¨C over 50% of their fighting force.
Clearly, poor strategy played its part in this. Braun planned for the Red Army to march in a straight line. The Guomindang were able to predict where the Red Army would be at any given point. Also the fleeing communists took with them equipment that was bound to hold up their retreat ¨C the printing presses, typewriters were not of military value in survival terms and hindered speed of movement. After the Battle of Xiang, Braun was blamed for these failings but the damage had been done. In January 1935, control of the Red Army was handed over to Mao and Braun was suspended.
Mao, supported in his work by Zhu De, adopted new tactics. He wanted the Red Army to move in a completely unpredictable way. As the Red Army moved away from Xiang, it used twisting movement patterns that made predicting its direction very difficult. Mao also split up the Red Army into smaller units. In theory this made them more open to attack ¨C in practice, they were more difficult to find in the open spaces on China.
Mao also had a new target ¨C Shaanxi province towards the north of China. The journey was physically demanding as it crossed a very difficult environment. The Red Army had to cross the Snowy Mountains, some of the highest mountains in the world, and the Chinese Grassland which was an area of deep marshes which claimed hundreds of lives. The Red Army did not only have to contend with the Guomindang. The land in northern China was very much controlled by warlords. Even the Guomindang under Chiang had failed to break their power. They were did not welcome the arrival of the Red Army into an area they effectively ruled.
By October 1935, what was left of the original 87,000 Red Army soldiers reached their goal of Yanan. Less than 10,000 men had survived the march. These survivors had marched over 9000 kilometres. The march had taken 368 days. The Long March is considered one of the great physical feats of the Twentieth Century. However, when those who survived the march reached Yunan, they combined with the communist troops there to form a fighting strength of 80,000 which still made it a formidable fighting force against the Guomindang.
As Mao Zedong's health began to decline in 1971 and 1972, Zhou and the Gang of Four struggled internally over leadership of China. Zhou's health was also failing however, and he died eight months before Mao on 8 January 1976. The massive public outpouring of grief in Beijing turned to anger towards the Gang of Four, leading to the Tiananmen Incident. Deng Xiaoping, Zhou's ally and successor as Premier, was able to outmaneuver the Gang of Four politically and eventually take Mao's place as Paramount Leader.
Early life
Zhou Enlai was born to a well-educated couple in 1898 or 1899 in Zhejiang, and spent most of his early years in Huai'an, Jiangsu. His education included the Chinese Classics and, later, the prestigious Tianjin Nankai High School. From there, he studied at Waseda and Nippon universities in Japan, and later attended Nankai University in Tianjin.
Revolutionary activities
A young Zhou Enlai (1919)
Zhou first came to national prominence as an activist during the May Fourth Movement. He had enrolled as a student in the literature department of Nankai University, which enabled him to visit the campus, but he never attended classes. He became one of the organizers of the Tianjin Students Union, whose avowed aim was ¡°to struggle against the warlords and against imperialism, and to save China from extinction." Zhou became the editor of the student union¡¯s newspaper, Tianjin Student. In September, he founded the Awareness Society with twelve men and eight women. Fifteen year old Deng Yingchao, Enlai¡¯s future wife, was one of the founding female members. (They were married on 8 August 1925). Zhou was instrumental in the merger between the all male Tianjin Students Union and the all female Women¡¯s Patriotic Association.
In January 1920, the police raided the printing press and arrested several members of the Awareness Society. Enlai led a group of students to protest the arrests, and was himself arrested along with 28 others. After the trial in July, they were found guilty of a minor offense and released. An attempt was made by the Comintern to induct Zhou into the Communist Party of China, but although he was studying Marxism he remained uncommitted. Instead of being selected to go to Moscow for training, he was chosen to go to France as a student organizer. Deng Yingchao was left in charge of the Awareness Society in his absence.
French "studies" and the European years
In Whampoa Military Academy.
On 7 November 1920, Zhou Enlai and 196 other Chinese students sailed from Shanghai for Marseilles, France. At Marseilles they were met by a member of the Sino-French Education Committee and boarded a train to Paris. Almost as soon as he arrived Zhou became embroiled in a wrangle between the students and the education authorities running the ¡°work and study¡± program. The students were supposed to work in factories part time and attend class part time. Because of corruption and graft in the Education Committee, however, the students were not paid. As a result they simply provided cheap labour for the French factory owners and received very little education in return. Zhou wrote to newspapers back in China denouncing the committee and the corrupt government officials.
Zhou traveled to Britain in January; he applied for and was accepted as a student at Edinburgh University. But the university term didn¡¯t start until October so he returned to France, moving in with Liu Tsingyang and Zhang Shenfu, who were setting up a Communist cell. Zhou joined the group and was entrusted with political and organizational work. There is some controversy over the date Zhou joined the Communist Party of China. For secrecy reasons members did not carry membership cards. Zhou himself wrote "autumn, 1922" at a verification carried out at the Party's Seventh Congress in 1945.
There were 2,000 Chinese students in France, some 200 each in Belgium and England and between 300 and 400 in Germany. For the next four years Zhou was the chief recruiter, organizer and coordinator of activities of the Socialist Youth League. He traveled constantly between Belgium, Germany and France, safely conveying party members through Berlin to entrain for Moscow, to be taught the art of revolution.
The First United Front
Zhou returned to China as a seasoned party organizer in 1924. He was appointed Director of the CCP Guangdong Military Affairs Department, Director of Training at the National Revolutionary Army Political Training Department and Acting Director of the Whampoa Military Academy's Political Department. The latter role made Zhou political commissar of the 1st Division, 1st Corp during the Eastern Campaign of 1925. At the end of that successful campaign, he was named CCP Secretary of Guangdong Province, one of the highest jobs in the party. A year later, at the age of 28 or 29, Zhou Enlai was elected to the CCP Politburo and placed in charge of military affairs.
In January 1924 Sun Yat-sen had officially proclaimed an alliance between the Kuomintang and the Communists, and a plan for a military expedition to unify China and destroy the warlords. The Whampoa Military Academy was set up in March to train officers for the armies that would march against the warlords. Russian ships unloaded crates of weapons at the Guangzhou docks. Comintern advisers from Moscow joined Sun¡¯s entourage. In October, shortly after he arrived back from Europe, Zhou Enlai was appointed Director of the political department at the Whampoa Military Academy in Guangzhou.
Zhou soon realized the Kuomintang was riddled with intrigue. The powerful right wing of the Kuomintang was bitterly opposed to the Communist alliance. Zhou was convinced that the CCP, in order to survive must have an army of its own. "The Kuomintang is a coalition of treacherous warlords" he told his friend Nie Rongzhen, recently arrived from Moscow and named a vice director of the academy. Together they set about to organize a nucleus of officer cadets who were CCP members and who would follow the principles of Karl Marx. For a while they met no hindrance, not even from Chiang Kai-Shek, the director of the academy.
Sun Yat-sen died on 12 March 1925. No sooner was Sun dead than trouble broke out in Guangzhou. A warlord named Chen Chiungming made a bid to take the city and province. The East Expedition, led by Zhou, was organized as a military offensive against Chen. Using the disciplined core of CCP cadets they met with resounding success. Zhou was promoted to head Whampoa¡¯s martial law bureau. Zhou quickly crushed an attempted coup by another warlord within the city. Chen Chiungming once again took the field in October 1925. Once again Zhou defeated him and this time captured the important city of Shantou on the South China coast. Zhou was appointed special commissioner of Shantou and surrounding region. Zhou began to build up a party branch in Shantou whose membership he would keep secret.
On 8 August 1925, he and Deng Yingchao were finally married after a long-distance courtship of nearly five years. The couple remained childless, but adopted many orphaned children of "revolutionary martyrs"; one of the more famous was future Premier Li Peng.
After Sun's death the Kuomintang was run by a triumvirate composed of Chiang Kai-Shek, Liao Zhongkai and Wang Jingwei, but in August 1925 Liao (father of Liao Chengzhi and grandfather to Liao Hui, both prominent PRC politicians), was murdered by Nationalist agents. Chiang Kai-shek used this murder to declare martial law and consolidate right wing control of the Nationalists. On 18 March 1926, while Mikhail Borodin, the Russian comintern advisor to the United Front, was in Shanghai. Chiang created a further incident to usurp power over the communists. The commander and crew of a Kuomintang gunboat was arrested at the Whampoa docks (see Zhongshan Warship Incident).
This was followed by raids on the First Army Headquarters and Whampoa Military Academy. Altogether 65 communists were arrested, including Nie Rongzhen. A state of emergency was declared and curfews were imposed. Zhou had just returned from Shantou and was also detained for 48 hours. On his release he confronted Chiang and accused him of undermining the United Front but Chiang argued that he was only breaking up a plot by the communists. When Borodin returned from Shanghai he believed Chiang¡¯s version and rebuked Zhou.
At Chiang's request Borodin turned over a list of all the members of the CCP who were also members of the Kuomintang. The only omissions from this list were the members Zhou had secretly recruited. Chiang dismissed all the rest of the CCP officers from the First Army. Wang Jingwei, considered too sympathetic to the communists, was persuaded to leave on a ¡°study tour¡± in Europe. Zhou Enlai was relieved of all his duties associated with the First United front, effectively giving complete control of the United Front to Chiang Kai-Shek.
From Shanghai to Yan'an
After the Northern Expedition began, he worked as a labour agitator. In 1926, he organized a general strike in Shanghai, opening the city to the Kuomintang. When the Kuomintang broke with the Communists, Zhou managed to escape the white terror. Zhou attended a July 1927 meeting with Zhu De, He Long, Ye Jianying, Liu Bocheng, ¨C all future marshals of the army ¨C and Mao to decide a response to Chiang¡¯s blood purge. Their move was the Nanchang Uprising, led by Liu and Zhou.
After that attempt failed, Zhou left China for the Soviet Union to attend the Chinese Communist Party's 6th National Party Congress in Moscow, in June-July 1928. He was elected Director of the Central Committee Organization Department; his ally, Li Lisan took over propaganda work. Zhou finally returned to China, after more than a year away, in 1929.
In Shanghai, Zhou began to disagree with the timing of Li Lisan's strategy of favoring rich peasants and concentrating military forces for attacks on urban centers sometime in early 1930. Zhou did not openly break with these more orthodox notions, and even tried to implement them later, in 1931, in Jiangxi.
Zhou moved to the Jiangxi base area and shook up the propaganda-oriented approach to revolution by demanding that the armed forces under communist control actually be used to expand the base, rather than just to control and defend it. In December 1931, he replaced Mao as Secretary of the 1st Front Army with Xiang Ying, and made himself political commissar of the Red Army, in place of Mao. Liu Bocheng, Lin Biao and Peng Dehuai all criticized Mao's tactics at the August 1932 Ningdu Conference. Under Zhou, the Red Army defeated four attacks by Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist troops. Only when the Nationalists were forced to change their tactics did Zhou endorse withdrawal. Zhou Enlai was thus one of the major beneficiaries of the 1931-34 side-lining of Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, Tan Zhenlin, Deng Zihui, Lu Dingyi and Xiao Qingguang.
In early 1933, Bo Gu arrived with German Comintern adviser Otto Braun (a/k/a Li De)]] and took control of party affairs. Zhou at this time, apparently with strong support from party and military colleagues, undertook to reorganize and standardize the Red Army. The results were the structure that led the communists to victory:
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| Leaders | Unit Designation |
|---|
| Lin Biao, Nie Rongzhen | 1st Corps | | Peng Dehuai, Yang Shangkun | 3rd Corps | | Xiao Qingguang | 7th Corps | | Xiao Ke | 8th Corps | | Liu Binghui | 9th Corps | | Fang Zhimin | 10th Corps |
In the Yan'an years, Zhou was active in promoting a united anti-Japanese front. As a result, he played a major role in the Xi'an Incident, helped to secure Chiang Kai-shek's release, and negotiated the Second CCP-KMT United Front, and coining the famous phrase "Chinese should not fight Chinese but a common enemy: the invader". Zhou spent the Sino-Japanese War as CCP ambassador to Chiang's wartime government in Chongqing and took part in the failed negotiations following World War II.
Premiership
Zhou shakes hands with President Richard Nixon upon the Nixons' arrival to China in February 1972.
In 1949, with the establishment of the People's Republic of China, Zhou assumed the role of Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs. In June 1953, he declared the five principles for peaceful coexistence. He headed the Communist Chinese delegation to the Geneva Conference and to the Bandung Conference (1955). He survived a covert proxy assassination attempt by the nationalist Kuomintang under the government of Chiang Kai-shek on his way to Bandung. A time bomb with an American-made MK-7 detonator was planted on a charter plane Kashmir Princess scheduled for Zhou's trip. Zhou changed planes but the rest of his crew of 16 people died. Zhou was a moderate force and a new influential voice for non-aligned states in the Cold War; his diplomacy strengthened regional ties with India, Burma, and many southeast Asian countries, as well as African states. In 1958, the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs was passed to Chen Yi but Zhou remained Prime Minister until his death in 1976.
Zhou's first major domestic focus after becoming premier was China's economy, in a poor state after decades of war. He aimed at increased agricultural production through the even redistribution of land. Industrial progress was also on his to-do list. He additionally initiated the first environmental reforms in China. In government, Mao largely developed policy while Zhou carried it out.
In 1958, Mao Zedong began the Great Leap Forward, aimed at increasing China's production levels in industry and agriculture with unrealistic targets. As a popular and practical administrator, Zhou maintained his position through the Leap. The Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) was a great blow to Zhou. At its late stages in 1975, he pushed for the "four modernizations" to undo the damage caused by the campaigns.
Known as an able diplomat, Zhou was largely responsible for the re-establishment of contacts with the West in the early 1970s. He welcomed US President Richard Nixon to China in February 1972, and signed the Shanghai Communiqué.
After discovering he had cancer, he began to pass many of his responsibilities onto Deng Xiaoping. During the late stages of the Cultural Revolution, Zhou was the new target of Chairman Mao's and Gang of Four's political campaigns in 1975 by initiating "criticizing Song Jiang, evaluating the Water Margin", alluding to a Chinese literary work, using Zhou as an example of a political loser. In addition, the Criticize Lin, Criticize Confucius campaign was also directed at Premier Zhou because he was viewed as one of the Gang's primary political opponents.
Reputation in popular stories
During a time when news could not be communicated as easily as today through internet and television, much weight is put on hear-say which cannot be verified. It is widely believed that at the Geneva Conference of 1954 U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles snubbed Zhou by publicly brushing past his outstretched hand. Whether the incident actually happened or not, President Nixon clearly believed that it had. Therefore, when he descended from Air Force One in Beijing on his visit to China, he ostentatiously and respectfully held out his hand to Zhou, who appreciated the symbolism.
The clash with Russia created a number of these stories. One story had it that Zhou met Premier Nikita Khrushchev outside a meeting hall where each had denounced the other. Khrushchev, who was said to be jealous of Zhou¡¯s cosmopolitan skills, remarked to Zhou ¡°it¡¯s interesting, isn¡¯t it. I¡¯m of working class origin while your family were landlords.¡± Zhou quickly replied ¡°Yes, and we each betrayed our class!¡±
Another such account had it that at another such encounter Khrushchev shook Zhou¡¯s hand, then pulled out his handkerchief and wiped his hands. Zhou then pulled out his handkerchief, wiped his hands, and put the handkerchief in the nearest wastebasket.
This is especially interesting since apparently Richard Nixon told a similar story. He recalled that in 1954 Undersecretary of State, Walter B. Smith did not want to "break... discipline" but also did not want to slight the Chinese blatantly. Therefore, Smith held a cup of coffee in his right hand when shaking hands with Zhou. Zhou took out a white handkerchief, wiped his hand and threw the handkerchief into the garbage.
When asked for his assessment of the 1789 French Revolution, he is remembered for saying, "It is too early to say", although this is also attributed to Mao.
Death and reactions
Zhou was hospitalized in 1974 for bladder cancer, but continued to conduct work from the hospital, with Deng Xiaoping as the First Deputy Premier handling most of the important State Council matters. Zhou died on the morning of 8 January 1976, aged 77. He died eight months before Mao Zedong. Zhou's death brought messages of condolences from many non-aligned states that he affected during his tenure as an effective diplomat and negotiator on the world stage, and many states saw his death as a terrible loss. At the United Nations session of the year the flag was also lowered to half-mast in commemoration of Premier Zhou. Zhou's body was cremated and the ashes scattered by air over hills and valleys, according to his wishes.
Inside China, the infamous Gang of Four had seen Zhou's death as an effective step forward in their political maneuvering, as the last major challenge was now gone in their plot to seize absolute power. At Zhou's funeral, Deng Xiaoping delivered the official eulogy, but later he was forced out of politics until after Mao's death.
Because Zhou was very popular with the people, many rose in spontaneous expressions of mourning across China, which the Gang considered to be dangerous, as they feared people might use this opportunity to express hatred towards them. During the Tiananmen Incident in April 1976, the Gang of Four tried to suppress mourning for the "Beloved Premier", which resulted in rioting. Anti-Gang of Four poetry was found on some wreaths that were laid, and all wreaths were subsequently taken down at the Monument to the People's Heroes. These actions, however, only further enraged the people. Thousands of armed soldiers repressed the people¡¯s protest in Tiananmen Square, and hundreds of people were arrested. The Gang of Four blamed Deng Xiaoping for the movement and temporarily removed him from all his official positions.
Since his death, a memorial hall has been dedicated to Zhou and Deng Yingchao in Tianjin, named Tianjin Zhou Enlai Deng Yingchao Memorial Hall and there was a statue erected in Nanjing, where in the 1940s he worked with the Kuomintang. There was an issue of national stamps commemorating the first anniversary of his death in 1977, and another in 1998 to commemorate his 100th birthday.
 Deng Xiaoping (1904 - 1997)
- Born: 22 August 1904
- Birthplace: Paifang, Sichuan province, China
- Died: 19 February 1997 (respiratory failure)
- Best Known As: Leader of China, 1978-89
One of the old guard of the Chinese Communist Party, Deng Xiaoping became the party's Secretary General in 1954, but was purged by Chairman Mao in 1966 for his strong objections to the excesses of the Great Leap Forward. By 1974 Deng had been "rehabilitated" and returned to power. After Mao's death, Deng was the de facto leader of China until he finally expired in 1997. He was succeeded by his protege Jiang Zemin.
Deng lived and studied in Paris from 1920-26.
(b. Sichuan Province, 24 Aug. 1904; d. 19 Feb. 1997) Chinese; de facto leader of China 1978 ¨C 97 Deng's political career is one of remarkable ups and downs. Initially a close comrade of Mao Zedong, he was subsequently purged twice under Mao. However, he returned to take de facto control of the political structure and implement a series of radical reform in 1978. For much of the 1980s he was feted in the West as a great leader as he moved China away from its Maoist past to a more Western and market-orientated economic system, until his reputation became tarnished with the massacre of student demonstrators in Beijing in June 1989.
Deng was the youngest of a small group of young Communists who were sent on a work-study programme in France by the Communist International. Deng was prominent in the radical student and labour movement in Lyon, and with Zhou Enlai recruited young Chinese in Europe to the Communist cause. Returning to China, Deng supported Mao's view that the peasantry were a positive revolutionary force, and was subsequently heavily criticized by Li Lisan ¡ª the first and mildest of his official condemnations. A veteran of the Long March, Deng also served as a political commissar in the second Field Army in his native south-west China.
After a brief period in charge of the south-west region after 1949, Deng was brought into the central political apparatus where he served as party secretary-general. Despite his impressive leadership credentials, Deng's rapid promotion to central leadership owed much to Mao's patronage. It is sometimes forgotten that Deng was once a very strong supporter of Mao, particularly during the formative years of the Great Leap Forward. However, when the Great Leap collapsed into the great famine, Deng changed his view, or at least changed his allegiances. Together with Liu Shaoqi and the economist Chen Yun, Deng oversaw the retreat from the Great Leap from 1961 to 1966, and the reinstatement of more orthodox Leninist political and economic disciplines. Deng argued that if a policy was successful in generating economic recovery, then it should be accepted and not subjected to tests of political correctness. If market mechanisms helped bring about recovery, then market mechanisms were good. This was anathema for Mao, and the start of bitter conflict between the two.
Even though Mao, as chairman of the party, remained theoretically in control, he later claimed that Deng did not consult him once during this period, and that Deng would sit with his deaf ear to Mao at party meetings. Mao also suspected that Deng and Liu had deliberately obstructed his socialist education movement of 1962 ¨C 4, and that these two men were the single biggest obstacle to the implementation of true (i.e. Maoist) socialist principles in China. Thus, when Mao launched the Cultural Revolution to purify the party of these heretical influences, Deng was designated as the second worst class enemy in the party (behind Liu Shaoqi).
Deng suffered massive humiliation and hardship during the Cultural Revolution, as did the rest of his family (his son, Deng Pufang, was paralysed by a "fall" from a window). However, his treatment was partly tempered by Zhou Enlai's intervention, and Zhou played a leading role in ensuring Deng's rehabilitation in 1973. From 1973 to February 1976, Deng worked as the deputy to the ailing Premier Zhou Enlai, who saw Deng as a crucial counter-balance to the radical Maoist Gang of Four. The extent to which Deng owed his position to Zhou's patronage became clear in 1976. Once Zhou died in February, the left moved to oust Deng. When a spontaneous mass demonstration occurred in Tiananmen Square in April in support of Zhou (and by implication Deng), Deng was accused of orchestrating a counter-revolutionary movement. The demonstration was brutally suppressed, and for a second time in ten years, Deng was purged.
Deng found a safe haven in the south under the protection of the military leader, Wei Guoqing. After Hua Guofeng's succession to Mao, the clamour for Deng's rehabilitation grew ever louder. Whilst other leaders lobbied for Deng's return, Deng wrote an open letter to the Central Committee explaining that he only wanted to serve under Hua. On a popular level, the Democracy Wall movement in Beijing raised difficult questions about Hua's own Cultural Revolution record and called for a new polity. It is notable that once Deng returned to power he acted to weaken those forced that had helped his own rehabilitation ¡ª he reshuffled China's military leaders (including Wei Guoqing) to cut them off from their power bases, and closed down the Democracy Wall.
From 1978, Deng oversaw the radical reformation of the basis of the Chinese economy. For much of this period, Deng acted without any formal position of power. He instead acted as the crucial power broker behind the scenes, making and breaking factional alliances to maintain the reform momentum. Even his closest colleagues were dispensable if they got in the way of greater goals. Thus, Deng promoted both Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang to central leadership, but allowed both men to fall from grace when their actions threatened party unity and undermined the reform process.
The fall of Zhao Ziyang in 1989 accompanied the Tiananmen massacre of 4 June. This event perhaps more than anything epitomized Deng's vision of reform in China. The whole point of reform was to bolster the party's grip on power. Economic reform was essential in that it increased the party's popularity, but political reform that threatened the party could not be countenanced. Those elements of Deng's leadership that the West so supported were part of the same strategy that resulted in the human rights abuses that the West so despised. The party's continued grip on power despite the problems generated by reform and events in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe show that in his own terms, Deng's leadership has so far been a great success.
Deng Xiaoping (1904-1997) became the most powerful leader in the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) in the 1970s. He served as the chairman of the Communist party's Military Commission and was the chief architect of China's modernization and economic reforms during the 1980s.
Born in Guangan, Sichuan Province, in 1904, Deng joined the Chinese Communist party (CCP) in 1924 while on a work-study program in France. Before returning to China in 1926 he went to Moscow, where he studied for several months.
During the fabled Long March of 1934-1935 Deng served first as director of the political department, and then as the political commissar, of the First Army Corps. After the war with Japan began in 1937 Deng was appointed political commissar of the 129th Division, one of the three divisions in the reorganized Communist Eighth Route Army, which was commanded by Liu Bocheng, also a native of Sichuan.
The forces under the two Sichuanese grew into a large military machine and became one of the four largest Communist army units during the war. It was renamed the Second Field Army in 1946 when the civil war began. In the critical Huai-Hai battles in East China during November 1948-January 1949, Deng served as the secretary of a special five-man General Front Committee to coordinate the strategy of participating Communist troops and direct the military actions. In 1949-1950 the Second Field Army took Southwest China, and Deng became the ranking party leader there in the early 1950s.
Deng rose quickly in the leadership hierarchy after his transfer to Peking in 1952. He became CCP secretary-general in 1954 and a member of the Politburo the following year after he supervised the purge of two recalcitrant regional leaders. During the Eighth CCP Congress in 1956 Deng was elevated to the six-man Politburo Standing Committee and appointed general secretary, heading the party secretariat. By then, he had become one of the half dozen most powerful men in China.
Exile and Return
By many accounts Deng was an able, talented, and knowledgeable man. He was nicknamed "a living encyclopedia" by his colleagues. Chairman Mao Tse-tung, the architect of the PRC, allegedly pointed Deng out to Khrushchev of the U.S.S.R. and said, "See that little man there? He is highly intelligent and has a great future ahead of him." Deng visited the Soviet Union several times in the 1950s and the 1960s, as he was closely involved in Sino-Soviet relations and their dispute over the international Communist movement.
Mao and Deng parted ways in the 1960s as they disagreed over the strategy of economic development and other policies. Deng's pragmatism, embodied in his well-known remark, "It does not matter whether they are black cats or white cats; so long as they catch mice, they are good cats," was heresy to Mao's ears. Mao also resented Deng for making decisions without consulting him - he scolded Deng in a 1961 party meeting: "Which emperor did this?" In 1966 Mao launched the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR) and mobilized the youthful Red Guards to purge the "capitalist powerholders" in the party, such as Deng. From 1969 to 1973, Deng and his family were exiled to a "May 7 cadre school" in rural Jiangxi to undergo reeducation, in which he performed manual labor and studied the writings of Mao and Marx. Deng's elder son, Deng Pufang, was permanently crippled in an assault by Red Guards.
In the spring of 1973 Deng was brought back to Beijing and reinstated a vice-premier in the wake of a major realignment of political forces, which resulted from the demise of Defense Minister Lin Piao and the purge of Lin's followers. Deng's ability and expertise were highly valued in the Chinese leadership and he quickly assumed important roles. In late 1973 he carried out a major reshuffle of regional military leaders and was elevated to the Politburo. In April 1974 he journeyed to New York to address a special United Nations session, in which he expounded Mao's theory of the "Three Worlds."
As Premier Zhou Enlai was hospitalized after May 1974, the burden of leadership and administration increasingly fell on Deng's shoulders. In January 1975 Deng was elevated to a party vice-chairman, the senior vice-premier, and the army chief of staff. However, Deng's eagerness to carry out "four modernizations" and the political reforms alienated Mao and other radicals led by Mao's wife Jiang Qiing.
Thus, soon after Premier Chou died on January 8, 1976, Deng became the target of attack in the Chinese media, and on April 7 the party Politburo passed a resolution at Mao's urging to oust Deng from all leadership posts. After Mao's death in September 1976 Deng's allies prevailed and Deng was reinstated in July 1977, the opposition of new Party Chairman Hua Guofeng not withstanding.
After Deng's political comeback and in his struggle for ascendency thereafter, his foremost task was to destroy the cult of Mao and to downgrade Mao's ideological authority. Another powerful measure of de-Maoization was to put the "Gang of Four" on public trial, which began in Peking on November 20, 1980.
These four radical leaders, including Mao's widow Chiang Ch'ing, were the late chairman's most ardent supporters and the prime movers behind the GPCR, on which they rode to power. The trial symbolized the triumph of veteran officials, led by Deng, who had fallen victim to the radical crusade between 1966 and 1976.
Moreover, Deng also used the trial as the coup de grace against Chairman Hua Guofeng. Although Hua was not a defendant, he did collaborate with the radicals before Mao's death. In a central committee plenum in June 1981 Hu Yaobang, Deng's protege, replaced Hua as the party chairman.
Reform Leader
Deng's economic policies required opening China to the rest of the world in order to attract foreign investment and to educate students abroad in the latest technologies. Accordingly, the People's Republic of China in 1978 signed a Treaty of Peace and Friendship with Japan. In 1979, Deng obtained his nation's official recognition from the United States. Sino-Russian relations were gradually improved over the next decade, and he achieved the long-cherished goal of recovering the British colony of Hong Kong through an agreement scheduled for implementation in 1997.
These diplomatic successes supplemented and eased major changes in the domestic economy. Deng found China's industrial progress impeded by the imbalances of the Cultural Revolution, which stressed investment in heavy industry while virtually ignoring, consumer production, agriculture, transportation, and energy production. As a result, wages and farm prices were too low, and consumer goods were in short supply.
To combat this situation, Deng reduced capital investment in heavy industry, increased prices paid by the state to farmers, and arranged a series of bonuses to raise workers' incomes. Farmers were encouraged to sell more produce privately, and a rapid growth of free markets for farm produce occurred.
The communal labor system was virtually eliminated from the rural communes, and fields were leased to farm families on terms that allowed them more autonomy in determining what crops to plant. Agricultural production increased dramatically while, at the same time, a significant proportion of the rural population transferred its activities from farming to various kinds of light industry and trade. More free markets sprang up for distribution of these products, and some state-owned factories were placed under the control of their managers, who were instructed to take into account the profitability and market conditions for their products.
Fought to Maintain Political Stability
Throughout these reforms, Deng insisted upon maintaining China's socialist system. As ever greater reliance was placed on market forces to determine prices, it became increasingly difficult to balance socialist principles with capitalist effects. The reforms resulted in a generally improved standard of living but produced inequalities that were greatly resented. Inflation in the 1980s, a serious problem for the first time in a generation, accompanied increased unemployment and ever-growing disparities in living standards. Deng's inability to reform the blatant corruption and enrichment of many party and government officials and their families created new tensions.
Such tensions fed the long-smoldering discontent of academics who had opposed the party's dictatorship from the beginning and fueled repeated popular demands, especially among students, for a greater degree of democracy in China. In 1979, some of Deng's supporters had openly opposed his dictatorship and called for a democratic political system, and it was Deng himiself who led the suppression of their democracy movement, imprisoned some of their leaders, and banned unofficial organizations and publications. Again in December of 1986, widespre |
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