Where have I seen this behavior before?
Chaing Kai-shek was on the verge of defeating Mao Tse-Tung's Red Army, which had already committed many atrocities, when Japan suddenly invaded. Chiang held off on the final push and offered an olive branch instead...
"This misfortune might even turn out to be a blessing in disguise," Chiang wrote in his diary, "if the country gets united." Nanjing immediately decided to "suspend the plan of annihilating the Communists," and proposed a United Front against Japan. The CCP [Chinese Communist Party] spurned the idea, saying that the suggestion it was willing to join a United Front was "ridiculous in the extreme." The Communists' attitude was that the Nationalists, not the Japanese, were their chief enemy, and their slogans made this pointedly clear, ordaining "Down with the Nationalists" and merely "Oppose Japanese imperialists" ...
Leftism is indeed an eternal pattern. For the hard left, their eternal principal enemy is not the foreign power at the gates, but rather fellow countrymen who are not part of their party. The idea of dropping hostilities and uniting against a common foreign threat? "Ridiculous."
Since then, history has been completely rewritten, and the world has come to believe that the CCP was more patriotic, and keener to fight Japan that the Nationalists were -- and that the CCP, not the Nationalists, was the party that proposed the United Front. All this is untrue.
Quotes from Mao, The Unknown Story, by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, page 98.
I don't at all view Chiang as anything of a hero: I've never said nor recently thought any of the things you seem to be imputing. (I have no idea what my reaction was as a kid, but I don't remember thinking Chiang was a great guy then either.)
My point is only that he had the sense to see that Japan as a principal enemy, and considered temporarily uniting with domestic enemies to fight. Mao didn't.
On 15 April the Communists issued a "declaration of war on Japan." This was a pure propaganda stunt, and it was more than five years before the Red Army fired a shot at the Japanese (except in Manchuria, where the Party organization came under the control of Moscow, not Ruijin) -- making this one of the longest "phoney wars" in history.
In fact, the CCP's proclaimation was more a declaration of war on Chaing Kai-Shek than on Japan, as it asserted "in order to... fight Japanese imperialism, it is necessary to first overthrow the rule of the Nationalists." In secret intra-CCP communications, there was not a single reference to Japan as the enemy. (p 112)
I don't see any indication that the Nationalists were allied in any way with Pu Yi.
Regarding the posted review...
First, the leftists who loved Mao here were only engaged in "phoney radicalism"? The guy has got to be kidding. I grew up near UW Madison, where buildings were actually bombed. What kind of alternate history is he pushing?
Next, regarding...
The left, led by Ch'en Tu-hsiu and calling themselves Communists in identification with the Bolshevik revolution, were reluctantly following Soviet leader Joseph Stalin's advice to stick with the nationalists. Ever cynical, Stalin did not believe that socialism was possible in China, but hoped to influence Chiang Kai-shek. Chiang responded by slaughtering the Chinese Communists in their thousands to take control of the nationalist movement, the Kuomintang.
If Jung Chang's account is reliable (and it seems to make more sense to me than the suggestion the Communists were merely "sticking with" the Nationalists, to merely "influence"), Stalin's purpose was to infiltrate the Nationalists, and control the larger party from within -- much as Communists in other countries, until they were able to gain the upper hand.
Yet Heartfield only says "Chiang responded by slaughtering the Chinese Communists in their thousands" -- as if in response to mere attempted "influence"! He doesn't mention the uproar created by exposed evidence that Moscow was planning to turn China into a satellite. (And what this would mean in context of the earlier Boxer Rebellion.) Nor does he mention the loss of international support such an agenda threatened for the Nationalists.
Hmmmm.
Then, he asserts:
In the decisive campaigns, [Chang and Halliday] allege, the Kuomintang troops were led by CCP spies infiltrated into the leadership 22 years earlier, when they were all on the same side, and these generals deliberately led their men to disaster after disaster...
I can't attest firsthand what happened in history, but I can plainly tell you he's lying about Chang and Halliday's account.
First, the Red victory here is not all depicted as a "mystery": their primary military advantage is depicted as their ability to control (and evacuate) the peasants, and lure the Nationalist armies far into areas which were deprived of any support or supply, which is depicted as quite effective. Heartfield omits this.
Second, Heartfield's assertion Chang and Halliday depict the decisive factor as "Kuomintang troops... led by CCP [Chinese Communist Party] spies infiltrated into the leadership 22 years earlier" is simply untrue, as best I can see.
Here's what they actually wrote -- with my bold added:
What really tipped the scale was Russian assistance... The critical help came from Soviet military intelligence, the GRU, which, which had a network of more than 100 agents in China, mostly Chinese operating in Nationalist offices near the Red Army... In 1930, Moscow had dispatched a star officer, the half-German, half-Russian Richard Sorge to Shanghai. Sorge's main coup was to infiltrate the German military advisor's group in forward intelligence HQ... to steal the Nationalist codes, including those used for communication between the General Staff and units in the field. This information from the Russians gave Mao an incalculable advantage.
To be fair, Chang does also mention one CCP spy who also played a "big role", but the difference here is stunning. The spies are mainly involved in intelligence, not leadership. They transmitting codes and intel, not leading troops. They are primarily working for Moscow, not the CCP. They were not left behind "22 years before". And, crucially, they certainly are not the only factor depicted, creating a 'mystery', as Heartfield implies.
Next, I noticed this:
Chang and Halliday also misunderstand the defections back and forth between the Kuomintang and the CCP. These were less examples of espionage, as the fluidity of the situation, when many Chinese top brass were just not sure who would come out on top...
Are we even reading the same book? I got no such impression. In fact, quite to the contrary, speaking of one defection, they write:
The mutineers belogn to a unit of 17,000 men whose commander had brought them over to the Reds... This was the only mutiny in the Communists' favor since Nanchang in 1927 -- and for many years to come.... (p. 112)
The defections are depicted as mostly being one-way: away from the Reds, and towards the Nationalists. As you can see above, so far, it's not "back and forth" Heartfield seems to imply. And I haven't seen (or at least don't remember) any point at which the switches are depicted as "examples of espionage" -- more a reaction to Mao's brutality.
Again, I can't testify as to the facts of history, but I can at least tell you Heartfield is imputing to Chang and Halliday things I have not yet seen in their book. (Or perhaps I have somehow overlooked? Or will appear later, despite their pertaining chronologically to the sections I've already read?)
I have no idea how Wild Swans differs from Mao, but given what appears to be his unreliability in accurately depicting the contents of Mao, I'm don't see why I should trust him regarding a book I haven't read yet. Perhaps some of the differences arise from the fact that Wild Swans was published in 1992, and Mao was published 13 years later, in 2005, as even a modicum of research reveals.
Chang responded to the criticism, pointing out that she and her husband were shocked at what they discovered during the 10 years they spent researching the book. Halliday is an historian specializing in the Soviet Union, and he said that he was greatly helped by accessing Russian archives on China that were inaccessible until recently. [1]
Heartfield asks: "What are [Chang and Halliday] trying to hide?" I have to wonder the same about his own false and truncated portrayals.
But I think I can see a hint as to why:
Heartfield seem to actually believe it was the "ancient grudges... the class struggle of the peasant uprisings... that constituted the real motive force" which put Mao into power, rather than Soviet support combined with political terror.
But, in fact, it's not hard to see that the peasants really were better off under the warlords, and that Mao's terror apparatus purged millions and millions of dissidents. That's not a mere urban legend. What were they dissenting from? And if Mao really was the ideal of their hopes and dreams, why the need for the extensive terror we know he used? Is he utterly unaware of the "hundred flowers" campaign? Or is that more "far-right" silliness?
I don't know what Heartfield's angle is, but I'm reading the book now, and it doesn't seem (to me anyway) to line with his depictions.
If you can think of something I've overlooked, let me know. Otherwise, it seems more likely that Heartfield, not Chang and Halliday, is the one with an axe to grind.
A review of Mao, The Unknown Story
link
As for Chiang Kai-shek's attitude, Jung Chang's Wild Swans quotes Chiang Kai-shek's maxim, 'the Japanese are a disease of the skin, the Communists are a disease of the heart'. That seems a much more striking a values contrast than "Down with the Nationalists Oppose Japanese imperialists." It makes sense that the CCP was trying to actually bring down Shek's rule. They weren't trying to do the same with Japan. They just wanted the Japanese out of their country.
And Chinese nationalists certainly did cooperate with the Japanese far more than the Maoists did. Or what was Pu Yi's Manchukuo? (not part of the KMT, to be fair, but rather old Imperial China)
I'm not defending Mao whatsoever. Neither did Chang in either of her books. But Chiang Kai Shek's wife aside, you might want to consider just how deep Chiang Kai Shek's committment to American values really was. He may have been the best chance that America had to assert their values in the region, but the KMT had atrocities of their own and Taiwan is only recently democratic.
Posted by: Ryan on March 4, 2007 05:49 PM