On July 24, 2005, Jonathan Fenby contributed the article for Times
Online for the Sunday Times. It was a comment based on "Mao: the
Untold Story" by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday.
Read the complete article in
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2092-1705789,00.html
An outline of the article:
* The authorities now admit that the founder of
Communist China was "70% right, 30% wrong".
* The book is not on sale in mainland China. English-
language newspapers in the Far East that carried
articles about it were banned. On internet chat
sites the censors have moved in to delete any
postings critical to Mao.
* In its 70-30 valuation of Mao, Beijing is willing
to admit to one major fault - the Cultural Revolution
he launched in 1966 to assert his authority.
* Remove the props of Maoist history and you bring
into question the foundations of the party's
legitimacy to govern 1.3 billion people and head
an emerging global economic superpower.
* One key assertion on Mao is that he was a pure
nationalist putting his country first and led the
resistance to Japan invasion, but this book shows how
Joseph Stalin aided and directed Mao's rise.
* Mao kowtowed to Moscow - even after he achieved
power he rose to his feet during a visit by a Soviet
envoy to cry out three times "May Stalin live ten
thousand years".
* Apart from one offensive, of which the Chairman
disapproved, the Red Army avoided conflict, saving
its resources for civil war with the Nationalists
after Japan's defeat.
* A U.S. unit found that Communist units had struck
non-aggression agreements with the Japan invaders.
* Petr Parfenovich Vladimirov, the main Soviet adviser
at Mao's headquarters, makes evident the Communist's
plan to save its resources for later future civil war
in his diary published in 1974 in India.
* The Yenan politburo decided to go into the opium
trade.
* The orthodox story is that, led by the all-wise
Chairman, China's peasants overthrew the reactionary
Nationalists in a template of rural revolution. In
fact, Mao had a low opinion of the peasantry, amounting
to contempt.
* Despite the peasant legend, this was the victory of a
modern army using American equipment captured from the
Nationalists, as well as Soviet supplies - the first
Communist troops to enter Beijing rode in US trucks.
* A hidden element in that victory, as Chang and Halliday
lay out, was that key Nationalist generals were secret
Communist agents or switched sides.
* The year-long Long March out of southeast China to a
safe haven in the north of the country in 1934-35 is
extolled as one of the great heroic feats of the 20th
century. The reality was that regional warlords allowed
the Red Army to escape for fear that Chiang's central
government troops would set up permanent camp in their
domains. The Communists killed huge numbers of peasants
along the way.
* Chang and Halliday also wrote that Chiang Kai-shek let
the Communists escape because he hoped that, in return,
Stalin would release his son, who was being held in
Moscow.
|
