Red Star over China (2 page)

Such was the international environment of China when this journey
was undertaken. Domestic conditions inside that disintegrating society are defined in the text. In 1936 I had already lived in China for seven years and I had, as a foreign correspondent, traveled widely and acquired some knowledge of the language. This was my longest piece of reportage on China. If it has enjoyed a more useful life than most journalism it is because it was not only a “scoop” of perishable news but likewise of many facts of durable history. It won sympathetic attention also perhaps because it was a time when the Western powers, in self-interest, were hoping for a miracle in China. They dreamed of a new birth of nationalism that would keep Japan so bogged down that she would never be able to turn upon the Western colonies—her true objectives.
Red Star Over China
tended to show that the Chinese Communists could indeed provide that
nationalist
leadership needed for effective anti-Japanese resistance. How dramatically the United States' policy-making attitudes have altered since then is suggested by recalling that condensations of this report originally appeared in the
Saturday Evening Post
and
Life
magazine.

Other circumstances contributed to prolong the utility of this book. I had found Mao Tse-tung and other leaders at an especially favorable moment, in a lull between long years of battle. They gave me a vast amount of their time, and with unprecedented frankness provided more personal and impersonal information than any one foreign scribe could fully absorb. After my second visit to see Mao Tse-tung, in 1939, all the Red bases in Northwest China were blockaded by Nationalist troops, in their rear, and cut off by Japanese occupation around the guerrilla areas. For another five years, while no foreign newsmen were able to reach Yenan, the Red capital, these reports remained a unique source.

Much of this work is history seen from a partisan point of view, of course, but it is history as lived by the men and women who made it. It provided not only for non-Chinese readers, but also for the entire Chinese people—including all but the Communist leaders themselves—the first authentic account of the Chinese Communist Party and the first connected story of their long struggle to carry through the most thoroughgoing social revolution in China's three millenniums of history. Many editions were published in China, and among the tens of thousands of copies of the Chinese translations some were produced entirely in guerrilla territory.

I do not flatter myself that I had much to do with imparting to this volume such lessons of international application as may be drawn from it. For many pages I simply wrote down what I was told by the extraordinary young men and women with whom it was my privilege to live at age thirty, and from whom I learned (or had the chance to learn) a great deal.,

In 1937, when
Red Star Over China
first appeared, in England, there
were practically no sources of documentation for most of the material presented here. Today many foreign China specialists—helped or led by Chinese scholars of different political colorations—have produced dozens of works of varying importance and quality. With an abundance of new information available, aided by my own and others' wisdom of hindsight, many improvements might be made in the text to minimize its limitations—and yet deprive it of whatever original value it may possess. Therefore it was my intention to leave it as first written except for corrections of typographical errors and mistakes of spelling or of factual detail. That hope has not proved wholly practicable and departures from its fulfillment are acknowledged below.

Since
Red Star Over China
was completed under conditions of war I did not have the opportunity to see or correct galley proofs of the first edition. Nor have I been able to do so with subsequent editions until now. In extenuation for one kind of mistake: my handwritten field notes contained many names previously unknown to me, and I could not always get them down in Chinese characters. Phonetic transliterations into English resulted in misspellings as judged by Wade-Giles standards. These have now been (I hope) uniformly corrected.

Aside from that kind of conformance I have widely altered former present-tense verbs to past tense in order to eliminate many seeming anachronisms and make the story more accessible to contemporary readers. Where the book quotes or paraphrases the testimony of others, the wording of the original text has generally been preserved—to avoid tampering with
a priori
historical material—even when it conflicts with more believable information now available. In a few instances where secondary material has been proved manifestly inaccurate I have cut or corrected, rather than perpetuate known errors. In either case readers may refer to the Biographical Notes or the Notes to this edition to supplement or modify some textual facts or opinions. Here and there (with a certain macabre sense of looking backward on myself) I have reworked lines which the passage of time—or murky writing in the first instance—has made unintelligible to me. The great bulk of the volume, all the happenings, the main travel notes, interviews, and Mao Tse-tung's—remain intact.

Such liberties as I have taken in shortening, condensing, or discarding tedious accounts of a few matters no longer of importance helped to make room for the chronology, an epilogue, new footnotes, some heretofore unpublished documents, chapter commentaries, and some fascinating lessons of history in the form of biographical sequels to the early life stories of the truly extraordinary people first introduced here. Cuts of paragraphs and even whole pages necessitated composing new
transitional passages. Such “spin-ins” are confined to knowledge available to me no later than 1937, and the same applies to page footnotes—but not to the end-of-book materials, of course.

Doubtless this tome would not have suffered (and the reader would have profited) if I had omitted several whole chapters. Revision was not easy, and I daresay someone less connected with the subject could have done it with less pain to himself and with more grace for the reader.

And so, salutations and thanks to all persons mentioned in this book for their help and permission to use their remarks and photographs, especially Mao Tse-tung; to John Fairbank, for taking one more look at these ancient spoor, to Peter J. Seybolt for a reappraisal against a background of far wider perspective than we could know in the thirties; to Enrica Collotti Pischel, for painstaking scholarship in translating into Italian and bringing up to date the 1965 edition
(Stella rossa sulla Cina)
which inspired this effort; and to Mary Heathcote, Trudie Schafer, and Lois Wheeler for assistance and encouragement in general.

Edgar Snow

Geneva, February 14,1968

I.
Last Days of the Monarchy

1840–42 The “Opium Wars,” during which Great Britain forcibly opens China to foreign trade. They are followed by the granting of territorial concessions and rights of inland navigation and missionary activity. The British take Hongkong.

1860 China accepts Russian annexation of eastern Siberia.

1864 Near-victorious T'ai-p'ing (Great Peace) Rebellion crushed by Sino-Manchu forces under General Tseng Kuo-fan, helped by British army regulars and mixed European and American mercenaries. Chinese revolution “postponed sixty years.” Following French penetration and seizure of Indochina (1862), encroachments increasingly reduce the Manchu-Chinese Empire to semicolonial status.

1866 Sun Yat-sen (founder of Kuomintang, or Nationalist Party, 1912) born in Kwangtung province.

1868 Czarist Russia annexes Bokhara and begins penetration toward Chinese Turkestan.

1869 Suez Canal completed.

1870 Lenin born. 1874 Churchill born.

1879 Ch'en Tu-hsiu (first general secretary, 1921–27, of Kungch'antang, or Chinese Communist Party) born in Anhui province. Rapid expansion of French and British colonial empires in Africa.

1883–85 Franco-Chinese War. Chinese troops in Indochina, defending Peking's claim to suzerainty there, are defeated. France also acquires new territorial-political concessions in China. Britain ends China's suzerainty in Burma.

1889 Cecil Rhodes establishes British South African Company.

1893 Mao Tse-tung born in Hunan province. France extends its Indo-chinese colonial power to Laos and Cambodia.

1894–95 Sino-Japanese War. China forced to cede Taiwan (Formosa) to Japan and abandon ancient claims to suzerainty over Korea.

1898 “Hundred Days Reform” under Emperor Kuang Hsu. Empress Dowager Tz'u Hsi imprisons Kuang Hsu and returns to power, to remain real ruler till her death (1909). United States defeats Spain, takes Philippines.

1899 “Open Door” doctrine proclaimed by U.S.A.; “equal opportunity” for foreign powers in the economic and commercial “development” of China.

1900 So-called Boxer Rebellion. Antiforeign uprising. Allied reprisals include mass executions, crushing indemnities, new concessions, legalized foreign garrisons between Tientsin and Peking, etc. Czarist Russia takes China's port of Talien (Dairen), builds naval base (Port Arthur), acquires railway concessions across China's three northeastern provinces (Manchuria). Mao Tse-tung works as laborer on his father's farm.

1902 Anglo-Japanese alliance.

1901–05 Russo-Japanese War. Japan gets Port Arthur, Dairen, Russia's concessions in South Manchuria (China), and additional “rights.” Dr. Sun Yat-sen forms revolutionary Alliance Society in Tokyo.

1905 First Russian Revolution.

1911 Republican revolution (the “First Revolution”) overthrows Manchu power in Central and South China. At Nanking, Sun Yat-sen declared president of provisional government, first Chinese Republic. Student Mao Tse-tung joins rebel army; resigns after six months, thinking “revolution over.”

II.
The Republic and the Warlords (1912–27)

1912 Rulers of Manchu Dynasty formally abdicate. Sun Yat-sen resigns in favor of Yuan Shih-k'ai, as president of the Republic of China. Peking is its capital. Kuomintang (Nationalists) dominates first parliament, forms cabinet. Italy takes Libya.

1912–14 Provisional constitution and parliament suspended by militarist Yuan Shih-k'ai, who becomes dictator. Japan imposes “Twenty-one
Demands,” their effect to reduce China to vassal state. Yuan Shih-k'ai accepts most of the demands. Cabinet resigns. European war begins. Japan seizes Tsingtao, German colony in China. Mao first studies books by Western scholars.

1915
New Youth (Hsin Ch'ing-nien)
magazine, founded by Ch'en Tu-hsiu, becomes focus of revolutionary youth, and popularizes written vernacular
(pai-hua)
language; death knell of Confucian classicism. Mao Tse-tung becomes
New Youth
contributor, under pseudonym. Yuan Shih-k'ai attempts to re-establish monarchy, with himself as emperor.

1916 Second (Republican) Revolution: overthrow of “Emperor” Yuan Shih-k'ai by “revolt of the generals” led by Tsai O. Nullification of Yuan's acceptance of Japan's “Twenty-one Demands.” Era of warlords begins.

1917 Peking “shadow government” declares war on Germany. Generalissimo Sun Yat-sen, heading separate provisional regime in Canton, also declares war. In Hunan, Mao Tse-tung becomes co-founder of radical youth group, New People's Study Society. The October Revolution occurs in Russia.

1918 End of First World War. Mao Tse-tung graduates from Hunan First Normal School, aged twenty-five. He visits Peking; becomes assistant to Li Ta-chao, librarian of Peking University. Li Ta-chao and Ch'en Tu-hsiu establish Marxist study society, which Mao joins. All three later become founders of Chinese Communist Party.

1918–19 175,000 laborers sent overseas to help allies; 400 “Work-Study” student interpreters include Chou En-lai. Mao Tse-tung accompanies students to Shanghai. Back in Hunan, Mao founds
Hsiang Chiang Review
, anti-imperialist, antimilitarist, pro-Russian Revolution.

1919 May Fourth Movement. Nationwide student demonstrations against Versailles Treaty award of Germany's China concessions to Japan. Beginning of modern nationalist movement. Hungarian (Bela Kun) Communist-led social revolution suppressed.

1920 Mao Tse-tung organizes Hunan Branch of Socialist Youth Corps; among its members, Liu Shao-ch'i. Mao marries Yang K'ai-hui, daughter of his esteemed ethics professor at normal school. Mao helps found Cultural Book Study Society. League of Nations established.

1921 Chinese Communist Party formally organized at First Congress, Shanghai. Mao participates; is chosen secretary of CP of Hunan. Ts'ai Ho-sen, Chou En-lai, and others form Communist Youth League in Paris. Revolution in Mongolia.

1922 Sun Yat-sen agrees with Lenin's representative to accept Soviet aid
and form united front with CCP; Communists may now hold joint membership in Kuomintang, led by Sun. Washington Conference restores Germany's colony to China.

III.
Nationalist (or Great) Revolution: Kuomintang-Communist United Front (1923–27)

1923 Agreement between Sun Yat-sen and Adolf Joffe provides basis for KMT-CCP-CPSU alliance. At Third Congress of CCP, in Canton, Mao Tse-tung elected to Central Committee and chief of organization bureau.

1924 First Congress of Kuomintang approves admission of Communists. Mao Tse-tung elected an alternate member, Central Executive Committee, Kuomintang. Lenin dies.

1925 Mao returns to Hunan, organizes peasant support for Nationalist (Liberation) Expedition. Writes his first “classic,”
Analysis of Classes in Chinese Society
(published 1926). Sun Yat-sen dies. Russian advisers choose Chiang Kai-shek as commander-in-chief. “Universal suffrage” in Japan.

1926 Nationalist Revolutionary Expedition launched from Canton under supreme military command of Chiang Kai-shek. Mao, back in Canton, becomes deputy director Kuomintang Peasant Bureau and Peasant Movement Training Institute; he heads agit-prop department. Nationalist-Communist coalition forces conquer most of South China. Communist-led Indonesian revolution suppressed by Dutch.