Red Star over China (64 page)

On the arrival of the three armies in Szechuan, therefore, the figures were roughly as follows:

A total of 160,000 men, of whom more than half were (1935) under Hsu Hsiang-ch'ien and Chang Kuo-t'ao, while the Kiangsi-Hunan forces had lost 70,000 men en route (1934 and 1935).

In 1935 the First Army Corps (First Front Army) arrived in Shen-pei with about 7,000 men. There it joined Liu Chih-tan's force of about 10,000. Hsu Hai-tung also came up from Honan in 1935 with 3,000 troops left out of a
starting force of 8,000. New enlistments in Shen-pei (north Shensi), Shansi, Kansu and Ninghsia resulted in approximately the following:

Chou En-lai estimates the present strength of the Second Front and Fourth Front armies now en route to north Kansu, all the survivors from the winter in Sikang, as between 40,000 and 50,000.
^*
What, then, has happened to the rest of the troops?

FORCES ADDED IN NORTHWEST
:

The above figures would suggest a total combined loss in all Red armies over a period of a little less than two years of about 180,000 men. … My
guess would be that the present* Red strength may not exceed 30,000 to 50,000 regulars, with no more than 30,000 rifles.

Comment added in 1967:

The peak strength (1934–35) of the three main armies was 230,000, consisting of the First Front Army, commanded by Chu Teh and Mao Tse-tung (90,000), the Second Front Army, commanded by Ho Lung and Hsiao K'e (40,000), and the Fourth Front Army, commanded by Chang Kuo-t'ao and Hsu Hsiang-ch'ien (100,000). Chu Teh's army was divided at Moukung during the Mao-Chang dispute, after which Mao, P'eng Teh-huai, Chou En-lai and Lin Piao proceeded to Shensi where they arrived with only 7,000 men. A year later Ho Lung and Hsiao K'e reached Szechuan and met Chang Kuo-t'ao's surviving forces. The two Front armies proceeded northward but not as a coordinated operation. Chu Teh, Ho Lung, and Hsiao K'e arrived at Kansu and were met by P'eng Teh-huai, when their combined regular forces probably were no more than 40,000. Meanwhile, Hsu Hsiang-ch'ien, obeying Chang Kuo-t'ao's orders, followed a different route with the intention of occupying northwestern Kansu and seizing the road to Sinkiang. Hsu's army was trapped by KMT troops west of Sian, badly mauled, and split in half. The northern column, led by Li Hsien-nien and renamed the West Front Army, proceeded toward Sinkiang. Heavily attacked by Chinese Moslem troops with greatly superior numbers and arms, Li reached Urumchi with only 2,000 survivors. Hsu Hsiang-ch'ien and Chang Kuo-t'ao were cut off from their own remnant forces and arrived in Yenan sick and accompanied only by their personal bodyguards. Rupture of communications and coordination between Chang and Yenan, and then the split between Chang and Chu Teh and Ho Lung—and even some armed skirmishes between the two Party factions—had left the Fourth Front Army isolated and an easy prey. In brief, after my conversation with Chou En-lai, in September, 1936, Chang Kuo-t'ao's once formidable army of “100,000” virtually disintegrated before his part of the Long March ended early in 1937.

3
. The “three armies” were the First, Second, and Fourth Front (see note 2, above). Mao later rewrote the poem, of which several translations now exist.

Part: Six: Red Star in the Northwest

Chapter 1: The Shensi Soviets: Beginnings

1
. Thirty years later Mark Selden published a detailed and absorbing study of the origins of the revolution in Shensi, based on extensive and newly unearthed research data, entitled, “The Guerrilla Movement in Northwest China,”
China Quarterly,
Nos. 28–29 (Oct.-Dec., 1966, Jan.-March, 1967).

2
. Mao Tse-tung gives a different version of this incident in his
SW
, Vol. I.

Chapter
3:
Soviet Society

1
. See Mao Tse-tung, “How to Differentiate the Classes in the Rural Areas,” SW, I, 137–139.

Part Eight: With the Red Army

Chapter 1: The “Real” Red Army

1
. Joseph W. Stilwell was in 1937 U.S. military attaché in China. He became commander-in-chief of U.S. forces in the China-Burma-India theater during the Second World War. See
The Stilwell Papers
(New York, 1948).

Part Nine: With the Red Army
(Continued)

Chapter
4:
Moslem and Marxist

1
. “Feudal” and “backward” the ruling Ma family indeed was, as this report of three decades ago attests, but to conclude that the Communists easily convinced the
Hui-min
that they had nothing to fear in a future Socialist state would be greatly to minimize the troubles which lay ahead. Schisms among the Red troops themselves proved as serious as the quarrels then rife among the “three faiths” and the four Mas and their subjects. Such divisions led to serious Red defeats (see Chang Kuo-t'ao, Hsu Hsiang-ch'ien and Li Hsien-nien, BN). Not until the Liberation War were the Ma brothers finally driven from the Northwest.

The Communists did keep their promises to create autonomous Mohammedan states in Ninghsia and Sinkiang, but religious leaders continued to resist communization. Behind their smoldering discontent, which broke out in sporadic revolts after formation of the CPR, was the
Hui-min's
fear of loss of their grazing lands to Chinese farmers, and absorption such as overtook the Mongols of Inner Mongolia. The CCP policy toward minority nationalities was in many respects far more enlightened than anything pursued under the Kuomintang, but ancient quarrels between the Chinese and their frontier peoples were not to be settled in a generation or two. On their part, the Russians exploited signs of instability behind such Chinese frontiers after the breakdown in Sino-Soviet relations from 1960 onward.

Part Ten: War and Peace

Chapter 2: “Little Red Devils”

1
. On my return to China in 1960 and 1964–65 I met several former “little devils” holding positions of major responsibility. One was T'ai Ch'un-ch'i, vice-director of the Institute of Venereology and Skin Diseases, whom I first knew in 1936. In the same institute I renewed old acquaintance with Dr. George Hatem (Ma Hai-teh), an American, and the only foreign doctor with the Communist forces since 1936. See BN.

Chapter 3: United Front in Action

1
. See
Part Eleven
,
Chapter 6
, note 1.

Chapter
4:
Concerning Chu Teh

1
. Retained to preserve the form and spirit of the original text, this sketch is based chiefly on biographical notes given to me by Commander Li Chiang-lin (who was on Chu Teh's staff from the earliest days in Kiangsi), supplemented by brief data from Mao Tse-tung, P'eng Teh-huai, and others. It contains many inaccuracies but, as in the case of the story of Ho Lung, may be regarded as part of the Red Army legend at a time when no documentation was available. See BN.

2
. More accurate versions of Chu Teh's relations with Fan Shih-sheng later appeared in Smedley,
The Great Road,
and Rue,
Mao Tse-tung in Opposition.

Part Eleven: Back to Pao An

Chapter 1: Casuals of the Road

1
. Communists continued to observe a tolerant policy toward foreign missionaries throughout most of the Resistance War, but foreign missionary activity was ended soon after the CPR was established. See
TOSOTR
for some details.

Chapter 2: Life in Pao An

1
. The wife here referred to arrived with Li Teh from Kiangsi. Later he divorced her and married an actress from Shanghai. Li Teh left his second Chinese wife behind when he climbed aboard the one and only Soviet Russian plane that landed in Yenan during the Resistance War.

Chapter
3:
The Russian Influence

1
. Consult
Part Four
,
Chapter 6
, note 3 in connection with this chapter and the two chapters following.

Chapter
4:
Chinese Communism and the Comintern

1
. This chapter is retained to preserve the form of the original book. Its inadequacy reflects the poverty of information available thirty years ago, and should be read in contrast with annotations such as
Part Four
,
Chapter 6
, note 3.

2
. In a general sense this assessment still has validity in retrospect, but it reflects a limited knowledge of complex Sino-Russian Party relationships at that time. Direct contact with Moscow was indeed often lost for months, but conformance with the Comintern's general line and directives was the expressed intention and constant preoccupation of the Chinese PB. Not until after the Tsunyi Conference of January, 1935, did Mao's national leadership prevail over Russian-trained and Russian-oriented Chinese Communists. Mao never openly denied the supreme wisdom of Stalin until twenty years later.

Chapter
5:
That Foreign Brain Trust

1
. The “Red military council,” as constituted in 1934 and headed by Chou En-lai, was not “unanimously” opposed to Li Teh's plans. The “so I was told” above referred chiefly to a statement made in Kansu (August 12, 1936) by Hsiao Ching-kuang, who blamed the “Kiangsi disaster” on attempts to fight positional warfare during the Fifth Campaign. “This was largely due to Li Teh's advice,” he told me. “He was very confident and very authoritative. He pounded his fist on the table. He told Mao and others that they knew nothing about military matters; they should heed him.” How was he able to do that? “He had the prestige of the world Communist supporters behind him.” See
RNORC
.

Chapter 6: Farewell to Red China

1
. The Red reports of victory given to me proved premature. The “joyous reunion,” while doubtless genuine enough between the rank and file, opened a new chapter of reckoning for differences which had divided the camps of Chang Kuo-t'ao and Mao Tse-tung in the Party leadership. For comment on Red losses reported later, see Hsu Hsiang-ch'ien, Chang Kuo-t'ao, and Li Hsien-nien, BN.