COVER STORY

The architect of 'new China'

JOHN CHERIAN

MAO ZEDONG is no doubt one of the greatest of leaders who strode the world stage in the 20th century. The architect of the Communist Revolution in China, he presided over the country's destiny for 27 years. Maoist ideology may have been put on the backbu rner now, but the leaders of today's China acknowledge the role of Mao in building and consolidating the revolution. Many leading economists and Sinologists have forecast that China will become an economic superpower in the next three decades. It was Mao 's insistence on self-reliance during the first three decades after liberation that enabled China to withstand Western attempts to rein it in militarily and hamper its economic growth. Small wonder then that the Chinese people give Mao the credit for cre ating the "new China".

Mao was born in Hunan province on December 26, 1893. He was the eldest of four children - three sons and a daughter. His father, a dispossessed peasant, joined the army to escape poverty. His stint in the army made him relatively rich. From the beginning , Mao had the makings of a radical. He was against his father's profiteering ways.

Mao completed formal education at the age of 25. He passed out of an institution that trained teachers. While he was there, he participated actively in the country's nascent revolutionary movement. One of the early supporters of the Russian Revolution wa s Li Ta-chao, a librarian at Beijing University. He, along with some progressive-minded people, started a Society for the Study of Marxism in 1920, which was the forerunner of the Communist Party of China (CPC). Li employed Mao, who was one of its member s, as an assistant.

Mao was part of a group of young intellectuals in the CPC and began organising revolutionary activities in 1921. It was in the mid-1920s that Mao began to realise that tremendous revolutionary dynamism could be unleashed by mobilising China's vast, impov erished population. Although both Lenin and Stalin had recognised that peasants could play a revolutionary role in underdeveloped areas, Mao was the first to propose that the peasantry was potentially the backbone of the Chinese Revolution.

The Communist Party suffered a series of setbacks between 1921, when the party was founded, and 1927. Chiang Kai-shek's forces violently crushed the urban-based National Democratic Revolution and an attempt by industrial workers, who constituted a very s mall proportion of the population then, to ignite a revolution between 1925 and 1927. The failure of two revolutions sidelined the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. After 1927 the revolution shifted to the countryside, where Maoist ideology thrived, and i t triumphed ultimately.

After conducting some investigations on his own, Mao wrote in 1927 a report, the key elements of which was to constitute his lifelong conviction - that it was the rural areas that would be the key centres of revolution not only in China but all over the world. Mao predicted that the power of peasants would "bury imperialism and militarism". In a celebrated passage in the report, Mao emphasises that only "armed struggle" can bring about genuine change. "A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an e ssay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another."

Mao's strategy and tactics were effective. Between 1928 and 1933, the Communist Party's membership in China swelled from 40,000 to 300,000. During the same period, the Communist army's strength grew to 100,000. Chu Teh, a former warlord, and his forces j oined hands with Mao. Chu Teh became the Commander of the Red Army and was Mao's comrade-in-arms during the 21 years of revolutionary warfare that followed.

Alarmed by the growth and popularity of the Communist Party, the Nationalist Government of Chiang Kai-shek, launched a fierce military offensive aimed at destroying Mao's military base in Kiangsi province, where Mao had proclaimed the creation of the Kia ngsi Soviet, a Communist republic. For three years, the Communists administered a territory of 15,000 square miles. The CPC was advised by the Comintern, an organisation of world Communist parties, against conceding any territory to the Kuomintang. This strategy, however, backfired, and in order to avoid a military rout the Communists, under Mao's leadership broke through the Kuomintang encirclement and embarked on the epic Long March. The March, one of the most heroic episodes in history, dramatically changed the course of 20th century history.

The March, which lasted from October 1934 to October 1935, saw Mao and his followers trek 6,000 miles (9,600 km) from Kiangsi to the northern Shensi province. A temporary headquarters was set up at Pao An before a permanent base was established at Yenan 14 months later. During the March, the Communist forces were reduced from 90,000 to around 20,000: they had not only to negotiate rivers, rough mountain terrain and arid areas, but also to engage the Nationalist (Kuomintang) army in battles. Among those who died were some of Mao's closest comrades. One of his brothers, Mao Tse-t'an, was killed in one of the battles with the pursuing Kuomintang and warlord armies. Two of Mao's children, who were left behind with sympathetic peasants in Kiangsi, were neve r traced.

Few would disagree with Edgar Snow's assessment of the Long March as "an Odyssey unequalled in modern times". The heroic deeds which the Communist guerillas under Mao accomplished are now part of revolutionary lore. They have inspired several revolutions , including the Cuban Revolution. The Long March was also instrumental in consolidating Mao's hold over the Chinese revolutionary movement. In January 1935, Mao was elected Chairman of the Politburo of the CPC. The other leaders of the party who held swa y for decades since the 1930 were also veterans of the Long March.

XINHUA / GAMMA
In 1947, Mao leads comrades-in-arms to the northern Shaanxi province, from where they continued to direct the national liberation war.

The Yenan experience (1937-45) was invaluable for Mao and the CPC. During his sojourn in Yenan, Mao was at the height of his creativity. He addressed himself to the needs of the peasants and carried out land reforms and rent reduction programme. Peasants became fully involved in the political, economic and military organisations in the liberated areas. In order to sensitise the peasantry, Mao created a corps of poor peasants - this was in addition to the farm labour union - and encouraged them to partic ipate actively in the land reform movement. During this period Mao also formulated the "Three-Thirds System", which limited the participation of party cadre in local government to one-third, leaving two-thirds of the posts to progressive citizens and int ellectuals. The bulk of his writings, which later appeared as Thoughts of Mao, were written in Yenan. (Even while steering China towards progress in later years, Mao never forgot his Long March experiences or his days in Yenan. The periodic shake-ups he carried out in the government and in society in the 195 0s and 1960s owed a lot to these experiences.) In Yenan, he criticised comrades who could "repeat quotes from Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin from memory but understand very little or nothing of their own history."

The Communists under Mao made spectacular military gains from the mid-1930s to 1945. At the outset of the war with Japan, they gained immense prestige by routing the Japanese in the Shansi province, while the Nationalist troops had fallen into disarray. The Japanese invasion undermined the Kuomintang regime as it was evicted from the major cities. The Communists, on the other hand, gained enhanced access to the countryside as they had generated tremendous goodwill among the peasantry and were good at gu erilla warfare. The invading Japanese did not have sufficient manpower to enforce their writ in the countryside.

Much of the guerilla warfare against the Japanese were organised by the Communists. During this period the communist army gradually coalesced into a professional army. After the Japanese surrendered in 1945, it emerged as the strongest force in China. Bu t the Nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek refused to acknowledge this reality and started another civil war in the country which was just recovering from the ravages of Japanese occupation. (The Kuomintang war machine was financed by the United States of America. Chiang Kai-shek's main adviser was Gen. Ludwig von Falkenhausen, a German.) At the beginning of the civil war in 1945, the Communists only had half a million regular troops, which was one-fourth the size of the Nationalist army. By 1948, however , the Communist army's strength was the same as that of the Kuomintang's.

The U.S. tried to change the course of history by coming quickly to the aid of the Nationalists. When the Japanese were withdrawing from the cities, the U.S. dispatched 50,000 marines to key ports and communications centres, besides airlifting Nationalis t troops to Tientsin, Beijing, Shanghai and Nanking. The defeated Japanese Army also collaborated with the U.S. and the Kuomintang. The CPC, however, managed to retain control of most of northern China. The entry of Soviet troops into Manchuria was also a positive development from the CPC's point of view.

Mao's leadership role was crucial to the final outcome. His theory was that an inferior force could defeat a larger enemy only through a gradual process. When the civil war started, the Communists adopted a defensive posture, taking into account the over whelming numerical superiority of Chiang Kai-shek's forces. In a classic gambit, the Communists withdrew from several areas which were under their control, including their Yenan headquarters. Chiang Kai-shek interpreted the withdrawal of the Communists f rom their headquarters as a sign of military weakness and ordered his elite troops to pursue them deep into Manchuria. This, however, put an enormous strain on his supply lines. He did this against the advice of the U.S., his staunchest ally.

The second stage of the Communist plan was implemented in 1947. A limited counter-offensive was launched against the provinces of central China and against the railway network used extensively by Chiang Kai-shek to provide supplies to his troops. By the end of 1947, when Chiang Kai-shek's best troops were fighting in Manchuria and his communications capabilities were over-stretched, the more mobile Communist army captured key railway junctions in the Hopei province south of Beijing. The Nationalist Gove rnment in Nanking found it difficult to send reinforcements and supplies to its beleaguered troops in Manchuria and northern China.

By the middle of 1948, the Nationalists were in total disarray. Mao initiated the final push by launching a series of military campaigns through central and eastern China, which ultimately brought him and his men to the doorstep of the Nationalist capita l, Nanking. Chiang Kai-shek had fled to Taiwan. Despite the reservations expressed by some of his own comrades and allies such as Stalin, Mao ordered the capture of Nanking. The rest is history. On October 1, 1949, Mao stood high on the Gate of Heavenly Peace in Beijing to announce the establishment of the People's Republic of China. It was a day that was as significant as the end of the French Revolution in 1789 and the Russian October Revolution of 1917.

While riding into Beijing triumphantly, Mao composed a poem, which reflected his worldview. A line from it is: "The true way that governs the world of men is that of radical change."