Mao Zedong
By Steve Mosher
FrontPageMagazine.com | December 6, 2005
This is the sixth article in our "Leftwing Monsters" series, the
first of which featured Humberto Fontova's profile of Fidel Castro.
"Leftwing Monsters" is a feature of www.discoverthenetworks.org
where the entire series will be archived -- The Editors.
Mao Zedong was the leader of the Chinese Communist Party from 1935
until his death in 1976. Chairman Mao, as he became known to
generations of admiring Western leftists, is arguably the greatest
mass murderer in history, eclipsing even the murderous Joseph
Stalin in this regard. Some 70 million Chinese, along with
countless Tibetans, Mongolians, Manchus, Koreans, Hmong, Uyghurs,
and other nationalities, perished at his hands during his long and
brutal reign.
Mao was born into a rich peasant family in a valley called
Shaoshan, set in the heartland of China in Hunan province, on 26
December 1893. Hopelessly doted upon by his mother, alienated from
his hard-working father, Mao balked at having to dirty his hands
with farm work, once even threatening suicide in protest. Instead
he successfully insisted that his father send him away to
school.[1] He arrived in the provincial capital of Changsha in 1911
at the age of seventeen, turning his back forever on peasant
life.
He later claimed that his peasant upbringing had filled him with
concern for the plight of poor peasants, but there is no
contemporary evidence of this. Indeed, one of his early teachers
wrote how Mao had told him that in his clan
it is easy for them
[peasants] to get rich.[2] Mao also maintained that, as a young
man, he was moved by the sight of people starving. But he was in
Changsha during a famine when, according to a friend of Maos, the
numerous beggars looked like skeletons wrapped in yellow skin.
There is no mention of these unfortunates in Maos writings of the
time.
Instead, as his early journals make clear, Mao admitted no duty
towards or responsibility for anyone other than himself. Indeed, he
described himself as wu fa wu tian, which literally means without
law and without heaven. As he wrote, I do not agree with the view
that to be moral, the motive of ones actions has to be benefiting
others. Morality does not have to be defined in relation to others
People like me want to
satisfy our hearts to the full, and in
doing so we automatically have the most valuable moral codes. Of
course there are people and objects in the world, but they are all
there only for me.
People like me only have a duty to ourselves;
we have no duty to other people.[3]
He considered himself to be a Great Hero, and argued that, for
this elite group, absolute selfishness and irresponsibility was the
rule: Everything outside their nature, such as restrictions and
constraints, must be swept away by the great strength in their
nature.
When Great Heroes give full play to their impulses, they
are magnificently powerful, stormy and invincible. Their power is
like
a sex maniac in heat and prowling for a lover
there is no
way to stop them.[4]
(Chairman Mao was a sex maniac, as it turned out, who in his later
years did in fact prove unstoppable. Around 1953 the Great Hero
ordered the Peoples Liberation Army to provide him with a steady
stream of fresh, young, attractive female recruits. Leading
General Peng Dehuai, later purged, bitterly complained about having
to pimp for Mao, comparing it to selecting imperial
concubines."[5] Unlike imperial concubines, however, who had lived
in the Forbidden City, had a certain status, and were well cared
for, most of Maos date rape victims were warned by his bodyguards
never to speak of what had happenedand sent packing.)
Mao Zedong, who was at least as well versed in Chinese history as
in Marxist dialectics, envisioned himself as much the founding
emperor of a new dynasty as the ruler of a Communist state. His
poem White Snow, written in 1936 during the Yenan years, scarcely
cloaks his vaunting ambition:
How beautiful these mountains and rivers,
enticing countless heroes to war and strife.
Too bad that Emperors Qin Shihuang and Han Wudi lacked
culture
and that Emperors Tang Taizong and Song Taizu lacked romance.
Genghis Khan was the pride of his time,
though he was only good at shooting eagles with his bow.
They all belong to a time gone by,
Only today is a True Hero present.[6]
The True Hero was proposing himself, correctly as it worked out, to
be superior in both ability and ruthlessness to the founders of the
Qin, Han, Tang, and Song dynasties. If he was offended by
comparisons that many made between himself and Emperor Qin
Shihuang, arguably the most hated figure in Chinese history, it was
only because he saw himself as Emperor Qins superior in
ruthlessness and cunning. At the Second Plenum of the Eighth Party
Congress in May 1958, Mao scoffed, Emperor Qin Shihuang was not
that outstanding. He only buried alive 460 Confucian scholars. We
buried 460 thousand Confucian scholars. [Some democratic
personages] have accused us of being Emperor Qin Shihuang. This is
not true [I told them]. We are a hundred times worse than Emperor
Qin. To the charge of being like Emperor Qin, of being a dictator,
we plead guilty. But you have not said nearly enough [I told them],
for often we have to go further [than Emperor Qin Shihuang
did].[7]
In another of his poems, Mao contrasted his admiration for Emperor
Qin Shihuang and the Legalist order to his utter disdain for
Confucius:
Please dont slander Emperor Qin Shihuang, Sir
For the burning of the books should be thought through again.
Our ancestral dragon, though dead, lives on in spirit,
While Confucius, though renowned, was really rubbish.
The Qin order has survived from age to age. . . .
Maos disdain for Confucianism was rooted less in his
Marxist-Leninism than in his drive for power. Mao despised the old
Confucian orthodoxy for its impracticalities, for its moral
niceties, for its preachiness about virtue and benevolence. Even
more, he despised it because its tottering remains stood in the way
of building a strong state that would dominate the Chinese and
neighboring peoples. Confucius had preached what is known as the
silver rule: Do not do unto others what you would not have them
do unto you. Maos mottowhat should perhaps be called the black
rulewas Do unto others what you would not want done unto
yourself.
Growing up around the turn of the twentieth century, Mao had
steeped himself in Chinese historical classics, absorbing the frank
and brutal advice they offered to would-be Hegemons.[8] Know the
future in the mirror of the past, as the Chinese say, Jian wang
zhi lai. His ambition was to found a dynasty by naked force, to be
a new Emperor Qin Shihuang, to rule all of Chinas traditional
domains through the same kind of totalitarian institutions. To
successfully establish the Qin order in the modern age, however,
he needed a replacement for Confucianism, a new legitimating
ideology that the people could be taught. He needed to reconfigure
imperial rule for modern times.
With the victory of the Communist revolution in Russia, Mao found
an unlikely companion for his totalitarian ambitions: an imported
Marxist ideology that was every bit as statist and elitist as
traditional Chinese political culture, while at the same time
claiming to be even more modern and progressive than its chief
ideological opponent, liberal democracy.[9]
Democracy, after all, would be the nemesis of Maos ambitions,
dispersing power among elected representatives instead of
concentrating it in his hands, weakening instead of strengthening
the state, empowering rather than subjugating the people. The
principle of the self-determination of peoples, in particular,
threatened to undermine hegemony by opening the possibility that
border regions where minorities were numerically dominant, such as
Tibet and Xinjiang, would go their own way. He detested the
Christianity underlying Western values and feared that the
weakening, even the dissolution, of China would result from the
widespread propagation of such altruistic views.
While formally acknowledging civil rights and the equality of man,
Marxist-Leninism was an enabler for Mao. It defended the monopoly
of power by an educated elite (and in practice by one Great
Hero), and defined a relationship between state and society very
much in keeping with Chinas autocratic tradition. It was a much
more effective tool of indoctrination than Confucianism and, with
its pseudoscientific terminology, provided a stronger defense for
autocratic rule. As a bonus, it even commanded a respectful
audience in the very heart of Western society.
Mao saw Communism as an allegory for hegemony, showing how the
revolution that had come to China was predestined to spread to
neighboring countries. Meanwhile, China could keep a tight grip on
border regions; it would only be a matter of time until a common
proletarian identity unified Chinas diverse ethnic nationalities.
Mao, already a leftwing radical, decided for very practical reasons
to become a Communist.
It was largely due to Mao that the early history of the Chinese
Communist Party is encrusted in self-serving myths. For example,
official historiesalong with most accounts by Western
scholars--date the Partys founding to 1921 to bolster Maos false
claim of being a founding member, when it was actually begun the
year before without him.[10] Nor was it even a Chinese initiative,
having originated in Moscow in what Mao biographers Chang and
Halliday call a huge secret program of action and subversion for
China, starting a commitment of money, men, and arms three decades
long, which culminated in bringing the Communists under Mao to
power in 1949.[11] Young Mao, though he proved difficult to
manage, was effectively in Moscows pay from 1921 onward.
After a flirtation with the Nationalists, whom the opportunistic
Mao for a time cast his lot with, he was driven out by Chiang
Kai-shek, who in 1927 moved to reduce the influence of Communists
and suspected Communists in Nationalist ranks. Mao then returned to
Hunan, where he managed to convince the Party Central Committee,
based in Shanghai, to let him lead an August assault on the
provincial capital of Changsha. For the first time, troops were
placed under his command.
This episode--the beginning of the myth of Mao as a peasant
leader--appears in history books as the Autumn Harvest Uprising.
In fact, in what the Soviets called an act of the most despicable
treachery and cowardice, Mao called off the assault before it
began.[12] Instead, he made off with his new Red Army, taking
them into the remote fastnesses of the Jinggang mountains to become
mountain lords, or bandits.
For this duplicity, a furious Central Committee stripped him of all
his posts. But Mao, now safe in his lair, could not be budged. He
cleverly passed his Party post along to a stooge while as Division
Commander, a title he had awarded himself, he kept a firm grip on
the army. Mao kept the base alive by raiding surrounding areas,
even capturing a county seat. Stalin, who was impressed that Mao
had an army and a base, ultimately intervened on his behalf. He was
insubordinate, Stalin later remarked to the Yugoslavs, who knew
something about insubordination, but a winner.[13]
Another myth created by Mao was the Long March, which began in
October 1934. Most history books recount how the Red Army, guns
blazing, fought its way out of the Nationalist armies that had
encircled its southern base and through hostile provinces to reach
the Red Base of Yenan in the far north a full year later. But this
heroic epicthe central myth of Communist China--is a complete
fabrication. In reality Chiang Kai-shek, who had encircled the Red
Base with a 500,000-man army and four lines of blockhouses
bristling with machine guns, simply allowed them to decamp. He
opened one side of the net, thereafter using his superior forces
to herd the increasingly pitiful Red forces along like sheep until
they reached his intended destination. Chiang made absolutely sure
that the Reds would flee to Yenan by allowing the Communist base
there to flourish, while others elsewhere in China were vigorously
stamped out. The so-called Long March should properly be recorded
in the history books as a forced march.
Why did Chiang relocate the Red Army instead of simply destroying
it? The Generalissimo was afraid that Stalin would execute his only
son, Ching-kuo, at that time nine years a hostage in the USSR. The
Confucian-minded Chiang did not want to betray his ancestors by
leaving no male descendants. He herded the Reds to the north to
please Stalin, knowing that the Soviet supremo wanted them where he
could control them, arm them, and use them against the looming
Japanese threat. Chiang hopes for the return of his son went
unfulfilled, however, and the Red Army was fatefully able to link
up with Moscow.
To visiting Westerners, Mao claimed that he had won the Chinese
civil war with only millet plus rifles, but research into the
Soviet archives has uncovered regular payments from Moscow to the
CCP, including receipts dating from the 1930s for US$300,000 (worth
about US4 million today) signed and sealed by none other than Mao
Zedong himself.[14] Without this generous and continuing support
from his Soviet older brothers, which included, after World War
II, the entire arsenal of the surrendered Japanese Army in
Manchuria, Mao would have remained a minor bandit on Chinas
periphery. Instead, with Soviet aid, he had by 1949 extended his
writ to all of China.
Mao was mightily assisted in his conquests by Western journalists.
Chief among these was socialist Edgar Snow, whose Red Star Over
China (193
airbrushed the Chinese Communist into an
austere patriot dedicated to agrarian reform. Later journalistic
visitors to Yenan, well-fed and pampered, isolated from the dark
side of Maos rule, likewise fell under the same spell. Guenther
Stein of the Christian Science Monitor declared ecstatically that
the men and women pioneers of Yenan are truly new humans in
spirit, thought and action, and that Yenan itself constituted a
brand new well integrated society, that has never been seen before
anywhere.[15] Most agreed with A. T. Steele of the New York Herald
Tribune, who thought that a Communist victory would open the way
to a new day in China.[16]
They were carefully isolated from, and completely oblivious to, the
terror that underlay Maos rule in Yenan.
Rule by Terror
From the beginning, Mao had been no stranger to murder and mass
executions, always in the pursuit of power. Given a heartfelt
welcome in Yenan in October 1935 by a local Red army that
outnumbered his own, Mao had 200 of its officers shot for
rightwing deviations and the popular base commander, Liu
Chih-tan, assassinated. He destroyed rival Politburo member Chang
Kuo-taos army in 1936 by sending it on a hopeless mission into the
wastes of the Gobi desert, and then ordered that the survivors of
this debacle be executedafter being forced to dig their own
graves. In 1941 he had Politburo rival Wang Ming
poisonedtwicecrippling his health and forcing him to seek medical
treatment in Moscow. Many more examples of his utter ruthlessness
could be cited.
But what really distinguishes Mao as a leftwing monster is his use
of terror to systematically destroy entire classes of people who
might prove obstacles to his rule, deliberately striking fearand
instilling blind obedience--into the remainder of the population.
Mao had written in the early twenties that China must be destroyed
and then re-formed. Once in power, he began applying the Leninist
principle of class struggle to the Chinese people under his
control.
Mao launched his first terror campaign, called a zheng-feng in
Chinese,[17] from 1942-44. It was aimed at the tens of thousands of
young volunteers who had come to Yenan and other base areas in
response to Communist--and Western--propaganda. Expecting to enter
into a patriotic, egalitarian paradise, they instead found
themselves trapped in joyless, regimented hellholes from which
escape was nearly impossible and even the attempt was punishable by
death.
Mao needed to turn these increasingly disillusioned volunteers into
obedient cogs for his machine. So, after torturing one of their
number into confessing that he was a Nationalist spy, he had them
all placed in detention for screening. Because their numbers were
so great, most remained in their places of work, but were kept
under watch, forbidden to leave of have visitors, and subjected to
interrogations. As Chang and Halliday comment, turning ordinary
organizations into virtual prisons was a significant innovation of
Maos
Here he went far beyond anything either Hitler or Stalin
achieved.[18]
The torture that followed produced hundreds of absurd confessions
of spying. But its real purpose lay elsewhere. It was intended to
break the will of these idealistic young people to resist until
they, like Winston in George Orwells 1984, would swear that four
fingers were actually fiveor however many Chairman Mao wanted
there to be. Maos reality was the only reality they were allowed
to possess.
After winning the civil war, Mao launched one terror campaign after
another, each aimed at neutralizing this or that class of
enemies:
· The campaign to suppress counterrevolutionaries in 1950, in
which many of those in any way associated with the Nationalist
regime were arrested and shot, terrorizing the political
class.
· The land reform of 1950-53, in which not just large landowners
but smallholders were publicly condemned and tortured, often to
death, terrorizing the rural population.
· The three-antis campaign of 1951, referring to embezzlement,
waste and something called bureaucratism, really slacking,
succeeded in terrorizing the ranks of Communist government
officials.
· The five-antis campaign of 1952, against bribery, tax evasion,
pilfering state property, cheating, and stealing economic
information, aimed at terrorizing the Chinas capitalist
class.
· The collectivization of agriculture, from 1953 to 1958, forced
the peasantry into ever-larger collective farms run by the
state.
· The anti-rightist campaign of 1957, aimed at critics of the
regime of all stripes.
· The famous Great Leap Forward, from 1958-60, which resulted in
the creation of the Peoples Communesand the deliberate
pauperization of the peasantry.
Each of these campaigns cost hundreds of thousands, if not millions
of lives, and reduced another portion of the population to abject
servility. Official propaganda touted these movements as popular in
origin, and necessary to destroy roadblocks to the brave new world
of modern China. Predictably, these fabrications and others
endlessly repeated by starry-eyed overseas sympathizers. Professor
John K. Fairbank of Harvard, for example, wrote in the Atlantic
Monthly in 1957 that the regimes controls over prices, person and
minds, mobilizing of patriotic youth, collectivizing the rural
economy and pushing of industrialization were remarkable
successes and great achievements.[19] Not a word about the Maoist
terrors that now held the Chinese people in a grip of fear, nor
about Maos larger aims.
Mao intended his terrors to preempt opposition to his rule, of
course, but the True Hero had a greater purpose in mind: The
Chairman wanted to put China on a war footing in preparation for
the wars of conquest that he intended to launch.
Want to read part 2 on Mao?
click
http://www.frontpagemag.com/articles/readarticle.asp?ID=20423&p=1
