Mao: A Life by Philip Short

Author:Philip Short [Short, Philip]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: General, Historical, Biography & Autobiography, History, Political, Biography, Asia, China, Mao; Zedong, Heads of State - China, Heads of State
ISBN: 9780805066388
Google: 4y6mACbLWGsC
Amazon: B0000AZW7D
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
Published: 1999-01-01T16:00:00+00:00

Y a n ' a n I n t £ r l u d £

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To Mao, it was a repeat performance of Stalin's perfidy in 1936, when he had demanded Chiang's release during the Xian Incident.

Once again the Soviet leader had sold out the CCP for Russia's national interests. Mao had known that the Russians and the GMD

were talking. But he had been kept in the dark about the understanding reached at Yalta. Now, finally, it all became clear: if civil war did break out, the CCP would be on its own.

Communist policy changed overnight. All criticism of the Guomindang, and of the United States, stopped. Plans for urban insurrections were put on hold. Red Army units were told to co-operate with US troops in disarming Japanese formations. On August 28, Mao set out for Chongqing aboard a US air force plane, accompanied by General Hurley, for peace negotiations with the nationalists, leaving Liu Shaoqi in charge of the Party in his absence. Pyotr Vladimirov, a Tass Correspondent who served as Moscow's representative in Yan'an, wrote in his diary that Mao looked like a man going to his own crucifixion.

He had a very tough hand to play. Chiang had cast-iron US

support and the Soviet Union's benevolent neutrality. As long as the talks lasted, the GMD armies could move gradually to repossess Japanese-held areas while the Red Army was kept at arm's length.

If they broke down, Chiang could blame communist intransigence and opt for a military solution.

Their last encounter had been in Canton, when Mao had headed the GMD's Peasant Training Institute, nineteen years before.

Nothing had happened since to facilitate a meeting of minds. Their personalities were utterly different: contemporary photographs showed Mao in a baggy blue suit with a round Sun Yat-sen collar and an incongruous, light-grey pith helmet over his long, unkempt hair, while Generalissimo Chiang, immaculately groomed, wore a crisply pressed military uniform. Their politics were diametrically opposed. And, for good measure, they detested each other. Mao, Chiang fumed, was a traitor: if such people went unpunished, no one would obey the government. It particularly galled him that, by agreeing to negotiate, he had been forced to concede - in Mao's words - 'a pattern of equality' between the two parties, which the communists saw as a significant gain.

During the six weeks the talks lasted, the two men met face to face four times; approved a memorandum of understanding, in which they both promised 'resolutely to avoid civil war'; and 350

M A O : A L I F E

Chiang undertook to convene an all-party Political Consultative Conference to discuss a new constitution. Wider agreement was blocked, as in earlier negotiations, by Chiang's insistence, and Mao's refusal, that the CCP place its army and the local governments it led under GMD control as a precondition to an overall settlement.

Far more important, however, was the change in the international context which occurred while the meetings were taking place.

In August, when the Chongqing talks began, the US and the Soviet Union were both officially committed to non-intervention in Chinese affairs.

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