Mao: The Unknown Story

Three days later, on the 21st, Mao held a public rally of an organized crowd of thousands of people to celebrate the victory. The climax was the killing of the county chief, who had just been captured. An eyewitness described the scene (in cautious language, as he was telling the story under Communist rule): “A fork-shaped wooden frame was driven into the ground … onto which Chang Kai-yang [the county chief] was tied. The whole place was ringed with ropes from one wooden pole to another for hanging slogans. People thrust their spears, suo-biao, into him and killed him that way … Commissar Mao spoke at the rally.” Mao had earlier expressed a special fondness for this weapon, suo-biao. Now, under his very eyes, it pierced the life out of the county chief.

Public execution rallies had become a feature of local life since Mao’s arrival, and he had demonstrated a penchant for slow killing. At one rally, staged to celebrate a looting expedition at the time of the Chinese New Year 1928, he had written couplets on sheets of red paper, which were pasted onto wooden pillars on both sides of the stage. They read:

Watch us kill the bad landlords today.

Aren’t you afraid?

It’s knife slicing upon knife.

Mao addressed the rally, and a local landlord, Kuo Wei-chien, was then put to death in line with the prescriptions of Mao’s poetry.

Mao did not invent public execution, but he added to this ghastly tradition a modern dimension, organized rallies, and in this way made killing compulsory viewing for a large part of the population. To be dragooned into a crowd, powerless to walk away, forced to watch people put to death in this bloody and agonizing way, hearing their screams, struck fear deep into those present.

The traditional bandits could not match Mao and his orchestrated terror, which frightened even them. Yuan and Zuo submitted to Mao’s authority; soon after this they allowed themselves and their men to be formed into a regiment under him. Mao had out-bandited the bandits.

AS SOON AS he had reached the bandit land, Mao had sent a messenger to Party headquarters in Changsha. Contact was established within days, in October 1927, by which time Shanghai had received reports about the events surrounding the Autumn Harvest Uprising. What could not have failed to emerge was that Mao had aborted the venture, and had then made off with the troops without authorization. Shanghai sent for Mao (along with others) to discuss the fiasco. Mao ignored the summons, and on 14 November he was expelled from his Party posts.

The Party made a determined effort to get rid of him. On 31 December, Shanghai told Hunan that “the Centre” considered that “the … army led by comrade Mao Tse-tung … has committed extremely serious errors politically. The Centre orders [you] to dispatch a senior comrade there, with the Resolutions [expelling Mao] … to call a congress for army comrades … to reform the Party organization there.” Clearly anticipating trouble from Mao, the message added: “assign a brave and smart worker comrade to be the Party representative.”

The banner of the Party was critical to Mao, as he had little personal magnetism. His solution to the Party order was simple: prevent the news of his expulsion from ever reaching his men.

A week after Shanghai issued its order, the entire Hunan committee was conveniently — some might say suspiciously — arrested by the Nationalists. Mao’s troops never learned that the Party had withdrawn its mandate from him. It was not until March 1928 that the first Party envoy was allowed to appear in Mao’s base, bringing the message that expelled him. But Mao outsmarted the Party by ensuring that the envoy could only deliver the message to a few hand-picked lackeys, and then pretending to submit by resigning his Party post, which he passed on to a stooge. He awarded himself a new title, Division Commander, and continued to control the army.

THIS BANDIT COUNTRY made an ideal base, well supplied with food. The mountains, though rising to only 995 meters, were steep, and gave excellent security, being ringed by precipices, with dense forests of fir and bamboo that were permanently shrouded in mist, and teemed with monkeys, wild boar, tigers and all sorts of poisonous snakes. It was easy to defend, and to get out of in an emergency, as there were hidden byways leading out to two provinces — narrow mud paths buried under masses of vegetation, impossible for strangers to spot. For outlaws, it was a safe haven.