Mao: The Unknown Story

Within days of Mao sending his telegram, the rebellion by Guangdong and Guangxi collapsed, ignominiously, not least because popular opinion was vehemently against any separatist movement. Stalin was confirmed in his belief that Chiang was the only person who could hold China together. On 15 August Moscow sent the CCP a milestone order, telling them to stop treating Chiang as an enemy, and count him as an ally. “It is incorrect to treat Chiang Kai-shek the same as the Japanese … You must work for the cessation of hostilities between the Red Army and Chiang Kai-shek’s army, and for an agreement … to struggle jointly against the Japanese …”; “everything must be subordinated to the anti-Japanese cause.” Stalin now wanted the CCP to support Chiang as the head of an undivided China, at least for the time being.

Moscow brusquely ordered the CCP to enter serious negotiations with Chiang for an alliance. Mao had to accede, and talks about a “United Front” began in September between the CCP and Chiang’s representatives. Chiang had initiated the rapprochement. At the time the Long March ended, he had made overtures to Moscow, but the Russians told him he had to talk “directly with the Chinese [CP],” as a way of promoting the CCP.

Both Moscow and Mao kept the Young Marshal in the dark about this policy shift, and continued to mislead him on the issue that most concerned him — replacing Chiang. When the Young Marshal told Soviet ambassador Bogomolov in late July that he “hoped” that his “bloc with the [CCP], directed against Chiang Kai-shek and the Japanese, would be supported by the USSR,” the ambassador said absolutely nothing to suggest that Moscow was dead set against this notion. For his part, Mao encouraged the Young Marshal to go on thinking that Moscow might back him.

ALTHOUGH HE HAD decided to back Chiang as the head of China, Stalin was in no way cutting back on his clandestine efforts to build up the Chinese Red Army. In early September 1936 he endorsed a plan to ship a large cargo of arms to the CCP through Outer Mongolia. Mao’s wish list had included “monthly aid of 3 million dollars,” as well as “planes, heavy artillery, shells, infantry rifles, anti-aircraft machine-guns, pontoons,” together with Soviet personnel to fly the planes and operate the artillery. On 18 October he heard from the Comintern that “The goods are not as many as you requested in your cable of the 2nd [October] … and there are no planes or heavy artillery …” Still, the “foreign company” handling the shipment, a GRU dummy, would “supply 150 vehicles and provide drivers and gasoline; they can make two return trips … with about 550 tons to 600 tons” each trip. The number of rifles was almost exactly the same as the Russians sent to Spain, where the civil war had just broken out.

In October the Chinese Red Army began its operation to smash through to a delivery point in the desert near the Outer Mongolian border. At this stage, Mao had 20,000 troops in the base, and the other Red Army branches were about to converge there in response to his summons to join him. They included the troops led by his now disabled rival Chang Kuo-tao, who had spent the winter on the Tibetan border, at the mercy of Nationalist bombing. Thousands froze to death, and many others developed snow blindness. During the previous year, Kuo-tao had lost half the 80,000 troops he had commanded when he met up with Mao in June 1935.

Although he still had twice as many men, Kuo-tao now came as a junior partner. Sensing that he was done for, he became “very emotional,” as his colleagues witnessed. “He even shed tears. He said: ‘I’m finished. When we get to North Shaanxi, I’m going to prison …’ ” Though Kuo-tao was not exactly imprisoned, Mao was eventually to wreck his army further — and then purge him. But for now, Mao needed Kuo-tao’s large and efficient force to fight to the Outer Mongolia border.

The other branch of the Red Army that came to Mao now was headed by Ho Lung, a tough former outlaw. He had been herded to North Shaanxi by Chiang Kai-shek from his base on the Hunan — Hubei border. The three branches of the Red Army joined hands on 9 October 1936, making Mao the chief of an army of almost 80,000 men, twenty times the number he had fielded just a year before.