Jung Chang - Mao - The Unknown Story

Peng had a highly expressive mouth and eyes, which seemed to show a permanent sadness. He cared about the poor and the downtrodden. Unlike most Communist leaders, he had had a poverty-stricken childhood, which scarred him profoundly. When his mother died, his youngest brother, who was six months old, had starved to death. Decades later, Peng wrote of his childhood:

In bitter winter, when other people were wearing padded clothes and shoes, my brothers and I wore straw sandals on bare feet, and clothes made of palm leaves, like primitive men … When I was ten, there was nothing at all to live on. On New Year’s Day, when rich people’s homes let off firecrackers, my family had not a grain of rice. So I took my second brother to go begging, for the first time.

He described how he fainted from hunger after they got home. Out of pride, he refused to go begging next day, so his grandmother, who was over seventy, went hobbling on bound feet, pulling along his younger brothers, one of them only three years old. Watching them disappear into the snow, Peng said later that he felt sharp knives were cutting at his heart, and he went into the mountains and chopped some firewood which he sold for a small packet of salt. That evening he would not eat the rice his grandmother’s begging had brought home, and the whole family wept.

When he was fifteen, his village was hit by drought, which brought starvation for many. Peng became involved in an attempt to force a wealthy landlord to hand out some rice, by climbing onto the roof of the landlord’s granary and removing the tiles to reveal the grain the man had denied having stored. Peng was placed on a wanted list, and had to flee. In 1916 he joined the Hunan army and became an officer. He was sometimes invited by local dignitaries to banquets where young girls barely in their teens were available for their pleasure. One girl of thirteen told Peng she had been badly beaten by a pimp because she declined to sleep with officers. Peng bought her freedom, and thereafter turned down all invitations to banquets. He became attracted to communism “to find a way out for the poor,” as he put it.

Peng secretly joined the CCP just after New Year 1928. That July he mutinied against the Nationalists, taking 800 men with him. The Party told him to make contact with Mao, who was in the outlaw land nearby at the time. Peng arrived in December, just as Mao was making ready to quit the base. Mao needed someone to stay behind to hold the fort, as possession of a base was his main asset.

So Mao grabbed Peng and told him to stay and defend the territory — a doomed task. After Mao was gone, government troops came in force. Peng’s men had to break out through deep snow, climbing over precipices and inching along tiny tracks normally used only by wild animals.

From then on, Mao continued to treat Peng as his subordinate, and Peng made no objection. But Shanghai did not formally endorse this arrangement, and Mao’s mandate did not, officially, extend beyond the Zhu — Mao Army. In early 1930, when Moscow and Shanghai reorganized all Red Army forces nationwide in preparation for establishing a Communist state, Peng’s army, which had grown at an extraordinary rate to 15,000—the same number of troops as Mao’s — was made independent of Mao. Peng’s men were excellent soldiers, with a strong esprit de corps. A Party inspector told Shanghai that Peng’s army “has the highest morale. The troops obey orders, have strong discipline and a great spirit of camaraderie, and are brave soldiers … They are very loyal to Peng De-huai personally. The wounded in the rear hospitals, once recovered, absolutely insist on returning to [Peng’s] army … It has very few deserters.”

Mao was determined to control Peng and his crack force. This was why he suddenly expressed an eagerness to attack Nanchang. If he was there, rather than down south on the Jiangxi — Fujian border, this would bring him hundreds of kilometers closer to Peng, who was nearby. Mao’s secret plan was to go and physically join forces with Peng, as this was the only way he could exert control over Peng and his army.

Mao set off north, saying he was going for Nanchang, as the Party had ordered. But when he reached the outskirts of Nanchang, at the end of July, he fired only a few shots and then moved his army towards Changsha, which Peng had just captured on 25 July.

Changsha was the only provincial capital the Reds took, and Peng held it for eleven days, proclaiming a Communist government, with his HQ in the American Bible Institute. His success rang alarm bells in Western capitals, especially Washington, which now, for the first time, registered the Chinese Communists as a serious force. One reason was the death in combat of Seaman 1st Class Samuel Elkin, the first US serviceman to die fighting Chinese Communists, killed on the USS Guam on the Xiang River by shelling from Peng’s forces en route to Changsha — on the Fourth of July. Gunboats of four foreign powers, particularly the USS Palos , played a critical role in driving Peng out of the city on 6 August.

In mid-August, Peng received a message out of the blue saying that Mao was coming to “help” him. Mao wrote simultaneously to Shanghai, on 19 August, to say that he had abandoned his assignment to attack Nanchang in order to go to Peng’s rescue, claiming that Peng was in deep trouble—“suffering considerable deaths and losses.” Peng told Mao flatly that he was not in trouble and did not need help, but this was not enough to shake off Mao, who cunningly countered by telling Peng to come and help him , as he was about to attack a town called Yonghe, located in between them, about 100 km east of Changsha.

When Peng joined up with him, on 23 August, Mao announced that Peng’s corps was now merged with his own, under his own command, leaving Peng as mere deputy military commander, under Zhu De. Mao tried to blow smoke at Shanghai (and Moscow) by claiming that the goal in merging the armies was to attack Changsha a second time — a move opposed by both Peng and Zhu De, who argued that it had no prospect of succeeding, as the element of surprise, essential to Peng’s capture of the city, had been lost.

But Mao insisted, and assured Shanghai that together the two corps could easily “occupy Changsha … then attack Wuhan … to trigger a general uprising in the whole of China.” Mao stoked Shanghai’s delusions by suggesting that the occupation of Wuhan was imminent, and with it the establishment of a Red government: “Please could the Centre instruct on taking Wuhan,” he wrote in his most ingratiating style, “and start preparations for organising a government …” In fact, Mao had no intention of going anywhere near Wuhan.

Nor did he really think he could seize Changsha. Still, to cement his absorption of Peng, he ordered Changsha to be attacked. The result was “huge human losses,” Moscow was told. These were much greater for Peng’s units than for Mao’s, as Mao had avoided a genuine strike at Changsha, whereas Peng had faithfully carried out orders and attacked the city directly The GRU chief in China, Gailis, told Moscow that “Mao just looked on.”

At the end of three weeks, Mao called off the siege, insisting that Peng’s army should move off with him. This met with resistance from Peng’s officers, and some even tried to break away. (The Chinese Red Army, like Chinese forces in general at this point, was not like a modern army where orders were obeyed unconditionally and unquestioningly.) Mao soon launched a bloody purge against them.

Mao also used the siege of Changsha, which made headlines, to promote himself to the top job, and raise his profile further. When he started the siege, on 23 August, he proclaimed an All-China Revolutionary Committee, put it in command of all Red Armies, governments and Party branches, with himself as chairman, and sent an announcement to this effect to the press.