Mao Zedong (23 page)

The basic source on the Hunan strikes is Shaffer,
Mao and the Workers,
which details the work of the returned students Liu Shaoqi (from Moscow) and Li Lisan (from France) in the mining strikes at the Anyuan collieries and railyards, and the Shuikoushan lead and zinc mines; she covers Mao and the carpenters on pp. 119-42, and Mao and the printers on pp. 148-61. Saich, Rise to Power, gives full documentation for Chen Duxiu’s negative views on the United Front, Chen’s 1923 Party figures, and Mao’s 1923 description of Hunan’s problems. Snow,
Red Star Over
China, p. 159, gives Mao’s statement on the missed 1922 Party Congress. Schram,
Mao’s Road to Power,
vol. 2, has Mao’s 1923 strike tables (pp. 172-77), the report of his 1926 Changsha speech (pp. 420-22), the 1926 Xiangtan report (pp. 478-83), and the entire Hunan report of 1927 (pp. 429-68). The Hunan tables are on p. 442, and the cited passage is on p. 430. The cited passage from the Great Union of the Popular Masses is from Schram, vol. 1, p. 386. The Chinese transcript of the original version of Mao’s poem of 1923 to Yang Kaihui is given in Xiao Yongyi, ed.,
Mao Zedong shici duilian jizhu
(Changsha, 1991), pp. 10-13; I have used this version, and especially the original closing four lines of the poem as given there, to amend the translation of the revised later version of the poem in Schram, vol. 2, pp. 195-96.

The basic documentary history of the period is given in Saich, Rise to Power. A powerful earlier account of the events of 1927 is Harold Isaacs,
The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution
(Stanford, 1961), which can be supplemented with Jean Chesneaux, The
Chinese Labor Movement,
1919-19Z7 (Stanford, 1968), and with Elizabeth Perry, Shanghai on Strike:
The Politics of Chinese Labor
(Stanford, 1993). The period after 1928 is covered in S. Bernard Thomas,
Labor and the Chinese Revolution
(Ann Arbor, 1983). Mao’s 1927 writings on the need for grasping the barrel of the gun are given in Schram, Mao’s
Road to Power,
vol. 3, pp. 21-31 and 35-36, his Changsha campaign dreams in vol. 3, p. 44. The Jinggangshan material is in Schram, vol. 3, pp. 51-130. Schram, vol. 3, pp. 192-93, gives the text about Yang Kaihui in Mao’s letter to Li Lisan. Yang Kaihui’s October 1928 poem for Mao is printed in Xiao Yongyi, ed., Mao Zedong shici, pp. 99-100.

Details on the birth of Mao and Yang’s third child, Anlong, and the various children born to Mao and He Zizhen, are discussed in Bin Zi,
Mao Zedong de ganqing shijie
(Jilin, 1990), pp. 32,95, and 124-30, and in Ye Yonglie, Jiang Qing zhuan (Beijing, 1993), pp. 163-68. The subsequent fates of Anlong, Anying, and Anqing are given in Xiu Juan,
Mao Zedong Yuqin zhuan
(Beijing, 1993), pp. 42-43 and 83-84. The text of Mao’s entire Jiangxi investigation is translated and analyzed by Roger Thompson, Mao Zedong: Report from Xunwu (Stanford, 1990). The politics of the Long March and the Zunyi meetings are studied in detail by Benjamin Yang, From Revolution to Politics:
Chinese Communists
on the Long March (Boulder, 1990). Edgar Snow noted the birth of Mao and He’s daughter Li Min in
Red Star Over China,
p. 72.

The texts of the main Xian discussions and Yan‘an political debates can be found in Saich,
Rise to Power,
pp. 769-87, and the protest made by Wang Shiwei against Mao in ibid., p. 1107. The Yan’an talks are translated and explicated in Bonnie S. McDougall, Mao Zedong’s
“Talks at the Yan‘an Conference on Literature and Art”
(Ann Arbor, 1980). The various policies in the northern Communist base areas are finely analyzed in Pauline B. Keating, Two Revolutions:
Village Reconstruction and the Cooperative Movement in
Northern Shaanxi, 1934-1945 (Stanford, 1997). The most thorough review of the growth of the Mao cult is that by Raymond F. Wylie,
The Emergence of Maoism: Mao Tse-tung, Ch’en Po-ta, and the Search for Chinese Theory,
1935-1945 (Stanford, 1980). Snow’s Red Star Over China nicely depicts Mao’s carefully honed self-presentation at this time. Chen Yung-fa,
Making Revolution: The Communist Movement in Eastern and Central China,
1937- 1945 (Berkeley, 1986), shows the realities of life in the other main border areas. Gregor Benton,
Mountain Fires: The Red Army’s Three-Year War in South China,
1934-1938 (Berkeley, 1992), explores the lives of those Communists left behind at the time of the Long March.

Rather surprisingly, there is still no definitive book on the 1945-1949 civil war in China. The policies of the Soviet Union during the war are summarized in James Reardon-Anderson,
Yenan and the Great Powers: The Origins of Chinese Communist Foreign Policy,
1944-1946 (New York, 1980). Saich,
Rise to Power,
again gives the key Communist policy documents. The buildup of the Communists’ base in Manchuria is explored by Steven Levine in
Anvil of Victory: The Communist Revolution in Manchuria,
1945-1948 (New York, 1987). The Mao-Stalin talks have been published in the
Bulletin of the Cold War International History Project,
issues 6 and 7, “The Cold War in Asia,” Washington, D.C., winter 1995/1996, pp. 5-9. The possibilities of preserving Beijing and its walls as an ideal park-like city were pushed by Liang Sicheng, son of Mao’s erstwhile reformist hero Liang Qichao. See Wilma Fairbank,
Liang and Lin: Partners in Exploring China’s Architectural Past
(Philadelphia, 1994). Two important reevaluations of the Korean War, using many newly available Chinese sources, are Chen Jian, China’s Road to the Korean War: The Making of the Sino-American Confrontation (New York, 1994), and Shu Guang Zhang,
Mao’s Military Romanticism: China and the Korean War,
1950-1953, (Lawrence, Kan., 1995). Mao’s comments on the death of his son in Korea are given in Michael Kau and John Leung, eds.,
The Writings of Mao Zedong,
1949-1976, 2 vols. (Armonk, N.Y., 1986 and 1992), vol. 1, pp. 147-48.

The personal letters to Mao cited here can be found in Kau and Leung,
The Writings of Mao Zedong,
vol. 1, pp. 13-14, 74-77, 233, and 448, on the Yang family: vol. 1, pp. 121-22 and 141 on former teachers; and vol. 1, pp. 36, 70, and 161 on local abuses. A careful analysis of the roles of Mao’s confidential secretaries is in Dong Bian, ed.,
Mao Zedong he tade mishu Tian Jiaying
(Beijing, 1989). Background documents on Mao’s rural reforms are given in
Selected Works of Mao Tsetung,
vol. 5 (Peking, 1977), especially pp. 184-90 and 198-99. The important original draft of the February 1957 “Contradictions” speech is translated in full in Roderick MacFarquhar, Timothy Cheek, and Eugene Wu, eds.,
The Secret Speeches of Chairman Mao: From the Hundred Flowers to the Great Leap Forward
(Cambridge, Mass., 1989), pp. 131-89. The 1957 Beidaihe talks are in ibid., pp. 397-441. On the early purges, see Frederick C. Teiwes,
Politics at Mao’s Court, Gao Gang and Party Factionalism in the Early 1950s
(Armonk, N.Y., 1990). A useful overview of data and sources on the 1950s is Timothy Cheek and Tony Saich, eds.,
New Perspectives on State Socialism in China
(Armonk, N.Y., 1997).

Several new personal details on Mao’s children and their spouses were released in
Beijing Review,
December 13, 1993, pp. 20-22, and on Jiang Qing and Mao in Ye Yonglie,
Jiang Qing zhuan,
p. 240. On p. 248, Ye Yonglie gives details on He Zizhen in the 1950s. Mao’s village talks are given in Leung and Kau, vol. 2, pp. 80, 83, and 299. His letter to spare the nanny Chen Yuying from labor duty is in Kau and Leung,
The Writings of Mao Zedong,
vol. 2, p. 803. Mao’s poem for Yang Kaihui and Li Shuyi’s husband was written on May 11, 1957, published the following New Year’s Day in Hunan, and then later run in the national press. I follow the Chinese text and notes in Xiao Yongyi,
Mao Zedong shici,
pp. 96-99; in the translation I draw on the versions in Kau and Leung, vol. 2, p. 539, and in Ch‘en,
Mao and the Chinese Revolution,
pp. 347-48. Deng Tuo’s life is carefully evaluated in Timothy Cheek,
Propaganda and Culture in Mao’s China: Deng Tuo and the Intelligentsia
(Oxford, England, 1997), especially pp. 178-81, for their crucial confrontation. An excellent source on the Lushan Plenum and Peng’s role is Roderick MacFarquhar,
The Origins of the Cultural Revolution,
vol. 2, “The Great Leap Forward, 1958-1960” (New York, 1983), pp. 187-251; quotations are from pp. 197, 203, Z47, and 249. For Mao’s Great Leap poem from the Shaoshan visit of June 25, 1959, see Xiao Yongyi, pp. 106-8, and the English versions in Schram,
Mao Tse-tung,
p. 298, and Ch’en, p. 350.

The investigative tours coordinated by Tian Jiaying are carefully explored in MacFarquhar,
The Origins of the Cultural Revolution
(New York, 1997), vol. 3, “The Coming of the Cataclysm, 1961- 1966,” especially pp. 39-43, 50-55, and 264-66. The suicides of Deng and Tian are discussed on pp. 456-60. The same book gives a detailed analysis of the various factional groupings and their policies prior to the Cultural Revolution, and is a good way to cross-check some of the most controversial parts of Li Zhisui’s memoir,
The Private Life of Chairman Mao
(New York, 1994). Transcripts of Mao’s talks with his nephew Mao Yuanxin are given in Stuart Schram, ed.,
Chairman Mao Talks to the People: Talks and Letters,
1956-1971 (New York, 1974), pp. 243-52. Mao’s remark on the intellectuals cocking their tails is in Kau and Leung,
The Writings of Mao Zedong,
vol. 2, p. 611. The essay by Michael Schoenhals, “The Central Case Examination Group, 1966-79,”
China Quarterly,
vol. 145, March 1996, pp. 87-111, examines that crucial organization. Schoenhals has also edited an invaluable collection of materials on the Cultural Revolution,
China’s Cultural Revolution, 1966-1969: Not a Dinner Party
(Armonk, N.Y., 1996). See pp. 212-22 for the Number 26 Middle School manifesto. The most complex and powerful account of the turbulent emotions aroused in the young Red Guards that I have read is Rae Yang,
Spider Eaters: A Memoir
(Berkeley, 1997).

Besides the informal documents in Schram,
Chairman Mao Talks to the People
(pp. 270-74), a useful collection of Mao’s Cultural Revolution reflections is Jerome Ch‘en,
Mao Papers, Anthology and Bibliography
(Oxford, England, 1970), quotations from pp. 35-36, 45-49, and 153. Mao Yuanxin’s activities are mentioned in Li Zhisui,
The Private Life of Chairman Mao,
pp. 504-5, and Mao’s harsh 1974 letter to Jiang Qing on p. 578. Li Zhisui mentions Li Na as a link with the students in pp. 468-69 and 504. Her Jinggangshan romance and pregnancy is discussed in Ye Yonglie,
Jiang Qing zhuan,
pp. 607-8. Li Zhisui’s details of Mao’s debilities seem to have been often exaggerated; a more vigorous and alert Mao comes across from the transcripts of Henry Kissinger’s five visits with Mao between 1972 and 1975: see William Burr, ed.,
The Kissinger Transcripts: The Top Secret Talks with Beijing and Moscow
(New York, 1999). Some of these materials are also in Richard Nixon, RN,
Memoirs
(New York, 1978), pp. 560-64, Henry Kissinger,
White House Years
(Boston, 1979), p. 1059, and Henry Kissinger, Years
of Renewal
(New York, 1999), pp. 868-99. Ruan Ji hong collected valuable interview materials with Zhang Yufu, Mao’s female attendant in his last years; they are published in Huang Haizhou, ed., Mao
Zedong yishi
(Hunan, 1989), pp. 26- 39. The medical reports of Mao’s last hours are in Lin Ke et al., eds.,
Lishi de zhenshi
(Hong Kong, 1995), pp. 190-98. On Mao’s death thoughts, see Schoenhals,
China’s Cultural Revolution,
p. 293.

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