Mao: The Unknown Story

The next day, Mao suddenly told Xiang to take the East Route, the one the Generalissimo had vetoed, but did not tell Chiang this, so Chiang thought the Reds would take the route agreed. On 3 January 1941 a cable arrived at Xiang’s HQ from the Generalissimo himself, specifying the itinerary and adding: “I have ordered all the armies along the way to ensure your safety.”

Xiang replied at once, saying he would not be taking the route Chiang had designated, and asking to have the East Route cleared instead. But this crucial message never got to Chiang — thanks to Mao. Mao had banned all Communist commanders from communicating with the Generalissimo direct, and had ordered all contacts channeled through himself. Xiang sent the message via Mao, and Mao did not send it on. So Xiang set off in wintry chill and rain on the night of 4 January 1941 along Mao’s chosen East Route not knowing that Chiang had never seen his cable.

Xiang and his troops walked right into a much larger Nationalist force, who had not been told that Xiang’s unit was coming, much less that it was only passing through, and thought this was an attack. Fighting broke out on the 6th. That day the local Nationalist commander, General Ku, gave orders to “exterminate” the Reds.

Xiang sent frantic telegrams to Yenan pleading for Mao to tell the Nationalists to hold their fire. But Mao did nothing. When Liu Shao-chi, who was with the main N4A force north of the Yangtze, wired Yenan on the 9th about the situation, Mao pretended ignorance, claiming that the last he had heard from Xiang was on the 5th, and “after that we do not know anything.”

During the most critical period of bloody fighting, the four days from 6 to 9 January, Mao claimed he received no communication. During those days, Xiang’s radio operators were sending out repeated, desperate SOS messages, and Liu Shao-chi had no problem receiving them. It is hard to believe that Mao’s communications had conveniently “broken down” just for the four days when the N4A HQ was being massacred. And even if there was some glitch, this cannot explain how Mao did nothing — for days — to resume contact. Mao had a history of using “radio trouble” as an excuse to suppress information (after the kidnapping of Chiang Kai-shek in 1936, Mao had claimed he was unable to receive a vital message from Moscow). For Mao, the greater the bloodshed, the greater his excuse to turn on Chiang; and he was sacrificing someone he was glad to get rid of anyway, Xiang Ying.

After Liu brought up the subject of the N4A’s plight on the 9th, Mao’s radio miraculously started functioning again. From that day, urgent pleas from N4A HQ began to be recorded. On the 10th the HQ entreated Mao: “on the brink of doom …” “Please could you quickly make representations to Chiang and Ku to call off the encirclement. Otherwise the entire force will be wiped out.” Mao sat still.

That same day, Xiang Ying again tried to cable Chiang, again via Mao. That plea too was withheld from the Generalissimo, as Mao revealed to his liaison Chou (on the 13th): “I did not send it on to you … This cable must absolutely not be passed on.”

On the evening of the 11th Chou was attending a reception in Chongqing to celebrate the third anniversary of the CCP’s New China Daily when a message arrived from Mao. Chou announced to the assembled throng that N4A HQ had been surrounded and attacked. But even now the telegram Mao sent was not an order to act; it was merely “for your information.”

It was only the next day that Mao finally instructed Chou to “make serious representations to have the encirclement called off.” But the level of crisis was carefully toned down (“they say they can still hold out for seven days” was a distortion of much more desperate reports days before). Chou did not make any serious protest until the 13th. By that time Chiang had stopped the killing on his own initiative, on the 12th.

On 13 January, after the massacre had ended, Mao suddenly came to life, telling Chou to crank up a PR campaign for a righteous all-out war against Chiang. “Once the decision is made,” Mao said, “we will strike all the way to Sichuan [Chiang’s base].”

“Now it is a matter of a total split … of how to overthrow Chiang.”

AS HIS ARMY was no match for Chiang’s, Mao could not possibly achieve these goals without Stalin’s intervention. Chou saw the Russian ambassador on 15 January to impress on him that the Reds needed bailing out. He was given the cold shoulder. In his classified memoirs, Panyushkin recorded his suspicion that Mao had set Xiang Ying up — and that Chou had been lying.

Mao, meanwhile, appealed directly to Moscow for all-out war against Chiang, with what a Russian intelligence source calls “one hysterical telegram after another,” claiming that Chiang’s plan was to wipe out first the N4A, then the 8RA, and then “crush the CCP.”

“There is a danger our army will be completely annihilated,” Mao told Moscow.