Mao: The Unknown Story

WHEN HE GOT to Xian on 4 December, Chiang made no exceptional arrangements for his personal security. His immediate quarters were guarded by several dozen of his own staff, but the gate and outer perimeter of the residence were patrolled by the Young Marshal’s men. The Young Marshal was even able to bring the kidnappers to reconnoiter Chiang’s residence, at a hot spring on the outskirts of town, and to check out the Generalissimo’s bedroom.

At dawn on 12 December, Chiang was kidnapped. He had just finished his morning exercises, part of his strict routine, and was getting dressed when he heard gunfire. His quarters were attacked by some 400 of the Young Marshal’s men. Chiang’s guards resisted, and many were shot dead, including his chief of security. Chiang managed to escape into the hills behind, where he was found hours later hiding in a crevasse, clad only in his nightshirt, barefoot and covered with dust, and with an injured back.

Just beforehand, the Young Marshal had informed Mao that he was about to act. When Mao received the cable from his secretary, he beamed: “Go back to bed. There will be good news in the morning!”

This assassination is generally attributed to the Japanese, but Russian intelligence sources have recently claimed that it was in fact organized, on Stalin’s orders, by the man later responsible for the death of Trotsky, Naum Eitingon, and dressed up as the work of the Japanese.

This base also went through bloody purges conducted by the Reds between 1932 and 1934. Ho Lung himself said later: “in this one purge alone, over 10,000 were killed. Now [1961] there are only a few women comrades alive, and this is because men were killed first … and then the enemy came before [the purgers] got around to the women …” “Even today in the area … they dig out bones from one big pit after another.” Survivors recalled that many had been “put in jute sacks and thrown into Lake Hong with big stones tied to them. Fishermen did not dare to go fishing in the lake, because so many corpses came up, and the color of the lake changed.”

These funds, as well as some further transfers, were sent through Mme Sun Yat-sen, from America.

17. A NATIONAL PLAYER (1936 AGE 42–43)

WHEN THE NEWS reached Party HQ that Chiang Kai-shek had been kidnapped, jubilant leaders crowded into Mao’s cave. Mao was “laughing like mad,” a colleague recalled. Now that Chiang was caught, Mao had one paramount goal: to see him dead. If Chiang was killed, there would be a power vacuum — and therefore a good opportunity for Russia to intervene and help to bring the CCP, and himself, to power.

In his first cables to Moscow after the event, Mao implored the Russians to get seriously involved. Choosing his words with care, he solicited their consent to killing Chiang, saying that the CCP wanted to “demand that Nanjing sack Chiang Kai-shek and deliver him to the people for trial.” This was a euphemistic expression, unmistakably implying a death sentence. Knowing that his own goals were different from Stalin’s, Mao pretended not to have heard about the kidnapping until after it had happened, and promised that the CCP “would not issue public statements for a few days.”

Meanwhile, he was maneuvering busily behind Moscow’s back to get Chiang killed. In his first cable to the Young Marshal after the kidnapping, on 12 December, Mao urged: “The best option is to kill [Chiang].” Mao tried to dispatch his ace diplomat, Chou En-lai, to Xian at once. Chou had negotiated with the Young Marshal earlier in the year, and they seemed to have hit it off. Mao wanted Chou to persuade the Young Marshal “to carry out the final measure” (in Chou’s words), i.e., to kill Chiang.

Without spelling out the real purpose of Chou’s mission, Mao solicited an invitation for Chou from the Young Marshal. At the time, the Reds’ HQ was several days’ ride on horseback from Xian, at Baoan, nearly 300 km to the north; so Mao asked the Young Marshal to send a plane to collect Chou at the nearby city of Yenan (then held by the Young Marshal), where there was an airstrip which Standard Oil had built when it was prospecting in the area earlier in the century. To encourage the Young Marshal to act quickly, Mao made him a spurious promise on the 13th: “We have made arrangements with the Comintern, the details of which we will tell you later.” The clear implication was that Chou would be bringing news of a plan coordinated with Moscow.

What the Young Marshal needed was not off-the-record promises relayed by the CCP, but Russia’s public endorsement. Yet on the 14th, front-page articles in the two main Soviet papers, Pravda and Izvestia, strongly condemned his action as helping the Japanese, and unambiguously endorsed Chiang. Two days into the kidnapping, the Young Marshal could see that the game was up.