It has meanwhile passed into Chinese folklore as The Long March; in reality it was a long
flight. If I say folklore then that is incorrect; folklore is made by the people. The myth of the long march was invented by Mao Zedong to glorify the communist cause, but more himself. Always thinking of himself first, like any good communist he not only caused unmeasured suffering but sold it as a triumph.
Sun Yat-Sen set up the Chinese Republic by abolishing the Empire through the child emperor's abdication. Republic as far as he was concerned was an Empire without an emperor and with a Sun Yat-Sen instead. Nobody mentioned anything about democracy, a concept completely alien to the Chinese mind just emerging from a 2,000 year old empire.
Sun Yat-Sen had two chief-lieutenants or henchmen, Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek. Upon his death these two
power-crazed monsters immediately opened hostilities upon each other to get the
whole cake for themselves. One chose the mantle of nationalism for himself, the other invented his kind of communism. So far the story resembles any other story we know from
history since Alexander the Great died.
With a
lot of help from the United States, nationalist Chiang Kai-shek pressed heavily
on Mao’s followers. He reputedly killed off four-fifth of the communist
leadership after a failed coup by Mao to seize power. In his plight, Mao dared
the unthinkable and offered women membership in the communist party as comrades and equals. This move was taking women out of their traditional slavery (called caring for your parents,
marriage, and motherhood in the West) and 2,000 years of cultural stagnation.
Women flocked to the opening offered, obviously, and were let down and betrayed almost
immediately.
Surrounded
by a million strong army, Mao decided to flee his stronghold of Jiangxi. With him he took all fighting men
and 30 handpicked women. In Jianxi he left behind the women, children, and the old to face the enemy.
What a heroic start. Planning for the flight was meticulous. Every aspect of a
putative future government, the only goal of Mao’s bid for total power for himself,
was carried along. This included a printing press and tons of gold among other useful things. It did not include unnecessary things such as food and water bottles.
Mao
later claimed that the fugitives covered 6,000 miles; it was little more than
half of that. People tend to become all mushy over the deprivation of the
heroes on the marsh. Maybe a less brainless planning would have seen more
survivors. It is hard to cook soup from a printing press and to get warm
covering yourself in gold. As good communists, they shared everything together
as equals. None of the
leadership died of either hunger or cold, while thousands on the march did.
With the
invasion of the Japanese, Mao received the order from Moscow to side with
Chiang Kai-shek and repel the Japanese army. He duly did so. Just as soon as
the Japanese capitulated, the two leaders went back to their main concern of
securing absolute power for themselves. As the Americans had lost interest in
China, the heavy arms supplies from Russia carried the day and Mao could seize
power, while Chiang Kai-shek had to retreat to Taiwan.
This part I got out of the book 'Unbound' (referring to the bound feet of Chinese women, one of the many Bronze Age culture aspects of Chinese life) written by Dean King and published by Little, Brown. American author Dean King tries to bring some understanding of the Chinese into the West, but left me still baffled. Even failing on his main objective with me, his book was most revealing on a secondary level.
The book
is set up to follow the 30 women on The Long March, trying to make them heroines. They emerge in my eyes as traitors to their fellow women. Later, they get betrayed
themselves by the Gang Of Four. Mao and Chiang Kai-shek both behaved as the first
Emperor did by treating the people as little more than slaves.
Further reading
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