Chapter 21 strike

In mid-1925, a Chinese worker at the Shanghai Cotton Mill was beaten to death by a lawless Japanese foreman.At the behest of the British, the concession police shot and suppressed the workers who held a demonstration, resulting in 10 deaths and 50 injuries. The incident was thrown like a lit match into a powder keg, and demonstrations, strikes and clashes broke out in many cities.The strike in Hong Kong lasted six months - the longest in world history - and Beijing rickshaw drivers, always looked down upon, put up a sign on their cars: "Don't pull the British and Japanese". This had an unprecedented impact on the peasants, and for the first time the countryside uttered a cry against imperialism.The influence of the Communist Party spread like a tropical weed. In January 1925, the number of members of the Chinese Communist Party was 995, and by November it had reached 10,000.

It seems that revolution is no longer just in the books of radicals any longer. It was at this time that the KMT came to a crossroads.After Sun Yat-sen died of illness in Beijing in the spring, his body was covered with the red, blue and white party flags of the Kuomintang, and sad people attended the funeral.Is there any successor who can walk on this tight rope like him?The debate over the nature of the Kuomintang began in the summer. In autumn, Mao Zedong returned to his handy place.The new problem he identified—the upsurge of the peasant movement—featured heavily in the debate. The governor of Hunan province was hunting for the tall, then 31-year-old radical, who worked in the countryside.In the countryside, Mao Zedong was quite safe—the warlords couldn't reach the mountains.But Mao Zedong took the risk and went to Changsha.The rulers followed him and sent troops to hunt him down, and he fled to Canton.

External political forces suddenly overwhelmed the internal drive for social change. In 1924, Mao Zedong wrote a document for the party organization in Shanghai for several months. After working vigorously in Hunan for several months in 1925, he filled out a poem to express his memory. The poem "Qinyuanchun·Changsha" is both nostalgic and calmly hopeful for the future.Mao Zedong recalled the era of studying: Recalling the past eventful years thick. Cha classmate boy, in full bloom; scholarly anger, Rebuke Fang Qiu. Pointing to Jiangshan... Mao Zedong felt that the lost things cannot be recovered:

All kinds of frost compete for freedom. melancholy, Ask the vast land, Who is in charge of ups and downs? The whole poem fully reveals Mao Zedong's personality, and the ending is full of confidence: Do you ever remember, hit the water in the midstream, Waves stop the flying boat? [34] The vitality of youth will be slightly reduced after passing the 30th year, but will it still maintain the power to change the environment? At the beginning of the rainy season in October, Mao Zedong arrived in Guangzhou.It has been nearly a year since he left this noisy city on the Pearl River. Mao Zedong has changed, and so has the United Front.

It will be interesting to see how Mao explained to his colleagues the whereabouts of these months.Colleagues must have been very concerned about this period of his eclipse.All we can say is that Mao was not wasting his time, he was trying quietly.Soon he resumed party work. This is mainly for the Kuomintang, because his position in the Kuomintang is now higher than his position in the Communist Party.He was part of the leading body of the Kuomintang, not the Communist Party. Mao Zedong became editor-in-chief of the Kuomintang's main publication, Political Weekly. In the second half of 1925, he published 15 articles of his own writing in this weekly newspaper with great enthusiasm.All of these articles are radical comments on current affairs, just like his radical commentary in 1923 in "Guide".

"Politics Weekly" and Mao Zedong wrote the opening speech. Mao Zedong still has an important position in the Kuomintang. He is the number two figure in the Propaganda Department.Because the head of the Propaganda Department was busy with the work of the prime minister of the Guangzhou government, Mao Zedong actually presided over the propaganda work of the Kuomintang. However, it was Mao Zedong's third job that flashed the brilliance of the future. In October 1925, the Fifth Peasant Movement Workshop was opened.Hunan people accounted for 40% of the students in this class, and the influence of Mao Zedong is obvious.His younger brother Mao Zemin participated in this session of study.

Mao Zedong rose like a new star in the workshop.After a period of fading, he made a comeback as a teacher. Mao Zedong's work in the thriving Kuomintang was notable as relations between the party and the party went from strained to sour. The united front may never have worked.Regardless, it had broken in the spring of 1926.A right-wing group, the "Xishan Conference Faction"—named after its members who had met in Xishan, Beijing—began to emerge within the Kuomintang, and they were unwilling to have any contact with the Communist Party. Just before Mao Zedong fled from Hunan to Guangzhou, an influential left-wing leader of the Kuomintang was murdered in Guangzhou. The "Xishan Conference faction" may have paid for this event.

At the Second Congress of the Kuomintang in January 1926, the momentum against the united front faltered slightly.At that time, the Kuomintang had a great influence in the south, and the meeting was held in the commercial district of Guangzhou, which was very lively.Like all KMT meetings, the first item on the agenda was to stand up, bow three times to Sun Yat-sen's portrait, and listen to the reading of his will. Mao Zedong sat in the front row, spoke and debated, and was re-elected as an alternate member of the executive committee with 173 votes (Wang Jingwei received the most votes with 248 votes; Li Dazhao, a senior Communist Party leader, had 192 votes).Mao Zedong was also elected to the Peasant Department of the Kuomintang.

In a report submitted to the Congress on behalf of the Propaganda Department, Mao Zedong expressed his new view: “We paid too much attention to the cities and neglected the peasants.”[35] He was right, but it was like a cry in the wilderness.The Kuomintang is more like an army than a political party, and the core of this army is officers with landed families.How could the Kuomintang approve of a revolution like the Hunan Peasant Movement that Mao Zedong had contacted and led?Wouldn't that be taking his own life? The Xishan Conference faction was at an absolute disadvantage at the meeting, and their violation of discipline caused controversy.How should we deal with their opposition to the United Front?Mao Zedong was on the side of tolerance. [36]

What is Mao Zedong's purpose?At the "Second National Congress" of the Kuomintang, he seemed to be on the right side, and many things later showed his position. With a gun in hand, Chiang Kai-shek succeeded in the race to succeed Sun Yat-sen.Once he drew several followers of Sun Yat-sen to his side, he would oppose the Communist Party. In March 1926, Chiang Kai-shek destroyed the United Front.He used the "Zhongshan ship incident" as an excuse to launch a surprise attack on the Communist Party, arresting Communist Party members (including Zhou Enlai)[37], and controlling the labor unions with strong Communist Party forces.Within the Kuomintang, he used conspiracy to subdue Wang Jingwei's left-wing forces, and Wang Jingwei was forced to go to Europe for "investigation".Chiang Kai-shek took control of the Canton government and tilted it to the right.

However, Mao Zedong never cut off contacts with the Kuomintang.Although the Kuomintang had in fact released him from the Propaganda Department, he soon had a new post.When the prison in Guangzhou was full of his comrades, Mao Zedong became the director of the Sixth Guangzhou Peasant Movement Workshop of the Kuomintang.This session starts in May and ends in October.During those unfortunate months, Mao Zedong was the only Communist to serve in the Kuomintang. The Agricultural Institute is housed in a quaint Confucian temple in the center of Guangzhou.Mao Zedong liked to use the inheritance of his ancestors to engage in activities against tradition.He lived in a hut at the Agricultural Institute, sleeping on a hard bed at night, without a mosquito net (in Guangzhou, only the poor or those who took pleasure in suffering did so). Classroom of Guangzhou Peasant Movement Workshop. In 1926, Mao Zedong served as the director of the Sixth Peasant Movement Workshop. On the bamboo bookshelves are the notes he made during his visit to Hunan, which enabled him to deliver a 23-class lecture: "The Problem of Peasants in China." He is also personally responsible for three other courses: the 9-hour "rural education method", and his favorite geography.He created discussion-style independent study courses, raised doubts about authority in the classroom, and he pioneered a new teaching of hygiene.He also adopted a new teaching method, moved the classroom to Haifeng, and let the students observe the vigorous peasant movement led by Peng Pai. Mao Zedong personally selected 15 teachers, most of whom have practical work experience and are solid in their work.He chose the elegant Zhou Enlai (now out of prison) to teach military courses. Zhou Enlai had many qualities that Mao Zedong did not have: gentle temperament, quick behavior, good at communication, and rooted in the mean.Although Zhou Enlai is 27 years old, he still looks like a teenager, while Mao Zedong looked mature when he was a teenager.Zhou Enlai had been to Japan (1917-1918), France and Germany (1920-1924), as can be seen from his demeanor.Zhou Enlai was born in a scholarly family, and participating in the popular revolution was his moral choice.He didn't know much about the military, nor did Mao Zedong. That summer in Guangzhou can be regarded as the beginning of the cooperation between Mao and Zhou, and this partnership has survived through various twists and turns.This is somewhat unbelievable: Zhou Enlai was born in a landlord family and had just returned from Europe; while Mao Zedong was an authentic farmer's son, and his hometown was in a corner. The Northern Expedition is about to begin.From Chiang Kai-shek's point of view, this was a military operation to seize the power of the northern warlords to unify China; but from Mao Zedong's point of view, it was more than that.Mao Zedong predicted that when the Kuomintang's Northern Expeditionary Army passed through the already turbulent countryside, it would cause a major social shock.He is correct.His purpose was to train peasant cadres across the country to guide this social change. Partly because of the Agricultural Lecture Institute, Mao Zedong's reputation has been restored to a limited extent within the Communist Party.The Communist Party's growing concern for the situation in the countryside led its leaders to once again use Mao Zedong. At the Central Plenary Session held in July 1926, the Peasant Department was finally established.Mao Zedong was appointed in charge.Obviously, this gave Mao Zedong another seat on the Central Committee.At the end of the year the Guide published two of his articles on the peasant question. However, the Communist Party never controlled the entire peasant movement, and its peasant department was located in a metropolis like Shanghai inappropriately.At the same time, Mao Zedong was still busy in Guangzhou in charge of the work of the Agricultural Lecture Institute for the Kuomintang.He only returned to Shanghai twice for a short period of time, but the focus of his peasant work was still within the Kuomintang and not within the Communist Party. This explains why Mao Zedong was able to occupy the center of the political arena. For most Communist Party leaders, the most troublesome question in the mid-1920s was how the Communist Party could benefit from a united front while maintaining its own independence. Likewise, for Moscow, the united front is their crowning achievement in China.It is true that the Communist Party of China was a child of the Soviet Union, but the Soviets overestimated the capabilities of this baby.Since the Kuomintang appears to be more powerful, when it comes to China, the Kremlin must talk about the united front. Not Mao Zedong.The relationship between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party was not important to Mao Zedong's unconventional uniqueness, and the issue of the method of action did not attract his attention. What Mao Zedong cared about was the question of his supporters, who should the revolution be for?What kind of spark can ignite the flames of revolution on the land of China, making it hot enough to melt the old and replace the new? Mao Zedong's answer came from Hunan.The revolution should be for the poor, the vast majority of whom live in the countryside.The revolution was for more than 90% of the people around Shaoshan, whom Mao Zedong considered poor or middle peasants.A spark should be ignited in the countryside, where the oppression of landlords is more serious and cruel than that of urban compradors.In Mao Zedong's heart, he believed that this was the fundamental truth, and all issues of political methods were secondary. Not surprisingly, he has been with the KMT longer than other Communists.Because in the mid-1920s, the Kuomintang paid more attention to the peasant issue than the Communist Party. Mao Zedong was opposed by Shanghai.Professor Chen Duxiu deduced bookishly: "The peasants are petty bourgeoisie...how can they start a communist movement?" [38] Liu Shaoqi said in a condescending tone that the proletariat must "lift the peasants" and lead them to the revolution. [39] Moscow was a little closer, but not too close, to the basic truths Mao held.Marin's contempt for the peasants is reminiscent of Marx's mocking of the peasants' stupidity.But Marin left China forever in 1923.Seeing the peasantry becoming active, the Comintern found a theoretical basis for the revolutionary potential of the peasantry in Lenin's writings in early 1926. Mao Zedong's logic, however, was not of the Comintern type.He therefore admired the Northern Expedition of the Kuomintang (on this issue he agreed with Chiang Kai-shek), while Moscow did not approve of it, although Borodin was in favor of the Northern Expedition after the Zhongshan incident. The Soviets wanted peasants to participate in the revolution under the strict control of an elaborate united front.They worried that the Northern Expedition of the Kuomintang army would cause social unrest, which would be beyond the control of the land-owning Kuomintang officials. Furthermore, Moscow also got on well with the three major warlords in the north (including the one who massacred railway workers in 1923).Stalin did not want to lose the warlords, nor did he want to lose the Kuomintang.The starting point of Stalin's China policy was to serve the interests of the Soviet Union, so he did not want the two to conflict, and he did not want to be forced to make a painful choice between the Chinese revolution and the Soviet Union's national interests. But where to start?Every new revolution is a creative activity, and carefully planned revolutions based on the experience of victories elsewhere rarely succeed.The fire of revolution often flashes in a desperate situation, and once ignited, it will be violent and swift.Mao Zedong wanted and demanded a social change that would break through the dictating papers of Moscow and Shanghai.Eventually he had a formula for success. In February 1926, Mao Zedong published "Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society" in Guangzhou. [40] Half a year later, he published "National Revolution and Peasant Movement" on his way north. "Who is our enemy? Who is our friend?" Mao Zedong raised this question at the beginning of "Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society".He described the relationship and status of various social classes in China under specific historical conditions: the number of urban working class was small; bullying by imperialism made some Chinese bourgeoisie sympathize with the revolution; peasants were an important force that could not be ignored in the revolution. "They need a revolution." Mao Zedong made this judgment based on the facts he knew, not from the dogma of Marxism. However, Mao Zedong still regarded the relatively small industrial proletariat as the "leading force of the revolution" in "Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society".He tried to place peasant forces under the leadership of the proletariat. The September article is a different kind of content.It said the peasants were vital in every aspect of the revolution and they were the most oppressed.The compradors only had an advantage in the coastal and riverside areas, "not as good as the landlord class in all provinces, counties, and townships of China." Mao further argued that compradors always followed the warlords, who were "selected by the landlord class".He demonstrated economically that "90% of the tens of millions of dollars spent by the warlord government each year are directly and indirectly obtained from the farmers under the domination of the landlord class."In other words, power in China arose from the land. Mao Zedong boldly stated: "The current political struggle of the urban working class is only for the complete freedom of assembly and association, and it cannot immediately destroy the political status of the bourgeoisie." He finally expressed his support for the labor movement in Changsha. suspicion. He went on to comment: "The peasants in the countryside come up against the local tyrants, evil gentry, and big landowners who have been oppressing the peasants for thousands of years..." Therefore, they are the most capable of fighting. Mao Zedong naturally came to the conclusion: "However, without the privilege of peasants rising from the countryside to overthrow the patriarchal and feudal landlord class, the forces of warlords and imperialism would never have completely collapsed." This is a startling conclusion.The success or failure of the revolution depends on the peasants, only the peasants can bring down the crumbling edifice of old China, and even the struggle against imperialism depends entirely on them.With this article, Karl Marx descends to the rice fields of Asia. [41] Mao Zedong had already shown his thinking, which he had formed in Hunan in 1925. The countryside attracted Mao Zedong like a magnet.The Sixth Workshop of the Agricultural Institute ended in October 1926, and there was nothing else to do to keep him in Guangzhou, but he did not go to Shanghai to preside over the work of the Communist Party's Peasant Department of which he was a minister.He returned to his hometown of Hunan, unwilling to issue orders in a metropolitan office, but to deal with problems in the peasant movement on the spot. Great changes took place in Hunan, which became the center of the Chinese revolutionary movement at that time.When the Northern Expedition arrived in Changsha in the late summer of 1926, the warlords who ruled Hunan at the time also took on the guise of supporting the Kuomintang.At the same time, peasant associations were powerful throughout the countryside. There was going to be a storm between the two forces, and Mao Zedong would soon see that.He seemed brooding, not fully aware of the troubles to come.He is doing preparatory activities—he has been to some rural areas in Zhejiang and Jiangsu, and reported on the "Guide" that the peasant movement is "surging like a storm."He made an important speech at the first peasant congress in Hunan.After a period of activities, Mao Zedong returned to Shaoshan, a sheltered place. He often goes back in winter. Although it is not home, at least the environment makes him feel used to it.Just like the time he returned home in the first lunar month two years ago, he inspected several surrounding villages and spent 32 days in five counties. This time, Mao Zedong did not need to find an audience like a troubadour, and 500 farmers in Hunan had joined the peasant association.His task was no longer to mobilize the peasants, but to show the whole picture of the peasant movement to the outside world. This time Mao Zedong acted brilliantly.Edgar Snow's "Red Star Shines Over China" is not a classic of the Chinese revolution. The classic should be Mao Zedong's "Investigation Report on the Hunan Peasant Movement". In 1927, published the "Warrior" weekly magazine "Investigation Report on the Peasant Movement in Hunan" and published the "Report" booklet. Mao found that people were beating gongs and surrounded by high-hatted landowners, and the heinous landowners had been imprisoned in the county prisons. Their crimes included hoarding and raising food prices--and Mao Zedong's father did the same in 1906 .Some landlords abandoned their property and fled in embarrassment. Peasants set up a pike team to maintain the new order, and the children quickly accepted the new moral concepts. Mao Zedong noticed that among the children playing and fighting, one of the children who was annoyed stomped and shouted: "Down with imperialism!" I heard a peasant yell at a squire: "Evil gentry, do you know the Three People's Principles?" Society is turned upside down.Even the rebel was amazed at the upheaval of society, since he had not been in the midst of the struggle for so long.With a feeling of respect, he wrote quickly: "The dignity and prestige of the landlord is wiped away." His excitement made the style of the "Report" different from that of the Kuomintang or Communist Party documents. Mao Zedong was ecstatic.In order to prohibit gambling, farmers "burned a load of mahjong cards", Mao Zedong was very happy.He didn't care that some country folks did like playing mahjong.With excitement—rather than reproach—he reported that the overthrown landowners had begun calling the rising peasants kings of the village.He made no secret of his sarcasm towards the evil gentry, "It's the world of committee members now! You see, all the piss touches the committee members." When Mao Zedong saw the sedan chairs being smashed, he didn't think there was anything wrong with it. Peasants "hate those who sit on sedan chairs the most."Did he ever think that Professor Yang Changji, whom he respected, would go to school every morning in a sedan chair when he was in Changsha? Revolutions, of course, change everything.One is to call for the birth of a new society, and the other is to smash the sedan chair you are sitting on. Mao Zedong mocked Ye Gong, a character in a story made up by Liu Xiang (77 BC-6 BC).Ye Gong likes dragons very much, and there are dragon patterns carved and drawn everywhere in the room. The real dragon came down to earth when he heard that Ye Gong was so infatuated, but Ye Gong was frightened to death. Mao Zedong concluded: "Every day you talk about 'awakening the people', and when the people get up, they are frightened to death. How is this different from Ye Gong's love of dragons?" [42] And how is that any different from the peaceful activism of Mao Zedong's father-in-law? The pedantic spirit disappeared in Mao Zedong.He began to oppose the foreign-style education that introduced him to the wider world, and now he believes that people like Professor Yang cannot be political allies. The Report makes no mention of the leading role of the urban working class in the revolution (a point Beijing carefully added when compiling Mao Zedong's Selected Works in the 1950s).But the content is quite radical, if not Marxist. Mao Zedong divided the peasants into poor peasants (70%), middle peasants (20%) and rich peasants (10%).As a division of the social sciences, this classification is only rough, but it is wise as a lever for change.Making the poor peasants aware of their own poverty is the first step in the revolution. Mao declared—partly from surveys, partly from evaluations—that the poorest people were also the most revolutionary, as Mao had always said.The high mountains are valleys, and the abyss are mausoleums.This is Mao Zedong's understanding of the revolution in 1927, and he is "raising his arms" for it. Mao Zedong had to return to the urban political world again, taking his old reports with him.Mao Zedong came to the city to attend the meeting of the Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang, which was held in Wuhan in March 1927, and the atmosphere was very lively. For the rest of 1927, Wuhan became part of Mao's life.Wuhan is the provincial capital of Hubei (north of the lake).This industrial city is an important town in central China, straddling the Beijing-Guangzhou Railway, and also a waterway hub from Chongqing to the Yangtze River, which flows through the estuary of Shanghai. In 1927, Mao Zedong was in Wuhan.The picture on the left is the inspection report he wrote after returning to Wuhan from Hunan.