Chapter III
Communist Personalities
The Central People’s Government of the Chinese Communist Party is the ruling class. It makes the policy, enforces the laws and governs with dictatorial power. Mao Tse-tung, at fifty-six, is Chairman and Supreme Commander—for the time being at least. Directly responsible to him are six Vice-Chairmen among whom is the famous Madame Sun Yet-sen. Under these Vice-Chairmen are fifty-six Supreme and fifteen Administrative Councilors, twenty Ministries and a political Consultative Committee of one hundred and eighty Active Members.
Mao Tse-tung, or Chairman Mao, is a rotund little figure, rather dejected looking, with an undistinguished face, topped by a broad forehead and a luxuriant crop of black hair. Now installed in Peking, he dresses less slovenly than in those earlier days in Yenan when a sloppy appearance was considered a badge of honor.
His name, pronounced “Mout-zz-dung,” is easily mispronounced by foreigners. Once, during the Japanese war, when Mao was in Chungking for a short time, ostensibly to coordinate the Communist forces with the Generalissimo’s war effort, he was consistently called “Mousy-dung,” by Ambassador Hurley. In conferences, and with the best intentions in the world, Hurley would keep saying, “Mr. Mousy-dung,” this or that ..., while the Generalissimo would politely cover his face with his hand to hide his smile and Mao would blush. “Mousy-dung,” in a more common Chinese dialect means “the hole in the water closet.”
Earnest and zealous, Mao, a “China for the Chinese” promoter, and therefore basically at odds with the Russians, speaks in a distinct, sometimes shrill, high-pitched voice. He has a habit of quoting from his wide reading. His oratory is forceful but, like Hitler’s, not polished. Although brilliantly educated in the Chinese Classics and familiar with ancient Greece and Rome through translations of their history and literature, up to the time he left Yenan he had never learned to speak or understand English. Nearly all foreigners relied upon his interpreter when speaking to him. In spite of this, he held one group of reporters spellbound for nearly three hours as he talked to them in the Foreign Office cave, gesticulating nervously and cracking watermelon seeds endlessly between his square white teeth. Sometimes his sober countenance and intense preoccupation would amuse foreigners. Hurley, after long hours of serious discussions, always through an interpreter of course, would, on leaving, bow in sweeping Western style and invariably say in English, “Good night, you sad little apple you,” to his politely bowing host.
Mao’s childhood was one of unusual drudgery. His father was a peasant and a domestic tyrant. Understandably, the boy’s thoughts were turned, at an early age, to revolution against authority and oppression. He chopped off his pigtail in defiance of the Manchus and joined other restless youths who had a hand in the formation of the Chinese Communist Party. A few years later, largely through his help, this party was joined briefly to the revolutionary party of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, which Russia was then aiding.
Years of civil war had taught Mao the technique of guerilla warfare, as well as the qualities necessary for leadership. He likens his guerilla tactics to the behavior of fleas. “We attack by night,” he says, “and wear out strong men.” In 1927 he became President of the first Chinese Peasants Union and has never lost his standing with it. The ignorant peasants are always impressed not only by his rugged and often ruthless qualities, but also by his great learning and his ability to write Chinese poetry in the classic style. In the early days, he won their further applause by moving freely among the people, organizing rickshaw boys into labor unions, and sometimes pulling them about in rickshaws himself, while he talked intimately of the glories of Communism.
Most of the activities of the Communist Party in the early days were carried on in the South, especially around Canton. By 1934, however, the Nationalists had gained such power that the Communists were forced to leave the Southern province of Kiangsi for the Northern caves of Yenan. This, the “Long March,” was a journey of thousands of miles, travelled on foot, partly over almost impassable trails and some of the highest mountains and largest rivers in Asia. In three hundred and sixty-eight days, eighteen major mountain passes were crossed, five of them snow-capped, and twenty-four rivers were forded. At each stop that was made, the marchers ravaged villages, impoverished the well-to-do, and persuaded the poorer peasants to join them. They whipped up such a frenzied crusade that their ranks were swelled by thousands. So strenuous was the journey, however, that at its end only twenty thousand men and women were left, ten thousand having fallen by the way. Those who survived were tough, one may be sure. A much-quoted legend has grown up about Mao, the stalwart leader, which tells how he stumbled along barefooted, refusing a wounded soldier’s offer to share a pony’s back. “No,” said Mao to the soldier, “your wounds are worse than mine. We shall suffer and fight together. That is what makes us comrades.”
Mao’s domestic career, like his political one, has been stormy. His first wife, a child, was forced upon him by his parents, at the age of fourteen. In his opinion, she does not count, and he never mentions her. His second, a school teacher’s daughter, is said to have been shot by a Nationalist General. His third was the heroine of the “Long March,” and Mao had just cause to be proud of her. Tall, frail looking, clever and high spirited, she was sometimes argumentative, behavior unheard of in a Chinese women. A female soldier, she is said to have received many wounds in battle. She also gave birth to a son by Mao during the “Long March,” but when the going became too difficult and unsafe she left the child along the way with old peasants who were unable to join the marchers.
Alas for this brave wife, when Mao met the beauteous movie actress Lang Ping, on arriving in Yenan, she was completely forgotten. He was so enraptured with the newcomer that he sent his wife to Moscow, normally a reward sought after by any Communist. In this case it was only a face-saving gesture, however, and there were rumors that the rejected woman contracted tuberculosis and died. Mao’s new marriage to Lang Ping caused a flutter of excitement and alarm in Yenan, where the Communists knew and admired the courage and fortitude of his third wife and where she was held in esteem. News of this flurry of unrest reached the Comintern in Moscow, where the practice of casually exchanging wives was recognized, if not encouraged. There Mao’s conduct was dismissed lightly, and the Chinese Communists were told that the matter was to be regarded as “personal, not a Party affair.”
During the war, Mao lived happily in a cave in Yenan with wife Number Four. Both dressed simply in blue uniforms padded with cotton in the winter. In spite of this simplicity they enjoyed more privileges than the average Communist. They ate special meals and had extra rations of cigarettes, which Mao liked to chain-smoke. He and his ex-movie starlet went, occasionally, to Saturday night dances given for the Party workers. Here an improvised orchestra struggled with Viennese waltzes, known to be Mao’s favorites, along with scattered bits of boogie-woogie. Mao also liked Chinese translations of Russian songs, but whatever the music, he and his wife swung into action with genuine enthusiasm.
On the whole, Mao’s simple life adds to his popularity. A Mao-myth, similar to the Stalin-myth, is being built up about him, and by similar means. His picture is everywhere. His words are repeated and his name is spoken with reverence. In 1937, Mao wrote a letter to Earl Browder, head of the Communist Party in the United States, in which he said, in part: “We feel that when we achieve victory (in China) this victory will be of considerable help to the struggle of the American people for liberation.” Mao signed his letter, “President of the Chinese Soviet Republic.”
Today, Mao is not only the most influential Communist in China, but probably, next to Stalin, the most powerful Red on earth. With Kremlin approval, he controls, temporarily more than four hundred and sixty million people, which is three times the population of the United States and double that of Russia. A typical student of the methods of Moscow, in spite of his devotion to Confucius and Plato, he has no compunction whatever about condemning thousands to death upon suspicion that their loyalties are slipping. Aware of this quality in him, Japanese and Korean Communist representatives have declared him, “The Symbol of the struggle for emancipation of all the peoples of the Orient.” They claim he has attained his position of power through his sincere and idealistic solicitude for China’s masses and his realism in bringing about reforms. His enemies, however, intimate that his “realism” has not excluded any means to gain his ends, from walking out of attempted peace conferences to assassinations.
The second most important man in Communist China, now that the war with the Chinese Nationalists is over, is Chu Teh, pronounced “Ju Duh,” Commander-in-Chief of the Chinese Communist Armies. He is often called the “Red Heart” of Communist China, as contrasted with Mao’s nickname of the “Red Brain.” Number Two in the Hierarchy is a plump, jolly, genial-appearing fellow. Looking anything but a martinet, he has a broad, disarming smile which shows a wide expanse of pink gum. He loves to trot about chucking little children under the chin. Born with a gold spoon in his mouth, he was a reckless though courageous child who always wanted to be a soldier and kept breaking away from an early existence of luxury and high living. Rich at the outset, he became even richer through “squeeze” in a government financial post. Son of a family of overlords, he rose to power and wealth despite his addiction to opiates while still a youth. His early use of opium can be laid to his parents. They spread the thick, gooey, sweet-smelling stuff on sugar cane and gave it to him to suck at night—a common practice of the time to still an infant’s nocturnal wails.
Chu Teh had a large family of wives, concubines and children. He was past forty when he decided to leave them all and devote his entire future and fortune to the revolutionary ideal that burned fanatically within him. After squandering part of his wealth and donating the rest to the Communist cause, he plundered public funds in order to leave his large household well established in a comfortable residence.
Chu was persuaded that the revolution of Dr. Sun Yat-sen in 1911 had proved to be an utter failure for the masses. In his opinion, it lacked the spark of a vigorous ideological revolution, because it only substituted one bureaucracy for another. He longed to modernize China and to emulate the Marxian heroes of the West. In order to further his ambitions and to carry out his ideals, Chu put a large foot in the mouth of tradition and, having abandoned his family, swashbuckled into Shanghai to meet and mingle with the Nationalist revolutionaries. These he joined temporarily, but he was always regarded by them with a jaundiced eye. They even went so far as to try to kill him one night when a Nationalist officer invited him to dinner. Chu scented danger. Realizing at the same time that his host was naive and impressionable, he flashed one of his face-consuming smiles, followed by a rat-a-tat fire of vitriolic conversation damning Communism. He fondled the feminine entertainers, recited sensuous love sonnets, and generally made himself the life of the party. It worked. His would-be murderous host was completely captivated, and Chu escaped without a scratch! In like fashion, by such guile and beguiling ways, Chu’s predecessors, under Genghis Khan, performed the remarkable feat in the 13th century of subjugating the entire country. The old party tricks are still up to date!
A practical fellow, with more intestinal fortitude than his habits would indicate, Chu picked up his meager belongings a little later on and went to Germany to study the Marxian and the Russian Revolutions with the Communists there. He moved on up the scale to Moscow, matriculated in the Eastern Toilers’ Union, where he studied under the best Communist teachers. When he came back to Shanghai, he regaled his friends with what he had learned in Germany and Russia. “I am determined to make this work in China,” he vowed. To this end, he placed great emphasis on guerilla warfare, the people’s self-defense corps, to suppress activities of traitors, draw out information about the enemy, and guard military secrets. His military tactics are the same as those of the Huns of Attila, the Mongols of Genghis Khan and the Tartars of Tamerlane. Let the enemy be the source of supplies—the enemy being anyone who has anything you want.
As far back as 1927, Earl Browder had been in China helping the Communists plant the seeds for the future control of that country. They had planned on Chiang Kai-shek playing the role of Kerensky in Russia—that of being a temporary leader of the Chinese to be kicked out as soon as he had defeated the warlords in southern and central China. Chiang, however, was more than a match for them and succeeded in blocking their “October Revolution.” He took over, on the death of Sun Yat-sen, and ousted all of the Russian advisors and so-called “master minds,” who had been posing as friends. The Kremlin whimpered and licked its wounds, preparing a relentless revenge.
This was the only serious set-back they encountered until Tito deserted and U. S. aid in 1947 saved Greece, Italy and France. Their hatred of Chiang, therefore, was deeply rooted and they had discredited him and his government in every way prior to their take-over of the country when we, the U. S., failed China in 1946 and 1947.
In 1928, Chu joined forces with Mao, and together they founded the first Chinese Soviet Government and the Red Army in Kiangsi Province. Chu became Commander-in-Chief of the Red Army in China. With Mao, he led the “Long March” to Yenan. Unlike Mao, who will stop at nothing to gain his ends, Chu has a Robin Hood quality that makes him a friend to the poor, with whom he is ever gaining in popularity. When the peasants, for example, complain bitterly that the soldiers are stealing from them (a time-honored custom among Asiatic troops), he forces them to return the stolen goods. Often, as a matter of discipline for other offenses, and as a demonstration to convince the peasants of his “sincerity” as to looting, he gathers the entire village together and gives the populace the satisfaction of seeing the worst looters shot. “No more looting,” he says, shaking a long bony finger. “Hereafter, when we need anything we will ‘confiscate’ it from the rich, our natural enemies, who use cheap and offensive tactics against us.”
In spite of an occasional shooting, Chu is popular with his troops and has been able to recruit from one to two million guerillas, both men and women. One of the latter, a pistol-packing Amazon named K’ang K’eching, revived his temporarily restrained love life. Dressed as a man, this big-boned siren with platter-sized hands and feet, approached him one day and told him she and her companions had captured a machine gun. Would he teach her how to use it? He would, indeed, for he was delighted with this husky bit of pulchritude. He continued to teach her many other guerilla tricks, and from these lessons romance flowered. The next year she became Mrs. Chu Teh, and the newlyweds set up housekeeping in a cave in Yenan.
Sometimes, on weekends, Chu would leave his cave-office and the headaches that beset him there. Sniffing the fresh air as though it held an alien fragrance, and baring his buck teeth in a flash grin, he would ask in Chinese: “What’s cooking?” This was not idle slang with him. When soldiers in the Red Army have been rewarded for some deed, they often use the small change they receive to buy a goose which they roast and share with their comrades. A standing joke among them was that since General Chu could not be rewarded—there being no immediate superior to bestow such favor—he could always smell a goose and thereby get himself invited to a meal. Among the soldiers he was nicknamed “The Cook,” and not alone for his interest in the kitchen. Once, disguised as a cook, he was cornered behind Chiang Kai-shek’s lines. With revolvers poked into his ribs, he yelled: “Don’t shoot! I can cook for you!” The hungry soldiers, touched to their taste buds, hesitated for a closer inspection. When he was recognized and the cry “kill him!” went up, Chu whipped out a concealed pistol, shot the crier, overcame a guard and fled.
Always able to compensate by his keen wits for lack of material, he is one of the most talented products of Moscow’s training. He has taught his troops to use the old steppe dweller method of getting much needed equipment from the enemy. In addition, he has successfully augmented his supplies with material obtained from the Japanese and the Russians. In spite of Chu’s long association with Marx and Moscow, he probably has the interests of China at heart to such an extent that the Moscow yoke could cause him to revolt. Chu can be likened in the Chinese Communist Hierarchy, to Budnenie in the Russian Soviet Army and left in political isolation after his usefulness is over. Not a political figure, but entirely military, Chu will never compete with Mao.
The third most important man in Communist China, who was the Number Two during the war with Japan, is Chou En-lai. His name is pronounced “Joe-n-lie.” Like “Mousy-dung,” the name has given rise to considerable amusement. Chou himself, unlike Mao, never failed to be highly entertained when Ambassador Hurley saluted him with the familiar “Hi, Joe!”
The Party’s most polished envoy, Chou is practically the only one capable of meeting foreign dignitaries with ease. He is wily, clever at negotiation and, like the Property Man of Chinese drama, set the stage for the spectacular performance before a world audience of the talks with General Marshall in 1945. As “Chief Front Man” and one of the directors of foreign propaganda, Chou did such a consummate job that Ambassador J. Leighton Stuart told friends, “He presents his case better than anyone I have ever encountered, clearly, forcefully, urbanely.” Chou was urbane, certainly, for at a large cocktail party he charmed the peace negotiators of all three parties, including Stuart and Marshall. The tired “diplomats” sought respite in small chow and small talk, and for an hour Chou showed himself the polite, intelligent, agreeable mixer that he is. Stuart, a scholar and an intellectual, told me in Nanking: “Whenever I cannot get a point across to Chou, I talk the matter over with some of my students at Yenching University. They discuss it with Chou and a solution is arrived at immediately.”
It is no secret that the young intelligentsia of the Chinese Communist Party were reared and fostered under Stuart’s faithful hand, as President of Yenching University, near Peking. He gave his best and his all to represent the United States, yet he was an old and tired man, and his ideologies and hopes for the Chinese people were wrapped up in a belief that the salvation of their country lay in Socialism. The only group capable of carrying out these ideals was the Chinese Communist Party, which, like its dictator, was ready to prostitute Socialism and replace it with its own brand of dictatorship.
Following the cheerful little get-togethers, the negotiators would return to their arguments, hammer and sickle, and Chou’s charm was abruptly turned off. On one or two occasions, however, this charm caused the Hierarchy embarrassment. For instance, he was recalled to the “Ivory Tower” in Yenan once because Mao felt that he had gone too far in his talks with Marshall; that he had appeared to be making too many concessions, even though he told a comrade he had not the slightest intention of ever living up to any of them. Moreover, he seemed to be getting too friendly with Marshall. Chou spent many unhappy hours in the Chinese Communist dog house in consequence.
After he confessed, with mock solemnity, to the error of his ways and promised “Papa Mao” to be a “good boy,” Chou was sent back to Nanking to continue the negotiations. (Mao had to send him back anyway, because he was the only man in the Chinese Communist Party at the time who could do the job). To prove that he was now “reformed,” Chou let out a series of blasts against the United States Government that were more violent and vitriolic than any that had yet come from Communist Headquarters. Among other things, he accused President Truman of fomenting the civil war and of trying to turn China into an American Colony.
As an individual, Chou En-lai appears to many by far the most personable of all the Chinese Communist leaders. Of medium height, he is well built and well groomed. At press interviews he has a nervous habit of removing and replacing his black-rimmed glasses as he talks. His broad, handsome face is distinguished by thick eyebrows and clear cut features. He speaks English in a well-modulated, yet vibrant and dramatic voice, undoubtedly cultivated while acting in amateur theatricals in college in Tientsin. There he frequently took the feminine lead, because of his facial beauty and willowy figure, and it was there that he first learned to speak English.
I had several conversations with Chou En-lai in Nanking, always speaking through an interpreter. Once, after several hours of laborious questions and answers, I said: “Will you ask the General if he came through Moscow on his return to China from Europe?” At this, Chou threw back his head and laughed heartily. “Heck no,” he said in plain American, “I couldn’t speak any Russian then!” I should have realized that nearly all Chinese pretend they understand no English, hoping they may catch you off guard.
Chou’s grandfather was a high official in the Manchu Dynasty, his father a school teacher, and his mother an unusually well-read woman. Reared as an intellectual, if not moneyed, aristocrat, he early rebelled against the corruption of Chinese politicians. He went to France in 1920, and in Paris two years later founded the Chinese Youth Group, a branch of the Chinese Communist Party. Returning to China, he became a secret organizer of workers in Shanghai and Nanking, successfully engineering two revolts. Because of his ruthlessness he was called “Executioner,” a title that certainly belies his suave appearance.
The Nationalists always considered Chou one of their cleverest foes, and they are said to have offered $80,000 for him once, dead or alive. During the war he never actually soldiered, although he “assumed” the title of “General.” He did help to organize and served for a time with the Chinese Red Army in several minor operations in the capacity of Chief Political Commissar. With a magnificent flair for political education and propaganda, he won his present outstanding position as a member of the Politburo, which rules the Red-blighted areas wherever they may be. He learned much from Michael Borodin, Russian-born Communist, and also from Chiang Kai-shek’s one-time Russian advisor, Gallen, who later, as General Bleucher, commanded the Russian Far Eastern Army.
Chou is not afraid of work. Toiling late at night, he writes articles for the press and prepares lengthy speeches for the radio. He has been able to convert many U. S. State Department officials to the view that in helping Chiang, we were backing the wrong horse and should, instead, have put our money on the Red. From Earl Browder, to whom he wrote in 1937, we learn this: “Comrade, do you still remember the Chinese comrades who worked with you in China ten years ago?”—in 1927!
Chou is a true turncoat and has served, back and forth, both the Nationalists and the Communist Governments. One job he held during the war was liaison officer between the Nationalists and Communists in their so-called drive against the Japanese. This was a smoke screen, for when Chiang ordered Communist troops to fight the Japanese north of the Yangtse River, Chou violently objected. He knew that he and the Communists would either starve or be annihilated by the Japanese. Thereafter, the Communists pulled their anti-Japanese punches, or did not punch at all.
As “Property Man” for the great drama being staged by the Communists, Chou always listens to the prompting voice from the wings, the voice of his wife. Her’s is a strong, clear voice, the one that converted him to Communism, and the one that reminds him constantly of his duties. He met her during one of the lowest ebbs of his erratic life, in jail. Mrs. Chou is one of the hardest working and most enthusiastic and important members of the Party. Not especially pretty, she is attractive in a quiet way. In spite of illness (she is said to have tuberculosis), she remains politically active and influential. Like her husband, she once held a post in Chiang’s Government, as Finance Chairman of his New Life Movement.
More favored by Moscow than either Mao, Chu or Chou, is Li Li San, whose name is pronounced “Lee Lee Sahn.” Long ago, he and Mao quarrelled bitterly, and Li Li San fled to Russia, there to become close to the heart of the Comintern. Fifteen years later, this lean and hungry-looking agitator returned as Moscow’s appointee to the head political role in Manchuria. A rumored cause of the rift with Mao was that Li Li was caught heading an anti-Mao secret society, with Russian connivance. The angle of their Communism differs. Mao, a peasant, supports the farmers, while Li Li San, with his Moscow training, favors the city workers.
Probably few men in history have been reported dying or dead over a long period of their lives more often than has Li Li San. Nicknamed the “Tito of Red China,” when Tito was still dominated by Moscow, his career followed closely that of his namesake. After quarreling with Mao, he vanished and was presumed dead by his friends. Some years later he reappeared, with full Russian support, as a power to be reckoned with in the Far Eastern picture.
While in Moscow, Li Li had married a Russian woman and, in the Far Eastern University had trained Communist agents and sent them back to their homelands as agitators. He maintained a close liaison with the Kremlin. As Russia’s war with Japan was nearing an end, Stalin, ignoring Li Li’s petty dispute with Mao, sent him, with Marshal Malinovsky’s Russian Army of Mongols, into Manchuria six days before the Japanese surrendered. His job was to take over this “Prize of Asia,” rich in everything the Russians or anybody else needed and which no contester for world power could do without.
Another important military personality in the Communist picture is Lin Piao, pronounced “Lin Bow.” A great guerilla fighter and a natural leader of men, he is a tactical genius who served on Chiang Kai-shek’s staff and rose to become President of the Military Academy. A little later he left the Nationalists and threw in his lot with the Red Army. At twenty-eight he was given command of the First Red Army Corps, a unit that is said never to have been defeated. Lin Piao was to the Chinese Communist Army what Zukov was to the Russian Army, Chief of Staff and a military wizard.
Today, Lin, in his forties, has never gotten over his youthful tendency to blush. His agreeable face has slanting eyes that trail off into little mice tail wrinkles. He is a sloppy dresser and is over-casual in appearance. He has a good singing voice and he and Mao, who also fancies himself a singer, often join in duets. After a hearty meal when all are feeling warm and rosy from the choicest wine of the Communist vineyards, Lin likes to tune up his vocal chords and suggest that they sing Mao’s special song, “The Hot Red Pepper.”
This is the story of the Red Pepper who sneers at all the lazy vegetables for living such a spineless existence, especially the fat and contented cabbage. Finally, the Red Pepper, by means of his exceptional personality and cunning ways, incites them all to revolution.
The theory, Mao says, is that pepper is loved by all revolutionaries from Spain and Mexico to Russia. Lin, like many of the Communist leaders, has never been out of China, but because of his excellent articles in military magazines his name is familiar in both Japan and Russia.
The Hierarchy of the Chinese Communist Party has attached to it a liaison officer originally from the Third Internationale, a Syrian-American named Dr. Hatem. His Chinese name is Ma Hia-teh, pronounced “Ma-High-Da,” and he is always referred to by the Chinese as “Dr. Ma.” Fiftyish and fat, he is typically American in appearance, resembling more than anything else a successful businessman. Born in Buffalo, New York, he was educated in North Carolina and in Switzerland where he is said to have received a degree in medicine. He has been with the Communists now for about twelve years. So completely submerged is he in Communist ideologies, he insists he has forgotten his American name.
Proud of having an ardent foreign convert, the Communists still do not trust Dr. Hatem politically, although they use him wherever they need information from Americans. Because of his ingratiating manner, he is a natural to make lonely Americans open up their hearts to an old friend from home. He enjoys strutting about among his Chinese and foreign friends and bragging about his connections. His chief value to the Communists, however, is his ability to evaluate American newscasts. In the summer of 1946, he was seen almost daily at the fashionable Peking Hotel, immaculately groomed and wearing well-tailored clothes. There he spent hours eating and drinking with the foreign diplomats and correspondents.
Married to a Chinese movie actress—they all lean in that direction—he has a son about three or four years old. Mrs. Ma is a graduate of the Lu Hsun Art Academy, formerly the Catholic Church in Yenan, and is accustomed to wearing silk and using cosmetics. She finds it quite a bore to obey the Communist dictates of “cotton clothes and no make-up,” and on several occasions she has been called down for making a “spectacle” of herself. Being a Russian-language student and much younger than her husband, she was constantly in the company of a young Russian doctor who was part of the Soviet liaison group in Yenan.
Dr. Ma is a most enthusiastic Communist worker, who has remarked many times that he would gladly “kill for the Cause.” He has been known to add with emphasis, “And I would just as soon kill Americans as anyone else!” He is said, despite his loose tongue, to stand well with Moscow because he is such a willing tool.
No panorama of Communist personalities can be complete without the name of Madame Sun Yat-sen, famous in Chinese history as the wife of the founder of the Revolution that overthrew the Manchu Dynasty. Madame Sun, sister of the celebrated Madame Chiang Kai-shek, and the slightly less illustrious Madame H. H. Kung, is known widely as “one of the famous Soong Sisters.” The middle one of the three—Eiling, Chingling and Meiling—Chingling is listed on the new governmental roster as Soong Chingling, perhaps to cause less embarrassment to her family. She is in charge of the so-called “independent liberals” in the Party.
Under her maiden name, this clever conniver has had a somewhat stormy career. Claiming that she shuns publicity, she has, nevertheless, managed to stay in the limelight a large part of her life. The daughter of Charlie Soong, a wealthy merchant who had been reared by a missionary and educated in America, she was one of six children and is said to have been her mother’s favorite. Chingling has been called a pretty child and a not-so-pretty child, so that one might infer that her beauty lies rather in her personality than in her face. As a young girl, she was on the “dreamy” side, rather shy but highly emotional. When she is deeply aroused over a person or a cause, she becomes enthusiastic to the point of fanaticism, a quality that has proved alarming and distressing to the other members of her family.
Educated in the United States, she adopted the American name of “Rosamond,” by which her classmates at Wesleyan College, in Macon, Georgia, called her affectionately. Her teachers said that she was “very studious, had high ideals and was extremely interested in moral and philosophical ideas.” No timid flower, she showed a fiery temper when provoked. Very proud of her country and interested in its affairs, she often said that she considered the Revolution of 1911 the “Greatest event of the Twentieth Century.”
“Rosamond’s” English was excellent, and she wrote numerous articles for the college paper, one of which read: “When China moves, she will move the world. The Revolution has established China in Liberty and Equality, those two inalienable rights of the individual....” A copy of this was sent to her father, who was so pleased with his daughter that he forwarded to her one of the new five barred flags of the Republic of China. On receiving it, Chingling shouted with joy, climbed up and pulled down the dragon banner from the wall of her bedroom, and stomped on it crying, “Down with the dragon! Up with the flag of the Republic!”
While still in college, Chingling began a hero worship of Dr. Sun. When she returned to China, she shocked everyone by announcing her determination to marry him—this, although he was married to a woman his own age who had borne him three sons, of whom Dr. Sun Fo undoubtedly is the best known. Subsequently she became his secretary and, with skill and determination, aided by her youth and beauty, she finally overcame all obstacles and, in 1915, became the second Madame Sun Yet-sen. Basking in all the excitement and publicity she so “abhorred,” she wrote to a classmate back at Wesleyan, “Being married to Dr. Sun is just like going to school all over again, only there are no examinations to take!”
The marriage lasted until Dr. Sun’s death, in 1925. They had the usual ups and downs, but she reported to her friends from time to time that “it never lacks excitement.” The Revolution inspired by her husband, Communistic in its original structure, shifted back and forth from reactionary to conservative to reactionary.
On the death of Dr. Sun, the reins of the revolution were put into the hands of Madame Sun’s brother-in-law, Chiang Kai-shek. Never in harmony, politically or emotionally, Chiang and Mme. Sun had had many violent disagreements. Finally, in 1927, two years after her husband’s death, she confirmed her leftist sympathy by going to Moscow. There she remained for three years, studying Communist doctrines in the World Anti-Imperialist League. In self-justification, she claimed that the Nationalist Government had distorted the meaning of her husband’s original ideas, that they had always been similar to those of the Russian Revolution.
Again, in 1930, Mme. Sun, the former Soong Chingling, burst into print in an angry tirade against the Generalissimo. On January 22nd of that year, she sent a cable to the Anti-Imperialist League in Berlin, saying: “Reactionary forces in the Nationalist Government are combining with the Imperialists in brutal repression against the Chinese masses. They have degenerated into Imperialist tools and attempted to provoke war with Russia.”
Feeling ever closer to the Communists and farther, ideologically, from the rest of her family, she chose the anniversary of the eightieth birthday of her predecessor, the first Madame Sun, to take her stand, in 1946, in favor of the Chinese Communists and the Soviets. Her stinging speech was headlined in every Chinese newspaper and many abroad. There could be no doubt now that she was a full-fledged militant Communist, willing to use the powers of her brilliant mind and persuasive personality to the utmost.
Today, nearing sixty, she is third Vice-Chairman of the Communist Party, and her influence is, perhaps, the strongest and most forceful of any women member, so global are her contacts. Soon after her “elevation” to the third Vice-Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party early in 1950, she said: “China will continue to follow the policy of leaning to one side, to the side led by the great Soviet Union under the leadership of the mighty Stalin: the side of peace and construction.”
A current rumor, despite denials, is to the effect that Mme. Sun may be having another change of ideas and ideals and is, therefore, not in the good graces of General Mao who, like his mentors, Stalin and Genghis Khan, hates a turncoat.
In appearance, Madame Sun is not unattractive. She dresses simply, preferring plain silks without the elaborate trimmings so dearly loved by her sisters. She wears her neat, black hair parted in the center and drawn back smoothly from her face to form a large, soft “bun” at the nape of her neck. She speaks in a quiet voice and says exactly what she thinks.
At the Shanghai Opera one evening in 1946, Madame Wei Tao-ming, wife of the then Chinese Ambassador to the United States, was seated just behind her. Madame Sun, who was flanked on either side by well-known Chinese and American Communists, turned around at each intermission to chat with Madame Wei, who had been one of the youngest and most devout revolutionaries. I learned the subject of the conversations that evening when we returned to Madame Wei’s temporary home in the Avenue Lafayette. Livid with rage, Madame Wei said to me:
“Do you know what she kept saying to me, over and over again?”
Naturally I could not have known and said as much. Madame Wei continued:
“She berated me bitterly for not being nicer to the Communists! Me, of all people, who was one of the first and hardest working fighters in her husband’s own revolution! She said, ‘You’re going to regret it one day, if you do not change your attitude. They are in the driver’s seat, and they are going to stay there’!”
I had never seen Madame Wei so beside herself with anger. This was just four years before it was generally acknowledged that the Communists were in full authority, and the period of tenure is a matter of conjecture. Madame Sun, apparently, had seen the handwriting on the wall and had interpreted it correctly.
While there are many other Communist personalities aside from those discussed in the foregoing pages, to mention them all would do no service to this story. Those included are the ones whose names appear most frequently in the press and on the radio. To know them and their ways is to know the spirit and the methods of the unholy movement to which they subscribe.