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.