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.