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It was interesting to read the article "Remembering Lin Biao" from Workers World a couple of weeks ago. The well-written piece was very informative and included some important background information on an individual who has been all but forgotten by much of the West since his death in 1971. "Remembering Lin Biao" was written on the occasion of the centennial of Lin's birth and accurately praises Lin as "an outstanding military leader in China's anti-feudal, anti-imperialist revolutionary war..." To this day, revolutionary groups including elements from India's Naxalites and Nepal's Maoist insurgency still look to Lin as an important strategist. One of Lin's more important contributions to revolutionary theory includes his 1965 piece "Long Live the Victory of the People's War!" which elucidated the doctrines of People's War and set a course for revolution in developing countries around the world. In addition to his work as a military strategist, Lin was capable of speaking on complex components of Marxism-Leninism, as in the matter of his discussion of the theory of the productive forces from his "Secret Address to the Eleventh Plenary Session" in 1966. By the late 1960s, Lin was honing his skills as an up-and-coming political leader, preparing for the role of Mao Zedong's successor.
It is important, however, to note that Lin's legacy is not one-sided by any means. It is relatively well-known that Lin's political differences with Mao and with Zhou Enlai led him to flee the People's Republic of China in relative disgrace in late 1971. In the course of Lin's hasty exit, he met an untimely end which remains shrouded in mystery to this day. But from an historical perspective, Lin's role as the so-called "architect" of China's Great Proletarian Revolution is much more significant than the circumstances of his controversial death. The Cultural Revolution is now widely regarded by much of the world's revolutionary left as a campaign fraught with errors and excess. Indeed, the greatest push to Lin's ascent to power came in the early years of the Cultural Revolution after the purge of Lin's political rival Liu Shaoqi. In one of the more unfortunate chapters of the Cultural Revolution, Liu Shaoqi was ultimately killed after a lengthy period of imprisonment, abuse and medical neglect. In a manner of speaking, the legacy of Lin Biao is – at the very least – tainted with the blood of Liu Shaoqi and many others who suffered needlessly during the Cultural Revolution. Moreover, it was Lin's political miscalculations which ultimately paved the way for the political dominance of China's "Gang of Four," led by Jiang Qing. The darker, latter portion of the Cultural Revolution saw Jiang complete the posthumous sacking of Lin with an extensive and pervasive campaign of public criticism. The downward spiral which Lin created through his own mistakes was to ultimately swallow him like some kind of Orwellian memory hole. Lin Biao's image and name were quickly erased from China's collective memory following his demise. Chinese citizens went so far as to publicly tear out pages from their Little Red Books which featured introductory notes by Lin, including Lin's legendary directive to China's masses:
"Study Chairman Mao's writings, follow his teachings, and act according to his instructions."
The Workers World piece notes that Lin's portrait was returned to public display in the Beijing Military Museum in July 2007, amounting to a nunc pro tunc recognition of Lin as a "hero" of the People's Republic. However, the move by itself is not necessarily an indication of a full-scale effort to rehabilitate Lin. His 100th birthday ultimately came and went with no fanfare or formal recognition by the PRC. Lin's legacy – with so many considerations regarding his political character and his relationship with Mao at at the time of his demise – is an issue which all sides of the controversy, from anti-revisionists to post-coup market socialists, will have difficulty reconciling for some years to come.
Last week, I was doing a bit of tidying in my home library and I came across a big stack of copies of The Economist from late 2001 and 2002. I had a subscription to the magazine back then and read the issues with some interest, holding on to them as I thought they might be useful at some point in the future. However, since they had done little more but gathered dust for the past 5 years, it seemed like a good time to get rid of them. But before I pitched them all, I did recall that there was one article in the batch of 50+ issues that was worth keeping. The article was an October 27, 2001 obituary for Chang Hsueh-liang (Pinyin spelling: Zhang Xueliang), who was – in my opinion – one of the most intriguing figures in China's modern history. I clipped the obituary before walking the pile of old magazines to the recycling bin.
It was Chang Hsueh-liang, known to many as "Young Marshal," who temporarily quelled the Chinese Civil War of the 1930's by unifying the reactionary Kuomintang (KMT) with China's communist forces against the invaders from Imperial Japan. His intervention occurred at a point in time in which such a united front seemed impossible. As the story goes, following some discussion with Chou En lai (Zhou Enlai), Chang engineered the arrest of KMT Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and compelled him (ostensibly under a bit of duress) to join forces with the Red Army in an effort to smash the invaders from Imperial Japan. This incident is known as the Xi'an incident (or Sian incident) to many. According to the piece in The Economist, Chang opened his meeting with Chiang Kai-shek with the simple words "Please don't be angry...I wish to lay my views before your excellency." Upon agreeing to Chang's terms, Chiang Kai-shek was released, returning to the helm of the KMT. Chiang Kai-shek was surprisingly true to his word upon regaining his freedom and the united front of the Nationalist KMT and Red Army did indeed win the day in the struggle against the Japanese invaders. It is widely believed that the Chinese forces could not have repelled the Japanese on their own without the intervention of Chang Hsueh-liang.
Toasting victory against Japan; Mao and Chiang Kai-shek, 1945
Interestingly enough, it is Chang's upbringing as the son of a prominent Manchurian warlord that made something of a unique ally for the communist forces. Chang received a private education and military training from the KMT in his early life. He had something of an appreciation for westerners and a penchant for western luxuries and it was these qualities which made him an unlikely "communist." Nevertheless, Chang effectively saw past differences of philosophy and theory in his efforts to combat one the greatest threat the devloping nation had ever faced.
Unfortunately, Chang ultimately spent most of his life in prison for his role in the arrest of Chiang Kai-shek. He voluntarily appeared before a KMT court following Chiang's release and was placed on house arrest. When the KMT fell to the communists in 1949, Chang Hsueh-liang was taken to Taiwan by the KMT and he remained imprisoned there through Chiang Kai-shek's death in 1975 and through Taiwan's "democratic" reforms in the late 1980's. It was not until 1990 that he was finally freed. In 1995, he moved to Hawaii where he spent the remainder of his life.
Chang Hsueh-liang, the "Young Marshal," is remembered to this day as a hero of the Chinese people. His bold pragmatism is an enduring example to those who oppose fascism and imperialism around the globe. Further reading A Statement on Chiang Kai-shek's Statementby Mao Zedong (December 28, 1936) Long Live the Victory of People's War!by Lin Biao (September 1965)
Several
years ago, I was facing a decent commute to and from work and I went
through quite a few books on tape during that period. One of the larger
(and more interesting) audiobooks that I "read" during this time was The Private Life of Chairman Mao
by Dr. Li Zhisui. Over the course of the few weeks that it took for me
to get through all of the tapes (there must have been 30 or more
cassettes), I became quite immersed in Dr. Li's scandalous
memoir. Sometimes I would continue listening to the text after
arriving home, listening to segments while I was mowing the lawn and
working outside (I still think about the "mango worship" part of the
book when I am mowing my front yard.) But most of the time that I spent
listening to the book was during my evening commute, which was usually
pretty close to dinner time. The fact that I listened to so much of
this book on an empty stomach left a lasting impression on me because
in a few parts of the book, Li chronicles his dinnertime meetings with
Mao, describing Mao’s meals in some detail. The one part that always
stood out in my mind was this exchange between Mao and Li:
Dinner
was served. Again, the food was swimming in oil. Mao was sixty-two
years old and weighed over 190 pounds-a bit heavy even for his
five-foot-ten-inch frame. Later, I would often criticize his diet and
caution him against eating so much fat, but he never listened. He had
been in the habit of eating fatty pork since boyhood, and he would do
so until the end of his life.
He offered me a dish of bitter melon cooked with hot peppers. "How does it taste?" he wondered.
I had never eaten such a dish. "It's hot and bitter," I replied.
Mao
roared with laughter. "Everyone should taste some bitterness in his
life," he said, "especially a person like you. You studied medicine and
became a doctor. You have probably never eaten bitterness."
Chi ku,
"to eat bitterness," can mean, literally, to eat something bitter or to
suffer hardship, and I was not certain whether Mao was referring to the
food we were eating or playing on words to let me know he regarded me
as soft, a product of an easy upper-class life. "I have never eaten
this kind of bitter melon before," I replied, sticking to the question
of food, "but it's tasty."
"Well, good," he replied. "You must be prepared to taste some bitterness ."
— from The Private Life of Chairman Mao, pages 81-82.
Now, most folks probably wouldn’t
find this description of spicy, bitter food "swimming in oil" to
be terribly appetizing but during those long drives home, my empty
stomach and love of spicy Chinese food helped to convince me that this
was a winning combination. I’m not really a fan of pork dishes when it
comes to Chinese food (although I did have a good rendition of spicy
pork in black bean sauce earlier this week) and melon doesn’t really
sound that good to me in a hot dish. So I tried some substitutions and
made my own stir-fry mix that I ended up eating at least twice a week
for a decent stretch back in 2000 or 2001. Basically, I would cook
about a pound of stir-fry beef in a generous amount of oil (I used oil
liberally so that it wouldn’t reduce completely and I would still
have some left in the dish when it was ready to be served) with mixed
vegetables. I would usually use things that would stay crunchy like
onions, celery, carrots and bell peppers. I would then add lots of hot
chili peppers and sliced lemons—peel and all. Once this is all cooked
up, the lemon pulp is pretty soft, so it separates pretty easily from
the peel. But the bitterness of the pulp, peel and juices mixes well
with the spicy peppers. When you’re eating the dish, it’s best to get a
fork full that includes some lemon peel, pepper and beef. If you can
kind of crush the lemon over the pepper and beef, it’s especially
tasty, even if you choose not to eat the peel. The other day, I got a
taste for this dish and I made it for the first time in well over a
year. It was just as tasty as I remembered. Now, I had been under the
impression that I was the only person at our house that was really
crazy about this dish, but then Thomai made a fresh batch for dinner
just last night. I am not sure how fattening or unhealthy this stuff
is, but at least I’m eating my share of bitterness!
Almost 80 years after it was written, Lu Xun’s work, “In Memory of Miss Liu Hezhen” still stands as an important symbol of the ongoing struggle between the Chinese people and their rulers.
HONG
KONG, Dec. 16 -- At first glance, it looked like a spirited online
discussion about an essay written nearly 80 years ago by modern China's
greatest author. But then again, the exchange on a popular Chinese
bulletin board site seemed a bit emotional, given the subject.
"In
Memory of Ms. Liu Hezhen," which Lu Xun wrote in 1926 after warlord
forces opened fire on protesters in Beijing and killed one of his
students, is a classic of Chinese literature. But why did thousands of
people read or post notes in an online forum devoted to the essay last
week?
A
close look suggests an answer that China's governing Communist Party
might find disturbing: They were using Lu's essay about the 1926
massacre as a pretext to discuss a more current and politically
sensitive event -- the Dec. 6 police shooting of rural protesters in
the southern town of Dongzhou in Guangdong province.
In
the 10 days since the shooting, which witnesses said resulted in the
deaths of as many as 20 farmers protesting land seizures, the Chinese
government has tried to maintain a blackout on the news, barring almost
all newspapers and broadcasters from reporting it and ordering major
Internet sites to censor any mention of it. Most Chinese still know
nothing of the incident.
[...]
At
Kdnet, a large bulletin board site based in Hainan province, users
flooded forums with more than 30,000 messages of protest and sorrow in
the days after the shooting. The site deleted almost all of the
messages Sunday night, but a top editor felt compelled to post a note
pleading for forgiveness.
[...]
Even
after the purge of messages on Kdnet, people continued expressing their
views on the site by disguising their comments. More than 140 notes and
poems were posted in one forum on Lu Xun's essay, for example, almost
all of them without any explicit reference to the shooting in Dongzhou,
a coastal town about 125 miles northeast of Hong Kong. ( full article)
