Mao Zedong’s most famous aphorism could well be, “Revolution is not a dinner party.” But perhaps he should have said, “Revolution is a dinner party where the main course is human flesh.” Here’s one gripping episode from Frank Dikötter’s The Tragedy of Liberation.
In April 1948, the communists advanced towards Changchun itself. Led by Lin Biao, a gaunt man who had trained at the Whampoa Military Academy, they laid siege to the city. Lin was considered one of the best battlefield commanders and a brilliant strategist. He was also ruthless. When he realised that Zheng Dongguo, the defending commander in Changchun, would not capitulate, he ordered the city to be starved into surrender. On 30 May 1948 came his command: ‘Turn Changchun into a city of death.’
Inside Changchun were some 500,000 civilians, many of them refugees who had fled the communist advance and were trapped in their journey south to Beijing after the railway lines had been cut. A hundred thousand nationalist troops were also garrisoned inside the city. Curfew was imposed almost immediately, keeping people indoors from eight at night to five in the morning. All able-bodied men were made to dig trenches. Nobody was allowed to leave. People who refused to be searched by sentries were liable to be shot on the spot. Yet an air of goodwill still prevailed in the first weeks of the siege, as emergency supplies were dropped by air. Some of the well-to-do even established a Changchun Mobilisation Committee, supplying sweets and cigarettes, comforting the wounded and setting up tea stalls for the men.
But soon the situation deteriorated. Changchun became an isolated island, beleaguered by 200,000 communist troops who dug tunnel defences and cut off the underground water supply to the city. Two dozen anti-aircraft guns and heavy artillery bombarded the city all day long, concentrating their fire on government buildings. The nationalists built three defensive lines of pillboxes around Changchun. Between the nationalists and the communists lay a vast no man’s land soon taken over by bandits.
On 12 June 1948 Chiang Kai-shek cabled an order reversing the ban on people leaving the city. Even without enemy fire, his planes could not possibly parachute in enough supplies to meet the needs of an entire city. But the anti-aircraft artillery of the communists forced them to fly at an altitude of 3,000 metres. Many of the airdrops landed outside the area controlled by the nationalists. In order to prevent a famine, the nationalists encouraged the populace to head for the countryside. Once they had left they were not allowed back, as they could not be fed…
Few ever made it past the communist lines. Lin Biao had placed a sentry every 50 metres along barbed wire and trenches 4 metres deep. Every exit was blocked. He reported back to Mao: ‘We don’t allow the refugees to leave and exhort them to turn back. This method was very effective in the beginning, but later the famine got worse, and starving civilians would leave the city in droves at all times of day and night, and after we turned them down they started gathering in the area between our troops and the enemy.’
What was the point of this cruelty? Victory:
By the end of June, some 30,000 people were caught in the area between the communists, who would not allow them to pass, and the nationalists, who refused to let them back in the city. Hundreds died every day. Two months later, more than 150,000 civilians were pressed inside the death zone, reduced to eating grass and leaves, doomed to slow starvation.
[…]
Soldiers absconded throughout the siege. Unlike the civilians who were driven back, they were welcomed by the communists and promised good food and lenient treatment.
And victory was indeed achieved:
Hailed in China’s history books as a decisive victory in the battle of Manchuria, the fall of Changchun came at huge cost, as an estimated 160,000 civilians were starved to death inside the area besieged by the communists. ‘Changchun was like Hiroshima,’ wrote Zhang Zhenglong, a lieutenant in the People’s Liberation Army who documented the siege. ‘The casualties were about the same. Hiroshima took nine seconds; Changchun took five months.’
Victory, however, was the basis for decades of tyranny and tragedy. Why? Because the Maoists, devoted followers of Lenin, only practiced “By any means necessary” when trying to gain and hold power. Otherwise, their motto was, “Whatever strikes our fancy.”
READER COMMENTS
Phil H
Oct 9 2019 at 11:56am
We just went through the grim spectacle of the 70th anniversary of the founding of the PRC. Fortunately the vast majority of the propaganda that gets thrown about is about the latter half of PRC history, post-Deng: Life getting better for people. Still, it’s uncomfortable balancing the need to educate my children about the truth against the need for them to be able to fit in.
Mark Z
Oct 9 2019 at 2:50pm
That seems like a precarious position, and I wonder how people will deal with it going forward, not just in China but Russia too. Neither went through an introspective reckoning with history and national identity the way Germany had to, or to a lesser extent Western European countries have. Do people argue as much much about the significance of the darker side of history for national identity in China? In Russia the common attitude often just seems like outright denialism.
Phil H
Oct 9 2019 at 8:08pm
I don’t think there’s much of a question to be asked. How will China deal with its dark history? Exactly the same way America dealt with its dark history; exactly the same way Britain dealt with its dark history. China will deny until time has disinfected the wounds sufficiently.
Eric Mack
Oct 9 2019 at 12:14pm
This is eerily like the horror at the German siege of Leningrad during WWII. The besieged garrison, as is normally the case, wants civilians to leave so the troops don’t have to share food with them or simply have to refuse to share the food. The besiegers, as usually, want the civilians to remain a burden on the besieged garrison. As I recall — according to Michael Walzer’s account in Just and Unjust Wars — the German commander ordered that civilians attempting to flee from Leningrad be shot. As I recall, after the war the German commander was tried for and convicted of war crimes.
John
Oct 9 2019 at 12:38pm
Is any of this unique to communists? Not to defend Mao I think you could find examples of armies of every ideology doing things like this in times of war. In fact the first thing I thought of was the siege of Gallic Alesia by Julius Caesar.
Quoting Wikipedia:
…same strategy, of course.
I would consider the peacetime crimes of Mao to be much more particular to Marxists.
Warren Platts
Oct 9 2019 at 3:50pm
Excellent article, which raises the question as to why we Westerners are still supporting General Secretary Xi’s regime, given that he clearly has no intention of ever reforming.
Thaomas
Oct 9 2019 at 7:03pm
Because a “trade war,” with who knows what objective, is still fairly popular with the segment of the electorate that supported President Trump and useful to Secretary Xi.
Fred_in_PA
Oct 10 2019 at 10:41pm
Huh?
Are you arguing that the trade war is somehow beneficial to Xi? And that Trump’s supporters are in favor of that?
I understand an intense dislike of Trump and his supporters, but this is a stretch.
P Burgos
Oct 9 2019 at 9:19pm
What would a Chinese leader who wanted to reform the country do, taking into consideration that they have to answer to the CCP and can be removed from office if they anger the central committee? I think that you are overestimating Xi’s, or any Chinese leader’s scope for action. That said, the scale of internment in Xinjiang (vs. that in Tibet) does seem to suggest that Xi isn’t interested in reforming China in a politically more “liberal” direction.
Mark
Oct 10 2019 at 9:31am
This is unfortunately a common military tactic going back to at least Julius Caesar. The best solution to avoiding these sorts of tragedies is to avoid war generally, which China has done for the last 40 years following its economic reform.
Overall, Mao’s record is not as bleak as often portrayed. From 1950 to 1980, China’s life expectancy increased by 25 years, and its population doubled, whereas its population has previously experienced very little growth from 1850 to 1950 due to constant war and famine. Of course, there were many huge mistakes such as the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution (although, it was really the reaction against the Cultural Revolution that did the most damage, resulting in closing of the universities and sending the students to peasant villages to tamp down on ostudent-led fervor). And I’m not saying Mao was a good leader, and of course a different leader could have done better. But by objective measures, Mao was an improvement over what came before him and China was in better shape in 1979 than 1949. I would not put Mao in the same category as a Hitler, who definitely left Europe worse than he found it.
Mark Z
Oct 11 2019 at 1:10am
Your intervals are conveniently picked for Mao. Life expectancy in China decreased between the start of Mao’s regime and 1960, which is a phenomenal failure for a country in the mid 20th century. Life expectancy shot up after 1960 then decelerated to levels comparable to other developing countries like India by the 70s. The boost was China recovering from the cessation of Mao’s horrendous policies, in other words. And why is population growth a measure of a leader’s quality? Would you say Sub-Saharan Africa has the best leaders in the world? And the mere fact that growth happens over time, especially in developing countries, almost no matter how bad a leader is, a country being better off when one leaves office as an indicator of quality would lead us to conclude most modern dictators were actually alright leaders. By these measures, if Hitler had won the war and lived another 20 years you’d have to concede he left the world better than he found it. Does that sound right?
And I don’t see how one can seriously argue that the Kuomintang was worse than Mao. They were bad, but that bad? No way. I’s say Mao absolutely deserves to be grouped with the likes Hitler and Stalin and the others. His capacity survive the fallout from his own worst policies long enough to still be on the thrown when GDP supersedes its starting point isn’t much to brag about.
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