Lin was also told: “say we struggle for political, economic and military democracy … Do not put forward the slogan of class struggle.”
BY EARLY 1947, when the Nationalists had failed to crack Mao’s vast base on the borders with Russia, Chiang knew he was in trouble. Many in the country knew, too. He badly needed a victory to boost morale. He came up with the idea of taking Yenan, Mao’s capital. Its capture would have “the greatest significance,” he wrote in his diary on 1 March. On that day, he gave this vital task to a man who enjoyed his unconditional trust. General Hu Tsung-nan was the guardian of his younger (and adopted) son, Weigo, and had stood proxy for Chiang at Weigo’s wedding.
Our investigations have convinced us that General Hu was a Red “sleeper.” He started his career at the Nationalists’ Whampoa Military Academy in 1924, which Moscow founded, bankrolled and staffed, at a time when Sun Yat-sen was trying to use Russian sponsorship to conquer China. Chiang Kai-shek was the head of the Academy, and Chou En-lai the director of its pivotal Political Department. Many secret Communist agents were planted there, and went on to become officers in the Nationalist military.
At Whampoa, Hu Tsung-nan was strongly suspected of being a secret Communist, but he had well-placed friends who vouched for him. He then struck up a friendship with Chiang’s intelligence chief, Tai Li, who match-made his marriage. The two became so close that Tai ordered his subordinates in Hu’s units to send copies of all their intelligence reports to Hu as well as to himself, the result of which was that none of them dared report any suspicions about Hu.
In 1947, Chiang assigned him to take Yenan. On the day he received the assignment, the message appeared on Mao’s desk. Mao ordered the city to be evacuated, and the local population was herded out into the hills by armed militia. The bulk of the Red administration went to the Red base east of the Yellow River.
On 18–19 March, Hu took Yenan, which the Nationalists trumpeted as a great victory. But all they acquired was a ghost town. On Mao’s orders, the evacuees and the locals had buried not only their food, but all their household goods, down to cooking utensils.
Mao himself had left only hours before, in an ostentatiously leisurely, even nonchalant manner, pausing awhile to gaze at the pagoda which was the symbol of Yenan, while his driver revved the engine of his American jeep (donated by the departing US mission) as a reminder that the Nationalists were nearby. Mao staged this performance to build confidence in people around him. A short time before, Mao’s top brass had been awe-struck when he sent most of the troops in Yenan away, keeping only 20,000 men with him for the whole of the region — less than one-tenth of the force Hu had at his disposal, which totaled some 250,000.
Mao set off north, riding with Chou En-lai, now his chief of staff, and Mme Mao. On the way, he and Chou chatted and laughed, as if, in the words of a bodyguard, “this was an outing.”
About 30 km northeast of Yenan, at a place called Qinghuabian, Mao asked the driver to slow down in a deep valley where the loess slopes had been scoured by rain and floods into deep canyons. His bodyguards were puzzled to see him pointing and nodding thoughtfully with Chou. It was only a week later that the explanation dawned on them, when Hu’s 31st Brigade HQ and 2,900 troops walked into an ambush at this exact spot on 25 March.
The brigade had been given the order to follow this road by Hu only the day before. But Mao’s men had started taking up positions days earlier — and Mao had committed his entire force of 20,000 to this one operation. Before the first shots were fired, the brigade spotted the ambushers, and radioed the information to Hu. General Hu told his force to press on, threatening court martial if they did not, and the 2,900 men were wiped out. Meanwhile, Hu had dispatched the bulk of his army in another direction, due west, making it impossible for it to come to the rescue of the trapped brigade.
Three weeks later, on 14 April, Mao scored another victory in exactly the same fashion at a place called Yangmahe, when one of Hu’s units marched straight into an ambush. Five thousand men were killed, wounded or captured. Just as before, Hu had moved his main force away, so the doomed brigade was cut off from it by impassable ravines.
On 4 May came a third pushover, when the Communists took Hu’s main forward depot, Panlong. Once again, Hu had sent his main force away on a wild goose chase, leaving the depot lightly defended. Both the defenders and the main force had reported Red units “lying in hiding” near the depot, but Hu said they were crying wolf. When the main force reached its target, it found an empty city.
