[courtesy: Military Affairs,
Autumn 1958, vol.22, no.3, pp.139-145]
That Mao Tse Tung is a military
genius becomes apparent to one who studies with objectivity his rise to
power in China from 1927 to 1945. His military philosophy utilized available
forces to fit his power needs and achieve his strategic objectives. To study
and be familiar with this neatly tailored philosophy of Mao Tse Tung is
vital in this uncertain age of ours � not from an historical standpoint
alone but because of its obvious utility in the economy of space-age
warfare.
Two decades of Mao Tse Tung�s new
and revised �guerrilla warfare�1 laid the foundation of his power
and formed the pivot upon which China was to swing from the Nationalists to
the Reds. Ever keeping his eye on the grand strategy of total
victory, Mao left the details of tactics to his subordinates. No one man in
modern times, not even Lenin, can be credited with doing so much with so
little. This �scholar-soldier�2, this man of intelligence,
patience, strength, and faith in himself put his end-justifies-the-means
philosophy to work without scruples, morals, or ethics and strove steadily
for power. Without Mao Tse Tung there would have been no Communist conquest
of China.
Mao Tse Tung�s military
philosophy with its political and psychological aspects and implications has
its origins in his deep understanding of and appreciation for that ancient
Chinese military philosopher, Sun Wutzu. Clausewitz, indirectly through
Lenin, also influenced Mao�s military thinking. But practical experience
gained in several years� work both inside and outside the Kuomintang
(Nationalist) Party was crucial in the development of Mao�s philosophy and
his subsequent rise to power. For it was during these years that Mao Tse
Tung concluded rightly that whoever gained leadership over the masses,
restless and close to spontaneous eruption as they were, would hold the key
to power in China.
The Communist conquest of China
may be divided into three phases.
(1) Kremlin-directed strategy
(1921-1926)
(2) Mao-directed guerrilla warfare (1927-1945, the primary concern of
this paper), and
(3) Conventional-type warfare (1946-1949)
With the founding of the Chinese
Communist Party in 1921 the Kremlin attempted to gain control over China
through the political and military advisers and the financial help they (the
Russians) sent to the Kuomintang.3 Simultaneously Chinese
Communist Party members infiltrated the Kuomintang and gained key positions
in preparation for an attempt to take over through a coup d�etat.4
But Chiang Kai-shek was alerted
to the Red plan when he intercepted a cable from Stalin to the Chinese
Communist leaders. Chiang immediately took steps to eliminate the traitors
in his midst.
Birth of Mao�s Guerrilla
Warfare
Until Chiang Kai-shek�s purge Mao
Tse Tung had occupied dual high positions in the Propaganda and Peasants�
departments, openly in the Kuomintang but secretly, of course, in the
Chinese Communist Party. Now Mao stepped in as leader of the demoralized
Communists who had escaped to the Chingkanshan mountain stronghold on the
Hunan-Kiangsi border.
From this point on, the path of
the Chinese Communists diverged from that originally prescribed for them by
the Kremlin.5 Mao was convinced that an armed force was an
absolute necessity. And he set about to create it. Its nucleus, a band of
outlaws, was augmented by captured and converted Nationalist soldiers.
Eventually masses of peasants were incorporated to make it a full-bodied and
strong Chinese Red Army.
The early period in the
Chingkanshan mountains was the most critical test of Mao�s military
leadership. Had he failed here it is doubtful that the Communists could have
gone on to the victories they eventually achieved. Here it was that Mao
forged his primary weapon: the armed guerrilla force. His task was merely to
create this force out of seeming nothingness. He had a small group of men
with even fewer weapons. Some were armed only with spears or sticks and
stones. He received no tangible aid from Russia. And from the local populace
even less, for they looked on his men as bandits.6 The only thing
that held them together at this point was the price put on their heads by
the Nationalists � and of course Mao�s personal leadership and strong
conviction that the strategy and tactics of his evolving guerrilla warfare
would, over a protracted period of time, lead to victory for the Communists:
victory over an enemy rich in equipment and numbers but poor in
understanding the needs, hopes, aspirations of the masses who could and
would win in the end.
Let us take a look at Mao Tse
Tung�s basic principle of war: �To preserve oneself and to annihilate the
enemy.�7 What did Mao mean by �annihilate�? He meant �to disarm
him or �to deprive him of his power to resistance� and not to annihilate him
completely in a physical sense.�8 Thus Mao Tse Tung drew very
heavily upon his enemy for trained manpower and weapons, strengthening his
own forces while at the same time directly weakening his enemy. Mao combined
the old guerrilla-partisan warfare with modern concepts of psychological and
total war. �Since the guerrilla units�, Mao said, �generally grow out of
nothing and expand from a small force to a big one, they should not only
preserve themselves but also expand their forces.�9 This is the
core of Mao�s strategy of guerrilla warfare. Few military and political
leaders realize how extensively Mao�s umbrella of guerrilla warfare covers
his paramilitary and psychological operations. Indeed it would be less
misleading to call his guerrilla warfare parasitic cannibalism.
Mao states: �Every communist must
grasp the truth: Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.�10.
And in order to make the best use of the few guns he had, he advised the
study of military science, strategy and tactics which he said was the core
of everything.
With his enemy well supplied and
his own force practically empty-handed what could have been any simpler or
more direct than to take his enemy�s guns for his own? Mao�s first
significant military success came in February 192911 when his
guerrilla band in a frenzy of desperation surprised and defeated a division
of Nationalist troops, capturing men and taking over arms in the first
noteworthy example of his strategy of parasitic cannibalism.
Not only were badly needed
weapons and ammunition, food and clothing put to use but the captured
soldiers were absorbed into Mao�s rapidly armed force. Once consolidated and
reorganized, Mao boldly advanced on another nearby Nationalist division. His
men wore the uniforms and flew the banners and flags of the annihilated
division, and they completely surprised and engulfed this sister division in
the same fashion they had the first.12
Mao Tse Tung was now a power to
be reckoned with. The Nationalists stepped up their campaigns against him.
But Mao�s tactics of �ten against one� supported his overall strategy of
�one against ten�13 and all but the last were desolate failures.
Instead of reducing Mao�s strength, these campaigns served to increase it
and to feed his evergrowing Army. Instead of hitting his vital bases, the
Nationalists were misled into chasing him over the countryside.14
Mao said the Red Army �draws upon the enemy for almost all of its
supplies�Not only are our losses compensated but our troops are
strengthened.�15
But the Fifth Anti-Communist
Campaign the now desperate Nationalists planned and conducted so effectively
that the Chinese Communists were forced to abandon Kiangsi and on 16 October
1934 began their Long March, a strategic retreat into northwest China. With
this blow Mao Tse Tung�s armed force was reduced from the 100,000 rifles16
he had gained primarily from defeated Nationalist forces to the
comparatively few arms the survivors of the Fifth Campaign could carry with
them on the 6,000 mile year-long trek to the Shensi Province.
Guerrilla Warfare
Psychologically Waged
On their arrival in Yenan in 1935
Mao Tse Tung�s fighting forces were so weak that Chiang Kai-shek no longer
considered the Reds much of a threat.17 How disastrously he
underestimated his enemy! Red intelligence had discovered the Nationalist
vulnerabilities. Under cover of guerrilla warfare tactics, Mao put into
effect the basic law with which he was to constantly best his enemy: �Know
the enemy and know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles without
disaster.�18 He shifted from the use of the gun to the battle
field of psychological disintegration, attacking thus the former Manchurian
Army under the leadership of General Chang Hsuehliang (also known as the
Young Marshal).
Psychological disintegration was
not new to Mao Tse Tung. He had employed it successfully before on a small
scale in the encouragement of defections to his camp. For Mao Tse Tung did
not believe in the �purely military viewpoint.�19 Unlike the
Nationalist Army, the Red Army was trained in more than one way to fight.
Their missions in addition to �merely fighting�20 Mao insisted
would pay even greater dividends. The first of these was to arouse
the masses of people through agitation and propaganda on a person-to-person
basis, using violence if necessary. A second was to organize these
aroused masses. A third: to disintegrate the enemy, dissolve his
old loyalties, destory his organizations, and demoralize, confuse and
reduce him to general ineffectiveness. These three missions combined to
produce the psychological disintegration Mao sought.21
The Japanese attack on China
became the overt target for much of the Chinese Red propaganda. On the Long
March, Mao Tse Tung deceived the people along his route into thinking the
Red Army was on the march to fight the Japanese despite Nationalist
determination to keep them from it. Mao officially declared war on Japan in
1932.22 But his covert aim was always the disintegration of the
Nationalist forces.
The framework within which the
Red soldiers worked was always one of fear.23 Like Genghis
Khan, they made sure that their reputation preceded them. The uncertainty
and insecurity thus engendered in the people made them receptive to the
propaganda of the Red soldiers. Then the initially decent treatment caught
them by surprise and made them even more open to Red influence and
deception.
Organizing was not done
haphazardly. The Red plan called the complete mobilization of the populace,
utilizing local leaders but with top control always remaining in
Communist hands. Thus they could boast of total mass protracted
resistance.24 Not until they had firm control could they
afford to drop the mask.
Though military and police forces
were the primary targets in their attempts to disintegrate the enemy, any
vulnerability that advanced the power of Mao Tse Tung and weakened the enemy
was exploited. Nationalist armed forces were trained technically and
militarily but they were not prepared for a psychological-ideological
battle. And this was the battlefield Mao chose for his main effort.
Why should Mao fight costly
conventional military battles against an enemy who in numbers, training,
arms and logistics was superior to him? Who could inflict great losses on
him? Why, when he could by cheaper though slower means disintegrate the
enemy�s will to fight? This way he could not only win the battle but
take over trained and armed soldiers and, rather than destroy them, use them
against their former allies.
Chiang Kai-shek made a grave
error in assigning ex-Manchurian troops to the mission of containing the
Reds, a mission they considered insignificant in comparison with fighting
the Japanese who had forced them out of their homeland. It was not long
before Chinese Communists dressed in the uniform of Chang�s army were giving
the Manchurian instructions in guerrilla warfare techniques for use against
the Japanese.
At the top level the Chinese
Communists also had super-secret dealings with the Commander, General Chang,
again without Chiang Kai-shek�s full knowledge. The Communists convinced
Chang of their patriotism, saying they only wished Chiang Kai-shek would
stop his fight with them so they could join together under his leadership to
fight the Japanese. Mao�s �persuasive reasoning�25 with Chang
brought results: Chang kidnapped Chiang Kai-shek (when the latter flew up to
plan a final campaign against the Communists) and tried to convince him to
join the Reds in an Anti-Japanese United Front Alliance.
Initially meeting with failure,
Chang called in his Communist mentors to finish the job they had started
with the idea Chang had taken for his own. Chou En-lai, seemingly an angel
in disguise, won Chiang Kai-shek�s confidence by saving him from a people�s
court and securing his release. Thus, in the Sian Incident the Communists
won favor by appearing to rescue a person (in this case none other than
Chiang Kai-shek) from the very danger they had plotted against him in the
first place. The Communists had devised a new way to make something out
of nothing.
Mao Tse Tung used the haphazard
alliance of the Anti-Japanese United Front as an almost perfect cover for
his work of parasitic cannibalism of the Nationalist forces. Though Chiang
entered into the alliance in good faith, Mao�s duplicity had secured
legal sanction for the Communists. Now legally Mao could cover
his secret preparations for seizure of power from the Nationalists (with the
unwitting help of the Japanese).
The change of name designating
the Red Army as the Nationalist Eighth Route Army served but to deceive the
Nationalists. Though the uniform and insignia were changed, Mao still had
supreme command in fact, giving only lip service to Generalissimo Chiang
Kai-shek as commander-in-chief. But all of this gave to Mao Tse Tung a de
facto legal status in the eyes of the masses. He did not need a de
jure status to carry out his strategy of utilizing the enemy�s laws and
customs to advance his own power. So important was this legal sanction that
only a year after the initiation of the Anti-Japanese Alliance, Mao could
report that the Chinese Communist Party had stepped out of its narrow
confines and become a major party, national in scope.26
Mao Tse Tung�s secret
instructions to his top leaders now put into effect the following policy:
70% of the Chinese Communist effort was to be devoted to expansion, 20% to
dealing with the Kuomintang (i.e. the Nationalists), and a mere 10% would
take care of fighting the Japanese.27 The total strength of the
Eighth Route Army together with his New Fourth Army in 1937 was about 40,000
men. By 1945, when Japan surrendered, these armies had expanded to over
1,000,000 men.28
Mao�s principle of victory29
and his adherence to the advice of Sun Wu-tzu30 show him to be a
conservative, cautious man. The totality with which he studied his
enemy and learned about himself might be considered Mao Tse Tung�s hallmark
of genius. He then was careful to use this carefully garnered information to
counter the enemy�s efforts to gain intelligence and even to mislead and
confuse him.31 Intelligence and counter-intelligence were
missions assigned not just to Mao�s five major groups of trained spies32
but to all members of his armed force and to literally all people under Red
control. Much of the 70% of effort Mao assigned to expansion went in this
direction.
For Mao the 20% of his effort
allotted to the Nationalists was �lip service�. Mao was more than willing to
build up Chiang Kai-shek in order to mislead him into thinking the Reds had
really accepted him as their leader and commander-in-chief. The Communists
made many special concessions and compromises in order to hold together the
fiction of the Anti-Japanese United Front so long as it was expedient for
them to do so. For a time Mao was even able to draw funds from the
Nationalists. Money intended for the fight against the Japanese was used
instead to finance Communist subversive agent operations against the
Nationalists themselves.33 Materials and supplies were stockpiled
for use at a later date against the Nationalists who had provided them in
the first place. Chiang Kai-shek writes with feeling: �Communists�always
seek to make use of their enemy and in the meantiem take care not to be used
by him.�34
Mao was ever alert to new
movements, to join them and gain leadership over their people under the
pretext of helping them get what they wanted. Thus did Mao use the peasants.
So too the students. Mao�s �professional students�, on Nationalist-awarded
scholarships, subverted students at the universities and gained the
leadership Mao needed to win.35
As for the 10% of effort
consigned to fighting the Japanese, news releases put out by the Chinese
Communists would have one believe that they and they alone, with their
guerrilla warfare, were winning the war against Japan. For the Communists
took advantage of the situation to propagandize when it was not possible to
check the validity of their statements. In actuality, the Chinese Reds did
little fighting. They preferred to do what Mao accused others of doing: �Sit
on top of a mountain to watch the tigers fight.�36 Then, when
both sides were worn out they would come down to carry off the spoils.
An official United States
document sums up the Chinese Communists� guerrilla warfare against Japan:
�The art of playing two opponents against each other, subjecting them both
to spurious losses while building one�s own strength, was practised more
effectively by Chinese Communism than by any other country or group in the
Second World War.�37
Summation
Mao Tse Tung�s genius as a
military thinker lies in the fields of total and para-military
warfare, psychologically waged. His underdog strategy of one against ten
(one Communist against ten unorganized and unsuspecting foes) and his
tactics of ten against one (ten organized Communists overwhelming one
enemy) sum up his basic philosophy for gaining victory. Mao�s principle of
war, to �preserve oneself and annihilate the enemy,� indicates the
absoluteness with which he aims to conquer his enemies ultimately.
Alliances, neutrality, truces, and co-existence are but temporary
conditions permitting consolidation of gains and preparation for complete
victory over that segment of the enemy he has isolated and marked out for
annihilation. The philosophy behind this principle of Mao�s is that he can
preserve himself only by the annihilation (i.e., destruction of his
will and/or power to resist) of his enemy.
Parasitic cannibalism
is the logical extension of this philosophy of annihilation. Here Mao uses
his unwitting enemy as quartermaster and employment agency!
Circumstances forced Mao Tse Tung
to economize on costs. But he made capital of the idea. The least expensive
areas for Mao to attack were also vital ones in which the enemy was
unprepared. Why should Mao use expensive and hard-to-get bullets when less
costly ways were more effective in the long run even though they were
sneered at by conventional military leaders? Why should Mao physically
destroy an enemy that could be persuaded to join his own forces,
strengthening them and directly weakening his enemy? Here we see Mao Tse
Tung�s strategy of warfare, psychologically waged. It does not
preclude the use of armed force, violence, fear, and shock. Rather, these
are the basis for Mao�s formula for persuasive reasoning.
Mao repudiated the �purely
military viewpoint�. His first requisite was �iron-clad political training�
� complete brainwashing as to the justness of Mao�s struggle which
was, at the peasant level, for food, land, security (with no mention of
Communist ideology) and the unjustness of the enemy cause. With this
hope for security held continually before them and the assurance of victory
in the end, Mao�s men were ideologically prepared to fight to the finish if
necessary.
Mao Tse Tung trained his officers
and men to agitate, propagandize, organize, disintegrate, and act as
intelligence and counterintelligence agents, as well as to fight. Analysis
of Mao�s conquest of China during the vital guerrilla warfare phase
(1927-1945), the umbrella for his overt paramilitary operations, bears out
Chiang Kai-shek�s after-action report of 20% fighting and 80% intelligence,
propaganda and psychological stratagems.
International Law and Conventions
of War have been ignored by Mao Tse Tung except when he could apply them
against others. Strength is the only thing Mao respects � strength in all
the elements of military preparedness (political, economic, psychological,
social, ideological) with emphasis on the will of men as well as the
technical excellence of machines.
Now while we still have moral and
physical strength we must recognize, study and learn to combat Mao Tse
Tung�s secret weapon: psychological disintegration.
Foot Notes
1. Mao Tse Tung, Selected
Works, I, II, III, IV (New York: International Publishers Co., Inc.,
1954).
2. Robert Payne, Mao Tse Tung:
Ruler of Red China (London: Secker and Warburg, 1951), pp.272f.
3. Most recent example of this
technique: Soviet dealings with Nasser.
4. Chiang Kai-shek, Soviet
Russia in China; A Summing Up at Seventy (New York: Farrar, Straus and
Cudahy, 1957), p.362.
5. Edgar Snow, Battle for Asia
(New York: Random House, 1941), p.290 states, �Mao was twice expelled from
the party for alleged violations of the Comintern line.�
See Benjamin X.Schwartz,
Chinese Communism and the Rise of Mao (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1951), pp.5, 135f, 155. See also, Robert C.North, Moscow and
Chinese Communists (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1953),
pp.170-78.
6. See M.N.Roy, Revolution and
Counter-Revolution in China (Calcutta: Renaissance Publishers, 1946),
pp.616ff. where Roy quotes from the Military Bulletin of the Central
Communist Party of China, January 15, 1930.
7. See Mao Tse Tung, Selected
Works, II, p.121 (�Strategic problems in the Anti-Japanese Guerrilla
War�). See also, Stefan T. Possony, A Century of Conflict (Chicago:
Henry Regnery Company, 1953), p.383, for an excellent summary and comparison
of Western and Communist military principles.
8. Mao Tse Tung, �On protracted
war�, Selected Works, II, p.205.
9. Mao Tse Tung, �Strategic
problems in the Anti-Japanese Guerrilla War�, Selected Works, II,
p.122.
10. Mao Tse Tung, �Problems of
War and Strategy�, Selected Works, II, p.272.
11. Roy, Revolution and
Counter-Revolution, pp.618ff.
12. Charles R.Shepard, A
Nation Betrayed: Communism in China (New York: Exposition Press, 1954),
pp.73f.
13. See Mao Tse Tung, �Strategic
Problems of China�s Revolutionary War�, Selected Works, I, pp.238f:
�The Chinese Red Army, a small and weak force, has�surprised the world�Our
strategy is �to pit one against ten�, while our tactic is �to pit ten
against one� � this is one of the fundamental principles on which we beat
the enemy.�
14. Others beside Chiang Kai-shek
were misled. See US Congress, House, Document 154, Part 3, Supplement III,
Communism in China, pp.12f: �They had no such thing as a base of
vital importance. Their logistics were so simple and rudimentary�the
Communists were free of dependence on any fixed base.�
15. Mao Tse Tung, �Strategic
Problems of China�s Revolutionary War�, Selected Works, I, p.252. See
also p.253: �Our basic directive is to rely on the war industries of the
imperialist countries and of our enemy at home. We have a claim on the
output of the arsenals of London as well as of Hanyang, and, what is more,
it is to be delivered to use by the enemy�s own transport corps. This is the
sober truth, not a joke.�
16. Edgar Snow, Red Star Over
China (New York: Random House, 1938), pp.173f.
17. Chiang Kai-shek, Soviet
Russia in China, p.65.
18. Mao Tse Tung, �On
Contradiction�, Selected Works, II, p.27.
19. Mao Tse Tung, �On the
Rectification of Incorrect Ideas in the Party�, Selected Works, I,
p.106.
20. Ibid
21. Ferreus, �The Menace of
Communist Psychological Warfare�, Orbis, vol.1, no.1, April 1957,
pp.97-121. See also Eudacio Ravines, The Yenan Way (New York:
Scribner, 1931), pp.148-61.
22. As one expert who called
their propaganda �masterly� put it: the people were �persuaded by force and
held by fear�. Father Raymond J.DeJaegher and Irene Corbally Kuhn, The
Enemy Within: An Eyewitness Account of the Communist Conquest of China
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co, 1953), pp.181, 183.
23. V.A.Yakhontoff, The
Chinese Soviets (New York: Coward-McCann, 1934), pp.236-38.
24. Snow, Red Star Over China,
pp.343ff.
25. Mao, in �Oppose the Party
�Eight-Legged Essay�, Selected Works, IV, p.49, describes
persuasive reasoning: �In [persuasive] reasoning we must begin by
administering a shock and shouting at the patient, �You are ill!� so that he
is frightened into a sweat, and then we tell him gently that he needs
treatment.�
26. Mao Tse Tung, �Introductory
Remarks to the Communist�, Selected Works, III, p.53. Chiang
Kai-shek, Soviet Russia in China, p.85.
27. Chiang Kai-shek, Soviet
Russia in China, p.85.
28. Mao Tse Tung, �Strategic
Problems in the Anti-Japanese Guerrilla War�, Selected Works, II,
p.119.
29. �We do not fight unless we
are sure of victory; we must on no account fight without preparation and
without certainty of the outcome.� (Mao Tse Tung, �Questions of Tactics in
the Present Anti-Japanese United Front�, Selected Works, III,
p.199.)
30. �Know the enemy and know
yourself, and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster.� See Mao Tse
Tung, �On Contradiction�, Selected Works, II, p.27.
31. Mao Tse Tung, �On the
Protracted War�, Selected Works, II, p.217, says: �In order to win
victory we must try our best to seal the eyes and the ears of the enemy,
making him blind and deaf, and to create confusion in the minds of the enemy
commanders, driving them distracted.�
32. See Payne, Mao Tse Tung,
p.105: �The first group consisted of �native spies�, men who knew the
terrain well; then there were �inside spies�, who knew the highest secrets
of the enemy; then there were �spies in reverse�, who were in fact fighting
for you, but were unknowingly employed by the enemy; then there were �dumb
spies�, poor creatures who were fed with knowledge which they unconsciously
gave to the enemy; finally there were �daring spies�, who went over to the
enemy lines and discovered military secrets at great risk to themselves. To
survive, Mao had to use all five kinds of spies.�
33. Chiang Kai-shek, Soviet
Russia in China, p.120.
34. Ibid, p.291. See US
Department of State, Publication 3573, Far East Series 30, US Relations
with China (Washington DC, 1949), p.86, which states that General Chu
The tried to get twenty million dollars ($20,000,000) from the United States
to use to encourage defections of men and arms to their side and for
sabotage purposes.
35. DeJaegher and Kuhn, The Enemy
Within, p.143.
36. Mao Tse Tung, �The Unity
between the Interests of the Soviet Union and the Interests of Mankind�,
Selected Works, III, p.46.
37. US Congress, House, Document
No.154, Part 3, Supplement III, Communism in China, p.27. See also
William Benton, �How Strong is Russia? And How Weak?�, in New York Times
Magazine, 10 June 1956, p.70: �I startled some of my colleagues in the
US Senate when I argued on the Senate floor that Red China fell to Red
Propaganda rather than to the Red Army. I shall never forget a statement
I heard General Marshall make early in 1947, shortly after he returned from
China.He said, �China might have been saved by the massive use of radio and
motion pictures, on a scale hitherto undreamed of.��
