Mao’s goal in building a master narrative of history and creating Mao Zedong Thought was to seek total political control over the CCP. All his actions during the early Yan’an era, from eliminating rivals to writing historical narratives, served the purpose of attaining complete supremacy over the CCP.54 Although he had already attained political control in 1935, Mao
realised that only ideological control could protect him from the fate suffered by prior leaders, including the ones Mao himself had removed from power. Mao, therefore, employed
historical narratives extensively to safeguard his power over the CCP.
First, Mao used the United Front policy to establish political leadership over the CCP. Second, Mao built a master narrative that proved that the United Front and Mao Zedong Thought were unique theories, which had adapted Marxism to fit the Chinese revolution. Mao enhanced his ideological power and, therefore, political power over the CCP by claiming to have adapted Marxism for the Chinese Revolution. Finally, Mao spread Mao Zedong Thought through his
53 Dutton, Policing Chinese Politics, 78.
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master narrative of history, and his narrative of the 1911 Revolution, to support his leadership. Mao obtained political supremacy over the Party through the employment of the United Front during the War against Japan. Histories of the 1911 Revolution published by Mao and his supporters validated Mao’s use of the United Front.
Leaders adopting political policies, usually referred to as lines, and subsequently falling when the lines did, characterised the history of the CCP up through 1935.55 Chen Duxius’s 陈独秀
(1879-1942)56 line of allying with and subordinating the CCP to the Nationalist Party fell, and
took Chen from power with it, during the 1927 suppression of the CCP. Li Lisan’s 李立三
(1899-1967)57 line of taking back the cities from the countryside fell after multiple failures to
reconquer any of China’s cities from the countryside. At the 1935 Zunyi Conference,58 Mao’s
line of joining a United Front with the Nationalist Party against Japan had taken the initiative, but some Party leaders, such as Wang Ming 王明 (1904-1974) 59 and other students who had
returned from the USSR, remained critical of the new set of policies and were ready to supplant Mao as leader should Mao’s line fail.
Mao’s line, in addition to founding bases in rural areas, focused on the United Front with the Nationalist Party. At the Wayaobao 瓦窑堡 Conference in December 1935, just after becoming leader of the CCP, Mao made a peace offer to the Nationalist Party, which still
55 Wylie argued accurately that the portrayal of CCP history as a struggle between Mao’s correct line
against all other incorrect lines was Mao’s invention to legitimise his leadership; Wylie, The Emergence of Maoism, 239. Despite the origin and implications of this narrative of struggle between lines, it in some ways remains factually based; CCP leaders prior to Mao fell from power when their signature policies failed in practice.
56 Chen Duxiu was a co-founder and the first leader of the CCP. Chen accepted Comintern advice about
joining the first United Front, a policy discredited by the 1927 rift between the Nationalist Party and CCP.
57 Li Lisan was the leader of the CCP, after the Nationalist Party-CCP split in 1927, who advocated
uprisings to take back the cities, a policy that led to major CCP defeats.
58 The Zunyi Conference 遵义会议 was a conference held during the Long March from Jiangxi to Yan’an
where Mao gained authority over the military and, therefore, over the CCP.
59 Wang Ming was prominent CCP member trained in Moscow who returned to Yan’an in 1937, after
years representing China on the Comintern, to challenge Mao for power. Wang advocated a line for all work to go through the United Front, similar to the First United Front of Chen Duxiu.
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threatened the CCP even after the conclusion of the Long March. Mao argued that the Nationalists and CCP needed to set aside their war and enter a United Front to mutually resist the Japanese invasion of China. Mao’s United Front was a practical policy designed not only to resist Japanese aggression more efficiently, but also to ensure the CCP’s survival.60 Mao’s line
differed from that of the First United Front61 and Wang Ming’s proposals, in that Mao stressed
the need for independence within the alliance. The CCP was to maintain its own army and its own structure, and the two parties would join in an alliance not entirely of equals, but one in which the Nationalist Party did not control the CCP. As with his predecessors, however, Mao’s policy of the United Front was a line, a reactive policy that applied to contemporary
circumstances only. Until the Xi’an incident62 in 1936, Mao’s offers had been only words while
Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalist Party continued to attack the CCP. After the Xi’an Incident, Mao’s line proved prophetic and his power within the Party grew. Mao staked his political life on the line of the United Front in 1935, just as his predecessors had staked their careers on their lines, and the success of the United Front policy between 1936 and 1941 validated Mao’s leadership over the CCP.
Particularly after the 1941 New Fourth Army Incident,63 however, the United Front appeared
to be breaking down, and with it, Mao’s line. Rather than risk building a new line, Mao instead chose to turn the line of the United Front into a theory.64 Mao had been working on this
transformation of line into theory for some time, but the events of 1941 forced Mao to speed up his efforts and culminated in the 1942 Rectification Movement that put Mao Zedong
60 Van Slyke, Enemies and Friends, 58-59.
61 The First United Front lasted from just after the foundation of the CCP in 1921 to 1927. The CCP
joined the Nationalist Party as a party within a party to support the Nationalists’ goal to reunify the country from the rule of warlords. Chiang Kai-shek ended the alliance with a purge of the CCP in 1927, after the fall of Shanghai to the forces of the Nationalist Party-CCP alliance, beginning the First Civil War.
62 The Xi’an Incident 西安事件 in 1936 was the beginning of the Second United Front. Chiang Kai-shek’s
generals conspired to abduct Chiang in Xi’an and took Chiang to meet CCP leaders to negotiate a truce between the Nationalist Party and CCP to fight together in the War against Japan.
63 New Fourth Army Incident (Xin si jun shijian 新四军事件), also known as the Wannan Incident 皖南事
件, was a 1941 battle between CCP and Nationalist Party troops that nearly ended the Second United Front and did end most forms of cooperation.
49 Thought at the forefront of the CCP.
Moreover, Mao’s move into theory served to undermine the remaining authority of Wang Ming and his supporters who had studied Marxist theory in the Soviet Union before returning to China. Supported by the Comintern65 and the Soviet Union, the members of the group
claimed the right to leadership positions in the CCP due to their advanced training in, and understanding of, Marxist theory. Mao’s argument that Chinese society was unique was a direct response to the criticisms of Wang Ming, who claimed that Mao did not understand communism well enough to lead a communist party. Mao instead argued that Wang Ming did not understand China well enough to lead the Chinese Communist Party.
Mao built his master narrative and his narrative of the 1911 Revolution to attack his opponents within the Party. He wrote that:
[Many comrades in the CCP] are not ashamed but proud when they understand very little or nothing of their own history. They really understand very little about the particularly important history of the CCP or Chinese history for the hundred years since the Opium War…. Many are ignorant of anything that is their own, yet hold on to Greek and foreign tales…. For the past few decades, many returned students have been making this mistake.66
The Russian Returned Students were proud of their training, and expected to hold eminent positions within the CCP as a result; and until Mao’s creation of Mao Zedong Thought, that pride and expectation was justified. Mao argued that China’s unique circumstances set it apart from other countries, enabling him to criticise his opponents for not understanding that
65 The Comintern (1919-1943), short for Communist International, was an organisation dominated by
the USSR which supported and helped organise communist movements around the world, including in China.
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uniqueness. Mao’s narratives of the 1911 Revolution, which argued that the Chinese
revolution was based on a unique coalition of anti-imperialist forces, were central to his claim that Chinese Marxism required its own theory and a deep understanding of local
circumstances.
Mao did not, however, simply want to discredit particular opponents, as that tactic would only lead to new opponents arising in their place; Mao wanted power focused on himself in the long term. Apter and Saich showed how Mao’s storytelling used three layers of historical narratives to focus the legacies of Chinese modern history, and the responsibility for saving China, onto his own shoulders.67 His narratives played a crucial role in ensuring that Mao
inherited the mantle of Sun Yat-sen. The CCP and Nationalist Party collaborated in the First United Front to turn Sun Yat-sen into the ‘National Father’, a man who had single-handedly borne the responsibility for saving China.68 By the time of the War against Japan, the legacy of
Sun Yat-sen was to have led China, and whoever was Sun’s true inheritor would be the rightful leader of China. Mao focused on inheriting this legacy and shouldering Sun’s uncompleted task in an attempt put himself at the centre of Chinese history.
It is, therefore, no coincidence that Mao chose the example of the 1911 Revolution to exemplify his theory of the United Front as a theory, so he portrayed the Revolutionary Alliance of the 1911 Revolution as Sun Yat-sen’s United Front. Mao argued that he had not created the theory of the United Front but inherited it from Sun and then further developed it, making Mao the clear successor to Sun and the next leader of China. This narrative of
inheriting Sun’s legacy became even more pronounced after Mao had attained dominance in the CCP and had begun to turn his historical narratives against enemies outside the Party: Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalist Party
67 Apter and Saich, Revolutionary Discourse in Mao’s Republic, 92-95. 68 Bergѐre, Sun Yat-sen, 408-414.
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Moreover, while Mao may have been able to enshrine the theory of the United Front into the operating methods of the Party, it would not necessarily be enough to protect its creator. Mao needed to remain arbiter of the theory and determine how its implementation would change, according to changing contemporary circumstances. Mao’s master narrative of history created a history that shaped the CCP’s understanding of the present and predicted a future69 that
relied on Mao Zedong Thought. By creating a reliance on Mao Zedong Thought, Mao created a reliance on himself and validated his continued power over the CCP.
By tracing the themes of the United Front, the uniqueness of Chinese society, the periodisation of history through contradictions and class analysis I will use the narratives of the 1911
Revolution to track the rise and spread of Mao’s master narrative of history and therefore his influence in the CCP. I will examine the historiography of the 1911 Revolution in two separate CCP base areas to track the influence of Mao Zedong Thought across the Party: the Shan-Gan- Ning Border Region centred on Yan’an and the CCP presence in the Nationalist Party wartime capitals of Nanjing and Chongqing.