Red Star Over China
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Red Star Over China, a book by Edgar Snow, is an account of the Communist Party of China written when they were an obscure guerrilla army.
[edit] Overview
In Red Star Over China, Edgar Snow recounts the months that he spent with China’s Chinese Red Army during the Civil War. The book has biographical accounts of a number of persons on both sides of the conflicts, including Mao Zedong; contains a vivid description of the Long March; and encapsulates the life of China of 1930s.
It contains Mao's own account of his life, as well as descriptions of Zhou Enlai and Peng Dehuai. Also a little about Lin Biao and some vivid descriptions of other Chinese personalities, as well as the Long March.
When Snow wrote, no outsider had much idea of what was going on in the Communist-controlled areas of China or who the main personalities were. And Snow also saw history in the making. The Xi'an Incident occurred while he was there. His view—which is controversial—is that the imprisonment of Chiang Kai-Shek by his own generals ensured that Nationalist China fought Japan rather than capitulating. The incident was much later alleged to be an impulsive power grab by an independent young warlord, who had to back down in the face of Moscow's opposition.
He produced a revised edition which appeared in 1972, shortly after his death. His own view of the context is:
- The Western powers, in self-interest, were hoping for a miracle in China. They dreamed of a new birth of nationalism that would keep Japan so bogged down that she would never be able to turn upon the Western colonies—her true objective. Red Star Over China tended to show that the Chinese Communists could indeed provide that nationalist leadership needed for effective anti-Japanese resistance. How dramatically the United States' policy-making attitudes have altered since then […]
- It provided not only for non-Chinese readers, but also for the entire Chinese people—including all but the Communist leaders themselves—the first authentic account of the Chinese Communist Party and the first connected story of their long struggle to carry through the most thoroughgoing social revolution in China's three millenniums of history. Many editions were published in China […] (Red Star Over China, Preface to the Revised Edition.)
The revised version was one product of Snow's 1970 visit, in which he also helped with the normalisation of relations between China and the United States.
A new edition was published in May 2006, entitled Red Star Over China - The Rise Of The Red Army. (ISBN 1406798215).
[edit] Criticisms
According to Chang & Halliday's Mao: The Unknown Story, the book grew out of a propaganda project by Mao Ze-dong and a communist mole in Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist Propaganda Department, Shao Li-tzu. The object was to use the Western print media to create a favorable image of Mao as a brave and kindly man, to cover up the many atrocities committed by him and the Reds, and to present the communists as staunch opponents of the Japanese invaders. The author, a well-connected American journalist with left-wing sympathies, was hand-picked by the Shanghai communist underground for precisely those qualities. A similarly conceived "autobiography" of Mao, consisting of interviews with Snow, had previously done much to boost the communists' standing with thousands of young Chinese and Tibetans.
They also say that many of these events were heavily embellished or invented outright, such as the battle of the crossing of the Dadu River during the Long March. The years of torture and terror in Red-controlled areas of China were kept from Snow, and thus out of the consciousness of the Chinese and Western public.
Mao vetted everything Snow wrote, rewriting parts as the goals of the project demanded. Snow complained at the time to his wife in a letter: "Don't send me any more notes about people reneging on their stories to me...As it is, with so many things cut out it begins to read like Childe Harold." Snow later denied that the communists had ever tried to censor him.
The Long March by Ed Jocelyn and Andrew takes a different view. The book is critical of Mao on many points, but strongly disagrees with Chang & Halliday. They note disagreements over the number of deaths from different sources—Snow himself says three and the official number on the bridge itself is four.
