The Chinese Foreign Ministry recently published a series of lengthy articles reviewing how the Chinese Communist Party handles foreign relations, including one that recounts the history of the first official U.S. organization to visit Yan’an in the late War of Resistance in the last century, which unravels the reasons why the Communist Party defeated the modernized KMT forces in 1949 with a full complement of U.S. equipment, one of the keys being that the U.S. did not give the KMT strong support at the critical moment. support.
On July 22, 1944, the “U.S. Army China-Burma-India Theater Observation Group in Yan’an”, composed of U.S. Army generals Richard Bowery and William Hsieh, arrived in Yan’an, the first official U.S. organization to contact the highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party.
Communist Party Shows Utopian Yan’an to the Outside World
According to the Chinese government, members of the team had conflicting impressions of Yan’an, from the “progressive Yan’an” reported by pro-China American journalists such as Snow to the reactionary Yan’an propagated by the Nationalist government for years. “The equality, democracy and efficiency of the Communist Party of China endeared itself to the observation team.”
The article also quotes military personnel who witnessed the event, describing the U.S. military representatives as heartily supportive of the CCP and disparaging of the KMT: “The members of the observation team repeatedly gave me a thumbs up saying ‘you Communists are this’ and a little thumb toward the ground, ‘the KMT is this ‘”
The article said: “After spending time with the military and people in the base area, Carter, a member of the observation team, believed that the Communist Party’s greatest charm was its simplicity, that their goal was to work hard and live simply, and that the energy, vitality and sincerity of the Communists made them a stark contrast to the corrupt Kuomintang.”
According to the Communist Party history, the head of the observation team, Bao Ruide, had witnessed bunches of civilians being taken as soldiers in the National Unification Area, but this was never the case in the Communist-led border areas. He commented that the Communist army was “well-trained and battle-trained, with a high level of intelligence work and strong morale. He also saw the military and people of the base area working together to rescue an American pilot shot down by the Japanese, demonstrating the high level of organization and strength of the Communist Party in the base area, and the team exclaimed, “The Communist government and army are the first in modern Chinese history to be actively supported by the people, because they truly belong to the people. “
Old party members reveal the harrowing experience of the Yan’an period
The Communist Party history records the Yan’an period as a paradisiacal ideal state, a revolutionary shrine of the Communist Party, where people lived in harmony with each other and leaders and subordinates respected each other as guests. However, after the reform and opening up, several folk works, such as “Yan’an Diary 1940 – 1945”, “A Revolutionary Survivor”, “How the Red Sun Rises – The History of the Yan’an Rectification Movement” and “Xiao Jun’s Yan’an Diary”, have recorded in detail the first-hand testimonies of several old party members, in whose eyes, the Yan’an In their eyes, the struggle within the Party during the Yan’an period did not stop for a moment, and was very cruel, with mixed relationships between men and women in the leadership, which was different from the description of the Party history.
Tao’s wife Zeng Zhi’s memoirs, “A Revolutionary Survivor,” wrote: “A female comrade was beaten so much that her face was covered with blood, and even when her menstruation came, she was beaten as usual, and as a result, her pants were red, and the floor of the kiln was dyed red. Every night in the silence, the temporary branch of the row of small windows of the kiln came out of the glowing yellow light of the small lamp of sesame oil, quietly around, a burst of scolding, kicking and screaming across the earthen walls, across the beams to the dark mountains, intermittently, one after another, let people’s hearts jump, shudder.”
In “How the Red Sun Rises – The History of the Yan’an Rectification Movement,” Gao Hua reveals that many victims were killed in secret. For example, the “Trotskyists” were executed by bayoneting, saber-chopping, beating to death, shooting, burying alive, leaving dogs to bite, and having their brains smashed with wooden hammers.
Of course, the U.S. military’s Yan’an Observation Mission could not see any of these realities, and their trips were carefully arranged so that Mao showed them a desire for Western democracy, and in this way, the CCP accomplished an united war effort on the international front that paralyzed the West, which was still in the post-war period. By the time the Americans awoke, the CCP had already ruled China, and a year later when the Korean War broke out, the CCP was shoulder to shoulder with the Soviet Union, exporting the Red Revolution to the world.
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