Mao (Mao Zedong, the leader of the Communist Party of China or CPC) impressed me as a man of considerable depth of feeling. I remember that his eyes moistened once or twice when he was speaking of dead comrades... One soldier told me of seeing Mao give his coat away to a wounded man at the front. They said that he refused to wear shoes when the Red warriors had none.
What surprised me about these dramatic "clubs" (the Red Theater in the Soviet region led by the CPC) was that, equipped with so little, they were able to meet a genuine social need The players received only their food and clothing and small living allowances, but they studied every day, like all Communists, and they believed themselves to be working for China and the Chinese people.
In the years following 1978, and after, under the direct guidance of Deng Xiaoping, major attention was focused on economic construction - increasing national productive forces - with spectacular results which put China in the World's front rank in its rate of development. From the late 1990s, the role of her Communist Party was defined by Deng's successor, Jiang Zemin, by what were called the "Three Represents" - listed as the China's most advanced productive forces, foremost thinking, and the most widespread welfare of her population.
Very visibly, both the retiring leadership in its last period, and its new successors, have done much for the people's physical welfare.
...The new leadership of the Communist Party and government, which took office in 2003, appears more sensitive, and active, in this respect (public medical treatment). At this writing, it is launching a nationwide informational campaign against the spread of AIDS.
The communist movement seemed to have been defeated again and again in China - in 1927, in 1934 and at the ragged end of the Long March. But they turned every defeat into a victory - just when their struggle was most desperate, new forces from the masses, roused by the very desperate character of the
struggle, refilled the broken ranks. Like the giant Antaeus, the more they were crushed to earth,
the more strength the earth gave back to them. For they were the people. Though they (the Chinese communists) had little personnel to spare for school teaching and little time between battles, the first thing they did in every district was to start primary schools for adults and children, trying to educate teachers quickly to disseminate all available knowledge as widely as possible...
One evening Comrade Wang (an interpreter) took me to see Mao Tse-tung, the famous leader of the Chinese Communists...
"So long as our people have the will to endure hardship," he said, "and the will to continue resistance, China will not be beaten. That will can only be built and sustained if the people have confidence in their leaders and are provided with hope for a better way of life. We try to provide these essentials by training leaders to live simply, administer justly and strive earnestly to aid the people to solve their problems..."
As I chatted with these men (several generals of Kuomintang, then China's ruling party) who were directing the affairs of the nation I could not resist contrasting the physical comfort in which they lived with the strenuous self-discipline of the Eighth Route Army (larger of the two major Chinese communist forces that fought the Japanese from 1937 to 1945). There was no question of the earnest patriotism of the two groups of leaders, but they represented antipodal schools of thought.
At that time, in January 1938, they (the CPC) had already restored Chinese government in 30 county towns...They were winning because they had the full support of the Chinese peasants. The Chinese peasants had always hated soldiers, but the Communists showed them a new kind of soldier, who never raped or looted but respected the peasants and helped them get in their harvests and especially taught the people their own strength and the way to fight and win.
(China Daily 10/19/2007 page8)
