Thomas Kampen

The Zunyi Conference and Further Steps in Mao's Rise to Power

We are all indebted to Benjamin Yang for presenting to us the results of the Investigation Report on the Zunyi Conference just one year after its open publication in China.l The Investigation Report, edited by Li Zhiguang and Lu Youshan and checked and approved by the six surviving participants of the Conference,2 has shown how inaccurate Taiwanese and western accounts and interpretations of this important meeting have been.3 But because of the complexity of the revolutionary developments in the 1 930s and the lack of reliable sources, there are still many problems which remain unsolved. In addition, as Mr Yang has pointed out, the Investigation Report only provides very interesting historical details without interpreting them. Lastly, even if we were able to solve the most important problems related to the Conference which is not very likely we should still wonder how the confusion, which lasted for more than half a century7 started, and why there have been so many contradictory accounts and interpretations of this decisive event. In the following pages I will try to provide some important details not mentioned by Mr YangX give an interpretation which differs considerably from his and offer some explanations for the difficulty in studying this period of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) history. For the convenience of the readers I shall first comment on different aspects of the Conference and then discuss the rise of Mao Zedong as Mr Yang did in his article.

Wang Jiaxiang, Mao Zedong and the ‘Triumph of Mao Zedong-Thought’ (1935–1945)

While Mao Zedong might still be Chinas most famous communist, only scholars of the history of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have heard of Wang Jiaxiang and even they have never studied his career in detail. But recent Chinese publications show that there were very few CCP leaders who had such a tremendous impact on the Chinese communist movement in general and Mao Zedongs career in particular. This article will show that Wang not only supported Mao during the power struggles of the 1930s and helped convince Stalin that Mao should be acknowledged as the CCPs leader, but that Wang also played a decisive role in establishing Mao Zedong-Thought as the Partys guiding ideology. The release of numerous Party documents in the last five years also throws some light upon the relations and conflicts between Mao Zedong and other CCP leaders such as Wang Ming, Zhou Enlai, Zhang Guotao and Liu Shaoqi in the decade between the Long March and the Seventh Party Congress of 1945.