30 CHINA CONQUERED
30 赢得内战
(1946–49 AGE 52–55)
1946～1949 年 52～55 岁
MAO'S MOST FORMIDABLE weapon was pitilessness. In 1948, when he moved on Changchun, in Manchuria, and a direct assault failed to take it, an order was given to starve it into surrender. The actual words used on 30 May by Mao's commander on the spot, Lin Biao, were: “Turn Changchun into a city of death.”
毫无恻隐之心是毛泽东的最大优势。一九四八年中共打长春时，因强攻不得手，改变围困绝粮的办法，欲迫使长春守敌投降。五月三十日，林彪下令：“要使长春成为死城！”
The defending commander, General Cheng Tung-kuo, was a hero of the war against Japan, and refused to capitulate. As there was only enough food to see the 500,000 civilians through until the end of July, he tried to evacuate civilians.
守长春的是郑洞国将军，他拒绝投降。由于城里五十万平民的存粮只能维持到七月底，郑将军要平民离城。
Lin Biao's response, endorsed by Mao, was: “Strictly ban civilians from leaving the city.” The Communists let people go who had arms or ammunition, so as to encourage Nationalist soldiers to defect, but specifically blocked civilians. Mao's calculation was that General Cheng was “a nice sort of guy,” as he described him to Lin Biao, and could be pressured into surrendering by massive civilian deaths. Though completely without pity himself, Mao knew how to manipulate it in others. As it happened, Cheng stuck it out to the end, although he was very torn.
毛泽东批准了林彪的作法：“严禁城内百姓出城。”“只有带枪和军用品的人才能放出。”这是为了鼓励国民党军人投诚。毛对林彪说：郑洞国“人老实，在目前情况下[即老百姓挨饿的情况下]有可能争取起义、投诚”。虽然他自己没有怜悯之心，毛很懂得这一人之常情，懂得怎样利用它。可是尽管郑洞国内心“极度痛苦、绝望”， 他没有想过投降，一直坚持到最后。
Three months after the city was sealed off, Lin Biao reported to Mao:
围困长春三个月后，林彪向毛报告：
The blockade … has produced remarkable results, and has caused grave famine in the city … The civilian inhabitants are mainly living on tree leaves and grass, and many have died of starvation … “Our main policy has been to forbid exit,” Lin wrote. On the front line, we have placed one sentry every 50 metres, plus wire and ditches, and blocked all the gaps … Those who got out, we persuaded [sic] to return … When starvation got worse and worse, hungry people … flocked out; after we drove them back, they were pressed into No Man's Land … Many died of starvation there. In [one place] alone, there were about 2,000 deaths …
“围困已收显着效果，造成市内严重粮荒……居民多赖树叶青草充饥，饿毙甚多。”对郑洞国要老百姓出城的做法，林彪说：“我之对策主要禁止通行，第一线上五十米设一哨兵，并有铁丝网壕沟，严密接合部，消灭间隙，不让难民出来，出来者劝阻回去。此法初期有效，但后来饥饿情况越来越严重，饥民便乘夜或与白昼大批蜂拥而出，经我赶回后，群集于敌我警戒线之中间地带[“卡空”]，由此饿毙者甚多，仅城东八里堡一带，死亡即约两千。”
This policy was so brutal that the troops balked at enforcing it. Lin told Mao: The starving people knelt in front of our soldiers en masse, begging to be allowed to go. Some put their babies down in front of the troops and turned back themselves, some hanged themselves in the sentry posts. The sentries could not bear the sight of the misery. Some knelt with the starving people and wept with them … others secretly released refugees. After we corrected this, we discovered another tendency. Soldiers beat up, abused and tied up refugees [to push them back] and went as far as opening fire on refugees, causing deaths.
林彪还说：“不让饥民出城，已经出来者要堵回去，这对饥民对部队战士，都是很费解释的。”饥民们“成群跪在我哨兵面前央求放行，有的将婴儿小孩丢下就跑，有的持绳在我岗哨前上吊。战士见此惨状心肠顿软，有陪同饥民跪下一道哭的，说是“上级命令我也无法”。更有将难民偷放过去的。经纠正后，又发现了另一偏向，即打骂捆绑以致开枪射击难民，致引起死亡。”
Even the hard-hearted Lin recommended letting the refugees go. There was no reply from Mao. Lin, familiar with Mao's tactic of veto by silence, then took it upon himself to issue an order on 11 September: “Release Changchun refugees … at once.” But the order was not carried out, which can only mean that Mao rescinded it. The only people allowed to leave were those with something useful to the Reds, which usually meant they were relatively rich. One survivor remembered that Communist soldiers “walked up and down announcing: ‘Anyone who has a gun, ammunition, a camera—hand it over and we'll fill out a pass for you to leave.' ” Nationalist deserters and their families were given preferential treatment. This survivor's family got out on 16 September, thanks to the fact that her husband was a doctor, and useful to the Reds.
甚至铁石心肠的林彪也建议“酌量分批陆续放出”难民。报告上交毛后，没有回音。林彪熟悉毛“默否”的老花样，便自行做主，在九月十一日发出命令：“从即日起，阻于市内市外之长难民，即应开始放行。”但是这一指示未能实行，原因只可能是毛否决了它。只有对共产党有用的人才被放出。某难民回忆道：“我们家是九月十六号那天走的，在“卡空”待一宿就出去了。是托了我老伴的福。他是市立医院X光医生，那边缺医生”。
携枪逃亡的国民党官兵及其家属受到特别欢迎，沿途热情关照优待。留在“卡空” 里的老百姓呢，活过来的人说，吃的是“草和树叶子。渴了喝雨水，用锅碗瓢盆接的。这些喝光了，就喝死人脑瓜壳里的，都是蛆。就这么熬着，盼着，盼开卡子放人。就那么几步远，就那么瞅着，等人家一句话放生。卡子上天天宣传，说谁有枪就放谁出去。真有有枪的，真放，交上去就放人。每天都有，都是有钱人，在城里买了准备好的，都是手枪。咱不知道。就是知道，哪有钱买呀！”
After mid-September, Changchun's mayor recorded a massive rise in deaths, when tree leaves, the last food, were falling. By the end of the five-month siege the civilian population had dropped from half a million to 170,000. The death toll was higher than the highest estimate for the Japanese massacre at Nanjing in 1937.*
当时的长春市长记道：市民大批饿死是在“九月中旬”以后，那时“北地长春，业已落叶铺地”， 供人们充饥的唯一食物也没有了。五个月的围困下来，中共進入长春时，长春人口从五十万减少到十七万。就是中共的官方数字也承认饿死十二万人。
A Red veteran in the besieging army described how he and his comrades felt: When we heard outside the city that so many people had died of hunger, we weren't too shocked. We had been in and out of piles of corpses, and our hearts had been hardened. We were blasé. But when we entered the city and saw what it was like, we were devastated. Many of us wept. A lot of us said: We're supposed to be fighting for the poor, but of all these dead here, how many are the rich? Which of them are Nationalists? Aren't they all poor people?
参加围城的中共官兵说：“在外边就听说城里饿死多少人，还不觉怎么的。从死人堆里爬出多少回了，见多了，心肠硬了，不在乎了。可進城一看那样子就震惊了，不少人就流泪了。很多干部战士说：咱们是为穷人打天下的，饿死这么多人有几个富人？有国民党吗？不都是穷人吗？”
News of this mammoth atrocity was suppressed. The few inhabitants who were let out had four “refugee rules” stamped on their passes, one of which was “no spreading rumors”—i.e., don't talk. The Changchun model, based on starving civilians to death in order to force the defending troops to surrender was used in “quite a few cities,” according to the Communist general Su Yu, who was understandably unspecific.
长春发生的事被严密封锁。有幸离城的难民都发了“难民证”， 印着四条“难民纪律”，其中一条是：“不得造谣生事及一切破坏行为”，严禁他们传播饿死人的真相。中共粟裕大将说，利用饿死平民来迫使守城的国民党投降这一长春模式，在“若干城市采用”过。只是粟裕大将没有说是哪些城市。
CIVILIANS IN THE communist-held territories were also ruthlessly exploited. Most men of working age were either drafted into the Reds' expanding army, or into hard, often dangerous labor at the front. The latter involved particularly large numbers. In Manchuria the Reds conscripted 1.6 million laborers, roughly two to each fighter. In the Peking–Tianjin campaign the figure was 1.5 million, and in the Huai–Hai Campaign, 5.43 million. This gigantic corvée performed numerous frontline tasks for which the Nationalists used regular troops, such as dismantling fortifications and transporting ammunition and wounded.
毛毫不留情地利用平民为战争服务。“解放区”大多数青壮年男子被征入中共不断扩大的军队，或当为前线服务的民工。后者数字尤其巨大，在辽沈战役中，直接支前的民工达一百六十万，二肤一兵。平津战役中的民工数是一百五十万。淮海战役中高达五百四十三万。这一支庞大的队伍在前线修工事、运弹药、抬伤员、送饭菜。
Women were left to do most of the farm work, along with children and men unfit for the front. They also had to care for the wounded, mend uniforms, make countless shoes for the army, and cook for the giant army of troops and laborers. Every household had to hand over a designated amount of food—which came to a staggering 225 million kg of grain alone in the Huai–Hai Campaign. In addition to feeding Red soldiers, food was also used in psychological warfare to entice Nationalist troops to defect.
农活归留在家里的妇女干，帮她们的只有小孩、老人跟残疾人。她们还得照料伤病员，洗补军服，做无穷无尽的军鞋，给军队和民工碾米磨面做饭。家家户户都要出粮，在淮海战役期间农民出的粮达到二亿二千五百万公斤。*为了提供做饭的燃料，农民拆掉自己的草房。大军搭的桥、铺的路上，有不少农家的房梁。
The Nationalists were constantly short of food, as they relied heavily on supplies brought in by railway, and sporadic airlifts. One Nationalist veteran recalled how hundreds of thousands of men sat for a month in one pocket, starving and freezing in a temperature of –10°C. Soldiers fought—and sometimes killed—each other to get to air-dropped food. Later on, tree bark “was a good meal,” and soldiers turned to eating their leather belts and shoe soles. The veteran remembered digging up a dead rat: “Delicious! It was meat.” At the end, he said, there was no need for the Reds even to shell them: “In an area no bigger than your bum, all you'd have to do was just throw stones at the 300,000 starving ghosts and they would have had it.” Some went over to the Communists as a result of being bombarded by loudspeakers shouting: “Hey, Chiang Kai-shek, we've got pancakes here, come on over and eat.” “No amount of politics was as good as food,” the vet remarked. “Everyone knew that stewed pork was better than shoe soles.”
* 粮也用来做向国民党军队劝降的心理战武器。一个老兵对作家桑晔讲到他在摄氏零下十度的天气里，被困了整整一个月，“连皮带和皮鞋底子都煮了吃”。“过阳历年那天，我在前沿刨出来个冻得硬梆梆的死耗子，连毛都没褪干净，生着就下肚了。多少年来我还是觉得那死耗子好吃极了。”“一到吃饭的钟点解放军那面就开喊，“小蒋介石们快过来投降吧，我们还有红烧肉，今天刚宰的大肥猪”……当官的把能想出来的办法都使上了，还是挡不住人跑。”
Apart from enduring Red requisitioning and being drafted, many peasants also lost their houses, pulled down to provide fuel for cooking and materials for building bridges. The whole of Communist-held territory was turned into a giant war machine encompassing every aspect of every person's life. The entire population was made to live and work flat out, night and day, for the war, and very often in the thick of it. Mao called this “People's War.”
在中共“解放区”， 人们的全部生活都成了战争机器的一部分。这就是毛的“人民战争”。
But “the People” did not volunteer this all-consuming type of support, much less with the zeal that Communist mythology proclaims. Only intense terrorization coerced them into providing services for the war “for a long time without getting tired,” as Mao put it. The process went under the misnomer “land reform.”
是什么使农民“踊跃支前”，用毛的话说，“长期支持斗争不觉疲倦”？中共宣传说靠的是搞“土地改革”。没错。但那是什么样的土地改革呢？
DURING THE WAR against Japan the Communists had suspended their policy of confiscating and redistributing land and replaced it with one of reducing land rent. When the war against Chiang started in earnest, they reverted to their earlier radical approach. But land redistribution was not the main aspect of Mao's land reform. The part that really mattered was a practice called dou di-zhu, “struggle against the landlords,” which in reality meant violence against the relatively better-off. (In China, unlike pre-Communist Russia, there were very few large landowners.) When people recall the land reform, it is this practice that dominates their memories.
毛泽东式土改的主要内容是由中共派“工作组”到农村，组织“斗地主”大会。会上对那些相对富有的人家和其他牺牲品，打骂折磨，甚至施以酷刑。提到土改，人们说起的都是这些记忆。分土地倒成了其次。 为了让“工作组”的干部们知道具体应该怎么办，一九四七年三月到六月，毛派专门整人的康生，到晋西北的郝家坡去创造典型。郝家坡第一天斗争大会后，康生对干部和积极分子总结说：“我们对地主太客气了”，“要指着鼻子骂”，“要提出让他倾家荡产”， “要教育农民敢于同地主撕破脸斗争”，“要死人，但死也不怕。”“多死点地主分子没关系。”
The violence typically took place at rallies, which all villagers had to attend. Those designated as targets were made to stand facing large crowds, and people were psyched up and organized to come forward and pour out their grievances against them. The crowds would be led to shout slogans while brandishing fists and farm tools. Village militants and thugs would then inflict physical abuse, which could range from making the victims kneel on broken tiles on their bare knees, to hanging them up by their wrists or feet, or to beating them, sometimes to death, often with farm implements. And there was often torture of even more ghastly kinds.
康生指示把整家人作为斗争对象。斗争大会上，妻子跟丈夫一道被推搡着跪在瓦渣上，被吐唾沫、用鞋底抽嘴巴，被剥下衣服，被厕所里舀来的粪淋在头上。孩子们被别的孩子唤作“小地主”，打得头破血流。康生站在一边微笑地看着。
The Party's orders to its cadres were not to try to stop the violence, the line being that these were legitimate acts of revenge by the downtrodden. Cadres were told they must “let the people do what they want” to those who had oppressed and exploited them. In fact, the Party wanted to encourage violence, and where there was no violence, local cadres were accused of obstructing the land reform movement, and promptly replaced.
“地主”这顶帽子可以戴在任何人头上。郝家坡早已在共产党统治下多年，富人地也卖了，人也穷了，按中共《怎样划分农村阶级成分》的标准，这里就找不到地主了。没有斗争对象怎么行呢，康生规定群众不喜欢的人可以作为斗争对象。于是村民们嫉妒，怨恨的人，通奸的人，便成了靶子。
A model was created between March and June 1947 by Mao's terror expert, Kang Sheng. Cadres in all other Red areas were instructed to copy his methods. The fact that land reform was entrusted to a man who was an expert not in agrarian reform, but in terror (and who knew nothing about land issues), makes clear the nature of the program. Kang went to a village in northwest Shanxi called Haojiapo. After the first rally, he berated the local cadres and activists for being “far too polite.” “There must be abuse,” he said. “Educate the peasants to … have no mercy … There will be deaths. But let's not be afraid of deaths.”
康生的土改模式是干部们的教科书。和彭德怀一道在一九五九年庐山会议上仗义执言的周小舟的夫人说：“我亲身看了那个土改，想起来很难受。斗地主，其实不是什么大地主，只是劳动力缺乏，请个工人，种种地，就叫地主了。斗的时候，搭个架子，把那些人吊起来。我看见的一个村子里，四根绳子一齐吊了四个人。”其中一个是女的，“丈夫死了，女的那时都是小脚，在田里做工是很不容易的，于是请个长工進来。他们问她粮食藏在哪里？为什么房里粮食不多？我知道她家并没有很多的地，没多少粮食，但逼，逼供信，就要你交。他们把她的上衣剥掉，她有个吃奶的小孩，奶水往下滴，小孩在地上哭着爬着要舔奶吃……人们都把头低下来不敢看。” 村子里男女老少都要来，连小孩子都要来看，强迫着来。叫你举手，你是不敢不举手的，不举手你也会遭殃。干部有的是痞子干部，真正的老实农民到那时惹不起那些痞子干部。”
Kang told the cadres and activists to treat whole families as targets, even children. He stood by smiling when village children beat up “little landlords,” as children from the wrong families were called. These could be almost anybody, as Kang extended the criteria for condemning people far beyond the original “landlords” and “kulaks,” in order to create victims where there were no landed rich. (This was especially the case in areas that had been occupied by the Reds for years, where the relatively wealthy had been impoverished.) Kang invented a new—and very vague—yardstick: “how they are liked by the masses.” This meant that anyone could be turned into a target, so those who had incurred feelings of indignation or jealousy on the part of their fellow villagers, for behavior like having “illicit affairs,” became prime victims.
周小舟和夫人反对这类做法。但他们接到的指示说，这是受压迫受剥削的穷人翻身复仇的正义行为。当时的口号是“群众要怎么办就怎么办”。毛实际上要的是干部们鼓励暴行。周小舟等人被指责为阻碍群众运动，被当作“石头”“搬掉”。
Appalling physical abuse swept the Red areas. One woman official described to us a rally where “four people were hanging in a row by their wrists from four ropes,” watched by “every man, woman, the old, young, even children” of the village. There was a “female landlord” at the end of one of the ropes. “It is very painful thinking about it,” the eyewitness told us.
As a matter of fact, she hadn't got much land; she had only been short of labour and had hired a farmhand … They asked her where she had hidden the grain … I knew she did not have the grain. But they insisted she did and beat her … Her blouse was stripped off. She had just had a baby and her milk was dripping. The baby was crying and crawling on the ground, trying to lick up the milk. People lowered their heads and couldn't bear to look … Many loathed all this, but they were forced to watch. If they objected, they would come to disaster, too. Some village cadres were really thugs. True honest peasants did not dare to offend them.
Public displays like these brought shivers for decades to people who witnessed them. In many places people were obliged to watch even more gruesome sights. In one place, one elderly member of the gentry whose surname was Niu, which means Ox, had a wire run through his nose and his son was forced to pull him through the village by the wire, like an ox, with blood streaming down his face. Elsewhere, “entire families from the youngest to the oldest were killed. Babies still on milk, grabbed and torn apart at the limbs or just thrown into a well.” Some grisly scenes took place right under Mao's nose in Jiaxian county in the Yenan region, where he was staying from 16 August to 21 November 1947, doing quite a bit of sightseeing. Reports to Mao about this county included descriptions of how one person was drowned in a vat of salt water, and another was killed by having boiling oil poured over his head. One place actually had a rule that “anyone not active in denouncing landlords will be stoned to death.”
Mao saw violent scenes with his own eyes. His bodyguards described him going, in disguise, to watch a rally in the village where he was staying in late 1947, Yangjiagou, where dreadful things happened. Afterwards, he talked to the guards about the various forms of torture, and the fact that children had been severely beaten up.
毛对土改的暴行知道得一清二楚。一九四七年八月十六日到十一月二十一日，他在陕北佳县。根据给他的报告，那里的土改：“有用盐水把人淹在瓮里的。还有用滚油从头上烧死人的。”有个地方甚至“规定谁斗地主不积极，就用乱石头打死。”
The upshot was, as reports to Mao made clear: “Everyone is terrified.”* Mao had achieved his goal.
毛那年底住陕北杨家沟时，不引人注意地去观看了斗争大会。会上的残忍作法连出身贫雇农的警卫也觉得“过火”。会后，他跟警卫们讲到土改中的各种刑罚如“吊、打、拉，磨、杀等”，“有的甚至连小孩子也斗” 。
BY THE BEGINNING of 1948 the Reds controlled some 160 million people. Peasants constituted the overwhelming majority, and they were all terrorized in traumatic ways. The Party dictated that 10 percent of the population qualified as families of “landlords” and “kulaks.” This means that in these categories alone (and more were created by Kang Sheng's new criteria) at least some 16 million people were on the receiving end of some degree of physical abuse and humiliation. Hundreds of thousands, possibly as many as a million, were killed or driven to suicide.
一九四八年初，中共占领地区拥有一亿六千万人口，绝大部分在农村，都经历了土改。中共政策是百分之十的人口是“地主富农”，这意味着仅就这两种人，还不算康生新加上的斗争对象，起码一千六百万人成为受害者。死亡难计其数。
In Yenan in 1942–43, Mao had built an efficient instrument by terrorizing his power base, the members of the Communist Party. Now he was terrorizing his economic and cannon-fodder base, the peasantry, in order to bring about total, unquestioning conformity. The result was that the peasants put up little resistance to Mao's requisitioning of soldiers, laborers, food, and anything else he wanted for his goals.
土改的结果，据给毛的报告是“人人都害怕”，“农村极度紧张”。同情中共的美国记者杰克·贝登(Jack Belden)在河北看到土改后说：“恐怖的手段越来越厉害，人口中相当一部分被消灭。”“在中共地区的农民中出现了前所未有的恐惧与谨小慎微。”
毛泽东的目的达到了。中共要农民出兵、出夫、出粮、出钱时，他们大都一句怨言也不敢发，还得表现积极。
Mao regarded this process of terrorization as indispensable for winning the war. So when he was preparing for the last decisive campaign, Huai–Hai, he sent Kang Sheng to Shandong province, which was going to bear most of the logistics burden, to carry out a second land reform at the end of 1947, having decided that the first had not been fearsome enough. Kang decreed hideous public torture and executions on a scale so large that the Shandong Party organization revolted. It was purged en masse. A sense of the scale of the violence can be derived from the fact that in one small town, where relations had been good up till then, 120 people were beaten to death, some simply designated as landlord “sympathisers.” Among them were two boys aged seven, who were killed by children in the Children's Corps. It was this generalized terror in Shandong that built the foundation for the Huai–Hai victory.
山东农民负担决定性的淮海战役。毛嫌那里的土改制造的恐怖气氛不浓，于一九四七年底派康生去搞第二次土改。康生对斗争对象采取“不管有无罪恶一律予以肉体消灭”的政策。有一个镇，康生到来前没有什么暴行发生，来了以后一百二十人被打死。有的罪名是“同情地主”，其中两个年仅七岁，被儿童团的一帮孩子折磨死。正是山东的第二次土改，为淮海战役的胜利奠定了雄厚的人力物力基础。
IN THE LAND REFORM, the people who implemented Mao's policy were Party cadres, who were also being terrorized and brutalized in the process. This was part of Mao's design. Most new Party members were sent to villages to be “educated” in the ways of land reform. One person Mao made a point of hardening was his 25-year-old son An-ying, whom he placed under Kang Sheng's tutelage in 1947–48, disguised as Mrs. Kang's nephew. Less than ten days after arriving at Kang's HQ, An-ying was already in torment. He was bombarded with criticisms and made to feel that his thoughts “smelled right-wing.” He lay awake at night, and was in a constant state of self-criticism for his “petty bourgeois feelings.” “I have not become proletarianised,” he wrote in his diary, which remains a secret to this day. “My character is so rotten.” He felt “extremely full of pain, so full of pain that I wept.”
毛也利用土改想使中共干部学习残忍，适应残忍。大多数新党员都得下乡参加土改“受锻练”， 其中一个是毛二十五岁的儿子岸英。岸英虽然在斯大林的苏联长大，像土改那样的场面他还从未经历过。一九四七到一九四八年，毛派他去跟康生当学生，在康生领导的土改工作组里充作康生妻子的侄儿，化名小曹。不久岸英就充满苦恼，他在日记里写道：“我来到郝家坡不到十天，在思想上已经发生了问题。”他受到很多批评，说他“思想有右倾的嫌疑”。他睡不着觉，“晚上躺在床上，我左思右想地检讨了一翻[番]，难道我的思想真是含有右倾成分吗？”他责怪自己的“小资产阶级味道”，“我还没有无产阶级化”。他感到“无限的痛苦。这种痛苦使我流下了好久没有流过的眼泪。”
An-ying was shocked by the public, mass brutality, which was something he had not experienced in Stalin's Russia. This was exactly what his father wanted him to get used to, and to learn to incite, by being with Kang. After two months in Kang's company, he wrote to his father (using Red jargon) that “my own proletarian stand is firmer now.” But he retained a sense of aversion, which emerges strongly from notes he wrote about mass rallies other people had described to him. In one case, 10,000 peasants had been herded to rallies that lasted for almost a week. “It was very cold that day,” An-ying wrote. “Everyone was saying: ‘How cold! There must be quite a few frozen to death today. What have we done to deserve this!' ” He evinced palpable distaste about the rallies themselves: “After careful rehearsals, on the fifth day, denunciations began … all the masses were told to raise their weapons when the word was given and shout several times: ‘Kill, Kill, Kill' … the rally site was in a chaotic storm, and ended in eight people being beaten to death.” An-ying also registered that the Party was often relying on the worst people in the land reform: “Some of the activists promoted were thugs and dregs, [former] Japanese puppet soldiers and lackeys.” Such people made up a sizable proportion of the Party's new recruits in rural areas.
两个月后，岸英给父亲写信说，他“认清了自己所站的无产阶级立场。”“不把农村中的阶级斗争掀起到最高程度，是不能发动广大农民群众的。”
但是岸英仍对土改保持了相当的反感，这在他的“工作笔记”里明显反应出来。笔记详细记载别人讲给他听的一次“万人大会”。岸英记道，大会足足开了一个星期，搅得老百姓““小搬家”，“大搬家”(大会前一天各村各路真是人仰马翻，大车小辆，男女老少扶老携幼……)”。开始那天，“天气很冷，冻得大家都说：“今天真要活冻死个人，真是受罪！””“第三天让各村研究斗争对象，另一方面组织预演斗争。”“第五天進行斗争。指定地点方向”，“让所有群众听到口令将武器[梭镖]举起来，并喊几声杀杀杀”。一个村把斗争对象打倒在地，宣布胜利时，“一响炮一擂鼓，其他村也沉不住气了，大家都争先斗争胜利，于是会场更加乱的不可收拾，结果打死八名。”“有一些不是地主也被斗了。第六天召开祝捷大会，选举新村干。大会提拔的积极分子，一部分是流氓地痞伪军狗腿”。“万人大会的结果，许多农民只弄了二斗粮食，这是翻身吗？”
LIKE AN-YING, many Party members who had joined up during the Sino-Japanese War, and who tended to have been idealists, were repelled by the atrocities, and some petitioned the Party about it. A few top leaders also feared that this level of violence might cost the Party its chance to capture power. Mao was not worried. He knew his power did not depend on popularity. As he had done in Yenan, he let terror sink deep into everyone's heart before he called a halt. This came in early 1948, when he circulated reports criticizing atrocities, which he pretended he was hearing about for the first time.
厌恶土改暴行的中共党员，纷纷上书反对。中共领导中也有人担心这样搞会使中共失去民心，影响夺权。但对毛来说，要夺权就得这样搞，民心从来不是最重要的。毛只是在恐吓农民的目的达到之后，才于一九四八年初制止了暴行。
After the Yenan Terror, Mao had made some unapologetic apologies to pacify Party cadres. Now he designated a scapegoat for the violence and atrocities. On 6 March, he wrote to his No. 2, Liu Shao-chi, informing him that he was to be the fall guy: “I feel the many mistakes committed in all areas are mainly … the result of the leading body … not clearly demarcating what was permissible and what was not … Can you please do a critical review of yourselves.” Liu resisted at first, but then caved in: “most [mistakes] are my fault,” he told top cadres. “It was not until Chairman Mao made a systematic criticism … that these were corrected.” Thenceforth it was Liu, not Mao, whom Party officials tended to blame for the violence in the land reform. To rise high under Mao you had to carry the can for him.
毛清楚党内反对土改暴行的呼声很高，为了保持自己一贯正确的形象，转嫁党内愤怒的矛头，他装作这些事他都不知道，推出刘少奇作替罪羊。三月六日，毛给刘写信说：“请你们加以检讨。”刘开始还想为自己辩护：“我要负责的，但不是说，各处“左”的偏向错误就是我的主张。”后来他就大包大揽了，对中共高级干部说：土改的责任，“大多数与我个人有关”，“直到毛主席系统地提出批评并规定了纠正办法，才得到纠正。”至今中共干部提起土改，骂的还是刘少奇。
This acknowledgement of “mistakes” was kept strictly within the Party. The public knew nothing about it, as the Party remained a secret organization. There was no apology to the public. Mao's calculation was that he did not need to placate the common people, because they did not count. This went for both the Red-held areas and the Nationalist-held areas.
刘少奇承认错误只限于中共党内，对普通老百姓一句道歉话也没有。身在国统区的人不是不知道土改的暴行，但他们既无力阻挡毛势如破竹的攻势，又对国民党没太多好感，只能是听天由命，尽量朝好处想中共。
Although people in the White areas knew quite a lot about the brutality in the land reform, not least through the hundreds of thousands who escaped, they often attributed it to passing excesses by the oppressed. In any case, they had no way of doing anything to stop Mao's advance, and having no great affection for the existing regime, often willed themselves to give Mao the benefit of the doubt.
Nationalist captain Hsu Chen had seen some terrors, which had made him strongly anti-Communist. In early 1948, when he came home to Ningbo, near Shanghai, he found that people did not want to listen to what he had to say, and saw him as a pain:
国民党军官徐枕曾想把土改的真相告诉他家乡宁波的亲戚故旧，他“舌枯唇烂，声嘶力竭地，来一人说一遍”，但“没法劝醒他们的迷梦，反而引起他们的反感”。有的说：“这种话都是国民党宣传，怎能完全相信。”有的说：“现在在武力战争中，这种清算斗争没收私人财产不过只是过渡时期一种手段，将来长治久安了怎会还能如此呢？”还有的说：“抗战沦陷，日寇占领时期，一样过去了，共匪来了总不能说比日寇还要坏。”
[M]any relatives and friends came to see me … I talked to every visitor, till my tongue dried up and my lips cracked … I told them about the heartless and bestial deeds of the Communist bandits … But I was unable to wake them up from their dreams, but rather aroused their aversion … I realized that most of them thought as follows:
“These words are Nationalist propaganda. How can you believe them all?”
“In a violent war like this, these are only transitional means …”
“We've been through Japanese occupation, and survived. You can't say the Communists are worse than the Japanese.”
These views could be said to represent the way of thinking in the middle and lower echelons of society … People always have to learn from their own experience …
People were in denial—and helpless against Mao's juggernaut. This fatalism was buttressed by disillusion with the Nationalists, who also committed atrocities, often against groups more visible to urban dwellers, and in a milieu far more open than under Mao—with public opinion, a much freer press, and where people could talk, gossip and complain. The Nationalists openly arrested large numbers of students and intellectuals, many of whom were tortured, and some killed. A Nationalist student wrote in April 1948 to the famous pro-Chiang intellectual leader, Hu Shih: “The government mustn't be so stupid, and treat all students as Communists.” Four months later, he wrote again saying: “Now they are being slaughtered in great numbers.” Although Nationalist killings were a drop in the ocean compared with Mao's, they raised strong feelings, and some even thought that the Reds were the lesser of two evils.
国统区的人看到的是国民党的腐败和劣行。国民党自己的高官通敌，却专门抓杀手无缚鸡之力的知识分子、青年学生。有个亲国民党的学生一九四八年四月给亲蒋的胡适写信说：“政府不能那么糊涂，那学生全看成共产党，哪里来的那些个共产党呢？”四个月后他再次写信说：“学生中不会有几十、几百的共产党……现在又大批的杀戮，真是太残忍了。”虽然国民党的杀戮跟毛的比起来是小巫见大巫，但是它遭到报纸大加挞伐，街头巷尾议论纷纷，朝野一片怨声载道，不少人认为跟蒋介石比起来，毛泽东还要好些。
But however averse people were to the Nationalists, only a small number of radicals embraced communism. As late as January 1949, when the Reds were clearly on the verge of total victory, Mao told Stalin's envoy Anastas Mikoyan that even among workers in Shanghai, who should have been the Communists' core constituency, the Nationalists were much stronger than the Reds. Even right at the end, in Canton, a hotbed of radicals in the 1920s, the Russian consul noted that there was “practically no Communist underground … Therefore people did not go out to welcome the arrival” of the Communist army. In central China, Lin Biao told the Russians in January 1950: “the population is not evincing great joy at the change of power.” There was not a single uprising, urban or rural, in the CCP's favor in the whole of China—unlike in Russia, Vietnam or Cuba during their revolutions. There were defections by Nationalist troops (as opposed to surrender on the battlefield), but these were not mutinies by the rank-and-file, but by top commanders, mostly prearranged “moles,” who brought their troops with them.
即使这样，真正信仰共产主义的也只是少数。一九四九年初，共产党胜利在望时，在上海工人中，据毛告诉斯大林的使者米高扬(Anastas Mikoyan)， 国民党远比中共号召力大。中共开進广州时，苏联领事留心到那里“几乎一个共产党地下党员也没有”，“没有人出来欢迎”。在华中，林彪一九五0年一月对苏联情报人员说：“群众对改朝换代没有太大的兴趣。”
ON 20 APRIL 1949 a Communist army of 1.2 million men began pouring across the Yangtze. On the 23rd it took Chiang's capital, Nanjing, in practice ending twenty-two years of Nationalist rule over the Mainland. On that day, Chiang flew to his ancestral home, Xikou. Knowing that this would probably be his last visit, he spent much of the time kneeling by his mother's tomb, praying in tears. (Soon afterwards the victorious Mao issued an order to protect the tomb, Chiang's family house and clan temple.) Then a ship carried Chiang away to Shanghai, and eventually he crossed the strait to the island of Taiwan.
一九四九年四月二十日，一百二十万中共大军以排山倒海之势横渡长江，二十三日夺取蒋介石的首都南京。国民党二十二年的统治崩溃了。这天，蒋介石飞回老家溪口，心里明白这是最后一次回老家了。蒋含着泪长时间地在母亲墓前徘徊跪拜，依依不舍离去。接着，一艘军舰载着他驶向上海，以后又辗转到了台湾。
A few months later, Mao asked Stalin for Soviet-crewed planes and submarines to help take Taiwan in 1950 or “even earlier,” telling Stalin that the CCP had a large number of well-placed moles who had “fled” there with Chiang. Stalin, however, was not prepared to risk a direct confrontation with America in such a high-visibility, high-tension area, and Mao had to shelve his plan, allowing Chiang to turn Taiwan into an island stronghold.*
蒋介石的住宅、祠堂及其他建筑物受到毛泽东的保护。毛请求斯大林派飞机、潜水艇助他進攻台湾，时间在一九五0年，“或更早一点。”他告诉斯大林有好些红色代理人跟随蒋“逃”去了台湾，位居要职，可以里应外合。但斯大林不肯冒跟美国对抗的风险，毛只好把计划束之高阁。*
* 斯大林帮毛镇压了西北沙漠地区强烈反共的穆斯林部队。斯大林对毛说：“可以很容易地由大炮对付。我们可以给你四十架飞机，一下子就能把那支骑兵部队一扫而光。”一位苏联高级外交官嘴里“嗒嗒嗒”的，手比划着机关枪扫射的样子，对我们描述苏联空军是怎样在戈壁滩消灭穆斯林骑兵的。
However much Chiang hated the Communists, he did not carry out a scorched-earth policy when he fled. He took most of China's civil aviation—and many art treasures—but only tried to move a small number of factories, mainly electronics plants, to Taiwan. This attempt was blocked by a senior Nationalist official, and virtually all significant industrial facilities were preserved and taken over by the Communists, including sixty-eight ordnance factories. Chiang did far less damage in industrial terms in the entire Mainland than the Russians did just in Manchuria. Mao did not inherit a wasteland in 1949; in fact, he was bequeathed a relatively intact, albeit small, industrial structure, no fewer than 1,000 factories and mines—as well as a functioning state. Chiang was not nearly as ruthless as Mao. As a critic of both regimes observed, “Old Mr. Chiang was not like old Mr. Mao. Perhaps this was why Chiang was beaten by Mao.”
不管蒋介石多么仇恨中共，他逃跑时没有实行焦土政策。他带走了一部分宝贵的故宫文物和飞机，但当他打算把几个主要搞电子的工厂搬去台湾时，却由于主管工矿的孙越崎的抵制而未能如愿。孙等人把所有的重要工业设施都完整地交到中共手里。蒋介石临走时给中国工业造成的全部损失，远不及苏联人掠夺东北的损害。毛继承下来的不是一个千疮百孔的烂摊子，而是一千座“几乎未有一点破坏”(陈毅语)的工厂、矿山，一个初具规模的工业体系，包括六十八家军工厂-- 外带一整套现成的政府经济、行政管理体系。蒋介石的无情，真是不能跟毛泽东比。
THAT SPRING, Mao floated into the outskirts of Peking amidst pear blossoms from Xibaipo, where he had been staying for the past year. Peking had been the capital of China for many dynasties from the twelfth century, and he had decided to make it his capital. In the heart of the city, a huge imperial compound called Zhongnanhai, Central-South Lake, with waterfalls, villas and pavilions, became the main official residence and workplace for him and the rest of the leaders, the equivalent of the Kremlin, which the Russians sometimes called it.
一九四九年春天，在梨花夹道的春光里，春风得意的毛泽东从西柏坡進了北京城。毛选中了城中心的前皇帝御苑中南海作正式官邸。中共中央和国务院也在这个“山水之间，千姿万态，莫不呈奇献秀于几窗之前”的美丽庭园里办公。
While Zhongnanhai was being prepared, Mao stayed for several months in a beauty spot on the western outskirts called the Fragrant Hills. The inhabitants were moved out, and the whole mountain cordoned off for the leaders, the Praetorian Guard, and some 6,000 staff. To preserve secrecy, a plaque was hung at the entrance bearing the words “Labour University,” but this drew so many young people wanting to enroll that another sign had to be put up saying: The Labor University is not ready; consult the newspapers for enrollment dates.
毛搬入前，中南海進行了好几个月的大清理、大修缮。这时的毛住在西郊着名风景区香山。居民被迁走，香山摇身一变成了“劳动大学”，山门口还挂了块牌子。牌子吸引了不少青年来报名入学。中共只好再挂一块牌子说：劳动大学的准备工作还没有做好，现不招生，何时招生，请看报上广告。
Mao moved into Zhongnanhai in September. There, and anywhere else he might set foot, the grounds were swept by Russian mine-detectors—and Chinese soldiers walking shoulder-to-shoulder as human minesweepers. An extraordinary but unobtrusive security system was installed, for which the watchword was wai-song nei-jin—“Outwardly relaxed, inwardly tight.”* The system was so slick that even Stalin's former interpreter, with extensive security experience, was unable to spot it.
中南海里，苏联的扫雷专家带着工兵排用扫雷器反覆搜索，充作人工扫雷器的战士们还一步步把各个角落都走了一遍。毛的警卫措施严密又不显眼，所谓“内紧外松”，连熟透了保卫工作的斯大林的翻译也没看出来。毛的这套做法使许多西方人天真地以为中共领导人深受老百姓爱戴，不需要警卫。某法国记者一九五四年看见周恩来跟印度总理尼赫鲁 (Jawaharlal Nehru)驱车驶过天安门，议论说：“要暗杀周恩来之容易，简直就是小孩子的玩艺儿。”
And yet, with all his watertight security, on the eve of his inauguration as supreme leader of China, deep fear was lurking in the recesses of Mao's mind. A friend from the past, Mrs. Lo Fu, described visiting him and Mme Mao at this time. Mao was “in high spirits … When I asked about his health, Jiang Qing said he was all right, except he would tremble when he saw strangers. At first I didn't understand … and I said: But he looks all right today! Chairman Mao interjected with a smile: You are an old friend, not a stranger.” It seems Mao knew that his terrorization had produced not only mass conformity, but quite a few would-be assassins.
尽管警卫天衣无缝，毛泽东在“登基”前夕，看见突然出现的陌生人时，会紧张害怕得发抖。老朋友刘英到香山去看毛后回忆说：“毛主席情绪很高，江青拿出油果子等招待，谈得很知己。”， 问到毛主席的身体，江青说他别的没什么，就是见了生人会发抖。我一下没有听明白，说今天见到我不是挺好吗！毛主席接过话头笑着说，你是老朋友，又不是生人。”
On 1 October 1949, Mao appeared standing on top of Tiananmen Gate, a stone's throw from Zhongnanhai, in front of the Forbidden City, and inaugurated the People's Republic of China (PRC). This was his first-ever public appearance before a large crowd of hundreds of thousands. The crowd was well organized, and very distant from the Gate high above. From now on Mao would ascend the Gate on special occasions, a practice he modeled on Soviet leaders mounting Lenin's tomb in Red Square, which was far lower and less grand.
一九四九年十月一日是“开国大典”。毛登上与中南海一箭之遥的高大宏伟的天安门城楼，宣布中华人民共和国成立。这是他第一次在数以十万计的人群前露面。从此以后，在天安门城楼上检阅大众成了毛庆典活动的一部分。仪式是跟苏联人学来的，但同样作检阅的红场列宁墓，比起天安门矮了太多。
On this occasion Mao made the only speech he ever delivered from the Gate in his entire reign of twenty-seven years. (On other occasions when he appeared there, he would at most mouth a slogan or two.) He cleared his throat every other sentence, in the manner of a nervous speaker rather than a rousing orator. Moreover, the content was extraordinarily flat, mainly a list of appointments. Its most salient feature was what he did not say. Mao did not outline any program to benefit “the people” in whose name the regime had been installed.
开国大典这一天，毛在天安门城楼上发表演讲：他执政二十七年中唯一的一次。往后他顶多呼呼口号。念稿子时毛不断清嗓子，不像个激励人心的演说家，内容又平淡无奇，大半是一长串名单。这个“人民共和国”将为人民做些什么，他一个字也没有提。
The crowd of over 100,000 cried “Long live Chairman Mao!” Mao appeared excited, waving as he walked from one end of the magnificent Gate to the other, and occasionally shouting into the microphone: “Long live the people!” He had that day established himself as the absolute ruler of some 550 million people.
广场上人们高呼“毛主席万岁！”毛看起来也很兴奋激动，在城楼上走来走去，朝下面人群挥手，有时他走到扩音器前喊一声：“人民万岁！”毛就这样当上了五亿五千万中国人至高无上的统治者。
*Even the watered-down official CCP figure for civilian deaths from starvation in Changchun was 120,000.
*The terror and the extraordinarily high level of killing were recorded on the spot in Hebei province by Jack Belden, an American reporter extremely sympathetic to the Reds, who told US diplomat John Melby about “the increasing use of terror against any form of opposition, and the extermination of large sections [sic] of the population.” The Reds, Belden said, have “create[d] in the peasants a terror and furtiveness he has never before seen in Communist areas …”
*But Stalin responded eagerly to Mao's request to help subdue the vast and remote northwestern deserts and annihilate a fierce anti-Communist Muslim army there. No problem, Stalin said. The Muslim horsemen “could be destroyed by artillery very easily. If you wish, we can give you 40 fighter planes which can rout … this cavalry very fast.” A senior Russian diplomat told us, with accompanying “rat-a-tat” of machine-guns and mowing-down hand gestures, that this is what Stalin's air force had done, far from prying eyes, in the wastes of the Gobi.
*This system fooled foreigners into thinking that security was light, from which many concluded, wrongly, that the regime was popular, and so did not need much protection. A not untypical reaction was that of a French journalist who watched Chou En-lai drive across Tiananmen Square with India's Premier Nehru in October 1954: “Assassinating Chou En-lai … would have been child's play,” he wrote.