Review: The Long March
| DOI | 10.1177/002070200906400130 |
| Published date | 01 March 2009 |
| Date | 01 March 2009 |
| Author | Timothy Cheek |
| Subject Matter | Review |
| Reviews |
| 302 | Winter 2008-09 | International Journal |
THE LONG MARCH
The True History of Communist China’s Founding Myth
Sun Shuyun
New York: Doubleday, 2006. 270pp, $34.00 cloth (ISBN 9781400134526)
Getting the facts straight on the long march of Chinese communist forces
retreating from southeast China (Jiangxi) ultimately to northwest China
(Shaanxi) in 1934-35 is no easy matter. It is, as Sun Shuyun confirms in this
readable account, the national myth of the People’s Republic of China. Since
the march was made known to Westerners by Edgar Snow in his
Red Star
Over China
(1937 in London; 1938 in New York), it has been presented as
the myth of sacrifice and redemption that vindicated the Chinese
Communist party and its then-emerging leader, Mao Zedong, as the rightful
rulers of China. These themes were amplified by the party propaganda
system and taught—in the fashion of similar national myths in other
countries—to generations of Chine se ever since, inclu ding to Sun, who
learned this during the last decade of Mao’s rule (she was born in the 1960s
to a military family in China).
Sun is clear from the start: she wants to challenge that myth. For her,
digging beyond the patriotic paeans to the long march involves asking: Was
communism the magnet that drew the poor in droves to the Red Army? How
did it all work in detail? And what happened to the four-fifths of the
approximately 100,000 marchers who never reached the end (3)? Her
answers are vivid: some people did believe, but many did not and joined by
force of circumstance or at the point of a rifle u nder forced conscripti on.
Leaders, particularly Mao, made numerous mistakes and were often
unfeeling of the suffering of the rank and file. The heroism of the long
march was mostly the heroism of ordinary people, not Mao, other leaders, or
idealized Red Army commanders from the films Sun saw in China as a kid.
Mostly, Sun’s story emphasizes the experience, memory, an d voices of
ordinary Chinese, many long forgotten and ill-served by the army and party
they either joined or endured. In the end, Sun finds heroism, but it is not
the heroism of Mao and the party, but the heroism of these ordinary people.
Their example now inspires Sun and her mission is to get their side of the
story out. The reason this is important, Sun says, is that the dark side of the
long march that emerges helps to explain what went wrong later under Mao.
The errors of later years and the causes of the sufferings of the survivors she
profiles can be seen in Jiangxi
before
the long march (246). The implication
is clear: it was rotten from the start.
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