Sino-NK

How likely is China to invade Taiwan? And what is the connection between domestic stability, coastal defense, regime security, and the CCP’s foreign policy? Reading Xi Jinping’s public statements on these matters is naturally an important business, but we need to better understand the types of internal discussion going on within the Party and the People’s Liberation Army leadership, and the past precedents for such discussion.

Thus we turn to a relatively neglected historical source — a collection of Mao Zedong fragments published in Beijing in 2013, otherwise known as the six-volume Mao Zedong Nianpu (Chronology of Mao Zedong). Mao’s concerns and actions about conflict in the Strait and along his southern coast play prominently in those papers. Among other things, one extract dealt with below reminds us that CCP leaders are capable of belligerence in their internal communications and constraint in their public messages. That is to say, the leadership may be preparing for conflict at an almost frantic pace whilst refraining from mobilising the public for imminent war.

If we read entries to the Mao Nianpu for 12-13 January 1951, we find Mao searching for an adequate plan to defend Guangdong, the southern maritime province enveloping Hong Kong, which at that time was still a British territory. Guangdong functioned as an in-depth defense for Hainan Island, which had been held by the Nationalists until April 1950. On 13 January 1951, Mao telegraphed Ye Jianying about an intelligence report he had received on 8 January. That document had flagged up a Chiang Kai-shek plan to use 250,000 troops to attack and occupy Xiamen, as well as Shantou [汕头市] in eastern Guangdong province, as well as other places. An alarmed Mao wrote: “There is a very high probability [of this intelligence being correct]; quickly research a policy” which would counteract the potential Nationalist assault.

Mao then asked Chen Yi to consider increasing the defensive pace at Xiamen, bringing in more heavy artillery, grain, and medicine for stockpiling prior to the coming conflict. Mao further recommended sending troops from Hunan, and accelerating the completion of anti-bandit work in Fujian and Guangdong provinces. “Not to do so would be a mistake,” he wrote, urging detailed military preparations made for a Nationalist attack on Xiamen.

On 16 January 1951 Mao pushed for more action around Xiamen in Fujian province, the coastal area of southeastern China just opposite Taiwan. “Xiamen should stockpile grain and ammunition, actively arrange air defenses (don’t neglect or reduce air defenses), and have commanders actively encouraging army political commisars to do deeper work, preparing a long-term defense of Xiamen.” Mao wanted to increase both coastal defense and patrols along rivers flowing out of the inland. He requested weekly progress reports on anti-bandit activity in Fujian from the PLA and other groups. Speaking to the potential for lagging morale within the Party’s anti-bandit troops in the southeast, he advised giving more medals each week, a (probably temporary) relenting of internal self-criticism, and to more quickly rehabilitate those who “had incorrectly been accused of criminality.”

In a statement which might have sounded even moderate in the context, Mao indicated that “anti-bandit work needs to be wrapped up sooner.” Turning to eastern China or the Huadong region (which included Shanghai), Mao told them not to ask for outside help (i.e., central government assistance) in anti-bandit work, and stated that Zhejiang province needed to put a time limit on completing its anti-bandit work. It may be the case that anti-bandit overzealotry was interfering with land reform, an areas was Mao was regularly demonstrating his interest, for examplane annotating an inspection report on land reform in southern Jiangsu province, south of Shanghai, on 13 January.

In February 1951, Mao clearly put zero stock in American promises that the US Seventh Fleet had merely ‘frozen’ the Chinese civil war. Yet, his warnings about a pending invasion of Fujian are caveated just a day later, when a slightly contradictory message was sent elsewhere. On 13 January 1951, Mao instructed the Northwest Bureau on how to angle their upcoming Korean War propaganda themes: “The US,” he writes, “has no plan right now to unleash [fadong / 发动] a world war.” It is of course possible that there is no contradiction at all between the writings about Fujian and his instructions to the Northwest Bureau. While preparing internally for a broader war, Mao did not want propaganda to spark too much fear among the public of a full-on US invasion.