From The December Conference to the Sixth Plenum: Wang Ming Versus Mao Zedong

From The December Conference to the Sixth Plenum: Waug Ming Versus Mao Zedong by Thomas Kampen "We aJ l know that there have been two crucial conferences in the history of the Chinese [Communist) Party. One was the Zuny i Conference in January 1935 and the other the Sixth Plenum in 1938. [ ... ] Since the Zunyi Conference the guiding line of the Central Committee has been correct, but there have also been setbacks. The December Conference at the beginning of the Anti -Japanese War was such a setback. What would have happened if the state of affairs of the December Conference had continued? [: . . j The Sixth Plenum decided China's fate." (Mao Zedong, 10 June 1945)[1] 1988 saw the fiftieth anniversary of the Sixth Plenum of the Sixth Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), but in contrast with the widely publicized celebrations and publications in connection with the f'lftieth anniverseyry of the Zunyi Conference three years earlier, the Sixth Plenum did not receive the attention of CCP leaders or historians. There· is no doubt that the Sixth Plenum was one of the most important conferences in the CCP's history--it may even have been more important than the Zunyi Conference . While Zunyi was just a defeat for some of Wang Ming' s "supporters ", the Sixth Plenum brought the defeat of Wang Ming himself. The Plenum also ended twelve months of disunity within the CCP leadership which had started with Wang Ming's arrival in Yan'an in November 1937. While many important aspects of CCP history are now being discussed by Chinese historians and many documents have been published, the two Politburo meetings of December 1937 and March 1938, as well as the Sixth Plenum are still avoided. Mao Zedong's main speeches at all three conferences have never been published and the Selected Works of Zhou Erllai, Zhu De, Li u Shaoqi and Chen Yun do not contain their reports at the Sixth Plenum. Even the most recent 14 volume collection -of pre-1949 Party Documents (for internal consumption) only includes a small number of Sixth Plenum documents, which had already appeared in Since the Sixth Congress. [2] There are indications that the documents of the Sixth Plenum, which are complete and (safely) kept in the CCP's Central Archives jn Beijing, will not be available in the foreseeable future. The f j erce controversy over the Xil ~.!! (Western Route Army) in 1987 which involved several important Party leaders (including Yang Shangkun, the current head of state) has shown that some events of the 1930s are still very sensitive issues.[3] 82 In recent years Chinese periodicals have repeatedly discussed the thirty and fifty year rules of Western government archives--if these rules were adopted in China the documents of 1938 would now be available. The lack of nearly all relevant document~ concerning this crucial period in the CCP 's history and Mao's rise makes a detaUed analysis of the three conferences impossible, but the information now available still provides some interesting clues and contradicts many assumptions of Western historians.[4] THE DECEMBER CONFERENCE On 14 November 1937 Wang M~ng and Rang Sheng, the two CCP representatives at the Comintern, left Moscow, flew to Xinjiang, where they were joined by Chen Yun and finally reached Yan'an on 29 November 1937.[5] Most Western historians who gave October as the month of Wang Ming's arrival, were puzzled by Mao Zedong's speech of 12 November, which contradicted Wang Ming's views but considering that Wang only arrived after Mao's speech this fact is hardly surprising . [6] The enlarged Politburo conference of 9 to 14 December 1937 was the first Politburo meeting after Wang's arrival and thirteen Party leaders attended: Zhang Wentian, Mao Zedong, Wang Ming, Kang Sheng, Chen Yun, Zhou Enlai, Qin Bangxian, Lin Boqu, Peng Dehuai, He Kequan, Liu Shaoqi, Kiang Ying and Zhang Guotao.[7] Even though Zhu De, Ren Bishi, Wang .Jiaxiang and Deng Fa were not in Yan' an, this was still the most complete meeting of CCP leaders since the Fpurth Plenum in January 1931 and Wang's fi~st encounter with some of the...