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Because China needs industrial developing, Mao is ready to collaborate with small and medium capitalists. But bourgeois "diehards" are out. ("Goodness, do we not know what they would do with the destiny of our nation? . . .") Land must be "equalized," and capital "controlled." Warns Mao: "Whoever dares to turn in the opposite direction will . . . get his head broken against the wall. . . The sun of the new China appears on the horizon, we clap our hands and hail it. Raise your fists, new China will be ours!"
Plain Chinese, who have fled Communist areas by the millions, have observed the "new democracy" at work in every village the Communists have taken. The Chinese say that the Reds have a "three-head policy." The first stage is the "nod head," when they are polite to the people and want to make friends. The second stage is the "shake head," when they begin to refuse the people's requests. The third stage comes when they are in full control; it is called the "chop head."
The Charming Earth. Mao Tse-tung will have to chop off many a Chinese head in trying to rule China, probably the biggest task ever taken on by Communism. As he has put it, "A revolution is no invitation to a banquet."
The Chinese people have borne, driven off or absorbed, many a conqueror—the Huns and Mongols, the Tartars and Manchus. But the conqueror who, in the name of a grandiose world conspiracy, prepared to take over China last week could rival all of these. Mao Tse-tung knew that. Once, while flying over a civil war battlefield on which his men fought blindly for what they thought was the end of misery, Mao had written a poem. Excerpt:
In clear weather
The earth is so charming.
Like a red-faced girl clothed in white.
Such is the charm of these rivers and
mountains
Calling innumerable heroes to vie with
each other in pursuing her.
The emperors Shih Huang and Wu Ti
were barely cultured,
The emperors Tai Tsung and Tai Tsu
were lacking in feeling,
Genghis Khan knew only how to bend
his bow at the eagles,
These all belong to the past—only to-
day are there men of feeling.
Mao was a man of feeling, all right, but as tough and tyrannical as any emperor who had preceded him in the rule of his great and long-suffering land.
* The best and virtually only source on Mao's early life is Edgar Snow's Red Star Over China (Modern Library Series, Random House). Snow spent many nights listening to Mao's life story. TIME bases its account of Mao's childhood largely on Snow's interview.