The Claws of the Dragon: Keng Sheng—The Evil Genius Behind Mao and his Legacy of Terror in People’s China

This week we are continuing our studies on the sort of sociopath that thinks socialism is a fine idea with The Claws of the Dragon: Keng Sheng—The Evil Genius Behind Mao and his Legacy of Terror in People’s China by John Byron & Robert Pack.

Kang Sheng was born Zhang Zongke by his parents when he was born on November 4, 1898, in Shandong Province. He was actually born to a landed family, one of the landowners that would later be persecuted for, you know, owning land, but that that allowed Zhang was a comfortable lifestyle growing up and a classical Chinese education, meaning he was well read, was trained in Chinese philosophy and history, and learned the arts of painting and calligraphy. So much so that in his later years, his artwork would be proudly displayed by people after his death, at least until they realized he was the artist. Then the art collector would be horrified. Rather like owning a piece of art painted by Hitler. And he eventually became recognized as a master calligrapher, with his calligraphy surpassing his painting in artistry.

None of that changes the horror he inflicted on China. And there in lies the true story.

Kang, having been born at the time of the collapse of the last Chinese empress/empire, was born into a time of uncertainty. Which more or less did not directly impact his home in Shandong, but as he was growing up, he basically joined street gangs, even as a rich kid, looking for identity. Ultimately, his father sent him to Boarding school, where he learned German, and when he returned, he was married. He was like 17 when he accepted the marriage arranged for him by his father. He did have two children with his spouse, but ultimately abandoned his family…like all of them, parents, siblings, his spouse, and his children.

He also began the process of changing his name, which was actually NOT that uncommon in China, at least for the children of landed persons, to change their names at various stages in their lives. It would not be until 1933 that he settled on Kang Sheng as his name. He taught for a bit at a local school before moving to Shanghai in 1924 to study at Shanghai University. It was here that he would join the communist party, almost as a founding member, as it was here that the CCP, or Chinese Communist Party, would be founded in 1921 by Mao Zedong and 12 other radicals.

And he began climbing the ranks, becoming the first spymaster of the CCP in Shanghai in the 1920’s. And it was crazy times in Shanghai in the 1920’s. With the fall of the Chinese empire, there was an ongoing power struggle between the CCP and the Kuomintang (KMT) which was the rival political party run by Chiang Kai-Shek. The dispute between these two parties would run for nearly 30 years, mostly behind the scenes as each tried to outmaneuver the other politically. They would call a brief truce to their feud after the Rape of Nanking in 1937, the Asian continents early salvo’s of WWII, but the feud would pick up again in 1946 and rage for three years, ending in 1949 when Chiang Kai-Shek withdrew the KMT to Taiwan, where he would rule under military law until like 1989. So…. hard to say who won there. KMT is not the topic of this book, so let’s focus on Kang.

In 1933 Kang went to Moscow, where he would spend several years under the tutelage of Stalin. Like, right during Stalin’s purges, and the famines he implemented in Ukraine, Kang was there, learning at the master’s knee. He would spend five years in Moscow, returning to China right before Beria made his appearance in Moscow. There’s no indication that the two ever met, but Kang was flattered when people would compare him to Beria, so…. Take that information for what you will.

Now, he returned to China to a CCP which was basically encamped at Yan-an, and they had been more or less routed by the KMT and forced into this back wards warren, when Nanking was attacked by the Japanese, and during the duration of WWII, the two sides agreed to a sort of cease fire, which just meant they no longer openly fought against each other. Each still kept their own party members in line with allegations of disloyalty to THEIR side. And in fact, working with KMT would be a charge Kang would lever against his greatest political foes in later years.

In 1938, he managed to emplace his greatest asset in Mao’s household, the actress Jiang Qing. Kang had met Jiang way back when he was teaching, and while there is speculation that they had been lovers, nothing was ever proven. What is known is that he swore before the CCP that while she had had contact with KMT officials, she was a loyal communist. And this cleared the way for her to become Mao’s fourth wife, and his longest lasting marriage. But having been placed there by Kang, he was essentially her patron, and when he had anything, he wanted Mao to know, he would tell Jiang, and she would tell Mao. And in this way, like courtiers of Empires past, Kang was able to control Mao. Or was he?

While the communists were entrenched at Yan-an, Kang was again placed in charge of counterintelligence, known by the charming name “The Social Affairs Department” under which Kang established “the Trial Office”. And having come fresh from his lessons learned at Stalin’s own court, Kang enacted the following on suspected traitors:

The bamboo cut: when bamboo spikes were driven under the fingernails.

Passing the horsehair through the eye: when a hair from a horse’s tail was inserted into the penis.

Passing Through a Woman: water from a narrow hose is pumped into the vagina at great pressure.

Giving the Guest a Drink: a large quantity of vinegar is forced down the throat; This makes one throw up. And after the first retching, the pain is excruciating. Basically, you’re throwing up bile, which is acidic, past an acid burn.

Beam Pulley: where the victim is suspended by his arms and lashed with leather thongs.

Pressing incense: Prisoner is suspended from a rafter by his arms, and a smoldering piece of incense was applied to the armpit.

Pulling Down the Road: Prisoner is bound and tied to a horse’s tail, then dragged to his death as the horse is whipped.

Assisting production: Prisoner digs his own grave and is buried alive.

And these are just some of the most well-known, that had such charming names as pressing incense, or giving a guest a drink. Kang would have a prisoner stand on one leg for 3 days, without sleep. Or imprison them in a cell that was not big enough to stand upright in, or big enough to lay down in, for a month or more. This would leave the prisoner permanently disabled as the muscles would atrophy in different ways. At least 20 million Chinese were imprisoned or sent to labor camps during the CCP takeover of China during these years. And it would only get worse for China.

Kang’s power as spymaster lasted until the end of the Chinese Civil War. Once the KMT withdrew to Taiwan, Kang was basically shuffled off to be in charge of farming, which Kang resented. And he actually went into a sort of retirement from 1949 to 1956, claiming that he was ill.

And this is one of the more interesting aspects of Kang’s character. Having been born to a wealthy family and educated with that classical Chinese nobleman’s education, he was aware of the history of courtiers in China and knew that when a courtier fell out of favor, historically he would withdraw for “medical” reasons, until the time to reenter the court arrived. And so, Kang was “ill” for about 6 years, waiting for the time to re-emerge and claim his place with Mao’s court again.

And he determined, through communication with Jiang Qing that his time was in 1956, right when Mao was planning his Great Leap Forward, which was due to start in 1958. The other thing that prompted his return to society was Khrushchev’s Secret Speech which denounced Stalinism. Kang was Stalin’s most apt pupil, and he took offense at Khrushchev’s repudiation of all Stalin had accomplished. And Kang knew if he did not return to Mao’s side now, Mao might easily be persuaded to follow Khrushchev’s lead by some other courtier.

Now, I’m not going to spend too much time on the tragedy of the Great Leap Forward, mostly because I already did that when I reviewed Mao’s Great Famine by Frank Dikötter. Kang was very much up to his spy master tricks during the Great Leap Forward, making sure that any of the party cadre that disagreed with the way forward was persecuted into silence, and when the movement spectacularly failed in the deaths of an estimated 45 million, working his magic to make sure none of the blame fell on Mao.

And then he continued to claw his way back up the party ranks, from which he had fallen during his medical respite, and when Mao started looking for a Cultural Revolution to erase the horrors of the Great Leap Forward, Kang was there, and willing to help, laying the ground work by building up The Red Guard on the university campuses across China.

Now…the maxim that is often repeated by those who are profoundly ignorant of history, is that those who do not study history are condemned to repeat it. And they often say this, while pointing at the horrors inflicted on humanity by fascism. And ok, no one is denying Fascism sucks. The horrors of the Holocaust have been well studied AND well taught in schools the world over.

The horrors of communism…. not so much. And this is where the flipside of the above maxim comes in. Those who HAVE studied history are condemned to watch while those ignorant of history repeat it.

Things that Kang implemented during the Cultural Revolution. Starting in 1964…a full two years before the official start of the Cultural Revolution, the students at universities started doing self-criticism, that lovely thing where they would sit down and tell all their class mates all the things, they had done that were against party doctrine. And they would struggle with each other, explaining how and where they went wrong.

This is what is happening on campuses now. In gender studies classes, for example. Or corporate training, when they have people explain all the ways they’ve been prejudiced in the past. For more on that, I’m going to refer you back to James Lindsay’s New Discourses podcast.

This primed the students for the first actions of the Cultural Revolution, and the first violence of this happened on June 18, 1966, when student Nie Yuanzi, who was backed by Kang and his spouse Cao Yi’ou, organized a struggle session to criticize and humiliate senior members of the university administration. Now…if THAT doesn’t sound horrifyingly familiar, remember these headlines:

More and more students are protesting over the DUMBEST things…like protesting a Halloween party. Or protesting against free speech. Prior to the Cultural Revolution, Mao had a pretty firm policy about not persecuting other members of the party, particularly senior party members. That rule went out the window and Kang was essentially given carte blanche to persecute anyone he could get away with.

And it wasn’t long before these Student Protests began bleeding over to the public. Kang plotted behind the scenes, maneuvering the useful idiots on the college campuses into doing his leg work and persecuting the intellectuals who might fight back against his regime. “Vast numbers of young Red Guards disrupted the daily life of Peking and eventually the country at large. Originally conceived as a force of shock troops whose ardor and sheer numbers reflected the Chairman’s charisma, the Red Guards ran barbarically out of control and started terrorizing every corner of the land. The young men and women who made up their ranks were intoxicated with Mao and oblivious to opposition; remorselessly, they began attacking the mandarins and professors and factory managers whom Kang and his fellow radicals singled out as symbols of “revisionism” and bureaucratic oppression.”

“Revisionism” in the context of the cultural revolution, means the rejection of Stalinism. There is a reason I have said that “The left has pushed the center so hard, that as far as the left is concerned, ANYONE who disavows Mao is a right-wing extremist.”

“Once the call to destroy Mao’s enemies went out, groups of self-styled rebels sprang up inside schools, universities, and factories throughout China. Accusing their superiors of belonging to “black gangs” or other reactionary organizations, the protestors dragged them from their homes and offices, ridiculed them at mock trials, paraded them through the streets, and sometimes even beat them before packing them off o the countryside to plant rice or shovel manure. Almost every Chinese somehow set apart from the masses was a potential target. A college education, a brother or cousin abroad, a middle-class lifestyle before the Communist victory (that victory 20 years previously….if you were middle class before that, you were fucked)…membership in a church or religious organization, a supervisory post in a school or factory or shop—any of these could mark ordinary folk as class enemies.”

The two passages I quoted above were on pages 308 and 309 respectively. And they literally leapt off the pages at me as eerily similar to what is going on today. Sounds like BLM and Antifa, right? And no matter what your family history is now…no matter how poor or broke you are, if you are white, you are guilty. In 1960’s China, if you came from a middle-class family, you were guilty. Except for Kang. His own family history never impeded him from ultimately rising to the number 3 position in China, behind Mao and Mao’s one time heir apparent Lin Biao.

Lin Biao was actually named as Mao’s successor; however, Lin began making political mistakes that had him falling out of favor in 1970ish. Up until he began making those mistakes, Kang did everything he could to bolster Lin as the heir, supporting Lin. When Lin began making errors, Kang began withdrawing his tacit support. Lin ultimately authored a failed assassination attempt against Mao and when the attempt failed, died in a plane crash trying to flee the country.

Now, this created a problem for Mao, which Kang was happy to step in and help solve with his Red Guard and propaganda. See Mao, as Chairman, was infallible. But…if his heir apparent had attempted to assassinate him, then he DID make a mistake in naming Lin as his heir. And that cannot be allowed to stand. So, Kang jumpstarted his propaganda machine to try and undo the damage of having had Lin as the next in line and distance Mao himself from having named Lin as next in line. America knew about Lin’s death in 1971. China was not notified until 1973, after Kang had had time to reverse the propaganda that had propped Lin up for two decades.

Kang died of cancer on December 16, 1975. It was a painful cancer, at least. His lifelong habit of smoking opium, a habit for which other Chinese were imprisoned or killed, did not help him, as it basically had no impact on his pain due to his tolerance, built up over 60 years of smoking the narcotic. So at least he died painfully. And, ironically, as is true of many communists, Kang had been an avowed atheist most of his life. Up until it became obvious the end was near, when he found some of that old time religion and started having the state sanctioned Buddhist priest…the one who was allowed to practice just to show how tolerant the CCP was of religion…come to visit. He was particularly interested in reincarnation. Like why dude…you’re gonna reincarnate as a tape worm, I would not be excited for that.

Initially, he was granted a large funeral and place in national memorial. Nowhere near as big as Mao’s next heir apparent Zhou Enlai. Zhou was genuinely adored by the people, unfortunately, he also died before Mao did. But Zhou’s funeral was MASSIVE and spontaneously attended by hundreds of thousands, who recognized he was the head of the moderate Communists, who had halted Mao’s Great Leap Forward when its failure became apparent.

Kang’s removal from the annals of Chinese communism came about after Mao’s death. Kang’s one-time protégé Jiang Qing attempted to usurp power with three compatriots and was jailed. The Gang of Four was tried and many of Kang’s misdeeds came out. And those who had had Kang’s art hanging on their walls started removing it. Kang’s family had his ashes removed from the national memorial. Now, on Jiang Qing and her relationship with Kang…she was Kang’s longest protégé, being his pupil for 40 years. By the 1970’s she was no longer technically his wife. Legally she was, but Mao had found another lover, and Jiang graciously stepped aside, basically leaving the field but staying on as a counselor to Mao. But she no longer quite had Mao’s ear they way she had during Kangs long climb to power. When Kang tried to position Jiang as the next successor following Lin Biao’s betrayal, Kang was rebuked by Mao. And Kang, seeing the political winds change once again, did what he always did…. saved his own neck by throwing Jiang under the bus. If Kang could be said to have any friends, it was Jiang. But he always chose to save himself. Always. Because ultimately, that’s what communism is. Hate the man who is better off then yourself….and always save yourself first.

This book was a very telling look at how the communist party rose up in China. It carefully laid out Mao’s complicity and approval of Kang’s methods and told a tale of duplicity and industrialized mass murder. Remember kids…guns don’t kill people, governments do.

This book was originally reviewed on YouTube on June 11, 2023, but is now available on Rumble and PodBean.