Vol. 17: The Fire You Can See, the Roots You Can't: What Red Political Power Shows About What Something Needs to Survive

When I wrote about ofo, I left a question: for something still small and weak, how should you look at its foundation, its external conditions, and the changes that may come next? How do you tell whether it's a real spark or a burst of excitement that will soon pass?

Mao wrote an essay with a very direct title: "Why Is It That Red Political Power Can Exist in China?"

He didn't put the answer down to the Red Army's bravery, and he didn't stop at revolutionary ideals. He laid out the conditions holding up red political power and analyzed them one by one.

Only with these conditions together did a small, weak base area have a chance to survive. Missing a key link, no amount of enthusiasm could hold it.

Five Conditions for Red Political Power to Exist

First, the five conditions Mao analyzed at the time.

First, the long-running splits and wars among the White regimes. China was then under the indirect rule of imperialism, and each warlord faction had different powers backing it. The White regimes couldn't form a stable, unified rule, and that gave red political power a crack to survive in.

Second, the area had been through the democratic revolution, and the masses had some political training. Red political power couldn't be set up just anywhere remote. The area needed a mass base, ordinary people with experience in organizing and struggle.

Third, the revolutionary situation across the country kept developing. If the revolution outside stayed quiet for a long time, a small red area would have a hard time holding out alone. Only while the bigger environment was still changing could it keep growing.

Fourth, there had to be a regular Red Army of adequate strength. Masses alone weren't enough. There had to be an armed force that could fight. Otherwise it could at most deal with local militias and would fall when regular troops came.

Fifth, the Communist Party organization had to be strong and its policies free of mistakes. Even with the first four conditions in place, if leadership and policy went wrong, red political power could still collapse.

These five include the external environment, a mass base, the tide of the times, and one's own hard strength and organizational ability.

Whether something can last a long time doesn't depend on how much buzz it has right now. It depends on whether the conditions holding it up are real and solid.

Why Xiang Yu Didn't Kill Liu Bang at the Feast at Hong Gate

Put this principle into history and it gets clearer.

In 206 BC, Liu Bang entered Guanzhong first, and Xiang Yu arrived afterward with his army. According to the Records of the Grand Historian, Xiang Yu had 400,000 troops and Liu Bang only 100,000, a huge gap. Judging by that day's balance of forces alone, it seems Xiang Yu could easily have killed Liu Bang at the Feast at Hong Gate and settled things once and for all.

Fan Zeng signaled to Xiang Yu again and again to strike, and even arranged for Xiang Zhuang to perform a sword dance. Yet Liu Bang still left the feast alive.

Many people put this down to Xiang Yu being softhearted, or too bound by honor. Personality played a part, of course, but explaining it by personality alone is too simple. Although Xiang Yu was the strongest among the allied lords, he hadn't yet set up a stable order of rule. And Liu Bang was the first lord to break into Guanzhong. Killing him meant weighing legitimacy and how the other lords would react.

Besides, Xiang Yu's own camp wasn't of one mind. Fan Zeng wanted Liu Bang dead, but Xiang Bo was helping him. Xiang Bo had old ties with Zhang Liang. The night before, he had rushed over to warn them, and at the feast he shielded Liu Bang with his own body. When even the people closest to him disagreed, it was all the harder for Xiang Yu to make up his mind.

So at the Feast at Hong Gate, Xiang Yu seemed to hold every advantage, but at the moment it came to striking, he lacked a united judgment, enough resolve, and a moment when he wouldn't have to bear the consequences. An advantage that sits on the table and never turns into action isn't really an advantage in hand.

Later, in the war between Chu and Han, the conditions around Liu Bang slowly fell into place: Xiao He held the rear and the grain supply, Zhang Liang made the plans, Han Xin led the troops. Look at Xiang Yu on the other side: Fan Zeng left, the lords defected one after another, and grain and supplies got harder and harder. At Gaixia he was as fierce as ever, but personal ferocity could no longer fill the gaps in the whole situation.

When Xiang Yu took his own life by the Wu River in the end, it wasn't that he'd suddenly forgotten how to fight. It was that the conditions that would let him keep fighting were almost gone.

So when the two of them fought it out to the end, the contest wasn't just about who was stronger at the moment. It was about who could turn their advantages into a set of conditions that kept running.

Why I Dared to Start a Paid Column

Turn this method of analysis on yourself and you can see a lot too.

When I started Life Lessons from Mao's Selected Works as a paid column last year, I wasn't sure of myself at all.

I'd never done paid writing, and I didn't know if anyone would pay for this topic. A voice kept asking me: what gives you the right to charge?

Looking back now, I felt I "couldn't do it" because I had put all my attention on "never done it before." But the things that actually hold up the writing were already there.

I've read the Selected Works for many years and spent a long time studying and thinking about materialist dialectics. I'm in the habit of reviewing my own experiences, so I can match theory to concrete life. And I've always been writing. The writing never stopped.

None of these three things were thrown together at the last minute. They built up bit by bit. It's just that back then I was blocked by the phrase "never done paid writing," and couldn't see what I already had.

That I took the step at all had to do with my friend Dahua. He'd done paid content, and done well. When we talked, he kept urging me: getting started is what matters most. Don't set the price high. Start at 9.9 yuan.

He didn't dwell on whether I'd done it before. He asked whether I had content, whether I had the ability, whether I had a body of work behind me. I had all of those, so the thing to do was get the column out and let the market answer.

Before launch, a reader I'd never met read my opening letter and added me on WeChat specifically to ask when it would officially launch. I said not yet, and that I'd let him know when it went live.

In that moment I actually got a bit nervous, afraid that if I dragged it out too long I'd lose even a reader like this. That question is what made me speed up the launch. Later he really did subscribe, and I was thrilled.

Of course one subscription can't prove the column will succeed. But it did prove one thing: I wasn't the only one who thought this was worth something. Someone was really willing to pay for it.

At first I only saw "never done it." Dahua helped me see what I'd already built up, and that reader gave me my first feedback through action. Analyzing conditions means not letting the most glaring surface lead you around, and looking at whether the things that really hold something up are there.

A Failed Equipment Inspection

There's another story that shows the same principle from the other side.

A while ago, our company took part in an equipment tender for a big client. We make medical devices, and the product we bid with made it onto the shortlist.

When we were shortlisted, everyone was pretty happy and figured we'd probably land the project. But at the acceptance inspection, it fell through.

The reason wasn't complicated: in the bid, some technical parameters had been overstated.

This isn't rare in the industry. With a hospital whose management isn't too strict, it sometimes just slips through. So at first nobody really took it seriously.

But this client was different. The acceptance inspection was very strict.

On inspection day, the experts measured the data on site with instruments, and no matter what we did, the numbers didn't match. We went through all our documents and couldn't find anything to support the parameters in the bid. The atmosphere on site got tenser and tenser, because this was no longer just about whether the project passed. It involved legal risk too.

By that point, everyone actually knew: the project probably wasn't going to pass.

Even so, many people were still clinging to a bit of hope, feeling there might be some way to bluff through. After all, similar things really had been bluffed through before.

In the end, the project fell through completely.

Looking back now, the project was missing the most crucial thing from the very start: real, reliable equipment parameters.

Making the shortlist only meant we'd passed the first round on paper. But the numbers on paper were hollow, and at the on-site inspection, there was nothing to hold them up. If we'd bid with the real parameters, we might not have made the shortlist at all. Overstating them only bought us an entry ticket that couldn't survive inspection.

That it had passed before didn't mean this condition was unimportant. It only meant the inspections hadn't been strict enough. When a real test came, the gap naturally showed.

How to Judge Whether Something Will Last

Put these stories together and the principle is the same.

Red political power could exist not on courage alone. The wars among the White regimes, the local mass base, the nationwide revolutionary situation, a regular Red Army, and correct organization and leadership together gave it room to survive.

Liu Bang won in the end not just because he was smarter than Xiang Yu or better at fighting. He gradually organized the strength of Xiao He, Zhang Liang, Han Xin, and the lords together, while Xiang Yu kept losing advisers, allies, and supplies.

I got Life Lessons from Mao's Selected Works off the ground not because I suddenly became brilliant one day, but because the books I'd read, the reviews I'd done, and the posts I'd written were quietly holding me up.

The tender failing was even less simply a matter of "the inspection was too strict." The inspection just shone a light on a problem that already existed: the foundation of real parameters had been empty from the start.

When we judge whether something can succeed, we often stare at the surface buzz: how much money was raised, how many people were hired, how many stores opened, how many posts went out. That's the fire you can see.

But what decides how long the fire burns is usually the inconspicuous roots underground: whether the external environment leaves room, whether the mass base is solid, which way the tide is going, whether your own hard strength is enough, whether there are problems with organization and decision-making.

With deep roots, a small flame now is nothing to fear. With hollow roots, however fiercely the fire burns, it can't stand up to the wind.

So now when I look at something just getting started, I don't only ask how much buzz it has right now. I first ask: are the conditions it needs to survive actually there?

If the conditions are there, even if it's still small and weak now, it's worth investing in patiently. If a key condition is missing, the more buzz there is, the more wary you should be.

That's the method of analysis Mao gave in 1928: to see whether something can last, don't just stare at the fire. Look down at its roots.