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as editors on the Popular Newspaper for a group called “Popular Books and Papers,” two teaching at primary school, and two working in the Cultural Book Society; all the others were students: six at middle schools, one at the Hunan-Yale medical school, and one in self-study. None were workers, farmers, or tradespeople. Mao’s own feeling was that this group as a whole was “somewhat immature,” and showed “childishness in thought and behavior”; some of them were “apt to launch or support causes rashly.” He did not entirely exempt himself from criticism. He knew full well that he was “weak-willed,” he told a friend in January 1921. “I constantly have the wrong attitude and always argue, so that people detest me.” But when Mao convened a lengthy meeting of the Cultural Book Society in that same month and called for a vote on the political options, twelve members, including Mao and Tao Yi, voted for Bolshevism, one voted for moderate (Russell-style) Communism, and two for parliamentary democracy. Tao Yi also spoke out for concentrating on ideological work within the army, rather than putting faith in education throughout the society as a whole. (Yang Kaihui is not listed among the attendants at the meetings.)
    Even as the first Comintern agents were exploring the possibilities in China, Lenin convened the Second Congress of the Comintern. Despite serious differences over how to interpret the opportunity in China and what organizational forms would be most suitable, this congress decided to send the Dutch Communist Sneevliet (who operated under the pseudonym “Maring”) to China—specifically to Shanghai—to investigate the situation there and elsewhere in Asia. This decision was finalized in August 1920, but due to various organizational problems Maring left for China only in April 1921. His instructions were confusing and contradictory. Following current Comintern policies, he should encourage Chinese Communists to unite with the bourgeoisie in the interests of the national revolution, while at the same time leaving room for the development of a strong proletarian organization that could eventually overthrow the bourgeoisie. For his entire trip to China, Maring was given £4,000 sterling, of which he used £2,000 immediately for his wife’s expenses and some other political obligations. He also lost £600 of his funds in a bank failure, and was thus left with funding of exactly £1,400 for the entire revolutionary journey. Taking a train from Berlin in April 1921, he obtained his visa for China in Vienna, and traveled from there to Venice, where a passenger ship was readying to sail for China.
    Maring reached Shanghai on June 3 and took rooms with a Russian landlady in the International Settlement. Within a few days he made contact with another Comintern representative, Nikolsky, who had been sent from Irkutsk. Though the details are obscure, it appears that Maring coordinated with Communists from the Shanghai and Beijing small groups, who had already begun to plan a Communist conference, and that letters were sent to Communists in the other four cities where small groups had formed, as well as to a Communist living in Japan and one with no fixed affiliation living in Hong Kong. Thus it was, after various delays and mishaps, that fifteen representatives (thirteen Chinese and the two Comintern representatives) convened in Shanghai for the First Congress of the Chinese Communist Party on July 23, 1921. The fifteen were there to represent the complete roster of fifty-three Chinese Communists who were then affiliated with the Party in some form or other.
    Mao was one of the two invited to come from the Changsha small group, a fact that was to prove crucial to his subsequent revolutionary career. But why was he chosen? There is no absolutely clear answer. As we have seen, Mao knew the Party founders, Li Dazhao and Chen Duxiu, at least fairly well, and had made a name for himself in Changsha educational