Mo Xiong (; 1891 – February 1980) was born in Yingde, Guangdong and was a close friend of Sun Yat-sen, and member of Tongmenghui, a member of Kuomintang, and a communist sympathizer / agent. He served high ranking positions in both the Republic of China and the People's Republic of China. In both Mao Zedong's and Zhou Enlai's words, Mo Xiong had saved the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese revolution in 1934 when he provided important intelligence on Chiang Kai-shek's military plans, and thus saved the Communists from total annihilation.
Early work with the Communist Party
Mo Xiong was originally an ardent revolutionary, following the footsteps of Sun Yat-sen in his struggle to overthrow the Qing dynasty, such as participating in the Huanghuagang Uprising. Later, he distinguished himself in the National Protection War and campaigns against Chen Jiongming, and as well as the Northern Expedition, steadily rising from regimental commander to brigade commander, and finally to divisional commander. However, Mo became disillusioned with the Kuomintang after witnessing its corruption and power struggles and left the army. With the help of T. V. Soong, in 1930 he managed to get a job in the finance ministry in Shanghai. Due to his leftist nationalistic stand within the Kuomintang, he was sympathetic toward communists. After an accidental contact with Liu Yafo (刘亚佛), a Communist, Mo kept his contact with the Communist Party and eventually asked to join the Chinese Communist Party. The Chinese Communists, however, believing that Mo would be much more valuable if he remained as a non-Communist member, convinced him to give up the idea.
Rise in status
Under the recommendation of Chiang Kai-shek's secretary-general Yang Yongtai (杨永泰), who was unaware of Mo's communist activities, Mo Xiong steadily excelled in Chiang Kai-shek's regime, eventually becoming an important member within Chiang Kai-shek's general headquarter in the early 1930s and by January 1934, Chiang Kai-shek named him as the administrator and commander-in-chief of the fourth special district in northern Jiangxi. Mo used his position to plant more than a dozen communist agents within Chiang's general headquarters, including Liu Yafo (刘亚佛), the Communist who first introduced him to the Chinese Communist Party, Xiang Yunian (项与年) his communist handler, whom he hired as his secretary, and Lu Zhiying (卢志英), the Communist agent who was the acting head of the spy ring.
Transfer of intelligence
After the successful siege of the adjacent regions of Ruijin, the capital of the Jiangxi Soviet, and occupying most of the Jiangxi Soviet, Chiang was confident that he would finish off the Communists in one final decisive strike. In late September 1934, Chiang distributed his top secret plan named "Iron Bucket Plan" to everyone in his general headquarters at Lushan, which detailed the final push to totally annihilate the Communist force. The plan was to build 30 blockade lines supported by 30 barbed wire fences, most of them electric, in the region around Ruijin, to starve the Communists. In addition, more than 1,000 trucks were to be mobilized to form a rapid reaction force in order to prevent any communist breakout. Realizing the certain annihilation of the Communists, Mo Xiong handed the document weighing several kilograms to his communist handler the same night he received it, risking not only his own life, but that of his entire family.