North China at War: The Social Ecology of Revolution, 1937-1945 0847699382, 9780847699384

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North China at War

North China at War The Social Ecology o f Revolution 1937-1945

Edited by Feng Chongyi and David S. G. Goodman

W orld S o cia l C h a n g e

R O W M A N & LITTLEFI ELD P U B L I S H E R S , INC.

Lanham • Boulder • New York • Oxford

R O W M A N & LITTLEFIELD PU BLISHERS, INC.

Published in the United States of America by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 4720 Boston Way, Lanham, Maryland 20706 http://www.rowmanlittleField.com 12 Hid’s Copse Road Cumnor Hill, Oxford 0X2 9JJ, England Copyright © 2000 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available lib rary o f C ongress C ataloging-in-Publication Data

North China at war : the social ecology of revolution, 1937-1945 / edited by Feng Chongyi and David S. G. Goodman p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-8476-9938-2 (alk. paper)—ISBN 0-8476-9939-0 (paper : alk. paper) 1. Sino-Japanese conflict, 1937-1945—Social aspects—China. 2. Social ecology—China—History—20th century. 3- Communism—China—History—20th century I. Title: Social ecology of revolution, 1937-1945. II. Feng, Ch'ung-i, 1961-111. Goodman, David S. G. DS777.533.S62 N67 2000 940.53' 1'09511—dc21

99-08942

Printed in the United States of America The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

C ontents List of Illustrations Preface Terminology and Language: A Note to the Reader Maps of North China Border Regions and Base Areas Introduction: Explaining Revolution Feng Chongyi a n d Damd S. G. Goodman 1

2

3

4

5

6

vii ix xi xv 1

Getting Peasants Organized: Village Organizations and the Party-State in the Shaan Gan Ning Border Region,1934-1945 Pauline Keating

25

Revolution in a “Feudal Fortress”: Yangjiagou, Mizhi County, Shaanxi, 1937-1948 Joseph W. Esherick

59

Social Reform and Value Change in the Jin Cha Ji AntiJapanese Border Region Wei Hongyun

93

Social and Political Change in the Villages of the Taihang Anti-Japanese Base Area Tian Youru

115

Resistance and Revolution, Religion, and Rebellion: The Sixth Trigram Movement in Licheng, 1939-1942 David S. G. Goodman

131

The Making of the Jin Sui Base Area: Peasants, Intellectuals, and Democratization Feng Chongyi

155

v

Contents

VI

7

8

The Survival of the Shandong Base Area, 1937-1943: External Influences and Internal Conflicts Elise A. DeVido

173

Comparative Perspectives: North and Central China in the Anti-Japanese Resistance Gregor Benton

189

Index About the Contributors

225 235

Illustrations Table 3.1 Land Transactions in 24 Villages, Beiyue Base Area, 1937-1943 ' Table 3 2 Changes in Landholding in 42 Villages in Jin Cha Ji Guerrilla Areas, 1937-1942 Table 3 3 Changes in Landholding in 24 Villages in Jin Cha Ji Stable Areas, 1937-1942 Table 4.1 Rent Rates in the Taihang Region Table 4.2 Survey of Change in Landownership: Rent and Interest Reduction Campaign, 1942 Table 5.1 Comparative Social Structure of CCP and Sixth Trigram Movement Members, Licheng County, Shanxi, 1941 Table 5.2 Comparative Age Structure of CCP and Sixth Trigram Movement Members, Licheng County, Shanxi, 1941 Table 5.3 Women Members of the Sixth Trigram Movement, Age and Social Class

103 105 105 116 127 138 140 141

Preface The War of Resistance to Japan of 1937-1945 was a defining moment in the development of Eást Asia not simply because of its conflict but also because its progress led directly to the victory of the Chinese Communist Party in 1949, the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, the retreat of the Chinese Nationalist Party to Taiwan, and indirectly to the economic and po­ litical consequences of those events. Necessarily, the history of the War of Resistance to Japan has been and remains highly ideologized: seen through the filters of the civil war between Nationalists and Communists, the wider Cold War of which the Chinese conflict rapidly became part, and the politics within the Chinese Communist Party. Important as those perspectives may be, they can also obscure the dynamics of social change. In the 1990s the climate for scholarship began to change dramatically, both because there was greater access to a wider range of sources and also because there was greater and closer interaction among scholars globally, betw een those inside and those outside the People’s Republic of China researching the War of Resistance to Japan. This volume resulted from precisely that kind of cooperative project building on the latest re­ search into the dynamics of social change at the local level during the War of Resistance to Japan. Participants were invited to a workshop at the University of Technology, Sydney, in May 1996 attended by scholars from the People’s Republic of China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand. The full proceedings of the workshop have already been published in Chinese as Huabei Kang Ri genjudi y u shehui shengtai (The social ecology of base areas in North China during the War of Resistance to Japan) (Beijing: Dangdai Zhongguo chubanshe, 1998). This volume presents a selection of those studies sub­ stantially revised for publication in English. The workshop received financial support from the Chiang Chingkuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange, and its assistance is grateix

X

Preface

fully acknowledged. Chapter 2 by Joseph Esherick and chapter 5 by David Goodman have already appeared in somewhat different editions in the pages of Modem China, and the editors of that journal are hereby acknowl­ edged for granting permission to proceed with the publication of them in this volume. Many people have contributed to the success of this project—both the workshop and the resultant publications—and their involvement is gratefully acknowledged, especially the staff of the Institute for International Studies at the University of Technology, Sydney. All those who presented papers at the initial workshop gave generously of their efforts, experience, and time. Chen Yung-fa in particular provided considerable support and assistance to this whole project, as did Mark Seiden in its later stages.

Term inology and Language: A N ote to the Reader Some introductory explanation of essential technicalities is perhaps neces­ sary for those less familiar with the detailed history of the Chinese Commu­ nist Party (CCP),in North China during the War of Resistance to Japan. In general, the standard pinyin transliteration system in use in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) for rendering Chinese characters into Latin letters has been employed in this volume. The exception is Chiang Kai-shek, leader of the Nationalist Party, who is much better known in this rendering than as Jiang Jieshi. The use of the name “Beiping” to refer to the city now known as Beijing (Peking) is no mistake. At that time, Beijing was not the capital of China (not even the Northern Capital, which is the meaning of “Beijing”) and was generally known by an earlier name, “Beiping.” There is inherent confusion about terms such as “border region,” “border area,” and “base area.” In general, border regions were larger than both bor­ der areas and base areas, and they usually included a number of border areas (where the CCP was engaged in regular guerrilla conflict with the Japanese) and base areas (where the CCP was somewhat more secure). However, be­ cause of both the CCP’s expansion during the War of Resistance to Japan and the conditions of guerrilla warfare, the terms are used interchangeably for the most part within the People’s Republic of China. Base areas were estab­ lished, merged, became border regions, and fluctuated wildly in size during the course of the War of Resistance to Japan. To try to maximize clarity of ex­ planation in this volume, contributors use the term “base area” exclusively for the smaller units of CCP-led organization within the border regions. The border regions were so called because they were located on the bor­ ders of influence of the CCP and the Japanese. To add to the confusion, many were also located on the borders of two or more provinces. Thus the ShanxiChahar-Hebei Border Region was located on the borders of those three xi

xii

Terminology and Language

provinces but did not cover all three provinces completely. The names of the border regions customarily refer to the provinces by their classical single-char­ acter descriptors. Thus the Shanxi-Hebei-Shandong-Henan Border Region is often referred to as the Jin Ji Lu Yu Border Region. Shanxi’s single character de­ scriptor is Jin, Hebei’s is Ji, Shandong’s is Lu, Henan’s is Yu, Chahar was Cha, Suiyuan was Sui, Shaanxi is Shaan, Gansu is Gan, Ningxia is Ning. The border regions of North China were known accordingly as Shaan Gan Ning (ShaanxiGansu-Ningxia), JinJi Lu Yu (Shanxi-Hebei-Shandong-Henan), Jin Sui (ShanxiSuiyuan), and Jin Cha Ji (Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei). The CCP armed forces in North China during the War of Resistance to Japan were known as the Eighth Route Army because of the arrangements initially made under the second united front with the Nationalist Party. In that agreement the CCP’s troops in North China were renamed and renum­ bered as three divisions—the 115th, the 120th, and the 129th—of the Eighth Route Army of the national armed forces. The Nationalist Party High Command renumbered the armed forces before the end of 1937, but by that stage the Eighth Route Army had distributed itself so successfully throughout North China that the name stuck in the popular consciousness. The 115th Division was the original main force in the Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei (Jin Cha Ji) Border Region; the 120th Division the original main force in the Shanxi-Suiyuan Border Region (Jin Sui), and the 129th Division the original main force in the Shanxi-Hebei-Shandong-Henan Border Region (Jin Ji Lu Yu) and all points east. In Shanxi, troops of the New Army fought alongside the soldiers of the Eighth Route Army, and the organization of the Sacrifice League worked closely with that of the CCP. The Sacrifice League was the Shanxi Sacrifice League for National Salvation (Shanxi xisheng jiuguo tongmenghui, more usually referred to in Chinese as the Ximenghui). The prewar warlord of Shanxi was Yan Xishan, who initially was more wary of Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalist Party than he was of the CCP despite a nominal commitment to the Nationalist Party regime. Yan allowed CCP organizers to establish and develop the Sacrifice League in Shanxi as preparation for a Japanese inva­ sion, and one of its institutions was the New Army. Eventually, when the al­ liance between Yan Xishan and the CCP broke down (at the end of 1939), the Sacrifice League, along with most of its organization and membership, was subsumed into the CCP and its activities. The close working relations among the CCP, other parties, movements, and people were generally subsumed under the CCP’s conceptualization of the united front. This notion of broad popular support was not just a tactic of war to provide a united front of oppositon to Japan, though the associa­ tion with nationalism clearly aided its development. The CCP has long oper­ ated united front organizations designed to mobilize broader popular sup­ port for the Communist movement and government from nonmembers.

Terminology an d Language

xiii

One of the main tasks for the troops of the Eighth Route Army or CCP ac­ tivists w hen they first moved into the villages of North China was to restore social order, which, though it had not always collapsed with Japanese inva­ sion, had certainly been severely challenged. The chapters in this volume make mention of two aspects of the more traditional order, though they were not operational in the base areas and border regions of North China during the war. The baojia system was the traditional administrative system orga­ nized for control and extraction. Ten households were grouped in a jia and ten jia in each bao. It was emphasized as a control mechanism by the Na­ tionalist Party in and after 1932, but it dates back to the Song dynasty. At heart it was a mutual surveillance and security system in which all members of a jia held mutual responsibility. The lijia system was a development of the baojia system during the Ming dynasty that focused more on taxation. The peasantry were organized in registered groups of 110 households. Each year ten households hçaded by one leading household took responsibility for su­ perintending tax payments and labor services. One of the major political reforms introduced by the CCP was village elec­ tions, in which not only village councils but also village heads and deputy heads were directly elected. It is not usual to find these two reforms being introduced simultaneously. In most base areas there was a time when village councils were directly elected, but village heads were either indirectly elected by the village council or appointed by some outside body, such as the CCP or Eighth Route Army. When direct elections were introduced, they were based on the “three-thirds principle,” which limited CCP domination of elected positions to a third, with the other two thirds divided between “pro­ gressive” and “neutral” elements. The “three-thirds principle” often became confused in implementation and was, presumably, deliberately ambiguous in any case. While this equation guaranteed the CCP the kind of political sup­ port it sought, it also, as Tian Youru (in his discussion of political change in the villages of the Taihang Base Area) makes clear, introduced a more open political system than had existed before. For those unfamiliar with the history of the War of Resistance to Japan, ref­ erence to “mopping-up” activities by the Japanese forces may seem a little strange. Japanese strength in North China, even at its height, was largely cen­ tered on lines of communication—railway lines for the most part—and the larger towns and cities. CCP strength was to be found in the rural areas away from Japanese concentrations, but in guerrilla fashion they would repeatedly make forays against Japanese garrisons and related activities. The Japanese response was to try in various ways to keep the CCP penned into their areas of influence, sometimes even through physical blockades, and then to send troops to sweep through, “mopping up.” The contributors to this volume have avoided using Chinese terms as far as possible. However, five terms have been rendered in their original Chinese.

xiv

Terminology a n d Language

Four are traditional measures: the shang, the mu, the sheng, and thè li. A shang is a North Shaanxi land measure, equal to about three m u or half an acre. A mu is an area of land equivalent to 0.067 hectare or 0.1647 acre. The sheng is a Northwest Shanxi measure of grain. A li is a traditional Chinese mile, whose dis­ tance varies with the difficulty of travel but is usually approximated as half a kilometer or just under a third of a mile. The fifth term referred to in Chinese is the yangge. The yangge is, or more accurately has become, a folk art form of music, dance, and drama much praised and publicized by twentieth-century political and social reformers in North China, including Mao Zedong and the CCP. The development of the yangge is a prime example of the New Culture Movement discussed by Wei Hongyun in his chapter on Jin Cha Ji. Its origins are probably related to the South China “flower-drum” genres.

Shaan Gan N ing Border Region

Jin Cha Ji Border Region

Jin Ji Lu Yu Border Region

SUIYUAN

Jin Sui Border Region

JIn Cha Jl Border Region

BOHAI SEA

Rongcheng •hldao

Shandong Base Area

Margin of Base Area

Introduction Explaining Revolution Feng Chongyi and David S. G. Goodman

During the mid-1930s, when Japan had occupied the Northeast of what is currently the People’s Republic of China (PRC) but before the Japanese armies had invaded the rest of the country, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was very much outside mainstream national politics. Surrounded in its major redoubt in Southeast China by the forces of the Nationalist Party, the forces of the CCP became even more marginalized and dispersed, with the headquarters units retreating first to the west and then to North China. The Sino-Japanese War, from 1937 to 1945, saw a massive change in the CCP’s fortunes, for by the mid-1940s it was well on its way to achieving the estab­ lishment of national government that came in 1949. The Sino-Japanese War of 1937-1945, more usually known within China as the War of Resistance to Japan, is commonly regarded as a turning point in the history of contemporary China. However, acknowledging its importance has not been the same thing as providing an explanation of the revolution that it engendered. While the War of Resistance is usually held to have been seminal for the development of communism in China, there continues to be considerable disagreement about the precise content of that contribution. Explaining social change in China and particularly the CCP’s mobilization of large parts of the population during the War of Resistance has been prob­ lematic because the available historical evidence was extremely limited until the late 1980s and 1990s. Archives of contemporary materials were not gen­ erally open to Chinese scholars, let alone to international researchers for whom access to China in general was in any case severely restricted. Both domestic and international politics have inevitably intervened in the ex­ planation of revolution. The War of Resistance to Japan and the CCP’s experi1

2

Feng Chongyi and David S. G. Goodman

ence at that time are an essential part of the legitimacy of the People’s Repub­ lic of China. Within China interpretations of CCP success during the Sino-Japanese War and personal relations developed at that time have additionally been a necessary part of the later evolution of internal CCP politics. Particularly during the Cultural Revolution there was eveiy encouragement for Chinese scholars to conform to the official history of the War of Resistance, and certainly not to seek alternative evidence. Internationally, the interpretation of CCP success and the roots of Communism in China were inevitably affected by the ideological di­ vides of the Cold War era. The intellectual climate for understanding social and political change dur­ ing the War of Resistance to Japan has changed dramatically during the 1990s, though it has undoubtedly remained politicized. International schol­ ars had started to challenge prevailing orthodoxies during the 1970s. How­ ever, it was not until later that the greater access to materials and scholars generated by political change within China during the 1980s combined with wider international intellectual trends to provide the opportunities for fun­ damental reinterpretations. Change started in the late 1970s after Mao’s death, when a reform leadership headed by Deng Xiaoping and anxious to ensure its legitimacy perceived a need to reconstruct the more varied history of the CCP. Starting in the early 1980s, the rediscovery of a wider CCP history beyond that of Mao Zedong re­ sulted in the opening of CCP and government archives, the publication of their contents, and the development of a more inclusive history. Within China, analy­ sis of the War of Resistance may not have led to more critical history, but it has certainly developed complementary and sometimes even competing narra­ tives. It is now recognized that different parts of China played significant roles in the political changes that occurred at that time, and there is a greater official acceptance of the inherent variabilities of those processes.1 Internationally, the wider availability of sources and materials within the PRC has significantly increased the opportunities for research, particularly as the reform agenda has also bolstered cooperation between Chinese and in­ ternational scholars. These opportunities, together in the 1990s with the de­ mise of earlier ideological certainties, have encouraged new approaches to the explanation of the CCP’s revolution. For historians outside China there has been an increasing awareness that seeking to explain the CCP revolution might more usefully start with specific case studies rather than general the­ ory;2 in any case the consideration of revolution might go beyond its tradi­ tional boundaries of conflict between parties or classes.3 This volume is the result of a project that has brought together scholars from both inside and outside the People’s Republic of China. The project has built on new opportunities for analysis presented by political change within the PRC in the 1980s and 1990s, particularly as access to sources of informa­ tion and scholarly exchange became more readily available. The project con-

Introduction

3

tributes to the further understanding of the dynamics of social and political change during the late 1930s and 1940s through its focus on the social ecol­ ogy of revolution on the North China battlefront. Rather than seek to develop an overarching explanation of social and political change during the War of Resistance, it adopts a more local view concentrating on the specificities of different social and political characteristics that were significant in different places, and their consequences.

THE CCP AND THE WAR OF RESISTANCE TO JAPAN

The history of North China during the War of Resistance to Japan has been central to China’s politics ever since the defeat of Japan, not least because it is essential to the legitimacy of the PRC and is embedded within the CCP’s right to rule. Its salience may have declined somewhat since the death of Deng Xiaoping in Fébruary 1997, particularly given that Deng first made his particular mark on the development of the CCP during the war, when he de­ veloped relationships that were to ensure his later political safety and rise to supreme influence.4 Nonetheless, CCP claims to the leadership of China re­ main grounded in North China during the War of Resistance, and for most of the time since 1945, specific interpretations of Communist mobilization in North China during the war have been at the heart of the construction of po­ litical orthodoxy and correctness. During the civil war between the CCP and the Nationalist Party during the late 1940s, the CCP’s earlier popular support in the anti-Japanese resistance movement, particularly the base areas and border regions of North China, re­ inforced its claims to national and nationalist legitimacy. After the PRC was established in 1949, and as the CCP attempted to create socialism in the early 1930s, the base areas of North China provided it with not only the political foundations for successful revolution but also its social roots. The collectivist social and economic reform programs and the techniques of mass mobiliza­ tion designed to ensure their implementation, which had been employed in the earlier base areas, were seen as the blueprint for the future. At the same time, an overwhelming majority of the cadres of the new regime—those at the middle and lower reaches of management, not the highest leadership levels—had first been recruited to the Communist revolution during the War of Resistance to Japan.5 For Mao Zedong, commitment to his specific interpretation of the signifi­ cance of Yan’an—the headquarters of the Chinese Communist Party, the cen­ ter of the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region, and his location during the War of Resistance to Japan—became the touchstone of politics after the mid1950s and contributed significantly to his belief in the need for the Cultural Revolution. Through the late 1950s and early 1960s Mao equated his model

4

Feng Chongyi an d David S. G. Goodman

for China’s development with the Yan’an experience, implying^hat any other views were subverting the CCP’s traditions and indeed the legitimacy of the regime. In seeking to launch the Cultural Revolution and attack colleagues within the leadership, he repeatedly resorted to the mythology and symbol­ ism of Yan’an, emphasizing its struggle, self-sacrifice, hardship, guerrilla ac­ tivity, and mass mobilization.6 During the last twenty years of Mao Zedong’s life, when he was at his most utopian, the CCP generally articulated a fairly one-dimensional view of North China during the War of Resistance to Japan. It attributed success in 1949 and victory in the civil war to the roots laid during the War of Resistance to Japan, but in the process it appeared to regard North China as the sole theater of ac­ tion of anti-Japanese resistance of any real importance. Even within that limita­ tion, Yan’an and the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region, with Mao Zedong at the center, were privileged. Very little was written about the War of Resistance outside North China or indeed about the other base areas or border regions of North China.7 In the process attention not only focused on Yan’an, but Yan’an became a metaphor for the whole Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region. Mao himself had a somewhat ambiguous and ingenuous approach to de­ scription of the War of Resistance, often acknowledging the plurality of base areas but then assuming that they all shared the Yan’an experience.8 Cer­ tainly during the 1960s and 1970s Yan’an became a very powerful symbol that linked the heroic resistance of the pre-1949 era with Mao, though this had not been the case during the war. With Mao’s death in 1976 and the in­ troduction of reform by Deng Xiaoping, Chen Yun, and others—based ex­ plicitly on the rejection of the politics of the Cultural Revolution—it was in­ evitable that the history of North China during the War of Resistance to Japan would continue to be important and would become even more complex. In generational terms many, though by no means all, of those who had been removed from office during the Cultural Revolution for their alleged opposition to Mao Zedong had first been recruited to the leadership of the CCP in North China during the War of Resistance to Japan. Deng Xiaoping is the most obvious example. Having served in minor positions in the CCP be­ fore the war, after 1937 he gained seniority rapidly, joining the Central Committee of the CCP for the first time at the Seventh Congress in 1945. These were cadres who on the whole, unlike Deng, had not been appointed to the Central Committee of the CCP until its Eighth Congress in 1956. Unlike their colleagues who had joined the Seventh Central Committee, they were considerably more likely to have been victims of the Cultural Revolution.9 The introduction of reform required not only the reversal of the politics of Cultural Revolution but also the restoration of its victims in the CCP, both liter­ ally and historically. Between 1978 and 1985 these formerly displaced cadres were first rehabilitated” and then retired, having ensured what they would re­ gard as a more orderly political future both for China and for themselves, and

Introduction

5

in the process strengthening the leadership position of Deng Xiaoping and his supporters.10 For the majority of cadres at this time the period of the War of Resistance to Japan seemed to have been a golden age in the development of the CCP. During the late 1970s and early 1980s the earlier operational principles of the CCP during the war, particularly its more relaxed internal regime, were regarded retrospectively as a model for the future of political development. So too were the close relationships with society described by the CCP during the War of Resistance to Japan, which were regarded as setting the foundation for the CCP’s subsequent claim to legitimacy. The rejection of the politics of Cultural Revolution and the attempt to return to the principles of an earlier era have necessarily meant that in the PRC the his­ tory of the War of Resistance to Japan, and indeed most earlier periods in the history of the CCP, has undergone substantial revision. The one-dimensional, Mao-centric and Yan’an-dominated interpretation of the War of Resistance to Japan has been drastically revised.11 Despite its obvious centrality to the CCP’s conduct of the War of Resistance, Yan’an was by no means the only border re­ gion, and it could by no means be regarded as typical. The CCP had opened other base areas and border regions throughout North China, in East China, and in South China, all qf which (unlike Yan’an) were behind Japanese lines. Yan’an was much less fluid as a political and military entity in consequence. It was also much larger in land area, smaller in population, and less varied in its social and economic geography, and a higher proportion of its population was involved in politics and administration. Although Yan’an was the CCP’s headquarters, the base areas throughout North and Central China bore the brunt of Japanese and Nationalist Party attack, and the party’s policies and programs were tested in these areas outside Yan’an. The localization of politics, the need to reinforce the CCP’s public image, the desire to “right the wrongs” of the past and to restore the victims of the Mao-dominated era to their place in history together have led to committing considerable resources to the study of the CCP’s past, particularly the differ­ ent aspects of the War of Resistance to Japan, its varied border regions and base areas, and their different experiences. Archives have been opened and their contents published; historians have been put to work, sometimes as part of major state projects, to record previously largely untold aspects of the revolution; and in general greater attention has been paid to local history, with the number of local historians and local history projects mushrooming quite remarkably, at least until economic rationalism started to bite in the early 1990s. In Shanxi, for example, where Deng Xiaoping’s role during the war is al­ most certain to have been a contributory factor in its promotion, study of the Taihang Base Area became a major (and provincially funded) project within the seventh Five Year Plan.12 By the end of the 1980s in Shanxi some 120 local historians had been employed to work on this project and two ambi-

6

Feng Chongyi and David S. G. Goodman

tious publication projects were started. One produced a series of volumes analyzing different (thematically organized) aspects of the base area, each volume containing a selection of relevant contemporary documents;13 the other reproduced an annual selection of CCP documents from the era of the Taihang Base Area.14There were similar developments in other provinces for almost every base area.

RESEARCH ON THE WAR OF RESISTANCE

Western scholarship on the War of Resistance to Japan—published largely in the English language in Europe, North America, and Australia15—has in part developed a life of its own and has in part been influenced by the political environment in the PRC. It could not help but be influenced by PRC politics, which has largely determined the sources that have been available (or not available, as the case has often been). Interpretations of the War of Resistance to Japan have been heavily source dependent, and all of the bestknown and sometimes controversial attempts to provide overarching “grand” theory to explain the revolution of the 1930s and 1940s were neces­ sarily constrained by the difficulties in obtaining primary material, let alone alternative sources of information. Chalmers Johnson’s theory of peasant nationalism, which in many ways can be seen as having established the study of the War of Resistance to Japan as a subdiscipline of China studies, was based largely on Japanese survey data from the war years.16 Mark Selden’s landmark study, “The Yenan Way,” which emphasized the importance of the CCP’s appeal to social and eco­ nomic reform (rather than to peasant nationalism), was based on CCP inter­ nal documents from the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region.17 Tetsuya Kataoka’s account of the CCP’s organizational capacity and abilities was sim­ ilarly based on CCP internal documents, almost all of which dealt with orga­ nizational development in the War of Resistance to Japan.18 Ralph Thaxton’s account of a peasant-led revolution, which resulted from moral outrage at the injustices of a traditional society in decay, drew heavily on fictionalized accounts of what had happened in North China during the War of Resistance that were produced as part of a specific political movement within China during the 1960s.19 These various accounts of revolution were mythologized and to some considerable extent demonized by the wider politics of which they were part. In the rest of the world, particularly the United States and Europe, is­ sues of nationalism, social and economic revolution, and Communist orga­ nization were major topics of debate even when not related to China, and even before the advent of the Cold War. These debates took on a new ur­ gency, especially with the development of the Vietnam War and its after-

Introduction

1

math.20 Discussion has often been polarized on the basis of almost elemen­ tal attitudes—articulated and imputed—to China and communism in general and not around each of those four interpretations of the War of Resistance. Unfortunately, the wider politics tended to essentialize an aspect of each in­ terpretation to the detriment of scholarship. In any case, the monocausality of each of those interpretations is much exaggerated: Seiden, for example, does not discount a nationalist agenda but argues that it cannot be divorced from the CCP’s broader social program; Johnson later wrote that he did not deny the relevance of the CCP’s socioeconomic program.21 Moreover, not every commentator, even at the height of the Cold War, reflected the politi­ cal debate with such obvious imbalance.22 As Chen Yung-fa pointed out in his study of the War of Resistance in East China, although each of these accounts could certainly be criticized in terms of its own arguments, overdependence on sources, and logical infelicities, the es­ sential problem was the search for grand theory.23 Chen derided the “obsession with the search for a single decisive factor in accounting for wartime Communist success,” not least because it masked the different circumstances in different base areas and the varied strategies employed by the CCP. While un­ doubtedly correct, jx was a harsh judgment, not least because of the limitations on access to sources and to China itself until the start of the reform era. Chen Yung-fa’s comments reflect those articulated in the late 1970s by a va­ riety of scholars who had come to focus more widely on the question of rural social and political change in China. This development is often referred to broadly as the emergence of “base area studies,” even though many earlier works, including to some considerable extent Selden’s study of the Yan’an way with its focus on the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Base Area, had prefigured the ap­ proach. Lyman Van Slyke at Stanford University had encouraged research on more specific localities during the War of Resistance.24 Elizabeth Perry pro­ duced a study of the relationship between environment and rebellion that fo­ cused historically on the Huaibei (North Anhui) region during the last half of the nineteenth century and first half of the twentieth and developed ideas about the need for an ecological approach to be applied to the study of social change in China.25 However, the most important intellectual turning point was almost certainly the project organized by Kathleen Hartford and Steven Goldstein that considered a range of CCP base areas over time. It was not limited to base areas in North China or to the War of Resistance.26 The strategy, even before anything like a full range of sources had become available, was to put aside the search for grand theory and concentrate on the processes of change rather than its outcomes in order to develop sounder middle and (eventually) long-range theory. The aim was clearly not to abandon theorizing but rather to approach the search for explanation from the bottom up, recognizing the differential factors and approaches that were significant in different localities and base areas. This is the basis of the

8

Feng Chongyi and David S. G. Goodman

attempt to examine the social ecology of revolution, which isYoncemed to relate local conditions to wider processes of social and political change.27 The less intellectual but probably more necessary organizational factors that make a social ecology of revolution more feasible are the political changes within China since the late 1970s and their consequences. As already noted, these changes have resulted in a recognition within China of the con­ tribution of a range of base areas to CCP success in the War of Resistance, and in the process they have made more detailed research on those base areas possible through access to previously unavailable sources. Until the late 1980s the full range of sources and archives were limited in their availability within the PRC, let alone to international scholars, though by the end of the decade scholars of each of the North China Base Areas had published collec­ tions of documents from the archives, accompanied by new histories.28 At the same time, scholars both in and outside China have cooperated to ensure opportunities for international and Chinese scholars with mutual in­ terests in research on base areas in the War of Resistance to Japan to meet and to discuss those issues. In particular Lyman Van Slyke and Wei Hongyun (Nankai University, Tianjin) took the lead in organizing two conferences in China in 1984 and 1991.29 One result of all these intellectual and practical de­ velopments is that international research on the War of Resistance to Japan has become decidedly more disaggregated, localized, and detailed.

THE SOCIAL ECOLOGY OF REVOLUTION

In the 1990s, scholarship in the English-speaking world on social and po­ litical change during the War of Resistance to Japan has continued to ex­ pand analysis as it has tried to come to terms with the vast am ount of newly released or republished information, as well as access to archives, scholars, and participants. The immediate impact of such scholarship has been rapidly felt with the publication of detailed studies of individual bor­ der regions, base areas, and even localities.30 In the process the history of the War of Resistance has become more detailed across the geographical space of China, and it has also become inherently more contested. The success of the CCP revolution is less automatically accepted, and indeed the meaning of revolution has also become less certain.31 This has been the result in part of increased information, but in part also of the changed international intellectual environment. Earlier ideological certainties have disappeared with both the collapse of Communist party-states in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe since 1989, and the rise of China’s mar­ ket socialism, particularly in the 1990s. In their place have come new channels for academic inquiry based on considerations of social move­ ments, gender, locality, and culture.

Introduction

9

International research during the 1990s, including the chapters in this vol­ ume, has begun to deliver not simply a fuller and more detailed picture of the political revolution that occurred during the War of Resistance but also a considerably more complex account of the social change that occurred at that time. Attempting to generalize from this research may be premature and misleading. It not only goes against the intellectual spirit of the times but may also conflict with the goal of what is being attempted in the following chap­ ters, both in providing detailed local studies of change and in preparing ev­ idence of the patterns of interactions between local conditions and processes of change. Nonetheless, as Gregor Benton points out in the concluding chapter of this volume, although any conclusions must remain tentative, there is still a need to develop middle-range theories for further investiga­ tion, not least to ensure that the larger goals of analysis can continue to be met. From that perspective it is worthwhile to attempt some preliminary ob­ servations about the processes of change generally in North China during the War of Resistance, réflecting the current state of research. A useful starting point is the earlier observation that the CCP’s success in the War of Resistance is no longer taken for granted, or at least not in every location on all occasions. Moreover, as every author in this volume notes (if in various ways), it is widely acknowledged that the CCP’s strategies were extremely fluid, emerging, more often than not, incrementally and experi­ mentally. There were perhaps two independent determinants of this strat­ egy: the local military situation and the requirement of military superiority, and the need to establish CCP presence under Yan’an’s leadership. The im­ portance of local military superiority is almost self-evident but nonetheless hard to understate. Opposition to the CCP—whether Japanese or National­ ist—did not need to be totally eliminated and indeed under many circum­ stances had wider uses, as in the creation of all the border region govern­ ments. However, without an established military presence the CCP was always in danger, as in South Hebei or in Shandong before 1943, of being squeezed out entirely. The CCP’s dramatic expansion in 1938, particularly the first few months ofthat year, created numerous subsequent problems, es­ pecially in ensuring the political reliability of the organization. Across the base areas of North China, 1939 and 1940 saw the start of moves to reassert Yan’an’s leadership of the Communist movement through reorganization and rectification, which sometimes led to conflict between the more local leadership and local activists, as well as with local elites. CCP strategies varied with the military and political situation in each local­ ity, with the different social categories being approached, and with the stage in the development of the War of Resistance. Moreover, as several authors have indicated, these strategies were aimed at different kinds of mobilization. Joseph Esherick in his various studies of the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region has highlighted the difference between the goals of struggle and ex-

10

Feng Chongyi an d David S. G. Goodman

traction. Pauline Keating in her study of Suide and Yanshu !h this volume identifies mobilization for institution building, for war and for community de­ velopment. All the same, studies of these base areas suggest that in general each experienced two distinct phases in its development, the establishment of political institutions preceding the encouragement of social revolution. Perhaps more interestingly, in terms of earlier debates, Wei Hongyun (in his study of the Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Border Region) has even suggested that mobilization for war and mobilization for social reform were not necessarily linked, at least as part of the CCP’s strategy. According to Wei, to some extent the goals of social reform were simply followed for their own sake. These observations are of course comments on the CCP’s intent and not necessarily on the consequences of those strategies. Indeed, the results of CCP strategies may often have been at odds with their intent, not least be­ cause of the complex environment in which they were implemented. Put simply, there may have been conflict between different parts of the CCP’s strategy. The attempt to sustain elements of both stability and change si­ multaneously across a wide range of variables required a substantial ele­ ment of good fortune as well as a sophisticated approach. Balance was everything, and while the degrees of freedom in balance were considerable, in some places and at some times the balance was hardly ever achieved, as in Shandong; occasionally it was misplaced, as in Licheng in 1940-1941 (discussed in chapter 5). In Shanxi before 1940—where there was a poten­ tially fatal conflict constantly looming between the strategy of united front work and CCP participation in Yan Xishan’s Sacrifice League on the one hand and the strategy of separate guerrilla organization and warfare on the other—this balance trod a very fine line. One reason for moving out of bal­ ance is further suggested in some of the studies presented here. Mobiliza­ tion for struggle—against the Japanese, the Nationalist Party, or local elites—was both easier to organize and more effective than mobilization for community development. This general observation overlaps with Esherick’s conclusion that the CCP’s practices were liable to “leftist” excesses because it was easier for the CCP to unite on issues of class structure than on issues of production or extraction. CCP success in North China was extremely contingent under most cir­ cumstances and resistance was rarely far away. This resistance came not only from organized political interests within localities but also from communities reacting against CCP organization. In the research of the 1990s, CCP success appears considerably more coercive than was previously thought to be the case. By contrast with earlier research, there would seem to be a need to in­ crease the emphasis placed on the role of CCP leadership and to decrease the roles ascribed to popular participation and spontaneous action. Indeed, when there was either popular participation or spontaneous action, it often emerged as opposition to the CCP, as the examples of the electoral process

Introduction

11

described in the Taihang Base Area by Tian Youru (chapter 4) and the Licheng uprising (chapter 5) bear witness. Moreover, peasant engagement in social and political change was far from easily achieved. Even when their economic interests were directly involved, peasants seemed reluctant to par­ ticipate without guarantees of permanence. Thus the emerging research on the War of Resistance has highlighted the question of agency. There has been an intense concern with the role of the CCP as the agency of revolution, but this has also been modified by attention to other actors in the political environment. While the peasantry remains central to any analysis, there are both different kinds of peasants and other social classes and categories—as well as other political parties and forces from the Nationalist Party and various warlords to secret societies and reli­ gious groups—whose behavior is important to any understanding of the War of Resistance.32 These observations are reflected in the studies that follow in a number of ways, not least the indication of merchant involvement in Shandong and the organization of religious groups in Licheng. Particularly in Shanxi, elements of the Nationalist Party, local elites, and intellectuals played a major role in the development of the anti-Japanese resistance and o^ the CCP’s base areas through involvement in the Sacrifice League. The Sacrifice League was originally established by the Shanxi warlord, Yan Xishan, with CCP support in 1936. As Feng Chongyi (in his chapter on the Shanxi-Suiyuan Border Region) and Tian Youru (in his account of the developm ent of village politics in the Taihang Base Area) make abundantly clear, the institution of the Sacrifice League made a considerable difference to CCP prospects in Shanxi and its ability to mo­ bilize and gain popular support. However, as Wei Hongyun (in his de­ scription of the Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Border Region) and David Good­ man (in his description of politics in Licheng) observe, that relationship could be a double-edged sword. The relationship between the CCP and the Sacrifice League needed careful management and had the potential to cause difficulties to the CCP as it sought to extend its base of support. Be­ fore 1940, and the split betw een the CCP and Yan Xishan, open CCP ac­ tivity in Shanxi was restricted, and on many occasions senior CCP leaders warned about the need for restraint. This greater sophistication in incorporating the role of local elites, intel­ lectuals, and members of the Nationalist Party into any explanation of the War of Resistance is matched by diversification in the analysis of the peas­ antry. In particular, as several chapters in this volume certainly confirm, at­ tention has been drawn away from the previously popular categories of poor and lower-middle peasants and directed toward the emergence of middle peasants as the drivers of social and political change. Pauline Keating’s study of Yanshu and Suide, Tian Youru’s study of the Taihang Base Area, and Wei Hongyun’s account of the Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Border Region all highlight

12

Feng Chongyi an d David S. G. Goodman

the growth in numbers and wealth of middle peasants during the course of the War of Resistance. The growth in salience of the middle peasants was a function of the land redistribution achieved during the war, to a large extent through the oper­ ation of the market. By increasing the costs of landownership through tax­ ation and reducing the costs of borrowing money or renting land, the CCP was able to effectively encourage landowners and rich peasants to de­ crease their landholdings. These holdings were then purchased by middle and poor peasants. The result was increasing social equality during the War of Resistance and less potential for class conflict—a process characterized elsewhere in a recent study of a village in the Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Border Region as a “silent revolution.”33 However, care must be taken in analyzing the phenomenon of middle peasant dominance; there were differences be­ tween those who had been middle peasants at the outbreak of war and those who only became middle peasants through the “silent revolution.” Moreover, the latter category included both those who had risen during the war to become middle peasants and those who were former but now dé­ classé landlords and rich peasants.34 The scale of information and scholarship on the War of Resistance to Japan has expanded dramatically during the 1990s. This expansion does not nec­ essarily negate the earlier long-term goal of creating theory from more spe­ cific studies, though it almost certainly will complicate that process. On the other hand, it certainly reinforces the importance of examining the social ecology of revolution across the CCP’s different border regions and base areas in attempting to interpret the War of Resistance to Japan, to explain the roots of the CCP’s eventual success, and to describe the even wider processes of social change in China of which these events were part.

THE BORDER REGIONSAND BASE AREAS OF NORTH CHINA

This volume and the workshop that preceded it are part of the process of ex­ tending the social ecology of revolution: to understand the different social and economic conditions that applied in and across the base areas of North China and how the CCP responded to and interacted with those varied en­ vironments. It concentrates on North China not out of any desire to belittle or ignore the CCP’s efforts at revolution elsewhere but simply out of a recog­ nition that had the CCP’s exerience in North China during 1937-1945 been different, then so too would later politics. The project has certainly been made possible through the extent of scholarship already generated on North China during the War of Resistance, both inside the PRC and internationally. The chapters in this book were all first presented at the workshop on Base Areas of North China during the Sino-Japanese War: Social Change and

Introduction

13

Political Mobilization, held at the University of Technology, Sydney, in May 1996. In order to encourage the disaggregated analysis of the various processes of social change, the workshop, like this volume, was organized by border region, the territorially largest area of CCP activity in North China during the War of Resistance to Japan. Pauline Keating and Joseph Esherick write on the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region, Wei Hongyun on the Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Border Region, Tian Youru and David S. G. Goodman on the Shanxi-Hebei-Shandong-Henan Border Region, Feng Chongyi on the Shanxi-Suiyuan Border Region, and Elise DeVido on Shandong. Gregor Benton attended the workshop as rapporteur and wrote the conclusion, which draws comparisons between the North and Central China experience of the CCP during the War of Resistance to Japan, in the process attempting a preliminary characterization of the social ecology of revolution in North as well as Central China. The studies presented here of different aspects of the social ecology of revolution indicate not only the roots of the CCP’s eventual success but also the difficulties and problems it faced in that process. During the era of Mao-dominated politics from the Great Leap Forward to his death (1957-1976), CCÇ success was often appreciated as though it were some­ how something magical or at least something achieved without agency. Once outlined, Chairman Mao’s great strategic plan was assured of success, not least because of Mao’s own virtue. Perhaps the most important aspects of the revision of history that have taken place in the post-Mao era are that the agency of social and political change is more clearly revealed, as well as the process. At the local level in particular, leadership and organization are highlighted as having been considerably more important than charisma. As Keating and Esherick highlight (in their examinations of different localities in the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region), the CCP’s mobilization of local popu­ lations and their implementation of policies of social and economic reform fre­ quently met resistance and sometimes did not happen. Yet the CCP was not derailed by these problems; indeed, throughout the War of Resistance to Japan in North China it demonstrated a formidable capacity to learn from reverses as well as from achievements. This organizational capacity was particularly im­ pressive because of the variety of social, economic, and political conditions to be found in each of the border regions and base areas of North China. The Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region Although the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region was not, strictly speaking, on the front line of resistance to Japan—there were, for example, no attempts by the Japanese forces in North China to invade—it is always re­ garded as the leading border region of the War of Resistance to Japan

14

Feng Chongyi an d David S. G. Goodman

because its capital at Yan’an was the CCP’s headquarters throughout this pe­ riod. The CCP forces that established all the remaining border regions and base areas of the War of Resistance moved out of what later became the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region at the start of war and, crossing the Yellow River, took up positions on Shanxi’s borders further to the north and west. The Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region, and particularly Yan’an, was the political hub of the war effort and CCP organization. CCP political and military leaders returned there for their briefings and debriefings, and Yan’an contained a full panoply of government and political institutions, in­ cluding cadre training programs and agencies of cultural construction. In particular the Lu Xun Academy of the Arts and the Central Party School, which were to exert long-term influence well after the end of the war, were both located here as national training centers. As already noted, the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region was far from typical in social, economic, political, and military terms from the other bor­ der regions and base areas of North China, which was precisely one most im­ portant explanation of its significance as the national headquarters of the CCP. It was far from the front line of fighting with Japan and, while it shared economic hardship, did not have the difficulties of mobilization in the face of attack experienced elsewhere. Unlike other later border regions, which varied considerably, the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region was fairly homogeneous socially and economically. One reason for these characteris­ tics was that the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region contained no cities and few towns.35 All the same, as the chapters by both Keating and Esherick in this volume indicate, there were differences within the border region, and there were localities in which CCP rule was not necessarily secure. The Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Border Region The Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Border Region is usually regarded as the second most important of the border regions, largely because it was the first to for­ mally establish a border region government, and it remained the only border region government officially recognized by the Nationalist government. But it was also large and long-lasting, and there is evidence that its program was ambitious. The three border regions located in and around Shanxi were all formed by divisions of the Eighth Route Army, which moved east from Yanan at the start of the War of Resistance. The Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Border Region emerged from the activities of the 115th Division of the Eighth Route Army that moved into the extremely mountainous area of Northeast Shanxi and West Hebei. Throughout the War of Resistance the Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Border Region both benefited and suffered from its proximity to Beijing (then known as Beiping), which it eventually came to surround. Its organization

Introduction

15

was particularly strengthened by students, intellectuals, and administrators escaping Beiping as the Japanese occupation took hold. However, at the same time the Japanese presence throughout the region brought the CCP into almost constant conflict, which was not always the case in parts of some other North China border regions. Base areas were difficult to establish and more difficult to maintain, and much of the region remained contested guer­ rilla territory to the end of the war. The western and mountainous parts of the Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Border Region were the first areas developed by the CCP. The Beiyue Base Area was the original part of the border region, centered on Fuping in Hebei, Wutai in Shanxi, and Jiyuan in Chahar. Later base areas were developed on the North China plain to the east (Pingdong) and south (Pingzhong) of Beiping. The contingent nature of CCP organizational presence and its need for popular strength emphasized the united front aspects of the border region’s strategy, and indeed the institution of a border region government was explicitly for­ mulated in that context. On the Shanxi side of the base area, the Sacrifice League—established by the Shanxi warlord Yan Xishan with CCP assistance in 1936 to mobilize political and military resistance to Japan regardless of ideology—was çxtremely active under its Wutai-based leader, Song Shaowen, in the development of the border region. The development of the institutions of a border region government in the Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Border Region highlights one of its more important roles in the emergence of Communist revolution in North China. Many of the practical policies that were later disseminated to other parts of Communist North China during the War of Resistance to Japan first emerged from ex­ periments in the Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Border Region.36 The Shanxi-Hebei-Shandong-Henan Border Region The Shanxi-Hebei-Shandong-Henan Border Region was the most politi­ cally and socially complex of the North China border regions during the War of Resistance to Japan. Indeed it is more than a little misleading to regard it as a single administrative unit when it was actually a federation, the con­ stituent parts of which were in many ways more significant throughout the war. Communications among its four constituent base areas-—the Taihang, South Hebei, Taiyue, and Hebei-Shandong-Henan Base Areas—were always difficult. Even at the point of formation of the Shanxi-Hebei-ShandongHenan Border Region, it was far from clear that the CCP’s Shandong-based activities (the Hebei-Shandong-Henan Base Area) were to be part of the new organization: up until a few days before its launch the border region had only been referred to as the Shanxi-Hebei-Henan Border Region. Similarly, though the border region government attempted to act in unison throughout the war, the Border Region Assembly could only meet in sections. In part this sepa-

16

Feng Chongyi an d David S. G. Goodman

ration was a function of size and terrain—the area of the border region was considerable, with successive mountain ranges in the west and the open North China Plain in the east—and in part a function of the Japanese forces’ program of pacification, which attempted to surround the CCP base areas from the former’s outposts along the major lines of communication, espe­ cially the railway lines. The unity of the Shanxi-Hebei-Shandong-Henan Border Region was pro­ vided by the 129th Division of the Eighth Route Army. Having marched along the Xi’an-Shijiazhuang Railway at the start of the war, it turned south into the Taihang Mountains when it reached Pingding. At the start of the war the 6,000 men in the 129th Division made it the largest of the three divisions of the Eighth Route Army. One reason for committing troops to the Taihang area was that it had been planned in advance as a center of CCP activity. In addition to the 129th Division, the headquarters of the Eighth Route Army and later the North China Bureau of the CCP were located within reach of each other within the Taihang Base Area. CCP planning aimed to develop its own organizations but substantially, as in the Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Border Region, CCP activities were conceived within the wider context of a broad united front of resistance to Japan. CCP-led antiJapanese civilian mobilization activities in Southwest Hebei combined with the advancing troops of the 129th Division in the north of the Taihang area. Rail­ way and coal mine unions and workers were mobilized to support CCP cadres and forces, and the CCP was particularly well organized along the Shijiazhuang to Handan section of the Beiping-Wuhan Railway. CCP cadres were active well in advance of both Japanese occupation and the advent of troops from the 129th Division in building oiganizational bases of various kinds around the re­ gion, particularly in the larger towns of Handan and Shexian to the east of the Taihang Mountains and in Changzhi and Jincheng to the west. Moreover, two of the four columns of the Shanxi Sacrifice League’s New Army—one under Bo Yibo, the other under Rong Zihe—marched from Taiyuan to mobilize dif­ ferent parts of the Taihang region. Conditions were radically different to the east and west of the Taihang Mountains. The strength of the Shanxi-Hebei-Shandong-Henan Border Region lay to the west in the initial Taihang Base Area, from which the Taiyue Base Area was separated when the Japanese drove a railway through to Changzhi from the Xi’an-Shijiazhuang Railway just south of Taigu laigely as part of their attempts at pacification in late 1939. Both the Taihang and Taiyue Base Areas were mountainous with considerable agricultural resources in high-altitude mountain valleys. Throughout the war the Taihang Base Area became the po­ litical and organizational springboard for the Shanxi-Hebei-Shandong-Henan Border Region while the Taiyue Base Area became its food store, especially during the droughts, famines, and locust plagues of 1941-1943, which devas­ tated the area east of the Taihang Mountains.

Introduction

17

The situation east of the Taihang Mountains had always been less secure, even before the economic problems of the early 1940s. Japanese forces were more organized and active along the line of the Beijing-Wuhan Railway and on the North China Plain. Guerrilla activities were much harder to sustain in the plain, with the CCP often unsuccessfully attempting to organize cooper­ ation by day and resistance by night with considerable confusion and de­ moralization. In 1942 Deng Xiaoping (who was the political commissar of the 129th Division for most of the War of Resistance) was forced to effec­ tively close down the South Hebei Base Area for eighteen months. In the Hebei-Shandong-Henan Base Area the CCP was not much more successful: the base area existed more as a series of guerrilla groups than in any organized sense.37 The Shanxi-Suiyuan Border Region Parts of the Shanxi-Suiyuan Border Region are almost as old as CCP activ­ ities in what later became the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region. During February-April 1936 the CCP led an eastward expedition under Mao Zedong from Northeast Shaanxi across the Yellow River into West Shanxi. Repulsed in joint action by Chiang Kai-shek and Yan Xishan, the CCP nonetheless man­ aged to establish a base area in Lishi in the Luliang Mountains, which re­ mained in place after the expedition forces withdrew. However, the ShanxiSuiyuan Border Region was not formed until 1942 and had very little to do with these earlier activities, which simply continued in largely unrelated ways throughout the war. Until the early 1940s, CCP activities in what later became the ShanxiSuiyuan Border Region—the three base areas of Northwest Shanxi, the Daqingshan in Suiyuan, and Southwest Shanxi (centerd on Linshi)—were extremely restrained and largely confined to operations within a united front of anti-Japanese resistance. This was particularly the case in North­ west Shanxi and Daqingshan, where the CCP was weak. Although the 120th Division of the Eighth Route Army moved into the mountains of Northwest Shanxi during the second half of 1937, it was substantially un­ dersized, and there was little local CCP organization with which it could combine. Based in the mountains north and west of Ningwu, its value was as much strategic in defense of the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region as anything else. As with the other border regions of Shanxi, the base areas of the later Shanxi-Suiyuan Border Region were reinforced by troops of the Sacrifice League’s New Army, which marched here from Taiyuan during the second half of 1937. However, in this case the CCP was not in control of either the local Sacrifice League or the New Army, or at least not until the end of 1939, when CCP activists in those organizations replaced their leaders in what became a

18

Feng Chongyi an d David S. G. Goodman

bloodless coup. These characteristics of its organization and evolution explain the paradox of a Shanxi-Suiyuan Border Region economy that was heavily dominated by poor peasants but had a political and administrative system that was dominated by professionals and middle-class intellectuals.38

The Shandong Base Area Unlike the other North China Base Areas, the CCP’s activities on the Shandong Peninsula were in a region completely occupied by the Japanese that had a more numerous Nationalist Party presence. Military organization and activity were the major concern, and the base area existed more in name than in organizational practice as a series of largely unconnected guerrilla groups. From the outset of the war until 1943—when there was limited Japanese and Nationalist Party withdrawal—the CCP made very little head­ way and was only successful in establishing any kind of presence in three small areas: the Yi Meng and Taishan mountain districts of central Shandong, in southern Shandong, and in Binhai. Moreover, even in its pockets of activity the CCP itself was not particularly united despite the apparent need for military resistance. Successive waves of troop infusions from the 115th and 129th Divisions of the Eighth Route Army came into Shandong only to clash politically with local guerrilla groups. By 1939 conflict between “insiders” and “outsiders” in parts of the base area were endemic and led in one or two districts to violent and dramatic organi­ zational cleansings known as “anti-Trotskyite struggles” that saw consider­ able loss of life. For a base area organization that already faced more prob­ lems than most, these conflicts were debilitating and destabilizing, leaving little time for other activities.39 In many ways, the experience of the Shandong Base Area is reminiscent of the development of the Communist movement in Central China, as highlighted by Benton in this volume, except of course that the Shandong Base Area was considerably less successful. Nationalist presence in Shandong after the start of the war was formidable and placed a major restraint on CCP expansion. The CCP forces saw a proliferation of command posts across a series of largely un­ related, and nonadjacent, base areas. The CCP had a radical ultraleft phase in which it tried to establish itself, and indeed in Shandong (re)establishment was devastatingly protracted in consequence. Local CCP activists in Shandong as­ sayed a strategy of constructing close relations with disaffected gentry, though to considerably less effect than in Central China. Moreover, as in Central China so too in Shandong, the CCP leadership was often in conflict with its local ac­ tivists; in both the latter were criticized for their “guerrilla-ism.”

Introduction

19

NOTES 1. A recent review o f the work o f historians in China may be found in Gong Yuzhi, “Guanyu KangRi zhanzheng shi yanjiu” (Research on the history o f the War of Resistance), Zhonggong dangshi yanjiu (Research on CCP history) 6 (1995): 7. 2. An early statement o f this perspective on research outside China is found in Kathleen Hartford and Steven M. Goldstein, “Introduction: Perspectives on the Chi­ nese Communist Revolution,” in Single Sparks: China's Rural Revolutions, ed. Kath­ leen Hartford and Steven M. Goldstein (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1989), p. 3. A more recent reinforcement o f this change in approach is by Lucien Bianco,“Peasant Responses to CCP Mobilisation Policies, 1937-1945,” in New Perspectives on the Chinese Communist Revolution, ed. Tony Saich and Hans van de Ven (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1995). 3. The boldest statement o f the need to extend analysis o f China’s revolution in a number o f areas is Joseph W. Esherick, “Ten Theses on the Chinese Revolution,” Modem China 21, no. 1 (1995). 4. David S. G. Goodman, Deng Xiaoping and the Chinese Revolution: A Politi­ cal Biography (London: Routledge, 1994); and Benjamin Yang, Deng: A Political Biography (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe), 1997. 5. Details and analysis may be found in Wolfgang Bartke, Biographical Dictionary and Analysis o f China's Party Leadership, 1922-1988 (Munich: K. G. Saur, 1990), pp. 375ff. 6. See, for example, Stuart R. Schram, “Introduction: The Cultural Revolution in Historical Perspective,” in Authority, Participation, and Cultural Change in China, ed. Stuart R. Schram (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), p. 1; Schram, Mao Tse-tung Unrehearsed (Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin, 1974); and David E. Apter and Tony Saich, Discourse on Power: The Revolutionary Process in Mao's Republic (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996). 7. One exception was Qi Wu, Yige geming genjudi de chengzheng: KangRi zhanzheng he jiefang zhanzheng shiqi de JinJiLuYu Bianqu gaikuang (The transfor­ mation o f a revolutionary base area: An outline of the Shanxi-Hebei-Shandong-Henan Border Region during the Sino-Japanese War and the War of Liberation) (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1957). 8. For example, Mao in his 1967 discussions with Zhang Chunqiao in Jiangxi com mented on the large number o f base areas during the War o f Resistance in order to point out the extent to which they were all brought together and made to conform to a single principle; reported in Mao Zedong Sixiang Wansui (Long live Mao Z edong thought) and translated as “D ialogues during Inspection o f North, Central-south, and East China,” in Miscellany of Mao Tse-tung Thought, JPRS (Joint Publications Research Services, USA), 61269-2, February 1974, 2:465. 9. D. W. Klein and L. B. Hager, “The Ninth Central Committee,” China Quarterly 45 (March 1971): 37. 10. David S. G. Goodman, “The National CCP Conference o f September 1985 and China’s Leadership Changes,” China Quarterly 105 (March 1986): 123.

20

Feng Chongyi an d David S. G. Goodman

11. In contrast to previous orthodoxy, the current standard text on the topic is Wei Hongyun and Zuo Zhiyun, Huabei KangRi genjudi shi (A history o f base areas in North China during the War o f Resistance to Japan) (Beijing: Dangan chubanshe, 1990), which provides a polycentric account o f North China at war. 12. Tian Youru, “Taihang kangRi genjudi shi yanjiu songshu” (Research on the his­ tory of the Taihang anti-Japanese base area), Dangshi tongxun (Newsletter on Party history) 353, no. 7 (1987): 3913. The first was Taihang geming genjudishi zongbian weihui, ed., Taihang geming genjudi shigao (Outline history of the Taihang Revolutionary Base Area) (Taiyuan: Shanxi renmin chubanshe, 1987). There have been twelve subsequent vol­ umes in the series, with further additions planned. 14. Shanxisheng danganguan, ed., Taihang dangshi ziliao huibian (Collection o f materials on the history of the Party in the Taihang Base Area) (Taiyuan: Shanxi renmin chubanshe, 1989,1994). The volume published in 1989 covers the 1937-1938 and 1939 volumes and the 1994 volume covers the 1940 and 1941 volumes. 15. The most comprehensive overview of the War of Resistance to Japan in English is to be found in Lyman Van Slyke, “The Chinese Communist Movement during the Sino-Japanese War, 1937-45,” in The Cambridge History of China, vol. 13, Republican China, 1912-1949, pt. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 609. 16. Chalmers Johnson, Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power: The Emergence o f Revolutionary China, 1 9 3 7 -1 9 4 5 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1962). 17. Mark Seiden, The Yenan Way in Revolutionary China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971). 18. Tetsuya Kataoka, Resistance and Revolution in China: The Communists and the Second United Front (Berkeley: University o f California Press, 1974). 19. Ralph Thaxton, China Turned Rightside Up: Revolutionary Legitimacy in the Peasant World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983). 20. This aspect of historical development is reflected in Mark Selden’s compre­ hensive review o f Western literature on the topic in “Yan’an Communism Reconsidered,” Modem China 21, no. 1 (1995). 21. Chalmers Johnson, “Peasant Nationalism Revisited: The Biography o f a Book,” China Quarterly 12 (1977): 766. 22. An obvious exception is Lucien Bianco, Origins o f the Chinese Revolution (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1971). 23. Chen Yung-fa, Making Revolution: The Communist Revolution in Eastern and Central China, 1 9 3 7 -1945 (Berkeley: University o f California Press, 1986), esp. p. 8. 24. Lyman Van Slyke’s role in the development of base area studies goes back to his wartime report The Chinese Comm unist Movement: A Report o f the United States War Department, July 1 9 4 5 (1945; reprint, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1968). The group at Stanford included Chen Yung-fa (Eastern and Central China), Kathleen Hartford (Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei), and David Paulson (Shandong). In addition to pub­ lications cited elsewhere in notes to this introduction, see also Kathleen Hartford, “Step-by-Step: Reform, Resistance, and Revolution in the Chin-Ch’a-Chi Border Re­ gion” (Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 1980); and David Paulson, “War and Revolu­ tion in North China: The Shandong Base Area, 1937-1945” (Ph.D. diss., Stanford Uni­ versity, 1982).

Introduction

21

25. Elizabeth J. Perry, Rebels a n d Revolutionaries in North China, 1845 -1 9 4 5 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1980). 26. Kathleen Hartford and Steven M. Goldstein, eds., Single Sparks: China's Rural Revolutions (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1989). 27. Additional early studies that adopt these perspectives include Carl E. Dorris, “Peasant Mobilization in North China and the Origins o f Yenan Communism,” China Q uarterly 68 (Decem ber 1976): 697; Chen Yung-fa, M aking Revolution: The C om m unist Revolution in Eastern a n d Central China, 1 9 3 7 -1 9 4 5 (Berkeley: University o f California Press, 1986); and Chen Yung-fa and Gregor Benton, Moral Econom y a n d the Chinese Revolution (Amsterdam: Center for Anthropology and Sociology, University o f Amsterdam, 1986). Though not directly concerned with base areas, Philip C. Huang, The Peasant Economy a n d Social Change in North China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985), also contributed to the related develop­ ment o f studies o f rural social and political change. While such approaches were generally not visible within the PRC, there were a few researchers experimenting in this direction. See, for example, Huang Xuanwen, Xiaohe fengyun: Henansheng N eihuangxian Qiartkoucun (Storm on the river: Qiankou Village, Neihuang County, Henan Province) (Henan: Renmin chubanshe, 1976); and Dong Qian, Meiyou renm in de shijie—weikun Q inyuan tongxun (A world without people—The story o f the siege o f Qinyuan) (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1979). 28. These include a number o f multivolume collections, most notably: Jin Ji Lu Yu bianqu caizheng jingjishi bianjizu and Shanxi, Hebei, Shandong, Henan sheng danganguan, eds., K angri zh an zh en g shiqi Jin Ji Lu Yu bianqu caizheng jingjisji cailiao xu an bian (Selected documents on econom y and finance in the Jin Ji Lu Yu Border Region during the War o f Resistance against Japan) (Beijing: Zhonggong caizheng jingji chubanshe, 1990); Shanxisheng Danganguan, ed., Taihang dangshi zilia o huibian (Collection o f materials on the history of the Party in the Taihang Base Area) (Taiyuan: Shanxi renmin chubanshe, 1989-); Shaan Gan Ning bianqu caizheng jingjishi bianxiezu, Shaanxisheng dang’anguan (The Editorial and Writing Group of the history o f the finances and econom y o f the Shaan Gan Ning Border Region and the Shaanxi provincial archives), K angri zh an zh en g shiqi Shaanganning bianqu caizheng jin g ji shiliao zh a ib ia n (A collection o f historical materials on the finances and econom y o f the Shaan Gan Ning Border Region during the resistance war pe­ riod) (Xi’an: Shaanxi renmin chubanshe, 1982); Gansusheng shehui kexueyuan lishi yanjiushi (Gansu Social Science Academy, History Research Department), ed., Shaanganning gem ing gen ju di shiliao x u a n (A collection o f historical materials on the Shaan Gan Ning Revolutionary Base Area) (Lanzhou: Gansu renmin chubanshe, 1982-); Zhongyang dang’anguan (Central Party archives), Shaan Gan Ning bianqu kangri m in zh u genjudi: W enxian ju a n (The Shaan Gan Ning Border Region—An anti-Japanese democratic base area: Collected documents) (Beijing: Zhonggong dang’an chubanshe, 1990-); Party History Research Center, CCP Shanxi Provincial Committee, Jin Sui Geming G enjudi D ashiji (A chronicle o f the Jin Sui Revolutionary Base Area) (Shanxi: Renmin chubanshe, 1989); Shandong sheng dang’an guan (Shandong Provincial Archives), ed., Shandong gem ing lishi d a n g ’an ziliao x u a n ­ bian (Selections from the Shandong revolutionary history archival materials) (Jinan: Shandong renmin chubanshe, 1986-); Zhonggong Shandong shengwei dangshi zil­ iao zhengji yanjiu weiyuanhui (Shandong Communist Party history materials Compi-

22

Feng Cfoongyi an d David S. G. Goodman

lation and Research Committee), Shandong dangshi ziliao (ShandongVarty history materials) (Jinan, 1983-); Jin Cha Ji Bianqu caizheng jingji shi bianxiezu, Hebei sheng danganguan, Shanxi sheng danganguan, Jin Chaji bianqu caizheng jingjishi ziliao ocuanbian (Selected materials on the financial and econom ic history o f the Jin Chaji Border Region) (Tianjian: Nankai daxue chubanshe, 1984); Taihang geming genjudishi zongbian weihui, ed., Taihang geming genjudi shiliao congshu (Taiyuan: Shanxi renmin chubanshe, 1991-). 29. The results may be found in the resulting volumes: Zhongguo KangRi genjudishi guoji xueshu taolunhui taolunji (Collection o f papers from the International Academic Conference on the history of base areas in China’s War o f Resistance to Japan) (Beijing: Dangan chubanshe, 1985); and Zhongwai xuezhe lun KangRi genjudi (Chinese and foreign academics on the base areas o f the War o f Resistance to Japan) (Beijing: Dangan chubanshe, 1993). 30. See, for example, Odoric Y. K. Wou, Mobilizing the Masses: Building Revolu­ tion in Henan (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994); Joseph W. Esherick, “Deconstructing the Construction o f the Party-State: Gulin County in the Shaan-Gan-Ning Border Region,” China Quarterly 140 (December 1994): 1052; Pauline Keating, “The Yan’an Way of Cooperativization,” China Quarterly 140 (D e­ cember 1994): 1025; David S. G. Goodman, “Jin Ji Lu Yu in the Sino-Japanese War: The Border Region and the Border Region Government,” China Quarterly 140 (D e­ cember 1994): 1007; Pauline Keating, Two Revolutions: Village Reconstruction and the Cooperative Movement in Northern Shaanxi, 1934-1945(Stanford: Stanford Uni­ versity Press, 1997). Although not concerned exclusively with the War o f Resistance, the first part of Edward Friedman, Paul Pickowicz, and Mark Seiden, Chinese Village, Socialist State (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), deals with social and polit­ ical change in a village in the Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Border Region. 31. Joseph W. Esherick, “Ten Theses on the Chinese Revolution,” Modem China 21, no. 1 (1995), provides an excellent summary and analyses o f these intellectual trends. Probably the most dramatic challenge to the CCP’s revolutionary credentials during the War of Resistance has come from the work o f Chen Yung-fa: Yan ’a n de yinying (Yan’an’s shadows) (Taipei: Académica Sinica, Institute o f M odem History, 1990); and Chen Yung-fa, “The Blooming Poppy under the Red Sun: The Yan’an Way and the Opium Trade,” in New Perspectives on the Chinese Communist Revolution, ed. Tony Saich and Hans van de Ven (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1995), p. 263. 32. Prasenjit Duara, Culture, Power, and the State: Rural North China, 1900-1942 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988); Kathleen Hartford, “Repression and Communist Success: The Case of Jin-Cha-Ji, 1938-1943,” in Single Sparks: China’s Rural Revolutions, ed. Kathleen Hartford and Steven M. Goldstein (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1989); Lucien Bianco, “Peasant Responses to CCP Mobilisation Policies, 1937-1945, in New Perspectives on the Chinese Communist Revolution, ed. Tony Saich and Hans van de Ven (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1995), p. 175; He Gaochao, Dizhu, Nongmin, Gongchandang: Shehui boyilun fenxi (Landlords, peasants, and the Chinese Communist Party: A game theory analysis) (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1997). 33. Edward Friedman, Paul Pickowicz, and Mark Seiden,

Socialist State (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), pp. 84ff.

Chinese Village,

Introduction

23

34. Observation o f difference within the category o f middle peasants at this time is far from being the product o f recent research. See notably Isabel Crook and David Crook, Revolution in a Chinese Village: Ten Mile Inn (London: Routledge, 1959); and Victor Nee, “Towards a Social Anthropology o f the Chinese Revolution,” Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 11, no. 3 0977): 40. 35. The standard account in English o f the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region is Mark Selden’s China in Revolution: The Yenan Way Revisited (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1995). A more recent study is Pauline B. Keating, Two Revolutions: Village

Reconstruction and the Cooperative Movement in Northern Shaanxi, 1934-1945 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997). 36. Sources in English on the Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Border Begion include Carl E. Dorris, “Peasant Mobilization in North China and the Origins o f Yenan Communism,” China Quarterly 68 (Decem ber 1976): 697; Kathleen Hartford, “Step-by-Step”; and Friedman, Pickowicz, and Seiden, Chinese Village. 37. The standard account o f the Shanxi-Hebei-Shandong-Henan Border Region is Qi Wu, Yige geming genjudi de chengzheng: KangRi zhanzheng he jiefang zhanzheng shiqi dé JinJiLuYu Bianqu gaikuang (The transformation o f a revolu­ tionary base area: An outline o f the Shanxi-Hebei-Shandong-Henan Border Region during the War o f Resistance to Japan and the War o f Liberation) (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1957); later revised as Jin Ji Lu Yu bianqu shi (A history o f the Shanxi-H ebei-Shandong-H enan Border Region) (Beijing: Dangdai zhongguo chubanshe, 1995). An analysis o f the Shanxi-Hebei-Shandong-Henan Border Region in English may be found in David S. G. Goodman, “Jin Ji Lu Yu in the Sino-Japanese War: The Border Region and the Border Region Government,” China Quarterly 140 (Decem ber 1994): 1007. Accounts o f the Shanxi-Hebei-Shandong-Henan Border Region’s separate base areas may be found in Taihang geming genjudi shigao (Out­ line history o f the Taihang Revolutionary Base Area), ed. Taihang geming genjudishi zongbian w eihui (Taiyuan: Shanxi renmin chubanshe, 1987); Zhonggong Shanxishengwei dangshi yanjiushi, ed., Taiyue geming genjudi jianshi (A history of the Taiyue Revolutionary Base Area) (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1993); JiLuYu Bianqu gemingshi gongzuozu, JiLuYu Bianqu gemingshi (History o f the revolution in the JiLuYu border area) (Jinan: Shandong daxue chubanshe, 1991); and Zhonggong Hebei Shengwei dangshi ziliao zhengji bianshen weiyuanhui and Taihang (Hebei bufen) shiliao lianhe zhengbian bangongshi, eds., Jixi minxunchu yu Jixi Youjidui (The West Hebei training regiment and the West Hebei guerrilla troop), Taihang gem ing genjudi shiliao congshu 10 (Shijiazhuang: H ebei renmin chubanshe, 1989). 38. On the Shanxi-Suiyuan Border Region, see Party History Research Center, CCP Shanxi Provincial Committee, Jin Sui geming genjudi dashiji (A chronicle o f the Shanxi-Suiyuan Revolutionary Base Area) (Taiyuan: Shanxi renmin chubanshe, 1989). 39. A source in English examining the Shandong Base Area is David Paulson, “War and Revolution in North China: The Shandong Base Area, 1937—1945” (Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 1982).

1 Getting Peasants Organized V illa g e O r g a n iz a tio n s a n d t h e P a rty -S ta te in t h e S h a a n G a n N in g B o r d e r R e g io n ,

1934-1945

Pauline Keating The Chinese Communists’ “central” base area, Shaan Gan Ning, gave birth to the Yan’an tradition, the “Yan’an way” myth, and an entire field of studies that Gregor Benton has dubbed “Yan’anology.”1 Over the last twenty years or so, the basic premises underpinning Yan’anology have been progressively undermined by research on the CCP’s other base areas. The new studies show that Shaan Gan Ning was far from typical of the party’s wartime bases and that the Yan’an way is an idiosyncratic Maoist construction and a con­ struction that is highly contestable. But it is not only the histories of the other base areas that are deconstruct­ ing the Yan’an way legend. The newly available archival materials that gen­ erate those histories also make possible a much closer, more critical study of the Shaan Gan Ning Base itself. Such a study exposes differences, dualities, multiple meanings, and paradoxes within an experience that only later be­ came generalized as “the way.” In other words, close study of the “atypical” Shaan Gan Ning Base can make important contributions to a project that is demonstrating the enormous variety, variability, and range of social and po­ litical processes within the Communist revolution during its formative pe­ riod. This chapter aims to explore some of the different processes that im­ pelled and shaped the party’s grassroots organizational work. It will demonstrate variety and difference in social and political outcomes by fo­ cusing quite narrowly on just two subregions within the Shaan Gan Ning Border Region. The centrality of organization building within the Communist movement is indisputable; it was fundamental to the mobilization and reconstruction project of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in all places and in all peri25

26

Pauline Keating

ods.2 That the Communists succeeded organizationally w here'other rural reformers and state strengthened failed is also broadly conceded. Given the importance, therefore, of the Party’s organizational initiatives, it is sur­ prising that relatively little attention has been given to the actual processes and the checkered progress of grassroots organization building in the Com­ munist bases. By demonstrating the experimental, fluid, and incremental nature of the CCP’s organization w ork in the Shaan Gan Ning Border Region during the War of Resistance, I aim to show that meanings also were fluid in this period and that achievements were mixed. Debates over the meaning of the Communists’ organizational achieve­ ments tend to polarize around the “statism” and “populism” extremes. The CCP’s organizing has been seen either as a top-down and hegemonizing process that achieved unprecedented state penetration of the villages or as popular mobilization premised on broad-based voluntary participation and the principle of democratic management.3 In the argument here, statism and populism are not mutually exclusive; we find in the base areas’ grassroots or­ ganizations a mix of the two that varies according to politico-military and ecological contexts. Furthermore, the statism-populism continuum does not accommodate the full range of meanings we can give to the new village or­ ganizations built by the Communists. Like most other areas of the CCP’s rural reconstruction project, organizational work was restorative at least as much as it was innovative. While acknowledging, therefore, the importance of im­ ported Leninist, anarchist, and “democratic” organizational models, the Com­ munists’ organizational initiatives also need to be understood in terms of continuities with China’s own sociopolitical traditions, including the selfstrengthening tradition that took root in the late imperial period.

ORGANIZATION AND NATION BUILDING

Many of China’s pioneering nationalists saw social mobilization and, by corollary, organization as fundamental to the process of nation building. Sun Yat-sen used his “loose sheet of sand” metaphor to lament a lack of cohesion within the Chinese body politic and to argue for a mobilization that would bond local communities, cementing them into a nationwide web of self-gov­ erning administrative units. Local self-government advocates such as Sun de­ fended their argument for the priority of grassroots democratic construction, and against a centralizing top-down approach, by pointing to established self-help organizations and self-governing traditions in the localities.4 Even if their argument is somewhat undermined by reference to baojia and lijia or­ gans the traditional local security system—as evidence of the self-govern­ ing capacity of village China, their commitment to the idea that a democratic nation required a bedrock of thousands of “units of popular sovereignty”

Getting Peasants Organized

27

was genuine.5 For most of his revolutionary career, Sun Yat-sen insisted that the establishment of a national parliament needed to await the development of democratic governments in the localities. Of course, for all reformers in the self-strengthening tradition, grassroots democracy and local autonomy were means to the end of state strengthening; any loosening of state control in the localities was for the immediate purpose of strengthening it. As Philip Kuhn has demonstrated, this puts the local selfgovernment movement squarely within China’s “feudalist” tradition of state­ craft,6 a basic tenet of which was the “fundamental compatibility of particular interests and the general good.”7 In the arguments of feudalist reformers such as Gu Yanwu (1615-1682) and Feng Guifen (1809-1874) effective central gov­ ernment depended on effective local government, which in turn depended on an accommodation of the enlightened self-interest of local activists. As the Qing dynasty crumbled in the late nineteenth century and the pres­ sure for political and economic modernization mounted, the need to chan­ nel local energies into national causes became particularly urgent. That need, and the manifest inadequacies of local governments in terms of both autonomy and control objectives, explains how popular mobilization came to be injected ipto the autonomy-control dynamic. The proponents of local self-government in the late Qing and early republican period were, says Kuhn, arguing for a mobilization that would stimulate individuals and or­ ganizations “to higher levels of activity in their own spheres of life and yet be more amenable than before to the interests of the larger society.”8 No longer was it good enough to have at the center a minimalist state that let local people do some things for themselves. Mobilization required that the state be more in touch with the localities and that local people be more con­ cerned about national problems; it entailed the use of new techniques, in­ cluding new technologies, that would both stimulate and discipline local en­ ergies to serve economic development and central state strengthening.9 The mobilizing focus of the local self-government theorists was local elites, not the common folk. That applied even to sometime populists such as Sun Yat-sen. As Robert Scalapino and George Yu aptly put it, the masses were treated by people such as Sun as “a chessboard on which the political game was played rather than as players of the game itself.”10 Elitism among reformers and the essential political impotence of the local self-government program in the context of dynastic collapse, half-baked or phoney republi­ canism, and endemic warlordism meant that there was never any kind of popular mobilization for nation building in the localities before 1937. In­ deed, as Prasenjit Duara has so effectively demonstrated, the early twentiethcentury modernizing reforms that were premised on community resource­ fulness (i.e., funding) actually had the effect of destroying the organizational integrity and self-governing capacities of local communities.11 In the North China villages he studied, Duara found that state expansion, beginning with

28

Pauline Keating

the New Policy reforms in 1901, set in motion the processes' that quite quickly tore apart “the nexus of interests linking elites with the power struc­ tures of local communities,”12 leaving villages exposed and defenseless against a depredatory state and rendering the state illegitimate in the eyes of rural folk. The proliferation at subcounty level of “local bullies,” a phenom­ enon noted in all close studies of this period, was both a cause and a conse­ quence of the atomization of local communities; and it probably constituted the single most important obstacle to a social mobilization that could bring together the center and the localities for nation building. State making in the form of top-down and “involutionary” bureaucratiza­ tion,13 deepening bureaucratic penetration of local communities, and in­ creasingly extortionate revenue exactions by self-serving state brokers all served to fan the flames of an antibureaucratic “populism” among social re­ formers of the May Fourth period.14 This populism had solid roots in the tra­ ditional feudalist hostility to assertive centralism, but it was now also fed by new currents of thought that yeasted the May Fourth intellectual ferment, particularly anarchist ideas of mutual assistance within voluntary associa­ tions and a social reorganization (revolution) premised on small groups. The May Fourth radicals who became Marxists were, in Arif Dirlik’s argument, people who had despaired of effecting change through peaceful anarchist means but carried with them into the Communist movement the anarchist vi­ sion of the good society—a radical democracy built from the bottom up through the agency of small groups and based on cooperative self-help.15 Its anarchist gloss notwithstanding, that vision was still, at base, con­ structed from a feudalist-type critique of the “old society,” a critique that had wide currency among New Culture radicals.16 In other words, the vision was in the first place the product of a Chinese heritage and experience, and im­ ported ideas played only a secondary role in its construction. Moreover, de­ spite the disagreement over the means of realizing the vision, it is fair to say that there was a broad commitment among May Fourth reformers (including the lapsed anarchists) to a “national salvation” that required state strengthening. For modernizers in the feudalist mold, the processes of m odem state building and of a mobilizational grassroots democratization were, by defini­ tion, inextricably linked.

THE COMMUNISTS AND ORGANIZATION BU D D IN G

The Communists’ organizational work in their rural bases during the 1930s and 1940s expressed in varying degrees the state-strengthening nationalism and anarcho-populist radicalism of the May Fourth period. That is, grassroots or­ ganization building constituted for the Communist reforméis the essential foundation of nation building. They believed, as did the local self-government

Getting Peasants Organized

29

advocates, that local communities would be most effectively mobilized for the construction of a “new China” when particular Qocal) interests converged with common (national) interests. They understood that mobilization would be most effective when “the masses” had been organized into “small groups” and that those groups would need to be solidified by habits of cooperative selfhelp and democratic management. Particularly important was the educational function of the small group. “Mass education” was a central concern of most rural reformers in the republican period, but it became a matter of urgency for nation builders who needed to make self-interest converge with the common good in order to achieve a channeling of local energies into national projects. Only when the bond between localities and the center was harmonious and strong was it possible to nurture self-government capabilities in the localities. The Communists’ dream of reintegrating rural China’s atomized populations into organic communities, constituted as federations of small groups, is in many ways similar to Liang Shuming’s rural reconstruction vision. Liang made a re­ formed version of the'eleventh-century village covenant serve as the organiza­ tional basis of his program. Liang’s village covenant, says Guy Alitto, was to be formed “not by bureaucratic fiat but by moral suasion and local initiative.” Through “positive, activist” organization of enthusiastic mass participation, it would “build up the power of the peasantry.”17 Communist Party organizers in the villages frequently made explict use of village covenant-type rituals to sol­ emnize and give moral meanings to Party-sponsored village or group projects. More important than that, however, was the implicit endorsement of basic vil­ lage covenant values. Underlying much of the Party’s community-building work was the original village covenant ideal of an autonomous mutual aid col­ lectivity that had responsibility for community activities such as dispute media­ tion, local defense, famine insurance and poor relief, sanitation work and health care. Both the Communists and Liang Shuming expanded the range of community activities in which community members were morally bound to participate; the inclusion of popular education and economic initiatives in par­ ticular constituted a modernizing of the village covenant. But the traditional goal—nurturing a local autonomy that would give sustenance to the body politic as a whole—persisted in most twentieth-century revivals of the village covenant idea. The important differences between Liang Shuming’s approach to rural re­ construction and that of the Communists are well documented; for our pur­ poses the most important was the Communists’ commitment to class warfare and Liang’s vehement rejection of the entire Marxian theory of class.18 His re­ fusal to admit the necessity of bloody class struggle against “current powerholders” is, suggests Alitto, “the nub of the question of Liang’s ultimate fail­ ure.”19 The Communists, for their part, eventually succeeded in breaking the power of the “local bullies and evil tyrants,” that category of subcounty “en­ trepreneurial state-brokers” (Duara’s term) that neither the Nationalist Party

30

Pauline Keating

nor any of the warlord regimes was able to shackle and that Confounded all non-Communist rural reformers. The imported class struggle strategy, there­ fore, lay at the heart of the CCP’s state-making success and, of course, orga­ nized class struggle was a major feature of its organizational work in the villages. Liang Shuming made telling points when he deplored the destructiveness, the institutionalization of violence, and the social divisiveness that resulted from the fomentation of class conflict; rather than build communities it de­ stroyed them.20 Scholars who analyze the Communist movement have also noted the damaging legacies, both short- and long-term, of the class struggle phases of the Communists’ revolution making.21 I will take up this issue when examining the Party’s community-building work in the Shaan Gan Ning Border Region. The question is whether or not the Party found ways of resolving the tension between class struggle and consensus building, or the extent to which the stoking of social conflict inhibited the progress of village reconstruction. The class struggle issue illustrates a more general point that the grassroots organizations built by the Communists were designed for a range of purposes, some of which were potentially in conflict. Analytical light is, I suggest, brought to the problem by delineating three broad approaches to organization building within the Communist movement. One organizational mode was un­ ambiguously Leninist; to this category belongs the construction of the Party machine and hierarchical monolith, the base of which was formed by CCP cells in the villages. A second type of organization can be described as mobilizational; I apply this term to the organizations that were established for spe­ cific, often temporary or one-off tasks and for which a mass concerted effort was usually needed. Third, there were the organizations that formed the infra­ structure of reconstructed village communities, combining the old village covenant ideal of self-help autonomy with the modernizing ideals of eco­ nomic growth and nation building. These, in other words, were “community development” organs and, as such, are the primary focus of this study. There was, of course, a close relationship between the three approaches. In the Party’s view, nothing was possible without first building a vanguard party; the success of all other organizational work was contingent on Party hegemony and effective Party leadership. And so the formation of CCP cells in the villages almost always constituted the first phase of reconstruction work in any one district (and often well before military control of the district had been secured). But because it was so important that Party activists at vil­ lage level were trusted community leaders, the distinction between the Leninist party and community organs could become blurred. This was par­ ticularly the case in places where, following Kuhn’s reasoning, an auton­ omy-control dynamic worked to serve both local community and partystate. Second, it is often difficult to distinguish in practice between the mobilizational organs and those I call “community development” organs.

Getting Peasants Organized

31

The former were invariably expected to perform the functions of the latter, particularly in guerrilla zones and insecure areas where mobilizational alert­ ness among all villagers was necessary for village security. Community or­ ganizations designed for local self-government and economic development were to a large extent confined to well-consolidated, secure regions that were distant from the war zones. These organizations, however, were usu­ ally asked to maintain a mobilizational readiness for emergency or special government projects. That, and the need for tight leadership in tense situa­ tions, meant that the Leninist top-down approach infused almost all of the CCP’s organizational work at one time or another.

GRASSROOTS ORGANIZING IN SHAAN GAN NING

The Shaan Gan Ning Border Region, because it was relatively secure and well consolidated byl940, provides rich material for a study of the CCP’s or­ ganizational project, particularly the range of meanings embodied in that project. As a militarily secure region, the opportunities there for community building and development were better than in most of the rear-area bases. In fact, the opportunities were exceptional in the wasteland districts that sur­ rounded the regional capital, Yan’an.22 The Communists repopulated these districts through a planned migration and migrant resettlement program that largely entailed getting people in densely populated Suide districts to move south to Yanshu (a tradition of mi­ gratory movement between north and south helped to smooth that passage­ way). Southward migrations during the war years often resulted in the dou­ bling or trebling of village populations in Yanshu. And while the managed program under the Communists might sometimes have dismantled village communities in Suide, it was essentially a community-building project in the wasteland districts. Wartime reconstruction work in Yanshu can be seen as rooted in the tradition of imperial restorations, a tradition that included elim­ ination of the regime’s opponents, the rehabilitation of family life, and a benevolent government’s paternalistic concern for the “people’s liveli­ hood.”23 The Communists, of course, went much further than restoration. In particular, their attempt to infuse their reconstruction project with democra­ tizing and developmental meanings was a significant break with the past. Shaan Gan Ning was exceptional both ecologically and in politico-military terms, and we cannot therefore draw from its history conclusions that are generally applicable to the Communist movement as a whole. In fact, from no one base area can such generalizations be drawn. This point becomes more and more self-evident as new research on the Party’s base areas reveals the immense variety and geographical specificity of much of the Party’s rev­ olution making in the 1930s and 1940s.24 Even within the Shaan Gan Ning

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boundaries there was considerable variety, ecological aná sociopolitical. There is a striking contrast, for example, between rural social structures in the wasteland districts of the Yanshu subregion and those in the densely populated, land-scarce Suide subregion in the far north of Shaanxi province, and this signficant difference is reflected in the grassroots organizational work directed from Yan’an by the Party’s Northwest Bureau.25 By examining the organizational history of the Communist movement in two subregions, Yanshu and Suide, I aim to demonstrate that the Party’s grassroots organiza­ tions in the Yan’an period expressed a range of different meanings. More broadly, my point is that the Communist Party, in this period at least, was not a monolith; within the still youthful Communist movement in the 1940s we find a range of different potentials. A hybrid, multilayered vision enacted in different settings will, of necessity, produce different outcomes. The Early Period, 1934-1939 Before the Nationalist Government conceded the CCP’s right to administer Shaan Gan Ning as a “special zone” in 1937, the Communists’ hold on terri­ tory in the region was fairly tenuous.26 Liu Zhidan’s movement in the Yanshu bandit “badlands” was largely military in nature. To the north, in the Suide area, educated youths did undertake grassroots Party building but, as Joseph Esherick points out, the Suide movement ,was decimated by government forces in 1935 precisely because it lacked military muscle.27 The convergence of Long March units in North Shaanxi (Shaanbei) in late 1935 certainly strengthened the northwest Communist movement, but it was now subjected to what Chiang Kai-shek hoped would be a last and decisive extermination campaign. Communist victories during the 1936 northwest civil war enlarged the area in which land distributions could be effected, but the strengthening push within the Communist Party through 1936 for a united front deal with the Nationalists was accompanied by a progressive pegging back of the land reform program.28 Confiscations were formally halted in January 1937. The early history of organization building in the Shaan Gan Ning region was shaped by the manner in which the region was created, but also by local ecologies. Before Communist rule, the small population of the Yanshu wastelands consisted, in the main, of gangs of bandits, small clusters of farm­ ing and shepherd families, and a few “big landlords” who managed huge es­ tates. There were vast tracts of land, much of it arable or semiarable waste­ land, to which absentee owners held title, and tiny hamlets were thinly scattered across a forbiddingly inhospitable hill country. Once the military opposition to the Communists in this area was destroyed, land reform in many places was a relatively simple matter of divvying up the property of ab­ sentee estate owners and “local tyrants” (most of whom had fled the area). If peasant associations were established to administer the land reform, they did

Getting Peasants Organized

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not last long. Where there was plenty of land and no concerted landlordclass opposition to redistributions, there was no need to keep peasant-class anger on the boil. And even where peasant associations did have a role to play (in, for example, more closely settled areas with sizable tenant farmer populations), the Party Center’s waning enthusiasm for land reform through 1936 resulted in a fairly quick withering of the organizations that had been formed to prepare for and administer land reform. In the Suide counties, where landlordism was exceptionally strong, there was a voracious land hunger among large populations of extremely poor farm­ ers. Here, therefore, the organization of the poor to secure and defend land distributions was critical for the success of land reform. But the Communists failed to hold the Suide area after 1936, and it took three years of “tussles” with He Shaonan, the Nationalist Party’s special commissioner in Suide City, before five Suide counties were, in early 1940, incorporated into Shaan Gan Ning as the region’s fifth subregion. Most land reform implemented in the area before 1937 was overturned during the period of He Shaonan’s three-year tenure; there is no evidence that peasant associations formed in the early period sur­ vived the 1937-1940 “counterrevolution.” Moreover, because conciliation and co-option of Suide’s/influential elites was, in 1940, the Party Center’s first con­ cern, all reconstruction emphasis was on “class unity”; there was hardly any mention of “class struggle” in the first couple of years of CCP rule in Suide. As in Yanshu during 1936-1937, the building of class-based organizations was in­ appropriate when united front needs had priority. Official Party pronouncements during the late 1930s declared that the mul­ ticlass “mass association” was the grassroots organizational form that would best serve the united front and, therefore, the resistance. Essentially the same organizational formula was to be applied in all of the Party’s bases. Within a broadly inclusive National Salvation movement (only traitors and “collabora­ tionist gangsters” were to be excluded), the masses were to be divided into groups according to criteria such as occupation, age, gender, and specific ac­ tivities. A 1938 report on the mass movement in Shaan Gan Ning discusses in some detail the four most commonly promoted categories of mass associ­ ations—groupings of workers, youth, self-defense units, and women—but also lists categories such as “merchant salvation associations,” peasant asso­ ciations, and groupings of people with interests in education, theater, re­ search, and the arts and literature.29 Any one person, said the author, could belong to more than one association, and there were instances of people be­ longing to three or four. The “concrete tasks” of the mass associations in­ cluded healing civil war antagonisms, energizing the resistance effort, civil­ ian defense training, antitraitor work, the democratization of organizational work (a result of which should have been an improvement in the quality of individual contributions),30 educational work (including literacy education) that would raise the masses’ national consciousness, and a stepped-up

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production effort.31 These tasks were all meant to serve the basic and over­ riding goal of “resistance mobilization”; the better the masses were orga­ nized, the more powerful the mobilization. There is little evidence to show that many of the united front mass associ­ ations in Shaan Gan Ning, particularly those in the villages, developed much further than the listing of memberships and the convening of a few meetings during the early war years. Indeed, the Party’s own rectification critiques in 1942 confirm that a lot of organizational work up to that time had been very hollow.32 The mass associations, we are told, were all form and no content; they were top-heavy,33 membership rolls were bloated, most members were inactive, bureaucratism suffused the associations, the organizers were re­ garded by the people as state officials, and the associations, as a conse­ quence, were unpopular.34 Of course, there was less incentive in unoccupied Shaan Gan Ning than in the rear-area bases to mobilize for resistance to Japan, and that partly explains the lackluster life of the mass associations there. But the organizational problems identified in the 1942 critiques of the associations characterized almost all mobilization work in Shaanbei during the first five years of Party government in the region. Take, for example, the 1939 production movement. The first purpose of the spring 1939 production drive was to speed up waste­ land reclamation. A closely related aim was institutional self-sufficiency. In other words, soldiers garrisoned in the region and staff members of schools and government offices were to grow their own food; wasteland reclamation work gave each garrison and work unit its own farmland. Soldiers in 1939 usually did their own picking, clearing, and plowing work, but it is unlikely that the office workers and teachers did much, if any, of the heavy clearing and digging. In fact, the CCP press made an issue of the mass mobilization that resulted in the reclamation of more than 1 million m u of land by the end of 1939.35 In other words, county and district officials had the job of mobilizing local people to clear and plow the fields that were to serve as state-owned cropland, and one report claims that 249,163 men, women, and children in nineteen counties were organized for the task.36 The same report tries to suggest that the mobilization was driven in large part by voluntary mutual aid associations. We are told, for example, that 89,982 men joined mutual aid teams in 1939, and the total membership of women’s production groups and children’s odd-job teams that year was 84,334.37 These figures exceed those for 1944, when the farming cooperative movement was at its peak and when the large Suide population was in­ cluded in the count;38 they are, therefore, almost certainly false. So too is the suggestion that participation was voluntary. Some of the reclamation work was done by the so-called public welfare farming teams—labor gangs or­ ganized to tend the land of soldier families and corvée gangs by another name. Most of the work was done by “reclamation teams”—gangs specially

Getting Peasants Organized

35

formed by local government officials in 1939 for that year’s main campaign. Organized at the township level under the direction of county governments, these teams did not pretend to be other than corvée labor brigades. The mo­ bilization took the form of setting targets for each county by Yan’an officials and waging intercounty reclamation competitions. Ten out of the nineteen counties reported that their targets had been exceeded. Five of these were in the Yanshu subregion, and both Yan’an and Yanchuan counties claimed to have exceeded their targets by 200 percent.39 Intergroup “competitions” were a mobilizational device that came to be in­ creasingly used by Communist organizers and, particularly during the big production drive of 1943-1944, to useful effect. We cannot but be skeptical, however, about the rallying power of “county pride” in the context of 1939 Shaanbei, particularly within a mobilization that pulled farmers off their own land to clear land for other people’s use. That the 1939 reclamation cam­ paign was a military-type operation and made heavy demands on rural peo­ ple is reflected in a growing and publicly expressed concern among Party strategists about the damage done to government authority and prestige when large numbers of people were press-ganged into labor brigades for the opening of public Jand, especially during the spring plowing season when their labor was urgently needed at home. The cooperative movement in Shaan Gan Ning serves as another illus­ tration of the incautious and false moves made by the Communists in the area of popular organization during the early resistance period. We have little detailed information about the region’s farmwork cooperatives be­ fore 1943. From what we know, however, of the big tow nship-based mu­ tual aid teams in the Jiangxi Soviet,40 and the 1939 reclamation work musters, we can deduce that most farmwork teams organized by Shaan Gan Ning CCP mobilizers were pro forma, large, regimented and not very popular. The CCP press, in May 1942, made a negative example of that year’s springtime conscription of 5,000 laborers, organized into “mutual aid teams,” to open up 80,000 m u of wasteland.41 The use of “shock troops” for reclamation work, said the Liberation D aily report, had given people “a distaste of collective labor.” Furthermore, while farmers were working in teams to clear wasteland, their own land fell to waste.42 Recti­ fication strategists now dem anded that there be no more mustering of farmers into large teams; popular teams, they said, could not be created by “administrative decree.”43 The formation of cooperative societies was hardly ever coordinated with the organization of farmwork mutual aid; that applied in the period after rec­ tification almost as much as before. Moreover, the Shaan Gan Ning organi­ zations that called themselves cooperative societies were, for a wide range of reasons, under populist attack as early as 1939. A very common complaint was that the bulk of the societies were not cooperatives at all but rather pri-

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vate businesses, “state shops,” or worse—the “private temples” of govern­ ment cadres.44 “Investment” in the district or township cooperative was very commonly collected from households as a compulsory levy and was re­ sented, therefore, as a tax. Popular resentment was compounded by the fail­ ure of the so-called cooperatives to pay dividends to “shareholders,” by cadre corruption (in the form, especially, of speculation and pilfering), and by the basic “bureaucratic stink” of the societies.45 The cooperative organization of a farming community’s various eco­ nomic activities appealed to the Communist reformers as an ideal solution to a number of logistical problems, and also as a means of nurturing self­ management capabilities among villagers. But this required an overhaul of the region’s cooperative societies along lines that w ould devolve m anage­ ment downward and reorient them toward production work and away from retailing, along lines that would ruralize, democratize, and popular­ ize them. Such an overhaul was not attempted until 1942 and was never to be very successful. The Middle Period, 1940-1942 The year 1942 was a major turning point organizationally for the Com­ munists, just as it was a turning point in other aspects of Party life. But the testing of new organizational forms began well before rectification. Some of the experiments are hidden from the view. For the 1940-1942 period, however, we have evidence of trials, errors, and progress in some impor­ tant areas of mobilizational work. I will focus here on two: the migration program and tax collection. The Migration Program More than 250,000 people migrated into Shaan Gan Ning’s four under­ populated subregions between 1937 and 1943; probably about 40,000 of that number were from the crowded Suide area, the great majority making the move while the area was still under Nationalist Party control;46 the rest came from war and famine zones to the south and east of the border re­ gion. Apart from the resettlement of army veterans and their families, there was little formal government planning or supervision of the migra­ tions in the early years. Anything that could be called a migration program before 1940 seems to have been premised on the hope that kinfolk and hometown contacts would provide resettlement aid to the newcomers; the government provided aid from welfare relief funds mainly to people w ho had nowhere else to turn. Then in 1939—1940 the region’s rapidly escalat­ ing economic crisis began forcing the Yan’an governm ent to slash its welfare budget.

Getting Peasants Organized

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In early 1940, five Suide counties were absorbed into Shaan Gan Ning, making feasible the organization of controlled and planned migrations from Shaanbei’s crowded north to the Yanshu and Guanzhong wasteland districts. The problem for the financially straitened Yan’an government was how to fund such an operation. Squeezing local residents to “donate” food and equipment to immigrants was one strategy it used. More successful in the long run, however, were the measures taken to free up the labor and landtenancy markets, enabling new settlers to find employment as laborers or tenant farmers. This strategy, combined with droplets of state aid, made it possible for migrant farmers to become independent owner-cultivators within two or three years. The governm ent’s m ethod of issuing farm loans was shrewd. To qualify for a loan to buy the necessary tools and draft animals for his farm, the borrower had to find guarantors who would form a “loan group” with him; the loan group^had to consist of no less than five households (the minimum group size was dropped to three households in 1943).47 This was more than a loan insurance system, since all members of the loan group w ere expected to coordinate their farming and to work coopera­ tively. In fact, muiual aid betw een the families became one of the loan conditions in 1943 48 In any case, the loans issued were often so small that the borrowers had no choice but to enter into cooperative arrangements with their neighbors. By pooling their resources, new settlers had a much better chance of making a go of farming than if they worked alone. In Yanshu’s w asteland districts, mutual aid teamwork among migrant farmers constituted the backbone in those districts of the cooperative farming movement, which took off region-wide in 1943. The stoking of self-help resourcefulness proved to be a particularly effec­ tive migrant resettlement strategy, and it came to typify the CCP’s migrant work in many of the Yanshu and Guanzhong wasteland districts. For our purposes, it serves as an example of an approach to grassroots organizing that breaks with the top-down mustering approach that characterized much of the Communists’ mobilizational work in Shaan Gan Ning’s early years. Mi­ grant mobilizations in Yanshu entailed steering newcomers toward villages in which they had kinfolk or friends, the supervision from a distance of their employment and tenancy contracts, and the provision of financial aid that was so paltry that new settlers were forced to rely on each other. This kind of “bottom-up” community building produced the most striking examples of new communities in Shaan Gan Ning. In the Yanshu wasteland districts dur­ ing the War of Resistance, tiny, isolated, and miserably poor hamlets pro­ gressively grew into prospering, diversified communities as a result of the ar­ rival each year of two or three immigrant families, usually from Suide.49 Needless to say, a “soft” approach did not characterize all of the Party’s migrant resettlement work. Recent migrants were the people most likely to

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be conscripted into the big land-clearing gangs; well over half of Yan’an county’s 80,000- m u reclaimed land in 1942 was cleared by fhigrant labor­ ers, for example.50 And much of the boasted “public sector self-sufficiency can be attributed to the hard work of migrant laborers. Government offices and schools, like private employers, were allowed to “exploit a little the destitute newcomer who needed food and shelter while he dug his waste­ land allotment; a sharecropping tenancy for a year or two could give the migrant farmer the leg up he needed, but it also meant that government cadres-cum-rentiers were relieved of the burden of farmwork, and at a cheap price. At the same time, we see mobilizational heavy-handedness, particularly in Suide. Organizers there typically drew from the Party’s mass mobiliza­ tion repertoire when organizing the outward migrations that began in 1942. In the new subregion, the target of 5,000 southbound migrants per year was, like the grain tax targets, broken down into county and then dis­ trict, township, and village quotas. In at least some instances, the district official appointed to migration work was head of the district’s grain tax team.51 A Jia County report in May 1943 ingenuously boasted that in dis­ tricts in which propaganda work was effective, up to half of the Jia peo­ ple who traveled south that year did so willingly.52 So strong was the pop­ ular resistance to the mobilizers that there was official sanction in some places for rounding up vagrants for deportation south, a practice that, needless to say, did not please resettlement officials in Yanshu.53 There was criticism in 1944 of cadres who were concerned only “to get the job done.” By mustering riffraff into the groups traveling south, they were giv­ ing the migration program a bad name.54 The Suide subregion, tom by strife and burdened with large populations of extremely poor people, was a particularly difficult place to administer and was always subject to strong party-state interventions. The official migration pro­ gram in Suide, begun after the spontaneous migrations had petered out,55 was essentially a population-culling project and inevitably provoked popular resis­ tance; it is significant that the target of 5,000 migrants out of Suide per year was not once achieved in the 1942-1945 period. In Yanshu, by contrast, inward mi­ grations became what was, in large part, a community-building project; migra­ tions into the subregion from the mid-1950s to 1944 came close to doubling its small population,56with the new settlers making a very significant difference to the economies of the areas in which they built their farm businesses. The partystate intervened in ways that speeded up farm building and turned migrants into owner-cultivators, enabling them to put down roots in new homes, but it also kept its distance when that served the same ends. At work here was the time-honored restorationist approach to rural reconstruction, oiled by a close convergence of state and local interests. The restorationist party-state was, in addition, laying a foundation for the big economic development mobilization it

Getting Peasants Organized

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launched across the border region in early 1943. So the migration program was, in the end, something more than a restoration. Tax Collection M obilizations The levying and collection of taxes is an area in which we should expect to find the least cooperation and harmony between the center and the locali­ ties. But precisely because the heavy and multiplying tax levies in 1940 and 1941 created so much popular disaffection, the party-state worked particu­ larly hard after 1941 at devising ways of “popularizing” tax collections. By this I mean that methods were developed to devolve responsibility for the apportioning and collection of taxes to community organs in a way that con­ ceded a degree of autonomy in this area to local communities; the party’s tax mobilizations came to be premised on, and tried to foster, community cohe­ sion. At the same time, the CCP launched a production movement that, by increasing farm-family incomes, enabled the state to collect as much tax as before, or even moré taxes, while hurting farmers less. Here again, therefore, we see the old autonomy-control dynamic injected with the developmental values of state-strengthening nation builders. The CCP’s taxation reformers worked hard at designing a “uniform gradu­ ated agricultural tax,” but that system was never to be ready for general im­ plementation in Shaan Gan Ning. Throughout the Japanese war period, the border region government continued each year to decree for each county a national salvation grain target, and local authorities continued to rely, at least in part, on mobilization (as opposed to scientific) methods as the means of extracting “equitable tax” payments from farmers. While lamenting the lack of surety, the uneven application, and the hit-and-miss nature of this collec­ tion method, the Communists defended it as a temporary wartime measure whose vagaries the people would forgive and tolerate for the sake of na­ tional salvation. Popular tolerance was stretched to the limit in 1941, when the party-state re­ sorted to some of the long-established taxing strategies of impecunious gov­ ernments and taxed farmers to the “saturation point.”57 Rectification in 1942 dic­ tated both a reduction of the tax take and changes in collection methods. The government announced at spring plowing time that the 1942 tax tar­ get would be reduced from the 1941 figure of 200,000 dan to 160,000 dan; in other words, almost all taxpayers would be asked to pay less tax, even if their harvests were bigger than the previous year’s. As well as the assurance that there would be no additional grain collections in the spring and summer, this decree also announced that the sheep tax (introduced in 1941) was thereafter abolished and that grain loans would be issued to families who had been hit too hard in December-January.58 Spring plowing, more than be­ fore, took the form of a mass movement this year. A huge inspirational effort

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was needed to persuade peasants to keep all farmland in production, espe­ cially the newly opened wastelands in the Yahshu counties, knd heavy re­ liance was put on the emerging labor heroes to back this effort. Wu Manyou, labor hero of labor heroes (and alleged Nationalist Party col­ laborator in 1947), is said to have “redoubled his efforts at opening up new land” in April 1942, and by June a total of 225 m u of new cropland had been dug by Wu and the other Wujiazaoyuan villagers.59 Grain tax constituted more than 30 percent of Wu’s income in 1941,60 and when the villagers said to him, “Old Wu, you pay too much, cut down a bit!” he spoke of his in­ debtedness to the revolution and the Eighth Route Army’s selflessness. After this, it was said, “everyone respected his opinion and enthusiastically gave grain to the state.”61 When labor hero Shen Changlin’s generous tax pay­ ments were marveled at, Shen remonstrated, “Hey! the state’s having diffi­ culties! Come on everyone, pay your taxes!” And when other people were selling their oxen and donkeys and letting their farms run down in the win­ ter of 1941, Shen ostentatiously bought livestock, hired laborers, and set about expanding his farming business.62 These “models” had salience only after demonstrated state trustworthiness and a production upturn in which the tardy and dull were penalized and patriotic (tax-paying) entrepreneurs reaped tangible profits. The CCP’s task was very much uphill in 1942, for it was not until that year’s November grain tax collection that the peasants could be convinced that they might keep the profits from the bigger pro­ duction effort asked of them. Did changes to tax collection methods in 1942 help improve public morale? I suspect that in this year at least they worked more to control dam­ age than to repair it. A concerted effort was made to inject more fairness into the 1942 collection, and that began with the compiling of more accurate in­ come registers. Survey work now took the form of much tighter and more rigorous organizational work at the grassroots level. The township govern­ ments were to appoint to each administrative village a work group that was to rigorously investigate household incomes and submit a register of in­ comes to the village’s assessment committee—a popularly elected group of about five or six “upright and esteemed” villagers. The committee was to ver­ ify the estimates by discussing them with household heads and then pass them back to the work group for submission to the township government committee, then the township assembly. Ratification by the assembly should have set the assessments in concrete.63 Not surprisingly, it rarely worked well in practice, and the authorities be­ came resigned to the fact that, until the uniform graduated tax (based on land valuations and average, not actual, incomes) could be broadly implemented, collections of National Salvation grain tax would always need to rely on mass mobilization, and that would always entail assessment irregularities and in­ accuracies. By the autumn of 1942, authorities were arguing that a mecha-

Getting Peasants Organized

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nistic application of the rules and slavish reliance on surveys were counter­ productive. The masses, collectively, had to be allowed to scrutinize income estimates in order to expose false income declarations.64 The same “mass democracy,” in the form of semicontrived struggles against corrupt officials, had been used to purge local governments of un­ satisfactory officials during the township election campaigns that year, and it was a populist strategy that the Communists were learning to wield with con­ summate skill. The village gatherings and crowd excitement, while clearly serving party-state purposes, also politicized village folk and taught them po­ litical strategies that could be used to defend community interests. The CCP intended that politicization would result in peasants paying taxes less grudg­ ingly; through political education they would learn that they paid taxes in order “to drive back the Japanese, to defend the Border Region and to safe­ guard their own livelihoods.”65 Tax increases in three successive years, how­ ever, hardly helped to win farmers over to the state’s way of seeing things. The Party leadership openly conceded in 1942 that the 1939-1941 tax hikes had caused the peasants’ “production morale” to plummet. The 1942 tax collection, therefore, signaled some key elements of an emerging new approach to mobilization work. First, it conceded a good deal of decision-making autonomy to local communities—certainly more than a “scientific” and centralizing approach would usually make room for. To set in train a process of community decision making about the distribution of tax levies, it facilitated the formation of community organs that had far more salience for villagers than, for example, the united front “mass associations.” It made a particular issue of the mediating function of grassroots officials and of their charge to be both upright and wise. Just as importantly, it brought forward the emerging rich peasant heroes as the kind of community leaders best able to serve as the bridges between progressive villages and the new “democratic centralist” party-state. Whether or not this approach to popular mobilization actually served both Party and community interests in most (or any) parts of the border region, it did mark a shift away from the dominant top-down mobilizations of previous years. In this particular context, one final point, the relationship between the CCP’s tax policies and the class struggle strategy, is worth noting. In the un­ reformed parts of the Suide subregion in 1943, tax rates were adjusted to give relief to the poor and to squeeze the “big families” harder than before. It was now an explicit government goal to get nonfarming landlords to relinquish their landholdings by selling them cheaply to poor peasants. Constant crop failures and the progressive decline of Shaanbei’s agricultural economy had long made land rental the least profitable of landlord businesses, yet the cul­ tural importance of maintaining a rural base caused the big families to hold on to their farm properties. Now, however, the loss for many of these fami­ lies of political face (if not power) during the township elections, the added

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economic d3 .m3 .gc to land rental businesses resulting from high grain raxes and rent reduction, and the promise of new ând more reliable profits from investment in urban industries favored by the government (and, therefore, leniently taxed) made selling rural properties within Shaan Gan Ning borders the most sensible option for the larger landlords. To the extent, therefore, that the party-government’s tax policies in Suide left the poor a bit better off and pushed landlords out of the villages, they contributed to a leveling and democratization of rural society in the subregion, goals that were central to the Party’s rural reconstruction project. Rent Reform in Suide, 1942-1943 Popular mobilizations for rent reform were organized only in the parts of Shaan Gan Ning that had experienced no land redistributions before 1937 or had seen counterrevolution overturn the reform. It occurred, therefore, only in old, elite strongholds of the Suide and Longdong subregions. Where land­ lordism had survived in Yanshu, rent reform was largely an administrative matter; in the Party’s terminology, it was enforced by “legal” means. In Suide, also, it seems that a fairly vigorous attempt was made in the autumn of 1942 to effect rent reform by means of legislation and the vigilant policing of government regulations. Throughout 1942, beginning with the Politburo’s January 1942 Decision on Land Policy,66 the Party Center issued a series of di­ rectives and rulings on rent and interest rate reduction. And, at rent payment time in late autumn, rent inspectors went down to the villages to ensure that the payment and collection of rents accorded with the new regulations. Despite the strong cadre presence in the villages, there was a wholesale hoaxing of government cadres and widespread rent reduction evasions by landlords in late 1942. The failure of tenancy reform that year was later at­ tributed to the reformers’ attempt to enforce rent reductions by means of “ad­ ministrative decrees” and in the manner of “bestowing gifts” on the masses.67 There had been, it was said, little investigation work, and the 23 percent rent reduction formula had been inflexibly applied to all land rents. Moreover, by trumpeting the campaign’s slogans without raking measures to prevent land­ lord retaliations, cadres had given landlords the chance to develop strategies for dodging the new laws and to stifle tenant support for reform.68 The struggle strategy had sometimes been used at rent collection time in 1942, but for staged performances only and with very few pre- or poststruggle attempts to achieve a durable tenant solidarity. The ease with which rentiers silenced their tenants and the now almost phobic fear among tenant farmers of provoking tenancy transfers made the Party realize that ensuring security of tenure was the key to successful rent reform.69 The legislators worked over the 1942 regulations, tightening them and closing loopholes. The revised regula­ tions were widely publicized, and violators were threatened with prosecution.

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The task in 1943, however, was not only to get land rentals reduced but also to repair the rather serious damage caused by embattled landlords over the previous several years. Cadres were told that they had to agitate and get ten­ ants organized to a level at which the tenants themselves enforced both rent reduction and new terms for their tenancy contracts. The R ent Reform Mass M ovement a n d Tenant Associations in 1943 Suide’s rent reform movement in 1943 was organized as an elaborate ritual. The first stages were orchestrated entirely by work team cadres, but man­ agement of the reform was meant to devolve progressively to tenant farm­ ers. The movement in any one district began with a calculation of the excess rents tenants had paid their landlords over the three years since rent reduc­ tions had been legislated by the Suide Provisional Assembly in July 1940. This was followed by the retrieval of the excess payments, the destruction of landlord account books in which rent debts were recorded, the annulment of old contracts, and'the restoration to farmers of rental land illegally repos­ sessed by landlords. At some point along the way, usually after the first stages of struggle against the landlords, the work team cadres organized ten­ ants into various kinds of association. The Communists put great store on the consciousness-raising effect among peasants of class struggle and the new political organizations that would result from that struggle. The tenant associations organized in Suide in 1943 were assigned the tasks of approving and registering all rent trans­ actions, ratifying all land “movements” (tenancies, mortgages, purchases, and sales), and settling disputes over tenancies; in the CCP’s argument, this was how tenants took charge of their own “fate.”70 For the most part, how­ ever, the associations were just not up to the tasks assigned to them. Super­ vision of reduced rent payments and of newly contracted tenure arrange­ ments became government work, and enforcements fell to official mediators and law courts. The first problem for the CCP workers, who in 1943 were sent down to Suide villages, had been to to forge durable tenant-class solidarity among tenant farmers. The traditionally bitter competition for rental land among tenants, a competitiveness that had always been expressed more openly and vociferously than resentment against landlords, was not easily muted while farmland remained desperately scarce. One of the central functions of the tenant associations formed after the early struggle meetings was to prevent the tenants from “poaching” each other’s rental land and, in the absence of a “tenant-class solidarity,” by severe sanctions against tenant cheats if neces­ sary. The Communists could not presume a willingness to play fair among people w ho for decades had been scrambling over each other to scratch the most pitiful living out of exhausted scraps of farmland. Tenant associations

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fulfilled their mandate to “safeguard tenant rights” by registering all land movements, adjudicating competing claims, punishing rule Violators, and handing over to higher authorities the people who refused to cooperate. The enforcement of reduced rent payments was as much a matter of driving a wedge between tenant and landlord as of establishing a fair tenancy, and the tasks of tenant associations, therefore, was to police and discipline tenants as well as to constrain landlords. To be effective, then, the associations needed the active involvement of authorative administrators and arbitrators. They were by no means autonomous, self-determining “mass associations.” CCP sources claim that from 1942 onward in the Suide subregion a large number of disputes brought to district and township mediators were over tenancies, that local courts were hearing more than fifty tenancy cases per day during the immediate aftermath of rent reform, and that the great major­ ity of these cases were filed by tenants against landlords.71 This was just at the time when the authorities, in the name of simple administration and community self-sufficiency, were trying to limit the number of local disputes submitted for formal adjudication. Tenants, nevertheless, were now explic­ itly encouraged to use the law courts.72 And it seems that after 1942 they had a better chance of winning favorable judgements than in the united front’s heyday. In fact, cases to do with rental land repossessions and lost by ten­ ants before 1942 were now reconsidered and decided in the tenants’ favor.73 It was hoped that tenant (or peasant) associations could at least solve the smaller squabbles (particularly those between tenants),74 and they were sometimes called on to submit to township and district courts any evidence pertaining to the more serious disputes.75 They could take measures to pre­ vent rental land repossessions by, for example, raising a loan to enable one of their members to pay the mortgage price being asked by the landlord.76 Nevertheless, by far the larger part of the burden of forestalling landlord sab­ otage and protecting tenant gains fell to township and district governments; it was expecting far too much of tenant associations, where they existed, to be effective. Any tenant associations that took seriously the job of policing tenancies and mediating tenancy disputes were likely to turn into quasi-official organs directly superintended by township government committees. That this com­ monly occurred is evidenced in the repeated admonitions against it. The au­ thorities insisted that the work modes of popular organizations be distin­ guished from those of government organs, and that the mass association nature of the former be preserved. Conversely, the administrative organs of government were not “to usurp the work of the peasant associations.”77 CCP direction and control of the associations, however, effectively denied them the political and functional autonomy they had been promised. Local CCP branch members served as the backbone of functioning associations; this ac­ corded with upper-level government instructions,78 and they were often led

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by the township headmen. The Party Center made much of the potential of local activists and said that, if properly trained, they could both reduce the mobilization workloads of government officials and give the state easy ac­ cess to the hearts and minds of villagers. But reliable, competent, and bid­ dable local leaders did not, to any significant extent, emerge from the rent reduction struggles. A poverty-stricken farmer who has been cowed and subservient for a lifetime does not learn to be ambitious and assertive in a matter of months. That much rent reform enforcement work was police work is evidenced in the merging of tenant associations with self-defense militia units in some vil­ lages.79 In fact, a Party directive in late 1943 recommended that, at a certain point, the rent reduction movement should link up with self-defense mobi­ lization and the antitraitor movement (another prong of the CCP’s assault on old elite power).80 The associations would also, of course, cooperate with the investigators who now regularly turned up to collect data for land ten­ ancy records and tax registers and to inspect production work. CCP strate­ gists sometimes expressed the hope that tenant associations would grow into multipurpose associations that could serve and defend the interests of all members of a village community. Thus, as well as being responsible for vil­ lage self-defense surveillance, the broad-based associations might have mo­ bilized local people for tasks such as well digging, road repair, crop watch­ ing, cultivating communal and army-family farmland, and managing village granaries. The reports from model district and township offer examples of tenant associations that had broadened to accept a range of responsibili­ ties.81 The indications are, however, that the general run of village associa­ tions almost certainly did not make the transition from class to community organization. Tenant associations fell from view in 1944. According to some reports, the 1943 peasant organizations for rent reduction turned into mutual aid teams the next year,82 but I doubt that happened often. Certainly, a CCP motive for the urgent promotion of rent reduction work in 1943 was to enable tenant farmers to contribute to the big production effort, and there are numerous reports arguing the rise in “production morale” of tenants who were “liber­ ated” as a result of rent reform. By the same token, it was also said that the 1944 preoccupation with the production campaign resulted in slackened tenancy inspections and unrelenting landlord assaults on the new laws.83 This was a criticism of local governments for failing to maintain strict sur­ veillance and was not aimed at tenant associations. The authorities more or less took for granted that those groups were no longer functioning. As in the days of land revolution, they had served as a battering ram during the strug­ gle against landlords but were never embraced by poor peasants as a means of further improving their livelihoods and of building better villages. In 1944, any surveillance of the surviving landlords and their tenant cohorts was

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being done by township law-enforcement officials, and any collective action by farmers to make farming prosperous was within mutual aid teams. The two enterprises were, by this stage, organizationally quite separate. The Cooperative Movement, 1943-1944s4 Farmwork cooperatives constituted the oiganizational foundation of Shaan Gan Ning’s big production drive of 1943-1944. CCP strategists were convinced that mutual aid teamwork was the best way of achieving the productivity in­ creases needed to solve problems in areas of “people’s livelihood” and “gov­ ernment finances.”85 But by 1943 the Communists were investing farming co­ operatives with other meanings as well. After years of experimenting with a variety of grassroots oiganizational forms, and in the context of rectification’s emphasis on simplified administration and people-run organizations, the CCP now entrusted the village production cooperative with the task of realizing the ideals of community self-help and self-sufficiency, rural democracy and a firststep modernization of the agrarian economy. Shaan Gan Ning’s mutual aid teamwork movement usefully demonstrates, therefore, a number of the lessons that Communist organizers had learned over the previous half-decade and more, for example, the damage done to grassroots organs by top-down “commandism” and “formalism.” There had always been, within the CCP, a recognition of the need to find an appropri­ ate balance between top-down interventions and a bottom-up organiza­ tional push. But now, in preparation for the 1943 movement, the CCP’s Northwest Bureau commissioned an intensive investigation into Shaanbei’s traditional teamwork customs, and mobilizers were instructed to prod labor teams into action based on traditional mutual aid arrangements; they were not to impose strange organizational forms if customary arrangements could be made to work effectively. The CCP’s deference to Shaanbei peasant pref­ erences in 1943 was quite unprecedented.86 Second, and in tune with the strong emphasis on traditional practices, farmer organizations were to be kept relatively small at first. And even when the mobilizers made vigorous attempts to broaden the movement in 1944, they recognized that both work efficiency and democratic management were more easily achieved within small groups. Teams were often federated as brigades when all of a village’s able-bodied menfolk were mobilized for teamwork, but the small team remained the basic accounting unit. To simplify accounting and minimize quarrels, laborers of roughly equal strength, skill, and resources were teamed together, and thus any one village was likely to have both strong and weak teams. In many Yanshu hamlets, for example, newly arrived migrants usually formed separate teams, and they in­ variably did less well than the better-resourced teams that included rich peasants. However, the class differences were not great, and the upward mo-

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bility of most farmers in the context of an expanding economy meant that eco­ nomic differences posed a less serious obstacle to economic cooperation than they had once done. The mobilizers were expected to nudge all teams, weak and strong, in the direction of year-round cooperation and to encourage them to broaden their activities to include not only all agricultural tasks and sidelines but health care, education, and other services related to general community welfare. But the nudgings seem to have been soft; a large number of teams re­ mained small and seasonal and undertook only a narrow range of tasks; some­ times they worked together only for plowing and weeding work. The major difference between this approach and earlier approaches to vil­ lage reconstruction was that now, in 1943, the basic organizational unit was a production unit. Not only that, under Party leadership these production units set the pace of an economic development project that was beginning to transform what had until very recently been a hopelessly depressed re­ gion. Although the collectivist directions in which die Party prodded the teams to expand were strange, peasants accepted the mutual aid teams as more meaningful than most of the other organizations they had been pressed to join. They were not unwilling, therefore, to follow the Party’s lead, the strangeness notwithstanding. The same had not applied to groupings like the united front mass associations, nor even to the class-based peasant associa­ tions formed for land reform. The latter, although very meaningful for a time, lost their salience for farmers once land reform was consolidated. The Communists often lamented the hollowness of the grassroots organizations they had formed, and many farmers resisted joining mutual aid teams as much as they resisted other CCP attempts to organize them. In general, how­ ever, because the mutual aid teams that worked were rooted in the economic life of a farming community, they were more likely to attract active partici­ pation than most of the CCP’s other organizations had done. The full-blown cooperative ideal was that a village mutual aid team would grow into a comprehensive cooperative that would constitute the village government as well as coordinate all production work in the village, both farmwork and sidelines. It would have responsibility, therefore, for educa­ tion, hygiene and medical care, village defense, taxation, dispute mediation, famine insurance, cultural activities, social welfare, and so on. But nowhere in Shaan Gan Ning do we see the full realization of the “cooperative village” ideal during the War of Resistance period. As noted earlier, the farmwork mutual aid movement did not ever successfully link up with the cooperative movement. Rectification after 1943 did go some way toward popularizing the cooperatives but did not, for the most part, root them in the villages. The most successful comprehensive cooperatives were, following the South Dis­ trict (Nanqu) model, based at district headquarters. And although they pro­ vided valuable services to farming communities, particularly the provision of cheap credit and farm equipment, as well as the coordination of supply and

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marketing work, they usually had little direct involvement in the villagebased mutual aid teams. The mutual aid team-and cooperative movements were organizationally separate in most of Shaan Gan Ning throughout the entire resistance period. The only possible exceptions were in the Suide subregion. In Suide, ac­ cording to CCP reports, there were some spectacular examples of cooperative villages that were models of local self-government and National Salvation pa­ triotism, pursuing cooperative management of all aspects of village economic, political, social, and cultural life. Take, for example, the subregion’s two most prominent model villages, Haojiaqiao and Wangjiaping. As well as village­ wide mutual aid farming brigades, either one or both villages had textile, trans­ port, credit and consumer cooperatives; grain-grinding, woodchopping, and children’s shepherd teams; and cooperatively organized educational, hygiene, welfare, and self-defense units. In the case of both villages, the people who coordinated and led “comprehensive cooperation” were also important cogs in the wheel of local government in their districts.87 The village models promoted in the Yanshu subregion were different. There was, for example, much less emphasis on the cooperativization of sideline work at village level. In labor hero Wu Manyou’s village, Wujiazaoyuan, less than half of the twenty village wom en could use a spindle, and there seems to have been no cooperative cloth making in the village even after skills training for nonspinners in 1944.88 Very little spin­ ning and weaving were done in hero Shen Changlin’s village in 1943 be­ cause none of the women had the necessary knowledge. After a couple of them took the trouble to learn, they had difficulty finding supplies of cot­ ton lint.89 Hero Tian Erhong’s 1944 production plan for his village entailed mobilizing sixty-seven of the village women to do agricultural work in the form of melon and vegetable growing, feeding the livestock, threshing and milling the grain, and delivering meals to the laborers in the hill fields.90 There was no mention of cloth making. The situation was similar in the subregion’s other model villages. The preoccupation in all of the wasteland districts was with opening up new farmland and with mobiliz­ ing all available laborers to keep it under cultivation.91 The important differences between Yanshu and Suide should now be clear. In the land-scarce Suide counties, CCP organizers needed to mount an all-out effort to reinvigorate and develop sideline industries if there was to be any kind of efficient organization of the labor force. In backward but land-abundant Yanshu, cottage industries were slow to develop because of a lack of skills and equipment and because wasteland reclamation work took precedence; on that issue the CCP and the peasants easily agreed. There was, it is true, a vigorous attempt to cooperativize transport work in Yanshu, but the more vigorous the organizing, the more transport cooperatives moved out of the villages and became based at district or even county

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level.92 At village level in Yanshu, therefore, most organizing energy went into farmwork, and CCP organizers were able to ride a wave of farmer en­ thusiasm for farm building and expansion. In Suide, a much tighter, more in­ terventionist organizing hand was needed if teamwork on tiny farms was to be in any way viable and if alternative employment was to be found for farm­ ers made redundant by teamwork. There was another critically important reason why the organization of co­ operative farming was more regimented and coercive in the Suide subre­ gion—a reason that is concealed in the official accounts of the Haojiaqiao and Wangjiaping models. The rent reform movement was still on the boil in important parts of the subregion in 1943, and the class conflicts deliberately stoked by that movement seriously impeded the organization of mutual aid exchanges. The teams that were organized were typically composed of the poorest villagers; in contrast to Yanshu, rich peasants almost never partici­ pated in teamwork. Many years of bitter rivalries among the tenant popula­ tion meant that any cooperation between the poor was usually quite fragile. It required the very firm organizing hand of Party mobilizers. The bigger and more extensive the organizing, the firmer that hand needed to be. It is sig­ nificant that the spectacular models of extensive and complex cooperation in self-governing villages came from Suide. The scope of farmer cooperation in Yanshu, even in its model villages, was a good deal more modest but was also less managed and manipulated by outsiders.

CONCLUSION

The cooperative movement’s mutual aid teams serve as the best example the Shaan Gan Ning Base has to offer of community development organizations that could serve as the foundation of new communities. In the Yanshu waste­ lands we most certainly see the beginnings of new communities and their rapid progress. The infrastructural decrepitude of that area, however, as well as the correspondingly low levels of literacy among the population, meant that the self-governing, self-sufficient community ideal would take a good deal of time to emerge. The Yanshu case study shows how, in a context in which local and state interests closely accorded, community autonomy could serve state strengthening. The Suide case study demonstrates, among other things, that where CCP control was incomplete or insecure, central control was asserted forcefully; the localities could not be allowed the autonomy that was conceded to local communities in places in which CCP hegemony was uncontested. Once we recognize that autonomy and control were two sides of the same coin in CCP thinking, we gain a much better understanding of, for example, the “mass line” strategy, the policy of “people-run” organization, and how democratization was meant to work in the localities. When re-

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assessing approaches to grassroots organizational work in 1942, rectifica­ tion strategists insisted that the organizers’ starting point had to be the in­ dividual interests and the special interests of the people being organized: “only when the people’s special interests are guaranteed will their activism be mobilized, and only then will the task of mobilizing support for the war effort and support for the government be successful.” By working from the bottom up, by rooting new organizations in local customs, and by “safe­ guarding the people’s special interests,” the organizers would avoid creat­ ing organizations out of thin air. Conversely, by means of sound organiza­ tional work, they would be able to ensure that local and special interests served collective interests; the people would come to understand that their special interests could be safeguarded only if “Japan is defeated and if the Anti-Japanese Democratic Government is stable.”93 Here we see the feu­ dalist conviction that the common good can be advanced by enlightened self-interest.94 The task for the Communist nation builders was to remove the obstacles to local activism, stoke it, and then mobilize it to ensure that it served national interests and the CCP’s state-strengthening goals. In the CCP’s analysis, the biggest obstacle to local activism in the vil­ lages was class oppression—the oppression of the poor by a feudal land­ lord class (an abstract category that was applied to all w ho im peded the CCP’s hegemonizing progress in the countryside). Organized class strug­ gle was designed, most importantly, to purge peasants of their passivity and to remove the people who blocked the CCP’s access to the villages. The class struggle strategy, therefore, was critical to the achievement of basic CCP goals—active peasant participation in nation building and elim­ ination of powerful or power-seeking rivals. Furthermore, by achieving a degree of economic and social leveling, the land (or tenancy) reform class struggles perhaps helped realize a degree of community solidarity not possible when class differences were sharp. On the other hand, the struggles, as we know, also ripped communities apart, and the CCP could never entrust strife-tom communities with au­ tonomous management rights. The case of Shaan Gan Ning provides the contrast between Yanshu, where community building was based on a high degree of community consensus, and Suide, where communities were much more diversified and conflict ridden. The CCP made impressive progress in Suide after 1939. But the special community ingenuity and activism that de­ rive from autonomy were found only in a few exceptional places where, for one reason or another, a leveling process had removed old elites and had achieved an exceptional degree of social harmony and cooperation. In two important respects, the Communist Party’s approach to local selfgovernment differed from earlier approaches. First, w hen looking for local initiative and activist energy in the localities, the CCP identified working farmers, and specifically middle peasants, as the backbone of the communi-

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ties that could best be mobilized for nation building. By contrast, local selfgovernment advocates in the 1900s and 1910s were speaking of rural elites w hen they argued that within local communities there were activists capable of managing local affairs. The second difference, of course, was that the very people on whom reformers like Sun Yat-sen depended to assume local lead­ ership were, for the most part, the people targeted by the Communists for elimination. The CCP’s successful destruction of old elite power in the coun­ tryside underpinned all of its reconstruction success. The paradox is that the class struggle strategy, so useful for generating poor peasant activism and for destroying the old elite power, also radically reduced, at least in the short term, the self-governing capacities of rural communities. Mobilization for class struggle was only one area of the Communists’ grassroots organizing work. Mobilizations for village self-defense or for farmwork emergencies, for example, could be separate from the class issue. The united front mass associations, promoted from 1937, were explicitly de­ signed to heal the conflicts that had flared and festered during the 1927-1937 civil wár. In Shaan Gan Ning, however, those mass associations never served as community development organs. When the Communists began to give serious attention to the nurturing of community consensus and solidarity, they had to learn organizational methods that were different from the top-down musterings that had become habitual during the early war years. They also had to heal the divisions that the struggles had engen­ dered. Everywhere in Shaan Gan Ning, the progress of organizational com­ munity building was halting and very uneven during the resistance war years. But it proved to be much easier to cultivate organizational autonomy in Yanshu villages that were largely free of class conflict and had been steadily, over four or five years, rebuilt by migrant families. Rectification’s popular autonomy in Suide villages was much weaker in large part because old class structures were not completely dismantled and because CCP con­ trol there was weaker than in Yanshu.

NOTES 1. Gregor Benton, “Comparative Perspectives: North and Central China in the Japanese Resistance,” chapter 8 o f this volume, p.189. 2. By “organization building” I mean a mobilization much broader than is con­ veyed by the term “organizational w eap on .” For a useful overview o f the debates about the Leninist organizational w eapon and its contribution to CCP “su ccess,” see Kathleen Hartford and Steven M. Goldstein, eds., Single Sparks: China's R ural Revolution (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1989), pp. 9-13. 3. An emphasis by scholars on popular participation and grassroots democracy in the CCP base areas was a reaction against the “Cold War scholarship” of the 1950s and

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1960s. Maurice Meisner and Mark Seiden were among the first to probe the populist di­ mensions of the Communist movement and of Maoism in particular. Maurice Meisner, “Yerian Communism and the Rise of the Chinese People’s Republic,” in M odem East Asia: Essays in Interpretation, ed. James B. Crowley (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1970), pp. 265-296; Mark Seiden, The Yenan Way in Revolutionary China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971); and Seiden, “Yan’an Communism Reconsidered,” M odem China 21, no. 1 (1995): 8-44. More recent scholarship has em­ phasized the state-strengthening, hegemonist, and totalitarian ambitions o f the Communist Party. See, for example, Tetsuya Kataoka, Resistance a n d Revolution: The Communists a n d the Second United Front (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974); Chen Yung-fa, Making Revolution: The Communist M ovement in Eastern a n d Central China, 1937-1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986); Steven Levine, The Anvil o f Victory: The Communist Revolution in M anchuria (N ew York: Columbia University Press, 1987). 4. See, for example, Sun Yat-sen, “A Refutation of an Article in Paohuang Pao” [“Protect the Emperor Newspaper”], Honolulu, December 1903, in Prescriptions f o r Saving China: Selected Writings o f Sun Yat-sen, ed. Julia Lee Wei, Ramon Myers, and Donald Gillin (Stanford: Hoover Institute Press, 1994), p. 32. 5. Sun Yat-sen, “Self-government as the Basis o f Reconstruction,” Shanghai, July 1916, in Fundam entals o f N ational Reconstruction (Taipei: Sino-American Pub­ lishing, 1953), p. 145. 6. Fengjian is usually translated as “feudalism” and means, essentially, the feu­ dal system of decentralized power. China’s fen g jia n advocates deplored centrist ab­ solutism and, in particular, the avoidance rule that put outsiders in charge o f local governments. For a useful discussion o f fen g jia n thinking in the early and late Qing, see Philip Kuhn, “Local Self-Government under the Republic: Problems o f Control, Autonomy, and Mobilization,” in Conflict a n d Control in Late Im perial China, ed. Frederic Wakeman Jr. and Carolyn Grant (Berkeley: University o f California Press, 1975), pp. 261-280. See also Min Tu-ki, N ation al P olity a n d Local Power: The Transformation o f Late Im perial China, ed. Philip A. Kuhn and Timothy Brook (Cambridge, Mass.: CEAS/Harvard University Press, 1989), chap. 4. 7. Kuhn, “Local Self-Government,” p. 275. 8. Ibid., p. 269. 9. Ibid. 10. Robert Scalapino and George T. Yu, M odern C hina a n d Its R evolutionary Process: Recurrent Challenges to the T raditional O rder (Berkeley: University o f California Press, 1985), p. 340. 11. Prasenjit Duara, Culture Power a n d the State: Rural North China, 1 9 0 0 -1 9 4 2 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988). 12. Ibid., p. 226. 13- In Duara’s definition, “state involution” describes a process o f state (bureau­ cratic) expansion without growth. 14. I use the term “populism” loosely, as partially endorsed by Catherine Lynch in her discussion o f populism in China and Chinese populism. Populism among China’s radical intellectuals in the 1910s and 1920s w as by no means a coherent and cohesive ideology but rather an ideological or activist orientation that included at least som e

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o f the following: antiurbanism, the celebration o f “backwardness,” voluntarism, antielitism, elevation o f “the people,” intellectuals “going dow n” to the people and bonding with them, egalitarian antibureaucratism, collectivism, organic community and communalism, distrust o f centralization, and occupational specialization. Cather­ ine Lynch, “Liang Shuming and the Populist Alternative in China” (Ph.D. diss., Uni­ versity o f Wisconsin, 1989), chap. 1. 15. Arif Dirlik, The Origins o f Chinese Comm unism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989) pp. 93-94,195-196. 16. This interpretation gives less importance to the “foreignness” o f May Fourth cul­ ture than is usual in standard treatments o f the May Fourth period. It does not deny the inspirational role played by Western ideas but finds strong influences from China’s past in the May Fourthers’ interpretations of those ideas/influences that, needless to say, were not recognized at the time. Indeed, rather than acknowledge their indebt­ edness to China’s fen gjian tradition, the New Culture radicals condemned the entire Confucian system as “feudal” (fengjian). For a discussion of the new intellectuals’ “alienation in terms o f vocabulary,” see John Schrecker, The Chinese Revolution in Historical Perspective (N ew York: Praeger, 1991), p. 143. 17. Guy Alitto, The Last Confucian: Liang Shu-ming a n d the Chinese Dilem m a o f M odernity (Berkeley: University o f California Press, 1979), p. 207. 18. For a discussion o f Liang Shuming’s critiques o f the Communists, and particu­ larly o f the class struggle strategy, see ibid., pp. 215-225. 19. Ibid., p. 225* 20. The CCP, said Liang, “first applies a kind o f divisive effort to rural society, and creates a situation o f disassociation and mutual antagonism within the village [so that] struggle com es about.” Cited by Alitto, Last Confucian, p. 216. 21. See, in particular, Philip C. C. Huang, “Rural Class Struggle in the Chinese Revolution,” M o d e m C hina 21, no. 1 (1995): 105-143; Edward Friedman, Paul Pickow icz, and Mark Seiden, with Kaye Ann Johnston, Chinese Village, Socialist State (N ew Haven: Yale University Press, 1991). 22. For a discussion o f the special ecological features o f the Yan’an area in the late 1930s, see Pauline Keating, “The Ecological Origins o f the Yan’an Way,” Australian Jou rn al o f Chinese Affairs 32 (July 1994): 126-140. 23. In the case o f Shaanbei’s Yanshu area, the CCP was confronted with the task o f “restoring” a region that had been bypassed by the Tongzhi Restoration (1861-1875). The great northwestern Muslim rebellion o f the 1860s was not finally put dow n until 1873, and it was follow ed by a pacification that forced Muslim com­ munities to relocate to Gansu Province. No attempt was made by either the central Qing or local administrations to reconstruct the econom ic infrastucture o f the areas laid waste by the 1861-1873 civil war and further depopulated by the outward mi­ grations. For more detailed discussion o f the “restoration” phase o f the CCP’s recon­ struction project in Shaanbei, see Pauline B. Keating, Two Revolutions: Village Reconstruction a n d the Cooperative M ovem ent in Northern Shaanxi, 1 9 3 4 -1 9 4 5 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), pp. 4—7, 245-246. 24. Tony Saich elaborates this point in “Introduction: The Chinese Commnunist Party and the Anti-Japanese War Base Areas,” China Quarterly 140 (December 1994):

1000- 1006.

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25. See Keating, “Ecological Origins,” pp. 126-140. 26. For an account of the early history of the Communist movement in Shaanxi province and the creation of the Shaan Gan Ning Border Region, see Seiden, Yenan Way, chaps. 1-3; Joseph Esherick, “Chinese Kaleidescope: Looking at Revolution from the Bottom Up” (unpublished manuscript, 1990), pp. 14-18. 27. Esherick, “Chinese Kaleidescope,” p. 17. 28. Seiden, Yenan Way, pp. 94-100. 29. Lu Mang, Shaan Gan Ning bian qu de m in zh o n g y u n d o n g (The mass m ove­ ment in the Shaan Gan Ning Border Region) (Hankou: D azhong chubanshe, 1938), pp. 7-8. 30. The argument here was that “by means of democratic elections, the work sys­ tems of the various mass organizations are put in place and made healthy. In this way, the abilities and strong points o f each individual group member will be brought into play, making them strong members of the group.” Lu Mang, Shaan Gan Ning bianqude m inzhong yundong, p. 5. 31. Ibid., pp. 4-6. 32. The 1942 rectification movement was, of course, much more than a drive to “rectify work styles,” and w e know that critiques o f past practices were designed to discredit “leading cadres” and party factions as much as to identify “erroneous prac­ tices.” Even so, whatever their main purpose, the rectification critiques do provide useful evidence about organizational practices and problems in the 1937-1942 period. 33. Literally, “with big heads, thin waists, and extremely small feet.” “Qunzhong tuanti zenyang gaizao” (The way to reform the mass associations), Jiefang ribao (Liberation Daily) (JFRB), 28 June 1942. 34. “Minzhong tuantide xingzhi he renwu” (The nature and tasks o f the mass as­ sociations), JFRB, 29 September 1942. 35. Party sources claimed that 1,002,744 m u o f land was reclaimed in 1939. This was almost three times the acreage reclaimed in 1938. “Bianqu nongye tongji biao,” 1940-1943 (A table of agricultural statistics for the border region), Shaan Gan Ning bianqu caizheng jingjishi bianxiezu, Shaanxisheng dang’anguan (The Editorial and Writing Group of the history of the finances and econom y o f the Shaan Gan Ning Border Region and the Shaanxi Provincial Archives), Kangri zh an zh en g shiqi Shaanganning bianqu caizheng jin g ji shiliao zh a ib ia n (A collection o f historical materials on the finances and econom y o f the Shaanganning Border Region during the Resistance War period) (CZJJSL) (Xi’an: Shaanxi renmin chubanshe, 1982), 2:573-574; “Shaanganning bianqu canyihui wenxuan” (Collected documents o f the Shaanganning Border Region assemblies), compiled by Zhongguo kexueyuan lishi yanjiusuo (History Research Unit, Chinese Academy o f Science) (CYHWX) (Peking: Kexue chubanshe, 1958), p. 21. 36. Shaan Gan Ning bianqu jiansheting nongmuke (The Agriculture and Livestock Section of the Shaan Gan Ning Border Region’s Construction Department), “1939 nongye shengchan zongjie baogao” (Summary report o f 1939 agricultural produc­ tion), in CZJJSL, 2:63. 37. Ibid. 38. Lin Boqu, “Shaan Gan Ning bianqu zhengfu yinian gongzuo zongjie” (A sum­ mary of the year’s work o f the Shaan Gan Ning Border Region Government), JFRB, 8 February 1944.

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55

39. Shaan Gan Ning bianqu jiansheting nongmuke, “1939 nongye shengchan zongjie baogao,” p. 63. 40. “Zhongyang suweite gongheguo linshi zhongyang zhengfu banbude laodong huzhushe zuzhi gangyao” (The announcement by the Provisional Central Govern­ ment of the Central Soviet Republic o f an organizational program for labor mutual aid societies), 1933, in Zbongguo nongye hezuohua yu n don g shiliao (Historical materi­ als on the agricultural cooperativization movement in China), ed. Shi Jingtang (Peking: Sanlian Shudian, 1957), 1:85-87. 41. Mao Zedong, “Economic and Financial Problems,” Decem ber 1942, in M ao Z edong a n d the P olitical E conom y o f the B order Region, trans. Andrew Watson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), pp. 77-78. 42. “Dui ‘jiti’ kaihuang yijian” (Some opinions about the “collective” reclamation o f wasteland), JFRB, 9 May 1942. 43. Zhongguo gongchandang xibei zhongyangju diaocha yanjiushi (CCP North­ west Bureau’s Investigation and Research Department), “Shaanganning bianqu laodong huzhu” (Labor mutual aid in the Shaanganning Border Region), Yan’an, 1944, in Zhongguo nongye hezuohua, ed. Shi Jingtang, p. 213. 44. See, for exam ple, “Fuxian hezuoshe yinianlai guangda gujin baisanshiyubei” (Investment in the Fu county cooperative has expanded more than 300 percent in a year), JFRB, 19 August 1944; CZJJSL, 7:117-119; Shaan Gan Ning bianqu gonghe bangongshi (Shaan Gan Ning Border Region Government’s Industrial Cooperative Office), “Bianqu hezuoshe gongzuo zongjie” (A summary o f the border region’s co­ operative work), Decem ber 1948, in CZJfSL, 7:82-83. 45. “Jingji jianshe baogaoshu” (A report on econom ic construction), 1942, in CZJJSL, 7:134-136. 46. For details and a discussion o f the migration data in Party sources, see Keating, Two Revolutions, pp. 93-96,118. 47. “Nongye shengchan huzhu xiaozu zhexing zuzhi tiaoli” (Provisional organiza­ tional rules for agricultural production mutual aid small groups), 1941, in CZJJSL, 2:425; “Shaan Gan Ning bianqu sanshiemiandu nongdai shishi banfa” (Methods for providing agricultural loans in 1943 in the Shaan Gan Ning Border Region), 1943, in CZJJSL, 5:408. 48. Clause 8 o f the Provisional Organization Methods for Agricultural Loan Groups (or Production Groups) reads as follows: “For production work, each group member has the duty to engage in labor exchanges and other mutual aid cooperation.” “Shaanganning bianqu sanshiemiandu nongdai,” 1943, p. 411. 49. People from Suide were much more easily assimilated than were refugees from war and famine zones. For one thing, a long-established Suide tradition o f mi­ grations southward to the wasteland districts meant that many Suide people had kin­ folk and contacts in southern Shaanbei. Communist mobilizers put “go south” pres­ sure on these people w hen the Yan’an government began, in 1942, to set migration targets and to organize migrations from Suide to Yanshu. 50. Mao Zedong, “Economic and Financial Problems,” pp. 77-78. 51. “Jingqu pinmin yiken neidi fengshou liangshi huixiang maidi” (Poor people from the garrison district m ove to the reclamation areas and after bumper grain har­ vests com e back hom e to buy land), JFRB, 20 January 194352. “Jiaxian shixing jianzu baodian” (Jiaxian implements rent reduction and the protection o f tenants), JFRB, 29 May 1943.

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53. “Jingqu pinmin yiken neidi fengshou liangshi huixiang maidi.” 54. Northwest Bureau Investigation and Research Office, B iafiqude y im in gongzuo (The work of resettling people in the border region), Yan’an, 1944, p. 22. 55. One source claims that 27,740 people migrated from Suide into Shaan Gan Ning between 1937 and 1940. “Huading yiminqu, songbu youdai banfa, sheli yiminzhan” (Designate immigrant districts, announce special treatment methods, set up migrant depots), JFRB, 2 December 1942. That figure is feasible, given that civil war continued to fester in Suide until 1940, and radical tax relief was offered to poor farm­ ers in the four Shaan Gan Ning subregions in the 1939-1940 period. 56. The area that became Yanshu had a population o f about 223,000 in 1930, and 410,000 in 1944. Hsü Yung-ying, A Survey o f the Shensi-Kansu-Ninghsia B order Re­ gion (New York: Institute o f Pacific Relations, 1945), 1:21; CYHWX, p. 378. 57. “Bianqu qingkuang gaishu— liangshi gongzuo bufen” (An overview o f condi­ tions in the border region—The grain work sector), 1948, in CZJJSL, 6:96. For details o f the 1941 tax take, see Keating, Two Revolutions, pp. 159ff. 58. “Shaan Gan Ning bianqu zhengfu guanyu queding sanshiyiniandu zhengliangcaoshu he peichu yangzishui mingling,” 1942, pp. 398-399. 59. Liberation D aily reports o f 30 April 1942 and 2 June 1942, translated in Mao, “Economic and Financial Problems,” pp. 229-232. 60. According to the figures given in the 30 April 1942 report, Wu’s tax payment constituted 36 percent of his grain crop. We are not, however, given details here o f his income from farm sidelines. Mao, “Economic and Financial Problems,” p. 231. 61. Mao, “Economic and Financial Problems,” p. 231. 62. “Mofan dangyuan he laodong yingxiong Shen Changlin tongzhi,” 1944. 63. “Shaan Gan Ning bianqu zhengfu guanyu queding sanshiyiniandu zhengliangcaoshu he peichu yangzishui mingling” (Shaan Gan Ning Border Region government decree concerning the grain and hay tax quotas fixed for the end o f 1942 and the abo­ lition of the sheep tax), 3 April 1942, in Shaanganning gem ing gen ju di shiliao x u a n (A collection o f historical materials on the Shaanganning Revolutionary Base Area), ed. Gansusheng shehui kexueyuan lishi yanjiushi (Gansu Social Science Academy, History Research Department) (Lanzhou: Gansu Renmin chubanshe, 1982) vol. 2, clauses 19-24, pp. 190-191; “Caiting Nan tingzhang tanhua shuoming zhengliang gongzuo fangzhen” (A talk by Finance Department head, Nan Hanchen, explaining tax collection work directives), JFRB, 26 October 1942. 64. Zhao Yiwen, “Jieshao qunian zhengshou gongliangde jizhong fangshi” (An ex­ planation of the different ways in which grain tax was collected last year), JFRB, 12 September 1942. 65. “Zhengliang yihou” (After the grain tax collection), JFRB, 14 February 1942. 66. “Zhonggong zhongyang guanyu kangri genjudi tudi zhengcede jueding ji qi fujian” (CCP Central Committee decision on land policy in the anti-Japanese base areas and supplements to that decision), 28 January 1942, in A D ocum entary History o f Chinese Communism, trans. C. Brandt et al. (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1952), pp. 276-285. 67. Jia Tuofu, “Guanyu bianqu tudi zhengce wentide baogao” (A report concern­ ing border region land policy problems), 15 March 1945, in CZJJSL, 2:221. 68. “Guanyu jianzu jianxi yu jiaozu jiaoxi wenti” (Concerning problems o f reduc­ ing land rents and interest rates and the payment o f rents and interest), February 1944, in CZJJSL, 2:306.

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57

69. Chai Shufan, “Jianzuzhongde dianquan wenti” (The issue of tenants’ rights dur­ ing rent reduction), JFRB, 27 October 1942. 70. “Suide Xindianqu nongmin chuzu jiao zhong” (The rents paid by peasants in Suide county’s Xindian district are relatively heavy), JFRB, 10 November 1942; “Bianqu lianggeyue jianzu shuping” (A review o f two months’ rent reduction work in the border region), JFRB, 30 September 1946. 71. “Suide fenqu tudi wenti” (The land problem in the Suide subregion), JFRB, 15 May 1945. See also “Qunzhong fenfen jihui; Suide jianzu jiaozu shenru xiangcun” (Mass gatherings occur one after another; the rent reduction movement goes down to the villages), JFRB, 1 November 1942. 72. Ibid. 73- Yuan Renyuan and Yang Heting, “Suide fenqu jianzu gongzuo baogao” (A re­ port on rent and interest rate reduction work in the Suide subregion), May 1943, in CZJJSL, 2:388, 395. 74. “Yaoqiu jianzude ren” (P eople w h o want rent reduction), JFRB, 30 October 1942; “Baohu dianhu quanyi” (Protecting tenants’ rights and interests), JFRB, 28 Novem ber 1942. 75. Yuan Renyuap and Yang Heting, “Suide fenqu jianzu,” 1943. 76. “Baijiayin jianzu yundong” (The rent reduction movement in Baijiayin Village), JFRB, 4 December 1943. 77. “Guanyu jianzu jianxi yu jiaozu jiaoxide wenti,” 1944, p. 333. 78. “Xibeiju guanyu jinyibu lingdao nongmin qunzhong kaizhan douzhengde jueding” (Northwest Bureau decision on taking further steps to lead the peasant masses for the developm ent o f the struggle for rent reduction), 10 October 1943, in CZJJSL, 2:278-283. 79- “Guanyu jianzu jianxi yu jiaozu jiaoxide wenti” (1944), p. 332; “Guanche jianzu” (Implement rent reduction), JFRB, 9 February 1945. 80. “Xibeiju guanyu jinyibu,” 1943; “Qingjian zhengfu sanshiemiandu jianzu gongzuo zongjie baogao” (Qingjian County government report on rent reduction work to the end o f 1943), n.d., in CZJJSL, 2:347. See Peter Seybolt’s discussion o f the “counterespionage campaigns” in Shaan Gan Ning Seybolt, “Terror and Conformity: Counterespionage Campaigns, Rectification, and Mass Movements, 1942-43,” M odem China 12, no. 1 (1986). To the extent that the campaigns reached into the vil­ lages, they were extensions o f the class struggles initiated by the election and rent re­ duction movements. 81. In Diuniugou and Majiaqu villages, places developed by the Party as models o f rent reform, are examples o f tenant associations that broadened their activities into production and social welfare work. “Guangyu jianzu jianxide wenti,” 1944, p. 317. 82. Ibid., pp. 212, 327; “Jianzu yu shengchan” (Rent reduction and production), JFRB, 6 November 1945; Northwest Bureau Investigation and Research Office, “Shaanganning bianqu laodong huzhu” (Labor mutual aid in the Shaanganning Border Region, Yan’an, 1944, in Zhongguo nongye hezuohua yu n don g shiliao, ed. Shijingtang. 83. “Shaan-Gan—Ning bianqu tudi wenti” (The land problem in the Shaan Gan Ning Border Region), 1946. 84. Shaan Gan Ning’s cooperative m ovement is discussed in detail in Pauline Keating, “The Yan’an Way o f Cooperativization,” China Q uarterly 140 (December 1994): 1025-1051. The following discussion draws on material in that article.

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85. “Zhonggong gongyang zhengzhiju, guanyu Shaan Gan Ning bianqu gongzuo fangzhende jueding” (A CCP Central Politburo decision concerning prin­ ciples guiding [our] work in the Shaan Gan Ning Border Region), 13 August 1942, in Zhongyang dang’anguan (Central Party archives), Shaan G an N ing b ian qu kangri m in zh u genjudi: W enxian ju a n (The Shaan Gan Ning Border Region— an anti-Japanese democratic base area: Collected docum ents), vol. 3 (Beijing: Zhonggong dang’an chubanshe, 1990). 86. The investigators uncovered some customary differences betw een teamwork in Yanshu and Suide that derived essentially from the two subregions’ demographic differences. They were, however, not different enough to make Yanshu customs “strange” to migrant settlers from Suide. 87. For a detailed discussion o f these two model villages, see Keating, Two Revolutions, pp. 353-357, 359-361. 88. “Wu Manyou he Wujiazaoyuan,” 1944. 89. “Mofan dangyuan he laodong yingxiong Shen Changlin tongzhi,” 1944. 90. “Tian Erhong chuangzao mofan xiang” (Tian Erhong creates a model town­ ship), JFRB, 2 February 1944. 91. “Wu Manyou he Wujiazaoyuan,” 1944. 92. Keating, “Yan’an Way o f Cooperativization,” pp. 1033-1034. 93. “Minzhong tuantide xingzhi he renwu,” 1942. 94. Kuhn, referring to Gu Yanwu’s idea. “Local self-government,” p. 264.

2 Revolution in a “Feudal Fortress” Y a n g jia g o u , M iz h i C o u n t y , S h a a n x i,

1937-1948

Joseph W. Esherick

In December 1947, China’s fate hung in the balance. No sooner had the war against Japan ended than the Nationalist (Guomindang) and Communist Par­ ties began preparing for civil war. Now their rival armies raged across the land. Chiang Kai-shek’s troops attacked and seized the Communists’ wartime capital of Yan’an—though Mao Zedong and the central Party leadership eas­ ily escaped to hide in the surrounding countryside. As the contending armies swirled across the map of China, Mao deliv­ ered a report to the Party Center. The military successes of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), he said, had transformed the revolutionary strug­ gle from the defense of the Communist base areas to offensive efforts to eliminate Chiang Kai-shek and his Nationalist armies. Land reform had made these successes possible by solidifying peasant support for the Party in its rear areas. Now, Mao correctly perceived, China had reached a “his­ torical turning point.”1 Indeed, 1948 would witness a series of decisive vic­ tories for the Communist forces, and the following year would bring com­ plete victory on the Chinese mainland. Mao’s report was written and delivered while he was living under a fic­ titious name in Mizhi County of northern Shaanxi, in the isolated moun­ tain village of Yangjiagou. Some forty years later, in February 1989, I visited that community to interview elderly villagers, staying for more than a w eek in the same elegant (but now somewhat dilapidated) landlord com pound that Mao and Jiang Qing had shared with Zhou Enlai. I already knew a good deal about the village. In the fall of 1942, the former general secretary of the Communist Party, the Russian-trained Zhang Wentian, had been sent to Yangjiagou to learn about rural life. His detailed published 59

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report2 h a s b e e n th e b a sis for a n u m b er o f stu d ie s o f Y an gjiagou in E nglish an d J a p a n e se .3 Later, in lo ca l a n d p ro v in cia l a rch iv es in S h aan xi, I d isc o v e r e d a nu m b er o f rep orts o n this v illa g e a n d M izhi C o u n ty ,.w h ic h I h a v e su p p le m e n te d w ith p u b lish e d d o c u m e n ta tio n in a n a ttem p t to tell th e story o f rev o lu tio n in o n e C h in ese v illa g e an d c o u n ty .4

YANGJIAGOU: “FEUDAL FORTRESS”

Yangjiagou (or “Yang Family Gulch”) is located in loess hills of the ShaanGan-Ning Border Region, the sparsely populated, impoverished, and isolated area to which Mao Zedong and the Red Army fled at the end of the Long March in 1935. After war with Japan broke out in July 1937, Communists and Nationalists joined in a tenuous united front against the Japanese aggressors, and Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist government recognized Communist con­ trol of this region. The Communist capital in Yan’an soon became a mecca for patriotic youth from all of China and for progressive journalists from across the world. In Communist propaganda Yan’an became China’s “revolutionary holy land,” and the border region was promoted as a socially progressive and democratic model for all of China.5 Yangjiagou was in no way typical of the border region. Within northern Shaanxi (Shaanbei), the three counties along the Wuding River—Yulin, Mizhi, and Suide—were the wealthiest part of a very poor region. In the en­ tire border region, the average population density was only 15.2 persons per square kilometer, but in the Suide subregion, which included these counties, the figure was three times higher.6 These counties also had the three best schools; Mizhi, with a fine middle school and a famous girls’ school, was rec­ ognized as the cultural center of Shaanbei—its county seat said to be more civilized than the provincial capital.7 In the context of the Communist revo­ lution, Mizhi was above all known for its powerful landlords. “Historically,” said a 1942 survey, “Mizhi has been an area where large landlords have con­ centrated.” Even under wartime Communist rule, their land was not redis­ tributed, and Mizhi and neighboring Suide landlords were considered “the representatives of the landlord class of the entire Border Region.”8 It was no accident that the enlightened gentry landlord Li Dingming, who was selected vice chairman of the border region government, came from Mizhi.9 But no landlord group was more famous than the Ma lineage of Yangjiagou. This landlord stronghold included the most heavily taxed man in Mizhi and Suide, and probably in the entire border region.10 In the winter of 1947, when Mao Zedong’s entourage approached the vil­ lage from the valley below, his bodyguard was struck by the array of me­ morial arches and large stone statues and steles that honored the occupants and their ancestors. The village itself was composed of a feudal fortress on

Revolution in a “Feudal Fortress”

61

the sunny northern side of the gully, where most of the sixty-odd Ma family landlords lived, and a number of dirt caves on the other side that housed the tenants and laborers who made up the rest of the village’s 250 or so house­ holds.11 This remarkable concentration of landlords (almost one-quarter of the households) was unusual for any part of China. Within the fortress—built in the 1860s for defense against Moslem rebels threatening from western Shaanxi and Gansu—the landlords of the Ma lineage lived in beautifully con­ structed stone and brick caves with spacious courtyards behind imposing gates, large storerooms, and ample room for their families, business man­ agers, and servants.12 Mao, of course, got the very best compound (just com­ pleted by a landlord who had received architectural training in Japan), with heating ducts that ran under the floor, stone dragons holding up the eaves, a small bathroom, and a courtyard large enough to play tennis. The arches, gates, and steles of Yangjiagou stood as constant reminders of the distinguished ancestry of the Ma landlords. Their forefathers included at least one holder of the metropolitan jinshi degree, one provincial juren, and several gongsheng a n d shengyuan. At least five had served as officials dur­ ing the Qing dynasty, usually as county magistrates. In the twentieth century, the family quickly adjusted to the new educational system. After a basic clas­ sical education in the school attached to the ancestral hall, many went to col­ lege in Beijing; four sons of this isolated mountain village had studied abroad. In the 1940s, members of the family were scattered throughout China. There were businessmen, academics, students, engineers, officials, and military officers in the Guomindang areas; a few younger Mas were stu­ dents, cadres, or soldiers on the Communist side.13 Locally, the family dis­ played and preserved its status by marrying daughters to, and taking wives from, all of the leading landlord families in the county and from neighboring Suide and Jia-xian elates.14 The rise of this spectacularly successful landlord lineage is not easy to ex­ plain. The village itself is some twenty kilometers from the county seat, even now reachable only by jeep or truck over treacherous unpaved mountain roads. It is far from any commercial route and is not a market town. Nonethe­ less, it is clear that beginning in the 1830s, the lineage founder, Ma Jiale, be­ came wealthy through commerce and usury—perhaps, as family lore has it, after finding a sum of silver sychee that had fallen from the donkey of a wealthy merchant. Rather than take the money, he waited for its owner to re­ turn, thus ingratiating himself and establishing a relationship that he gradu­ ally parlayed into a substantial fortune. He then invested this money in land, often by buying up and foreclosing on mortgages.15 Although the Mas’ rise had much to do with commercial activity, and the fam­ ily members continued to engage in substantial moneylending and traffic in grain, by the late nineteenth century, the lineage showed a characteristic ten­ dency to rely more on its landholdings and devote its attention to

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education for official careers and gentry status (or the twentieth-century equiv­ alent thereof). One family patriarch advised his sons not to go off seeking wealth through trade: “Money chases men, men cannot chase money.” He ad­ vised his sons to “sit still and live off the land.”16 The detailed accounts of the most successful landlord show him patiently accumulating ever larger landholdings, selling hoarded grain in famine years when prices were high and using the profits to buy land from hard-pressed peasants at bargain rates. By the 1940s, the Ma landlords owned virtually all of the land in their own village and a total of more than 14,000 shang of land in Yangjiagou and surrounding vil­ lages.17 (A shang, the Shaanbei land measure, equals about 3 mu, or 1/2 acre.) At the time of Zhang Wentian’s survey, most of the Ma landlords were fifth- and sixth-generation descendants of the founder. The lineage ow ned 200 or 300 shang of land whose rent supported an ancestral hall and lin­ eage school,18 but most of the land was held by individual households, each under the name of a tang, or family trust. The landholdings of the separate households varied widely. Ten small landlords held less than 50 shang, while middle-sized landlords were the norm, with twenty-five fam­ ilies owning between 50 and 200 shang. Among the big landlords, eigh­ teen families owned between 200 and 600 shang, and the four largest each owned more than 1,000 shang. The report stressed that household divi­ sion and opium addiction (noted in seventeen families) were the major causes of landlord decline, but a number of the small and medium land­ lords had good jobs outside the border region, and their modest landholdings may simply reflect an investment in more promising careers than landholding in Mizhi. Among those w ho stayed, the largest, Ma Weixin, accumulated much of his land through rather merciless foreclosures on loans to poorer, opium-addicted relatives.19 The enormous wealth and power of the Ma lineage made its members un­ questioned lords of Yangjiagou. The Mas’ tenants and hired hands were ex­ traordinarily dependent on their masters. Tenants and sharecroppers, who had no security of tenure, lived in constant fear of being replaced and losing their access to land. A total of 151 of these households lived in caves owned by the Mas, and they avoided any behavior that might get them kicked out and leave them homeless in Shaanbei’s harsh winters.20 Furthermore, virtu­ ally every tenant household owed back rent, often with debts running over several generations. In part, this reflected the landlords’ merciful flexibility in deferring rent collection in a region in which harvests varied widely with the weather. But the effect was to keep tenants in a sort of debt bondage, which was even more intense in the case of sharecroppers. Sharecroppers in­ evitably had to borrow against the fall harvest for food to tide them over the spring and summer. The personal dependence of sharecroppers and their wives was clearly revealed “in their obligation to perform petty chores around the home whenever the landlord called.”21

Revolution in a “Feudal Fortress”

63

Such coercive dependency was not the only basis for landlord domina­ tion. The Ma landlords also used selective benevolence to secure the loyalty of their fellow villagers. The large courtyard fronting the magnificent caves that Mao would occupy in 1947-1948 had been built up on the side of a cliff with stamped loess soil. The landlord, Ma Xingmin, began the project in the famine year of 1929, employing only Yangjiagou villagers and paying them only food for a day. This was clearly an exploitative wage, but the villagers remembered it as a welcome form of relief, which kept them from starving or becoming refugees.22 As a result of such practices, landlords successfully curried favor with the Yangjiagou peasants. Indeed, the Communist cadres of postwar land reform were frustrated to find peasants acting as the land­ lords’ “obedient slaves,” fatalistically accepting the propositions that “the master is exalted and the servant base” and “wealth and poverty come from Heaven.”23 But some of these tenants’ obedient service revealed signs of trouble: they served as guards patrolling the perimeter of the fortress wall day and night.24 The first sign that révolution might threaten this landlord stronghold came in 1934-1935, as Communist guerrillas started organizing soviets and carry­ ing out land reform in nearby areas. The Ma landlords managed to call in a company of soldiers from Suide for protection, and the troops stayed at least until the fall of 1935. Villagers were organized into a militia force, and there was no direct threat to Yangjiagou.25 Nonetheless, the village landlords did feel the effect. Rent collection outside the village was hampered, land prices fell, landlords stopped acquiring land, and they withdrew from the usury market.26 But a counteroffensive by the government put down the local guerrilla movement, and Guomindang and landlord power continued un­ challenged, even in the early years of the war with Japan. In Mizhi and Yangjiagou, revolution would not come easily.

EARLY YEARS OF THE WAR OF RESISTANCE

Although the Red Army arrived in other parts of northern Shaanxi late in 1933, the substantial landlord pow er in Mizhi—backed by the local war­ lord’s Eighty-fourth Division in Yulin to the north—left the county largely unaffected by revolution for another two years. Then the kidnapping of Chiang Kai-shek in the Xi’an incident of December 1936 brought a halt to the civil war as both sides agreed to a united front against Japan. Follow­ ing the outbreak of full-scale war with Japan in July 1937, Mizhi was in­ cluded within the garrison area of the Communist forces, now renamed the Eighth Route Army. Eighth Route Army troops moved into the county in November, but the Guomindang continued to control civil administration through its commissioner in neighboring Suide, He Shaonan.27

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In the first years of the war, Communist and Guomindang authorities competed for political advantage in Mizhi. The Eighth Route\Army used its Democratic Movement section to support leftist forces, but He Shaonan proved a determined and capable opponent—frustrating Communist rent reduction policies, organizing students, and making public speeches against Communist influence.28 Then, in 1939 and 1940, conflicts increased with the Guomindang forces surrounding the border region. Guomindang incursions recovered a large block of territory from Communist control: six county seats fell to the Nationalists in Guanzhong and East Gansu, along the southern and western borders of Shaan Gan Ning. Using the pretext of Japanese advances, the Party Center recalled Wang Zhen’s 359th Regiment from Shanxi to defend the Yellow River front. This brought superior Eighth Route Army forces to the Suide-Mizhi area, and in March 1940, He Shaonan was confronted with trumped-up charges of corruption and drug smug­ gling and was driven from the border region. Wang Zhen replaced him as commissioner of the Suide subregion. Thus, the loss of the desolate areas of eastern Gansu was compensated by Communist hegemony in the wealthiest part of the region.29 With the departure of He Shaonan, Communist power began to grow in Mizhi. Although the county still had a Guomindang magistrate, the Party formed a National Salvation association that increasingly acted as the real power in the county. The old regime’s rural administration was thoroughly overhauled. All baozhang in the old baojia local security system were changed, as were most of their superiors, thè lianbao heads. Two-thirds of the new lianbao appointees were Communist Party members. The Party also issued gun control orders, requiring the registration of privately held weapons. Slowly it began a wide range of reforms in education, opium pro­ hibition, tax collection, and public relief.30 Most important, the Party built a power base in the countryside. By May, it had established the network of peasant associations, and these, in the words of one forthright Party document, “took over the work of the old regime.”31 They handled land disputes, organized tax collection, and transmitted border region policies to the villages. The years 1940-1941 also saw a major recruit­ ment of peasants into the Party. Figures from the early postwar period show that of 2,090 Party members in Mizhi, 1,168 (36 percent) joined in 1940-1941. The appeal to new Party members was frankly opportunist. A key recruitment slogan was “no army service, light tax burden, and victory in all your law­ suits. 32 At the same time, the Party was vigilant to protect its class purity and ideological correctness, purging roughly 13 percent of the prewar member­ ship across the border region, warning against the growth of “bourgeois thinking among members who had become middle or rich peasants in the stable environment fostered by the new regime, and guarding against gentry and landlord elements slipping into the Party.33 In this last respect, they were

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certainly successful: statistics from 1941 show that more than 95 percent of the border region Party had middle or poorer peasant backgrounds, and only 0.09 percent came from landlord or gentry families.34 Despite considerable success in building its rural pow er base, there is some evidence that the Party’s top-down organizational strategy still left it short of full pow er at the village level. A 1944 survey found that among village heads, the 28.8 percent w ho were Communists were almost bal­ anced by the 24.6 percent who were classed as outright reactionaries.35 In Yangjiagou, landlord pow er was not seriously threatened. The largest landlord, Ma Weixin, was elected baozhang and later district head.36 Only seven men were recruited into the Party (six of them from two sets of cousins). They met secretly to receive instructions from their superiors and never dared reveal their Party membership to other villagers.37

COMMUNISTS AND LANDLORDS

*

As a key center of landlord power, Mizhi was a critical testing ground for the Communist Party’s united front with its class enemies. Wartime policy re­ placed the Soviet-era confiscation of landlord property with more moderate measures for rent and interest reduction; enlightened gentry and progressive landlords were welcomed into the united front against Japan. The Party held elections for local assemblies and announced a three-thirds system that lim­ ited the Communists to one-third of the seats, reserving one-third for other progressives and one-third for middling elements who were expected to be largely enlightened gentry and landlords.38 In Mizhi, it fell to Wang Zhen, as commissioner of the Suide subregion, to carry out the united front policy. His efforts were not welcomed by local Communist activists. Documents of the new regime regularly chastise local cadres for their “closed-door” attitude toward the gentry.39 These cadres had been fighting and killing landlords for some years and had no desire to work with their class enemies. They also feared, said one report, that their class adversaries were “too capable.”40 “This regime that we have built with our own blood!” the peasant cadres complained. “Now we are going to let the landlords and gentry rush back in! Can you guarantee that we w on’t get tricked?”41 In the early 1940s, the united front was clearly strained and artificial. Guomindang county magistrates were kept on, but Communist authorities at the subregional level made it clear that this was done largely for show, so everybody went around the magistrate and dealt directly with newly ap­ pointed department heads.42 Local gentry were appointed to meaningless positions as “some leading cadres thought that the notion of cooperating with the gentry meant getting enough people [gentry] to fill a quota. For this,

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they established a few sinecures in the county government for those types [i.e., prominent gentry and scholars] who cannot do any real V ork.”43 Despite resistance from below, Wang Zhen worked assiduously to court the local elite. Following He Shaonan’s ouster, landlords, including Ma Xingmin from Yangjiagou, were invited to help set new guidelines to imple­ ment rent and interest reduction,44 and the following year, thirty local gentry joined the preparatory committee for new elections 45 But Wang was working against tremendous odds. In areas such as Mizhi, where land had not been redistributed during the land revolution, the land­ lords initially greeted the Communists with “terror and fear.”46 Over time, however, fear receded before a renewed class confidence. The Mizhi land­ lords regarded themselves as heirs to the scholarly traditions of the old gen­ try class, and they were not impressed by the less educated cadres of the new regime. When the new cadres showed an equal suspicion of the land­ lords, excluding them from any voice in the National Salvation association that had become the de facto county government, the landlords accused them of violating the Party’s professed democratic principles: “Democracy is fake,” one said, “there is no democracy here.”47 Landlord suspicion was tempered by a realism that dictated flexibility in dealing with their new adversaries. However grudgingly, the landlords paid the heavy taxes justified by the war effort and established strategic personal connections to the new regime. Many at least permitted (and may have sub­ tly encouraged) their daughters to marry Communists. The biggest landlord in Yangjiagou, Ma Weixin, had two daughters married to open Communists, including the head of the secretariat for the Suide subregion.48 In fact, the ed­ ucation of women (most of whom obviously came from elite families) was so well developed in Mizhi that the county became a favorite place for Red Army officers to find wives. Within the PLA, the county acquired the nick­ name “wife’s father’s county.”49

COUNTY AND SUBREGION CADRES IN THE MIDDLE

As Wang Zhen and other subregion and county cadres sought to carry out border region policies, they often found themselves caught betw een local activists, on the one hand, and their border region superiors, on the other. One example, directly related to united front concerns, arose in the fall of 1941. The Guomindang had just appointed a new magistrate for Mizhi, and one of the Yangjiagou landlords joined his staff.50 The subregion authori­ ties proposed allowing local leftists in the Party-dominated mass organiza­ tions to organize demonstrations to drive him off. But the border region ve­ toed the idea. Mizhi was officially in the sphere of influence of the Guomindang general Deng Baoshan in Yulin. Driving off the Mizhi magis-

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trate would embarrass Deng, whose cordial relations with the Communists kept their northern border secure. A major incident might lead to Deng’s replacement by someone more hostile to the new regime. Furthermore, it was pointed out that the Communists controlled the county assembly and the rural apparatus, so the Guomindang magistrate would be quite power­ less anyway. Always conscious of divisions in the enemy camp, the border region also noted that the new magistrate was a member of the Guomindang’s CC Clique, which was on the defensive in the provincial capital, leaving him powerless to appeal to his superiors for assistance.51 The sharpest and most telling conflicts between the border region gov­ ernment and local officials and cadres were over fiscal issues. With the breakdown of the united front in 1940, the Guomindang ended the subsidy that had supported virtually all border region operations. The substantial po­ litical, military, and educational apparatus of the Communist Center was now forced to rely on the resources of the impoverished border region. A period of extreme fiscal stringency began, requiring drastic revenue enhancement measures.52The most irksome was a program to compel peasants to use their own draft animals to transport salt from salt fields in the northern part of the region to markets further south. In addition to supplying the local popula­ tion, the major object was sales to Guomindang areas, which had been cut off from coastal salt supplies. Under intense pressure from the border region government, salt production increased nearly tenfold from 1937 to 1941, and salt sales produced a major portion of border region export earnings and key revenue for the army.53 Salt transport was a much resented burden on the peasantry—who com­ plained that it diverted animals from agriculture, exposing them to injury and even death on the road—and was compensated so poorly that it was always a money-losing proposition. Wang Zhen and others appealed for greater compensation for salt transport, but they were repeatedly rebuffed by their border region superiors. Most frustrating was the border region govern­ ment’s insistence that peasants could make money transporting salt, so local cadres should persuade them to participate voluntarily and avoid all coer­ cion. As one county magistrate put it, “You ask us to take care to avoid co­ ercive measures. If this were made voluntary, nobody would go.”54 Although there were serious divisions within the central leadership on salt policy,55 the hard-liners prevailed and signaled an end to their patience for such objections by elevating the center-local conflict to a political level. Local officials were accused of “wavering” in the face of rumors spread by “reactionary ele­ ments.”56 In a reply to Wang Zhen (over a rare cosignature by Gao Gang, Party secretary of the Northwest Bureau), the border region authorities insisted that “in fact, only a few are dissatisfied, or these are rumors spread by secret agents.” Then, in an unusual display of Stalinist hyperbole, they claimed that “if cadres have faith, not just 2,000 loads, but even 20,000 loads can be accomplished.”57

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Accused of succumbing to the complaints of reactionaries or the disinfor­ mation of Guomindang agents, county and subregional official’s were forced to comply with the extractive demands of the center. This forced them to order reluctant rural cadres to coerce their fellow villagers to devote time and precious draft animals to the risky and profitless enterprise of salt transport. The discomfort of the subregional officials caught in the middle of the strug­ gle over salt transport is palpable throughout the archival record.

THE HIGHER CADRE CONFERENCE AND LEFTIST RESOLUTION

Many of the tensions in relations between central (border region), county, and rural cadres were resolved in the course of 1942. In February, the bor­ der region enunciated a new policy on salt transport that essentially con­ verted the levy to a cash payment that was used to hire transport.58 This seemed to eliminate most peasant dissatisfaction. Then, in the fall and win­ ter, from 16 October 1942 through 14 January 1943, 300 cadres from the county level and above gathered in Yan’an for the Higher Cadre Confer­ ence.59 All the top Party leadership spoke to the meeting, which brought to a close the first stage of Party rectification, following Mao’s call to rectify sub­ jectivism in study, sectarianism in the Party, and formalism in cultural work. County and subregional leaders received several clear messages from this meeting. One was the absolute preeminence in border region affairs of Gao Gang, the ambitious and strong-willed former guerrilla leader from Shaanbei. He was given the final word in writing the history of the revo­ lution in the Northwest, and Mao publicly lavished him with the highest praise.60 Local cadres were again chastised for their resistance to salt trans­ port, which was ominously interpreted as passive resistance to Gao Gang and the Northwest Bureau.61 But they were also sent back to their locali­ ties with the clear message that it was time for the revolution in the bor­ der region to begin another leftist stage—to target landlords with more class-conscious policies on taxes and rent and interest reduction.62 For the old elite of Mizhi, this was surely bad news. But for the Party, it provided the opportunity for center, county, and rural cadres to escape the division brought on by the center’s united front and extractive policies and to unite around a class struggle program with which all were quite comfortable.

THE SQUEEZE O N THE LANDLORDS

From the first years of Communist power in Mizhi, the basic policy had stressed cultivating the landlord-gentry elite politically while squeezing it economically. The most important squeezing was for increased taxes, which were collected

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under the patriotic designation “public grain for national salvation.” The un­ derlying principle was that the poor would provide manpower for the army and logistical support for the war effort and local administration while the rich would contribute a fitting proportion of their wealth. The accounts of Ma Weixin in Yangjiagou show the sharply increased tax burden after 1940. In the early years of the republic, in 1916, taxes repre­ sented 1.6 percent of his expenses; under the Guomindang, in 1936, the per­ centage rose to 5.2 percent; and under the Communists, it rose to 48 percent in 1940 and 57 percent in 1941.63 The late war years brought even heavier demands. A survey of landlords in the Mizhi county seat shows the trend. The percentage of total income paid in taxes rose from 16 percent in 1940 to 47 percent in 1941, 48 percent in 1942, and 79 percent in 1943. Of the eleven landlords in this survey, four were paying taxes in 1943 that exceeded their gross income.64 Another village survey shows how heavily the progressive tax system weighed on the landlord elite. The percentages of income that each class paid in taxes in 1943 were the following: poor peasants, 0.3 per­ cent; middle p easan t, 26.4 percent; rich peasants, 42.2 percent; and land­ lords, 222.3 percent. One of the landlords in this village had been paying taxes in excess of his income every year since 1941.65 Clearly, the landlords were being squeezed very hard. When living ex­ penses were added to taxes, virtually all were paying out more than they were earning in rental and other income. To make up the deficit, they began selling off land, so that in the course of the war, landlord holdings began a slow retreat. In effect, we see a limited “silent revolution,” similar to what Edward Friedman, Paul Pickowicz, and Mark Seiden66 have shown in central Hebei: highly progressive tax rates forced the rich to sell land, and inflation made it easier for the poor to repay mortgages and recover land, all of which worked to produce a more equitable distribution of landholding. In Mizhi, however, land was so highly concentrated that only a lit­ tle progress was made in bringing about true equity. In Yangjiagou, in the early war years, the Party sought to extract taxes from the landlords as graciously as possible. It sent well-educated cadres from elite backgrounds, usually with some prior connection to the Ma family. One group included Ma Weixin’s son-in-law, An Zhiwen, now the head of the subregion secretariat. These tax collecting teams contacted a sympathetic member of the Ma clan, the schoolteacher Ma Shiqi, who knew how much grain each family had stored up and willingly helped to allocate the burden. All of this was done with much praise for the patriotic contribution that the Ma landlords were making to the war effort against Japan.67 The second squeeze on landlords came with more vigorous and class­ conscious enforcement of rent reduction policies. With the beginning of the war against Japan, the Communists had abandoned their program of vi­ olent land redistribution, substituting a moderate program of rent and

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interest reduction. The basic political bargain behind rent reduction was laid out by Mao in a December 1940 speech: peasants would get a reduc­ tion of about 25 percent in the rent they paid landlords, and anti-Japanese landlords would get a guarantee that their ownership rights would be re­ spected and the reduced rent would in fact be paid.68 In areas w here land reform had already taken place, the land redistribution would be re­ spected—so in these areas, landlords no longer ow ned rental land, and rent reduction was a moot point. But in Mizhi, land redistribution had oc­ curred in only a few isolated villages, and rent reduction was a major issue. While He Shaonan remained the commissioner of the Suide subregion from 1937 to 1940, he effectively blocked rent reduction in Mizhi. Even after He was driven off in 1940, the Communist authorities were so intent on cur­ rying favor with the local elite that they failed to press rent reduction.69 By the end of 1941, it was clear that most landlords were circumventing the reg­ ulations. In the most common abuse, landlords would threaten to replace tenants or reclaim the land to cultivate by themselves, forcing their tenants (to preserve their access to land) to pay, covertly, the full original amount of rent.70 The Northwest Bureau of the Party ordered a thorough investigation of the problem, and a team headed by Gao Gang was sent to the Suide subregion to study land relations there.71 In January 1942, the Central Committee promulgated a new decision on rent and interest reduction, followed in early February by a secret intraparty directive explaining the political import of the decision. The purpose of the policy, the directive stated, is to weaken the feudal landlord elements. They will surely resist, and the masses will have to be mobilized to counter this re­ action. The directive continued, “In this sort of heated struggle by the broad masses, some leftist excesses are unavoidable. Such ultra-left behavior, if it is really the voluntary and self-conscious action of the broadest masses . . . is not harmful, and may even be beneficial, because it will attain the goal of weakening feudalism and mobilizing the masses.”72 On the eve of the Higher Cadre Conference, on 10 October 1942, the North­ west Bureau identified rent reduction as the “central problem and the key to all work.” Past accommodation to landlords under the three-thirds system was crit­ icized, and it was resolved that cadres should now use “the power of the state and especially the firm resolve of the masses” to overcome landlord resist­ ance.73 At the Higher Cadre Conference, this message was reinforced for the county and subregional cadres present—especially through the prominent roles of such Soviet-era guerrilla leaders as Gao Gang and He Long.74 Mizhi inaugurated the new rent reduction movement with great fanfare in November. Initial news reports stressed enlightened landlords voluntarily re­ ducing their rent, but by December the tone had changed. The Liberation Daily began stressing the punishment of recalcitrant landlords and mass enthusiasm for the tougher measures. Clearly, a major class mobilization was under way.75

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A petty case from the archival record illustrates the new leftist tilt of landlord-tenant relations in Mizhi. A certain Gao Xingzhou complained to the border region government that his tenant had for several years refused to pay rent, forcing Gao to default on his taxes. So Gao reclaimed his land and planted it himself (as the regulations clearly allowed). But the tenant protested and the local cadre mediator not only returned the land to the ten­ ant but allowed him to keep the crop that Gao had planted. Then the cadres assessed an unusually high salt transport levy, and Gao sought to sell his land. Again the local cadres intervened, prevented the sale, arrested Gao, searched his home, found enough grain to pay his taxes, and seized it. Gao’s protest to the border region government (and its vice chairman, the Mizhi “enlightened gentry” landlord, Li Dingming) was forwarded to Wang Zhen in Suide and then to the Mizhi authorities. Their reply made no mention of the local cadres preventing Gao from either cultivating the land himself or sell­ ing it (both of which were clearly his right under the land law) but stressed that he was secretly storing enough grain to pay his taxes. It further asserted that, contrary to Gad’s claim, nothing beyond grain had been taken from his house, and thus he was guilty of false accusation. Wang Zhen proposed that he be firmly punished as an example to other recalcitrant types.76 Clearly, the enormous discretionary power of local cadres meant that when policy shifts indicated a class-conscious favoring of tenants over landlords, the various legal protections embedded in the rent reduction regulations would afford little guarantee of landlord interests.

RECTIFICATION AT THE LOCAL LEVEL

Steeply progressive tax policies and a newly class-conscious implementation of rent and interest reduction greatly increased the economic burden on the Mizhi landlords. But the operation of the rectification campaign at the local level made an even deeper impression. Past studies of rectification have stressed the attacks on intellectuals in Yan’an and on Mao’s struggle against the Russian-returned group around Wang Ming.77 But Ch’en Yung-fa has re­ cently called our attention to the movements that followed rectification, es­ pecially the antitraitor movement launched by Kang Sheng and his allies in July 1943.78 There is no question that in the hinterland beyond Yan’an, the antitraitor movement was by far the more important campaign. The summer of 1943 was a tense period throughout the border region. Re­ lations with the Guomindang continued to deteriorate, and calls by rightwing publications and Guomindang leaders to eliminate the border region increased in frequency.79 The Guomindang concentrated more troops south of Yan’an, and it is clear from internal CCP communications that the threat of Guomindang military action against Shaan Gan Ning was taken seriously. In

72 the border region, mass meetings were held to condemn the Guomindang threats, and L iberation D a ily editorials vigorously condehined Chiang Kai-shek and the Guomindang for undermining the united front against Japan.80 It was in this context that Kang Sheng and Gao Gang launched the campaign to combat secret agents and “rescue youths who have lost their footing,” having been lured into collaboration with enemy agents.81 In the Suide subregion, the movement began with an intense four-month campaign at the Suide Normal School—a campaign that by the summer of 1943 focused on exposing a Guomindang secret agent network. In retrospect, the charges detailed in the press seem quite ludicrous. In the final nine-day mass struggle meeting, students mounted the stage armed with bags of rocks to con­ fess membership in a “Stone Gang” charged with murdering Communist cadres in rock-throwing ambushes. Female students, apparently caught in improper li­ aisons with their teachers, confessed to being hired courtesans undermining Communist discipline and uncovering Party secrets. Others confessed to spreading rumors that undermined confidence in the border region govern­ ment and its leaders. In the final meeting, all vowed to spread the movement to uncover Guomindang agents to every comer of the subregion.82 In Mizhi, the antitraitor movement focused almost entirely on class ene­ mies, and landlords and rich peasants were subjected to sweeping accusa­ tions of counterrevolutionary activity. Some resisted or complained and were locked up.83 Others fled to the Guomindang areas.84 In the district that included Yangjiagou, the masses were mobilized to struggle against the land­ lords as part of the rent reduction campaign, and the Ma family landlords were accused of a number of political crimes, including unfounded charges of association with the Guomindang fascist society, the Renaissance Society, the organization allegedly behind the Suide Normal School conspiracy.85 Perhaps most significantly, like so many later political struggles in China, this movement affected a population much greater than its immediate victims. Some middle peasants observed the fierce struggle and feared that the ax would next fall on them.86 The excesses stemming from the countless false accusations in the antitraitor movement were soon corrected, but the experience left an indelible impression on the old elite. Now they understood “the great power of the Communist Party.” Some sent their relatives to confess errors to the county committee, and others asked the government to “educate them” so that they would better understand government policy.87

REINTEGRATING AND TRANSFORMING THE LANDLORD CLASS

Having effectively intimidated their class adversaries, the Party sought to rein­ tegrate them into the new regime. New elections for the county assembly were

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held in 1944, and landlord representation increased from 8 percent to 20 per­ cent. With six of nine members (including Ma Xingmin of Yangjiagou), land­ lords dominated the standing committee.88 But real power lay not in the as­ semblies or other symbolic positions but in the Party-dominated government committees of the magistrate, Party secretaries, and department heads.89 The landlord representatives in the new regime had a clear grasp of their assigned role. A 1944 document from the Yulin archives gives this charming description of the mayor of Yincheng, the Mizhi county seat (whose wife was the sister of the Yangjiagou landlord, Ma Weixin):90 Mr. Feng Shechen is a relatively enlightened and honest Mizhi landlord. From the perspective o f the old society, he is a good old guy, with a cheerful view on life. He eats well, wears comfortable clothes, has fun passing his days pleas­ antly. He has no deeply held view s on politics. As far as h e’s concerned, you speak the language o f the society you live in; you carry out whatever laws are set by the government. If people say something is good or bad, he has no opin­ ion, always nodding^his head and approving.. . . As for his official functions, he never refuses w hen asked to serve; he always says a few words w hen asked to speak; he calls meetings w hen told to; but he never has any view s o f his own. When others speak, he just nods. Whatever is decided, he approves and then acts as though it is o f no concern to him. What really interests him in life is going to the opera or drama or gossiping.91

Feng was perhaps unusual in that he held an important official position yet managed to maintain a happy equanimity and hold his tongue on sensi­ tive political questions. But the general pattern of behavior was quite com­ mon, and documents from 1944 repeatedly comment on it. A rural landlord who had fled to the Guomindang areas during the antitraitor movement but had then been persuaded to return always said he had no political opinions. If pressed, however, “he says the Communist Party is good, the Eighth Route Army is good—just a few sentences, that’s all.”92 Even within the Party, some felt that rectification had changed Party life and left members passive.93 If necessary, some members of the old elite could be trained to speak. One interesting set of documents in the archives describes a visit paid to Mizhi by a group of Chinese and foreign journalists as part of their inspection of the border region. Elaborate preparations were made to spruce the place up: or­ ders went out to close opium dens, eliminate prostitution and gambling, re­ form paupers, and assemble all beggars. Practice sessions were held with prospective interviewees to see that answers to political questions were given according to a prepared outline. The efforts were a great success, and reports indicate that a key meeting with the seventy-nine-year-old gentry elder who was president of the county assembly went off without a hitch.94 Even as the new regime was attempting to subdue and coopt the landlord elite politically, it was seeking to transform it economically. Most obviously, the

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heavy taxation was designed to control the landlords’ luxurious lifestyle and bring them into greater conformity with the astetic orthopraxy' of the Yan’an way. They certainly made some progress in this regard. Surveys of landlords in­ dicate that they were eating less meat, eliminating vegetables at some meals, and buying fewer new clothes.95 Many found the changes difficult to endure: one complained that “if I go three days without eating meat, I can’t shit.”96 But by and large, the landlords were still living far better than ordinary cadres of the new regime, who in 1942 were reported surviving on three meals of millet gruel per day and often feeling weak and dizzy from hunger.97 More fundamentally, the rent reduction policies and heavy exactions of pub­ lic grain were designed to encourage landlords to “bouigeoisify”—to sell their land and invest more in commerce and industry, especially in the new cooper­ atives that were then being promoted. Some progress was made in this regard. Early in the war years, most landlords switched to commerce, often in opium, and the Party was not particularly pleased with that result—in part because such income was easier to hide and harder to tax.98 Later, several landlords in the county seat began investing in cooperatives and industrial enterprises.99 Rural landlords found it much more difficult to shift away from a land-based economy.100 Even in the city, some of the old elite seemed trapped in the men­ tality of an age that had passed and lacked the practical skills to adjust to the economic imperatives of the new order: “They say that the government does not look after them, does not help them. We have all been scholars since we were very young, and all along we have lived off society. Without land, we have no way [to survive].”101

AFTER THE WAR

In August 1945, when the atom bomb brought World War n to an abrupt con­ clusion, even the distant hinterland of northern Shaanxi felt the impact. The national enemy that had forced Communists and Nationalists into a tentative and often violated united front was now defeated, and both sides prepared to resume civil war. Yet fourteen long years of devastating conflict with Japan—beginning with the 1931 invasion of the Northeast (Manchuria)—had left the nation weary of war, and both Communists and Nationalists felt com­ pelled to go through the motions of negotiating a peaceful resolution of their differences and formulating a coalition government. The Yangjiagou landlords understood talk of “coalition government” as a weakening of the Communists^ border region regime. Their reaction showed the precariousness of the Communists’ “new democratic” alliance with their class enemies. Landlords greeted the coalition government news with great an­ ticipation and began open resistance to border region grain levies. Every day, one of their business managers went to the district government to read the

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newspaper. When he read that under the proposed coalition government, Northwest China was designated a garrison area for Nationalist forces, his em­ ployer told the peasants, ‘“The Border Region has been allocated to the Guomindang. The Communist Party is going to leave.’ The peasants were so afraid they dared not speak.” A particularly blunt-speaking landlord told one of his workers (apparently a minor functionary in the Communist regime): “Heh! Still pressing us to pay grain tax! Fuck you! Chee! The Guomindang armies will be here in a minute. Gonna cut your little prick off! Chee!”102 The reappearance of the landlords’ threatening demeanor shows how fragile the wartime united front had been. But such outbursts also show how grievously the landed elite had misread political and strategic realities. When civil war broke out for real in 1947, Nationalist forces under Hu Zongnan at­ tacked the border region from the south, west, and north. Yan’an was taken, and the Communist leadership retreated to the hills. But in the great pincer movement to catch the Communist forces between an army coming north and east from Yan’an and another moving south out of the Nationalist strong­ hold in Yulin, the southern force was deceived by feints and delayed by ha­ rassing Communist guerrillas. Wlien the Communist general Peng Dehuai met the northern force in the critical battle at Shajiadian, Mizhi, in August, the southern army was still forty kilometers away. The Guomindang forces were defeated and passed through Yangjiagou on their retreat. While it may not have been clear at the time, the decisive battle for northern Shaanxi had been fought, and the Communists had emerged victorious.103 As these battles defined the broader military balance of power, the Communist Party and the landlords of Yangjiagou moved inexorably toward their final confrontation in land reform. After the landlords’ self-assertion in 1946, local cadres were not inclined to lenience. But it is important to un­ derstand the dynamic of social and political conflict in the successive stages of the land reform process. In Shaanbei, the first stage of land reform came with the forced sale of landlord and rich peasant lands in exchange for government bonds (which, of course, would soon become worthless and were regarded as such from the beginning).104 Much to the dismay of the district Party committee, the landlords got advance wind of this policy through their connections in Suide, and some managed to sell off land to villagers before the forced sales were put into effect.105 Soon the local Party and the Peasant Association took con­ trol of the process, set the price, and used the proceeds to pay off back taxes and forced loans from the landlords. The “purchased” land was then distrib­ uted to landless peasants. Möst landlord and rich peasant holdings seem to have been redistributed in this stage of the movement, although they did not give up easily. To the local cadres of the district committee, they were resistant and even belliger­ ent. Ma Weixin spoke for the family: “I can’t bear it! Mao Zedong will not give

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up one village, one town of the Border Region, not one single inch. Why? He can’t bear to. I am the same. [I can’t bear it.] Mao Zedong got'the Border Re­ gion at the cost of human lives. I got my land bit by bit by the sweat of my brow.” But to higher levels of the Party, his appeal was more submissive and briefly more successful. At least one local cadre (later denounced by the dis­ trict-level Party committee) criticized the land redistribution as hastily done and overly harsh on the Ma landlords.106 Most striking about this initial land redistribution is the cool reception it re­ ceived from the Yangjiagou peasantry. For one thing, the landlords waged their own counter-propaganda: “Civil war is sure to come. The Communists are just distributing land to purchase the peasants’ favor in support of civil war.” The landlords argued that the Guomindang might well win and sug­ gested to the peasants: “Now you are buying land on the cheap; but actually you are just protecting the land for us landlords.” Given years of landlord hegemony and a patriarchal rule that most peasants regarded as generally benevolent, such talk had its effect—especially among older peasants. One old man felt sorry for the landlords: “The fine fields of the rich, built up over the ages, and now sold so cheaply!” And the hired hands of the wealthy, see­ ing the economic devastation of the landlords and a land redistribution pol­ icy that favored the tenant tillers of the confiscated lands, were most dis­ tressed: “They say, ‘The master is not strong any more,’ and fear that they will get no more benefit.” The minimal support for Party policy became even more striking in the spring of 1947, when a Settling Accounts Committee from the district came to redistribute the movable property of the landlords. The subsequent report on the process opens with a stark account of the difficulties: “ The Source o f the Problem. This township is rather com plex.. . . In the past, the district and township cadres had such shortcomings as a commandist work style, and a tendency to play favorites. As a result, they became divorced from the masses. This spring, when land reform started, the masses raised this slogan: ‘First struggle the cadres, then struggle the landlords.’”107 The immediate source of conflict was twofold. Since the Mas’ landholdings spread over a number of villages and counties, the Party sought to distribute their belongings throughout the region. The village peasants, however, felt that the Yangjiagou landlords’ things should be distributed to the masses in Yangjiagou. Needless to say, the landlords also favored keeping the wealth within the community—where they might better recover it should the na­ tional tide of battle turn again in their favor. But the peasants were also deeply offended by the behavior of the Settling Accounts Committee. When the committee arrived at this landlord stronghold, its members “ate and drank a great deal, wasting a lot and arousing even greater suspicion among the masses. The villagers had already put up sentries to prevent the land­ lords from removing their property, but the committee cursed them (the

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phrase that most offended was “assholes front and back”—an epithet that seemed to question their manhood) and ordered the sentries recalled. Sus­ picious, the villagers secretly sent watchmen out at night and caught one cadre making off with some of the landlords’ clothes. The next day, peasants from surrounding districts arrived for a mass meet­ ing and division of the fruits of the struggle with one of the Ma landlords. “The county magistrate (Ma Jitang, son of a former teacher in the village, but not of the Ma landlord lineage) was present for this important ritual of strug­ gle. One of the Yangjiagou villagers stood up to accuse the Settling Accounts Committee of taking all the good things. The crowd became aroused and starting beating one of the cadres, shouting, ‘We tilled the fields for your fam­ ily [referring to wartime service for labor-short families of soldiers and full­ time cadres], and you came to help us fanshen [turn over, revolt]. But in the end you cheated us.’” The county magistrate tried to calm things down but was interrupted as the crowd seized and tied up the suspicious committee members and interrogated them one by one. The whole affair was only settled through the intervention of Zhou Xing, head of the Public Security Bureau of the entire border region. In Yan’an, Zhou Xing was regarded as one of Kang Sheng’s henchmen and a key actor in the arrest and persecution of intellectual critics of the Party leadership.108 But in Yangjiagou he was regarded as tough, fair, and utterly incorruptible.109 He managed to bring some semblance of order and legitimacy to the process—a considerable achievement since this was a chaotic era, with Guomindang and Communist forces squaring off for battle just a few miles to the north. But his very presence indicates how seriously the Communist leadership took the struggle in this “feudal fortress.” (Of course, Zhou’s visit presumably helped identify the village as a suitably comfortable refuge for Mao during the following winter.)

LAND REFORM

By the summer of 1947, landlord power had been destroyed in Yangjiagou. Of sixty-eight landlord families recorded in the township, thirteen had left before or during the war. Eight more left before land reform, and sixteen left immediately after. In the thirty-one landlord households that remained, most members were women and children.110 Although the Yangjiagou landlords had already lost their land and caves, the official land reform process did not begin until December 1947. Follow­ ing a December 25 meeting in the county seat, 182 cadres formed into work teams that spread out across the county. By this time, Mao and the Party leadership were living incognito in Yangjiagou, and there was no major struggle in the village—nor did Mao and the other leaders interact in any sig-

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nificant way with the villagers, who knew only that some important leaders were living in their midst.111 Elsewhere, the county work teams’ hnethod was conventional: “visit the poor and follow leads.” Poor Peasant Corps were or­ ganized, and the older Peasant Associations reorganized along strict class lines. The organization of children and youth was particularly stressed, and older peasants were mobilized for “speak bitterness” sessions to raise class consciousness.112 Despite careful organization from the top down, the process did not go al­ together smoothly. From past experience, cadres had learned the rule “bet­ ter too left than too right.” Excessive corporal punishment was common, with hundreds of people tied up and hung by their hands. Thirteen deaths were recorded—mostly suicides and generally older people.113 Most problematic was a pattern in which many regarded the Poor Peasant Corps as a “New Communist Party” and turned against incumbent cadres. In the district that included Yangjiagou, there were renewed attacks on veteran cadres under the slogan “investigate the black bureau.” In other areas, “het­ erodox elements,” including former bandits, organized popular mass move­ ments that the Party found particularly dangerous. These independent move­ ments, and especially the notion of a “New Communist Party,” show how peasant activists had internalized the practice and rhetoric of revolution. A “Communist Party” was associated in their minds with just revolution against corrupt power holders, and attacks on cadre abuses no longer came from landlords seeking to restore the old order but from peasants insisting that the new order live up to its professed ideals. The most common problem in land reform was the leftist error of misclassifying peasants into landlord and rich peasant categories. When such left errors were investigated in part of Yangjiagou’s Hecha district, it was found that only two of six households classified as “landlords” properly belonged in that class, and only five of seventeen “rich peasants.” Often the cadres were just “rigidly filling quotas” for the expected percentage of each class—in a process that was conducted coercively “in an atmosphere of terror.”114 Particularly troubling was the fact that the victims were precisely those peas­ ants who had acquired land during and after the war from landlords forced to sell to pay taxes. They had benefited from the Party’s own forced sales and had followed the Party’s injunction to “get rich through production.” Beneficiaries of one stage of the revolution, they became victims of the next.115 In the late spring of 1948, leftist errors were investigated and to some de­ gree corrected. In two surveyed townships of Hecha, 85 percent of the mid­ dle peasant households had lost land during land reform—although the reg­ ulations prohibited any confiscation of middle peasant land. Nonetheless, in the heat of the struggle, the desire to equalize landholdings had caused even their hard-earned land to be expropriated. In the subsequent correction of left errors, these peasants had a telling response to the return of their land.

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Many offered to “contribute” the land for distribution to the poor. While it is possible that they were genuinely infected by the egalitarian ideals of the revolution, it seems more likely that they had now learned that it is danger­ ous to be a little rich—even if current Party policy made them so.116 Peasants were learning to look ahead and exercise caution lest some future turn of Party policy once again make today’s beneficiaries of revolution into tomor­ row’s victims.

THE REVOLUTION LEAVES YANGJIAGOU

In the spring of 1948, Mao Zedong left Yangjiagou, heading east to cross the Yellow River and leave northern Shaanxi forever. Legend has him declaring, as he left the region, “northern Shaanxi is a good place.” In fact, there is no evidence that he ever looked back. The peasants of Shaanbei had supported and protected the revolutionary center from 1935 to 1948. During that time, village life had beéh transformed. And now, with land reform, almost all peasants had their own small plots of land. But land reform did not bring good times to Yangjiagou. When I inter­ viewed old peasants about the land reform struggles, I expected that, despite all the difficulties, they would at least tell me that for landless tenants, getting their own land in 1948 was cause for great rejoicing. I was wrong. The year 1948, they told me, brought bad weather—too much rain. The harvest was poor, but the government still came seven times to requisition grain. No longer were the landlords the target of such exactions. Now they fell directly on the peasants. Those with grain had to give it up. Families with extra labor power had sons conscripted. Others either fled or survived on roots and wild grasses. That year, which should have been the best of times, proved instead to be the worst. But the peasants paid up and again sacrificed for the revo­ lution, a revolution that had now reached its turning point and inexorably pushed toward nationwide victory.117

CONCLUSION: THE REVOLUTIONARY PROCESS

It would be improper to generate conclusions about the Chinese revolution from the experience of one county and one village. Nonetheless, even the limited archival record now available and the information gained through oral history interviews indicate that the picture of the “revolutionary holy land” that we have from Edgar Snow, the wartime eyewitnesses, and Mark Selden’s early study is too rosy. Compared to these accounts, the view from the archives reveals a greater importance for local military superiority, a far greater role for coercion, and a smaller role for popular participation and

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th e m ass line. In d eed , w h e n sp o n ta n e o u s p o p u la r a ctio n arose, it s e e m e d to o p p o s e the Party as often as su p p ort it, as wfe sa w in th e caàe o f la n d re­ form. T he w h o le ex p e rien ce o f land reform is critical to ou r ev a lu a tio n o f th e w artim e era. O n the o n e hand, landlord d e fia n c e s h o w s h o w tentative a n d conditional their in v o lv em en t in the w artim e u n ited front w a s. O n th e oth er hand, peasan t attacks o n cadres su g g est that th e m ass lin e w a s le s s su c c e s s ­ ful in bringing Party and p e o p le togeth er than th e c o n v e n tio n a l a cco u n ts su ggest. O n the w h o le , this analysis ten d s to con firm P aulin e K eating’s c o n ­ clu sion that land sh ortage and land lord p o w e r m a d e th e revolu tion ary p rocess m u ch m ore difficult in th e Suide su b reg io n than in o th er parts o f th e border region .118 A b ove all, this chapter has attem p ted to u n d erlin e th e im p ortan ce o f p rocess— and for this reason, I h a v e persistently fo c u se d o n th e narrative d e ­ v elo p m en t o f the story. I am le ss in clin ed than so m e theorists to d erive th e C h in ese revolution from im m utable diad ic structures: China an d th e W est, state and society, urban-rural or class contradictions. S u ch structuralist e x ­ planations are perhaps appropriate for un dergraduate lectu re c o u r se s or broad cross-cultural com parisons, but th e actual d e v e lo p m e n t o f th e r ev o lu ­ tion se e m s to m e a far m ore c o n tin g en t p r o c ess that n e e d s to b e e x a m in e d in its o w n right.119

One of the repeated patterns in this process was the courting and manip­ ulation of a particular social group, followed by an attack (what Mao called yila yidd). The courting of landlords in the three-thirds system of the “new democratic” regime was followed by sharp attacks in the antitraitor move­ ment, then a renewed courting in the 1944 assemblies, and a final smashing in land reform. But the process could also affect middle peasants, who were encouraged to “get rich through production” in the wartime production cam­ paigns and then were victimized for their success during land reform. The behavior induced by the process—the wariness to embrace Party policies that promised new benefits, the caution and reluctance to speak out frankly—gradually permeated all levels of society. Especially important was the antitraitor movement in 1943, where any complaint against the regime was prima facie evidence of spreading propaganda on behalf of enemy se­ cret agents. The harsh and intense interrogation of suspected “traitors,” fol­ lowed by “lenience” toward those who confessed their errors, trained the population well in the techniques of dissimulation on behalf of the new regime. There is little question that this experience helped prepare the bor­ der region population for the visit of the Chinese and foreign journalists and the U.S. Army Dixie Mission in 1944. To understand this process, it is important that we see more than a conflict of the Party versus the landlord elite, of state versus society. It is especially important not to reify the Party. The Party Center (in this case, the border re-

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gion authorities), the county Party, and the basic-level rural cadres lived in three separate but connected worlds—their behavior shaped by their social background and their structural position in the hierarchy.120The rural cadres were as much members of village society as they were agents of the partystate. They were overwhelmingly young activists and largely recruited dur­ ing leftist phases of the revolution, many joining for frankly opportunist rea­ sons. In those areas of the border region where landlords were few and weak, rural cadres were often middle peasants, in part because they had more economic cushion to absorb the onerous tasks of rural administra­ tion.121 But in Mizhi, the concentration of land in landlord hands left a very weak middle peasant stratum—only one middle peasant and no rich peas­ ants in Yangjiagou, for example.122 Rural cadres were more likely to be poor peasants and more likely to mobilize peasants from the district level—to counter landlord domination of the village community. The Party Center was much closer to an autonomous state, and the privi­ leged isolation of the leadership divorced them from most of surrounding so­ ciety (just as Mao and his entourage were isolated in Ma Xingmin’s com­ pound in Yangjiagou). But the intellectual and military background of its members and the national condition of divided sovereignty in which the Party Center operated meant that its behavior was significantly determined by externalities: the international situation, the war with Japan, and the con­ flict with the Guomindang. At particular moments, divisions within the cen­ tral leadership on policy toward external actors could produce sharp intraparty struggles (in the 1940s, the struggle against Wang Ming and the subsequent rectification movement) that acquired a dynamic of their own. Between these two worlds, and partaking in some of the characteristics of each, were the county and subregional cadres. On a day-to-day level, they had to deal with and work through the local cadres. But they also had to re­ port to the central authorities and participated in their bureaucratic routines. They were periodically called to conferences at the Party Center—the Higher Cadres Conference being the most important example, but hardly the only one. These conferences gave them status from direct proximity to Mao and the top leadership and provided crucial information through formal and in­ formal channels on the latest policy directions. But these meetings could also expose local officials to direct and public criticism, as when they were faulted for excessive accommodation to landlord interests during the early years of the war. The interaction among these three worlds varied with different issues. On issues of extraction, which were of paramount importance to the revolution­ ary regime after the end of the Guomindang subsidy, county cadres were typ­ ically caught in the middle. Rural cadres resented and resisted extreme de­ mands, but when county and subregion leaders sought relief from the Party Center, they were criticized for defeatism, lack of revolutionary commitment,

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and succumbing to complaints by enemies of the revolution. On issues of class struggle, by contrast, county cadres were happy to prove their Revolutionary mettle, and rural activists were generally eager to comply. Thus, when the Party Center called for strict rent reduction, sharply progressive taxation, struggle against traitors and enemy agents, or land confiscation, county au­ thorities would send work teams to mobilize rural cadres, and these young ac­ tivists usually proved eager to curry favor with their superiors on an issue that threatened only their class (and political) rivals in the countryside. This greater unity among the various levels of the Party apparatus on is­ sues of class struggle produced a critical structural bias toward leftist excess. On extractive issues, the interest of center and locality conflicted, and county officials were uncomfortably caught in the middle. But class-conscious poli­ cies united the Party, gave the county authorities an opportunity to prove their revolutionary commitment, and concentrated the energies of all on an external class enemy. Above all, it is necessary to see the revolution as part of a complex process of interaction—with agency at all levels. We must avoid romantic notions of spontaneous peasant revolution, but we must also avoid a vision that re­ serves all agency for Mao and the Party Center.123 The key is to see the rev­ olution as a process in which different levels of the Party interacted with each other and with different actors in society, a process in which each stage built on what had gone before. In this chapter, I have attempted to describe that revolutionary dynamic in one isolated mountain village and one county in northern Shaanxi.

NOTES 1. Mao Zedong, Muqian xingshi he women de renwu (The present situation and our tasks), in Mao Zedong j i (Collected works of Mao Zedong), ed. Takeuchi Minoru (Tokyo: So So Sha, 1983), 10:97-116. Report to Party Center meeting, 25 December 1947. 2. The report was drafted by Ma Hong and was then revised and supplem ented by Zhang Wentian, the team leader. It was first published by the Northwest Bureau in Yan’an in 1944. The openly published Sanlian version dates from 1957 and w as reprinted by the People’s Press in 1980. This article follows the pagination in the 1980 edition. The report is now also conveniently available in Zhang Wentian, Xuanji Zhuanji Zu et al., Yan’an nongcun diaocha tuan (Yan’an rural survey team), ed., M izh ix ia n Yangjiagou diaocha (Survey of Yangjiagou, Mizhi) (1957; reprint, Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1980), pp. 123-290. 3. Evelyn Rawski, The Ma Landlords o f Yang-chia-kou in Late Ch’ing and Republican China,” in Kinship Organization in Late Imperial China, ed. Patricia Ebrey and James Watson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), pp. 245-283; Juzo Kawachi, “20 seiki Chugoku no jinushi ichizoku-Senseisho Beishi-ken Yokakono Ba-shi” (A landlord lineage in twentieth-century China: The Ma family of Yangjiagou,

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Mizhi, Shaanxi), Toyoshi kenkyu, 4 March 1963, pp. 139-171; Juzo Kawachi, “1930 nendai Chugoku no nominso bunkai no haaku no tame ni” (Toward a grasp of differ­ entiation in the peasant class in 1930s China), Rekisbigaku kenkyu 290 (July 1964): 27-41, 47; Fukao Yoko, Beisbi-ken Yokako dai-icbiji cbosa bokokusbo (Report on the first survey of Yangjiagou, Mizhi) (Osaka: Ni-Chu kodo Kahoku noson chosadan, 1995). 4. For a methodologically similar treatment o f a very different county, see Joseph Esherick, “Deconstructing the Construction o f the Party-State: Gulin County in the Shaan-Gan-Ning Border Region,” China Quarterly 140 (December 1994): 1052. Specialists will note that Pauline Keating’s 1997 book sharply contrasts the Suide and Yanshu subregions o f Shaan-Gan-Ning: Two Revolutions: Village Reconstruction a n d the Cooperative M ovem ent in Northern Shaanxi, 19 3 4 -1 9 4 5 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997). Gulin, the focus o f my 1994 article, was in the sparsely pop­ ulated, bandit-ridden Yanshu subregion; Mizhi, the focus here, was in the Suide subregion, where cultivable land was scarce and landlords were powerful. 5. For the classic eyewitness accounts, see Edgar Snow, Red Star over China (1938; reprint, New York: Grove, 1961); Edgar Snow, Random Notes on Red China, 1 9 3 6 - 1945 (Cambridge: East Asian Research Center, Harvard University, 1956); Harrison Forman, Report from Red China (New York: Whittlesey House, 1945). For scholarly treatments o f socioeconomic matters, see Mark Seiden, The Yenan Way in Revolutionary China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971); Seiden, “Yan’an Communism Reconsidered,” M odem China 21, no. 1 (1995): 8-44; Peter Schran, Guerrilla Economy: The Development o f the Shensi-Kansu-Ninghsia Border Region, 1 9 3 7 - 1945 (Albany: State University o f New York Press, 1976). For politics and the rectification movement, see Ch’en Yung-fa, Yan’an de yinying (Yan’an’s Shadow) (Taipei: Institute of Modem History, Academia Sínica, 1990); Dai Qing, Wang Shiwei a n d ’W ild Lilies’— Rectification a n d Purges in the Chinese Communist Parly, 1942-44, trans. Nancy Liu and Lawrence R. Sullivan, ed. David E. Apter and Timothy Cheek (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1994); David Apter and Tony Saich, Revolutionary Discourse in M ao’s Republic (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994). 6. Fang Chengxiang and Huang Zhao’an, Shaan-Gan-Ning bianqu gem ing shi, p. 65. The Suide subregion included, in addition to the three counties noted here, Wupu, Jia, and Qingjian Counties and portions o f three others. 7. Yuan Dexin, “Shaanbei shehui zhuangkuang yipie” (A glimpse o f northern Shaanxi society), X in Shaanxi yu ekan (N ew Shaanxi Monthly) 9 (1931): 53. 8. Chai Shufan, Yu Guangyuan, and Peng Ping, Suide, M izhi tu di w enti chubu y a n jiu (A preliminary study o f Suide-Mizhi land problems) (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1979); 1942 edition, Yan’an, pp. I l l , 113. 9. Seiden, Yenan Way, p. 169. 10. Chai Shufan, Yu Guangyuan, and Peng Ping, Suide, M izhi tu di w enti chubu ya n jiu , pp. 122-123. 11. Zhang Wentian’s team lists fifty-three Ma landlords (fifty-seven, if a recent fam­ ily division is counted) among 271 households in 1942, in Yan’an rural survey team, ed., M izhi x ia n Yangjiagou diaocha, pp. 2-3. In 1946, the district Party committee put the figure at 66 out o f 254 households, in Mizhi Hecha District Party Committee, “Guanyu Yangjiagou de tudi w enti” (On the land problem in Yangjiagou), 9 August 1946, Mizhi Archives, permanent juan 4. In 1948, the Mizhi Party Committee listed sixty-eight landlord families in the village in Mizhi Party Committee, “Hecha liuxiang

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tugaihou guanyu dizhu cailiao zhengli” (Compiled materials on landlords after land reform in the sixth township o f Hecha), August 1948, Mizhi Archives, >0001-1-28. Li Yinqiao mentions more than seventy landlord households in Li Yinqiao and Quan Yanchi, Zouxiang shentan de M ao Zedong (Mao Zedong approaches the sacred altar) (Beijing: Zhongwai wenhua chuban gongsi, 1989), pp. 66-67. 12. Ibid.; Yan’an rural survey team, ed., M izhi xian Yangjiagou diaocha, pp. 1-2. 13. The Ma scions’ success in leaving Yangjiagou for official and professional po­ sitions elsewhere left the lineage without a powerful local presence to counter the new Communist regime of the 1940s. Ibid., pp. 6-16. 14. Ibid., p. 23; Yangjiagou interviews, 198915. Yan’an rural survey team, ed., M izhi x ia n Yangjiagou diaocha, pp. 26-27; Yangjiagou interviews, 1989; Juzo Kawachi, “20 seiki Chugoku no jinushi ichizoicuSenseisho Beishi-ken Yokakono Ba-shi” (A landlord lineage in twentieth-century China: The Ma family of Yangjiagou, Mizhi, Shaanxi), Toyoshi kenkyu 21, no. 4 (1963): 139-171; Guan Shan, “Shaanbei weiyi de ‘Yangjiagou Ma-jia’ da dizhu” (Shaanbei’s one and only “Ma family o f Yangjiagou,” a big landlord), X in Zhonghua za z h i (New China Magazine) 2, no. 16 (1931): 24-33. 16. Yan’an rural survey team, ed., M izhi xia n Yangjiagou diaocha, p. 30. 17. Zhang Wentian’s report lists a minimum of 13,977.5 shang o f Ma landholdings and notes that the real total was certainly greater, since many landlords “were not willing to tell the truth” (p. 16). The report’s figures for the individual families total 13,869.5, but five of these families are listed as owning “over 100 sh a n g 1or som e sim­ ilar minimum, and my 13,869 5 total adds nothing for the additional amount indicated by the “over.” To any of these figures must be added the 200 to 300 shang o f lineage property supporting the school; see Yan’an rural survey team, ed., M izhi x ia n Yangjiagou diaocha, pp. 2-16; and Mizhi Hecha District Party Committee, “Guanyu Yangjiagou de tudi wenti” (On the land problem in Yangjiagou), 9 August 1946, Mizhi Archives, permanent juan 4. 18. Yangjiagou interviews, 26 February 1989- The lineage landholding, un­ equivocally attested by village informants, and the school and ancestral hall that remain standing go curiously unm entioned in Zhang Wentian’s report, Yan’an rural survey team, ed., M izhi x ia n Yangjiagou diaocha. Evelyn Rawski necessar­ ily relied on Zhang’s survey and based her analysis o f the Ma landlords on the lack o f lineage property or an ancestral hall. Her interesting argument on lineage struc­ ture in North China is accordingly unsupported by the evid en ce from fieldwork in Yangjiagou in “The Ma landlords o f Yang-chia-kou in late Ch’ing and Republican China,” in Kinship O rgan ization in Late Im perial C hin a, ed. Patricia Ebrey and James Watson (Berkeley: University o f California Press, 1986). 19. Yan’an rural survey team, ed., M izhi xian Yangjiagou diaocha, pp. 2-16, 84-86. 20. Ibid., p. 24; Yangjiagou interview, 23 February 1989. Mizhi H echa district Party committee, “Guanyu Yangjiagou de tudi wenti” (On the land problem in Yangjiagou), 9 August 1946, Mizhi Archives, permanent juan 4, p. 5. 21. Yan’an rural survey team, ed., M izhi x ia n Yangjiagou diaocha, pp. 94—95 132-144. 22. Yangjiagou interview, 22 February 1989. 23. Mizhi Hecha District Party Committee, “Guanyu Yangjiagou de tudi wenti” (On the land problem in Yangjiagou), 9 August 1946, Mizhi Archives, permanent juan 4, p. 1.

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24. Guan Shan, “Shaanbei weiyi de ‘Yangjiagou Ma-jia’ da dizhu” (Shaanbei’s one and only “Ma family o f Yangjiagou,” a big landlord), X in Zhonghua zazfoi (New China Magazine) 2, no. 16 (1931): 34-36. 25. Yan’an rural survey team, ed., M iz hi xian Yangjiagou diaocha, pp. 31-32. 26. Ibid., pp. 59, 89-91, 99, 124-125, 160, 162, 167-168; Mizhi interview, 27 February 1989. 27. Fang Chengxiang and Huang Zhao’an, Shaan-Gan-Ning bianqu gem ing shi, p. 153; “GuanYu jianzu jianxi yu jiaozu jiaoxi wenti” (On problems in rent and inter­ est reduction and payment), February 1944, in KangRi zh an zheng shiqi ShaanGan-Ning bianqu caizheng jin g ji shiliao zhaibian, 2:300-301. 28. Fang Chengxiang and Huang Zhao’an, Shaan-Gan-Ning bianqu gem ing shi, pp. 142-143. 29. Xiao Qinguang, “Jiaqiang Hefang fandui zaoyao pohuai de yinmoujia” (Strengthen Yellow River defenses and oppose the destructive rumor-mongering con­ spirator), X in Zhonghua bao (New China Daily), 9 December 1939, in ShaanGan-Ning bianqu kangRi m inzhu genjudi (Shaan-Gan-Ning anti-Japanese Base Area), ed. Xibei wu shengqu bianzuan lingdao xiaozu, Zhongyang dang’an guan (Beijing: Zhonggong, dangshi ziliao chubanshe, 0000), 1:236-238; Chinese Commu­ nist Party (CCP) secretariat directive, 10 November 1940, in Shaan-Gan-Ning bianqu kangRi m in zh u genjudi, 1:305; “Mizhi xian xianji sansan zhi diaocha cailiao” (Survey materials on the county-level “three-thirds system” in Mizhi), June 1944, Mizhi Archives, permanent juan 2. 30. Wang Zhen and Li Jingbo, “(Suide) xingzheng gongzuo baogao” ([SuideJ ad­ ministrative work report), April 1940, Shaanxi Archives, 2-1-164-1; Liu Jingfan, “G ongzuo baogao” (Work report), 9 May 1940, Shaanxi Archives, 2-1-164-2. 31. “Mizhi xian xianji sansan zhi diaocha cailiao” (Survey materials on the countylevel “three-thirds system” in Mizhi), June 1944, Mizhi Archives, permanent juan 2; Mizhi interview, 2 March 1989. 32. “Nongcun zhibu qingkuang” (Situation in rural Party branches), 1946 [dated 1946, but internal evidence suggests it must be from 1947], Mizhi Archives, perma­ nent juan 6; Li Fuchun, “Shaan-Gan-Ning bianqu dang de gongzuo” (Party work in the Shaan-Gan-Ning Border Region), Jiefang (Liberation), 20 November 1939, in Shaan-G an-N ing bianqu kangRi m in zh u genjudi, 2:492-503. 33. Li Fuchun, “Shaan-Gan-Ning bianqu dang de gongzuo” (Party work in the Shaan Gan Ning Border Region), Jiefang (Liberation), 20 November 1939, in Shaan-G an-N ing bian qu kangRi m in zh u gen ju d i, 2:492-503; CCP Border Region Organization Department directive, 21 September 1939, in ShaanG an-Ning b ian qu kangRi m in zh u gen ju d i, 2:520-21; “Shaan-Gan-Ning bianqu dang zuzhi de xianzhuang” (The present state o f party organization in the Shaan Gan Ning Border Region), 13 January 1941, in Shaan-G an-N ing bianqu kangRi m in zh u g en ju d i, 2:524-528. 34. Ibid, 2:525. 35. “Mizhi xian xianji sansan zhi diaocha cailiao” (Survey materials on the county-level “three-thirds system ” in Mizhi), June 1944, Mizhi Archives, permanent juan 2. 36. Yan’an rural survey team, e d , M izhi x ia n Yangjiagou diaocha,, p. 32. 37. Yangjiagou interviews, 23 February 1989; 26 February 1989-

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38. Fang Chengxiang and Huang Zhao’an, Shaan-Gan-Ning bianqu gem ing shi, pp. 214-219. ' N 39. Liu Jingfan, Liu Yingyon, Bai Dongcai, “Gongzuo baogao” (Work report), 24 April 1940, Shaaaxi Archives, 2-1-164-3; Wang Zhen and Li Jingbo, “(Suide) xingzheng gongzuo baogao ([Suide] administrative work report), April 1940, Shaanxi Archives, 2-1-164-1; Wang Zhen and Cao Liru, “Mi-Jia gongzuo” (Work in Mizhi and Jiaxian), 18 May 1941, Shaanxi Archives, 2-1-191-2. 40. Liu Jingfan, “Gongzuo baogao” (Work report), 9 May 1940, Shaanxi Archives, 2-1-164-2. 41. Quoted in Fang Chengxiang and Huang Zhao’an, Shaan-Gan-Ning bianqu geming shi, p. 219. 42. Liu Jingfan, “Gongzuo baogao” (Work report), 9 May 1940, Shaanxi Archives, 2-1-164-2. 43. “Mizhi xian xianji sansan zhi diaocha cailiao” (Survey materials on the county-level “three-thirds system ” in Mizhi), June 1944, Mizhi Archives, permanent juan 2. 44. “GuanYu jianzu jianxi yu jiaozu jiaoxi wenti” (On problems in rent and inter­ est reduction and payment), February 1944, in KangRi zh an zh en g shiqi ShaanGan-Ning bianqu caizheng jin gji shiliao zh aibian , 2:310. 45. “Mizhi report, 26 July 1941,” in Shaan-Gan-Ning bianqu zhengfu w en xian xu anbian (Selected documents o f the Shaan-Gan-Ning Border Region government), ed. Shaanxi sheng dang’an guan, Shaanxi sheng shebui kexueyuan (Shaanxi Provin­ cial Archives and Shaanxi Academy o f Social Sciences) (Beijing: Archives Press, 1988), 4:136. 46. Central Bureau directive on the Three-Thirds System, 30 January 1941, in Shaan-Gan-Ning bianqu kangRi m inzhu genjudi, 2:67. This was perhaps better than areas that had undergone land distribution. There, landlords were said to harbor a “relatively profound hatred” of the Communists. 47. Wang Zhen and Cao Liru, “Mi-Jia gongzuo” (Work in Mizhi and Jiaxian), 18 May 1941, Shaanxi Archives, 2-1-191-2. 48. Yan’an rural survey team, ed., M izhi ocian Yangjiagou diaoch a, pp. 25, 32; Liu Jingfan, “Gongzuo baogao” (Work report), 9 May 1940, Shaanxi Archives, 2-1-164-2. 49. Mizhi interview, 19 February 1989. 50. Yan’an rural survey team, ed., M izhi odan Yangjiagou diaocha, p. 15. 51. Cao Liru to border region, 31 August 1941, and border region reply to Wang Zhen and Cao, 15 September 1941, in Shaan-Gan-Ning bianqu zhengfu wenocian ocuanbian, 4:169-171. 52. Seiden, Yenan Way, pp. 179-187; Peter Schran, Guerrilla Economy: The Development o f the Shensi-Kansu-Ninghsia Border Region, 1 9 3 7 -1 9 4 5 (Albany: State University o f New York Press, 1976), pp. 168-204; Fang Chengxiang and Huang Zhao’an, Shaan-Gan-Ning bianqu gem ing shi, pp. 161-171. 53. Schran, Guerrilla Economy, pp. 132-137; Xie Juezai, X ie J u eza i riji (Xie Juezai diary) (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1984), 2:836. Trade statistics for 1941—1942 are not available, but apparently salt produced more than half o f export earnings. As Ch’en Yung-fa has argued, opium seem ed to have replaced salt as the key export item by 1943, the first year for which statistics are available. In that year, salt represented about half (47.4 percent or 62 percent in different sources) o f

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nonopium exports. See KangRi zh a n zh e n g sh iqi Shaan-G an-N ing bian qu ca izh e n g jin g ji shiliao zh aibian , 3:295, 4:65; Ch’en Yung-fa, “The Blooming Poppy under the Red Sun: The Yan’an Way and the Opium Trade,” in New Perspectives on the Chinese C om m unist Revolution, ed. Tony Saich and Hans van de Ven (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1995), pp. 272-274. 54. “Gulin Report,” 14 August 1941, in Shaan-G an-N ing bianqu zhengfu w enxian x u an bian (Selected documents o f the Shaan-Gan-Ning Border Region gov­ ernment), ed. Shaanxi sheng dang’an guan, Shaanxi sheng shebui kexueyuan (Shaanxi Provincial Archives and Shaanxi Academy o f Social Sciences) (Beijing: Archives Press, 1988), 4:116-118. See also Wang Zhen et al., 22 June 1941, in ShaanGan-Ning bianqu zhengfu w enxian xu an bian , 3:321-323; Wang Zhen et al., 5 July 1941, and Lin Boqu et al., Replies, 17, 18 July 1941, in Shaan-Gan-Ning bianqu zhengfu w enxian x u an bian , 4:38-43. 55. Xie Juezai, X ie Ju ezai riß, 1:322-327. 56. Border region to Gulin, 20 August 1941, in Shaan-Gan-Ning bianqu zhengfu w enxian xu a n b ia n , 4:116-117. 57. Lin Boqu, Gao Gang, and Gao Zili, 23 August 1941, in Shaan-Gan-Ning bianqu zhengfu w enxian xu an bian , 4:139-140. 58. Lin Boqu et al., 1 February 1942, in Shaan-G an-N ing bianqu zhengfu w enx­ ia n x u a n b ia n , 5:145-154. 59. Fang Chengxiang and Huang Zhao’an, Shaan-Gan-Ning bianqu gem ing shi, pp. 243-244. 60. Seiden, Yenan Way, pp. 200-207. 61. “Shaan-Gan-Ning bianqu zhengfu zhengfeng zongjie” (Sum-up of rectification in the Shaan-Gan-Ning Border Region government), 1943, in Shaan-Gan-Ning bianqu zhengfu w enxian xu an bian , 7:434. 62. Jia Tuofu, 15 March 1945, in KangRi zh an zh en g shiqi Shaan-Gan-Ning bianqu caizheng ß n g ji shiliao zh a ib ia n , 2:221. 63. Yan’an rural survey team, ed., M izhi x ia n Yangjiagou diaocha, p. 166. 64. “Mizhi Yincheng shi dizhu cailiao” (Materials on landlords o f Yincheng City in Mizhi), October 1944, Yulin Archives, 6/1-x-10-5. 65. “Mizhi xian Minfeng qu Gaomiaoshan ge jieceng shenghuo diaocha cailiao” (Survey materials on the livelihood o f the various strata in Gaomiaoshan, Minfeng district, Mizhi), 30 October 1944, Yulin Archives, 6/1-X-10-6. 66. Seiden, Yenan Way, pp. 84-86. 67. Yangjiagou interview, 22 February 1989. 68. Fang Chengxiang and Huang Zhao’an, Shaan-Gan-Ning bianqu gem ing shi, pp. 188-189. 69. Chai Shufan, Yu Guangyuan, and Peng Ping, Suide, M izhi tu di w enti chubu ya n fiu , pp. 23-33; Jia Tuofu, “Guanyu bianqu tudi zhengce wenti de baogao” (Report on problems in land policy in the border region), 15 March 1945, excerpted in KangRi zh an zh en g shiqi Shaan-Gan-Ning bianqu caizheng ß n g ji shiliao zhaibian, 2:218-219. 70. Wang Zhen et al., 12 December 1941, in Shaan-Gan-Ning bianqu zhengfu w en xian xu anbian, 4:448-449; 16 December 1941, in ibid., 5:21-23; Jia Tuofu, “Guanyu bianqu tudi zhengce wenti de baogao” (Report on problems inland policy in the border region), 15 March 1945, excerpted from KangRi zh an zh en g shiqi

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Shaan-Gan-Ning bianqu caizheng jin gji shiliao zh a ib ia n , 2:220-221; Keating, Two Revolutions. '■ N 71. Fang Chengxiang and Huang Zhao’an, Shaan-Gan-Ning bianqu gem ing shi, p. 233. Mao’s call for more survey work in “Reform Our Study” (May 1941) was criti­ cal to this new wave of rural surveys. The volume by Chai Shufan, Yu Guangyuan, and Peng Ping is the product of the Suide-Mizhi survey. See Chai Shufan, Yu Guangyuan, and Peng Ping, Suide, M izhi tudi wenti chubu ya n jiu (A preliminary study of Suide-Mizhi land problems) (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1979). Fang Chengxiang and Huang Zhao’an, Shaan-Gan-Ning bianqu gem ing shi. 12. “Zhonggong zhongyang guanyu ruhe zhixing tudi zhengce jueding de zhishi” (CCP Center directive on how to implement the decision on land policy), 4 February 1942, in Zhang Wentian Jin-Shaan diaocha wenji (Collection o f Zhang Wentian’s surveys in Shanxi and Shaanxi), ed. Zhang Wentian xuanji zhuanji zu (Beijing: Zhonggong dangshi chubanshe, 1994), pp. 407-408. 73. Northwest Bureau directive on rent reduction, 10 October 1942, in KangRi zh an zheng shiqi Shaan-Gan-Ning bianqu caizh en g jin g ji shiliao zh a ib ia n ,

2:264-270. 74. Fang Chengxiang and Huang Zhao’an, Shaan-Gan-Ning bianqu gem ing shi, p. 197; “Shaan-Gan-Ning bianqu zhengfu zhengfeng zongjie” (Sum-up o f rectification in the Shaan-Gan-Ning Border Region government), 1943, in Shaan-Gan-Ning bianqu zhengfu w enxian xu an bian , 7:434. 75. 9 November 1942,14 November 1942, 25 November 1942, 3 D ecem ber 1942, 18 December 1942, 27 December 1942, Jiefang ribao (Liberation Daily) Yan’an; Keating, Two Revolutions, pp. 170-175. 76. Lin Boqu and Li Dingming to Wang Zhen and Cao Liru, 7 August 1942, and reply, 19 September 1942, in Shaan-Gan-Ning bianqu zhengfu w enxian x u a n b ia n , 6:290-291. For other examples, see “Mizhi Yincheng shi dizhu shouzhi qingkuang diaocha cailiao” (Survey materials on the income and expenditures o f landlords o f Yincheng City in Mizhi), 22 November 1944, Yulin Archives, 611-X-0-3; Seiden, Yenan Way, pp. 229-237. 77. Boyd Compton, M ao’s China: Party Reform Documents, 1 9 42-44 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1952); Merle Goldman, Literary Dissent in Comm unist China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967); Raymond Wylie, The Emergence o f Maoism: Mao Tse-tung, Ch’en Po-ta, a n d the Search fo r Chinese Theory, 1935 -1 9 4 5 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1980), pp. 162-194; Dai Qing, Wang Shiwei a n d uWild Lilies”■—Rectification a n d Purges in the Chinese Comm unist Party, 1942-44, trans. Nancy Liu and Lawrence R. Sullivan, ed. David E. Apter and Timothy Cheek (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1994). 78. Ch’en Yung-fa, Yan’an d e yinying. 79. John S. Service, “Kuomintang-Communist Situation, 23 January 1943,” in Lost Chance in China: The World War II Despatches o f John S. Service, ed. Joseph W. Esherick (New York: Random House, 1974), pp. 170-178. 80. Mao Zedong to Dong Biwu, 4 July 1943, in Shaan-Gan-Ning bianqu kangRi m inzhu genjudi, 1:337. 81. Ch’en Yung-fa, Yan’an de yinying, pp. 80-94. 82. 15 September 1943 and 22 September 1943, Jiefang ribao (Liberation Daily), Yan’an.

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83. “Mizhi Yincheng shi dizhu Feng Huafu xiansheng cailiao” (Materials on Mr. Feng Huafu, landlord o f Yincheng city in Mizhi), October 1944, Yulin Archives,

6/1-X-9-6. 84. “Mizhi xian Minfeng qu Gaomiaoshan ge jieceng shenghuo diaocha cailiao” (Survey materials on the livelihood o f the various strata in Gaomiaoshan, Minfeng District, Mizhi), 30 October 1944, Yulin Archives, 6/1-X-10-6. 85. Northwest Bureau decision on rent reduction, 10 October 1943, in KangRi zh a n zh e n g shiqi Shaan-G an-N ing bianqu caizheng jin g ji shiliao zh a ib ia n , 2:278-282; “Mizhi xian xianji sansan zhi diaocha cailiao” (Survey materials on the county-level “tliree-thirds system” in Mizhi), June 1944, Mizhi Archives, permanent juan 2. On the Renaissance Society, see Frederic J. Wakeman Jr., Policing Shanghai, 1 9 2 7 -1 9 3 7 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), pp. 235-240. 86. “Mizhi xian Minfeng qu Gaomiaoshan ge jieceng shenghuo diaocha cailiao” (Survey materials on the livelihood o f the various strata in Gaomiaoshan, Minfeng district, Mizhi), 30 October 1944, Yulin Archives, 6/1-X-10-6. 87. “Mizhi xian xianji sansan zhi diaocha cailiao” (Survey materials on the county-level “three-thirds system ” in Mizhi), June 1944, Mizhi Archives, permanent juan 2. 88. “Mizhi xian xianji sansan zhi diaocha cailiao” (Survey materials on the countylevel “three-thirds system” in Mizhi), June 1944, Mizhi Archives, permanent juan 2. Rich peasant representation increased from 9 percent to 15 percent. 89- Keating, Two Revolutions, p. 136. 90. Yan’an rural survey team, ed., M izhi x ia n Yangjiagou diaocha, p. 25. 91. “Mizhi Yincheng shi dizhu Feng Shechen xiansheng shenghuo diaocha cailiao” (Materials on the life o f Mr. Feng Shechen, landlord o f Yincheng city in Mizhi), October 1944, Yulin Archives, 6/1-X-9-7. 92. “Mizhi xian Minfeng qu Gaomiaoshan ge jieceng shenghuo diaocha cailiao” (Survey materials on the livelihood o f the various strata in Gaomiaoshan, Minfeng district, Mizhi), 30 October 1944, Yulin Archives, 6/1-X-10-6. 93. Xie Juezai, Xie J u eza i riji, 2:952,1044. 94. “Suide fenqu zhu-yuan gongshu liuyuefen gongzuo jianbao” (June work re­ port o f the Suide commissioner’s office), 27 July 1944, Shaanxi Archives, 2-1-236-4; 2-1-236-7. 95. “Mizhi Yincheng shi dizhu shouzhi qingkuang diaocha cailiao” (Survey ma­ terials on the incom e and expenditures o f landlords o f Yincheng City in Mizhi), 22 November 1944, Yulin Archives, 6ll-x -0 -3 . 96. Chai Shufan, Yu Guangyuan, and Peng Ping, Suide, M izhi tu di wenti chubu yan jiu , p. 107. 97. “Suide xian zhengfu bayuefen gongzuo baogao” (August work report of the Suide county government), 14 September 1942, Shaanxi Archives, 2-1-221-8. 98. Chai Shufan, Yu Guangyuan, and Peng Ping, Suide, M izhi tu di w enti chubu yan jiu , p. 112. 99. “Mizhi Yincheng shi dizhu shouzhi qingkuang diaocha cailiao” (Survey ma­ terials on the incom e and expenditures o f landlords o f Yincheng City in Mizhi), 22 Novem ber 1944, Yulin Archives, 6 ll-x -0 -3 ; “Mizhi Yincheng shi dizhu Du Liangbao xiansheng cailiao” (Materials on Mr. Du Liangbao, landlord o f Yincheng City in Mizhi), October 1944, Yulin Archives, 6/1-X-9-8; “Mizhi Yincheng shi

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dizhu Ai Bingqing xiansheng cailiao” (Materials on Mr. Ai Bingqing, landlord o f Yincheng City in Mizhi), October 1944, Yulin Archives; 6/1-X-9-9. For the border re­ gion as a whole, see Jia Tuofu, “Guanyu bianqu tudi zhengce wenti de baogao” (Report on problems in land policy in the border region), 15 March 1945, in KangRi zh a n zh e n g shiqi Shaan-G an-N ing bia n q u ca izh e n g jin g ji sh iliao zhaibian, vol. 2; Keating, Two Revolutions, p. 178. 100. “Mizhi xian Minfeng qu Gaomiaoshan ge jieceng shenghuo diaocha cailiao” (Survey materials on the livelihood o f the various strata in Gaomiaoshan, Minfeng district, Mizhi), 30 October 1944, Yulin Archives, 6/1-X-10-6. 101. “Mizhi Yincheng shi dizhu shouzhi qingkuang diaocha cailiao” (Survey ma­ terials on the income and expenditures o f landlords o f Yincheng City in Mizhi), 22 November 1944, Yulin Archives, 6 ll-x -0 —3. 102. Mizhi Hecha district party committee, “Guanyu Yangjiagou de tudi wenti” (On the land problem in Yangjiagou), 9 August 1946, Mizhi Archives, permanent juan 4. 103. Fang Chengxiang and Huang Zhao’an, Shaan-Gan-Ning bianqu gem ing shi, pp. 421—482; and Yulin interview, 16 August 1991. This interview with a former Guomindang officer was particularly interesting, for in effect he suggested that had the Guomindang’s southern army, led by Liu Kan, arrived a day earlier, the planned pincer movement might have succeeded and thus defeated Peng Dehuai. This w ould have left Mao and other key Chinese Communist Party leaders surrounded, perhaps changing the course of Chinese history. Defeated military men often engage in such counterfactual “if” history, but at least his account (together with the archival mate­ rial cited in this article) suggests that Communist victory in Shaanbei may have been less certain and more contingent than the conventional history has suggested. For elaboration on the contingent nature o f the revolution, see Joseph W. Esherick, “The Theses on the Chinese Revolution,” M odem China 2Í, no. 1 (1995): 45. 104. Yangjiagou interviews, 22 February 1989; Fang Chengxiang and Huang Zhao’an, Shaan-G an-N ing bianqu gem ing shi, pp. 499-502. 105. Mizhi Hecha District Party Committee, “Guanyu Yangjiagou de tudi w enti” (On the land problem in Yangjiagou), 9 August 1946, Mizhi Archives, permanent juan 4, pp. 2-8; ibid. 106. Ibid. The account below on Yangjiagou in 1946 is based on this report. 107. “Guanyu Yangjiagou qingli qunzhong douzheng guoshi zhong ganbu tanwu de baogao” (Report on the disposition of the fruits o f mass struggle in Yangjiagou and cadre speculation), 19 July 1947, by Mizhi Party Committee, Mizhi Archives, 000-1-114. Unless otherwise noted, the discussion below o f the spring 1947 phase o f the struggle comes from this document. 108. Ch’en Yung-fa, Yan’an deyin yin g, pp. 34, 62. 109- Zhou’s reputation lives on in the village. Both an old party member (inter­ view, 22 February 1989) and a former landlord (interview, 22 February 1989) con­ firmed the favorable view o f Zhou given in the cited report. 110. “Hecha liuxiang tugaihou guanyu dizhu cailiao zhengli” (Compiled materials on landlords after land reform in the sixth township o f Hecha), August 1948, by Mizhi Party Committee, Mizhi Archives, 0001-1-28. 111. Yangjiagou interviews, 22-23 February 1989. 112. “Mizhi tugai zongjie baogao” (Summary report on land reform in Mizhi), 9 April 1948, for Suide prefectural committee, Yulin Archives, 6/1-X-80-6. Unless other­ wise noted, my discussion of land reform is based on this document.

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113. “Mizhi xian tugai douzheng siwang renshu” (The number of deaths in land re­ form struggles in Mizhi), c. 1948, Mizhi Archives, 0001-1. 114. “Hecha qu, yi, san liangge xiangjiupian gongzuobaogao” (Work report on correcting excesses in the first and third townships of Hecha), 5 May 1948, Mizhi Party Committee, Mizhi Archives, permanent juan 28, pp. 8-20. The small number of landlords in these figures indicates that Yangjiagou was not among the townships surveyed. 115. Linda Grove informs me that her research has uncovered the same phenom­ enon in Hebei. “Hecha qu, yi, san liangge xiangjiupian gongzuobaogao” (Work re­ port on correcting excesses in the first and third townships o f Hecha), 5 May 1948, Mizhi Party Committee, Mizhi Archives, permanent juan 28. l ió . “Guanyu chuli Shilipu erxiang tugaizhong de cuowu baogao” (Report on cor­ recting errors during land reform in the second township of Shilipu) and Northwest Bureau response, 29 March 1948 (?), Yulin Archives, 6/1-X-80-4. 117. Mizhi interviews, 27 February 1989. On similar burdensome taxes elsewhere during the civil war, see Chen Yongfa, “Neizhan, Mao Zedong, he tudi genfing: Cuowu panduan haishi zhengzhi yinmou” (Civil war, Mao Zedong, and land revolu­ tion: Mistaken assessment or political intrigue?) D alu z a z h i (Mainland Journal) 92 (1996): 1-3. In three parts. 118. Keating, Two Revolutions. 119. Joseph W. Esherick, “The Theses on the Chinese Revolution,” M odern China 21, no. 1 (1995): 45. 120. In an earlier article on Gulin County in the Yanshu subregion, I examined this question with the aid o f cadre registers, which allowed me to compare the background and political styles of county-, district-, and village-level cadres. See “Deconstructing the Construction of the Party-State: Gulin County in the Shaan-Gan-Ning Border Region,” China Quarterly 140 (December 1994). For Mizhi, similar data are not available, and it is impossible to distinguish systematically between district and village cadres. The two are accordingly treated together here as basic-level rural cadres. 121. Joseph W. Esherick, “Deconstructing the Construction o f the Party-State: Gulin County in the Shaan-Gan-Ning Border Region,” China Q uarterly 140 (Decem ber 1994): 1070-1075. 122. Yan’an rural survey team, ed., M izhi x ia n Yangjiagou diaocha, p. 19. 123. I believe that both Ch’en Yung-fa, and Apter and Saich (1994), despite their considerable contribution to our understanding of this era, succumb to an excessively Mao-centered dynamic o f revolutionary change; see Ch’en Yung-fa, Yan’an de yinying, David Apter and Tony Saich, Revolutionary Discourse in M ao’s Republic (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994).

3 Social Reform and Value Change in the Jin Cha Ji Anti-Japanese Border Region Wei Hongyun The Jin Cha Ji (Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei) Border Region was the first of many border regions and base areas established behind Japanese lines by the Chi­ nese Communist Party (CCP). The CCP and the Eighth Route Army con­ fronted a legacy of warlord-driven instability and social disorder. The restoration of order, the introduction of political and economic reforms, and military mobilization were the main tasks for Eighth Route Army forces dis­ patched from Yan’an. Despite susceptibility to punishing Japanese attacks— which forced Eighth Route Army and local forces to retreat to the mountains and left rural people in the plains areas vulnerable—in the course of the war the Jin Cha Ji Border Region saw the start of a process of social reform that fundamentally altered the power structure in the rural area and the relation­ ship between rich and poor, changed values and attitudes toward individual and collective action, introduced new forms of administrative and produc­ tive processes, and introduced new cultural forms with long-term conse­ quences. The CCP and its troops were the agents of change in a process that began with the organization of effective resistance and the reestablishment of basic social order and developed into a large-scale revolution.

THE FIRST BORDER REGION

On 10 January 1938, half a year after the outbreak of full-scale war with Japan, the Eighth Route Army formally established the Jin Cha Ji Border Re­ gion, which claimed to administer seventy counties in northeastern Shanxi (Jin), southern Chahar (Cha), and northwest Hebei 0 0 over an area roughly 93

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the size of Hebei province and with a population of about 12 million. The border region surrounded Beiping and Tianjin, North China’s\two most im­ portant cities. In this it marked a bold departure from earlier and later base areas located far from major metropolitan areas, distant from railroads and highways, and high in mountainous terrain. The decision to establish the first formal CCP base area in Jin Cha Ji was a function of the cooperation between the Communists and the Chinese cen­ tral government. The latter had allocated an area of eighteen counties on the borders of Shanxi, Chahar, Hebei, and Suiyuan as an area of operations for CCP troops. However, the development of the Jin Cha Ji Border Region to cover the larger adjacent plain areas was largely the unintended result of mil­ itary opportunities and unanticipated local anti-Japanese activity. The Jin Cha Ji Border Region centered on Mount Wutai and the surround­ ing mountains, extending north and east to cover many counties in the plains areas of West, Central, and East Hebei. There were considerable differences between the mountain and plains regions. In terms of the border region’s constituent bases, the mountain regions included the Beiyue Base Area (Mount Wutai, Hengshan, and the northern part of the Taihang Mountains), the Pingbei Base Area (north of Beiping), and the Pingxi Base Area (west of Beiping). The plains regions included the Jizhong Base Area (Central Hebei) and the Jidong (East Hebei) Base Area. The establishment of base areas and border regions was complex and sub­ ject to diverse interpretations. In the case of Jin Cha Ji significant differences in the contemporary accounts center on the contributions made by antiJapanese forces other than the CCP’s Eighth Route Army. One report from March 1939 indicates that when the Eighth Route Army arrived, guerrilla forces and bandit groups were already fighting the Japanese or fighting for control of the area. Those other forces included Nationalist Party forces who had either chosen or had been forced to stay through loss of contact with their commanders. Most notable was General Sun Dianyin and the remnant troops from the Nationalist Party’s 53rd Army, but there were also various local mili­ tia led by former Nationalist Party officers or local notables, such as Zhang Zhonghan and Meng Qingshan. The Eighth Route Army was able to establish its position only after successfully annexing or neutralizing these forces.1 Another account of these events, one by Nie Rongzhen in February 1940, painted a completely different picture. According to Nie, “One feature of this area was the absence of any old armed force, and every soldier was orga­ nized by the cadres of the Chinese Communist Party and the Eighth Route Army through thorough-going and painstaking work.”2 Writing in 1940, Nie would have found it difficult to acknowledge Nationalist Party activity in a positive light. Throughout North China at the end of 1939 and the beginning of 1940 there had been a series of armed conflicts between the Nationalist and Communist Party forces. In later years Nie revised his memoirs and in-

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eluded a separate section on the reform of various armed forces, which vividly described the complex situation in which the Eighth Route Army first had to cooperate with other Chinese armed forces that were already in the area but in the end either captured or destroyed them.3 Beiyue was the most stable of the five base areas that constituted the Jin Cha Ji Border Region during the war years. It was developed from a small guerrilla zone originally planned and established by the Eighth Route Army. Immedi­ ately after the Communist forces were reorganized as the three divisions of the Eighth Route Army in August 1937, its 115th Division, led by Lin Biao (com­ mander) and Nie Rongzhen (political commissar), was sent to the borders be­ tween the provinces of Shanxi, Chahar, Hebei, and Suiyuan to wage guerrilla war against the Japanese. They fought an initial and victorious battle at Pingxingguan in late September and arrived at Mount Wutai in late October. Fol­ lowing the loss of Taiyuan to a Japanese siege in early November, the main force of the 115th Division was sent to the Lüliang Mountains in West Shanxi to support the Shanxi warlord Yan Xishan and Nationalist Party troops in the area. They left a small-force of guerrillas led by Nie Rongzhen to wage war on Mount Wutai and the surrounding mountains. Initially Nie Rongzhen’s force of 3,000 soldiers was organized into one reg­ iment, a battalion, and two companies, concentrated in the four counties of Wutai, Dingxiang, Pingshan, and Mengxian. In their work of mobilization against Japanese invasion and governmental administration, they were as­ sisted by local branches of the Sacrifice League and the General Mobilization Committee. In some cases, the Communist forces set out to re­ store the local administration of the Nationalist government rather than cre­ ate a new administration. The Eighth Route Army, as well as its associated guerrilla and militia units, grew rapidly. By January 1938, when the Provi­ sional Committee of Jin Cha Ji was established as the highest administrative unit, the Eighth Route Army had set up six columns with a total force of more than 10,000 soldiers in the area. In addition to its own recruitment of local peasants, the Eighth Route Army in the Beiyue Base Area also successfully incorporated bandit groups, Nationalist Party remnant troops, and local mili­ tias. These other incorporated forces notably included the Tenth Route Army, a former bandit group led by Zhao Yukun; the National Anti-Japanese Army formed by refugee students from Beiping and Tianjin; and the Seventh Route Army formed by former Nationalist Party army officer Meng Geshen.4 The establishment of the Jizhong (Central Hebei) Base Area was made possible in large part by the defection to the Eighth Route Army of a full regiment of Nationalist forces. Central Hebei, including Beiping and Tian­ jin, had been the center of Communist underground activities in North China after Nationalist Party suppression of the CCP in 1927. By the out­ break of w ar in 1937, the CCP underground network was quite complex and already extended to parts of the Nationalist Party’s forces. One case

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was the 691st Regiment of the 53rd Army commanded by Lu Zhengcao, himself a secret CCP member. In October 19v37 as this regiqient retreated south from Beijing, it stopped at Meihua Township, southeast of Shiji­ azhuang. Lu realized that a military vacuum had been created in Central Hebei since the battlefront between the Nationalist Party forces and the Japanese had moved quickly to the south and west of the country. He and his colleagues persuaded the whole regiment to leave the Nationalist Party’s command but to maintain their resistance to Japan. They became instead a “People’s Self-defense Army.” Within a month local recruits, with support from the underground CCP units in the region and from the Eighth Route Army in Mount Wutai, had developed into a force of more than 3,000 soldiers. They also established a provisional system of govern­ ment in the four counties of Shenze, Anguo, Anping, and Gaoyang. At Nie Rongzhen’s command, Lu Zhengshao took the main force of the People’s Self-defense Army to West Hebei for training and consolidation in December 1937. After a month it returned to Central Hebei and was joined by members of the Hebei Guerrilla Army formed by previously un­ derground Communists and local notables. On 21 April 1938 these various forces were reorganized by the Eighth Route Army as the Central Hebei Military District (also known as the Third Column of the Eighth Route Army) with Lu Zhengcao as its commander and Wang Ping as its political commissar. On 1 May 1938 the Central Hebei Administrative Office was established at Anping. At its time of greatest expansion, from 1939 to 1941, the Central Hebei Administrative Office claimed to be responsible for rural areas across forty counties with control of local governments in twentyfour county seats and a population of some 8 million.5 While the experience of the Central Hebei Base Area suggested that the Eighth Route Army could operate successfully on the plains if conditions were right, this clearly did not mean that it was able to establish base areas on the plains at will. The experience of the attempt to establish a base area in East Hebei was, by contrast, nothing less than a disaster. East Hebei had been under Japanese control since 1933, when a puppet “East Hebei Autonomous Gov­ ernment Guarding against Communism” under Yan Rugeng had been estab­ lished at Tongxian with direction of twenty-two counties south of the Great Wall, as well as northeast of Beiping and Tianjin. All the same there was local anti-Japanese sentiment, and CCP underground units and guerrillas were active in the area. In July 1938 the Eighth Route Army, grasping the relative absence of Japanese strength in East Hebei, seized the initiative. It sent more than 5,000 troops of its 4th Column under Song Shilun (commander) and Deng Hua (political commissar) to the area. Together with CCP underground cells they organized the anti-Japanese mass uprising in East Hebei, which involved more than 200,000 people, including guerrillas, peasants, Kailuan coal min-

Social Reform in the Jin Cha Ji Border Region

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ers, local militia originally organized by landlords, remnant Nationalist Party forces, and members of the Peace Preservation Corps originally organized by the local Japanese puppet government. The uprising led to the formation of the East Hebei Joint Anti-Japanese Army, with a total force of 70,000 soldiers coordinated under the Eighth Route Army. In mid-1938 the Eighth Route Army planned to establish an East Hebei Base Area with an administrative structure extending across eleven counties. However, these plans were abandoned in late September when the Japanese returned to the area in force. Under pressure of a Japanese “mopping-up campaign” in largely indefensible terrain, Song Shilun and the local CCP leadership decided to retreat from the East Hebei plain and take the East Hebei Joint Anti-Japanese Army to the mountains to the west of Beiping in order to establish what became the Pingxi Base Area. The move was not sanctioned by the CCP high command, which repeatedly ordered its removal from Mount Wutai (the Jin Cha Ji Border Region), the Taihang Mountains base of the Eighth Route Army, and even from CCP headquarters in Yan’an. Unfortunately, these^ orders were ignored and the long distance transfer proved to be a disaster. A majority of the soldiers were unhappy about leav­ ing their hometowns and lacked experience or preparation in fighting a mo­ bile war. By late October, when the East Hebei Joint Anti-Japanese Army reached Pingxi, it had been reduced to just 4,000 troops by battle and de­ fection, with maity of the soldiers simply returning to their hometowns in East Hebei.6 Those CCP members and guerrillas who remained in East Hebei—led no­ tably by Li Yunchang, Li Chuli, and Zhou Wenpin—continued to fight the Japanese in isolated guerrilla areas. A more consolidated base area proved elusive, though they eventually succeeded in establishing seven cross­ county governments centered on Zunhua, Xinglong, Feirui, and Jixian to the east of Beiping, which claimed jurisdiction over a population of 1.1 million people by the end of 1940.7 However, at the village level, administration in these areas was more often than not a “double-faced regime” that served both the Japanese and the anti-Japanese guerrillas according to the changing situation.8

SOCIOPOLITICAL REFORM

The Jin Cha Ji Border Region and the Japanese-occupied area actually formed an interlocking pattern. The cities and towns were occupied by the Japanese, but the countryside was controlled by the Eighth Route Army. As already indicated, the Eighth Route Army was strongest in the Taihang Mountains, around Mount Heng and Mount Wutai, but its activi­ ties extended deep into the plain areas, including the suburbs of Beiping,

98

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Tianjin, and Baoding. The border region faced shortages of goods and ma­ terials, difficult internal communications, low living standards and poor working conditions, all exacerbated by repeated Japanese attacks or mopping-up campaigns in villages throughout the region. Indeed, as Kathleen Hartford has noted, “By the spring of 1939 the Japanese army could con­ centrate troops for an attack anywhere in Hebei within twenty m inutes.”9 Thereafter, sustained attacks by Japanese and puppet forces, sometimes moving out of blockhouses built with conscripted labor, took a heavy toll on the Eighth Route Army and local resistance forces. From 1941 to 1942, areas to the north and the west of Beiping were lost to the Japanese, and both the East Hebei and Central Hebei Base Areas were reduced to guer­ rilla areas. In the most severely afflicted areas, such as Central Hebei, the Eighth Route Army lost about half of its fighters. Despite these adverse conditions, and perhaps in part because of them, important changes oc­ curred in the lives and livelihood of the people, though there w ere clear variations across the border region, depending on the degree of political stability in the different base areas. The Eighth Route Army was the primary initiating agent of change in the border region. In the early stages of the war, the Eighth Route Army focused on mobilizing and organizing to implement armed resistance, not simply to restore administrative order. Throughout 1938, the first year of the border re­ gion, Eighth Route Army forces made impressive gains as Japanese forces continued their march south, focusing the brunt of their attack on retreating Nationalist forces. This was the golden age of a rising movement in the bor­ der region as local administration was established relatively unimpeded by Japanese attack, although social reform under wartime conditions was both gradual and variable, depending on locality, political circumstances, and tim­ ing. Policies could not be implemented uniformly and simultaneously. The CCP’s first aim was the restoration of administrative order. The border region government’s highest administrative body was the Executive Com­ mittee, under which there were five sections: the secretariat and the sections for civil affairs, education, economy, and justice. The sections (including the secretariat) were equivalent to departments in a provincial government. Im­ mediately subordinate to the Executive Committee there were initially three administrative offices, for Northeast Shanxi, West Hebei, and Central Hebei. Later this number increased to seven. Each administrative office had juris­ diction over a number of counties. Where county organization was not pos­ sible, either for reasons of size or politics, a joint county government might be established to take responsibility for parts of two or more counties. Thus in West Hebei a Fangliang County was established for parts of Fangshan and Liangxiang Counties, and a Changwan County for Changping and Wanping Counties. Below the county level there was a district level and below that a village level of administration.

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Whenever the Eighth Route Army entered an area, its first task was to re­ store political stability, appoint new officials, and ensure administrative order, not least because local officials had frequently fled in advance of the Japanese attack. In villages throughout the region, it organized Committees for Anti-Japanese Mobilization, bringing together village heads, members of the local elite, and representatives of peasants, women, merchants, and schoolteachers. These mobilization committees elected the village head and deputy heads, and they appointed cadres to take charge of armed selfdefense, propaganda, supplies, and neutralization of traitors in each village. Particularly in the early stages of the war, the Eighth Route Army received active support from the local population through the activities of the Shanxi Sacrifice League for National Salvation (the Sacrifice League), which usually included members of the local elite. This was the case in Nihai Village, then in Laishui County (present Zhulu County), a mountain village with 100 households. The Eighth Route Army arrived there in spring 1938, incorpo­ rated county troops into the anti-Japanese army, and established the county government with the^assistance of local members of the Sacrifice League. Liu Jian, a Sacrifice League stalwart, was appointed the village head. The district head of the Seventh District office, Cao Jianguo, was the son of Cao Xiangwu, a prosperous Laiyuan landowner.10 Laishui County exemplifies ef­ fective cooperation between Eighth Route Army and local elites, including landlords and others associated with the Sacrifice League. As the war progressed, the power structure in the countryside began to change, not least as an increasing number of previously powerless peasants were able to participate fully in the local administration and the organization of the anti-Japanese forces. The introduction of elections for local officials and the development of a variety of anti-Japanese associations provided new channels for political participation. The peasantry had previously been ex­ ploited and oppressed under the landlord-dominated baojia system of sur­ veillance, reintroduced by the Nationalist Party and the Republican govern­ ment in 1932 for control and tax purposes.11 Under those arrangements peasants had an obligation to pay taxes but exercised no rights. With the es­ tablishment of the border region, landlord power was challenged by new or­ ganizations and administrative structures that created opportunities for polit­ ical participation, particularly by peasants. The anti-Japanese associations organized during the war included Mobi­ lization Committees, the anti-Japanese Union, Peasant Associations, the Women’s Sacrifice League, and the Youth’s Nation Salvation Association. Major local anti-Japanese forces eventually took the form of the Self-defense Corps and the militia. While the entire population between sixteen and fiftyfive years of age was eligible for the Self-defense Corps, the militia was se­ lected from the strong and was initially composed of model Self-defense Corps and Young Vanguard Self-defense Corps. The Women’s Self-defense

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Corps and the Children’s Self-defense Corps played supplementary roles in local anti-Japanese activities. According to one report, the ^militia in the Beiyue Base Area had over a million fighters by the end of 1941.12 Peasant involvement in local administration was no less remarkable than it was in the Self-defense Corps and the militia. From the beginning of the new administrative order, some peasant activists were selected to become village heads. For example, in Tanhuipu, about thirty-five kilometers from the Wutai Mountains, there was a sizable village in the Fourth District of Fuping. It had more than 100 households, and about 500 people at that time. Most villagers rented land from the Buddhist monasteries. When the war broke out in 1937, a peasant, Liu Tingjie, was selected as village head, assisted by two villagers, Song Yuchuan and Li Changxin. All three later joined the CCP. In January 1939, the Village Electoral Law of the Jin Cha Ji Border Region was promul­ gated. Liu Tingjie was elected village head in the February election.13 An increasing number of peasants became local cadres in the Jin Cha Ji Border Region in and after 1939 with the direct election by the villagers of village heads. According to statistics compiled in 1942, 87.9 percent of heads of all kinds of village-level committees, 90.9 percent of village heads, and 82.1 percent of members of county councils were either hired hands, poor peasants, or middle peasants.14 After February 1939, all village-level officials were elected and subject to recall. Those who were deemed incompetent or opposed the anti-Japanese united front were sometimes dismissed by a sim­ ple village meeting. Whatever its imperfections, the new system constituted a fundamental change.

WEALTH AND POVERTY

It was almost inevitable that sociopolitical change in the Jin Cha Ji Border Re­ gion would lead to changes in economic relations and relativities. In the early years the main tasks for local administrations were to collect public grain (tax), to organize the militia, to recruit soldiers, and to mobilize women to make shoes for soldiers. Once the political situation became more stable and local administration was dominated by the CCP, the focus of work turned to improving the livelihood of ordinary villagers. Increasingly, local administration came to rely on the improvement of living standards as its major lever for local mobilization. In the 1930s and 1940s the rural economy was dominated by landlords and rich peasants. In the Jin Cha Ji Border Region, where arable land was relatively scattered and the landholdings of each household were small, an average land­ lord had perhaps 70-100 mu; only a few, especially in mountain areas, had holdings of 300 m u or more. Landownership in Wutai County might be typical of the mountain area. According to a survey of landownership in the five dis-

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tricts of Wutai County before the war, landlord families had 88 m u of land on average, whereas the average peasant family had 14.7 m u.15 Less equal still was the situation revealed by a survey of eighty-eight villages in twenty-eight counties in the Beiyue Base Area. Before 1937, poor peasants (including tenants and part-tenants) and farm laborers constituted over half the total number of households. An average landlord family had 97 m u of land, whereas the average peasant family had only 2.5-7.3 m u.16 In Nanchengzi Township, Laiyuan County, Chahar, before the War of Resistance to Japan, more than nine qing of land were cultivated by an excess of 100 tenant house­ holds, while the Hu landlord family owned more than five qing of the land.17 There were other similarly wealthy and large landlord families in Tangxian, Fuping, and Wutai Counties.18 For example, in Shijiazai Village of Fuping County there were fifty-eight households. Fifty-six of those households were tenants of one Buddhist monk who owned a total of two qing and ten m u of tenanted land.19 Problems of poverty in the base area were com pounded by tenancy, the small size of many landholdings, debt, and low levels of productivity. In Shijiazhai Village, Fuping County, some tenants on the poorest hill land rerented this land to those w ho were yet poorer. Many peasants had to borrow money at exorbitant interest from landlords. One type of loan pro­ vided that a peasant w ho borrowed 100 y u a n had to repay 200 y u a n at the end of the first year. If he could not repay both principal and interest on time, he incurred a 300 y u a n penalty at the end of the second year and 400 y u a n at the end of the third year. Such usury kept many peasants heavily in debt. In the words of a famous Chinese poem, “Behind the ver­ milion gates meat and wine go to waste while out on the road lie the bones of those frozen to death.” In poor regions such as Weiyang County (present Weixian and Yangyuan Counties) life was even harder. Peasants lived by cutting firewood, gathering medicinal herbs, and digging edible wild herbs. Most villagers were tenants who were too poor to have draft animals or livestock. They had to pay the landlord three to five dou of husked oats to hire an ox for a year. The land­ lords even owned the mountain forests. Peasant families in those areas were so poor that one cotton-padded suit had to be shared by several people or even by a whole family, with only the person going out to work being al­ lowed to wear it. Family members warmed themselves by a fire during the day and slept under rice or oat straw to keep warm at night because they did not own sufficient quilts. These socioeconomic conditions limited the development of both eco­ nomic and social life. The immediate problems confronting the border re­ gion—mobilization for war and the generation of adequate production— could only be solved by combined reforms in the social, economic, financial, and technical fields. One set of reforms were put in place through changes

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in tenancy arrangements. The Regulations on Rent a n d Interest Reduction were approved by the Jin Cha Ji Border Region government in February 1938 and were amended in later years. Important reform policies included the 25 percent rent reduction, the elimination of usury, and the abolition of more than thirty exorbitant taxes and levies. Interest rates were pegged at 10 per­ cent per year.20 In light of war conditions, rent reduction and interest reduc­ tion were implemented at different times in the different parts of the border region: first in the Beiyue Base Area (1939), then in the area north of Beiping (1940), then in Central Hebei (1942), and later still in the East Hebei Base Area (1943). Implementation of rent and interest reduction confronted many difficulties. Landlords and creditors were able to use their influence and privilege to resist change. Unilateral termination of a tenancy by a landlord was a major obstacle to rent reduction. Reform was often not possible without granting permanent tenancy guaranteed through the intervention of local government and struggles against landlords led by mass organizations. In Xialangjian Village of Fansi County and five nearby villages more than sixty peasants cultivated land owned by landlords. Rent and interest reduction was not implemented in Fansi, the Party later charged, because the village head, a landlord, controlled the head of the Peasant Association and suppressed reform. Consequently high rent and in­ terest and eviction of peasants continued. Only after the 1944 reorganization of the rural political system and village elections could rent and interest reduction be implemented in this locality. Xialangjian Village could be fairly typical of most villages in the Jin Cha Ji Border Region, for many contemporary govern­ ment reports indicated that rent reduction was not successfully implemented until 1944.21Kathleen Hartford has noted that areas which started organizing in earnest only after the Japanese garrisoned troops in them had great difficulty in implementing rent reduction.22 Yet over time the reform policies achieved positive results. Interest reduction was the most straightforward: in most villages of the border region the annual interest rate was reduced to 10 percent or less. According to incomplete statis­ tics, in four districts within the Beiyue Base Area a total of 320,600 yu a n of debt was written off and a total of 64,900 m u of mortgaged land was returned to bor­ rowers by June 1940.23 Rent reduction, where it occurred, was more spectacu­ lar still. Rent was reduced from 50 percent to 37.5 percent of the harvest. One report suggested that a total of 3,566.85 dan of grain was saved by carrying out this policy among 5,587 tenant households in Pingshan and Lingshou Coun­ ties.24In some villages tenants took a quarter of the harvest first and then shared the rest with the landlord.25 As elsewhere in North China, these policy changes also led indirectly to changes in landownership. Landlords moved to sell off some of their land; poor and middle peasants were able to increase their landholdings. Con­ temporary surveys indicated that the landlord economy was gradually being

Social Reform in the Jin Cha Ji Border Region

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whittled away and replaced by a small-scale owner-cultivator or middle peasant economy. These developments were manifest in the history of land transactions. As shown in a 1943 survey of twenty-four villages in the Beiyue Base Area (table 3.1), there was a considerable increase in the amount of land owned by middle peasants, poor peasants, farm laborers, workers, and small traders. Middle and poor peasants in particular gained significantly. More than half of the land sold before 1943 (54.8 percent) was bought by middle peasants, 29.8 percent by poor peasants, and 8.6 percent by workers, hired hands, and small traders; only 1.6 percent was bought by former land­ lords. On the other hand, 36.1 percent of the land had been sold by landlords and 29 percent by rich peasants. Only 34.4 percent of the land had been sold by poor or middle peasants, and in the main these sales were to permit the rationalization of landholdings to physically concentrate land packages or to change from dry farming to wetland farming. Very few poor and middle peasants sold their lands because of poverty, floods, droughts, or bandits, or because of changing occupations.

DIFFERENTIAL CHANGES IN THE SOCIAL STRUCTURE Social, political, a n d e c o n o m ic c o n d itio n s w e r e far from un iform across the Jin Cha Ji B order R egion. In particular there w a s a significant d ivid e b e tw e e n th e “stab le areas” o f th e border reg io n an d its “guerrilla areas,” w h ic h w a s e x ­ plicitly r e c o g n iz e d b y th e CCP in its p o licy form u lation an d im plem entation; it w a s certain ly reflected in th e c h a n g e s in th e so cia l structure that occu rred du rin g th e w a r years. Stable areas w e r e th o se h avin g a w e ll-e sta b lish ed ad-

Table 3.1 Land Transactions in 24 Villages, Beiyue Base Area, 1937-1943* Class Workers Hired hands Poor peasants Middle peasants Rich peasants Landlords Industrial and commercial owners

Land Sold (m u )

% o f Total

4.00 7.30 492.6 765.00 1,061.30 1,320.61 4.50

0.11 0.20 13.48 20.93 29.03 36.13 0.12

L and Bought (m u) 29.80 102.15 669.89 1232.15 116.70 35.25 60.70

% o f Total 1.33 4.55 29.82 54.84 5.19 1.57 2.70

*Jin Cha Ji bianqu caizheng jingjishi ziliao xuanbian, 2:53-54. Corrections have been made to the table produced in the text. The columns for “land bought" and “land sold” have been trans­ posed; and an important digit has been omitted from the amount of land bought by middle peasants, which should be 1,232.15 mu rather than 232.15 mu. Percentages have been recalcu­ lated accordingly.

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ministration run by the Eighth Route Army and its allies. Guerrilla areas were those lost to Japanese control for a considerable period or those in which the Eighth Route Army had influence but could not establish its own adminis­ tration. Usually guerrilla areas were on the plains. Particularly after the Japanese mopping-up campaigns of 1941, many of the previously stable areas became guerrilla areas.26 In practical terms, most of the Beiyue Base Area was regarded as a stable area and most of the Central Hebei, as well as the entire East Hebei Base Area, was regarded as a guerrilla area. In general, the problem of land concentration before the war was less severe on the plains than in the mountain areas of North China. Accord­ ing to contemporary CCP statistics, landlord families in the villages of the guerrilla areas on the plains owned 10 percent of the total land in 1937, compared to their counterparts in the villages in the stable areas of the mountains, who owned 16 percent of the total land.27 In the guerrilla areas CCP social reform programs, such as the introduction of the “reasonable burden” in public taxation or rent and interest reduction, were at best only partly implemented. All the same, the war years saw the decline of the landlord economy and the rise of the middle peasant economy, as was generally the case throughout the Jin Cha Ji Border Region. In extreme cases, landlords and landlordism simply disappeared in some villages of the Central and East Hebei Base Areas.28 Nonetheless, there were differ­ ences in the pattern and scope of these changes betw een the stable areas and the guerrilla areas. Table 3 2 provides détails of changes in landhold­ ing in the border region’s guerrilla areas; table 3-3, details of landholding in its stable areas. The scope of the decline in the landlord economy in the guerrilla areas was sharper than that in the stable areas of the border region, where the de­ crease in the proportion of land held by landlord families between 1937 and 1942 was 2.86 percent, compared to 6.26 percent for landlord families in the guerrilla areas. In the stable areas of the border region the number of land­ lord households (though not their landholdings) decreased by 0.19 percent between 1937 and 1942, and by 0.31 percent in the guerrilla areas over the same period. The scope of the decline in the rich peasant economy was even wider. In the stable areas of the border region rich peasant landholdings declined by 2.77 percent between 1937 and 1942, while in the guerrilla areas the pro­ portion declined by 5.8 percent. Rich peasant households decreased in num­ ber by 0.11 percent in the stable areas of the border region and by 1.14 per­ cent in the guerrilla areas. Equally surprising was the growth of the middle peasant economy in the guerrilla areas, which almost matched that in the stable areas of the border region. Middle peasant landholdings increased by 6.95 percent in the guer­ rilla areas, compared to 7.45 percent in the stable areas. Middle peasant

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Table 3.2 Changes in Landholding in 42 Villages in Jin Cha Ji Guerrilla Areas, 1937-1942» Class Workers Hired hands Poor peasants Middle peasants Rich peasants Landlords Professionals Small industrial and commercial owners Industrial and commercial owners Vagrants W idows and widowers' Others

Households (%) 193 7 1942

Landholdings (%) 1937 1942

2.56 7.06 40.47 36.14 7.95 2.42 0.08 4.41

1.99 3.23 37.72 41.93 6.81 1.91 0.02 3.32

0.14 0.81 20.00 40.65 26.95 10.47

0.21 0.55 21.33 47.60 21.15 7.61

0.68

0.71

0.72

0.66

0.48 0.13 0.34

0.45 0.21 0.25

0.01 0.02 0.02

0.44 0.58

a“Beiyue qu nongcun jingji guanxi he jieji guanxi bianhua de diaocha ziliao” (Survey materials on changes in economic and class relations in the Beiyue Base Area), May 1943. Quoted in Jin Cha Ji bianqu caizheng jingjishi ziliao xuanbian, 2:222-224.

Table 3 3 Changes in Landholding in 24 Villages in Jin Cha Ji Stable Areas, 1937-1942* Class Workers Hired hands Poor peasants Middle peasants Rich peasants Landlords Professionals Small industrial and commercial owners Industrial and commercial owners Vagrants W idows and widowers Others

Households (%) 1942 1937

Landholdings (%) 1942 1937

2.56 7.06 40.47 35.42 5.91 2.42 0.08 4.41

1.99 3.23 37.72 44.31 5.80 1.91 0.02 3.32

0.42 1.18 17.92 41.69 21.93 16.43

0.31 1.75 19.37 49.14 19.16 10.17

0.26

0.37

0.72

0.66

0.10

0.17

0.48 0.13 0.34

0.45 0.21 0.25

0.06 0.01 0.00

0.07 0.06 0.02

a“Ji Re bian shehui zhuangkuang kaocha” (A Survey of social conditions in the Ji Re Base Area), 1943. Quoted in Jin Cha Ji bianqu caizheng jingjishi ziliao xuanbian, 2:222-224.

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households increased 5.79 percent in number in the guerrilla areas and by 8.89 percent in the stable areas. The decline of the landlord economy in the stable areas of the border region was almost exclusively attributable to the implementation of CCP reform pro­ grams. In the guerrilla areas it was the combination of CCP reform programs and extraction by the Japanese that led to the misfortune of the landlords. When the Japanese took a village from the Eighth Route Army, they were un­ likely to follow the same class line as the CCP in formulating social policies. At the same time the Japanese did not have the ability or the political will to com­ pletely reverse the reform process initiated by the CCP. Worse still for the land­ lords, in order to meet the urgent needs of their war effort, the Japanese actu­ ally targeted the landlords for grain and other supplies. Mainly in order to avoid the combined heavy burden imposed by the Eighth Route Army and the Japanese, it became a common practice for land­ lords in the guerrilla areas to sell, mortgage, or even give away their land, in some cases offering financial inducements to others to take part of their landholdings.29 Rich peasants suffered more in the guerrilla areas than in the sta­ ble areas, since they were forced to give up their land by the same pressures that landlords felt and also because of the unstable political situation, which led to even greater losses in their nonfarming activities.

VALUE CHANGE

Before the outbreak of the war and the arrival of the Eighth Route Army, the overwhelming majority of the villages in the Jin Cha Ji Border Region had hardly been touched by modernization, let alone any consideration of intel­ lectual or spiritual change. A well-publicized case was Yesanpo District in Laiyuan County, about 150 kilometers south of Beijing. There were at that time 700 households living in twenty villages who had had no contact with any army or external administrators. Their public affairs were managed by three elected elders, and they continued to use the calendar of the Qing dy­ nasty, not realizing until 1929 that the Qing dynasty had been replaced by the Republic of China.30 The CCP and the Eighth Route Army brought many new ideas to these remote villages, and the social and economic change that re­ sulted from the war effort deeply affected the villagers’ worldview and values. The development of a cooperative ethos was perhaps the most obvious change in attitude among the peasantry of Jin Cha Ji. A traditional Chinese saying has it that “each sweeps the snow from his own doorstep and doesn’t bother about the frost on his neighbor’s roof.” Peasants had long worked in­ dividually for the most part, but in the border region many began to embrace mutual aid and cooperation. As a means to increase production and income, mutual aid teams, labor exchange groups, and cooperatives were set up

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throughout the border region. The development and expansion of the system of mutual aid teams and work groups encountered many difficulties. Peasants lacked experience in sustained cooperation, and some mutual aid teams were not well organized. Some labor exchange groups did not record work points and were slow to settle accounts, so that labor exchange alienated the more productive or simply collapsed. In others, cadres coerced participation with disastrous results. Under such circumstances cooperation was often short­ lived. However, lessons were drawn and new mies were laid down in order to record work points and settle accounts punctually and fairly.31 A common practice was to set the value of a day’s work at ten work points, allocating two points for early morning work, four for the morn­ ing, and four for the afternoon. Ratios of labor exchange between men and wom en and old and young were established, as were those between farming and weaving. Labor exchange groups expanded between 1942 and 1944, some prospering and diversifying. The Li Changshan Coopera­ tive in Xingtang, for example, coordinated the activities of labor and draft animals for cultivation, fertilization, and harvest. It also developed two cotton gins, two grain mills, one oil mill, a smithy, a woodworking shop, a drugstore, twelve weaving groups, and four transport teams, as well as arranging to have seventeen pigs raised.32 Inevitably, moral concepts started to change in the border region and new ideals came to be cherished, particularly by young people. Activists in the anti-Japanese movement were held up as models of patriotism, helpfulness, selflessness, and valor. The proverb “good men never become soldiers and the best iron is not used to make nails” disappeared from use during the War of Resistance to Japan. Young men vied to join the army or guerrilla forces to protect their communities and fight the invaders. Interview research on the generation of women who came to maturity in rural North China during the war reveals changing attitudes on critical is­ sues.33 In their youth many had been forced to “stay indoors all the time.” Even when an opera performance took place in the village or market town, they were not allowed to go out and watch. They knew no life outside their home, being controlled first by parents and then later by mothers-in-law. In the extended family, children were at the bottom of the family hierarchy; only w hen they grew up and had their own children and grandchildren did they come to dominate the family.34 In the border region, family relations changed as women attended meet­ ings and worked in the fields alongside men. Women participated more openly in social intercourse with men; they could more freely express their joy, anger, sorrow, fear, love, hate, and desire. Women began to perform in plays, operas, dances, singing groups, instrumental groups, and stilt walking. It even became possible for a fiancée to perform in her fiancé’s village. “Fam­ ily reform” was a popular slogan. Of course, changing ideas invariably pro-

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duced intergenerational and other conflicts as,women asserted their rights. The road to family harmony could be paved with conflict. Since the tenth century in North China, women’s feet had been bound and as a result they could not go out to work, play, or study. In Shanxi and Hebei Provinces the feet of little girls were often bound at age six or seven. After the 1911 Revolution women activists encouraged the development of un­ bound “natural feet,” yet the practice continued, particularly in more remote rural areas. The establishment of the border region brought the practice of foot binding to an end. The reform agenda for women included freedom of choice in marriage and an end to mercenary marriages and child brides. Although arranged marriages were not eliminated, some bold young people made their own matches. In addition, concubinage was attacked, prostitution was banned, and widows were encouraged to remarry. Women gained inheritance rights and divorce was permitted, subject to mediation through the Women’s Assocation.35 Changes in marriage arrangements were vividly reported in news­ papers. One village head told a reporter that now there is free marriage: this means boys and girls choose their ow n partners and register with the District Government. This was not the case before. In the past, marriages were arranged by parents and they happened through orders and coercion. Boys and girls had no idea o f w hom to marry, or why. They sim­ ply became husband and wife after sitting on a bridal sedan and prostrating b e­ fore earth and heaven. As a result it was com mon to find a girl o f 15 or 16 years old married to an old man o f 50 or 60 years old; or a little boy o f 12 or 13 years old married to a big sister more than 20 years old.36

Every society has both positive and negative aspects. If the latter can never be completely eradicated, they can be ameliorated. The War of Resistance changed society in the base areas profoundly. The Eighth Route Army and large numbers of students carried revolutionary ideas to the countryside. They identified with the peasants, helped them to mobilize for the resistance, and promoted social, economic, political, and cultural change. In turn, many peasants rallied to the resistance and joined in helping to reconstruct society, including their own worldview and culture.

THE NEW CULTURE MOVEMENT

The government of the border region encouraged social reform through the propagation of models and heroes for emulation. The image and deeds of the exemplary models spread from locality to border region and even throughout the country. Models included combat heroes, labor heroes, and child heroes.

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Models selected by mass associations were honored and rewarded through mass rallies held at all levels. When the Second Meeting of Heroes was convened by the Jin Cha Ji Border Region government in February 1945, more than 400 attended. An estimated 700 models attended county-level meetings across ten counties.37 The Zhang Rui Cooperative in Xushui, later the national model county during the Great Leap Forward, became a regional model. A February 1944 editorial in Liberation D aily (published in Yan’an for the Central Committee) urged all base areas to send representatives to visit the coop­ erative and learn from it.38 Zhang Rui was a longtime Communist orga­ nizer and the leader of the Anti-Japanese Association in a guerrilla area near Baoding on the Beiping-Wuhan Railway. He had organized villagers into a cooperative whose activities included spinning and weaving, oil pressing, and selling cotton yarn and cloth. To break the economic block­ ade, the co-op transported and sold goods. Zhang also established agri­ cultural mutual aid^teams and led them in digging irrigation ditches. Set­ ting up a cooperative in an area close to enemy lines was a bold venture. Zhang’s example spread across the border region and beyond. The border region used newspapers and journals, as well as literature and the arts, to promote a New Culture Movement. More than 100 newspapers and journals were published in Jin Cha Ji. The best known included Jin Cha Ji ribao (The Jin Chaji Daily), Jiuguo bao (National Salvation), Zhandou bao (Battle), B ianqu dabao (Border Region Herald), Jizhong dabao (Central Hebei Herald), P ingxi tingjin bao (North Beiping Herald), K angzhan shidai (Resistance Times), K angzhan wenyi (Resistance Litera­ ture and Art), K angzhan nongm in (Peasants in Resistance), K angzhan Jianche (Resistance and Construction), Zbansbi wenyi (Fighter’s Literature and Art), B ianqu w enhua (Border Region Culture), B ianqu jiaoyu (Border Region Education), B ianqu fu n ii (Border Region Women), B ianqu qingnian (Border Region Youth), and Q unzbong za zh i (Masses Magazine). New ideas, values, political concepts, morals, economic ideas, knowledge, all suf­ fused with patriotism, were also disseminated through modern drama, local opera, dance, songs, yangge folk dance and opera, as well as through a range of folk art forms including ballet, singing, storytelling, comic dialogue, and crosstalk dialogues. These cultural forms provided lively programs. The First Border Region Conference on Culture and Education, held in July 1940, mandated the formation of local culture and education commit­ tees. Village Sacrifice League offices provided the locus for social education at the village level. The Literary and Art Circle’s Association for Resisting the Enemy was established on 25 July 1940 with Cheng Fangwu as chairman and Deng Tuo as executive director.39 The association conducted regionwide courses for the organization and promoted village artistic activities. More than 300 attended the first training course for a month and a half. Participants

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returned to their villages to promote these programs and expand their activ­ ities. Anti-Japanese songs, including “March of the Volunteers,” “Song of the Guerrilla,” “March to the Rear Areas of the Enemy,” “March of the Patriots,” “On Taihang Mountains,” “March with the Broadsword,” and “The Yellow River Chorus” were soon heard throughout the border region.40 The close relationship between people and soldiers required for waging guerrilla war was reinforced through cultural work. Soldiers and peasants danced and performed together. Historical stories and legends about na­ tional heroes such as Yue Fei, Liu Xiu, and Li Zichang were praised for their patriotic and revolutionary determination and accomplishments. Patriotism was ubiquitous. New plays and operas were written and produced that re­ flected life in the border region and the social changes currently under way. One of the most popular modern dramas was Happiness o f the Poor, which showed how the difficulties of village life were overcome with the arrival of the Eighth Route Army. It was based on a true story and performed by ordi­ nary villagers, making use of local songs, dance, and clapper talk.41 Villagers, many of them illiterate, were mobilized through these cultural organizations not only to participate in specific campaigns such as the 1944 production movement but also to support wider social reform. In the new dramas, plays, dances, yangge, and comic dialogues, audience accessibility was imperative. The stories were of well-known events, whether historical or contemporary, with immediately recognizable characters. A Witch's Oum Words, a play produced by a village troupe in Yunbiao County, told the true story of a “witch” who defrauded peasants, persuading them to give her their money, and hurt their children by pretending to cure their sicknesses. However, the bankruptcy of her nostrums was exposed when her own children became ill and she sought a doctor’s assistance to save them. Her speech of repentance denounced the deceptions of witches and wizards.42 A single play could not, of course, overcome superstitious be­ liefs, but through its lively presentation in the context of social, economic, educational, and health programs, it contributed to raising the wider con­ sciousness of the peasants. Familiar cultural forms could be used to intro­ duce new ideas and challenge exploitative or superstitious old values. In the course of the war, education reached out more broadly and a new education system began to reform the old. Children and adults not only learned to read and count but also learned why the Japanese had invaded their country and how to fight them. Education led some to enlist in the army and others to form militia and mutual aid teams. In the slack season, winter schools were opened to the illiterate.43 New information and policies were disseminated widely through literacy classes, newspaper reading groups, and blackboard newspapers with words and drawings. The blackboard newspapers spread new ideas and criticized traditional values as well as the enemy. The principle of accessibility was ap-

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plied throughout the New Cultural Movement. The students in the literacy classes were taught about and discussed topics of central interest, for exam­ ple, combat heroes, marriage policies, and freedom of choice.

CONCLUSION

During the period of the War of Resistance, important changes took place in the material and spiritual lives of ordinary people. Throughout Jin Cha Ji, so­ cial, economic, and political change went hand in hand. Without the intro­ duction of village democracy, economic reforms could not be ensured, but without economic reforms, the power of the landlord-rich peasant elite would remain entrenched. Under wartime conditions political reform pre­ ceded and paved the way for socioeconomic reform. Peasants rallied both to the patriotic cause and to the antilandlord struggle, and in the process some of them rose to positions of responsibility and leadership. Their membership and leadership of the new mass organizations, armed forces, and system of governance greatly strengthened their position in the various campaigns of social and economic reform. Throughout the villages of Jin Cha Ji the local power structure ^nd economic relations changed eventually through the weakening of the previously rich and powerful and the empowerment of the previously poor and weak. The decline in the sociopolitical influence of landlords and rich peasants, as well as the growth of a political economy dominated by middle peasants, led to significant value change. Peasants embraced many new ideas and val­ ues brought to the often remote villages of the border region by the CCP and the Eighth Route Army. In particular these included innovative ideas such as commitments to patriotism, collectivism, gender equality and basic literacy. There is no doubt that social and value change in line with the Commmunist blueprint for new democracy took place in Jin Cha Ji. Nonetheless, those changes must be understood in their historical context. The behavior of the CCP and its followers contrasted sharply with that of the Nationalist Party, as well as the Japanese invaders and their puppets, in introducing radical so­ cial, economic, and political reforms. However, the primary concern of Communists was to mobilize social support for their survival and develop­ ment. In the final analysis, social and political change in Jin Cha Ji were only devices to achieve those larger ends.

NOTES 1. “Ji11 Cha Ji bianqu kangri genjudi shi zenyang fazhan qilai d e” (H ow were the anti-Japanese base areas in the Jin Cha Ji Base Area established*), Q unzhong (The

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Masses) 2, no. 17-18. Quoted in Jin Cha Ji bianqu caizheng jingjishi^ zilia o x u a n bian (Selected Materials on the financial and econom ic history o f the Jin Cha Ji Base Area), ed. Wei Hongyun et al. (Tianjian: Nankai daxuechubanshe, 1984), 2:53-692. “Nie Rongzhen Jin Cha ji bianqu de xingshi” (The Situation o f the Jin Cha Ji Base Area), speech before a conference on 28 February 1940, Jiefang (Liberation), no. 115. Quoted in Jin Cha Ji bianqu caizheng jingjishi zilia o xuanbian, 2:74. 3. Nie Rongzhen, Nie Rongzhen H uiyilu (Memoirs o f Nie Rongzhen) (Beijing: Jiefangjun chubanshe, 1984), 2:420-432. 4. “Beiyue qu shuchuang shiqi xingkuang” (The early stage o f the Beiyue area), November 1937-February 1938, in Jin C h a ji bianqu caizheng jingjishi zilia o x u a n ­ bian, 2:155-157. See also Nie Rongzhen, Nie Rongzhen Huyilu, 2:420-432. 5. Lu Zhengcao, Jizhong huiyi lu (Memoirs on Jizhong) (Jiefangjun chubanshe, 1984), p. 91. 6. “Jidong genjudi de fazhan” (Development o f the Jidong Base Area), 1944, in. Jin Cha Ji bianqu caizheng jingjishi ziliao xuanbian, 2:196-203- See also Li Yunchang, “Jidong kangri da baodong” (Anti-Japanese revolt in Jidong), in Ji Re Liao renm in kangri douzheng: Wenxian huiyilu (People’s anti-Japanese struggle in Ji [Hebei] Re [Rehe] Liao [Liaoning]) (Documents and memoirs), ed. Office for Research on People’s anti-Japanese Struggle in Ji Re Liao (Tianjin: Renmin chubanshe, 1985), 1:25-537. Wang Kun, “Ji Re Liao diqu kangri minzhu zhengquan zuzhi yange gaishu” (An outline of the history o f the anti-Japanese democratic government in the Ji Re Liao area), in Ji Re Liao renm in kangri douzheng: Wenxian huiyilu, 3:528-551. 8. For a useful analysis of the “double-faced regimes” in the Jidong Base Area, see Zhu Dexin, “Lun Jidong kangri genjudi de liangmian zhengquan” (Double-faced regimes in the Jidong Base Area), in Zhongwai xuezhe lun kangri genjudi (The Chinese and foreign scholars on the anti-Japanese base areas), ed. History Department o f Nankai University (Dangan chubanshe, 1993), pp. 314-325. 9. Kathleen Hartford and Steven Goldstein, eds., Single Sparks: C h in a ’s R ural Revolutions (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1989), p. 9910. Interview with Liu Dianjia, a native o f Nihai and son o f Liu Jian, now on the staff at Nankai University. Liu Dianjia was a student at Linqing Temple in 1940. By 1942 he was working in the Seventh District Office and later becam e Laishui County magistrate. 11. A further explanation of the baojia administrative system is provided in the preface. 12. “Beiyue qu renmin wuzhuang bu chengli” (Establishment o f the Department o f the People’s Armed Forces in the Beiyue Base Area), Jin Cha Ji ribao (Jin Cha Ji Daily), 21 April 1942. 13- Interview with Liu Zhenduo, a native of Tanhuipu, now on the staff at Nankai University. 14. Fang Cao, “Zhongguo tudi zhengce zai Jin Cha Ji bianqu zi shishi” (Imple­ mentation of the CCP land policies in the Jin Chaji Base Area), 1944. Quoted in Jin C h a ji bianqu caizheng jingjishi ziliao xuanbian, p. 59. 15- Wutai X ian zh i Ziliao (Material taken from the Wutai County Gazeteer), 14 (August 1982). 16. Wei Hongyun, Jidong nongcun shehui dtaocha y u yan jiu (Social investigation and study of rural society in East Hebei) (Tianjin: Renmin chubanshe, 1995), pp. 38-66.

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17. A qing .was a traditional unit o f land measurement, equivalent to 6.6667 hectares. 18. “Laiyuan Nanchengzi de guanche zhengce" (The policies implemented in Nanchengzi village, Laiyuan), Jin Cha Ji rihao (Jin Cha Ji Daily), 17 April 1945. 19. “Fuping Shijiazhai jianzu douzheng de jingguo ji jingyan” (Processes and ex­ periences o f rent reduction in Shijiazhai village, Fuping), Jin Cha Ji ribao (Jin Cha Ji Daily), 7 February 1945. 20. Jin C h a ji bianqu caizheng jingjishi ziliao xuanbian, 2:15-46. 21. “Muqian beiyue qu de jianzu yundon” (Current rent reduction movement in the Beiyue Base Area), Jin Cha Ji ribao (Jin Cha Ji Daily), 29 February 1944; “Wu zhuanqu quanmian guanche jianzu yundong de zhongjie” (A report on the compre­ hensive implementation o f rent reduction policy in five districts), 1944. Quoted in Jin C h a ji bianqu caizheng jingjishi zilia o xu a n b ia n , 0:110. 22. “Repression and Communist Success: The Case o f Jin-Cha-Ji, 1938-1943,” in Single Sparks, p. 102. 23. Huan Weiwen, “Guanyu genjudi jianzu jianxi de yixie cailiao” (Some materials on rent and interest reduction in the base areas), Jiefang ribao (Liberation Daily), 11 February 1942. ' 24. ”Wu zhuanqu quanmian guanche jianzu yundong de zhongjie” (A report on the comprehensive implementation o f rent reduction policy in five districts), 1944. Q uoted in Jin Cha Ji bianqu caizheng jingjishi zilia o xuanbian, 0:110. 25. Yuan Bo, “Ptngshan xian caojiazhuan de jingji shenghuo” (Economic life at Caojiazhuang village in Pingshan County), X inhua ribao (N ew China Daily), 9 May 1940. 26. “Beiyue qu nongcun jingji guanxi he jieji guanxi bianhua de diaocha ziliao” (Survey materials on changes in econom ic and class relations in the Beiyue Base Area), May 1943. Quoted in Jin Cha Ji bianqu caizheng jingjishi ziliao xuanbian,

2 : 213- 218. 27. Ibid, 2:224. 28. “Ji Re bian shehui zhuangkuang kaocha” (A survey o f social conditions in the Ji Re Base Area), 1943. Q uoted in Jin Cha Ji bian qu caizh en g jin gjish i zilia o x u a n b ia n , 1:745-748. 29. Ibid, 2:226-227. 30. Lu Yu, “Pinxi zixing” (A journey to West Beiping), X inhua ribao (New China Daily), 14 April 1940. 31. See the discussion o f the problems confronted in wartime efforts to form mutual aid teams and cooperatives in the Jizhong region o f Jin Cha Ji in Edward Friedman, Paul Pickowicz, and Mark Seiden, Chinese Village, Socialist State (N ew Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), pp. 52-79. 32. “Hezuo yingxiong Li Changshan” (Li Changshan, hero o f the cooperative movement), Jin Cha Ji ribao Qin Chaji Daily), 14 March 1945. 33. This research was carried out in the 1990s, w hen most o f the w om en were in their seventies. In addition to villages in Jidong (East Hebei), interviews have also taken place among villagers from Shajing Village, Shunyi County, Beijing; Wudian Village, Fangshan County, Hebei Province; Sibeichai Village, Gu’an County, Hebei Province; Fengjiachun Village, Jinghai County, Tianjin City; and Houjiazhai Village, Shandong Province.

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34. The film Small Happiness by Caima Hinton arid Richard Gordon memorably etches the frustrations o f w om en of this generation in a Shanxi village at being de­ nied the opportunity to take part in local performances. 35. For useful examples and statistics, see Liang Hong, “Taiyue qu de hunyin zhidu” (The marriage system in Taiyue), X inhua ribao (N ew China Daily), 20 August 1932; and Wang Wei, “Fuping de hunyin wenti” (The problem o f marriage in Fuping County), Jin Cha Ji ribao (Jin Cha Ji Daily), 20 June 1943. 36. Cang Yi, “Xinshi de hunli” (New-style wedding), Jin Cha Ji ribao (Jin Cha Ji Daily), 30 May 1943. The last point mentioned in the story was unique to mountain areas in North China. Usually it was relatively wealthy families that arranged mar­ riages between young boys and adult women, which sometimes led to an adulterous relationship between a father-in-law and a new bride. 37. “Qingzhu bianqu dierjie yingxiong biaozhang hui de shengli” (Congratulations on the success o f the second border region meeting to praise heroes), Jin Cha Ji ribao (Jin Cha Ji Daily), 9 February 1945. 38. “Zhang Rui de hezuoshe daolu” (The road of the Zhang Rui cooperative), Jiefang ribao (Liberation Daily), 23 February 1944. 39. Deng Tuo rose to the position of editor in chief o f People's D aily and and then party secretary of Beijing in the 1950s and 1960s. But in 1966 he became one the first three major victims o f the Cultural Revolution. Cheng Fangwu was the editor o f many influential journals and appointed president o f People’s University after the estab­ lishment o f the People’s Republic of China. 40. “Yaowen” (Important news), Jin Cha Ji ribao (Jin Cha Ji Daily), 17 August 1940. 41. “Yanzhe xiongrenle de fangxiang fazhan qunzhong wenyi yundong” (D evelop a mass movement o f literature and the arts in order to serve the happiness o f the poor), Jin C h a ji ribao (Jin Chaji Daily), 25 February 1944. 42. “Huoyue de Yunbiaocun jituan” (The activities o f the Yunbiao village troupe), Jin C h a ji ribao (Jin Chaji Daily), 1 October 1944. 43. Li Gongpu, H uabei dihou: Jin Cha Ji (Jin Cha Ji behind the enem y lines in North China) (Beijing: Sardian chubanshe, 1979), p. 144.

4 Social and Political Change in the Villages of the Taihang Anti-Japanese Base Area Tian Youru The Taihang Anti-Japanese Base Area was at the very center of the War of Resistance to Japan. Located in the Taihang Mountains—on the borders of Shanxi, Hebei, and Henan—it was the headquarters of both the Eighth Route Army and the North China Bureau of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) during the War of Resistance to Japan. At the start of the war, the CCP ex­ pended considerable effort in developing its activities first in Southeast Shanxi and then, as its base of support expanded, in the Taihang region and the other base areas of what became the Jin Ji Lu Yu (Shanxi-HebeiShandong-Henan) Border Region: the Taiyue, South Hebei, and Ji Lu Yu (Hebei-Shandong-Henan) Base Areas. Mobilization of the Taihang region was an important step in the CCP’s path to national power not only because of the scale of the support generated but also because of the experience of government gained in the process. Consequently, the Taihang Base Area is a particularly interesting focus for any inquiry into the social roots of change in contemporary China.1

THE TAIHANG REGION AND THE TAIHANG BASEAREA

Shanxi Province has long been regarded, not least by its own inhabitants, as one of the most traditional parts of China. However, even before 1937, the area that became the Taihang Base Area had started to change. In the years before the Japanese invasion there were signs that it was changing from a feudal society to one that was semifeudal and semicolonial. On the one hand, the local economy remained dominated by subsistence agriculture. Feudal landlords and family heads continued to dominate what was 115

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116

nonetheless a comparatively equal society, at least in terms of t^ie distribu­ tion of wealth. The peasantry remained in the grip of superstition. It was quite natural for them to worship, respect, and submit themselves to gods, village heads, and rulers. Earlier spontaneous uprisings against feudal rule and several CCP-led revolutionary insurrections had all failed. On the other hand, foreign merchants entered the Taihang region in great numbers from the early 1930s. They purchased native products at very low prices, mined the area’s mineral resources, and transported goods produced by landlords and commercial capitalists to Shijiazhuang and Tianjin, and from there into the wider market. In the early 1930s businessmen from Ger­ many, Japan, the United States, and Britain came to the Taihang region and bought local products such as coal, iron, cotton, grain, medicine, and wool, all of which they transported into international markets. In 1936 in the Southeast Shanxi region of the Taihang Mountains—the core of the later Taihang Base Area—the commercial grain ratio (the per­ centage of the yield that was marketed) was 14-13 percent; for cotton it was 44 percent and for oil crops 31 percent. The commercialization of the econ­ omy encouraged landlords to strengthen their ties with officials and mer­ chants, heightening levels of peasant exploitation.2 During the 1930s the ownership of land in the Taihang Mountains became more concentrated, with landlords exploiting peasants mainly through renting land and extending loans. Tenancy relationships were mainly based on fixed or unfixed land rents, with variations applying to well-known and specified types of arrangements, including huozhongdi (land of joint cultivation), dingdi (sub­ stitute land), baochudi (land with responsibility of hoeing), and other special arrangements. According to a survey of that time, rents in the Taihang region during the 1930s varied from 30 to 75 percent of the yield, as shown in table 4.1. Table 4.1 Rent Rates in the Taihang Region* County North Linxian Shexian Wu’an North Pingshun South Pingshun Yuci Yushe Zhanhuang West Heshun East Heshun Yuanshi Taigu Cixian Liaoxian Wuxiang

Rent Rate (%) 60-75 60-70 60 60 35 30 30 35-55 50 40 45 40 40 45 40

‘Taihang geming genjudishi zongbian weihui, e d , Tudi wenti (The problem of land) (Taiyuan: Shanxi renmin chubanhse, 1987), p. 78.

Change in the Taihang Anti-Japanese Base Area

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Tenants who were unable to pay their rents were forced into loan rela­ tionships with landlords. Interest in the Taihang region was usually 3-5 percent, 2-5 percent more if a loan was in grain. Interest could be calculated monthly, turning interest into principal and increasing interest, known by peasants as “snowballing usury.”3 In many cases peasants mortgaged future harvests with little hope of ever repaying the steadily mounting debt. Peas­ ants were consequently tightly controlled by landlords, who were usually moneylenders, merchants, and officials at the same time. Before the War of Resistance to Japan, social and economic development was bringing about a change from simple feudalism to a semifeudal, semi­ colonial society ruled by landlords, capitalists, and compradors. Feudal rule gave way to autocratic rule by bureaucratic warlords, and a subsistence economy became a commercializing one. However, in remote villages deep within the Taihang Mountains, feudal landlord rule and a subsistence agri­ cultural economy still predominated. In such areas social progress was slow. In general, the £CP and the Eighth Route Army established anti-Japanese base areas in the regions occupied by the Japanese through mass mobiliza­ tion. As a matter of fact, the Japanese never had enough troops to occupy the hinterland of the Taihang and Taiyue Mountains. By late 1937, Japanese troops were stationed at (but had not preceded beyond) the railway lines surrounding the Taihang region: in Pingyao and Fenyang on the DatongFenglingdu railway line to the northwest; in Yuci and Shouyang on the Shijiazhuang-Taiyuan railway line to the north; in Anyang and Xinxiang on the Beiping-Wuhan railway line to the east. The Japanese troops in this area were weakened in early 1938 as the front line of the Japanese advance moved further south. In the meantime, after the fall of Taiyuan in November 1937, there were ten divisions of the central government's Nationalist troops remaining in the Taihang region, although the main force further retreated to the Luliang Mountains in West Shanxi and the Zhongtiao Mountains in North Henan in mid-1938. The 129th Division and the 244th Brigade of the 115th Division of the Eighth Route Army entered the soon-to-become Taihang Base Area across the Shijiazhuang-Taiyuan railway line in October 1937. Their first tar­ get was the Hebei-Henan-Shanxi border in the area between Handan and the Taihang Mountains—leading to the establishment in October 1937 of the Ji Yu Jin (Hebei-Henan-Shanxi) provincial committee of the CCP. The army had less than 10,000 soldiers under arms in the Taihang region at the time, and there were only about 100 CCP members under the direct leadership of the provincial committee. Apart from sporadic attacks on the invading Japanese North China Army, the major task for the Eighth Route Army was to mobilize throughout the Tai­ hang region. Eighth Route Army forces divided into small work groups across the region, organized work groups to mobilize the local population in resistance to Japanese incursions, helped to restore the local organizations of the CCP, and established anti-Japanese armed groups and governments. On

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entering the Taihang region, forty-one of sixty-four companies çf the 129th Division of the Eighth Route Army traveled around the region in this way to mobilize the local population. Eighth Route Army and local CCP mobilization techniques included the es­ tablishment of training classes and programs, as well as larger mass move­ ments. The training classes were designed to produce teachers and trainers for later aspects of the resistance from among peasants, workers, young peo­ ple, and women. They included instruction on the anti-Japanese situation, the CCP’s united front policy, the principles of the mass movement, the re­ duction of rent and interest, guerrilla tactics, and military training. The train­ ing period was usually seven days but sometimes lasted half a month. Trainees soon became the organizational backbone in the establishment of base areas. As soon as they returned to their own locations, they organized local people into various anti-Japanese guerrilla groups and other similar or­ ganizations. The strategy was extremely successful and created a collective spirit that came to symbolize the formation and consolidation of the Taihang Anti-Japanese Base Area. During the first two weeks of April 1938 the Eighth Route Army, the Shanxi New Army, and the troops of the Nationalist government, with the support by the local population, managed to destroy more than 4,000 invading Japanese troops and recaptured eighteen county towns in the Taihang re­ gion. After this victory the 129th Division of Eighth Route Army established the Jin Ji Yu (Shanxi-Hebei-Henan) Military Area Command and five military subareas. At the same time, the Ji Yu Jin provincial committee of the CCP es­ tablished five special subcommittees, and anti-Japanese political regimes were established in every county. An anti-Japanese base area had been formed behind enemy lines. By May 1938, the Eighth Route Army in the Taihang Base Area had increased to 20,000 soldiers, with a further 50,000 fighters in county self-defense and guerrilla groups. By the same date local CCP membership had grown to 11,000, with about 800,000 participants recruited to some form of anti-Japa­ nese organization. This was the organizational framework in which the so­ cial development of the Taihang Base Area could take place.4 Immediately after the Taihang Base Area was formally established in May 1938, it developed fairly rapidly, giving rise to a comparatively stable order. In part this was because of the lack of sustained Japanese attention: the North China Army had been forced to move the bulk of its forces elsewhere in the face of sustained attack. The result was a period of relative peace in the Taihang region between Japanese and CCP forces that lasted until 1940. The expansion of both anti-Japanese activities and CCP influence led to the creation of more anti-Japanese military units and more local CCP organiza­ tions and county-level anti-Japanese governments.

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119

The Taihang Base Area consisted of Southeast Shanxi, Hebei south of the Shijiazhuang-Taiyuan Railway, and Henan west of the Beijing-Wuhan Rail­ way. The political situation in Hebei and Henan Provinces differed from that in Shanxi. The CCP was able to carry out revolutionary activities openly in Hebei and Henan but was considerably more restricted in Shanxi.5 Local anti-Japanese governments in the West Hebei and North Henan regions had earlier been established by the CCP and the Eighth Route Army as part of their development of the local base areas. However, in Shanxi the situation was somewhat different, with the CCP’s position in the province dependent initially on its close working relationship with the anti-Japanese (and largely anti-Chiang Kai-shek) provincial warlord, Yan Xishan. In Shanxi the CCP worked largely in secret until late 1939, though its more open activities continued in West Hebei and North Henan, where it con­ trolled local government. However, rapidly deteriorating relations between Yan Xishan and the CCP in December 1939 led to more permanent and open organizational arrangements. In particular, from 1940, anti-Japanese demo­ cratic governments at the prefecture and county levels in the Taihang region came together under the leadership of the Joint Government Administrative Office for the South Hebei, Taihang, and Taiyue Base Areas, which was a forerunner of the Jin Ji Lu Yu Border Region. Social and economic change in the Taihang started with the establishment of anti-Japanese democratic governments in 1938-1939. Three different processes led to their formation. First, in the early stages of the war, as the Japanese attacked, some county heads simply abandoned their posts and fled, allowing the CCP to appoint county heads and establish CCP-led local governments. Second, in counties where county heads remained in place, the anti-Japanese governments remained closely related to the Nationalist regime. The third route to the formation of anti-Japanese democratic government occurred mainly in Southeast Shanxi as a function of Yan Xishan’s relation­ ship with the CCP. In 1936-1937 Yan had established—with the cooperation of ¿he CCP—the Shanxi Sacrifice League for National Salvation (The Sacrifice League) as his own mass movement alternative to the Nationalist Party. Yan was president of the Sacrifice League, but operational authority lay with two CCP members: Bo Yibo and Niu Yinguan. The Sacrifice League was a province-wide organization that eventually organized its own volunteer army for armed resistance to Japan—the New Army. Many of the represen­ tatives of the Sacrifice League in the prefectures and counties were CCP members, so that w hen war broke out the CCP often headed the local antiJapanese resistance in a locality. Southeast Shanxi consisted of two prefectures in Yan Xishan’s provincial administration—the Third and Fifth Administrative Regions. Yan had ap-

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pointed Bo Yibo as head of the Third Administrative Region (baseçl at Qixian) and Rong Zihe of the Fifth Administrative Region (based at Changzhi). (Later the Third Administrative Region basically developed into the Taiyue Base Area, and the Fifth Administrative Region into the Taihang Base Area.) Bo and Rong in turn appointed CCP county heads when and where positions became available. However, at the village level power remained in the hands of land­ lords who only fought the Japanese in order to defend their private property. Once the Japanese moved on, they continued to exploit the peasants. From the peasants’ perspective, the establishment of a base area did not necessar­ ily relieve their poverty-stricken condition or their social oppression. Trans­ formation of village-level politics was thus a central task for the CCP.

POLITICAL CHANGE

The struggle to transform village power started with the establishment of the base area. With the start of war, many former village power holders had come over to the side of the anti-Japanese resistance. Under those circum­ stances the Eighth Route Army and the CCP did not attempt to remove most of the former village power holders, confining such opposition activity to the few who sided with the Japanese invaders. Once the base area was estab­ lished, the anti-Japanese government issued policies and regulations pro­ tecting the interests of the anti-Japanese masses. However, the contradictions between the anti-Japanese government and the former village power hold­ ers grew increasingly acute. Most of the power holders in the villages were landlords and local bullies who clashed with the CCP and its allies. The CCP set out to transform politics through protecting or advancing peasants’ economic interests. In the summer of 1938, the Taihang Base Area launched an anticorruption campaign, starting with an examination of the accounts of village heads, whose corruption was easily revealed. Villagers collected examples of their problems with each recalcitrant village head, wrote a description of alleged crimes and misdemeanors, and submitted it to the anti-Japanese government. The anti-Japanese government then sent cadres to investigate and, where necessary, to convene a mass rally to recall the village head and popularly elect a new village head. For example, the head of Majiu Village in Liaoxian County was a landlord who was not only corrupt but also guilty of bullying peasants. He usually commandeered don­ keys from the middle and poor peasants rather than horses and mules from landlords and rich peasants for public service. In July 1938, the peasants in that village sent a complaint to the Second District of Liaoxian County and the local CCP organized 1,000 people to petition the county head to remove the village head. With the support of the county head, a mass rally was con­ vened at Majiu Village to dismiss the village head and elect a peasant to the

Change in the Taihang Anti-Japanese Base Area

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position.6 In this way, power in most villages passed from the hands of land­ lords to those of the peasants, particularly the middle peasants. The transformation of village politics resulted in further consolidation of anti-Japanese governments and the involvement of many previously alien­ ated villagers in politics for the first time. Many villagers joined various antiJapanese organizations, and many joined the CCP itself. During the first half of 1939 there were 3.5 million people in the Taihang Base Area.7 By Sep­ tember, when the First Party Congress of the Jin Ji Yu (Shanxi-Hebei-Henan) committee of the CCP (which had taken over from the former Ji Yu Jin provincial committee in August 1938) was convened, there were 30,150 CCP members.8 In August 1940 when “the Hundred Regiments Campaign” began, more than 60,000 members of village militias participated and were involved in 538 battles and skirmishes.9 In 1940 the Central Committee of the CCP proposed the “three-thirds prin­ ciple” for the management of politics in all base areas, by which CCP domi­ nation of elected^positions was to be limited to one-third, with the other twothirds divided betw een “progressive” and “neutral” elements. The three-thirds principle often became confused in implementation and was somewhat ambiguous (presumably deliberately) in any case: various defini­ tions of the nofi-CCP categories existed in practice, including one-third nonparty leftists and one-third nonaligned elements, or one-third Nationalist Party members and one-third people unaligned by party.10 When the Jin Ji Yu CCP committee was establishing the Joint Government Administrative Of­ fice—and attempting to unite the South Hebei, Taihang, and Taiyue Base Areas—in line with the three-thirds principle, the Joint Government Admin­ istrative Office comprised military and civilian leaders, local notables and celebrities, experts and scholars, and “personages” from other parties, as well as those with no party affiliation. Directly under the Joint Government Administrative Office was the Tai­ hang Base Area, which (in 1940) in turn had five subordinate prefectures containing thirty-six counties. On 1 August 1940 the Joint Government Ad­ ministrative Office was formally established. Its first act was to issue its twenty-clause administrative program and then a series of regulations, poli­ cies, and measures to ensure that the Taihang region had unified policies and regulations. During the first three years of the Taihang Base Area, village-level politics shifted largely from the landlords to those of anti-Japanese progressives, though not necessarily the CCP. Transformation of village politics was far from completed, however, because power still resided almost exclusively with the village heads, of whom a majority were not themselves popularly elected. For this reason, in December 1940 the Joint Government Adminis­ trative Office convened the first meeting of commissioners and county heads in order to discuss problems in the construction of political power. The meet-

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ing decided to launch a campaign in the first half of 1941 for fije popular election of village heads. The Joint Government Administrative Office drew up its “Provisional Or­ ganic Rules for Village Political Power in the Jin Ji Yu Border Region” and “Provisional Election Regulations for Village Congresses in the Jin Ji Yu Bor­ der Region,” which provided for village-level political power to be mani­ fested in the village political committee, which was to be elected by the vil­ lage people’s congress.11 Each committee was to have a chairman and vice chairman—the village head and deputy village head—and committee mem­ bers for peasant education, finance, grain, production, public security, and military activities. All except the committee members for public security and military activities were to be elected. The election process was to include propaganda, checking of residence cards, registration of citizens, nomination of electoral divisions, election of representatives, the convention of the vil­ lage peoples congress and the establishment of village political committees. When the elections were held, the villagers in the base area took an active part: more than 80 percent voted on average overall, and in some villages the turnout rate reached 95 percent. All the village heads elected in this way were acknowledged locally by villagers as leaders both in the anti-Japanese resistance and in productive endeavors. County-level elections followed, based on the village-level elections. The elections at the border regional level above the county adopted an approach of open competition. The first stage was the election of councilors, with the council then electing the gov­ ernment officials. Candidates nominated for election as councilors had to make election speeches to the voters and answer their questions. In spring 1941 the election of county-level governments was adjusted ac­ cording to the three-thirds principle, and some patriotic “national bour­ geoisie” and “enlightened gentry” were invited to participate. The election for border region councilors was more intense, particularly at the nomina­ tion stage. For example, in Liaoxian County Li Xuefeng, the CCP secretary of the Jin Ji Yu committee of the CCP, was opposed by a “democratic person­ age” and both addressed their electors before Li was elected. In Licheng County there was an election between another “democratic personage,” Xie Haoli, and a CCP member, from which Xie Haoli emerged victorious. The first session of the Provisional Council of the Jin Ji Lu Yu Border Region was held from 7 July to 15 August 1941. It was attended by 133 councilors, of whom 44 were CCP members, amounting to one-third of the total.12 Thirtyone councilors from the Taihang Base Area participated in the session at which officials of the Border Region Provisional Council and Government were elected. As a result of this session the Taihang Base Area was placed di­ rectly under the leadership of the border region government, with six districts and twenty-nine counties, covering an area of 85,583 square kilometers.

Change in the Taihang Anti-Japanese Base Area

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The Provisional Council of the border region symbolized the new achievements in the construction of democratic politics within the base area. The formation of the council, strictly according to the three-thirds principle, reflected the policy of the anti-Japanese united front nationally, and the new democratic nature of the base area. Opinions representing the legal interests of various classes were fully discussed and reflected at the first session. The process of constructing democratic politics in the Taihang Base Area was completed in March 1943 when the Jin Ji Lu Yu Border Region government was formally able to adopt the structures developed in the previous eight years. Because of war conditions the First (permanent) Council of the Bor­ der Region government did not meet until 1945. During the eight year anti-Japanese war, great achievements were made in the construction of democratic politics in the Taihang Base Area. In particu­ lar, these included success in uniting the population and drawing all classes—landlords, rich peasants, and the bourgeoisie—into the anti-Japa­ nese democratic regime and putting the three-thirds principle into practice. A series of laws, regulations, and policies had been enacted, and bodies of legislation and law enforcement, as well as systems of public security, had been improved. According to^tatistics from the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth districts of the Taihang Base Area, there were 1,084 cadres above the prefecture level. Of those, 69 (6.3 percent) came from landlord families, 210 (19.5 percent) came from rich peasant families, 446 (41.2 percent) came from middle peasant families, 176 (16.2 percent) came from poor peasant families, 7 (0.7 percent) came from worker families, and 174 (16.1 percent) came from families whose class status was not known. In terms of education, 30 of these senior cadres (2.9 percent) had a college education, 76 (7.3 percent) had attended senior middle school, 305 (28.9 percent) had attended junior middle school, 374 (35.6 percent) had attended senior primary school, 250 (23.7 percent) knew how to read and write, and 17 were illiterate (1.6 percent).13 These percentages show that the new representations of political power covered all classes and fully embodied the policy of the anti-Japanese national united front.

SOCIAL CHANGE

As already indicated, despite the introduction of a commodity economy in some areas of the Taihang region, for the most part landownership by feu­ dal landlords remained dominant in rural areas. Feudal landownership was the economic base to the contradiction between landlords and peasants. With Japanese invasion and the start of the War of Resistance to Japan, class contradictions between peasants and landlords were temporarily alleviated

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as the national contradiction became the principal concern. However, with the development of the Taihang Base Area the land problem made the con­ tradiction between peasants and landlords more acute. How the mutual in­ terests and relationships between peasants and landlords should be coordi­ nated became a key to the further development and consolidation of the Taihang Base Area. The CCP had considered the question of land reform seriously when it planned to create base areas in the Japanese-occupied regions. In the “Ten Programs of Anti-Japanese Resistance and National Salvation of 1937” the policy of rent reduction on land and interest reduction on loans was put for­ ward as a measure for improving people’s life. However, in the early stages of the development of the base areas, this policy was little more than a slo­ gan and could not be implemented. “Many regions didn’t carry it out and some regions were apparently unaware of the policy.”14 In the early stages of the development of the base area, taxation was the­ oretically based on the principle of “a reasonable burden.” The idea behind the operation of the reasonable burden was that “people with money offer that, those with grain offer that, and those with physical strength offer that.” The system of a reasonable burden was put forward mainly to deal with the “unreasonable” taxation system that existed in the villages on the eve of the War of Resistance to Japan. When landlords had controlled village politics, and the government levied land tax and various additional taxes in the villages, the taxes used to be based on the size of the household or the extent of landholdings. Where ap­ portionment was according to household irrespective of income, landlords, rich peasants, and poor peasants were all responsible for the same tax con­ tribution. Where apportionment was according to landholding, the landlords and rich peasants simply passed the tax burden on to the poorer peasants who rented their land. If these practices had continued, the peasants would have been forced to bear most of the increased tax burden resulting from the war. In order to re­ duce the heavy burden of the peasantry, the Taihang Base Area introduced the idea of a “reasonable burden.” In concrete terms it led to mass rallies at which local peasant associations decided how much tax each household should bear calculated in terms of the total wealth—property, income, and assets—and as apportioned by the chairman of the association throughout the whole village. In this way, landlords came to bear most of the burden, middle peasants paid some taxes, and poor peasants only bore the burden of labor. The implementation of the principles of a reasonable burden put the heaviest responsibilities for supporting wartime finance and supplies on the rich peasants and landlords, much to the benefit of the poorer peasants. However, the principle of the reasonable burden was a short-term mea­ sure designed only to solve the problem of the relationship between the

Change in the Taihang Anti-Japanese Base Area

125

regime’s military forces and the peasantry. It was not designed to solve the land problem. At the time it was introduced, the leadership at various levels in the Taihang Base Area was concerned mainly with ensuring grain supply and money to support their troops. There was less importance attached to the reduction of rents on land and of interest on loans. Because of the fail­ ure to solve the land and debt problems that were so vital to peasants, the difficulties encountered in the Taihang Base Area in 1941 threatened not only the livelihood of the peasantry but also the continued existence of the base area itself. Faced with a difficult situation against the Japanese and low peasant morale, the Jin Ji Yu committee of the CCP and the Jin Ji Yu Peasant Salvation Association made an on-the-spot investigation and determined that the prin­ cipal problems impeding the continued mobilization of peasantry, both against the Japanese and in production, were to be found in the arrangements for tenancy and debt. Although the Joint Government Administrative Office had issued “Provisipnal Regulations for Reduction of Rents on Land and In­ terest on Loans” in December 1940, these regulations were not actually im­ plemented. A major reason for their nonimplementation was that the question of permanent tenants’ rights had not previously been solved. The landlords resisted or avoided the effects of the reduction in rents by distributing their landholdings (usually within the extended family), ending tenancies and re­ gaining direct land usage, selling and mortgaging land, and threatening to end the tenancies and take back (into direct management) the rented land of those peasants who participated in the rent reduction campaigns.15There was a prior need to ensure that permanent tenants were granted land usage rights which would remain even after rent reductions had been implemented. The major objective in the campaign to reduce interest payments on loans was to eradicate long-term debts and mortgages, in the process renegotiat­ ing and reassigning debt contracts. The investigation by the Jin Ji Yu CCP committee and Peasant Salvation Association indicated both that the reduc­ tion of rent and interest was a profound social reform quite apart from its im­ pact on the war effort, and that neither reduction could be carried out with­ out mass mobilization and class struggle.16 During the winter of 1941 some villages in Wuxiang and Licheng Counties were selected as trial points. At­ tempts were made to reduce rents and interest: the Peasant Salvation Asso­ ciation mobilized peasants to launch a debt-clearing struggle; to force land­ lords to return what they had expropriated from the peasantry; to revise rents, interest rates, and contracts; and to abandon earlier loan arrangements. For example, landlord Wei Xiaosan in Wuxiang County was forced to return 3,800 y u a n and 14 m u of land to peasants, and to abandon more than 1,000 rent and loan agreements.17 In the meantime the Central Committee of the CCP issued the Resolution on Land Policy in the Anti-Japanese Base Areas on 28 January 1942 and

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stated the three categorical principles of its land policy. The fir^t was the im­ plementation of reduced rents and interest, which was designed to ensure the civil rights, political power, and land and property rights of the peasants in order to improve their standard of living and encourage their participation in anti-Japanese resistance and production. The second was the need to en­ sure that payments of rent and interest were met, which was designed to guarantee the civil rights, political power, and land and property rights of the landlords and to rally them against the Japanese. And the third was the en­ couragement of capitalist production, which was designed to unify the bour­ geoisie in the anti-Japanese resistance, to ensure the continued production activities of rich peasants, and to guarantee them their various rights. The implementation of policy on rent and interest led to the most acute confrontation between peasants and landlords since the foundation of the Taihang Base Area. In order to promote the rent and interest reduction cam­ paign, CCP organizations, local governments, and peasant associations in the base area organized work groups that were sent to the villages to mobilize the peasants. The aim was to help the peasantry in each location to start pro­ ceedings against the landlords so that the latter would be forced to return ex­ propriated property and long-term debt and to renegotiate tenancy relation­ ships, the amount of rents, and interest rates. At the extreme it was intended that annual rent could be reduced by up to 25 percent and annual interest on loans by up to 1.5 percent. The original intention was to maintain tenancy relationships. However, the campaign to reduce rent and interest was accompanied by class struggle that resulted in distinct changes in patterns of landholding and landownership, as well as in class relationships. Landlords and rich peasants became poorer, a substantial number of poor peasants grew wealthier, and the proportion of peasants who were middle peasants increased considerably, as shown in table 4.2. In the Taihang Base Area, 1943 was one of the most difficult years in the eight-year anti-Japanese war. The strength and regularity of Japanese mopping-up operations, as well as a series of natural disasters, effectively halted the campaign to reduce rent and interest. The peasants, united by the 1942 struggle to reduce rent and interest and to eradicate debt, successfully re­ sisted these mopping-up operations during the summer of 1943 to such great effect that they not only consolidated the base area but also enlarged its area by 8,000 square kilometers to incorporate the southern part of the Taihang Mountains and North Henan. In 1944 the Taihang Base Area overcame these difficulties and gathered in a bumper harvest, which strengthened the confidence of the masses to win the anti-Japanese war, created favorable conditions for the rent and interest reduction campaign, and, particularly, whetted the peasants’ enthusiasm for participation. At the start of the campaign in 1944, anti-Japanese resistance in

Change in the Taihang Anti-Japanese Base Area

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Table 4.2 Survey o f Change in Landownership: Rent and Interest Reduction Campaign, 1942 (fifteen representative villages in twelve counties)2 Social Category Time Landlord Before After Landlord cultivator Before After Rich peasant Before After Middle peasant Before After Poor peasant Before After Farm laborer Before After Others Before After

N um ber o f Land Households % o f Total L and (m u ) % o f Total Household (m u )

'

60

2.75

49

2.02

5,918.56 2,094.67

23.04 8.79

98.64 42.28

11 10

0.50 0.41

410.56 218.24

1.59 0.91

37.32 21.82

158 167

7.25 6.90

4,797.84 3,463.73

18.68 14.53

30.37 20.70

823

1,132

37.80 46.79

9,519.09 13,072.80

37.02 54.87

11.56 11.54

l'065 1,019

48.95 42.13

4,875.61 4,779.22

18.98 20.05

4.57 4.67

41 23 19 19

1.88 0.95 0.87 0.78

64.35 94.90 95.20

0.25 2.39 0.41 0.42

1.57 4.26 5.01 5.30

100.90

aZhonggong Taihang qu dangwei diaocha yanjiushi, ed., Taihang qu shehui jingji diaocha (So­ cial and economic investigation of the Taihang region), 2 October 1945. The original is in the Shanxi Archive. Reprinted in Kangri zhanzheng shiqi Jin Ji Lu Yu bianqu caizheng jingjisji cailiao xuanbian, 2:1408.

the Taihang Base Area had changed from passive defense into active attack. The CCP-led forces broke through the three Japanese lines of blockade to the west of the Beiping-Wuhan railway line, an action that permitted previ­ ously isolated parts of the base area to be fully integrated. The Taihang re­ gion CCP Committee summarized the experience and lessons of the 1942, 1943, and 1944 campaigns in a series of meetings and documents. CCP gov­ ernments in the region generally mobilized the masses to reduce rents and interest, and at the same time emphasized the need to continue the payment of both rents and interest, all of which brought some solutions to poverty as­ sociated with the land problem while maintaining the policy and principles of the united front. Even so, once the peasantry had been mobilized, it became so powerful that the 1944 and 1943 rent and interest reduction campaigns led to more di­ rect confrontation over the feudal ownership of land, and the struggle in many villages began to touch on the change of landownership. As a result of

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these various campaigns, three great changes took place in the\villages of the Taihang Base Area. The first was a substantive change in landownership: the domination of the local economy by landlords and rich peasants was weak­ ened, and their political role was assumed by the greatly increased role in numbers and power—of the middle peasants. The second major change was that in tenancy relations. The amount of land available for rent by landlords was greatly reduced, as was the number of landlords and rich peasants who depended on rents for their livelihoods. At the same time a greater number of middle peasants had more land, which they offered for rent. The third great change affected class relations. The numbers of farm la­ borers and poor peasants decreased while the number of middle peasants increased. Those who remained as rich peasants from before the war de­ clined in number while the number of those who became rich peasants dur­ ing the same time increased. The overall number of landlords declined, and many who had been manager-landlords became rich peasants. A survey of fifteen villages indicated that through the two successive campaigns of rent and interest reduction in 1942 and 1944, the land surrendered by landlords accounted for almost 85 percent of their original landholdings. By the end of the process (in 1945) landlord and rich peasant families owned on average 23-30 m u of land; middle peasant families owned on average 12-13 m u of land; and poor peasant families had 5-6 mu. This survey and other statistics confirm that by the end of the war middle peasants were the most numerous throughout the base area: middle peasant fatnilies accounted for more than 50 percent of the total households, and their landholdings accounted for 60-70 percent of the total.18 The postwar middle peasants were a combina­ tion of former landlords and rich peasants on the one hand and former poor peasants on the other, as well as some who had been middle peasants be­ fore the War of Resistance to Japan and remained so throughout. The pattern of landholding at the end of the War of Resistance to Japan was an important expression of the extent of social change in the Taihang Base Area. The campaigns to reduce rent and interest in the Taihang Base Area had played an important role in bringing about both economic and so­ cial change. The campaigns weakened the political and economic power of the feudal landlords, assisted the destruction of the system of feudal landownership and the autocratic rule of landlords, established the political superiority of the peasantry, and enhanced their economic strength. These campaigns forced landlords to reduce the rent and interest they charged and stimulated them to turn to commercialization and economic development. In 1944 the Taihang Base Area harvested 0.615 million ton of grain, the largest harvest year since the start of the war, and recaptured 10,000 square kilome­ ters of territory previously controlled by the Japanese. In the great counterattack of August 1945 and after, 30,000 peasants joined the Eighth Route Army and a total of 455,000 actively participated in the

Change in the Taihang Anti-Japanese Base Area

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fighting. The reduction of rent and interest not only influenced social and economic change in the Taihang Base Area during the War of Resistance to Japan but also the postwar development of the region, particularly land re­ form. In 1944 many villagers had already raised further demands for the con­ fiscation of the land of landlords and a thorough and immediate solution to the land problem through confiscation and redistribution. In some places it was impossible to stop villagers’ going beyond the bounds of current policy and refusing to pay rents. Although the CCP and local governments had em­ phasized during the War of Resistance to Japan that villagers should pay rents according to national CCP policy, such radical measures could only be restrained temporarily. The campaign to reduce rents and interests had re­ leased social forces for change, ensuring that all peasants would eventually demand the chance to be farmers in their own right.

-

NOTES

1. The political geography o f the Taihang Base Area is almost inherently confus­ ing. The area o f the southern part o f the Taihang Mountains— below the line of the Shijiazhuang-TaiyuaiY Railway— on the borders o f Shanxi, Hebei, and (as was then the case) Henan is often referred to as the Taihang region. The Taihang Base Area was originally the southeastern Shanxi Base Area, which merged with CCP centers of activity in West Hebei and North Henan to form an enlarged Taihang Base Area in Au­ gust 1938. In turn the Taihang Base Area became a district o f the Jin Ji Lu Yu Border Region w hen that w as established, and that border region is in turn often referred to as the Taihang region. To complicate matters, the Taihang subbureau o f the CCP Cen­ tral Committee (established in 1942), which was succeeded by the Taihang region CCP committee (October 1943-August 1945), was only responsible for the Taihang and Taiyue Base Areas o f the Jin Ji Lu Yu Border Region. See David S. G. Goodman, “Jin Ji Lu Yu in the Sino-Japanese War: The Border Region and the Border Region Government,” China Q uarterly 140 (December 1994). 2. Zhonggong Taihang qu dangwei diaocha yanjiushi, ed., Taihang qu shehui jin g ji diaocha d iyiji (Social and econom ic investigation o f the Taihang region, vol. 1), August 1944. The original may be found in the Shanxi Archive. Reprinted in K an­ g ri zh an zh en g shiqi Jin Ji Lu Yu bianqu caizheng jingjisji cailiao xu an bian (Se­ lected documents on econom y and finance in the Jin Ji Lu Yu Border Region during the War o f Resistance to Japan), ed. Jin Ji Lu Yu bianqu caizheng jingjishi bianjizu and Shanxi, Hebei, Shandong, Henan sheng danganguan (Beijing: Zhonggong caizheng jingji chubanshe, 1990), 2:1354-1362. 3. Ibid., pp. 87-88. 4. Taihang geming genjudishi zongbian weihui, ed., T aih anggem inggenjudi shiga o (Outline history o f the Taihang Revolutionary Base Area) (Taiyuan: Shanxi renmin chubanhse, 1987), pp. 34-54. 5. Letter from Liu Shaoqi to the Ji Yu Jin Provincial Committee o f the CCP through Zhu Rui, 18 August 1938 (original in Shanxi Archive). Reprinted in Taihang dangshi

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ziliao huibian (A collection of material on the Taihang Party history), ed. Shanxi sheng danganguan (Taiyuan: Shanxi renmin chubanshe, 1989), 1:334. 6. Zhongguo gongchandang Zuo Q uan ocian lian shi (A brief history o f the CCP in Zuo Quan County) (Shanxi: Renmin chubanshe, 1995). Liaoxian County w as re­ named Zuo Quan in 1942 in honor o f the CCP general killed there by a Japanese at­ tack earlier in the year. 7. Zhonggong Jin Ji Yu quwei minyunbu, “Qunzhong gongzuo zongjie baogao” (Summary report on masses’ work), 16 March 1939. Original in Shanxi Archive. Reprinted in Taihang dangshi ziliao huibian, 2:190. 8. Taihang geming genjudishi zongbian weihui, ed., Taihang gem ing gen ju di shigao, p. 59. 9. Ibid., p. 112. 10. There is an interesting discussion o f this topic, albeit in its East China context, in Chen Yung-fa, Making Revolution: The Comm unist M ovem ent in Eastern a n d Central China, 1 9 37-1945 (Berkeley: University o f California Press, 1986), p. 255. 11. Before the Jin Ji Lu Yu Border Region government was established in July 1941, it had been several months in the making. Only at the last moment was it decided that the border region included activities from anywhere in Shandong. In the planning stage the border region had been intended as the successor body to the Joint Gov­ ernment Administrative Office with responsibility for South Hebei, the Taihang Base Area, and the Taiyue Base Area. 12. X inhua Ribao, North China edition, 9 July 1941. 13. Rong Zihe, “Taihang qu sannianlai de lianshe he fazhan” (The construction and development o f the Taihang region during the last three years) (speech given by the vice chairman of the border region government at the first session o f the Border Region Council, 8 March 1945). The original is in Shanxi Archive. Reprinted in K an ­ gri zhan zheng s h iq ijin ji Lu Yu bianqu caizheng jingjisji cailiao xuan bian , 1:372. 14. Peng Tao, “Guanyu xiaozu xiaoxi de jianghua” (Speech on rent and loan re­ duction), April 1939. The original is in Shanxi Archive. Reprinted in Taihang dan g­ shi ziliao huibian, 2:298. 15. For some typical cases, see Taihang geming genjudishi zongbian weihui, ed., Tudi wenti, pp. 278-299. 16. Some Western scholars call this process a “silent revolution.” See Edward Friedman, Paul G. Pickowicz, and Mark Seiden with Kay Ann Johnson, Chinese Village, Socialist State (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), chap. 4. 17. Taihang geming genjudishi zongbian weihui, ed., Tudi wenti, pp. 232-238. 18. Ibid., 2:1413-1414.

5 Resistance and Revolution, Religion, and Rebellion T h e S ix t h T r ig r a m M o v e m e n t in L ic h e n g ,

1939-1942

David S. G. Goodman Licheng County is in the heart of the Taihang Mountains and during the War of Resistance to J^pan was one of the most secure areas of the Jin Ji Lu Yu (Shanxi-Hebei-Henan-Shandong) Border Region.1 Licheng is on Shanxi’s border with what was then Henan, and three of its neighboring counties are probably better known in the history of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) during the War of Resistance—Shexian (to the east), Zuoquan (to the north), and Wuxiang (to the west)2—perhaps not least because they saw more Japanese activity. Although occupied three times by the Japanese during 1938 and 1939, Licheng is unusual even among counties in the Taihang re­ gion in that the county seat itself remained under CCP control from Decem­ ber 1939 to the end of the war.3 Licheng was considered so secure as part of the CCP base area that the South Hebei (Jinan) Bank was originally estab­ lished (despite its name) in Licheng in June 1939 and issued the Jinan dollar as the border region’s currency from there.4 Similarly, Licheng was also the site of the Taihang region’s most important meeting of the War of Resistance to Japan. In April 1940 the CCP’s leadership from the Taihang, Taiyue, and South Hebei Base Areas met in Licheng and decided to establish first a Joint Government Administrative Office (the JiTai lianbari) and then to prepare for a border region government.5 Licheng’s relative security from Japanese incursions was as much a func­ tion of geography as anything else. It is high and deep within the western (nonescarpment) expanse of the Taihang Mountains, with its population concentrated in two interconnected river valleys that lead into the Changzhi Plain. The Japanese ability to sustain attacks on the surrounding counties was somewhat attenuated, and, even though the Japanese army and its sup131

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porters carried out seven mopping-up campaigns, there was ^fter late 1939 no attempt to establish other than a passing military presence in Licheng. However, Licheng was also the location for the development of the Sixth Trigram Movement, which became quite sizable and attempted to overthrow the county government in October 1941. Indeed, the headquarters of the rebel movement was in the village of Gangdong, not much more than a stone’s throw from the temple in the next village of Beishe, where the April 1940 Licheng meeting had occurred and where the office of the county gov­ ernment was located. The Sixth Trigram Movement was a local sect established in Licheng in 1936, though it only developed organizational strength of any significance in 1940-1941.6 Its attempt at rebellion occurred on 12 October 1941, w hen the Sixth Trigram Movement organized 400 of its then 3,321 members (for com­ parison, at the time the county CCP had 1,764 members)7 into five groups to attack the county government and two subdistrict government offices. Four of the five groups were either rapidly dispersed or otherwise persuaded by the militia to go elsewhere. The fifth and largest group organized in rebellion by the Sixth Trigram Movement gathered at Gangdong and rapidly turned to violence as it began to march on the office of the county government in neighboring Beishe and defended by the local public security forces. As Li Yongxiang, the leader of the Sixth Trigram Movement, led the charge, he was killed by a grenade. An­ other three members of the Sixth Trigram Movement were killed along with seven local cadres and defenders of the county government in the assault.8 With the death of Li Yongxiang the leaders of the attempted insurrection burned their houses and together with about 100 followers marched south to Lucheng and ultimately Changzhi, seeking sanctuary with the Japanese and their allies, even though almost all later returned.9 With political change and greater access to original sources of information in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the history of the CCP during the War of Resistance to Japan has become more contested, differentiated, and detailed.10 In particular, Kathleen Hartford has emphasized the experimental and incremental nature of CCP activities; Chen Yung-fa, Esherick, and others have highlighted the need to understand the ecology of CCP mobilization of support during the War of Resistance to Japan.11 The Sixth Trigram Move­ ment presents a fairly unusual opportunity to examine the CCP’s record on mobilization during the War of Resistance to Japan. At least in the immediate term those policies led to failure in Licheng—whatever the ultimate and overall success of the CCP—in contrast to the more successful cases that are the more usual focus of scholarship. As scholars seek explanations for even­ tual CCP success, the emergence of the Sixth Trigram Movement as a politi­ cal force in Licheng may serve them as a negative example in their testing of other hypotheses, in particular those concerned with the relative importance

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of the CCP’s appeal to socioeconomic reform, peasant nationalism, and tra­ ditional peasant values, as well as of its organizational capacities. Several features of the Sixth Trigram Movement are particularly interesting. A number of authors have speculated on the relationships between religious organizations and the CCP.12 The Sixth Trigram Movement was a millenarialist organization. Although most of the available sources on its activities em­ anate from the CCP, the surveys it carried out after the attempted insurrection during the winter of 1941-1942 contain detail about both the movement’s ideas and interaction between the CCP and organized religion in a period of social change. In addition, and remarkably—both in general and for reli­ gious organizations in Licheng at the time—the membership of the Sixth Tri­ gram Movement came from the better-off and the young, and almost half (47 percent) were women. The local CCP’s response to the potential crisis it faced with the Sixth Trigram Movement’s attempt at rebellion was measured. Seven of the latter’s leaders were found and executed immediately, and over 100 people were ar­ rested. However, those arrested were released and the majority of the CCP’s effort in damage limitation went into a political education campaign rather than punitive action.13An essential part of that process was the establishment of an investigation team, which from 25 November 1941 to 27 January 1942 conducted in-depth surveys of former Sixth Trigram Movement members and the villages in which it had been active in order to ascertain the possible causes of rebellion. The investigation team concentrated on interviewing samples of intellectuals, women, and young people and on examining a number of CCP branches in detail, finally reporting in April 1942. A particu­ larly interesting aspect of its interviewing techniques was its ethnographic approach. In the case of the interviews of women this even extended to liv­ ing with female former members of the Sixth Trigram Movement in their homes for some time, getting to know them, and recording their observa­ tions informally.14

RELIGION AND REBELLION

The investigation team’s 1942 report seeks to characterize the development of the Sixth Trigram Movement and its attempted insurrection as “enemy ac­ tion.” It makes constant reference to the leaders of the Sixth Trigram Move­ ment having had “dealings,” “discussions,” or “relationships” with “the enemy.” However, it fails to identify the enemy any more distinctly. There appears to be an almost deliberate ambiguity that fails to differentiate among the Japanese, the Nationalist Party, and even “the landlords.” Later accounts, such as the CCP’s own histories of the Taihang region or the CCP in Licheng County, echo these comments, suggesting more strongly that insurrection

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was fomented by Nationalist Party and Japanese spies, although they are not credited with a direct or organizational role in the Sixth Trigram Movement.15 However, both such a broad definition of the enemy and the explanation of Sixth Trigram Movement motivation are unconvincing, not least because there is no evidence of any such subversive activity and—as the investiga­ tion report of 1942 explicitly acknowledged—“the Nationalist Party had in­ significant influence” in Licheng.16 There can be little doubt that in 1941 “the enemy” in Licheng, even for the CCP, referred to the Japanese. In the Taihang region relations between the CCP and the two different groups of Nationalist Party forces—those under Shanxi’s warlord, Yan Xishan, who had previously worked closely with the CCP, and those under General Wei Lihuang, more closely linked to the Chongqing government—had developed into a virtual civil war between De­ cember 1939 and the end of February 1940. However, in March 1940 Wei Li­ huang, who had become an admirer and advocate of the CCP’s guerrilla strategy, reached a negotiated agreement with Zhu De that the CCP would withdraw from the southern part of the Taihang region (Tainan), the area south of the Handan-Changzhi Road—of which the road between Shexian and Licheng was part—leaving it to be occupied by his Nationalist Party forces: the Twenty-fourth, Twenty-seventh, and Fortieth Armies.17 Between March 1940 and May 1943 (when the Nationalist Party troops in Tainan de­ fected), in contrast to the situation elsewhere, there appears to have been al­ most no conflict between the CCP and the Nationalist Party forces.18 Deng Xiaoping, political commissar of the 129th Division of the Eighth Route Army at the time, encouraged a positive working relationship between the CCP and the Nationalist Party in the Taihang region, not least because he had developed a strategy designed to win over Nationalist Party officials and soldiers,19 and there were members of the Nationalist Party in the border re­ gion government. Even the investigation report of the Sixth Trigram Move­ ment had no problem neutrally reporting that there were Nationalist Party members and Nationalist Party branches in the villages it investigated. There were, for example, reported to be 29 Nationalist Party members in Fanjiazhuang’s 230 households, and 41 Nationalist Party members in Lubao’s 190 households.20 In any case the investigation report did not take its own impli­ cations seriously, indicating explicitly at one stage that the Nationalist Party organization in Licheng “did not take the Sixth Trigram Movement seriously . . . hoped to make use of i t . . . and while a few joined to win the support of the masses, more less senior members of the Nationalist Party joined because of their aversion to current affairs . .. and few participated in the rebellion.”21 Moreover, there is no evidence that before the attempted rebellion, mem­ bership in both the Sixth Trigram Movement and the CCP was regarded as

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antithetical or contradictory by anyone. Indeed, it appears that the ten reli­ gious organizations that were active in Licheng were regarded by the local population as having functions that differed from the political role of the CCP and the Nationalist Party. The CCP’s investigation team reported that it was commonly assumed in Licheng that everyone over thirty participated to some extent in one or another religious organization.22 Many members of the Sixth Trigram Movement were also members of the CCP, and one of the problems for the CCP in the wake of the Licheng Rebellion was that in some villages and branches the influence of the Sixth Trigram Movement ran deep because of its relationship locally with the party organization. This was par­ ticularly the case in both Fanjiazhuang and Lubao, where in the wake of the attempted rebellion it was reported that the CCP was unable (by April 1942) to reconvene party meetings, “fearing resentment.”23 Though the eventual politicization of the Sixth Trigram Movement cannot be denied, its original motivation was almost certainly more religious than political, insofar as^that distinction can be maintained for a millenarialist movement. The Sixth Trigram Movement was also known as the Sal­ vationist Sect of the Goddess from the Southern Sea and appears to have been a secret society established in Licheng by Li Yongxiang in 1936, possi­ bly with outside assistance.24 Potential members required a reference and had to pass through an initiation ceremony. The first rule of discipline was secrecy—those who talked to nonmembers about Sixth Trigram Movement matters without permission would disappear into thin air. Recitation of the prescribed scriptures and special rituals for specific gods, and particularly the goddess from the Southern Sea, constituted the essence of religious ob­ servance. The scriptures—which consisted of thirty poetic stanzas and an explana­ tory text on self-cultivation—all had to be memorized. The thirty stanzas were abbreviated as slogans and give a taste of the Sixth Trigram Movement’s methods and goals:

The invincible army. The Japanese army has invaded. Self-cultivation. The way of the black dragon. One religion to unify all others. Those without gratitude lose their magic arts. Become sworn brothers and sisters. Defeat the enemy by the secret magic arts. Food, spouses, and wealth. All immortals gather on the battlefield.25

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In addition to exegesis of the thirty stanzas, the explanatory text provided further legitimation for the Sixth Trigram Movement with an appeal to folk traditions. It begins, The Sixth Trigram Movement has existed for a long time. When Pan Gu sepa­ rated heaven and earth, the sage Fu Xi created the Eight Trigrams, separated yin and yang and laid down the principles o f the Sixth Trigram Movement. The principles of “self-cultivation” are the most important handed dow n from history. They contain all the secret for your success in becom ing noble, having a harmonious family, running the country well, and bringing peace to the world.

Then it brings the adherents to consideration of the present: [From the Shang to the Qing Dynasty] . . . the people enjoyed peace and the good life for so long they did not look forward to paradise and becam e sinful. As the year of calamity is approaching, the four characters for “self-cultivation” [xiujing yangxing\ were given to Shanxi from heaven. The goddess herself came to earth with a decree and personally taught her disciples.26

The Sixth Trigram Movement offered an ideology of restoration: to return to social order through self-cultivation, discipline, and spirituality. Training in traditional martial arts and qigong assisted this goal by providing individ­ ual members with magical powers and immortality so that they could “with­ stand even bullets and spears” when attacked. Discipline of the mind was also accompanied by hierarchy and discipline, with membership ranks, functional leadership positions, and the organization divided into “altars,” or district committees, under a central altar, located at Gangdong with Li Yongxiang as the supreme commander. By the time of its attempted attack on the Licheng County government, the Sixth Trigram Movement had grown to 3,321 members in sixty-six villages, all within eight kilometers of the Licheng County seat. However, despite its organizational infrastructure and belief system, the growth of the Sixth Tri­ gram Movement occurred almost totally in 1940 and 1941.27 Neither its rela­ tions with the enemy nor its religious foundations seem, then, to provide suf­ ficient explanation for the Licheng Rebellion.

CLASS AND SOCIAL CHANGE

One of the more specific features of Licheng County in 1941 was the extent of religious activity. It had ten religious organizations with a total member­ ship of 13,500, out of a formal population of 75,842,28 thus amounting to about 17.8 percent. In contrast there were some 16,530 people, or 23 percent

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of the total population, involved in Licheng’s various anti-Japanese organi­ zations organized by the CCP under its united front work policy.29 Of the ten religious organizations in Licheng in 1940-1941, the Sixth Trigram Movement had grown rapidly to become the largest. However, the Sixth Trigram Move­ ment was different in three crucial ways: its general membership was drawn disproportionately from the better-off sections of the population (though not perhaps to the extent claimed by the CCP), and it included a high proportion of young adults and women. On the other hand, there was no particular in­ tellectual involvement in the movement. Discussions of class as quantifiable categories during the War of Resistance to Japan are fraught with difficulties. Survey techniques and sampling meth­ ods were extremely crude, data were usually inconsistent and incomplete, and there was considerable uncertainty even among the most experienced survey teams about the precise application of specific concepts. In the words of the investigation team examining the Sixth Trigram Movement, “Those who conducted the survey were not very clear about how to determine class status.”30 Although the available evidence may not be suitable for rigorous statistical analysis, it can nonetheless indicate trends and possibilities. Licheng County before the war was by no means a poor county. The 1933 ten-year plan for IJcheng indicated that the county was a net exporter, with its wealth based on the production of millet, furs, and traditional medicines. Tenancy was generally fairly low in the Taihang region before the start of the War of Resistance to Japan, and it was probably even lower in Licheng County. All these indicators do not mean that Licheng was particularly wealthy, but rather that it was on average a relatively better-off part of the Taihang region. Even after the implementation of policies to reduce rent and cancel interest on loans, the 1940 distribution of wasteland, and the 1941 campaign to redeem land and settle debts, the proportions of rich peasants and landlords (taken together), middle peasants, and poor peasants in Licheng compared to those in the Taihang region as a whole still indicate Licheng’s relative prosperity, as indicated in table 5.1. In 1941 Licheng County had a higher proportion of landlords and rich peasants and middle peasants, as well as a smaller proportion of poor peasants, than the Taihang region. The Sixth Trigram Movement was active in the more prosperous southern part of Licheng County, around the county seat. Even allowing for the pos­ sibly distorting effects of this concentration, as table 5.1 also indicates, there appears to have been a class basis to its membership. Figures for the peas­ ant membership of the Sixth Trigram Movement suggest that though the or­ ganization had proportionately fewer middle and poor peasants than were to be found in the county’s population as whole, it had considerably more rich peasants. These aspects of its social formation emerge even more clearly in comparison with the background of CCP members in Licheng. The Sixth

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Table 5.1 Comparative Social Structure o f CCP and Sixth Tngram M ovem ent M embers, Licheng County, Shanxi, 1941 (percentage o f m em bership)______ Social Category

CCP

Male Female Rich peasants (and landlords) Middle peasants Poor peasants Others

96.6 3.4 4.6 49.2 42.1 4.1

Sixth Trigram M ovement

Licheng County

Taihang Region

21.0

13.4

10.5

53.0

57.3 29.3

37.8 49.0

53 47

26.0

Note: Percentages for Licheng County and the Taihang region are for proportions of peasant households. Sources: Zhongguo gongchandang Shanxi sheng Licheng xian zuzhishi ziliao, p. 56; Li Gua Dao shijian diaocha baogao, pp. 8, 26; and Taihangqu shehui jingji diaocha (Dieryi) 1945 (So­ cioeconomic investigation of the Taihang region (2d collection) 19451, in KangRi zhanzheng shiqi Jin Ji Lu Yu Bianqu caizheng jingjishi ziliao xuanbian (Collection of materials on the fi­ nancial and economic history of the Jin Ji Lu Yu Border Region during the period of the War of Resistance to Japan), ed. Jin Ji Lu Yu Bianqu caizheng jingjishi bianjizu and Shanxi, Hebei, Shan­ dong, Henan sheng danganguan (Beijing: Caizheng jingji chubanshe, 1990), 2:1408.

Trigram Movement was formed from rich and middle peasants, the CCP from middle and poor peasants. The extent of rich peasant and landlord involvement in the Sixth Trigram Movement is clearly observable at the leadership level of the organization: of its twenty-nine senior officials, five were landlords, thirteen rich peasants, ten middle peasants, and one a merchant.31 Detailed statistics of any kind are not available for the local leadership of the CCP in Licheng. However, the ev­ idence from everywhere else in the Taihang region during the War of Resis­ tance to Japan is overwhelmingly that while the membership of the CCP was drawn from the middle and poor peasants, and in different proportions from place to place, the leadership was usually dominated by middle peasants— either those who had been middle peasants before the war or those who had become middle peasants as the result of redistributive policies implemented in 1937-1945.32 These figures suggest that class conflict had become considerably more polarized in 1939-1941 in Licheng than was usually the case in areas in which the CCP was attempting to mobilize support during the War of Resis­ tance to Japan. In general, as Chen Yung-fa and Edward Friedman, Paul Pickowicz, and Mark Seiden have detailed, the CCP was extremely sophisticated in its handling of class differences, skillfully using them to build support from all classes behind the united front while still pursuing specific interests.33 Even as traditional local elites were losing their political power and seeing

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their economic wealth dispersed, they were offered almost no opportunities for alternative action, including the possibility of defection to the Japanese. However, this balanced approached clearly broke down in Licheng during the years 1940 and 1941. One cause of discontent was the level and system of taxation. Until the for­ mation of the Jin Ji Lu Yu Border Region, the system was that inherited from Yan Xishan, which was based on the principle of “equitable burden.” Coun­ ties determined the level of taxation and were responsible for tax collection, usually through tax collectors employed on commission and percentage. The border region government eventually introduced a more administered and open development of the equitable burden known as the “reasonable burden,” but not until August 1941. In any case both systems were largely property taxes with a fairly high threshold. There were also income tax pro­ visions, but those engaged in nonproductive production or the war effort were exempt. The results were that the burden of tax fell almost completely on the richer middle peasants, rich peasants, and landlords, all of whom had taxable property and sometimes even taxable income.34 The tax burden had started to rise unexpectedly in Licheng during early 1940. Increased Japanese pressure starting in 1939, conflict with the Nation­ alist Party in Deceipber 1939, followed rapidly by the Taihang region’s cen­ tral involvement in the “Hundred Regiments Campaign” against the Japanese and Japanese reprisals, all placed an additional supply burden on the more secure areas of the Taihang region, including Licheng County. From 1939 on as the Japanese North China Army returned in force to the Taihang region, and particularly after their recapture of Changzhi from the CCP, there was an intensifying battle for space among the CCP forces, troops, and officials loyal to Yan Xishan, and Nationalist Party troops under Wei Lihuang. Apart from its other considerations for supply, as government, military, and political ac­ tivists retreated to Licheng, within a very short period the county had to sup­ port an additional population equivalent to almost one-third of its taxable population (24,000 in an official resident population of 73,000) that was not engaged in production. By way of comparison, the average figure for the nonproductive proportion of the population across the Jin Ji Lu Yu Border Region was 3.6 percent.35 The results of the CCP’s tax policy combined with its mass mobilization strategy to contribute to further polarization and class antagonism. Through the early years of the War of Resistance to Japan the CCP in the Taihang re­ gion had expanded rapidly on an inclusive basis, encouraging everyone, al­ most regardless of class, attitudes, and politics, to rally to the nationalist cause. In Licheng and other counties in Southeast Shanxi the organization of anti-Japanese resistance—in the forms of government and social organiza­ tions—and the expansion of CCP influence were further facilitated by the close relationship between Yan Xishan and the CCP. All classes were en-

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couraged to join the CCP and the various anti-Japanese organizations, and the party’s campaigns of social reform were directed only at “power-holding landlords,” not all landlords. However, this generally inclusive oudook started to change in October 1939 with increasing friction between the CCP and Nationalist Party forces in the area and with the second stage of the CCP’s mobilization strategy in the Taihang region, which highlighted the im­ portance of poor peasants as agents of socioeconomic change. The second stage of the CCP’s mobilization strategy in the Taihang region lasted from October 1939 to May 1940 and concentrated on organizing the population, particularly the poor peasants, to struggle against landlords and rich peasants, directly threatening both those classes for the first time. As Peng Tao, director of the Propaganda Department in the CCP Committee for the Taihang Region, openly admitted in 1943, the lines had been drawn too sharply during this second stage, and the campaigns were unbalanced: “We made mistakes and there was chaos in our handling of the transformation of class relations.”36 The regional Joint Government Administrative Office went further, admitting breaches of human rights through zealousness in mass mo­ bilization during 1940.37 In the third stage, which started in 1942, the balance was restored somewhat with middle and poor peasants mobilized in more equal numbers to struggle against landlords and “feudal” rich peasants. Less obviously related to socioeconomic trends, the Sixth Trigram Move­ ment drew no particular support from intellectuals but was very popular with the young. Thirty-nine of the sometime members of the Sixth Trigram Movement had been intellectuals, with three university graduates. Most had only completed primary schooling. These thirty-nine intellectuals who had been members of the Sixth Trigram Movement had class backgrounds that reinforce the image of that organization as a movement of the dispossessed or at least the threatened “better-off.” Five were landlords, eighteen rich peasants, eleven middle peasants, and five poor peasants.38 Table 3.2 pro­ vides data on the age structure of the Sixth Trigram Movement and provides Table 5.2 Comparative Age Structure o f CCP and Sixth Trigram M ovem ent M embers, Licheng County, Shanxi, 1941 (percentage o f m em bership) Age Category

CCP

Sixth Trigram M ovem ent

Under 25 years 26-35 years 36-45 years 46-55 years 46-60 years 46-80 years

39.8 37.4 19.2

52.7 24.1 9.5 8.5

3.6 5.2

Sources: Zhongguo gongcbandang Shanxi sheng Licheng xian zuzhishi ziliao, p. 56; Li Gua Dao shijian diaocha baogao, p. 26.

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comparative data for the CCP. Here the youthfulness of the Sixth Trigram Movement’s members is quite remarkable. Part of this might have been due to Li Yongxiang’s leadership and personal influence. Only twenty-nine years old in 1941, when he died, he appears to have been a central figure for his generation in Licheng.

GENDER, FREEDOM, AND RELIEF

Class and gender partly explain the relative youthfulness of the social base of the Sixth Trigram Movement. As table 5.1 indicates, the extent to which women joined the Sixth Trigram Movement was really quite remarkable. By comparison, less than 4 percent of the CCP membership in Licheng at the time were women. Even if comparison is widened to include all anti-Japa­ nese mass organizations in the county, the proportion of women who were members was oqly 20 percent, and one of those organizations was the Women’s National Salvation Association. There were women members in many of the other religious organizations in Licheng, but on the whole they were considerably older and more likely to be from a poor peasant background. Though the Sixth Trigram Movement also had older female members from a poor peasant background, the class and age composition of its women members reveals some significant differ­ ences. Table 5.3 presents an analysis, based solely on the investigation team’s report, of the women members of the Sixth Trigram Movement by age and social class. These figures suggest that the Sixth Trigram Movement was not only at the very least a movement of women to a degree not previously experienced in the county, but also one that attracted young women from wealthier, more privileged backgrounds. Just over one-fifth of all the women who were members of the Sixth Trigram Movement—and hence more than a tenth of its total membership—were young women from rich peasant or landlord backgrounds. Table 5.3 Women Members o f the Sixth Trigram Movement, Age and Social Class (percentage o f w om en members) P ercentage Age category Young Middle-aged Old Total

P oor P ea sa n t 3 6 9 18

Social Class R ich P easant M iddle P easant 11 17 11 39

Source: Li Gua Dao shijian diaocha baogao, p. 48.

23 17 3 43

Total 36 40 23

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The investigation report of 1942 is full of accusations of sexua| impropri­ ety, explicit as well as implied, against individuals and members of the Sixth Trigram Movement in general. In trying to portray the Sixth Trigram Move­ ment as promiscuous, the investigation team was presumably attempting to undermine its high moral tone, and its undoubted romanticism and ideals of noble love. For example, Li Yongxiang is said to have had sexual relations with his cousin’s wife. One of the male members of the Sixth Trigram Move­ ment interviewed by the investigation team claimed he had joined in order to increase the opportunities for sex, though he is also reported as having said that the opportunities were not later realized. In the investigation report the section considering the motivations of women members makes much of their concerns with “enjoying sex and finding a good husband” as well as of what is described as the “preoccupation with sex” of the younger women members.39 Such allegations are unlikely to have been generally correct and are more likely to be a function of gossip and perhaps leading questions after the event; or the interviewees may have been eager to please their interviewers. The Sixth Trigram Movement was after all a secret organization, and having a membership that was composed of half women was unusual enough in it­ self for that time and place. Far from proclaiming any doctrine of free love, the scriptures of the Sixth Trigram Movement explicitly advocate sexual ab­ stinence in order to preserve energy—for women as well as men—and its rules of discipline contain strictures against loose sexual mores among mem­ bers. Poetic stanza 25 states that “drinking less is good for the memory, and having less sex is good for your health.” Elsewhere, the explanatory text ex­ horts that “excessive pleasure seeking should be avoided.” However far removed the sexual politics of Licheng in 1941 were from those of the United States or Western Europe in the 1990s, the desire for greater freedom would appear to have been an important motivation for many women Sixth Trigram Movement members, and the organization itself did deliberately cultivate their support. The desire for greater freedom and even to some extent for self-expression emerges clearly from the accounts of the in-depth interviews conducted by the investigation team. Their concerns included arranged marriages, lack of choice in marriage, physical abuse in marriage, the claustrophobic control of mothers-in-law within the family home, and the inconveniences of living at home with one’s parents. Freedom of choice in marriage and the ability to move beyond the con­ fines of either the parental or the family home were the most frequently cited goals for former women members in joining the Sixth Trigram Movement. “Going out” was of particular concern. Of Li Naiting, for example, it was said that “she was the only child of her parents and was not allowed to go out for public activities. ’ The pressures for this kind of freedom were so intense that

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some women apparently joined the Sixth Trigram Movement just because membership and the compulsory attendance at various meetings presented an opportunity for women to move around outside the home without ob­ taining the permission of parents, husbands, or mothers-in-law. The Sixth Trigram Movement was prepared to welcome its women mem­ bers as equal, if sometimes different, members. Women could also become “immortal” warriors, and those mobilized on 12 October certainly included women as well as men, though how many is not recorded.40 In the Sixth Tri­ gram Movement male members were formally called dazhong and female members erzhong, and they were addressed as “brothers and sisters.” The near equality of gender distribution in the membership as a whole was re­ flected in its leadership. In addition, of the six superior ranks within the lead­ ership, the top two were reserved for the senior male member and the sen­ ior female member: Li Yongxiang and Li Lianfeng, the wife of Li Yongxiang’s brother Li Yonggui. Two senior women members were given responsibility for looking after female members within the organization. The analysis of the motivation of women members of the Sixth Trigram Movement also provides clues to the growth of the movement specifically in 1940-1941. The desire for self-protection against and relief from the dual threats of Japanese incursions and the depradations of disease increased dra­ matically at that time. Japanese mopping-up campaigns against Licheng started during the second half of 1940 and seem to have come as a shock to many of the county’s inhabitants. In 1940 and 1941 houses and crops were burned and draft animals were destroyed. It is estimated that the total cost of damage amounted to an average of 143 yu a n per capita in the county,41 well in advance of the annual average income. The Sixth Trigram Movement of­ fered not so much organized resistance to these attacks but invincibility: through self-cultivation within the organization it would be possible to avoid being killed. A second but probably more significant part of the Sixth Trigram Move­ ment’s appeal in 1940-1941 lay in the practice of medicine. Apparently a number of the leaders of the organization had some medical knowledge. By early 1940 four of the leaders of the Sixth Trigram Movement—Li Yongxiang and his brother Li Yonggui, and Chang Huating and his son, Chang Jihu— were fully employed as medical practitioners and were even granted special privileges by the CCP in consequence.42 Other members of the Sixth Trigram Movement were also practicing medicine, and the organization used the pro­ vision of medical treatment and advice as a proselytizing tool. Patients would be treated and recommended to join. This became a particularly successful strategy in and after May 1940, when Licheng was hit by a particularly viru­ lent bout of cholera. In the next two years recurrent and severe epidemics of cholera, smallpox, and dysentery swept the county.

144

David S. G. Goodman POLITICAL ORGANIZATION AND LEADERSHIP

From its religious ideology and the changing socioeconomic environment in Licheng during 1940-1941 the Sixth Trigram Movement gained motivation, the opportunity to expand, and a certain amount of its organizational strength. However, its real organizational strength, particularly as it ap­ proached rebellion, derived from the Sixth Trigram Movement’s base in the local elite and the problems that developed in the wake of the CCP’s changed strategy on political development. In Licheng the initial impact of the CCP’s “consolidation” and reorganization of 1939-1940, as well as the new formation of village and county governments, was to weaken the CCP’s organizational capacity, and in the process it alienated significant sections of the local elite who then became the leadership backbone of the Sixth Trigram Movement. Unlike other of the more secure parts of what later became the Taihang re­ gion, Licheng County had no significant CCP organization before 1937. The first CCP organization in Licheng came with the ten members of the 344th Brigade of the 115th Division, and the eight members of the 129th Division of the Eighth Route Army (led by Wang Zhen) who arrived to establish a CCP base after the Shiguai meeting in November 1937.43 They adopted a policy of cooperation with both the civilian authorities and the local elite, designed to establish both anti-Japanese organizations and CCP branches, and essentially to reform the existing system of politics from within.44 In Licheng, which was part of the third district of Shanxi, the support of the civilian authorities was not inconsiderable, since the district commissioner was Bo Yibo, who was also the secretary of the CCP Shanxi “O pen” Committee.45 In the mid-1930s one consequence of Yan Xishan’s cooperation with the CCP had been the es­ tablishment of the Sacrifice League throughout Shanxi.46 With the outbreak of war the Sacrifice League raised the New Army from Taiyuan, and columns then marched to different parts of Shanxi with (in the Taihang region) one column under Bo Yibo’s leadership going to Qinxian and another under Rong Zihe going to Changzhi.47 In Licheng the support of the district commissioner gave CCP activities much needed legitimacy. Local branches of both the CCP and the Sacrifice League were established rather rapidly through an essential strategy of, in Liu Shaoqi’s words, when commenting on the development of the CCP in Shanxi during the War of Resistance to Japan, “establishing the leading or­ gans and then rapidly recruiting the broad masses to flesh out the lower lev­ els.”48 By April 1938 there were already 2,202 CCP members in 141 party branches.49The united front appeal to the traditional elites both at the county level and in the villages was not always successful, and there was often in­ dividual resistance. But on the whole it enabled the CCP to establish a pres­ ence where none had existed before. County and village officials were re-

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cruited to thç anti-Japanese cause, and sometimes even to the CCP.50 In the villages the niceties of distinctions between anti-Japanese and CCP activities were even less in evidence. Senior village leaders and the heads of village as­ sociations {she or tudishen) were recruited to the CCP, as were complete vil­ lage associations. For example, the head of Lubao village—a Mr. Jiao—was a member of the CCP, as was the West she, one of three in Lubao.51 The CCP’s strategy of inclusivity in political development was maintained until late in 1939 in Licheng. Change came in a number of forms, including a party “consolidation” and reorganization, the reorganization of the county administration, and the introduction of elections for village governments. The December Incident of 1939, which marked Yan Xishan’s decisive break with the CCP, the Sacrifice League, and its New Army, added a new urgency to the reorganization of the CCP, anti-Japanese organizations, and political leadership generally in the Taihang region. In particular, there was consider­ able confusion as the organizational framework of the Sacrifice League was dismantled and its, membership reorganized directly under the CCP. Local elites immediately became politically suspect because of their real or as­ sumed former relations with Yan Xishan and the essentially inherited politi­ cal system. But a movement to remove local “natives” also developed within the CCP and extended far beyond the limits of the traditional local elites. Party consolidation was originally motivated by a perceived need to en­ sure greater political reliability within the CCP after the massive expansion that had marked the previous two years. The membership of those who had joined in 1937-1939 was reviewed in order to remove what Peng Tao in re­ view in 1943 described as “activists who were not class conscious ele­ ments.”52 The result was a dramatic change in the social basis of the CCP in Licheng. The wealthier and less politically committed were denied renewal of their CCP membership, as were large numbers of poor peasants who had joined enthusiastically in the first few years of the War of Resistance to Japan. In the last three months of 1939 alone CCP membership in Licheng was “consolidated” down from 2,206 to 802. However, as it was built up again to autumn 1941 (when total membership stood at about 1,700), a dispropor­ tionate number of the new members were poor peasants.53 At the same time the CCP removed many of its cadres from their positions of leadership and transferred them to other locations. In part this was de­ signed to avoid the development of localism and seems to have been targeted at native cadres. Local CCP cadres were rarely disciplined or criticized (that was not the point of the exercise), but they were reassigned often to locations far away. Huo Fan, for example, the deputy secretary of Licheng County CCP at the time of the Sixth Trigram Movement’s attempted rebellion (and later still the long-term Licheng CCP secretary during the War of Resistance to Japan), was a native of Licheng who had returned to Licheng from schooling in Bei­ jing to work in the county office of the Sacrifice League in 1938. After a pe-

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riod working in the CCP’s Propaganda Department^ in Liaoxian, in early 1940 he was posted back to Licheng as CCP secretary but within a couple of months found himself reassigned as deputy secretary. There was a tension between, on the one hand, local cadres with firsthand knowledge, experience, and familiarity and, on the other, cadres from other areas and par­ ticularly Taiyuan, Beijing, and the metropolitan areas of North China who were more sophisticated and generally knowledgable in the ways of the CCP. They tended in consequence to regard their local colleagues somewhat as uneducated peasants. It was a tension between insiders and outsiders that was of course not unique to Licheng. Throughout the base areas of North China in 1940-1941 this problem recurred frequently, causing Mao Zedong to call for restraint and an end to sectarianism of this kind.54 In early 1940 the CCP also completely reorganized the Licheng County ad­ ministration, with significant consequences for later events. Most spectacu­ larly, the founder of the local organization of the Sacrifice League, Kang Zhenpu, was dismissed. The leading positions in most of the departments of the county government, as well as all the leading personnel of the depart­ ments of finance, civil affairs, armed personnel, and public security, were changed, as were all the district heads within the county. Of particular inter­ est, three later Sixth Trigram Movement leaders were removed from their po­ sitions of leadership in departments of the county government at this time: Sui Qi and Zhao Liancheng from the Department of Armed Personnel and Chang Huating from the Department of Public Security. One result of CCP consolidation and political reorganization, then, was that a substantial element of the local elite who had been brought within the CCP’s orbit at the start of the War of Resistance was at risk of being alienated. This danger was heightened with the introduction of village elections that started in early 1940 and ran until the middle of 1941. Village leadership had previously been the preserve of landlords and rich peasants, but with the CCP-organized elections and the encouragement of the political capital of middle peasants and poor peasants all this was to change. By May 1941, 44 percent of the elected village heads in Licheng were poor peasants, 40 per­ cent middle peasants, 3 percent rich peasants, and 1 percent “enlightened” landlords and gentry.55 The disaffection of the local elite was clearly a major factor in the devel­ opment of the Sixth Trigram Movement and shows clearly in the comments made to the investigation team about politics and reflected in the report of 1942. Quite apart from the cases of those most senior leaders of the Sixth Trigram Movement who had been removed from the county administration, there were others involved throughout its organization. For example, Yang Xiantang, from Wangjiazhuang, was a rich peasant who had been village head and a staunch supporter of Yan Xishan. He believed that the latter had

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been supplanted by the CCP in 1939. On his own admission his decision to join the Sixth Trigram Movement was completely political, and he became the commander of one of its district organizations. Li Wuting was a univer­ sity engineering graduate who thought die land redemption campaign unfair since, in his view, landlords had not been able to speak in their own defense and whatever the peasants wanted was done. He aigued very strongly that the “government’s progressive programs are not suitable for the backward life of the masses.” Qiao Hongtai of Qiaojiazhuang worked in the Licheng County government and “participated in resistance activities” at the start of the War of Resistance to Japan. However, he was disaffected by the CCP’s tax policy and, refusing an offer of work in the new government, in 1940 he took up a teaching position in the Licheng First senior primary school.56 The overall result of these political changes was that in Licheng in the short term the CCP’s capacity to rule was weakened from a number of di­ rections. The CCP’s organization in Licheng had never been strong before 1940, and indeed Jt took some time before that organizational infrastructure was established. The First Licheng County CCP Congress was, for example, not held until July 1941. Much of the emphasis—and time—in the CCP’s work in the region had been devoted to the organization of first the Joint Government Administrative Office and later the border region government. As a result the CCP was not fully established in many villages, and even where it was there were frequently divided party committees and organiza­ tions. The investigation report of 1942 reported a litany of weak party or­ ganizations and divided CCP committees in all the villages it examined. Sometimes the cause of division was traditional, as in Lubao, where the vil­ lage’s three she had a history of intense conflict. Sometimes the causes were more recent, as in Shangguihua, where the impact of the CCP’s tax policy proved divisive, or Fanjiazhuang, where the speed and direction of socio­ economic reform were at issue.57 The weakness of CCP organization at the time is reflected in the comment of one leading cadre, interviewed more than fifty years later: “We knew something was going on, but we didn’t know where they were meeting or what they were doing.”58 The reorganization of the local CCP necessitated by the break with Yan Xishan and the CCP’s changed strategy on social and political development had potentially disastrous results in the short term. Those who had previ­ ously been prepared to support the CCP’s anti-Japanese nationalism became considerably more wary, particularly among the local elite. At the same time, the CCP’s insiders were removed and replaced by outsiders who had less knowledge and experience of what was going on and, more importantly, the identity of those whom locals did not trust as much if at all. A political vac­ uum emerged in 1940-1941 that the Sixth Trigram Movement filled in some of the villages of southern Licheng, at least for a short time.

148

David S. G. Goodman THE SIXTH TRIGRAM MOVEMENT IN HISTORY

The Sixth Trigram Movement’s attempted rebellion of October 1941 was clearly a traumatic event for the CCP in Licheng at the time, and more than fifty years after the event the sense of that trauma still lingers. The Licheng CCP’s own history, published in 1991, described it as “an evil deed” but pro­ vided no real explanation for its occurrence. Nationalist Party spies are blamed for its manifestation, but no evidence is presented of that relation­ ship or the spies’ existence. Instead, the spies (interestingly, not the Sixth Trigram Movement organization or its activists) are said to “represent Licheng’s reactionary landlords, prominent feudal figures, and a few reactionary intel­ lectuals.”59 At the time, policy changed in the wake of the attempted insurrection and the collapse of the Sixth Trigram Movement. There was a realization that the policy on supply and taxation had been neither thoroughly considered nor adequately developed. The Joint Government Administrative Office had new draft legislation in preparation, and the border region government was able to introduce a new taxation system in the second half of 1941. It was fol­ lowed the next year by the preparation of a “universal progressive tax” that still taxed wealth but was calculated on the productive capacity of property over an average number of years.60 At the same time, in Licheng a fairly con­ certed attempt was made to reduce the numbers of people engaged in non­ productive occupations who were exempt from taxation and needed to be supported themselves.61 In general there was a retreat from the narrower fundamentalism that had threatened to emerge in the CCP’s policies and appeal in 1940-1941. Indeed, at the first meeting of the border region government it was admitted that the encouragement of socioeconomic change had included “leftist” tendencies.62 The CCP’s policy on mass mobilization in the Taihang region changed deci­ sively with a return to a more balanced approach that took more account of the complicated social and economic environments in which the CCP had to work. Though it might have been too late to do much about the villages of southern Licheng that had come under the influence of the Sixth Trigram Movement, in general the attempt was made elsewhere to ensure the sup­ port of rich peasants or at least to avoid their outright disaffection. In a sim­ ilar vein, the Women’s National Salvation Association learned the lesson of the Licheng Rebellion and launched a full-scale inquiry into the problems and shortcomings in its implementation of policy on women and the organ­ ization of the women’s movement.63 Although too many conclusions cannot be drawn from the examination of one county (and really only part of that county) during two or three years, the development of the Sixth Trigram Movement and its attempt at rebellion in 1941 indicate clearly the contingent nature of CCP growth during the War

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of Resistance to Japan. The CCP was not able to take anything for granted, not even the support of one of its most secure areas that included consider­ able concentrations of its own cadres and activists. It had to work very hard to ensure that it maintained a balance in its program of socioeconomic re­ form and so maximized its support for political and military mobilization. The CCP also had to work very hard to ensure local activism and a posi­ tive acceptance of its policies qua government. The case of the Sixth Trigram Movement indicates that rural resistance and traditionalism were never far below the surface of political life in the base area, and even the support of the local population on nationalist grounds could not be assumed. In Licheng at least popular support for the Sacrifice League did not transfer au­ tomatically into support for the CCP. Moreover, during 1940-1941 the sever­ ity of Japanese incursions into Licheng served to widen the distance between the CCP and the local population, who came to feel they were no longer being protected. The causes of tlje growth of the Sixth Trigram Movement and its attempted seizure of power run much deeper than the temporary failure of the CCP’s organization. Nonetheless, it seems inconceivable that, had the Licheng CCP been better organized and more firmly grounded in village party branches, it would have not picked up clearer intelligence about the activities of the Sixth Trigram Movement. The organizational difficulties for the CCP in Licheng were not only that there had been no local organization there before 1937, but that its development even after that date and until late 1939 was made dependent on the relationship with Yan Xishan and the Sacrifice League. While this provided a useful foundation for establishing a CCP pres­ ence, it also limited the development of the CCP’s own organizational ca­ pacity, which, paradoxically for a county in the heart of a base area, meant that party building did not really start until the early 1940s.

NOTES Research for this paper has been supported by the University of Technology, Sydney; the History and Archive Institute o f Shanxi; and the Pacific Cultural Foundation, Taipei, all o f w h ose assistance is gratefully acknowledged. The presentation o f mate­ rial and arguments has benefited greatly from discussions with Professor Tian Youru, History and Archive Institute o f Shanxi; and Dr. Feng Chongyi, Institute for Interna­ tional Studies, UTS, though the view s expressed here are solely the responsibility of the author. 1. The standard history of Licheng during the War of Resistance to Japan is Zhonggu o G ongchandang Licheng ocian jianshi, 1 9 3 7 -1 9 4 9 (A concise history o f the CCP in Licheng County, 1937-1949), ed. Zhonggong Licheng xianwei dangshi yanjiushi (Taiyuan: Xinhua chubanshe, 1991). In addition, see Zhongguo gongchandang

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S h a n xi sheng lic h e n g x ia n zu z h ish i zilia o , 1 9 3 7 -1 9 8 7 (Materials on Sljanxi provin­ cial CCP Licheng County organizational history, 1937-1987), ed. Zhonggong Shanxi sheng Licheng xianwei zuzhibu, Zhonggong Shanxi sheng Licheng xianwei dangshi yanjiushi, Shanxi sheng Licheng xian danganju (Taiyuan: Shanxi renmin chubanshe, 1993), pp. 9-58. 2. Before the establishment of the People’s Republic o f China, Shexian w as in Henan, though it is now part of Hebei. 3. The Licheng-Shexian Road through the Taihang Mountains was finally secured in December 1939 as part of the attempt to secure the w hole o f the HandanChangzhi Road, o f which it forms part. 4. In Xijing village, see “Guanyu Jinan yinhang faxing Jinanbi de bugao” (Bulletin on the issue of Jinan dollars by the Jinan Bank), Bulletin 2 o f the director o f the South Hebei Executive Office, September 1939, in K angR i zh a n zh e n g sh iq i J in J i Lu Yu B ia n q u c a izh en g jin g ji shi zilia o xu a n b ia n , ed. Jin Ji Lu Yu Bianqu caizheng jingji shi bianjizu, and Shanxi, Hebei, Shandong, Henan sheng danganguan (Beijing: Caizheng jingji chubanshe, 1990), 2:700. The explanation for a bank in Shanxi being called the South Hebei Bank is not without some logic. At the time the Licheng CCP organization was subordinated to and had grown out of the Ji-Yu (H ebei-H enan) CCP Committee; see Zhongguo gongchandang S h a n xi sheng Licheng x ia n zu z h ish i zilia o , p. 16. 5. Though at that stage it was only intended to be the Jin Ji Yu Border Region, see “Beiju gaoganbu huiyi guanyu jianzheng wenti jielun,” 24 April 1940 (Summary o f senior cadres meeting of the North China Bureau o f the CCP on the question o f es­ tablishing organs of political power), in Z h en g q u a n jia n sh e (Political development), ed. Taihang geming genjudi shi zongbian weihui (Taiyuan: Shanxi renmin chuban­ she, 1990), p. 90. 6. Major sources of information about the development and organization o f the Sixth Trigram Movement in Licheng are Licheng kaochatuan, Li G ua D ao sh ijia n diaocha baogao (Report o f the investigation into the Sixth Trigram Movement inci­ dent), April 1942; and interviews conducted in Beijing, Taiyuan, and Licheng with some of the principals involved. Interviewees included Rong Zihe, deputy director of the Joint Administrative Office and later vice chairman o f the Jin Ji Lu Yu Border Re­ gion government; Zhang Baishi, director of propaganda, Taihang regional CCP Com­ mittee; Chi Biqing, chair o f the Taihang region Peasants’ Sacrifice League; and Huo Fan, deputy secretary of the Licheng County CCP Committee and the ranking cadre in the office at the time o f the attempted attack on the county government w hen the CCP secretary was away. The relationship between the Licheng Sixth Trigram Movement and other similarly named and possibly related organizations is unclear. Zhong Guofa in a survey o f “newly emerged religious sects” o f the republican era, in D a n g d a i Z ongjiao Y anjiu (Modem religious research) 4 (1997), suggests that the Sixth Trigram Movement may have been intellectually and organizationally derived from Liu Zuochen’s D octrine o f th e E ight Trigram s or W ay o f the N in e P alaces in the early Qing dynasty in Shandong. After 1912 the W ay o f th e N in e P alaces, headquartered at that time at Mount Wutai, fragmented into separate organizations for each o f the eighteen “heavens,” five “as­ sociations,” and eight “trigrams” that had been its organizational form. 7. Zhongguo gongchandang Shanxi sheng Licheng x ia n zu zh ish i ziliao, 193 7 1987, p. 56.

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8. The most detailed account of the events of 12 October 1941 is found in Zhongg u o gongchandang Shanxi sheng Licheng x ia n zu zh ish i ziliao, 1937-1987, pp. 108-112. 9. Including Li Yongxiang’s younger brother, Li Lao’er and his wife, both of whom were interviewed in Gangdong in May 1994. 10. A most recent and comprehensive review of Western literature is found in Mark Seiden, “Yan’an Communism Reconsidered,” M odem China 21, no. 1 (1995). Two useful surveys of scholarship inside and outside the PRC are included in the vol­ umes resulting from the conferences organized by Nankai University in 1984 and 1991: Zhongguo KangRi genjudishi guoji xueshu taolunhui taolunji (Collection of papers from the international academic conference on the history of base areas in China’s War of Resistance to Japan) (Beijing: Dangan chubanshe, 1985); and Zhongw a i x u ezh e lun KangRi gen ju di (Chinese and foreign academics on the base areas of the War of Resistance to Japan) (Beijing: Dangan chubanshe, 1993). A recent sur­ vey of the field is Gong Yuzhi, “Guanyu KangRi zhanzheng shi yanjiu” (Research on the history of the war of resistance), in Zhonggong dangshi ya n jiu (Research on CCP history) 6 (1995): 7. 11. Kathleen Haftford, “Step-by-Step: Reform, Resistance, and Revolution in the Chin-Ch’a-Chi Border Region” (Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 1980); Hartford, “Re­ pression and Communist Success: The Case of Jin-Cha-Ji, 1938-1943,” in Single Sparks: China's Rural Revolutions, ed. Kathleen Hartford and Steven M. Goldstein (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1989); Yung-fa Chen, Making Revolution: The Comm unist M ovem ent in Eastern a n d Central China, 1 9 3 7 -1 9 4 5 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986); Joseph W. Esherick, “Deconstructing the Construction of the Party-State: Gulin County in the Shaan-Gan-Ning Border Region,” China Q uar­ terly 140 (December 1994): 1052; Pauline Keating, “The Yan’an Way of Cooperativization,” China Q uarterly 140 (December 1994): 1025; and David S. G. Goodman, “Jin Ji Lu Yu in the Sino-Japanese War: The Border Region and the Border Region Government,” China Quarterly 140 (December 1994): 1007. 12. In particular, Ralph Thaxton concentrates on that relationship during the War of Resistance to Japan and apparently in the Taihang region in China Turned Rightside Up: Revolutionary Legitimacy in the P easant World (New Haven: Yale Univer­ sity Press, 1983). 13. According to Taihang geming genjudi shi zongbian weihui, ed., Dashijishu, 1 9 3 7 -1 9 4 9 (Diary of events, 1937-1949) (Taiyuan: Shanxi renmin chubanshe, 1991), p. 64, after the rebellion was defeated, “throughout the entire county a political of­ fensive was launched against sect followers to educate and win over the numerous sect members and stabilize social order.” 14. The report by the investigation team, “Li Gua Dao shijian diaocha baogao” (Report of the investigation into the Sixth Trigram Movement incident), runs to 103 pages, apparently reproduced on a waxed-stencil duplicator. References are to the handwritten “Li Gua Dao shijian diaocha baogao” by page number. This source must be handled both skeptically and cautiously, since its reliability cannot always be as­ sumed. The information it provides has been tested in a number of ways—by refer­ ence to other sources and through interviews with participants. However, such vali­ dation is clearly not always possible, and, where appropriate, doubt and shadows of doubt are expressed through conditional and more qualified statements.

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15. See, for exam ple, Zhongguo G ongchandqng Licbeng x iq n jia n sh i, 1937-1949, pp. 106-113; Investigation Report, pp. 32-36. 16. Li Gua Dao shijian diaocha baogao, p. 62. 17. On relations between the CCP and the Nationalist Party in the Taihang region at this time, see Taihang geming genjudishi zongbian weihui, ed., Taihang gem ing genjudi shigao (Outline history of the Taihang Revolutionary Base Area) (Taiyuan: Shanxi renmin chubanshe, 1987), pp. 68ff., 189; Li Yong and Zhang Zhongtian, KangRi m in zu tongyi zh an xian dashiji (Diary of the national united front in the War of Resistance to Japan) (Beijing: Zhongguo jingji chubanshe, 1988), p. 260; and Taihang geming genjudishi zongbian weihui, ed., Yubei zh an dou (The struggle for North Henan) (Taiyuan: Shanxi renmin chubanshe, 1988), pp. 4,163, 242. On Wei Lihuang, see Zhao Rongsheng, Huiyilu Wei Lihuang (Memories o f Wei Lihuang) (Beijing: Wenshiziliao chubanshe, 1985), p. 210; and Edgar Snow, Scorched Earth (London: Victor Gollancz, 1941), 2:245. Snow visited and commented on activities in the area south of the Handan-Changzhi Road and Wei Lihuang’s adaptation o f CCP theory and practice. 18. Warren Kuo provides a list of infringements of the united front but only cites one minor skirmish between the Nationalist Party forces and the CCP in the Taihang region at this time; see A nalytical History o f the Chinese Com m unist P arty (Taipei: Institute of International Relations, 1970), 4:81. 19- See “Taihangqu Guomindang wenti” (The Nationalist Party in the Taihang re­ gion), 23 August 1942, in Taihangdang liunianlai wenjian xuanji bubian bianzhe, ed., Taihangdang liunianlai wenjian x u an ji bubian (Supplement to collection o f docu­ ments on the Taihang party during the last six years), 1944, pp. 93-97. 20. Li Gua D ao shijian diaocha baogao, pp. 84, 98. 21. Ibid., p. 28. 22. Ibid., p. 5. 23. Ibid., p. 93. 24. Part of the mythology of Li Gua D ao is that Li Yongxiang was inspired either by a “visitor from Hebei” w ho came to Gangdong in 1936 (according, for example, to a Licheng native and then CCP county deputy secretary, Huo Fan, interviewed in Taiyuan on 4 July 1994) or by his maternal grandfather in Damingfii (according to the “Li Gua Dao shijian diaocha baogao”). However, as the “Li Gua Dao shijian diaocha baogao” also admits, “There are different explanations o f its origin” (p. 13). 25. “Li Gua Dao shijian diaocha baogao,” pp. 15ff. 26. Ibid., pp. 20-21. 27. Ibid., pp. 28, 30. 28. In addition to the 75,842 residents in 1941 there are estimated to have been about 24,000 temporary residents in Licheng County associated with military or p o­ litical activities. See Shanxi nianjian 1 9 8 6 (Shanxi yearbook 1986) (Taiyuan: Shanxi renmin chubanshe, 1987), p. 413. 29. Zhongguo gongchandang Licheng ocian jianshi, 1937-1949, p. 107. 30. “Li Gua Dao shijian diaocha baogao,” p. 8. 31. Ibid., p. 27. 32. The best-known account o f these phenomena in English is the analysis o f Wu’an in Isabel Crook and David Crook, Revolution in a Chinese Village: Ten Mile Inn (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1959), esp. pp. 74-31. On the Taihang region

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more generally, see Shisanxian sanshijiu g e zh ibu d e chujin ya n jiu , 2 0 September 1942 (Preliminary research on thirty-nine party branches in thirteen counties), in D ang d ejia n sh e (Party development), ed. Taihang geming genjudishi zongbian weihui (Taiyuan: Shanxi renmin chubanshe, 1989), especially pp. 277, 286. 33. Yung-fa Chen, M aking Revolution, pp. 121ff.; Edward Friedman, Paul G. Pickowicz, and Mark Seiden, Chinese Village, Socialist State (N ew Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), pp. 40ff. 34. Rong Zihe, “Jiajin jinxing heli fudan zoushang tongyi de suode leijinshui” (Strengthen implementation o f the reasonable burden so that it becom es a progres­ sive incom e tax), 18 September 1940, in Caizheng jin g ji jianshe, ed. Taihang geming genjudishi zongbian weihui (Taiyuan: Shanxi renmin chubanshe, 1987), 2:540; and “Jin Ji Lu Yu Bianqu heli fudan zhengshou zanxing banfa caoan” (Provisional regula­ tions for the collection o f the reasonable burden in the Jin Ji Lu Yu Border Region), August 1941, in Caizheng jin g ji jianshe, 2:543. 35. Taihang gem ing gen ju di shigao, p. 235. 36. Peng Tao, “Q unzhong yundong de fazhan yu jieji guanxi de bianhua” (The de­ velopm ent o f mass movements and the transformation o f class relations), February 1942, in Tudi w entf(T he question o f land), ed. Taihang geming genjudi shi zongbian weihui (Taiyuan: Shanxi renmin chubanshe, 1987), p. 229. 37. “Guanyu gongan gongzuo de baogao” (Report on public security work), in JiTai lianban diyici zh u an yu an xianzhang huiyi tekan (Special issue on the Joint Admin­ istrative Govemirient Office [for South Hebei, Taihang, and Taiyue], first meeting of commissioners and county heads), February 1941, p. 189; Dang de jianshe, p. 29. 38. Li Gua D ao shijian diaocha baogao, p. 26. 39. Ibid., p. 59. 40. The Li Gua D ao shijian diaocha baogao presents records o f discussions with three female members o f the Sixth Trigram Movement w ho participated in the events o f 12 October 1941; they were armed, if only with knives and staves. 41. Zhongguo G ongchandang Licheng ocian jianshi, 1937-1949; p. 122. 42. Li G ua D ao shijian diaocha baogao, p. 1343. Zhongguo G ongchandang Licheng x ia n jianshi, 1937-1949, p. 35. 44. Ibid., pp. 60-63; D ang de jianshe, p. 12. 45. From late 1936 to early 1940 there were two provincial committees o f the CCP in Shanxi: a front organization, the O pen Committee, under Bo Yibo, which handled relations with Yan Xishan, and the working provincial committee, which was re­ sponsible for the provincial party organization. Details may be found in Zhongguo gongchandang Shanxi sheng zu zh ish i ziliao, 19 2 4 -1 9 4 9 (Materials on the organi­ zational history o f the CCP in Shanxi, 1924-1949), ed. Zhonggong Shanxi shengwei zuzhibu, Zhonggong Shanxi shengwei dangshi yanjiushi, Shanxi sheng danganju (Taiyuan: Shanxi renmin chubanshe, 1994), p. 287. 46. The Sacrifice League was the Shanxi Sacrifice League for National Salvation (X ishengjiuguo tongm enhui o r Xim enghui). Bo Yibo, “Ximenghui lishi huigu” (Rec­ ollections o f the history o f the Sacrifice League), in Bo Yibo w enxuan (Beijing: Ren­ min chubanshe, 1992), p. 462. Wang Shengbo, Xim enghui shi (A history o f the Sacrifice League) (Taiyuan: Shanxi renmin chubanshe, 1987); “KangRi zhanzheng zhong de Ximenghui he Shanxi Xinjun” (Shanxi’s new army and the Sacrifice League in the War o f Resistance to Japan), Renm in ribao 16 , 20 September 1985.

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47. Bo Yibo, “Taiyue genjudi shi zenyang jinche kangzhande” (HowNthe Taiyue Base Area was established in the War of Resistance to Japan), Jiefang ribao (Libera­ tion Daily), 3 July 1943, reprinted in Bo Yibo wenxuan, p. 25. 48. Liu Shaoqi, “Liunian Huabei Huazhong gongzuo jingyan de baogao” (Report on work experience during the last six years in North and Central China), March 1943, in Liu Shaoqi xu an ji (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1981), 1:263. 49. Zbongguo gongchandang Shanxi sheng Licheng ocian zu zh ish i ziliao, 1937-1987 ; p. 2. 50. An account o f this process is provided in Zbongguo gongchandang Shanoci sheng Licheng ocian zu zh ish i ziliao, 1937-1987, pp. 50-52. 51. Li Gua D ao shijian diaocha baogao, p. 89. 52. Peng Tao, “Qunzhong yundong de fazhan yu jieji guanxi de bianhua,” p. 229. 53. Xu Zirong, “Guanyu bage xiande zhibu gongzuo” (Work on party branches in eight counties), 30 August 1942, in D ang d e jianshe, pp. 236ff., provides detail on Licheng County. A summary account o f the process o f party consolidation is con­ tained in Zbongguo Gongchandang Licheng ocian jianshi, 1937-1949, pp. 79-83. 54. Mao Zedong, “Rectify the Party’s Style o f Work,” 1 February 1942, in Selected Works o f Mao Tse-tung (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1967), 3:45. 55. Zbongguo Gongchandang Licheng ocian jianshi, 1937-1949, p. 101. 56. Li Gua D ao shijian diaocha baogao, p. 36 (Yang Xiantang), p. 62 (Li Writing), and p. 75 (Qiao Hongtai). 57. Li Gua D ao shijian diaocha baogao, p. 88 (Lubao), p. 93 (Shangguihua), and p. 84 (Fanjiazhuang). 58. Zhang Baishi, interview, 21 May 1994, Beijing. Zhang w as editor o f the Jin an ribao (South Hebei Daily) at the time. At the end o f 1941 he moved to Wuxiang and became head of the CCP’s Propaganda Department in the Taihang region. 59. Zbongguo Gongchandang Licheng ocian jianshi, 1937-1949, p. 112. 60. “Jin Ji Lu Yu Bianqu zhengfu zhuxi gei zhuanyuan, xianzhang de zhishixin” (Letter of instruction from the chairman of the Shanxi-Hebei-Shandong-Henan Bor­ der Region government to district commissioners and county heads), 26 June 1943, in KangRi zhan zheng s h iq ijin ji Lu Yu B ianqu caizh en gjin gji shi zilia o ocuanbian, 1:1051. 61. Zbongguo Gongchandang Licheng ocian jianshi, 1937-1949, pp. 127ff. 62. Liu, Zhang, and Wang, “Taihang geming genjudi zhengquan jianshe gaishu” (Summary o f the political development o f the Taihang Revolutionary Base Area), in Zhengquan jianshe, pp. 23, 30ff. 63. Jin Ji Yu qu funu qiuguo lianhe zonghui, “Guanyu ‘Fandui maimaihun zhengqu zizhuhun’ de chubu zongjie” (Preliminary summary o f “O ppose the trade in brides and strive to ensure freedom o f choice in marriage”), 31 August 1942, in Q un­ zhong yun don g (Mass movements), ed. Taihang geming genjudishi zongbian weihui (Taiyuan: Shanxi renmin chubanshe, 1989), p. 419.

6

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The Making of the Jin Sui Base Area P easants , I ntellectuals ,

and

D em ocra tiza tio n

Feng Chongyi

The Jin Sui (Shanxi-Suiyuan) Border Region—overshadowed by the Shaan Gan Ning (Yan’ap) and Jin Cha Ji Border Regions during the Mao era, and by the Jin Ji Lu Yu Border Region during the Deng era—is by far the least known of those in North China during the War of Resistance to Japan. It was located in West Shanxi and Central Suiyuan (now Inner Mongolia), bordering on the Yellow River to the west and the Datong-Fenglingdu railway line to the east. Anti-Japanese bases were created in the area during early 1938, but a unified Jin Sui Border Region did not come into being until February 1942, when two base areas in Northwest Shanxi and the Daqingshan in Suiyuan merged to form the government of the Jin Sui Border Region. There is some small confusion about the precise identity and composition of the Jin Sui Base Area and Border Region. In the history of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Jin Sui may refer to the three base areas in North­ west Shanxi, Southwest Shanxi, and the Daqingshan, as well as a more lim­ ited notion of the base area. CCP affairs in these areas were handled by one unit from the winter of 1938 to the end of the war, largely because the CCP worked closely with Yan Xishan against the Japanese in Southwest Shanxi until the end of 1939, when their coalition broke down. Here, following the example of the official documents published by the CCP local regime at the later stages of the war, the Jin Sui Base Area will be defined only in terms of the forty-nine counties of Northwest Shanxi and the Daqingshan.1 Despite its relative obscurity, the Jin Sui Base Area, and later the Border Region, was still a significant part of CCP activities in North China during the War of Resistance to Japan. From the military point of view, Jin Sui provided a defense for the Shaan Gansu Ning Border Region across the Yellow River 133

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from direct attack by Japanese troops. Politically, Jin Sui was a\test ground for the CCP to successfully exploit the wartime situation and mobilize local elites, urban intellectuals, and peasants for Nationalist as well as Communist goals. The concentration of “intellectual cadres” (i.e., intellectuals who be­ came cadres) in Jin Sui was so dense that, according to one statistic, more than 8,000 cadres, 423 among them above the prefectural level, were trans­ ferred to central government and CCP authorities and other areas from Jin Sui during 1948 and early 19492 This chapter highlights, on the one hand, the role of local elites and intel­ lectuals in the making of the Jin Sui Base Area and, on the other, the achieve­ ments and limits of “peasant democracy” in the base area. On the first theme, its findings contradict the general assumption that the CCP founded antiJapanese base areas on its own behind the enemy lines. On the second it presents some reflections stimulated by the current contention emerging in the rethinking of the Chinese Revolution after the bankruptcy of Stalinism and Maoism in regard to democratization in a peasant society.

YAN XISHAN AND SHANXI

“A special Shanxi is emerging as regard to the situation in North China,” wrote Mao Zedong in his telegraph to Zhou Enlai, Zhu De, Peng Dehuai, and Ren Bishi on 29 September 1937, “because of the Red Army and our coop­ eration with Yan Xishan. Due to the combination of these two forces, there will be guerrilla warfare involving several millions of people. We should ad­ vance in this direction to wage guerrilla war all over Shanxi, . . . and set up our base areas throughout the province.”3 Mao’s judgement of Shanxi’s spe­ cial circumstances was astute, though he failed to mention another specific feature. Many intellectuals from all over North China (the Beijing-Tianjin area in particular) were also gathering in Shanxi. Since the end of the war, a common theme in the historiography of wartime North China has been that the CCP mobilized peasants to create base areas behind the enemy lines in order to resist Japanese aggression. Discourse along these lines seems to ignore and downplay the role of intel­ lectuals and local elites in the process of base area building. The making of the Jin Sui Base Area was definitely not the sole responsibility of the CCP. In­ stead, it was a joint project of Communists, members of the Nationalist Party, local elites, and intellectuals, as well as the peasantry. A genuine coalition government was established during the early stages of the war that involved Communists, patriotic intellectuals, and local elites in Jin Sui. The emergence of a coalition in the face of a common enemy was really no surprise. Yan Xishan was desperate to make use of the CCP and its mass organizations to keep the Japanese and Chiang Kai-shek out of Shanxi.

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Taiyuan had become a gathering point for patriotic intellectuals who had es­ caped from Northeast China and the Beiping-Tianjin area.4 For their part the Communists were extremely weak at the outbreak of the full-scale War of Resistance to Japan in 1937. At least for the first two years, the Jin Sui Base Area was dominated by local anti-Japanese organizations in which the CCP played only a part, if not a small part. Yan Xishan, known as “the local emperor of Shanxi,” was a warlord who had ruled Shanxi since the 1911 Revolution.5With the march of the Japanese troops toward North China, Yan Xishan’s dream of keeping Shanxi as his “indepen­ dent kingdom” was shattered in late 1936. Shanxi was threatened by the Japanese invaders, and Yan Xishan faced, in addition, the penetration of his do­ main by both Chiang Kai-shek and the Communists in the name of resistance to Japan. Before and at the beginning of full-scale war between China and Japan in July 1937, Yan feared the Japanese and Chiang Kai-shek more than the Communists, who he thought presented the weakest challenge of the three. A cunning warlordrwho had successfully dealt with various political and military rivals and had maintained his rule over Shanxi for more than two decades, Yan had long adopted a philosophy of rule based on pragmatic lo­ calism. In order to safeguard “his” Shanxi, he was always ready to make a deal with any enerrfy. As the crisis of his rule in Shanxi deepened under ex­ ternal threats, he tried to recruit as many Shanxi natives, particularly the young and able, to his staff, regardless of their political background. The of­ ficial slogan coined by Yan at this time was “resistance against the enemy and defense of the soil,” which could be explained as fighting against any enemy to defend the territory of Shanxi Province, instead of talking about “saving China” by fighting the Japanese. Yan began to regard the Japanese as his major enemy in or around November 1936, w hen his troops fought a major battle with the Japanese in­ vaders in East Suiyuan, a battle that made him and his general, Fu Zuoyi, na­ tional heroes at the time. Yan Xishan had actually formed an alliance with the CCP against Japan before the Xian Incident in December 1936 and was part of the pressure that compelled Chiang Kai-shek to do the same nationally. By October 1936, agreement had been reached between Taiyuan and the CCP through secret negotiations between Liang Huazhi as the representative of Yan Xishan and Peng Xiefeng as the representative of the CCP. As a result, Yan Xishan would lift the ban on Communist activities, and a secret office of the CCP would be set up in Taiyuan.6

THE SACRIFICE LEAGUE

In the hope of mobilizing the population behind his efforts against Japan and “controlling the masses,” Yan Xishan encouraged the establishment of a

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number of patriotic mass organizations. These included the Yonth League for National Salvation, the Society of People’s Supervision over Government, the Fellowship of Self-strengthening and National Salvation, and the League for the Promotion of Justice.7 The most important organization of this sort, how­ ever, was the Sacrifice League—the “Shanxi Sacrifice League for National Salvation” CShanxi xisbeng jiuguo tongmenghui, or Xim enghui). It was es­ tablished in Taiyuan on 18 September 1936, the fifth anniversary of the Mukden Incident (of 1931), with Yan Xishan as chairman.8 It is reported that there were over 10,000 participants at the inaugural meeting on 18 October, all of whom were “excited and indignant.”9 Furthermore, Yan Xishan invited a great number of Communists and left-wing intellectuals—including Bo Yibo, Zhang Youyu, Xing Xiping, Wen Jiangong, Song Shaowen, Rong Wusheng (later better known as Rong Zihe), Zhang Junxuan, Liu Daifeng, Liu Yuheng, Du Renzhi, Zhang Wen’ang, and Niu Peizong—to help him pre­ pare Shanxi for a war against Japanese invasion. Soon after the founding of the Sacrifice League, Yan Xishan even put Bo Yibo, a Shanxi native as well as a member of the CCP, in charge of its daily affairs. Bo’s appointment was a good example of Yan’s localism. Bo joined the CCP in 1925, when he was a student at Shanxi Normal School, and later be­ came a member of the CCP Shanxi Province Provisional Committee. He was arrested by the Nationalist Party government in 1931 and only released from prison in Beiping in August 1936. Several days before his release Yan Xishan sent Guo Yingyi, a high-ranking official in the Shanxi government, and an ex-Communist (and also Bo’s sometime classmate) to see Bo in prison and invite him to work for Yan Xishan back home in Shanxi. Bo Yibo was back in Taiyuan by October 1936, having accepted Yan’s offer to become the of­ ficial in charge of the day-to-day business of the Sacrifice League. Bo Yibo in his turn was able to recommend many Shanxi native Communists to leading positions in the Sacrifice League, some of them newly sent by the CCP back to Shanxi from other provinces. By early 1937, six out of seven members of the standing committee of the league were members of the CCP, although by a large margin members of the league’s leadership at other levels were not Communists.10 Within the Sacrifice League a variety of committees were set up for differ­ ent functions. These included the Organizational Training Committee, the Propaganda Training Committee, the Taiyuan Municipal Committee, the Working Committee for Workers, the Working Committee for Students, the Vanguard Troops of Anti-Japanese National Salvation, the Special Training Regiment, and a General Affairs Office. In addition, in conjunction with other authorities, the Sacrifice League set up military training courses, a civilian cadre’s training regiment, an officer’s training regiment, an assistant village administrator’s training course, and a special instructor’s training course.11 The aims, as expressed in the slogans put forward by Yan Xishan and

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adopted by the Sacrifice League, were “to arouse, organize, train, and arm the masses in the War of Resistance to Japan.” Targets were set to organize 1 million people, arm 300,000, and train qualified officers for those 300,000 armed forces, all before the Japanese attacked Shanxi.12 At the beginning the Sacrifice League focused on mobilizing students, workers, officials, and soldiers in the cities. However, its leaders very soon found the strategy inadequate and turned their attention to the mobilization of peasants in the countryside. The first step was to train personnel for that purpose. In December 1936, the league began to select and train hundreds of “assistant village administrators” and sent them to the countryside. Ac­ cording to one report, all were “intellectuals” of some kind: high school stu­ dents and graduates; primary school teachers and senior primary school graduates; unemployed college and high school graduates.13 After the outbreak of full-scale war in July 1937, the priority of the Sacrifice League shifted to oiganize armed forces. Yan Xishan had long been worrying about the combat capacity of his troops and had for some time intended to es­ tablish a new army. This idea was first put into practice by the Sacrifice League, which set up ten officer’s training regiments throughout Shanxi in April 1937, with around 20,000 trainees.14 With the outbreak of the war in July 1937, these trainees were not seift, as the original plan had intended, to oiganize militia at village level. Instead, they were oiganized into the “Shanxi Youth Dare-to-Die Corps of Resistance against the Enemy,” which was formally established in August 1937. At the beginning, most members of the Dare-to-Die Corps were young “intellectuals,” particularly college and high school students. By November 1937, w hen Taiyuan fell to the Japanese, four columns of the Dare-to-Die Corps had been set up, with more than 5,000 members.15 The organizational system of the Dare-to-Die Corps followed the example of the National Revolutionary Army established during the period of the first united front of the CCP and the Nationalist Party in the 1920s, with po­ litical commissars and instructors appointed in parallel to military com­ manders, although the political commissars and instructors were from the Sacrifice League rather than (as earlier) the CCP. For Yan Xishan, these were the “new ” troops on which he would rely to defend his Shanxi. For the CCP, this was an opportunity to organize armed forces under their control. It is thus no real surprise that fighting over the leadership of the New Army—as the Dare-to-Die Corps later became known—was intense right from its beginning.

GENERAL MOBILIZATION COMMITTEES

Another key anti-Japanese organization to emerge in Shanxi at the time was the General Mobilization Committee for the Second War Zone. It was estab-

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lished in Taiyuan on 20 September 1937, less than two months before the Japanese took the city. The General Mobilization Committee and its more local General Mobilization Committees had a broader social base than the Sacrifice League, recruiting representatives from a whole range of political parties, mass organizations, governmental agencies, troops, and prominent local personages.16 Its director was Xu Fanting, a Shanxi native, a senior member of the Nationalist Party, and a well-known patriotic general, who had a good reputation among the provincial gentry.17 The most important task for the General Mobilization Committee was to mobilize the masses, or­ ganize guerrillas, and set up anti-Japanese base areas in North Shanxi. Xu’s leadership encouraged large numbers of patriotic gentry to participate in the resistance movement. The General Mobilization Committee—like the Sacrifice League—also established local committees down to the village level to mobilize the population and organize the local militia. Local officials were under orders from Yan Xishan’s regime to obey both the Sacrifice League and the General Mobilization Committee. The establishment of the Sacrifice League, the Dare-to-Die Corps, the General Mobilization Committee, and other anti-Japanese organizations provided an excellent opportunity for intellectuals, young intellectuals in particular, to contribute to the cause of national salvation. The CCP cer­ tainly manipulated the mass organizations to its advantage during the course of the war. However, it had not provided the leadership for these organizations from the very beginning. Whereas the Sacrifice League had recruited more than 600,000 members by the end of 1936, there were only 1,200 CCP members under the leadership of the CCP Shanxi Provincial Committee before the outbreak of the War of Resistance to Japan.18 In the Northwest Shanxi Base Area, the membership of the CCP was only 700 at the end of 1937.19 While many officials of the Sacrifice League and other mass organizations were later claimed as members of the CCP, it might well be the case that they had not been members from the beginning but joined only later during the war and only retrospectively regarded as Communist organized. According to Chen Yun, most of the CCP cadres at county and district levels in Communist North China during wartime had originally been students taking part in the resistance movement in 1936 and 1937.20 Until the alliance between the CCP and Yan Xishan broke down, mobiliza­ tion of the masses and the establishment of the base area governments in Jin Sui were organized by and through the organizational channels of the Sacrifice League and the General Mobilization Committee rather than the CCP. As al­ ready mentioned, both the Sacrifice League and the General Mobilization Committee had their own armed forces and established their own branch or­ ganizations down to the village level. By the end of 1939, the Dare-to-Die Corps organized by the Sacrifice League had expanded to fifty regiments, with a total of more than 60,000 soldiers. The General Mobilization Committee had

The Making o f the Jin Sui Base Area

l6 l

organized eight guerrilla brigades grouped as the First Provisional Division under the leadership of Xu Fanting. Troops of the General Mobilization Committee and the Third Column of the Dare-to-Die Corps were stationed in the Northwest Shanxi Base Area. In comparison, the 358th Brigade of the 120th Division—the long-standing unit of the Eighth Route Army in the area—was fairly small in number. At the same time, government officials in Jin Sui were mostly Sacrifice League members appointed by Yan Xishan, and almost all important decisions in the base area during that period (1937-1940) regarding administration and other policy issues were made by and publicized through the channels of the General Mobilization Committee, the local Commissioner’s Administra­ tive Office, and the local Public Security Headquarters, none of which was under direct CCP control. For the CCP, there were obvious immediate advantages to working through the Sacrifice League, the General Mobilization Committee, and other united front organizations in mobilizing the masses, organizing armed forces, establishing anti-Japanese local governments, and carrying out social reforms. In the environment in which the CCP was still very weak and not particularly favored by the public, this kind of arrangement helped appeal to patriotic intellectuals who were still skeptical of the Communist movement, allay the fears of the local population, and neutralize or silence any anti­ communist forces. In the early stages of the Jin Sui Base Area, where the troops of Yan Xishan and the Nationalist Party overwhelmingly outnum­ bered those of the CCP, it was not possible for the latter to act independently. In his report to the CCP Central Committee in March 1943, Liu Shaoqi ac­ knowledged that it had been the cooperation with these “new factions” and organizations in Shanxi that enabled the anti-Japanese base areas to be es­ tablished and develop so effectively.21 Furthermore, the Sacrifice League and the General Mobilization Commit­ tee protected the CCP and its army from direct attack by the troops of Yan Xishan, especially in the winter of 1939, when he attempted to regain con­ trol of the territory in Shanxi not occupied by the Japanese. The conflict be­ tween Yan Xishan and the CCP in Shanxi was fought out by the troops of Yan Xishan’s “old” army and largely those of the New Army (the Dare-to-Die Corps of the Sacrifice League). Clearly, the role played by the Sacrifice League and the General Mobilization Committee had a cushioning effect that diminished the potential damage to the CCP forces. The position of the CCP troops in Northwest Shanxi in December 1939 was so weak that Yan could expect a quick, easy victory through his loyal local troops. At the time there were only two regiments of the Eighth Route Army left in the Northwest Shanxi Base Area, operating in alliance with the First Provisional Division of the General Mobilization Committee led by Xu Fanting, and three brigades of the New Army, with all three brigade com-

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manders loyal to Yan Xishan. Yan Xishan’s troops and the Nationalist Party troops in the area included two complete armies, one independent division, and four independent regiments, with their commanders holding concurrent positions as administrative commissioners and county magistrates.22 Surpris­ ingly, members of the Sacrifice League and a small number of CCP members in the New Army settled the matter by simply taking preemptive measures to arrest two of the brigade commanders (the third escaped), one regiment commander, and several other officers loyal to Yan Xishan on 13 December 1939, on the excuse of supporting Yan Xishan’s earlier exhortation to punish “traitors.”23 The most senior officers of the New Army might have been from Yan’s “old” army, but its political commissars, junior officers, and many of its soldiers were recruited from members of the pro-Communist Sacrifice League and an increasingly pro-Communist peasantry. After the outbreak of open conflict between Yan Xishan and the CCP in December 1939, most members of the Sacrifice League and the General Mobilization Committee went over to the CCP. With the disappearance of the middle ground, most of the enlightened gentry and many patriotic in­ tellectuals in Shanxi, disillusioned by the corruption of the Nationalist Party government regime and its incompetence in resistance to Japan, came to side with the CCP, on which they now placed their hopes for saving China. It is safe to conclude that the alliance with the “new faction” in Shanxi pro­ vided a perfect transitional period for the CCP to establish itself in North­ west Shanxi, as indeed elsewhere in the province, and stage a comeback after its crushing defeat in 1934-1935.

PEASANT DEMOCRACY IN JIN S U I

It is easy to be cynical about the CCP’s appeal to democracy during the War of Resistance to Japan. It is obviously much more convenient to argue—as some Western historians have long done—that it was nothing but a deliberate manipulative conspiracy for the CCP to stand for dem oc­ racy in wartime, w hen the CCP itself was too w eak to seize national power by force. On the other hand, it seems equally hard to dismiss en­ tirely the sincerity of the CCP, even allowing for the special circumstances of war in which their appeal to democracy might have been couched. In both theory and practice the CCP pursued two goals in wartime—dem oc­ racy and resistance against the Japanese—with equal enthusiasm, if not with equal effort. In a speech delivered at the Yan’an Association for the Promotion of Constitutional Government on 20 February 1940, Mao Zedong had told his audience that “armed resistance to Japan, which we all support, is already being carried out, and the question now is only one of persevering with

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it. But there is something else, namely, democracy, which is not being car­ ried out. Both are of param ount importance to China today.”24 In defending the sincerity of the CCP’s quest for democracy, Liu Shaoqi solemnly declared in December 1940 that “some people say that the Com­ munist Party wants to seize political power and establish its own ‘one-party dictatorship.’ This is a malicious fabrication and calumny. In opposing the Nationalist Party’s one-party dictatorship, the Communist Party’s intention is not to establish one of its own.” In like manner, Deng Xiaoping wrote in April 1941, “In short, the concept of ‘ruling the country by the party,’ a result of the pernicious influence of the Nationalist Party, could most effectively lull the Party into complacency, de­ base and destroy it, and separate it from the masses. We oppose the one party dictatorship of the Nationalist Party, which is characterized by one party ruling the country.”25 It has long been maintained by many on-the-spot observers, as well as re­ searchers of later generations, that the encouragement of democracy in Com­ munist-led base areas was one of the most important factors in explaining the ways in which the CCP maximized its social support.26According to Mark Seiden, the democracy in question “does not rest on multi-party elections, parliamentary systéms, checks and balances, or other features of liberal democracy. Instead, it highlights a party-peasant bond secured through im­ provement of the material conditions of impoverished villagers as precondi­ tion for a democratic polity.”27 As indicated by the available sources, that was exactly what happened in the Jin Sui Base Area during the war, with the implementation of policies to reduce rent, abolish exorbitant levies, cancel interest on loans, and reallocate “wasteland”; to upgrade the education levels of the population; to promote cooperation in production and commercial activities; and to elect govern­ ments at the village level and beyond. There was also the implementation of tax reform to shift the burden of tax to the better-off sections of the popula­ tion. All of these measures worked to undermine the power of the rich, em­ power the poor, and revolutionize the existing social structure. Although the CCP in wartime refrained from openly redistributing the land, other socioeconomic reforms aimed at improving the livelihood of the rural masses were carried out, including tax reform, reduction of rent and in­ terest, and the cooperative movement. One of the most important tax re­ forms was the introduction of what is known as the “reasonable responsibil­ ity,” or “reasonable burden,” introduced at the beginning of the war. The reasonable burden shifted tax and levies to relatively prosperous households so that, in the words of a contemporary slogan, “those with money con­ tribute money, and those with strength contribute strength.” The normal practice in Jin Sui was that a committee consisting of members from the village branch of the General Mobilization Committee, the village

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branch of the Sacrifice League, and the village branch of the Peasant Association for National Salvation would meet together with the village admin­ istrator to assess the property and income of every household in the village and then impose levies according to the financial condition of each family. As a re­ sult, most of the poor families were in effect exempt from tax payment. Not until 1 9 4 3 , when independent owner-cultivators had become an overwhelming majority in the countryside, was the “reasonable burden” (a property tax) re­ placed by the “unified progressive tax” (an income tax), which, it is claimed, taxed 80 percent of the population.28 The reduction of rent and interest was a common economic program advo­ cated by all anti-Japanese groups in Shanxi. According to the Regulations Regarding Reduction o f Rent and Interest issued by the Northwest Shanxi Ad­ ministrative Office formally on 20 April 1940, annual rent had to be limited to 25 percent of land value (previously it had been as high as 40-70 percent) and annual interest to 15 percent (previously often over 30 percent).29Of course this policy was thoroughly carried out only in areas of military and political stabil­ ity, and the time and the rate of reduction varied from one location to another. CCP redistribution of land only applied to “the land of traitors” and “wasteland,” though it did include land abandoned by absentee landlords during the war. All the same, as elsewhere in North China during the War of Resistance, the com­ bination of tax reform, rent reduction, and land reallocation brought funda­ mental change in property relations in Jin Sui. The general trend was that the proportion of middle peasants (independerit owner-cultivators) increased, while the proportions of all other social categories—landlords, rich peasants, poor peasants, and hired laborers—decreased.30 In terms of the cooperative movement in Jin Sui, the most striking achievement was the organization of the labor exchange groups, which suited wartime agricultural production and transformed the working rela­ tions in rural communities through intensive cooperation among villagers. Mutual aid in the form of labor exchange had long been practiced by peas­ ants in North China. Whereas labor exchange in the past had only involved households with close kinship relations during busy seasons, such as plant­ ing and harvesting, labor exchange groups organized in wartime embraced peasant households without kinship and covered a whole range of agricul­ tural and military activities, more often than not coordinated by local gov­ ernment or the various mass organizations. In other words, earlier labor ex­ change activities had been temporary and based on particularism, but the new labor exchange groups formed year-round cooperation beyond kinship and friendship, catering to the needs of intensive cooperation for common survival and economic betterment in the wartime environment. The first labor exchange group of the new type in Jin Sui was set up by Zhang Chuyuan, a cadre of the Peasant Association at Xintunbao Village, Ningwu County, in spring 1941. At Zhang’s initiative, sixty-three households of the vil-

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läge organized thirteen labor exchange groups, with each household choosing its own partners according to its needs. In die beginning, arrangements were made for fellow villagers to cultivate the land of those households whose mem­ bers had joined the militia to fight the Japanese. Because the constant raids by the Japanese troops meant some villagers had to be frequently released from their farmwork to take on military duties, labor exchange became routine. Eventually, the exchange covered tools, draft animals, different sorts of farmwork, and other production activities. Villagers worked out through detailed discussions the exchange rate between labor, tools, and draft animals, as well as between different sorts of labor, such as plowing, sowing, weeding, harvest­ ing, threshing grain, sentry duty, patrolling, making land mines, making military shoes, spinning, and weaving. Although labor exchange was on some occa­ sions coordinated at the level of the administrative village, usually it did not ex­ tend beyond the limits of the natural village. In the case of Xintunbao Village, comprehensive labor exchange in 1943 resulted in a village yield of grain seven to eight sheng higher"than in neighbor villages, with no piece of land lying in waste and not a single ox being taken by the Japanese.31 Cooperation was not confined to the process of labor exchange. With the help of local governments and mass organizations, a variety of elementary co­ operatives were setü p by villagers throughout Jin Sui, such as transport coop­ eratives, wasteland reclamation cooperatives, sheep and cattle shepherding co­ operatives, spinning and weaving cooperatives, armament-producing cooperatives, and consumer cooperatives.32 Some villagers even set up com­ prehensive cooperatives covering both production and commercial activities. For example, Wei Jian’ao from Weijiatan Village in Xing County was joined by villagers from his village and the surrounding villages to run a shareholding co­ operative, which started with fifty-six members. It centered around a textile fac­ tory and engaged in a whole range of commercial activities, marketing its own products and purchasing salt, edible oil, and other daily necessities for its mem­ bers at lower prices. It also provided assistance, including food and clothes, to its members hidden in the mountains during the period of Japanese attack. Its membership increased to 557 within two years.33 It was not a small social change for a traditionally solitary villager to work collectively, giving play to the comparative advantage of each household and achieving what could not be achieved by individual peasants. In the meantime, a spirit of collectivism con­ ducive to political participation and democracy was cultivated in the process of developing the cooperative movement.

MILITIA BUILDING AND EDUCATIONAL REFORM

Recruitment of villagers into the armed forces was also an important way to empower the poor in the countryside. It was of course not new in Chinese

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history that peasants in troubled times should rebel in fighting rulers or join rulers in fighting invaders. Thus it was hardly surprising that the CCP should attempt to arm the peasants and “turn the whole nation into soldiers” in the War of Resistance to Japan. Yan Xishan had himself begun arming the peas­ antry before the CCP came to Shanxi in large numbers, realizing that it was necessary to mobilize the entire population in order to resist the Japanese in­ vasion. Great efforts were made by the Sacrifice League and other organiza­ tions to organize anti-Japanese guerrilla forces. On the other hand, unlike the CCP and those left-wing intellectuals who were dreaming of a revolution, Yan, his officials, and army officers were somewhat reluctant about organiz­ ing and arming the peasantry for fear of unleashing a revolutionary force.34 There were four levels of armed forces for peasants to join in Jin Sui. There were anti-Japanese self-defense corps; the militia, including local guerrilla and hard-core guerrilla groups; regular troops, such as the Eighth Route Army and the Central Nationalist Party Army; and the Jin Sui Army—both “new” and “old”—organized under Yan Xishan. The reputations of Yan Xishan’s old army and the Central Nationalist Party Army had become so tarnished that most patriotic intellectuals and peasants preferred to join the Eighth Route Army or the armed forces organized by the Sacrifice League and the General Mobilization Committee. In the first year of the war, 70,000 peasants from ten counties, including Xingxian, Jingle, Lanxian, Kelan, Wuzai, Shenchi, and Shuoxian in Northwest Shanxi, joined the regular troops of the Eighth Route Army or the Dare-toDie Corps. From these same counties 190,000 peasants had also joined the local guerrilla forces by 1942.35 By November 1940, w hen the Northwest Shanxi Military Region was established, the members of the self-defense corps and hard-core guerrilla groups had reached 98,000 and 2,500 respec­ tively.36 More to the point, once a peasant became a member of the antiJapanese armed forces, he secured protection and favor from the base area regime, including not only material benefits such as tax exemption, assis­ tance in cultivation, free schooling for dependents, and additional relief measures for dependent families, but also the extremely valuable enhance­ ment of social and political status. Educational reform also played a significant role in the democratization process. According to a survey of twenty-four counties of the Jin Sui Base Area in 1942, there were 1,520 primary schools, 26 of them operating on a regular basis, with about 63,400 students, and three high schools with about 1,000 students. In addition, there were many new forms of school designed for the part-time education of peasants and workers, including night schools, winter schools, and literacy groups. Education was free. There was not even a charge for textbooks.37 In most cases ‘“education” in Jin Sui might have meant little more than spreading literacy. However, as claimed contempora­ neously by the base area regime, education in Jin Sui became “an integral part

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of the war, production, and social and family life, catering to the basic needs of anti-Japanese war, everyday life of the people, and a democratic polity.”38

DEMOCRATIC PRACTICES

In addition to socioeconomic reform in Jin Sui, which provided villagers with the foundations for a democratic polity, some distinctive features of liberal democracy, such as the protection of human rights and the introduction of competitive elections, were also introduced. Democratic elections in Jin Sui began with the election of cadres for the Peasant National Salvation Associ­ ation in 1937. A writer on the spot vividly described the process of election and concluded that “peasants are good at the democratic movement. Actu­ ally they are bom democrats.”39 According to him, “the Peasant Association leadership at every level is formed through election, and it is required that a new leadership should be elected every year or every half year. The mem­ bers of the Association at lower levels have the right to demand the removal of the responsible persons whose conduct falls short in meeting the needs and interest of the masses.”40 To a certain degree the government of the Jin Sui Base Area was a “dem­ ocratic government” from the top to the bottom level. At the village level, the old neighborhood organizations were abolished in late 1937 and were re­ placed by the Villagers Representative Assembly as the highest authority and the Village Office as the local executive body. From the very beginning vil­ lage representatives and the village head were directly elected by villagers, and all candidates were well-known to the voters. Villagers were very en­ thusiastic about the election: in fourteen counties in Jin Sui more than 80 per­ cent of the eligible voters took part in the village election.41 Many important issues—the provision of public grain or the selection of candidates for the armed forces—were settled by detailed discussion at meetings of villagers.42 At the higher levels of the government, pow er was shared by the CCP and its united front allies. After a year’s preparation, the Jin Sui Border Re­ gion Provisional Council held its first meeting in October 1942. All coun­ cilors were elected by their constituencies, except for those from Japaneseoccupied areas, where election was impossible. The formation of the council followed strictly the principles of the “three-thirds system.” Among 143 members, only 47 were members of the CCP, less than one-third of the total. It was a well-balanced council with all major groups represented, in­ cluding the CCP, the Nationalist Party, landlords and the gentry, peasants, workers, businesspeople, students, soldiers, intellectuals, and women. Non-Communist Xu Fanting was elected to the highest executive position, director of the Jin Sui Administrative Office, in which CCP members also constituted less than one-third of the total staff.43

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“The Regulations for the Protection of Human Rights” passed by the first meeting of the Jin Sui Border Region Provisional Council stated that all citizens enjoyed broad freedom of person, action, residence, speech, publication, as­ sembly, association, political and religious belief. They had the right to engage in economic and commercial activities and to acquire lawful property.44As con­ crete measures to prevent the abuse of human rights, arrest without summons from a court was banned, and the jury system, new in local history, was cre­ ated.45 To fully enjoy the freedom of association available in the base area, a whole range of mass and professional organizations, such as the Peasants’AntiJapanese National Salvation Association, the Workers’ Anti-Japanese National Salvation Association, the Women’s Anti-Japanese National Salvation Associa­ tion, the Federation of Businesspeople, the Federation of Youth, the Student Union, and the Federation of Cultural Workers, were established throughout the region, each selecting its own candidates to compete for governmental po­ sitions during elections.46 At the same time, the protection of human rights was by no means univer­ sally applied. One common practice in Jin Sui was to arrest or even kill “trai­ tors” without a trial. For example, at “a public meeting to denounce and elimi­ nate traitors” in Haizibian several accused traitors were tied up and dragged to the platform, where the crowd beat them with sticks, stones, and whips, shout­ ing “beat the traitors to death.” The chairman of the meeting tried to stop the crowd when he realized the victims were almost dead, but the crowd contin­ ued to beat them, shouting “why are we not allowed to kill the traitors? Those who sympathize with traitors are traitors themselves.” In the end the organizers of the meeting had to take away the accused traitors in a motor vehicle.47 Dur­ ing the cooperative movement those who were categorized as “idlers” would not be granted a permit to leave the village and would be brought to public meetings for denunciation.48 Another common practice related to the recruit­ ment of “cannon fodder.” For instance, an internal report in Jingxian on re­ cruitment to the Eighth Route Army revealed that “at the beginning not a small number of peasants were recruited on a voluntary basis. However, on the last several occasions, most were recruited by coercion.”49 On balance, the democratic features of politics in the Jin Sui Base Area could at best be defined as a “peasant democracy” in the sense that its un­ derlying philosophy was not liberalism but benevolent despotism: a shared belief of peasants who valued the provision of service or material interests much more highly than any institutional guarantees of political freedom or civil rights.50 Personal liberty and the rule of law never acquired supremacy in the base area’s politics, whereas demands for personal sacrifice and the punishment of anyone who was not favored by the regime or some of its functionaries could always be easily justified in the name of the CCP, the na­ tion, and the revolution. While the government might be formed through election, elections were rigidly controlled by the CCP, and the highest power

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never rested with the elected government, which was always subordinated to the CCP and its army. Furthermore, democratic and legal procedures were always dispensable if they ran against the interests of the CCP. The CCP re­ cruited over 90 percent of its members from the peasantry, who shared the effective perspective of CCP leaders that democratic rights were bestowed as a favor by the CCP, which was entitled to revoke any such “rights” as the oc­ casion demanded. After the war, democratic practices or tendencies within the CCP were overwhelmed by party despotism. The seeds of democracy failed to develop not so much because of the CCP’s insincerity in its claim to be striving for democracy but because of its misunderstanding of democracy. When Mao Zedong talked about the “paramount importance” of democracy, he firmly rejected “the old, outmoded, European-American type of so-called democ­ racy, which is bourgeois bourgeoisie dictatorship.” Instead, Mao and his fol­ lowers wanted to move to a higher stage of democracy, namely “new democracy” at first and ultimately “the Soviet type of democracy, which is the dictatorship of the proletariat.”51 Chen Duxiu, earlier the leader of the May Fourth New Culture Movement and the secretary-general of the CCP for its first seven years, during the war analyzed the misfortune of democracy in China: since there ■fóas no such thing as “proletarian democracy” as opposed to “bourgeois democracy” in terms of their basic content, rejection of the ex­ isting bourgeois democracy could only lead to a Stalinist style of ruthless bu­ reaucratic dictatorship.52

CONCLUSION

The CCP contributed greatly to and benefited enormously from the his­ torical moment of Chinese national solidarity in the War of Resistance to Japan. In the early stages of the war, the CCP had been in a fairly desper­ ate situation. If it was not exactly on the edge of extinction, it was also nevertheless not short of political wisdom in capitalizing on the patriotism of all social strata and expanding its territory as well as its power base. A “democratic governm ent” pursued by the CCP in that period was benefi­ cial to both the CCP itself and its allies, w ho made no less effort than the CCP in building base areas behind the Japanese lines. Viewed from this perspective, the creation of a one-party dictatorship by the CCP, or even later the “people’s democratic dictatorship,” as misleadingly described by the Party itself, was an unfortunate outcome of the war and the revolution. Although the democratizing potential within the Chinese Communist movement during wartime failed to materialize in later political develop­ ments, the CCP has nonetheless never been able to eliminate its intrinsic democratic values and impulses.

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NOTES 1. Jin Sui B ianqu K angzhan Yu Jianshe G aikuang (A brief account o f the War of Resistance and construction in the Jin Sui Border Region), 1943, p. 1. 2. Party History Research Centre, CCP Shanxi Provincial Committee, Jin Sui Geming G enjudi D ashiji (A chronicle o f the Jin Sui Revolutionary Base Area) (Shanxi: Renmin chubanshe, 1989), p. 403. 3. Party History Research Centre, CCP Shanxi Provincial Committee, Zhongguo G ongchandang Shanxi Lishi D ashi Jishu, 1 9 1 9 -1 9 4 9 (A chronicle o f the history o f the CCP in Shanxi, 1919-1949) (Zhonggong: Dangshi chubanshe, 1993), pp. 187-188. 4. For example, the military and political cadres training course and the civilian cadres training course, including a special class for female students, set up in Taiyuan in late 1936, recruited several thousand college and high school students coming to the city from other provinces. See Wang Shengfu and Ren Huiyuan, Xim enghui shi (A history o f the Sacrifice League for National Salvation) (Shanxi: Renmin chubanshe, 1987), p. 138. 5. For details o f Yan’s career in Shanxi, see Donald G. Gillin, Warlord: Yen Hsi-shan in Shanxi Province, 19 1 1 -1 9 4 9 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967). 6. Zhongguo Gongchandang Shanxi Lishi D ashi Jishu, 1 9 1 9 -1 9 4 9 ; p. 157. 7. Historical Accounts Compilation Committee for Shanxi Provincial People’s Politi­ cal Consultative Conference, Yan Xishan Tongzhi Shanxi Shishi (A history o f the rule of Yan Xishan in Shanxi) (Shanxi: Renmin chubanshe, 1981), p. 195. 8. The exact date on which the Sacrifice League w as established is controver­ sial. The preparatory committee o f the league met on 18 September and decided to hold the inaugural m eeting on 18 October. But the program and the constitu­ tion released to the media by the preparatory committee w ere not approved by Yan Xishan. Therefore, the 18 October m eeting w as rescheduled as a promotional activity, and the inaugural m eeting w as never held. Later, the organizers o f the league determined that 18 September 1936 represented the date o f its beginning. See Wang and Ren, X im enghui shi, pp. 37-47. 9. 19 October 1936, Taiyuan Ribao (Taiyuan Daily). 10. Wang and Ren, Xim enghui shi, p. 87. 11. Ibid., pp. 87-96. 12. Ibid., pp. 95-111. 13. Ibid. p. 113. 14. Ibid. pp. 126-130. 15. The Dare-to-Die Corps was also known as the New Army, as distinguished from the “old” army previously developed by Yan Xishan. 16. Zhongguo Gongchandang Shanxi Lishi D ashi Jishu, 1 9 1 9 -1 9 4 9 ; p. 182. 17. For a brief account o f the career o f Xu Fanting, see Tian Weiben, “Xu Fanting,” in Minguo Renwu Zhuan (Personages in the republican period o f China), ed. Li Xin and Sun Sibai (Zhonghua Shuju, 1980), 2:83-90. 18. Zhongguo Gongchandang Shanxi Lishi Jianjie, p. 16. Party members in the Eighth Route Army and central Party organs in Shanxi did not register with the local Party organization.

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19. Jin Sui Geming G enjudi D ashiji (A chronicle o f the Jin Sui Base Area) (Shanxi: Renmin chubanshe, 1989), p. 20. 20. Chen Yun, “Guanyu ganbu duiwu jianshe de ruogan wenti” (Questions re­ garding the building o f cadre ranks), in Chen Yu Wenxuan, 1 9 2 6 -1 9 4 9 (Selected works o f Chen Yun, 1926-1949) (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1984), p. 113. 21. Liu Shaoqi, “Guanyu huabei he huazhong liu nian lai gongzhuo jingyan de baogao” (Report on the work experience in North and Central China in last six years), in Liu Shaoqi X u an ji (Selected works o f Liu Shaoqi) (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe,

1981), 1:262. 22. Wang and Ren, X im enghui shi, pp. 667-668. 23. Ibid., pp. 672-677. 24. Mao Zedong, “New-Democratic Constitutional Government,” in Selected Works o f M ao Tse-Tung (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1965), 2:407. 25. Deng Xiaoping, “Dang yu kangri minzhu zhengquan” (The anti-Japanese dem­ ocratic government and the Party), in Deng Xiaoping Wenxuan, 1 9 3 8 -1 9 6 5 (Selected works o f Deng Xiaoping, 1938-1965) (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1989), p. 12. 26. For an overview , see Mark Seiden, China in Revolution: The Yenan Way R evisited (Armonk, N.Y^: M. E. Sharpe, 1995), pp. 222-258. 27. Ibid., p. 227. 28. Jin Sui B ianqu K angzh an y u Jianshe G aikuang, p. 22. 29. Ibid., p. 21; Tian Youru, Zhongguo Kangri G enjudi Fazhan Shi (A history of anti-Japanese base areas in China) (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1995), p. 428. 30. Li Weishen, “Norigmin zai jiefang zhong: Jiefang qu nongcun jieji guanxi de bianhua” (Peasants in liberation: Changing class relations in the liberated areas), Q unzhong (The Masses) 10, no. 19 (1943). 31. “Zhang Chuyuan’s Talk about Production Plans at a Model Workers Confer­ en ce,” K angzhan Shibao (Resistance War Times), 13 January 1944. 32. Jin Sui B ianqu K angzhan y u Jianshe Gaikuang, p. 30. 33. “Wei Jian’ao: A First-Class Cooperative Hero,” H angzhan Ribao, 10 January 1945. 34. Gillin, Warlord, pp. 250-251. 35. Party History Research Centre, CCP Shanxi Provincial Committee,//« Sui Geming Genjudi Dashiji (A chronicle o f the Jin Sui Revolutionary Base Area) (Shanxi: Renmin chubanshe, 1989), p. 210. 36. Committee for Compilation o f Local History in Shanxi Province, Shanxi Minbing Douzheng Shi (A history o f the Shanxi militia), 1985, p. 13. 37. Jin Sui B ianqu K an gzh an y u Jianshe Gaikuang, p. 16. 38. Ibid. 39. Zhang Junyuan, “From the Peasant Association to the Peasant National Salvation Association, to the Northwest Shanxi Peasant National Salvation Federation, 1939,” in Z handi Zong D ongyuan (Battlefield general mobilization) (Taiyuan: Shanxi renmin chubanshe, 1986), 1:125. 40. Ibid., p. 126. 41. Jin Sui B ianqu K an gzh an Yu Jianshe Gaikuang, p. 12. While the rate o f par­ ticipation in elections was high, the line betw een voluntary and forced participation w as not always clear. The same writer w ho extolled the democratic outlook o f the peasants also complained that it took about one month o f hard work for the work team at Mamaozhuang Village, Lishi County, to get twenty peasants and accommo-

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date them in a broken house. The work team wanted to train them as core members o f the peasant association in the village. “When the work team walked into the house for the first meeting, the peasants folded their hands and made deep bow s, without the courage to raise their heads.” Zhang Junyuan, “From the Peasant Association to the Peasant Association o f National Salvation to the Northwest Peasant Federation,” in Z handi Zong D ongyuan (Battlefield general mobilization), 1:66-67. 42. Jin Sui B ianqu K angzhan Yu Jianshe G aikuang, pp. 19-20. 43. Ibid., pp. 11-12. 44. Ibid., p. 19. 45. Ibid., pp. 17-18. 46. Ibid., p. 20. 47. Xian Chongzhen, “Our Job in Eliminating Traitors,” 1939, in Z b a n d i Zong Dongyuan (Battlefield general mobilization) (Taiyuan: Shanxi renmin chubanshe, 1986), 1:336. 48. K angzhan Ribao (Resistance Battlefield Daily), 30 March 1944. 49. “How Did We Recruit New Soldiers?” in Z handi Zong D ongyuan, 2:799. 50. For the political belief of m odem Chinese peasants, see Feng Chongyi, Nongmin Yisbi Yu Zhongguo (Peasant consciousness and China) (Hong Kong: Chung Hwa Book Company, 1989), esp. pp. 1-25. 51. Mao Zedong, “New Democratic Constitutional Government,” in Selected Works o f M ao Tse-Tung, 2:408. 52. Chen Duxiu, “Letter to Lian Gen” and “My Basic Opinions,” in Chen D u X iu D e Z ui Hou Jianjie (The last opinions o f Chen Duxiu) (Hong Kong: Free China Press, 1949), pp. 15, 26.

7 The Survival of the Shandong Base Area, 1937-1943 E xternal I nfluences

and

I nternal C o nflicts

Elise A. DeVido The Shandong Base Area is different from the other base areas and border regions considered in this volume in a number of ways. Shandong was completely occupied by the Japanese, and there were several hundred thousand Nationalist guerrillas active in the province for at least the first six years of the war. Economically, large parts of the base area and its hinter­ land were coastal; it was generally prosperous and for the most part had commercialized agriculture. Moreover, to identify Shandong Base Area as a single entity exaggerates its organizational existence: it was extremely fragmented and existed more in the activities of its constituent guerrilla units and the subdistricts of the base area. All the same, during the War of Resistance the Shandong Base Area was a major strategic link to other base areas in the North, South, and West, and it served as a vital transportation and communication conduit for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The Shandong Base Area and its constituent subdistricts were highly contested throughout the war and were subject to serious internal organi­ zational problems. CCP success in the Shandong Base Area was extremely limited until the withdrawal of Japanese and Nationalist forces during the second half of 1943, though survival under the circumstances was quite a remarkable achievement. An initial success in establishing some military presence in the early years of the War of Resistance in three of the subdistricts was followed by four or five years of repeated setbacks, some of which were undoubtedly self-induced. In addition to depredations from Japanese and Nationalist forces, there were constant internal conflicts over leadership of the base area, as well as doubts over the appropriate strategies to be pursued locally. 173

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The base area was repeatedly rent by differences between local Shandong activists, on the one hand, and organizers and troops from Yan’an and the Eighth Route Army, on the other. This source of tension overlapped with the fairly frequent friction between the subdistricts and the CCP’s emerging provincial and county-level establishments. Nonethe­ less, the CCP did manage to achieve some of its organizational and politi­ cal goals before 1943, if only in a rudimentary way. In the process the Shandong Base Area during the late 1930s and early 1940s is as interesting for the extent to which it experienced some of the organizational patholo­ gies later associated with the development of the party-state as it is for the development of new political institutions. The internal politics of the Shandong Base Area are particularly difficult to untangle. Accusations of malpractice, corruption, political unreliability, and the like abound. While it is reasonable to assume that many of these accusa­ tions were articulated as a function of inner-party conflicts—and indeed some were even accepted as such by the CCP itself during the course of the war—it is also reasonable to assume that many of these accusations had some basis in events that took place. They may therefore be of use in point­ ing to some of the problems that the base area faced, as well as some of the ways in which CCP members and organizations responded to the circum­ stances of war. However, they are considerably less reliable as indicators of political intent and behavior during the War of Resistance. One major source of distrust within the CCP was the intense isolation of the various parts of the base area that resulted in large part from the presence of substantial Japanese and Nationalist forces and the Party’s subsequent in­ ability to establish itself politically and militarily. There was little organiza­ tional unity or indeed feeling of solidarity within the base area, and distrust was further heightened by the provincial committee’s attempts to centralize authority, especially when those involved the import of external expertise from Yan’an and the Eighth Route Army. The combination of the battle for survival and the struggle for supremacy within the base area fueled a series of long-running internecine disputes. A second major source of distrust was the socioeconomic environment in which the Shandong CCP operated. Shandong’s relative prosperity and high level of commercialization led local CCP activists not simply into in­ tense cooperation and compromise with local elites and various kinds of Chinese nationalists, but also into commercial and economic activities that attracted considerable criticism from elsewhere within the CCP and the base area, not least because they differed from the practices of other base areas in North China. National CCP policies on economic developm ent had been devised in the remote and comparatively underdeveloped envi­ ronment of Yan’an. In Shandong, CCP units frequently engaged in com­ mercial activities, sometimes possibly because it was easier than waging

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guerrilla war (as their accusers claimed) but also because that was the en­ vironment in which they needed to operate to build local alliances and to resource their own activities.

BASE AREA DEVELOPMENT

Although Shandong is both geographically and economically diverse, during the late 1930s it was generally prosperous, particularly because of its agri­ cultural production. Almost all parts of Shandong grew sorghum, millet, soy­ beans, maize, and sweet potatoes. The only exceptions were the very high­ est mountains and those areas badly flooded after the retreating Nationalist forces broke the Yellow River dikes in 1937. Where local conditions permit­ ted, vegetables, cotton, tobacco, flowers, fruit, and nuts were cultivated. In addition, there were forests and mines scattered across the region. Before the War of Resistance, commercialized agriculture had proceeded apace, greatly reducing the previously large economic differences between rural and urban areas. Urban merchants both bought up farmland, which they then paid oth­ ers to manage, and developed the retail sector in market towns.1 During the 1930s “White Terror” the Shandong CCP organization had barely survived. Without the protection of military forces it had become pre­ occupied with day-to-day survival and had been driven underground. At its nadir in 1933-1935, Party membership had dropped to only 500 activists. On the eve of war in 1937 the Shandong CCP’s membership was still under 1,000 but grew rapidly with the emergence of a confederation of five base areas by the end of 1940. It had semilegitimate status as a partner in the united front and a fairly solid presence in fifteen counties.2 On the eve of the Japanese invasion of China the CCP realized that estab­ lishing a military organization was its foremost priority in Shandong. In May 1936 the surviving underground party branches, located primarily in Jinan, Jiaodong, and western Shandong, were directed by Liu Shaoqi to join to­ gether under a single provincial committee directed by local organizer Li Yu. They organized armed militias, divided Shandong into ten military districts, and launched anti-Japanese guerrilla movements.3 The survivors from the earlier underground drew upon kinship, native-place, school, and profes­ sional networks to construct their militias and expand the party branches. When the Japanese entered Shandong in October 1937, the leading provincial Nationalist, Han Fuqu, fled into southern Shandong, having dis­ obeyed Chiang Kai-shek’s order to defend Jinan.4 With Han Fuqu gone, those remaining local garrison forces that did not disband fragmented into separate militias. The Nationalist army sent Qin Qirong to organize these as “military commission” guerrillas in fall 1937. Although these guerrilla groups were poorly organized, their 200,000-300,000 troops were certainly strong

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enough to impede CCP attempts at mass mobilization. During the first few years of the war the Nationalists were more successful in recruiting local elites and local armed forces, as well as secret societies and their members, than were the Communists. The latter were particularly handicapped by their numerical and military inferiority, as well as negative impressions left over from the prewar underground period. CCP mobilization in Shandong was a mixture of local peasant organiza­ tion and regular army units introduced from outside the province. From November 1937 to summer 1938 the Shandong CCP under Li Yu organized guerrilla militias and led anti-Japanese resistance in the Hebei-Shandong Border Area, Northwest Shandong, Jiaodong, Qinghe (in Bohai), West Taishan, Huxi (west of Weishan Hu), Central Shandong, South Shandong, and Binhai, all of which were based on surviving underground organiza­ tions from the prewar period. The Shandong resistance militias in these nine months recruited over 40,000 people, participated in 100 skirmishes, and captured a series of county seats.5 To December 1938 the CCP expanded in a fairly uncoordinated way. Cer­ tainly there were few opportunities to centralize the CCP or even attempts to coordinate that process, as the Communist movement was largely borne along by the tide of events. This began to change at the end of 1938, when the provincial and Shandong native party leadership attempted to unify the CCP organizations in the various constituent base areas. All CCP local armed forces were combined to form ten detachments of the Shandong Column of the Eighth Route Army. Two local activists from the earlier underground were appointed to its leadership: Zhang Jingwu was appointed commander and Li Yu, political commissar. Later, in the spring of 1939, under directions from Yan’an, Chen Guang and Luo Ronghuan led troops of the 113th Divi­ sion of the Eighth Route Army from the Taihang Mountains into western Shandong to provide greater military security for the CCP organization and to assist in developing base areas.6 Further centralization came on 1 August 1939, w hen the First Column of the Eighth Route Army was established in Shandong, with Xu Xiangqian as commander and Zhu Rui as political commissar. Both had previously been active in the establishment of base areas in Shanxi, Hebei, and North Henan. The First Column merged with the Shandong Column in October 1939, when Zhu Rui became secretary of the CCP’s Shandong Bureau and secretary of the Shandong Civil and Military Commission, in an attempt to unify Shandong CCP’s civil and military leadership. At this time the head­ quarters of the Shandong Base Area was in Yishui, central Shandong. There was certainly a need for concerted efforts in resisting the attacks of both Japanese and Nationalists. The former were a constant threat to CCP ac­ tivities, but the Nationalists were fairly benign in their attitudes until the end of 1939. However, from December 1939 to March 1940 the Nationalist forces

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launched an “anti-Communist high tide” designed to restrict CCP presence in Shandong. Local CCP activists responded by developing a vigorous united front strategy. At an important meeting in July-August 1940 the Shandong CCP and their united front allies established a provincial government body—the Wartime Working Committee—under Li Yu.7 By the end of 1940, the base areas, led jointly by the Shandong Bureau and the Wartime Working Committee, were re­ sponsible for a population of 12 million people and an area of 36,000 square kilometers, including county-level regimes in seventy counties scattered across the base areas of West Shandong, Central Shandong, South Shandong, Binhai, Jiaodong, Bohai, and the Hebei-Shandong border area. At the same time, the CCP had little room to maneuver. By 1941 the Japanese occupied nearly all the counties in Shandong. During 1941 and 1942 the Japanese as elsewhere undertook large-scale mopping-up and “nibbling” operations and implemented their “consolidation of public order” movement, which was designed specifically to remove all armed resistance. In the spring of 1941 the Nationalists also attacked again, launching a second “anti-Commu­ nist high tide.” The combined force of these attacks greatly damaged the Shandong Base Area and cut off the subdistricts from one another. By the end of 1942 the population of the base area had decreased from 12 million to 7.3 million people while its territory was reduced to 23,000 square kilometers. It was limited to the Yi Meng and Taishan mountain districts in central Shandong, southern Shandong, and Binhai, three areas in which the Communists had se­ cured military control at the start of the War of Resistance, that CCP rule had any degree of viability and where attempts at sociopolitical reforms such as rent and interest reduction, wage increases, and grain tax reform were possible.8

CONTESTED LEADERSHIP

From 1937 to 1943 the major concerns of the Shandong Base Area were largely organizational. The CCP was concerned almost exclusively with the development of party leadership structures; the formation of people’s mili­ tias, local self-defense corps, and guerrilla forces; the military consolidation of base areas and guerrilla districts; and the construction of united front local government organizations. Socioeconomic reform was rarely considered be­ cause the base area faced more immediate internal questions of institution building and leadership. There were conflicts over the appropriate strategies for the construction of the base area; conflicts between native Shandong ac­ tivists and outside cadres; conflicts between the provincial and county es­ tablishments of the CCP, on the one hand, and the local activists, on the other; and conflicts between civilian and military interests. Accusations of in­ appropriate political, economic, and moral behavior were fairly frequent within a leadership that was lacking in trust.

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A useful starting point for any explanation o f divisions within the leader­ ship of the Shandong Base Area is the entry of Eighth Route Army troops in 1939. Before then the expansion of CCP activities in Shandong had been left mostly to the local activists on the ground in each locality. These local ac­ tivists had organized guerrilla resistance, though as early as September 1938 they had made it very plain that more regular and conventional forces were needed to support their expansion.9 The provincial committee under Li Yu had tried to coordinate their activities, but to little avail. Despite their earlier calls for assistance from regular forces, the local activists did not respond well to the addition of Eighth Route Army troops. Paradoxically, the latter’s involvement in Shandong brought the local activists closer to the provincial and county-level establishments of the CCP in their opposition to “outsiders.” The native Shandong cadres and activists soon came to see the Eighth Route Army troops as less of a help than a hindrance. As a result of the sudden influx of regular CCP troops, the Nationalist forces felt threatened. Conflict between Communists and Nationalists escalated, leading to the first “anti-Communist high tide” at the end of 1939 and beginning of March 1940. Moreover, the inte­ gration of the main forces with the indigenous guerrilla units was far more prob­ lematic than anticipated. In Binhai and southern Shandong, the majority of cadres at the county level and above were not native. For example, 84 percent of the district party secretaries in South Shandong did not hail from the area, which impeded local organization building in two ways. First, the local people were often suspicious of outsiders. Second, the incoming cadres were often ig­ norant of, or misunderstood, local conditions.10 The attempt to create a unified command structure for the Eighth Route Army in Shandong sowed considerable discord, as did the new forces’ penetration of local society.11 Discord between the Communist forces and the wider environment continued to the end of the civil war, though the CCP took pains to implement ameliorative measures. Reflecting later on these events (in an August 1944 report), Li Yu specifi­ cally highlighted the weakness of the regular forces at the county and district levels. Li Yu was discussing these matters in his capacity as deputy political commissar of the Shandong Military District, but he had earlier been one of the main organizers of the native CCP guerrilla units. His loyalties from this earlier experience may have biased Li Yu somewhat against the main Eighth Route Army forces.12 Nonetheless, he commented on the ways in which the main forces forcibly annexed the indigenous guerrilla units on their entry to Shandong. Li described the actions of the Eighth Route Army troops toward local guerrillas in terms of “pulling up by the roots” and “liquidationism.” In his account, the troops of the Eighth Route Army ignored the imperatives of localization entirely. Instead, they concentrated their energies on developing “crack troops” who were unwilling to engage in guerrilla warfare, while the existing (and largely native) guerrilla units for their part resisted integration. Li described the county- and district-level forces in 1941 as “in a mess.” Con-

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sequently, in his view, they effectively sabotaged party policies, acted like “warlords and bandits,” and often deserted or defected. A sense of deep pes­ simism permeated the ranks of the local forces.13 Divided internally and beset by hostile external forces, the base areas at­ tempted to ensure their resource base and organizational foundations. They attempted to collect taxes systematically and at the same time launched a se­ ries of campaigns to consolidate local CCP organizations. Consolidation in this context rapidly came to mean a highly politicized campaign of terror, which resulted in CCP oiganizations purging “unreliable” individuals and those believed to be “collaborationists.” The whole movement was variously termed the “anti-Trotskyite struggle” or the “rooting out of traitors” and was to prove extremely self-destructive. The most celebrated case of “anti-Trotskyite struggle” in the Shandong Base Area occurred during August 1939 in Huxi—the area west of Weishan Lake. It reflected the tension between local activists and outsiders in the leadership of the local CCP movement. Cadres of the newly arrived Su Lu Yu detachment of the Eighth Route Army’s 115th Division and the new Huxi Border District committee launched an organizational rectification in the name of an anti-Trotskyite struggle, which led to the execution of 300 mem­ bers of the CCP drganization. According to official CCP history, in 1940 such so-called anti-Trotskyite struggles escalated into indiscriminate arrests, tor­ ture, and killing within the Shandong local party organization throughout the base area, as well as within the leadership organs of the Shandong Bureau and the Shandong Column. Several times between 1940 and 1945 the Shandong Bureau investigated these incidents and claimed to have rehabili­ tated the surviving victims and compensated their families, though a final reckoning was not made until 1983.14 The impact of this movement on the CCP’s organization in the Shandong Base Area was disastrous, and it is un­ likely that the CCP was able to rapidly rehabilitate the legitimacy and pres­ tige of its largely “outsider” leadership in the eyes of the local population. The base area’s organizational strength was further weakened by tensions between civil and military perspectives. As of 1943 some areas had estab­ lished military organizations, but no party branches or military organizations dominated. Some military units believed that “government was just for idlers” or preferred to regard civil officials as military support staff.15 Some­ times, for their part, CCP branches were not interested in cooperating with military organizations or in developing their own military power.16 When local activists articulated their conflict with the incoming Eighth Route Army cadres in terms of a tension between natives and outsiders, the Shandong provincial leadership criticized the local activists for their “guerrilla-ism.” In the early 1940s the criticism of guerrilla-ism referred in general to the decentralized, unsystematic, extractive nature of the base areas and their activities. In particular, the provincial leadership was targeting a variety

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of practices that encouraged the autonomy of local units and enabled them to act without reference to a more centralized base area. The criticism of guerrilla-ism was essentially an argument for systematization and unified leadership in all aspects of CCP policy in Shandong, especially the develop­ ment of political institutions, the resource allocation process, and the fiscal administration of the base area. The kinds of practice that were under attack as guerrilla-ism included in­ dependent tax collection, not only because it could provide local activists with separate sources of support but also because it conflicted with the base area government’s attempted revision of both land and grain taxes. The con­ flict over fiscal administration became particularly acute with the Shandong Bureau ruling that government organizations at county level and above were the only organizations able to levy administrative and judicial fines. Once collected, fines were to be handed over to the base area treasury, not re­ tained for local use. The Shandong Bureau in general attempted to bring local activists into line through making them more dependent organizationally on the county and provincial levels of government. The bureau decreed that no government organ below the level of a subprovincial district had the power to comman­ deer labor, money, food, shoes, or any other resources.17 However, these regulations proved hard to enforce, for the kinds of activity that were being criticized as “guerrilla-ism” were, more than somewhat paradoxically, pre­ cisely those that reflected attempts to build a successful guerrilla movement. The CCP had long developed the operational principle of “doing the best ac­ cording to local conditions” to meet the guerrilla condition. The organiza­ tionally superior bodies in the CCP—in this case the Shandong Bureau— could set the general guidelines for a campaign or movement. However, local activists needed to compromise, alter, or occasionally even ignore di­ rectives from above and were encouraged to do so.18

REVOLUTION IN A COMPLEX SOCIETY

The competing accusations of either imposing solutions on Shandong from outside or of engaging in “guerrilla-ism” are readily related to specific ten­ dencies within the leadership of the base area. This was much less the case for accusations of malpractice, corruption, and waste, or economic crimes, all of which were applied more indiscriminately in the base area’s political discourse during the early 1940s. While none of these accusations need be justified either in general or in detail, they do nonetheless reveal the ways in which the CCP in Shandong attempted to make revolution in a relatively complex society. Shandong was politically and militarily complex. Competi­ tion existed among CCP, Nationalist guerrillas, and the Japanese, forcing the

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CCP to target and work closely with the less-committed local elites. The rel­ atively high level of both economic development and urbanization meant that commercial activities were almost as central to the survival of some CCP organizations as other forms of guerrilla activity. Working with local elites as well as in commercial activities necessarily ex­ posed local activists not only to potential temptation to surrender their revolu­ tionary commitment but also to the danger of being tarnished with guilt by as­ sociation. Throughout the early 1940s CCP internal documents constantly criticized a wide variety of malpractice and corruption. Moving into towns and villages to build alliances with local landlords, intellectuals, and merchants seemed fraught with difficulties for CCP activists. The CCP warned against per­ sonal “degeneration,” particularly the dangers of cadres having relationships with women.19 A 1943 antispy work report pointed to Shandong’s numerous market towns and its “politically murky villages” as flourishing venues for brothels, opium dens, tea houses, gambling parlors, and restaurants, all of which were deemed security threats. They were alleged to harbor spies— Chinese, Japanese, and Korean—and to subvert revolutionary discipline.20 A report on postal and courier cadres blamed the alleged high incidence of cor­ ruption, waste, and degeneration within their ranks on the fact that they lived and worked in ránote localities without supervision, making it easy and con­ venient to embezzle money and “get near women.”21 In a sense the development of a critique of corruption is a sure sign that social development is becoming more complex, or at least that complexity is not being matched by regulation. In December 1940 the Shandong Base Area attempted greater regulation of cadre behavior. It defined certain prac­ tices as corrupt and prosecutable for both civilian and military cadres: tax evasion; embezzlement of public funds, grains, and goods, as well as other property for personal spending or investment; forced taxation and seizure of people’s property; freely procuring advances from the official treasuries and granaries; buying, selling, and bartering state goods; misuse of funds ear­ marked for special purposes; falsely reporting personnel totals; dealing in contraband and inflated or fraudulent accounts; blackmail, racketeering, and bribes; and wasting public property.22 Punishments varied from imprison­ ment to the death penalty. In addition particularly draconian laws, based on the Nationalist Criminal Law, were introduced against cadres’ use, manufac­ ture, or trade of opium, morphine, coca, and other drugs.23 The boundaries between corrupt and normal relationships were difficult to determine. Deep-rooted social customs such as gift giving and bribe tak­ ing were often, with some justice, not considered corrupt behavior. The base area urged cadres to build connections with merchants and other groups if they were useful for political, military, and economic purposes. Conse­ quently, the leading offices of the government, party, and military them­ selves often organized banquets, hosted operas, and provided facilitating

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gifts and payments to gain local support. Gift giving and bribe taking were the subject of a government resolution against corruption. However, this res­ olution also declared that “except for that gift giving which is necessary from the viewpoints of politics, society, and tradition, all other meaningless gift giving is prohibited.”24 Corruption and waste concerned the CCP during the early 1940s throughout North China as the Japanese counterattack reached its height. In Shandong as elsewhere the CCP responded through the introduction of a pragmatic “selfreliant production movement.”25 In general the aim was that everyone, but par­ ticularly cadres and activists, would produce their own food and supplies rather than rely on taxation or forms of secondary supply. In the Shandong Base Area the results of the production movement were not quite those intended. In the context of Shandong’s commercialized economy, local CCP organizations and troops tended to turn to trade and commerce rather than to agriculture and handicraft industries to meet the call for self-reliant production. They competed in the local economy, commandeering labor and materials instead of develop­ ing cooperatives and labor exchanges, as had been officially proposed. The provincial party then faced a dilemma. On the one hand, flourishing commerce and trade helped to ease fiscal and supply crises, and both individuals and or­ ganizations profited. On the other hand, with their growing fiscal powers, the local levels of the CCP gained more autonomy from the upper echelons of the oiganization, and aggravating already existing tensions within the leadership of the base area. In part the complexity of the Shandong economy limited the success of the production movement in Shandong. Black markets and smuggling opera­ tions flourished because of the Japanese and Nationalist blockades, as well as the CCP counterblockades. When the Communists created budgets for civil and military offices to purchase goods and materials according to fixed prices regardless of inflation, these units might smuggle simply to make ends meet, or military units might sell the provisions and goods rationed to them through the supply system on both the normal and black markets.26 Moreover, Shandong was fairly commercialized even before the war and thus under most circumstances was unlikely to revert to a subsistence economy solely. For the Shandong economy there was no reason to equate self-reliance with self-sufficiency. On the contrary, trade and commerce had been central to economic development before 1937 and were to become vital to the Commu­ nist movement during the 1940s. The production movement became deeply enmeshed in local markets. The public sector engaged in contractual agree­ ments with the private sector in matters of agriculture, trade, handicraft indus­ try, and transport, while organizations within the base areas—civilian as well as military—concentrated on profitable commerce to an extent probably unfore­ seen by the CCP Central Committee. Wartime trade was particularly successful. Some of the subdistricts of the base area reported a favorable balance of trade,

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and state management of commerce constituted 75 percent of total income in Binhai.27 Although the land tax constituted the laigest proportion (46 percent) of the Shandong Base Area’s total income from 1940 to 1944, the revenues from commercial taxation followed a close second (34.7 percent).28 In addition to military and political struggle, the Shandong Base Area engaged in a trade war with the Japanese: the former needed industrial goods and raw materials, whereas the latter needed agricultural goods and subsidiary products. By 1942 the Shandong Wartime Working Committee had established a rudimentary system of trade and tax bureaus at the provincial, subdistrict, and county levels, and it called for unified village and town financial administration. In trade, the base area government pro­ m oted free trade within the base area and encouraged trade with other base areas. At the same time it controlled trade with enemy-held areas—it prohibited the import of Japanese goods and discouraged all luxuries and goods unobtainable locally.29 The system of trade bureaus was not strong enough to solve several problems plaguing the base areas. The Japanese were frequently able to seize large quantities of vital goods and materials, and they imposed blockades on the base areas to restrict trade. The Japanese were also suc­ cessful in th eif'trad e in luxuries with the base areas, and smuggling abounded in both private and public sectors. In addition, as noted earlier, subprovincial local activists evaded taxes, withheld other revenues, and arbitrarily levied taxes or simply commandeered resources, and the tax bureaus could not supplant tax farmers and other brokers. As a result, in September 1943 the Shandong Bureau established the Industry and Com­ merce Administration Bureau under Xue Muqiao. Xue was made respon­ sible for organizing commerce and trade, systematizing taxation, organiz­ ing tax collection and antismuggling operations, leading the currency war, and directing the production movement.30 A vital com ponent of the base area economy and its potential for trade war with the Japanese was the Beihai Bank, established in Jiaodong dur­ ing late 1938. In the next few years other subdistricts opened branches to issue notes in the base area currency competing with the Nationalist-spon­ sored dollar and the puppet currency. In the currency war, the Beihai Bank endeavored to drive out the puppet currency, the various local cur­ rencies, and counterfeit base area paper money. In 1942 the Japanese at­ tem pted to reduce their excessive supply of Nationalist currency by trad­ ing it for goods and materials in the base area. As a result, both the Nationalist and the base area dollar were devalued and inflation ensued. The Industry and Commerce Bureau then implemented a series of mea­ sures to drive out the use of the Nationalist currency notes from the base areas, control exports, and adjust exchange rates and base area currency supply, which saw some success.31 As David Paulson points out, the cur-

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rency management program effectively protected the base areaseconomy. Prices were stabilized, and by 1943 the local CCP currency was stronger than both the Nationalist and the Japanese puppet-regime currencies.32

MOBILIZATION AND SURVIVAL

By 1943 the Shandong Base Area was not as well developed organiza­ tionally as base areas and border regions elsewhere in North China. In her description of Yan’an, both in this volume and elsewhere, Pauline Keating highlights the separation between the goals of party-state building and the goals of community development. Where these goals were in conflict, po­ litical institutionalization always took precedence.33 Mobilization for party development was not the same as mobilization for war, nor mobilization for community development. Strangely enough, this analysis is also in­ structive for the development of the Shandong Base Area, not least be­ cause it draws attention to the question of agency and authority in the construction of CCP base areas. External circumstances may have limited the growth and development of the CCP movement and local activists may have enthusiastically expanded the area of CCP influence, but only the CCP’s central leadership could determine and endorse base area develop­ ment. Moreover, from the perspective of the CCP central leadership, there was a distinct order of priority that required establishing party and gov­ ernment structures before attempting programs of socioeconomic reform. Shandong posed a significant challenge to the CCP, not least because of the difference of its economic, social, and political complexity. The exter­ nal pressures of Japanese occupation and intense competition with the Nationalist forces were not successfully negotiated. On the contrary, the isolation and independence of the local CCP forces m eant that the base area was considerably fragmented. This fragmentation was exacerbated by CCP attempts at centralization within Shandong. Though the goals of the base area might have been economic developm ent and social reform, neither was possible for the CCP without military and political stability, which it did not experience until 1943. As elsewhere on the front line against Japan, the exigencies of war ensured that state building was nec­ essarily subordinated to, and at times sacrificed to, the goals of survival. Moreover, in Shandong the struggle for immediate survival was consis­ tently acute. Japanese occupation meant that Shandong Communists had to operate within the context of the united front, which further restricted their already limited military and political capabilities. In most areas within the province the Communists were not strong enough to even con­ template working without their rivals. In general, they had to compromise and cooperate with local pow er holders. This not only often placed the

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CCP in a subordinate position in the Nationalist resistance in Shandong, but it also made CCP members subject to suspicion from their own side of having engaged in inappropriate activities.

NOTES 1. See Kenneth Pomeranz, The M aking o f a H interland: State, Society, a n d E conom y in In la n d North China, 1 8 5 3 -1 9 3 7 (Berkeley: University o f California Press, 1993), pp. 27-45; and Marianne Bastid-Bruguiere, “Currents o f Social Change,” in C am bridge H istory o f C hina (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), ll:577ff. 2. See Li Yu, “Shandong dang zuzhi de huifu yu chongjian” (Recovery and re­ construction o f the Shandong Party organization), in Shandong dangshi zilia o (Shandong Party history materials) (SDZ), ed. Zhonggong Shandong shengw ei dangshi ziliao zhepgji yanjiu weiyuanhui (Shandong Communist Party History Materials Compilation and Research Committee) (Jinan: Shandong Renmin chubanshe, 1983), 1:1-29. 3. Li Yu, “Shengwei guanyu fadong kangri wuzhuang qiyi de bushu” (The provin­ cial committee onm obilizing anti-Japanese armed risings), in SDZ, 1:72-80. Li Yu was b om in Yuanping, northern Shanxi, in May 1906 and joined the CCP in 1926. From 1927 to 1936 he held leading posts in the underground party and labor movement in Beijing, Tianjin, Shijiazhuang, Tangshan, and the Ji Lu Yu Border Region. Li held top civil positions in the Shandong CCP from 1936 to 1949, serving as secretary of the Provincial Committee and head o f the Wartime Working Committee, and from 1945 as the head o f the Communist provincial government. 4. Jinan fell in late December, and the Nationalists executed Han Fuqu in January 1938. Until 1943, the Japanese held the cities and transportation routes; the degree of their control over rural areas varied with changing war conditions vis-à-vis both the Nationalists and the Communists in Shandong. The Nationalists continued to main­ tain a provincial government and military headquarters, which m oved about to dif­ ferent locations in west, north, and south Shandong, until mid-1943. 5. Li Yu and Xiao Hua, “Shandong kangri genjudi” (The Shandong anti-Japanese Base Area), in SDZ, 4:154-156; Lin Hao and Chen Fenglai, “Shandong renmin kangri wuzhuang qiyi” (The Shandong people’s anti-Japanese armed risings), in SDZ, 4:151. 6. The Nationalists established the Su Lu War District under Yu Xuezhong in March 1939 with his four divisions from the Northeast Army; Shen Honglie was vice commander. 7. This meeting, held in Linyi, in southern Shandong, organized the entire sp ec­ trum o f united front mass organizations. It also established a united front Provincial Assembly, in rejection o f the Nationalist governm ent’s Shandong repre­ sentative assem bly in Zhonggong. See Zhonggong Shandong dangsh i dashiji, 1 9 2 1 -1 9 4 9 (Shandong Party history chronology, 1921-1949) (ZSDD), ed. Shan­ dong sh en gw ei dangshi ziliao zhengji yanjiu weiyuanhui bangongshi (Jinan: Z honggong Shandong sh engw ei dangshi ziliao zhengji yanjiu weiyuanhui ban­ gongshi, 1986), pp. 154-156.

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8. Zhu Rui, “Zhonggong Shandong fenju guanyu ‘Kangzhan sinian Shandong wodang gongzuo zongjie yu jinhou renwu’ de jueyi” (Resolution by the Shandong Branch Bureau on “a summary o f the Shandong Party’s work during the past four years o f the resistance war and the tasks for the future”), in Shandong gem ing lishi d a n g ’an ziliao xu an bian (Selections from the Shandong revolutionary history archival materials) (SGLDZX), ed. Shandong sheng dang’an guan (Shandong Provin­ cial Archives) (Jinan: Shandong renmin chubanshe, 1986), 9:59; Song Yingsan et al., “Kangri zhanzheng shiqi de Shandong minbing” (The Shandong p eop le’s militia dur­ ing the Resistance War), in Shandong shizhi ziliao (Shandong annals) (SSZ) (Jinan: Shandong sheng difang shizhi bianweihui, 1983), 2:4. Only late in the war and dur­ ing the brief lull before the civil war did the Shandong Base Area see the reforms that had been instituted much earlier elsewhere in North China base areas, such as de­ velopment of labor exchanges, popularly run cooperatives, and the reconstruction o f village governments. 9. “Muqian zhanzheng xingshi ji wom en de dangqian renwu— Guo Hongtao tongzhi zai Su-Lu-Yu-Wan bianqu xianwei shuji lianxihuishang de baogao” (The present war situation and our current tasks— Comrade Guo Hongtao’s report at the joint meeting of county committee secretaries o f the Su-Lu-Yu-Wan Border Region), in SGLDZX, 4:30-31. 10. “Zhonggong Shandong fenju guanyu zhixing ‘Wunian gongzuo zongjie ji jinhou renwu’ zhi jueding,”T9 August 1943 (Resolution by the Shandong Branch Bureau on implementing “summary o f five years’ work and future tasks”), in SGLDZX, 10:40, 100. 11. David Paulson, “War and Revolution in a North China Province: The Shandong Base Area, 1937-1945” (Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 1982), p. 112. 12. Shandong sheng junqu minbing ziliao zhengji bangongshi (Shandong Military District People’s Militia Materials Compilation Office), “Shandong minbing douzheng lishi gaikuang” (A general historical account o f the Shandong P eople’s Militia strug­ gle), in SDZ, 6:1-19. During the War of Resistance, the Shandong Communist armed forces grew to 270,000 persons, participants in the militias numbered 500,000, and those in the self-defense corps numbered 1.5 million. During the war no distinction was yet made between militia and war laborers. See ZSDD, pp. 244-245. 13. Li Yu, “Yingjie fangong shiqi de xianqu wuzhuang jianshe w enti” (The prob­ lem o f constructing county and district armed forces in the counteroffensive period), in SGLDZX, 12:347—375. David Paulson’s reading o f this report by Li Yu is more pos­ itive. Although he acknowledges initial tensions betw een the Eighth Route Army and the guerrilla forces, he argues that in general the combination o f the entrance o f the Eighth Route Army and the consolidation o f county regimes and improvement o f mass work after 1941 ended the “guerrilla period.” Paulson, “War and Revolution,” pp. 121,138. 14. See ZSDD, pp. 139-140,159. The term for “traitor,”flan, was elastic and was not carefully defined. For criticism by the Shandong Bureau o f forced taxation, summary ar­ rests, and the killing of traitors in enemy territory, see “Jinji dongyuan qilai w ei jianshe jianchi gonggu de Shandong minzhu kangri genjudi er douzheng,” 1 July 1941 (Mobi­ lize at once to strive for constructing and upholding a consolidated Shandong dem o­ cratic anti-Japanese Base Area), in SGLDZX, 7:137-152. Deng Xiaoping commented on these events in 1943: “Speech at the Mobilization Meeting on Rectification in the Party

The Shandong Base Area, 1937-1943

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School o f the Northern Bureau,” 10 November 1943, in Selected Works o f Deng Xiaoping, 1 9 3 8 -1 9 6 5 (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1992), pp. 94 n. 70, 353. 15. Li Yu, “Yinian lai ‘y°ngzheng, aimin’ zongjie” (Summary o f the “support the government and love the people campaign” in the past year), in SGLDZX, 8:372. 16. “Z honggong Shandong fenju guanyu zhixing ‘Wunian gongzuo zongjie ji jinhou renw u’ zhi jueding,’” 19 August 1943, (Resolution by the Shandong Branch Bureau on im plem enting “summary o f five years’ work and future tasks”), in SGLDZX, 10:80. 17. See, for example, “Shandong sheng zhanshi gongzuo tuixing weiyuanhui guanyu tongyi cunzhen caizheng ji renmin fudan de jueding,” 30 May 1942 (A resolution by the Shandong Wartime Work Promotion Committee on unifying village and town’s finances and the people’s burden), in SGLDZX, 8:312; “Shandong sheng zhanshi gongzuo tui­ xing weiyuanhui guanyu jindong kaohuo fei de tongzhi,” 20 November 1940 (A circular by the Shandong Wartime Work Promotion Committee on this winter’s heating ex­ penses), in SGLDZX, 6:98. 18. “Zhonggong Shandong fenju guanyu zhengli cunzheng caizheng de jueding,” 1 July 1942 (Resolution by the Shandong Branch Bureau on systematizing village and town finances), in SGLDZX, 8:407; and Zhu Rui, “Shandong dang de jianshe wenti” (O n the construction o f the Shandong Communist Party), in SGLDZX, 10:342. 19. Zhao Zhigang, “Liangnian lai Shandong zhanyou gongzuo gaikuo zongjie ji jin­ hou renwu,” August 1944 (A brief summary o f the past two years o f Shandong’s wartime postal work and tasks for the future), in SGLDZX, 12:396. 20. “Shandong chujian gong’an gongzuo huiyi zongjie,” August 1943 (Summary of the Shandong elimination o f traitors and public security work meeting), in SGLDZX,

10: 160. 21. Zhao Zhigang, “Liangnian lai Shandong zhanyou gongzuo gaikuo zongjie ji jin­ hou renwu” (A brief summary o f the past two years o f Shandong’s wartime postal work and tasks for the future), in SGLDZX, 12:393. “Couriers” was a term applied to armed cadres w h o transmitted documents or oral information, escorted cadres to new posts, and gathered local intelligence. Many archival documents are devoted to the underground network o f stations for couriers, publications (partly above ground, including newspapers for both inner-party and mass consumption, Communist book­ stores, and propaganda and training materials for cadres), and the postal system, which linked Shandong internally as well as with other base areas, towns, and cities. See SGLDZX, 10:376-437. 22. “Shandong sheng chengzhi tanwu zhanxing tiaoli,” December 1940 (Shandong province provisional regulations for punishing corruption), in SGLDZX, 6:151. 23. “Shandong sheng jindu zhizui zhanxing tiaoli,” 2 April 1943 (Shandong province provisional regulations on prohibition o f drugs and punishment o f crimes), in SGLDZX, 9:424. 24. “Shandong sheng zhanshi gongzuo tuixing weiyuanhui guanyu yanjin huilu de jueding,” 28 July 1942 (A resolution by the Shandong Wartime Work Promotion Committee on prohibiting bribery), in SGLDZX, 8:443. See also Li Yu, “Shandong m inzhu daobao yu jianchi Shandong minzhu douzheng de jiben fangxiang” (The fundamental direction o f Shandong Democratic Daily and the direction o f up­ holding Shandong’s democratic struggle), in SGLDZX, 5:221-230; and “Shandong sh en g di erci xingzheng huiyi caizheng zu zongjie baogao” (A summary report by

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the financial group at the Second Shandong Provincial Administration Confer­ ence), in SGLDZX, 13:310-315. 25. On the significance to the growth o f the Communist movement o f practical policies regarding production, trade, and finance, see, in particular, Mark Seiden, The Yenan Way in Revolutionary China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971); and Peter Schran, Guerrilla Economy: The Developm ent o f the Shensi-Kansu-Ninghsia Border Region, 1 9 3 7 -1 9 4 5 (Albany: State University o f New York Press, 1976). Research in the 1990s has highlighted the development o f the “party-state” or “proto­ party-state” in those activities in the base areas; see Wei Hongyun, “On County Fair Trade in the Jin Ji Lu Yu (Shanxi-Hebei-Shandong-Henan) Base Areas” (paper pre­ pared for the panel on social research in Chinese Communist base areas, Association for Asian Studies annual meeting, Los Angeles, 27 March 1993); Chen Yung-fa, “Be­ tween Survival and Ideology: The CCP Commercial Experience in Yan’an” (paper presented at the NEH Research Conference, Construction o f the Party, State, and State Socialism in China, 1936-1965, Colorado College, 31 May 1993). 26. Huang Tong, “Balujun zongbu ji 129 shi de caizheng gongzuo gaikuang” (A survey o f the public finance work o f the Eighth Route Army headquarters and the 129th Division), in K angri zh a n zb e n g shiqi Jin Ji Lu Yu bian qu ca izh en g jin g jish i zilia o x u a n b ia n (Selected materials on the history o f finance and econ om y in the Shanxi-Hebei-Shandong-Henan Border Region during the War o f Resistance to Japan), ed. Wei Hongyun et al. (Beijing: Zhongguo caizheng jingji chubanshe, 1990), 1:790-804. 27. “Shandong kangri genjudi de jianshe” (The construction o f the Shandong antiJapanese Base Area), in SSZ, 1:20. 28. “Shandong sheng di erci xingzheng huiyi caizhengzu zongjie baogao” (A sum­ mary report by the financial group at the second Shandong Provincial Administration Conference), in SGLDZX, 13:296-297. 29. Shen Chunsheng, “Shandong kangri genjudi de jianshe” (Construction o f the Shandong anti-Japanese Base Area); “Zhonggong Shandong fenju caiweihui dui ge caiweihui gongzuo zhishi,” 5 April 1942 (A directive by the Shandong Branch Bureau’s financial committee on the work of each financial committee), in SGLDZX, 8:243-249; “Shandong sheng jingguan shouzhi kuanxiang tongyi chuli banfa,” 30 May 1942 (Shandong province measures o f unified management o f revenue and ex­ penditure), in SGLDZX, 8:313-316. 30. Xue Muqiao later achieved considerable fame as one o f the leading economists of the 1980s reform era. 31. “Shandong sheng linshi canyihui yijie erci yiyuan dahui guanyu tongguo zhanshi gongzuo tuixing weiyuanhui shizheng baogao de jueyi” (A resolution by the second meeting of the first Shandong Provisional Assembly), pp. 267-273. 32. Paulson, “War and Revolution,” pp. 291-292, 289. 33. Pauline Keating, “The Yan’an Way o f Cooperativization,” China Q uarterly 140 (December 1994): 1027.

Conclusion_________ Comparative Perspectives N orth

and

C entral C h in a

in t h e

A n t i -J apanese R esistance

Gregor Benton

Today, few scholars outside China are drawn to writing the history of the Chinese Revolution or of the anti-Japanese resistance at the level of grand theory. We can identify two main streams of such writing in the past. One (copying Chinese practice) posited a single revolutionary process, domi­ nated by Mao and his armies, to which specific movements in different places were parochial appendices or exceptions. The other applied pet the­ ories, of which specific movements were parochial illustrations. Such ap­ proaches are now regarded as artificial and confusing. Rather than light up the war, they throw into shadow the forms of resistance that proliferated in China’s provinces, parts of provinces, and counties that composed the war’s real content. Historians outside China (and, increasingly, within China) pre­ fer to set aside the abstractions that before Mao’s death dominated study of the revolution, dwelling instead on the local and the particular.1 Since the late 1970s, this localist approach has evolved as “base area studies,” a field of scholarship in its own right. Such studies have deep­ ened our understanding of the revolution by focusing on its local varia­ tion. Their success was facilitated by the flood of data after Mao’s death and the flight from Mao-centrism. The new localist fashion can be ex­ plained too by the regionalization of the Chinese administration and, con­ comitantly, of some history writing. Western scholars who first voiced their dissatisfaction with the old ap­ proach included Lyman Van Slyke, who mocked it as “mountaintop-ism” and “viewing flowers from horseback,”2 and Kathleen Hartford and Steven Gold­ stein, who talked of “sweeping generalizations with little close testing in ac­ tual situations.”3 In China, ¿he narrowing of perspective has, for political rea189

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sons, been soft-pedaled, though some do protest at the lack of Content of his­ tory written from the panoramic sweep favored by the central Party schools.4 No critic of the old-style general histories holds that to analyze the revolu­ tion at a level of high generalization will remain forever poindess. On the con­ trary, critics recommend paying attention to local variation as a step toward hy­ potheses on the revolution that are “fuller, more comprehensive, and more solidly grounded.”5 Yet despite this good intention, the reaction against “mountain-top” or “horseback” history has been so powerful that broadly con­ ceived studies on the revolution have virtually ceased outside China. Few new hypotheses about general patterns have as yet emerged, though the aim of the new localist approach was not to suppress theory forming but to build stronger foundations for it. Unless this inhibition is overcome and historians step back to view the field from a greater distance, broader patterns in the rev­ olution will remain undetected. The problem is not simply that absorption in micro-societal case studies holds up the rise of scholarship to higher levels of generalization. The revolution itself created political and military structures at national and regional levels that served as new foci for initiatives and identifi­ cation and into which local bases locked. Endogenous factors that shaped the local resistance interacted with externally generated forces. The chief such exogenous factor was the system of military commands and Party bureaus that generated the strategy by which local war and poli­ tics were orchestrated. The Communists marshaled their forces in a grand design that crucially influenced the individual bases. An analysis of higher strategy is indispensable for understanding local events and processes. Higher-level decisions interacted with local environments to create patterns that set one broader region off from another. The Long Marchers who withdrew from South and Central China in 1934 and arrived in Northwest China in 1935 had no real knowledge of the fate of the rear guard they had left behind, but they occasionally mentioned it as a “southern” strategic complement to the Party’s northern bases. In 1938, the southern guerrillas marched to the Yangtze and became the military arm of the Yangtze Bureau; at more or less the same time, guerrillas in Eyuwan marched east into Anhui, north of the Yangtze, where they were subordi­ nated in late 1938 to the Central Plains Bureau, also newly formed, under Liu Shaoqi. Both sets of guerrillas together founded the New Fourth Army, the Eighth Route Army’s junior partner in the war. In 1939, Mao defined Central China as a potential escape hatch for the Party in the North, to be activated if the Eighth Route Army’s survival in the difficult conditions north of the Yellow River was endangered. Thus was bom the idea of a Central China battlefield (which also included Jiangbei and Jiangnan). In 1941, the Central Plains Bureau became the Central China Bureau. Central China was no theoretical construct of historians but an actual arena in which re­ sources were mobilized to a common (and unique) timetable and agenda.

Conclusion

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In Mao’s lifetime, the history of the New Fourth Army was distorted to pro­ mote Mao as the great leader of the revolution, conceived as a single process. Since the 1980s, much archival material and many publications have appeared to remedy this neglect, but the focus remains on the North. The New Fourth Army stamped certain distinguishing features on the re­ sistance in Central China. The Three-Year War from which the army was born in 1937 gave it a legacy quite different from that of the Eighth Route Army. Without an understanding of that legacy, important differences be­ tween the resistance in North and Central China cannot be grasped.6 This final chapter explores ways in which grand strategy and the special nature of the New Fourth Army shaped the resistance in Central China, distin­ guished it from that in the North, and helped create (or reinforce) a distincdy Communist tradition. More tentatively, the contrast between North and Central China not only facilitates the identification of general patterns in the social and political en­ vironment of each but also helps to explain differences between the resis­ tance in the two broad regions. Needless to say, two sorts of difference— military and contextual—interacted to produce unique social, political, and military patterns in ^ach. (These differences, as well as their causes and im­ plications, are presented as hunches rather than facts.) By aiming at a level midway between national and local, this chapter inches rather than rushes toward new abstractions. It offers middle-range conjecture rather than high-level generalizations open to the objections raised by the new Western scholarship. This midway level is no historian’s artifact but an actual structure. The existence of a Central China command and political bureau does not in itself guarantee uniformity but does suggest the likelihood of some convergence. Stepping back to get a broader look and spot new cycles, rules, and princi­ ples does not mean stepping too far. Looking north from the Yangtze and south from the Yellow River is a sensible viewing perspective. Both regions appear different and more clear when viewed in each other’s light. Such an exercise is laigely innovative. More work has been done outside China on the North, and studies on Central China lack a strong comparative focus. In China, the hege­ mony of Yan’an style, Yan’an tradition, and Yan’an spirit, a “confluence of the Jinggang Mountains and the Long March spirit, a precursor of the Daqing and the Lei Feng spirit,” enshrined in its own field, Yan’anology, has prevented the emeigence of a regional dialectic in base area history.7 Any opposition that can be established between Central and North China has analogies among the parts of each region and within each part.8 Communists explain the Eighth Route Army’s occupation of North China as a wavelike ad­ vance that originated in Shaan Gan Ning and passed from Shanxi to Hebei to Henan to Shandong.9 Although the wave was coordinated under one com­ mand and completed within little more than a year, temporal and contextual

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factors combined to create unique patterns of war and politics in the separate bases. The spread of the New Fourth Army across Central China was even more prone to discontinuities, for it happened under two commands, one north and one south of the Yangtze River, and it took three years.10 (An obvious contrast would be between the “delicate,” metropolitan Jiangnan and the “feudal,” “backward”Jiangbei.) However, this chapter largely ignores subregional differ­ ence and concentrates on broader commonalities.

EXPLAINING REVOLUTION

The trend initiated by base area studies has been away from monocausal ex­ planations of revolution (in terms of peasant nationalism, organizational prowess, or socioeconomic programs) and toward a multifactorial approach that strays across the boundaries between the structural and the volitional11 and between history, anthropology, economics, and political science. The resulting scholarship grasps natural environment, war situations, social and economic structures, political processes, values, institutions, and other forms of human agency in their complex interaction and interdependency.121 employ a similar eclecticism in this chapter, noting the distinctive characteristics of discrete ele­ ments in the resistance process and how they link. Xiang Ying, the New Fourth Army’s political chief until 1941, frequently spoke of the “special nature” of Jiangnan but was criticized for ignoring fac­ tors that Jiangnan shared with the North.13 For many years, Chinese scholars worked under a similar compulsion to stress uniformity. Research on the bases is at an early stage, even in China, so it has understandably focused on generalities. Once common patterns have been established, the way will be open for a new focus on the particular. However, much of the history writ­ ten in China is stereotyped to conform to political and theoretical prejudices and ignores differences in ideally uniform processes unless there is a special reason to play them up, for example, because they illustrate alleged political deviance. Though much comparable data are by now available, say, on changes in wartime class structure as a result of socioeconomic reforms, the different patterns that they evince are not always explored. Western studies that have ventured incidental comparisons between wartime communism in North and Central China assume that the latter was not just different from but less effective than the former.14They amount to an exercise in explaining northern success and southern failure. But the as­ sumption, which copies a Maoist prejudice, is questionable. In fact, the northern and southern movements developed in close step. The New Fourth Army started out in 1938 with around 10,000 troops, com­ pared with the Eighth Route Army’s 40,000 in 1937. By 1940, the New Fourth Army had grown to 90,000 and the Eighth Route Army to 400,000; their mu-

Conclusion

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tuai ratio had remained more or less the same, at around one to four. By the end of the war, the New Fourth Army had whittled down the Eighth Route Army’s lead, but not by much: it had 310,000 troops and was therefore around one-third the size of the Eighth Route Army, which had 1,028,000. The population under New Fourth Army control was 34 million, also around one-third the size of the population of 90 million under Communist control in the North. The surface area covered by the bases was likewise propor­ tionately similar: 230,000 square kilometers in Central China, compared with 800,000 in the North. These figures suggest that the two armies grew at a like rate, though from different base lines. They hardly bear out the assumption that the New Fourth Army was inferior to the Eighth Route Army.15 The overall environment in the two regions and the resources that the two armies could bring to bear on it were not identical, nor were the advantages and opportunities all in the North. Some comparisons worked to the disad­ vantage of the Party in Central China, others to its advantage.

GEOGRAPHY

Geographical conditions, said Mao Zedong in 1938, “are an important, not to say the most important, condition for facilitating guerrilla war.”16 When sur­ rounded by the enemy on all sides, or on three sides, the best place to es­ tablish a guerrilla base, he argued, is in the mountains. He listed six moun­ tain bases: the Changbai in Jilin on the border with Korea; the Wutai on the border between Shanxi and Hebei; the Taihang on the border between Shanxi, Hebei, and Henan; the Tai in Shandong; the Yan in Hebei; and the Mao in Sunan.17 Of those six mountain bases, five are in North China, while the Mao Mountains that housed the New Fourth Army’s early base in Central China are mountains in name only. When the guerrillas, maps in hand, reached them in 1938, they looked aghast at the “bare hills.”18 The best conditions in which to wage guerrilla war were found, according to Mao’s theory, in broad mountains bordering on plains, where the guerril­ las would have sufficient room in which to maneuver.19 The North best met these conditions. It had mountains, plains, rivers, lakes, and estuaries, unlike the old southern soviets, which were too narrowly based in unvariegated mountains.20 For similar reasons, Central China was no ideal site for a Com­ munist resistance. Whereas the South was predominantly mountainous, Cen­ tral China was predominantly flat. Though Mao insisted that the plains and flatlands of Jiangnan could sustain guerrilla warfare, Central China lacked the optimal set of topographical resources. The Central China Base was fringed by hills and mountains, but its hub lay in the middle of the Subei Plain. The New Fourth Army’s bases in Central China were encouraged to develop northward in the early years of the war, so that they could derive strategic back-

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ing from, and function as a strategic extension of, the Eighth' Route Army’s strongholds in Ji Lu Yu and Shandong. When the time came in 1945 for a strate­ gic redeployment of forces, the New Fourth Army’s Jiangbei garrisons were withdrawn to Shandong and Hebei, and its main forces in Sunan and Anhui went north of the Yangtze.21 In this bunching, Central China was temporarily expendable (though a local presence was kept and later reactivated). During the military movements in Jiangbei that preceded the New Fourth Army’s operational linking in 1940 to southbound units of the Eighth Route Army, the interests of the New Fourth Army under Xiang Ying south of the Yangtze were subordinated to those of the northern operation. Xiang was kept in the dark about strategic deployments northward, and his southern main force was used as a bargaining chip in negotiations aimed at strength­ ening Chen Yi’s position in Subei. Thus the temporary collapse of the army’s deep-rooted base in southern Anhui in 1941 was directly linked to strategic decisions taken by Mao in Yan’an and by the New Fourth Army’s northern branch.22 Mao’s perception of the military advantages of the North led him to downgrade and sacrifice the Communist effort in Central China. The geography of Central China placed novel constraints on the New Fourth Army. The army’s principal bases were flat and knitted together by numerous waterways and roads. It lacked mountain fastnesses and was vul­ nerable to attack by mechanized enemy units. Because of the lack of topo­ graphical variation, the New Fourth Army was far more dependent on pop­ ular support than it had been before 1935. Chen Yi called the idea that guerrillas could not fight in Jiangnan “topographical fetishism.” “Topography is important,” he argued (echoing Mencius), “but secondary. Human effort can vanquish unfavorable topography. . . . We have human mountains and oceans with which to isolate and defeat the enemy.”23 The CCP’s bases in Central China never achieved the degree of cohesion and articulation found in the North. In Sunan, the Japanese controlled 20 main highways, 64 feeder roads, and around 400 fortified points in an area of 17,000 square kilometers. As a result, Sunan’s Communists were con­ stantly on the move and were unable to establish a consolidated base. The territories that they did control formed a jigsaw with territories under the Japanese and the Nationalist Party.24 In Subei, the Communists were able to link a dozen or more counties into administrative units. Even so, the Japanese controlled points and lines in the region, and the New Fourth Army was not able to join its bases across topographical barriers.

THE NATIONALIST CONTEXT

Several writers have pointed to the crucial importance of power politics in the revolution.25 The political context in North China, where the Communists

Conclusion

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started their resistance, was one of power crisis and political fragmentation. Though Chiang Kai-shek did succeed after 1927 in subduing the northern war­ lords, few were loyal to him, and some (Yan Xishan in Shanxi was the most ob­ vious) who did not flee south in 1937 helped the Communists into power. In early 1939, when the implications of the Eighth Route Army’s expansion across North China had become clearer, Chiang tried to restore a military presence in Shandong, where the Communists were still weak, as well as in Hebei and Chahar. But fearing a further wave of regional militarism in the North that he would be unable to control, he gave his Shandong forces only lukewarm support, so the attempt eventually failed.26 Prewar Nationalist Party politics were more orderly in Central China than in the North and offered the Communists fewer wartime openings. Both Jiangsu and Anhui were in the hands of the loyalist CC Clique before the war.27 In 1937, Anhui was given to the Gui Clique and Jiangsu to Gu Zhutong’s Subei faction. For a year or so, the reformist Gui Clique allowed the Communists to organize under its wing, but in 1939 it cracked down heavily on them and in January 1941 joined in the destruction of the New Fourth Army headquarters in Wannan. It ran a competent administration and was viewed by the New Fourth Army warily/ather than as potential prey. The Nationalist government in Subei became the Communists’ bitter rival until it was defeated by them in late 1940. In Henan, the New Fourth Army could manipulate ties to remnants of Feng Yuxiang’s Northwest Army (which seized power at the local level after the Nationalist Party collapse) but was unable to profit from them to the same extent that the Eighth Route Army profited from Yan Xishan. Most Nationalists in Central China either clashed with the Communists from the start or kept them under supervision and clamped down on them when necessary. The Nationalists’ wartime regimes held firmer than in the North, where the turmoil of the 1930s paved the way for a political breakdown. Communists (like those in Shanxi) who built their regimes on warlord sup­ port and lacked indigenous bases had to employ violence to effect the transi­ tion from dual to sole authority. David Goodman shows that “popular support did not transfer automatically into support for the CCP” in a county like Licheng with no Communist tradition.28 In Central China, where the power balance was skewed against the Communists, the same thing happened, but the other way around. The Gui Clique, after building a structure of mobilization committees with Party help, purged the Communists to get a monopoly on power.

JAPANESE PRESENCE

The Japanese were at first far weaker (and always somewhat weaker) in Cen­ tral China than in the North, and they concentrated in the first years on attack­ ing Nationalist armies at the front. Even after the fall of Wuhan in October

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1938, when they switched to mopping up forces behind their own lines, their chief focus remained on the North. Liu Shaoqi, writing to Chen Yi in July 1942, acknowledged that “the enemy’s mopping-up operations do not seem to be so fierce as in North China.” He interpreted this difference as an opportunity: the Party in Central China could devote more attention to “preparations for a counteroffensive and the postwar struggle.”29 Mao also saw the relative security of the Central China Base as a boon—it provided a “lifeline” for the northerners. The relative weakness of the Japanese garrison in New Fourth Army areas figured in Chalmers Johnson’s peasant nationalism thesis, according to which the greater the “threat of wholesale destruction” by the Japanese, the greater the support for the Communist resistance. The lesser ferocity of the occupation of Central China meant that “the guerrillas and the populace [there] were not so completely identified as they were in the north.”30 Yung-fa Chen and others doubt Johnson’s explanation of peasant nation­ alism as a product of Japanese savagery. Chen points out that in the Yangtze Delta, the site of some of the worst atrocities, the Communists were weak, and in Jiangbei, where they were strong, the savagery was less.31 However, Johnson attributed the Communist advance to more than just Japanese brute force. It was also due to the overextension of Japanese resources, as a result of which “territory [was left] empty for the Communists to enter.”32 If the spe­ cial case of the Jiangnan Delta, where Japanese power was exceptionally great, is disregarded, the Japanese threat could still have explanatory power. Otherwise, it is hard to see why the New Fourth Army worked so hard to counter the “cheating propaganda” of the Japanese and to undermine their attempts to stabilize the economy and administration in Central China. The main way in which the Japanese invasion assisted the New Fourth Army was by reducing the opposition to it and enabling it to seize power from a rump Nationalist regime.

TIMING

The Communists in Central China started their resistance several months later and established their first county government more than two years later than in the North. This lack of synchrony suggests explanations for some dif­ ferences between the resistance in the two regions. The New Fourth Army’s late entry into the war and its failure to found gov­ ernments until 1940 (under Liu Shaoqi, north of the Yangtze) are conven­ tionally blamed on Xiang Ying’s “right opportunism.” In fact, as historians in China now acknowledge, Xiang’s army reached the war zone and slipped units into the Japanese rear as quickly as was objectively possible, within weeks of reorganizing its scattered southern columns. Xiang’s failure to build

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governments south of the Yangtze also had an objective explanation. His base was close to strong Nationalist garrisons that were in a position to pre­ vent radical measures. On this point, none of the army’s Jiangnan leaders, not even Chen Yi, disagreed with Xiang. Nevertheless, the special phasing of the birth of the resistance and of Communist governments in Central China set in motion various unique processes.33 In North China, the Communists’ early presence in places nominally under Japanese occupation and vacated by the Nationalists enabled them to seize power at the head of a roused populace and take control of weapons and supplies left by retreating Nationalists. In Central China, the terror in Jiangnan largely preceded the arrival of the New Fourth Army. The Communists sub­ sequently missed the chance to take advantage of the panic around Wuhan in late 1938, again allegedly because of a wrong political analysis, though it is hard to see how the Wuhan CCP organization, not itself an army, could have ended the rural chaos and proliferation of command posts. Because of the Communist absence at the decisive moment, the armies that sprang up on the Central China battlefield during the rural militariza­ tion in 1937-1938 were coopted by the Nationalists, who had learned from the mistake ç f abandoning the North to Communist guerrillas. “In this way,” said Liu Shaoqi, “the Kuomintang [Guomindang] restored part of its old order. It completely incorporated the spontaneous people’s guerrilla units north of the Changjiang [Yangtze] River . . . while we our­ selves became quite isolated there.”34 By the time the New Fourth Army had established a firm presence in Cen­ tral China, the Japanese had halted their offensive and Chiang had begun to curb the Communists. This timing explains the large number of battles fought in 1940 between the New Fourth Army and the Nationalists.35 According to Yung-fa Chen, the northern Party was able to seize power from fugitive local bureaucrats by raising nationalist slogans, since the rural communities were “desperate for help and assurance [and] responsive to any group promising solutions.” In Central China, where they were not on hand at the decisive moment, they were forced into a competition with the Na­ tionalist Party for the leadership of the villages and had to build an economic content into their platform of abstracted nationalism.36 Chen plays down the role of socioeconomic reform in the Communists’ campaign to mobilize the peasants, but his finding suggests a link between timing and the intensity of class struggle in Central China. The New Fourth Army’s failure to seize control of the spontaneous mobi­ lization that took place after the Nationalist defeat led to the temporary mo­ nopolization of rural self-defense by landlord militias, bandits, Nationalist stragglers, religious sectarians, and the like. The CCP reacted with “ultra-left mistakes in obtaining provisions, in reorganizing guerrilla units and local armed forces, in punishing collaborators and in policies concerning social

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problems.” Because of the militarization of the villages underNnon-Communist leaders, this radical phase lasted longer in parts of Central China than elsewhere in the country.37

RENT CUTS AND THE RESISTANCE

Class tensions between landlords and their tenants were a more widely avail­ able focus for agitation in Central China than in the North, where there was less tenancy.38 According to Yung-fa Chen, tenancy was “an important, but minor, problem in CCP-occupied central and eastern China.”39 In the North, taxes and official bullying and corruption were a far greater issue than rent in the eyes of most peasants, and the local state was a more frequent target for their protests than the landlord.40 Landlordism took quite different forms in New Fourth Army areas north and south of the Yangtze. A good half of southern landlords simultaneously en­ gaged in industry and commerce; many were absentee and few had connec­ tions to official service. Landlords north of the river, in the army’s central bases, had far greater economic and political power over their tenants. They lived in mud castles with large armed guards and had strong ties to the local state.41 According to Prasenjit Duara’s study on state building in North China, the northern Communists could enter the villages, more easily because few peas­ ants were dependent on landlords. For the same reason, however, the north­ ern villages were not tinder for the spark of class struggle.42 This argument should be considered alongside those of Tetsuya Kataoka and Yung-fa Chen. Both note the New Fourth Army’s failure to preempt rural militarization in Central China but explain it differently. Kataoka, borrowing arguments of Rao Shushi, implies that one reason for the Communists’ relative weakness in Central China was the existence there of a strong tradition of rural militarization—of regional and local forces or­ ganized along lines similar to their own.43 According to Chen, however, parochial mobilization was neither particularly strong in Central China nor especially weak in the North.44 The Party in Central China missed the chance not because of differences in the environment but because it was not ready, strategically or psychologically, to take it.45

COMMUNIST STRENGTH

The Communists ran a strong secret organization in North China at the start of the war and commanded a strong military base around Yan’an from which to support it. In Central China, the Party lacked such networks and institutions.

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The Party had been eradicated along the Yangtze after 1927. Although it reestablished a presence in Shanghai and other cities in 1937, it was not able to intervene decisively along either bank of the river in the early months of the war. Communists freed from Nationalist jails returned to their native places in the countryside, but their efforts were uncoordinated. The Party’s lack of experienced cadres, particularly at lower and middle levels,46 pre­ vented it from taking advantage of the turmoil in 1937 and early 1938 and slowed down base building in Central China. The Eighth Route Army moved out across the North from Shaanxi, the site of a Party base since 1934 and the seat of the Party’s central leadership since 1933. The bases from which the New Fourth Army set out in late 1937 and early 1938 were scattered across eight provinces and mostly far away from its new garrisons along the Yangtze. In the early war years, its bases in the old soviet areas were more a liability than a support, for they were subject to constant Nationalist harassment. Xiang Ying hoped that a Japanese advance south of the Yangtze'would enable him to restore a physical tie to the old so­ viet areas, but he died before the advance took place. To secure a reliable rear for the New Fourth Army, Chen Yi and Liu Shaoqi had to reorient it to the North, a process that took three years. The New Fourth Army’s weakness was partly remedied by the dispatch south of cadres versed in Maoist style. “Because we already had the experi­ ence of building base areas in the North and had many relevant directives by the Central Committee,” said Liu Shaoqi, “we were able to make relatively few mistakes and rapidly correct those that had been made.”47 The lack of personnel helps explain certain features of New Fourth Army politics and style, especially in the early years. In a word, the New Fourth Army’s touch seemed lighter. It was more ready to share power and more likely to exercise control indirectly rather than by compulsion. One example is its united front with influential sections of the Subei gentry, a relationship that went deeper, lasted longer, and had greater issue than similar connec­ tions elsewhere. Another is the special set of tactics that it developed to build mass movements to make up for its lack of numbers. In a report to a conference in Northwest Shanxi in 1942, Liu Shaoqi drew a number of comparisons between the looser style of Party work in Central China and the more authoritarian ways and “hierarchical criteria” of the North. One example that he urged the northerners to copy was the system used to promote rent and interest cuts. Instead of trying to develop the movement everywhere at once, by a single timetable established from above, the Party selected two or three key villages in key districts in key counties “so as to effect a breakthrough at one place.” Liu also criticized the northern habit of fighting the landlords in the masses’ stead and appointing their leaders, a style of work more foreign to the New Fourth Army, which was too thinly spread to manage situations in this way.48

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THE CCP AND THE GÊNTRY

Control over territory and resources in wartime Central China was contested across a far wider political and military spectrum than in the North. The larger Nationalist factions, including the Gui Clique and Gu Zhutong’s loyalists, were not the only non-Communist contestants. The local gentry too played a critical role in engineering power transfers of which the Communists were the beneficiaries. The gentry in New Fourth Army regions was more “modern,” “enlight­ ened,” and politically opportunistic than the gentry in other places. In the Yangtze Delta and on the Subei Plains, literati networks were particularly vis­ ible, outward reaching, and densely organized.49 This fact created special chances for the army that its leaders were particularly equipped to exploit and that uniquely shaped their work. The CCP in Yan’an recognized that the “national bourgeoisie” and gen­ try in Central China were influential throughout the country, including in Chongqing, and issued detailed instructions on how to treat them.50 It noted that the prestige in gentry, merchant, and scholarly circles in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Shanghai of Han Guojun, a veteran Subei politician and gen­ try leader, was particularly extensive; winning him “and others of Subei’s venerated old gentry” would help greatly toward “isolating the comprador capitalists . . . and winning the national bourgeoisie.” At the same time, Mao directed Zhou Enlai to request representatives of the Jiangsu-Zhejiang elite sojourning in Chongqing to send people to Subei to help build an anti-Japanese base there.51 Chiang Kai-shek’s state-building efforts after 1927 had alienated key sec­ tions of the gentry elite in parts of Central China from formal government. Excluded from higher office, the county elite lost its cohesion and ties to higher places. Countywide politics, once open to gentry participation and it­ self a conduit to provincial circles, became the preserve of the Nationalist Party and its local government.52 However, unofficial gentry power persisted in the counties after 1927 and was matched at the regional level by the in­ fluence of leaders like Han Guojun. The local gentry throughout Central China resented the carpetbaggers who turned up under Nationalist cliques. Many gentry had past radical attachments and were conditioned by the so­ cial programs of prewar governments to tolerate wartime reforms under the New Fourth Army.53 Before the Japanese invasion, such people could exercise their influence only discreetly, but Chiang’s flight west multiplied their options. The nature of Nationalist Party power in Central China changed fundamentally, and the New Fourth Army arrived with an unexpected modus operandi and agenda. In December 1937, Chiang Kai-shek appointed General Gu Zhutong, a Subei native, governor of Jiangsu, and Gu’s Subei protégé Han Deqin to

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head the province’s administration. Gu then appointed Han Deqin to stand in for him as governor. Han Guojun and the old Subei leadership ousted by the spread of Nationalist pow er formed a potential opposition to the new government. Not surprisingly, they found common ground with other of Han D eqin’s opponents, not least the Communists, his chief wartime rivals. The devolution of Nationalist Party power in Subei that resulted in the ap­ pointment of Han Deqin was a superficial form of localization effected from above and influenced by factional considerations at the national level. The ap­ pointment gave out-of-power factions the chance for a comeback. Han Guojun was immensely influential among Subei’s upper classes, who carefully studied his changing political direction. He maintained “a thousand and one ties” to Han Deqin himself and to Han’s entourage, most of whom were his proteges.54 Some dimensions of Han Guojun’s realm were restored by the war. If the Nationalist Party’s state-building project drove sections of the Subei gentry into opposition and a sort of wilderness, the Japanese inva­ sion put them back on the advantage by allowing them to mobilize old ties in defense of their ancestral lands. The special circumstances of the war thrust them iqjo an alliance with the Communists. Too small as yet to supplant Han Guojun, the New Fourth Army leaned heavily on his gentry faction to destroy Han Deqin. Chen Yi’s guerrillas had behind them the experience of the Three-Year War, which had forced them massively onto the defensive. Most guerrillas had switched to a policy of alliance with friendly or amenable power hold­ ers.55 Though the Three-Year War was not the source of this policy, which was practically as old as the CCP itself, it provided a priceless training in it. As a result, southern guerrillas perfected their mastery of the “united front from above” even before the official switch to it in Yan’an. The second united front legitimized skills and habits in the New Fourth Army that by 1938 came naturally to many of its commanders.56 This resort to old ways in new settings was more pronounced in the New Fourth Army than in the Eighth Route Army, and not just because of the ex­ perience of the Three-Year War. The Communists in Central China were far weaker than the Communists in the North and faced stronger military oppo­ sition from the Nationalist Party. They were in greater need of allies and found them in the disaffected gentry. The New Fourth Army could rely on a large number of highborn local Com­ munists to propagandize for it among the gentry. The foothold created in Jiangnan by indigenous revolutionaries freed from jail in 1937 gave the Party access to the regional elite, with whom the revolutionaries shared a nexus of familial, commercial, educational, and other ties that stretched across the Yangtze. All Jiangsu south of Nanjing and places east of Nanjing where the army established its first guerrilla base are tied linguistically to Subei: though

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geographically part of Jiangnan, people there speak a Subei dialect.57 Parts of the same region are also linked to Subei by virtue of the out-migration of Subei people to farmland depopulated by the Taiping Rebellion.58 Chen Yi waged an extraordinary poetry offensive to persuade the Subei gentry of his urbanity and patriotic spirit, as well as to legitimate his army’s bid for power. His Lakes and Seas Art and Literature Society punctuated the war with verse, commented on the issues of the day through poetry, and drew numerous members of the “enlightened gentry” to the Party’s side. “En­ lightened old poets” won scores of young people to the New Fourth Army, including poets from all over Central China.59 The bond with Han Guojun symbolized the confluence of the resurgent gentry and the Communists. Han was portrayed by Nationalist Party lead­ ers as little less than a traitor and puppet of Chen Yi, yet the recrudescence of gentry politics was no Communist fabrication. Gentry pow er was hatched by the war, which created the space for it to grow, and by gentry contempt for the Nationalist Party’s incompetent authority. The Commu­ nists seized the chance to build on the gentry-based structures that revived in Subei during late 1940. There was no firm divide betw een the local gen­ try and the local Communist elite. Under Han Guojun, members of the gentry formed a General Affairs Of­ fice for Dealing with the Crisis. This body, formed to keep social order, was a third force between the formal government of the Nationalist Party and the new Communist power. The Communists, far from being the gentry’s pup­ peteers, were too short of cadres in Hai’an to form a government of their own until after October 1940. The Consultative Assembly convened at Hai’an in 1940 had a representative, chaotic look that its stage-managed northern counterparts lacked. Of its 388 members, only 20 percent were Communist.60 That the Communists had no direct hand in initiating Subei’s gentry resur­ gence did not prevent them from adopting measures to encourage it. The shape that gentry power first took was informal and impromptu. In the longer run, after the New Fourth Army’s decisive victory over the National­ ists in Subei in late 1940 and the decisive break with the Nationalist Party in January 1941, gentry participation was formalized in new governments. The gentry itself was eventually overwhelmed by its Communist allies. The three main Chinese rivals for political power along the Yangtze in 1940 were the Nationalist Party, representing formal government; the gentry, representing the region’s obsolescent informal authority, temporarily re­ stored to a political role; and the Communists, representing a new politics that transcended the formal-informal divide. Before long, the Communists had reduced the Nationalist Party to an impotent rump. They achieved this victory by using the independently organized gentry, stiffened by their own supporters, as a fulcrum around which to turn the levers of patriotic indig­ nation and mass pressure.

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The gentry itself was so divided by interest and politics that it could not consistently follow a third way between the two parties. The actions that it initiated acquired clout only when the Communists lent a hand. The alliance between Party and gentry was no more than a stage on the Communists’ road to power. Despite his approval of the Communist project, Han Guojun was at the conservative end of gentry politics in the province. As a large landowner, he was wary of agrarian revolution, which he at first feared the New Fourth Army would unleash. He recognized that tomorrow belonged to the Communists but was in no hurry to see tomorrow come. Where Chen Yi charmed Han Guojun, the Subei Nationalists alienated him. Having won bureaucratic power from the gentry after 1927, they be­ grudged sharing it with Han’s regenerate supporters. There was also a re­ gional dimension to the rivalry between those in power—mainly natives of northern Subei—and Subei’s factionalized southernmost elite. Despite its relatively swift denouement, the Communists’ encounter with the Subei gentry was'no casual event of scant bearing on their enterprise but a defining act in the Communist drama in Central China. The alliance etched new patriotic themes on the mold by which Chinese Communists had for years shaped their alliances in civil wars and social struggles, and it won over or neutralized the region’s most influential group.

LOCAL ROOTS

Few of the regimes created by the Eighth Route Army and its supporters were without local “revolutionary traditions” in hotbed counties. By melding in its hour of need with the spontaneous resistance that rose after the Na­ tionalist collapse, the Communists in the North, particularly in the model Jin Cha Ji Base Area, restored ties to local activists, many of whom seized power even before the army arrived. The presence of these revolutionary traditions enabled the Eighth Route Army to take root quickly in receptive places. Old bases founded in the 1920s and 1930s and suppressed by government forces were nurseries of the resistance. Without these Red Army legacies, says Kathleen Hartford, “it is very doubtful that the Jin-Cha-Ji base would have been an early success; and without the early success of the Jin-Cha-Ji base, the CCP’s success in the War of Resistance becomes far from a foregone conclusion.”61 In the CCP’s Central China bases, the New Fourth Army had few traditions to call on. The Red Army and guerrilla bases in Eyuwan were part of the Central China battlefield, but in the early war, the trajectory of the Fourth Detachment of the New Fourth Army, bom in 1937, was located to the east, away from Eyuwan. Not until 1939 did Li Xiannian set up a new base in the region, but for quite some time it remained isolated from the New Fourth Army’s other bases.

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In 1930, Communist leaders in the Tonghairutai region of Subei set up a Fourteenth Red Army that mobilized up to 30,000 peasants, but the army was later routed and attempts to restore Party work failed. Despite its defeat, the army seeded the region with forces that reemerged to support the New Fourth Army in the crisis of 1940.62 However, its location close to the heart of Nationalist power in the 1930s meant that it was effectively closed down in the intervening period. It was the sole Party seedbed in the early bases of the New Fourth Army, apart from a minor guerrilla band active in the 1930s along Anhui’s southern border, not far from army headquarters. The guerrillas of the New Fourth Army were unable to take advantage of a local tradition of armed Red dissidence, and they were aliens in their new environment. Mountain people, they landed in China’s flattest, richest, wettest place, and they spoke varieties of Chinese unintelligible to their new neighbors. Their habits and values were different from those of the sophisti­ cated society of Jiangnan, which they considered corrupt, effeminate, cun­ ning, and treacherous. The people of Central China, said one Communist, were “not so frank and honest as the people of the Yellow River basin” (though he conceded that they were brave and intelligent).63 To a certain extent, the army’s passage into Central China was smoothed by the emergence in 1937 of armed forces led by indigenous Communists freed from Nationalist prisons or seeded across the villages from Shanghai. For some time, however, it lacked a feeling of security and its absorption into local society was slower than it was in the North. Insecurity and a lack of rootedness could lead to mistakes, misunderstandings, and inappropriate behavior, including high-handedness, on the part of the New Fourth Army, particularly where it had sufficient military resources to assert authority. Where weak and vulnerable, on the other hand, it tended to tread carefully and negotiate deals rather than issue orders. On the whole, its style in the early years was to seek compromise and make concessions.64

RECTIFICATION

Attempts to periodize the resistance at the national level seemed not to work. The New Fourth Army was out of phase with the northern resistance at the start of the war and remained so throughout it. Mark Seiden, reviewing the model for the Chinese Revolution that he established in the 1960s in The Yenan Way; comments that “the periodization of the epoch [there] proposed, . . . pivoting on the institutional-political-ideological watershed of 1942-1943 . . . remains generally valid not only for Shen-Kan-Ning [Shaan Gan Ningl but for the na­ tional movement.”65 But the “pivotal” rectification campaign carried out in Shaan Gan Ning between 1942 and 1944, identified by Seiden as the “border re­ gion’s second revolution,”66 was mirrored only roughly, at removes, in Central

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China. Even if periodization is interpreted as a series of necessary stages rather than as a chronology, rectification in Central China was but a shadow of that in the North, and scarcely a second revolution. Beyond its role in the power struggle, rectification was designed to cope with the crisis and social tensions created in the North by the Japanese of­ fensive and the Guomindang blockade in 1941 and 1942, and to make “good Communists” of new recruits. However, the different phasing of Party ex­ pansion in Central China, and perhaps differences at the economic level, ruled out a campaign in 1942 to consolidate and weed out the ranks. The problem in Central China in the early 1940s was to build the CCP rather than mold it. The period of rapid growth came later than it did in the North, where the bulk of the twentyfold increase in Party membership to 800,000 in the first three years of the war took place.67 Even by late 1942, membership in Central China was just 130,00o.68 The rampant inflation that created social tensions in the North likewise had no direct counterpart in Central China, where^grain prices remained relatively stable in many bases. The study movement launched in Yan’an in 1939 had no apparent equal in Central China. Plans laid in 1942 and 1943 for checkups, purges, and class education had little outcome, mainly because of the unstable military situa­ tion.69 Not until 1944 did rectification^ take off in Central China.70 The lesser impact of rectification helps to explain the New Fourth Army’s failure to knit its territories together. The main reason for that failure lay in power politics and the military balance. But the wartime Communist movement had all along been far more heterogeneous in composition in Central China than in the North, where reduction to uniformity was rectification’s main goal.

THE URBAN UNK Odoric Wou has rightly argued that no study of China’s peasant revolution is complete without a grasp of its urban links.71 This point suggests a fur­ ther contrast betw een North and Central China. Both places received sup­ port from the cities, but the support differed radically in strength and na­ ture. The Eighth Route Army drew most of its urban cadre from Beiping, by way of Taiyuan. Some CCP supporters insisted on staying in Beiping, but probably most left.72 Later, “large numbers of workers, Party members, students, and sympathizers” in the northern cities were mobilized to the villages or to their native places.73 The New Fourth Army’s main urban link was Shanghai, though it also drew support from many other cities north and south of the Yangtze. Shanghai at the start of the war differed from Beiping in several ways. It was China’s most important city in the 1930s. Although Nanjing was the capital, Shanghai was the principal political base of Nationalist Party politi-

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cians. It was China’s industrial and commercial heart, and the begetter of most of its modern radical movements, including the Communist Party. Shanghai’s International Settlement stayed out of Japanese hands.until the start of the Pacific War. In the first four years of the war, it remained a “lonely island” in a sea of occupation, unlike Beijing and Tianjin, which briefly opened during the first weeks of the war and then shut. Its anom­ alous position allowed it to be used as a base from which to launch covert and public campaigns in support of the New Fourth Army. Unlike Beiping, which was abandoned without a fight, Shanghai and other cities of East and Central China were the focus of protracted battles and much destruction, which loosed tides of refugees onto the villages. In the North, the pull of the Eighth Route Army was not matched by a comparable push. Beiping’s radical tradition lacked Shanghai’s resonance and was not renewed, as Shanghai’s was in 1937, by a political upheaval headed by the National Salvation movement. The attempts made to rouse Beiping in selfdefense were suppressed by the city’s Nationalist commander, who banned anti-Japanese agitation. In any event, the old capital yielded fewer workers, students, and intellectuals to the Eighth Route Army than Shanghai yielded to the New Fourth Army.74 Shanghai was the source not just of recruits but of cash, goods, and en­ couragement. It “consoled” the New Fourth Army, trained many of its re­ cruits, healed its sick leaders, spied and ran errands for it, helped keep it in touch with other places, and held it in the national and world limelight. Its impact on the Central China bases was quantitatively greater than that of Beiping on the bases of the Eighth Route Army; qualitatively, it was greater even than the countryside from which the New Fourth Army took the bulk of its members. The New Fourth Army’s urban link helped greatly in solving its shortage of officials and skilled personnel. Shanghai’s contribution to the army before 1941 was crucial in transforming it from a guerrilla confederation into China’s most modem force. The contribution consisted of some 10,00075 workers, students, intellectuals, and other people with special skills and an experi­ ence of urban and industrial culture, many of them Marxists and experienced organizers who erected a Party structure across Central China and licked the guerrillas into shape. They also included doctors, economists, educators, writers, artists, and news workers.76 As a result, the New Fourth Army was probably the best educated of China’s armies, made up, proportionately more so than any other army, of young men and women who, but for the war, would have been in full-time education and for whom the army was an alternative schooling. It was also China’s most proletarian army, and the one with proportionately the most women. The command of the Eighth Route Army was born of the Long March, a process of chemical bonding and refinement that had no equivalent in the

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southern experience. The New Fourth Army was more varied than Mao’s army sociologically, as well as politically and geographically. The peasant label adequately describes none of China’s Communist forces, which did not pursue exclusively peasant goals and included people from all social classes. Yet some Communist armies (e.g., the Eighth Route Army) had a larger peas­ ant contingent than others, such as the New Fourth Army. In the North China bases, nonpeasant, “m odern” classes were repre­ sented thinly if at all. Of 1,955 members of the twenty-one county assem­ blies in Shaan Gan Ning, just 97 were “hired hands or artisans.” Just 4 per­ cent of the members of seven county-level assemblies in Jin Cha Ji were described as workers. In 1939, Shaan Gan Ning’s Consultative Assembly included 4.5 percent workers, 67.8 percent poor peasants, 21.3 percent middle peasants, 1.7 percent rich peasants, 1.3 percent merchants, and 1.7 percent landlords.77 Workers did join the Eighth Route Army in Jin Ji Lu Yu and other northern bases, but they were mostly miners and members of other rural w orkers’ groups. In Central China, between 20 and 30 percent of members of consultative assemblies “at county level and above” were workers.78 The Huaihai Consultative Assembly in 1942 was attended by 229 people, including twenty-five soldiers, forty-eight landlord-gentry, fifteen industrialists and merchants, six people “from middle schools and above,” sixteen primary teachers, sixteen youth, sixteen women, sixteen workers, forty peasants, two boat dwellers, and twenty-nine government invitees (including another thir­ teen landlord-gentry).79 The leadership of the New Fourth Army at regimental level and above was varied and well educated. According to an incomplete list (compiled by Na­ tionalist intelligence) of the social backgrounds of senior leaders, four were graduates of university or medical school, seven of a military academy, and eight of Yan'an’s Resistance University; five were workers, eight had risen from the ranks, eleven were students, and five were peasants.80 Communist Party members in Jiangnan were also from a wide spread of classes. A Nationalist analysis of the background of 158 members of the CCP in western Zhejiang in 1939 yielded seventeen production workers, eight handicraft workers, three agricultural laborers, nineteen peasants, eight laborers, five “others,” and no fewer than ninety-eight intellectuals, of whom forty-five were government officials. Nine had gone to university and ninety to middle school; only eight were illiterate. Almost all were in their early twenties.81 Thus the New Fourth Army was generally more diversified and more mod­ em in social composition than the Eighth Route Army. It had proportionately far more workers and intellectuals, and probably absolutely more workers, absolutely more overseas Chinese, proportionately more women, and pro­ portionately more young people, at least at first.

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Estimates suggest that 10,000 people joined the New Fourth Army from Shanghai before 1941 (and another 10,000 thereafter), accounting for some­ thing like one in nine of its pre-1941 strength.82 Perhaps an equal number of workers, students, and intellectuals left other towns to join the army in its early years. In the villages, the Party and the army went out of their way to recruit village intellectuals, workers who had returned to the countryside, and rural proletarians; village intellectuals probably accounted for a large part of their initial growth. Peasants formed at most a plurality and certainly no majority in the early New Fourth Army. In 1943 and 1944, when it more than doubled in size, it came to look more like its northern counterpart. Even so, the effect of the exceptionally large urban and educated cadre that it ac­ quired in its formative years and was distributed across its bases could not be erased. Did the New Fourth Army’s unusual sociological constitution, which set it apart from other armies and went some way toward equipping it with the credentials of a Communist army in the classic definition, make of it in other respects an army of a different sort? The New Fourth Army under Xiang Ying did for a while entertain strategic goals that were inconsonant with Mao’s, but the difference had nothing to do with sociology and in­ stead reflected differences in military circumstance, military experience, and political viewpoint. Nor did the special nature of the New Fourth Army stand in the way of its rapid assimilation to Maoist norms and style after 1940. After 1942, the two armies grew in step, came to look more like each other, and eventually merged. The difference between the New Fourth Army and the Eighth Route Army was, ultimately, not of nature but of opportunity and environment. The two were variants on a single pattern. The New Fourth Army reflected the spe­ cial features of the society of the lower Yangtze region. The Shanghai Com­ munists, like Communists everywhere in China, mobilized all ties and re­ sources at all levels and applied them to miraculously transforming the New Fourth Army from a colorful ragbag of CCP diehards into China’s best edu­ cated and most modern army. The worker-student factor compensated for the New Fourth Army’s gross lack of resources, connections, and numbers. Workers were an asset not just in terms of ideological legitimation. They possessed rarer skills and had broader horizons than peasants; at the same time, almost all were linked to the villages by ties of provenance and kinship, which they could often wield more profitably than those who had never gone to town. The students lacked practical skills, but were literate, articulate, passionate, and broaderminded, and were better connected even than the workers. The army that hovered at the gates of Shanghai in 1945 was no alien in­ truder but was shot through, particularly at senior and middle levels, with Shanghai returnees. No wall separated Shanghai from the surrounding coun-

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tryside. The New Fourth Army was probably a more accurate reflection than any army in China of the society on whose behalf it claimed to fight.

EDUCATION The cities that lay south, west, and north of the Central China bases raised numerous levies of teachers and students for the New Fourth Army. These two groups were at the fore of Shanghai’s patriotic movement in 1937. Only among teachers had the Communists retained a base of supporters (which grew to several thousand in 1936) after the collapse of 1934. Living standards in most places in which the New Fourth Army fought were relatively high, as was the cultural level and the number of educated people.83 This social fact was reflected and even magnified in the New Fourth Army, which both attracted and went out of its way to recruit intellectuals. Naturally, Shanghai was the most important reason why the New Fourth Army was awash with students and intellectuals,84 but not the only one. Within the bases, the Communists made a special effort to recruit teachers in the many modem-style middle and primary schools.85 Schoolteachers were useful not simply for their skills but also for their many connections, both to other teachers ándito their past and present pupils. Prosperity gave peasants in Shanghai greater access to learning than peas­ ants elsewhere in China had.86 Village intellectuals, especially schoolmasters, were plentiful. In 1940, the Subei Command issued a directive criticizing the lack of attention to village intellectuals and demanding their “absorption in large numbers into the popular movement.” “They have social status,” the di­ rective explained. “The level of their political culture is high, they readily un­ derstand things, and their living habits have merged with those of the peas­ ants; they are our bridge to the villages.”87 Because of the New Fourth Army’s city link, its cultural activities were fa­ mous as the liveliest of any army in the country. Cultural figures from Shanghai and elsewhere flocked to it. Shanghai, said one commentator in 1940, had been the resplendent center of China’s new culture in prewar days, but after the Japanese invasion, Jiangnan became a barbaric waste­ land; the new culture had followed the New Fourth Army to places where that culture had previously been less known.88 A large cadre of educated, specialized personnel moving into the Central China bases compensated for the CCP’s poor start and its shortage of cadres; by late 1940, only cultural workers, technicians, medical workers, and a few others were recruited to work in Subei. The crowds of young people, stu­ dents, workers, and jobless workers who wanted to go there in the wake of the Communist victory at Huangqiao in October 1940 were welcome only on condition that they found their own way to the base.89

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BASE AREA FINANCE V

\

Most of the Central China bases were in or around China’s industrial, com­ mercial, and agricultural powerhouse. Taken as a whole, they generated a substantially greater per capita income than the Party’s northern bases. Be­ cause power in much of the region was shared among three authorities (the Communists, the Nationalists, and the Japanese or their puppet govern­ ments), the Communists’ financial administration was quite complex, varied, and insecure. Even so, it yielded an absolutely greater gain than in the North. In Shaan Gan Ning, the cost of millet spiraled between 1941 and 1943 more than a hundredfold.90 Central China Bases avoided extreme inflation and kept the price of grain substantially below that in occupied cities. In 1941, the price of rice was $40 a catty in the Huainan Base, compared with up to $160 in Nanjing, Shanghai, and Wuhu; wheat prices in Huainan were $30 a catty, compared with $200 in Xuyi.91 The separate bases in Central China conducted their financial affairs so successfully that they were able to make huge economic contributions to the New Fourth Army’s central coffers and even to the northern bases.92 The Wanjiang Base was so prosperous that its Seventh Division acquired the nickname the “Rich Division” and was said to have “eaten nothing but rice and worn nothing but uniforms made of Western-style cloth.”93 The base sent more than $2.6 million to Yancheng in 1942-1943, the equivalent of 11,761 catties of rice on the urban market, and a sum in 1944 equivalent to more than 83,130 catties.94 In 1942, its revenue (about $24.8 million) ex­ ceeded its expenditure by about $1.9 million.95 In 1941, the Wandong Base collected 300,000 hectoliters of grain tax and Suchangtai, 200,000. In 1944, Eyu collected more than 600,000 hectoliters, compared with figures of just 200,000 and 160,000 for the whole of Shaan Gan Ning in 1941 and 1944.96 Grain tax formed an unusually small proportion of total revenue in Cen­ tral China. In Huaibei in 1944, it accounted for a mere 12.1 percent of ad­ ministrative income, the bulk of which derived from trade, industry, and handicrafts.97 Taxes on goods in transit across lines of communication con­ trolled by the Communists formed a large proportion of the Party’s revenue in Central China. Such taxes explain the extraordinary profitability of the Wanjiang Base, which straddled the Yangtze and controlled some of the trade between occupied Jiangnan and the Nationalist rear. The rates it levied ranged from 13 to 20 percent on grain to 30 percent on “superstitious [i.e., religious] goods.”98 Statistics suggest that Communist currencies in some of the Central China Bases avoided the devaluation that hit those in the North. In Shaan Gan Ning, the value of border region currency fell twice as rapidly in 1941 as the value of the Nationalist Party’s currency.99 Even the relatively stable South Hebei dollar was worth only three Nationalist regime dollars by

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1945.100 In Wanjiang, in contrast, one local dollar bought first one, then thirty, and then, in 1944, fifty Nationalist dollars.101 By mobilizing the economic resources of their fertile Central China Bases, rich in roads and waterways, the Communists created a cushion against adver­ sity. However, that same ease of communication hindered their initial passage east and north, and the prosperity at times encouraged “ultraleft provision­ ing”—living parasitically by expropriating the rich and “protecting” trade.102

INTEGRATION Chinese histories of the war list a unitary Central China Base alongside the five northern bases, but this base lacked key features of the northern ones. For a long time, it failed to achieve the same degree of military coordination, and it never achieved the same degree of administrative integration. In 1945, the Central China Base was somewhat bigger than the average northern base. Like them, it was divided into strategic zones, or subsidiary bases. Al­ though it was on a par with them in other ways as well, it lacked an over­ arching administration at the top level, unlike the governments of Jin Cha Ji, Jin Ji Lu Yu, Shandong, and Jin Sui Border Regions.103 Several factors explain the relative incoherence of the Party’s war effort in Central China, including the scattered provenance of the founding units of the New Fourth Army, the jumbled origins of its political staff, and the mili­ tary, political, and physical geography of the region. These constitutional and contextual influences combined to disrupt military coordination and stood in the way of the CCP’s efforts to generalize its political power. The New Fourth Army was created from guerrilla fragments rescued from isolation and possible oblivion and brought together under one command but in two war zones, one north and one south of the Yangtze. The guerril­ las, initially (said Chen Yi) under “feudal lords,”104 were slowly integrated, some more quickly than others; the slowest to assimilate were those under Gao Jingting north of the Yangtze. In the three years up to 1938, the Communists who went on to form the New Fourth Army had no experience of regular or mobile warfare. They had rarely fought above battalion strength. They were used to acting indepen­ dently and planning from day to day.105 Once the New Fourth Army reached the Yangtze, local forces, some under Communists, some under leftist patri­ ots, some under military adventurers, were absorbed into it. These local guerrillas at first rarely conformed to the Party’s wishes, and continued to fol­ low their own lights despite efforts to discipline them. After 1937, the New Fourth Army was reinforced by infusions of cadres from Shanghai and Yan’an and, in 1940, by Eighth Route Army columns from Shandong. The in­ tegration of these different elements was not always smooth.

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The Eighth Route Army was also varied in composition, though far less so in terms of its origin in 1937; and it was not subject to admixtures from other Party armies. Its leaders were far more experienced in dealing with problems of expansion and consolidation than was Xiang Ying. The New Fourth Army’s chaotic origins deprived its early military cam­ paigns of discipline and concert. Its conquest of Subei, planned by Liu Shaoqi in consultation with Mao as an orderly advance from the west, the north, and the south, was, in the event, achieved by isolated local armies act­ ing on their own account.106 Liu sketched the chaos: Our army and Party organizations behind enem y lines in Central China were at first established . . . by merging diverse groups which had their individual or­ ganizations and systems o f leadership or command and which acted indepen­ dently with little co-ordination o f operations or policies. Therefore, unable to aid each other or to take unified actions to cope with attacks by the Japanese aggressors, the puppet troops and the anti-Communist diehards, they suffered som e unnecessary losses. With respect to the United Front and other policies as well as to certain concrete questions or certain people, differences often cropped up between armed units, between the upper and lower levels and be­ tween the army on the one hand and the Party and government on the other. There were also divergences betw een the policies announced by the Party and the practice of the various armed forces and government organs. All this left fer­ tile ground for our opponents to use in sow ing discord and misunderstandings among our ranks.107

“Guerrillaist” attitudes derived from the experience of the Three-Year War, which was fought by small, autonomous bands that preferred informal to for­ mal structures and “direct democracy” to military discipline and tended to “ig­ nore orders from higher levels,” created special difficulties during the early years of the New Fourth Army. Mao Zedong, speaking essentially of the his­ tory and future path of the Eighth Route Army and the main-force Red Army units that gave birth to it, described the three main changes in strategy as fol­ lows: “The first was the change from guerrilla warfare to regular warfare in the civil war. The second was the change from regular warfare in the civil war to guerrilla warfare in the War of Resistance. And the third will be the change from guerrilla warfare to regular warfare in the War of Resistance.”108 The task of the New Fourth Army in 1938 was the opposite of the one that the Eighth Route Army had at the start of the war. Its members had to learn formal discipline, strict military routine, and the ways of a large-scale orga­ nization. According to their commander, General Ye Ting, they had to make the transition from small-scale guerrilla units to large mobile forces orga­ nized in “one united army”; in short, they had to regularize.109 The disorganization of the New Fourth Army was compounded by the problem of articulating a movement across plains and dense lines of com-

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munication on a battlefield crowded with rival armies, in a region that was once the nerve center of prewar nationalism. The two problems, historical and situational, fed into one another. The fragmentation of the Central China Base into isolated, semi-independent regions was never entirely overcome. The Central China Bases, or strategic zones, were divided not only by jagged and intersecting military frontiers but by their distinct wartime origins. Before the 1941 attempt to orchestrate the Communist effort in Central China, three dif­ ferent bands of political influence coexisted. In Jiangnan, and in some places immediately north of the river, Xiang Ying’s accommodationist line, reflecting his vulnerable position alongside strong Nationalist divisions, held sway. In Huainan and Huaibei, Liu Shaoqi formed people’s governments based on the army and on local movements. In Wandongbei and northern Subei, the Eighth Route Army set up regimes on the northern model.110 The eight strategic zones into which the Central China Base was divided had no unified government, unlike Jin Cha Ji and other northern bases. Even some strategic zones lacked a single administration. Subei, for example, had one government in yanfu and another in Huaihai; Huainan had one govern­ ment west and another east of the Jinpu Railway. Not until 1943 were the strategic zones of Suzhong, Subei, Huainan, and Huaibei linked as one; only after Japan’s surrender was the Suwan Border Region government set up to administer them.1^1 True, the Communist governments in the North were not all equally ef­ fective. David Goodman has argued that the government in Jin Ji Lu Yu was a “convenient fiction,” having minimal capabilities and an influence limited to only two of the region’s four base areas, Taihang, and Taiyue.112 However, even in 1943, when Jin Ji Lu Yu was in crisis, Taihang and Taiyue together accounted for a total of eighty-three counties, the same total as in the four biggest (and at the time still unconnected) bases of Central China (Suzhong, Subei, Huainan, and Huaibei) in 1945.113 If the Communist government in Jin Ji Lu Yu was partly nominal and largely (though by no means wholly) inef­ fective, Central China lacked even the fiction, and the real symbolic value, of Jin Ji Lu Yu’s “sustained government and popular participation” at the re­ gional level.114 After the Wannan Incident, a finance committee was set up under the Cen­ tral China Bureau, but it never succeeded in establishing a unitary financial administration. Instead, each base ran its own finances and tended to suit its measure to local conditions. Each set its own targets, developed its own proj­ ects, and established its own financial institutions.115 The economic and fi­ nancial management of the individual bases was conducted with creativity and flair by well-known refugee economists from the nearby cities.116 The Party’s inability to create unitary regimes on large stretches of connected territory in Central China raised obstacles that were encountered less in the North. However, it compelled its cadres to dive deeper into society, adapt more

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effectively to the local environment, and apply ingenuity where naked author­ ity would not do. This decentralized model of decision making >and economic management, based more on consensus than on authority, looks quite con­ temporary in spirit, a resemblance not unremarked by present-day champions of an army vilified in the past for failing to live by Maoist precepts. Though the Central China Base existed in name only and was fragmented in most other ways, culturally it was more homogeneous than northern bases. Even before its wartime seeding by Shanghai, the enlightened cultural climate of Central China set it apart in Communist eyes from northern “back­ wardness,” particularism, and conservatism.117 The idea of “northern back­ wardness” disappeared from Party debate in the 1930s, but the issues it raised remained relevant after the the Party’s wartime power extended to China’s richest provinces.118

CONCLUSION The Communists in Central China lacked several of the advantages of those in the North. The Nationalists were less defeatist and divided, the tradition of Communist-led insurgency in the villages was weaker, and the terrain was less suited to guerrilla warfare. The New Fourth Army entered the war zone later than the northern Communists had, and it failed to profit from the initial ferment. The geographical restrictions, objective and imposed, on the New Fourth Army prevented it from coalescing into a unified whole, thus condemning it to an auxiliary status in the Party’s broader war. In 1943, it was directed to relinquish the Central China Bases and retreat temporarily to North China. It was smaller and in that sense expendable too. Throughout the war, it remained China’s second Communist army, in the ranking as well as the temporal sense. The idea of a Central China battlefield evolved with the war as a matter of military strategy (combined with military opportunities and the use to which they were put) rather than of geography. It was constructed to com­ plement the idea of a North China strategic center, which it served as an an­ cillary base and war theater. At times, local issues and imperatives took precedence, but on the whole, the centrally conceived vision, which or­ chestrated all the Party’s bases, armies, and war zones, was more important than local agendas in deciding the course of the resistance. A more flexible approach is required to encompass both levels of the process, but it is a process that cannot be ignored. The Communist movement in wartime Central China, no less than in the North, was the product of turmoil induced by the Japanese invasion. How­ ever, the confrontation with the consequences of that invasion was not direct

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but mediated, in the form of a contest with Nationalist forces in regions ren­ dered isolated and insecure by the war. This wartime contest presaged the civil war, and in some ways it foreshadowed its class struggle more than did the resistance in the North. The Central China Bases lacked a representative body and administration above the level of the individual bases. They were separated from one an­ other and chopped into sections by the Japanese, the Yangtze, and the Grand Canal, as well as the lakes, roads, and waterways. Their administra­ tors failed to grow the ribs and tendons of a unitary state; their soldiers were less able than their northern comrades to marshal their forces in a grand de­ sign. But though the machinery through which they exercised power was not integrated or extensive, and it never achieved a reach—even a symbolic reach—equal to that in the North, their bases were nourished to a greater ex­ tent by a tradition of education and elements of urban culture. This tissue joined them at a level above that of the purely administrative, and it made up for their operational weaknesses. Though junior in almost every other sense, in terms of economic security and income, the Central China Bases outdid the poorer, disaster-prone North. The income they generated stabilized their own regimes and provided hefty sur­ pluses that helped finance Communist resistance throughout the country. The Communists in Central China encountered numerous special difficul­ ties but benefited from several special circumstances. Along the Shanghai tie, educated and politically experienced people poured into their bases. Short of northern-style “hotbed counties” in which to plant resistance armies, they imported the radical pick of China’s number-one hotbed city and made good the deficit. The prevalence of a strong tradition of rural schooling and of an educated, well-knit, disaffected, combustible elite was another base on which they built. Far from lagging behind the North, their influence on local society and their army grew, proportionately, at roughly the same rate as in­ fluence in the North. NOTES The author would like to acknowledge the usefulness o f comments on an earlier draft by Chen Yung-fa, Flemming Christiansen, Joe Esherick, Alan Hunter, and Mark Seiden. 1. For a recent statement o f the advantages o f a “region-specific” approach, see Odoric Y. K. Wou, M obilizing the Masses: B uilding Revolution in H enan (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), pp. 13-14. 2. Van Slyke first made his criticism at Nankai University in 1984. See Fan Lipei (Lyman P. Van Slyke), “Xifang xuezhe dui kangRi genjudide yanjiu” (Research by Western scholars on the anti-Japanese bases), in Zhongguo kangRi genjudi shi guoji xueshu taolunhui lunw enji, ed. Nankai daxue lishixi (Beijing: Dang’an chubanshe, 1985), pp. 95-107, at p. 96.

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3. Kathleen Hartford and Steven M. Goldstein, introduction to Single Sparks: China’s Rural Revolutions, ed. Kathleen Hartford and Steven M. Goldstein (New York: M. E. Sharpe/East Asian Institute of Columbia University, 19&9), pp. 3—33, at p. 27. 4. Gregor Benton, “Maogate at Maolin? Pointing Fingers in the Wake o f a Disas­ ter, South Anhui, January 1941,” East Asian History A (1992): 119-142, at p. 141. 5. Fan Lipei, “Research by Western scholars”; Hartford and Goldstein, introduc­ tion, p. 36. See Gregor Benton, M ountain Fires: The Red A rm y ’s Three-Year War in South China, 1934 -1 9 3 8 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992). 7. “Jianli Yan’anxue” (Establish Yan’an studies), Renmin ribao, 16 May 1990. 8. For a recent study on variation within the Shaanganning base, see Pauline Keating, “The Yan’an Way o f Co-operativization,” China Q uarterly 140 (D ecem ber 1994): 1025-1051. 9. Rong Tianlin, “KangRi genjudi yu nongcun baow ei chengshide gem ing daolu wenti” (On the anti-Japanese bases and the question o f the revolutionary road o f sur­ rounding the cities with the villages), in Zhongguo kangRi gen ju di shi guoji xueshu taolunhui lunwenji, ed. Nankai daxue lishixi (Beijing: Dang’an chubanshe, 1985), pp. 51-65, at pp. 58-59. 10. Chen Yi, “Zai ‘qida’ fayan quanwen” (The complete text o f the speech at the “Seventh Congress”), D ajiangnanbei 5 0945; 1991): 5-9, at pp. 6-7. 11. Hartford and Goldstein, introduction, p. 20. 12. Wou, M obilizing the Masses, p. 11; Hartford and Goldstein, introduction, p. 33; Mark Seiden, China in Revolution: The Yenan Way Revisited (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1995), p. 237. For an early statement o f such an approach, see Elizabeth J. Perry, Rebels a n d Revolutionaries in North China, 1 8 4 5 -1 9 4 5 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1980), pp. 6-7. 13. Liu Shaoqi, “Report on Experience Gained in Six Years o f Work in North and Central China,” in Selected Works o f Liu Shaoqi (1943; reprint, Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1984), 1:246-289, at p. 275. 14. I am thinking in particular of Chalmers Johnson, Tetsuya Kataoka, and Yungfa Chen, though the assumption is quite general. 15. Ma H ongwu et al., eds., KangRi zh a n zh e n g shijian renw u lu (Events and personalities in the anti-Japanese War o f Resistance) (Shanghai: Renmin chuban­ she, 1986), pp. 19-21. Others give different figures. According to Wang Fuyi, ed., X insijun shijian renw u lu (Events and personalities o f the N ew Fourth Army) (Shanghai: Renmin chubanshe, 1988), pp. 205-207, the Central China Base e x ­ tended across 260,000 square kilometers; according to Wang Debao, “Shilun Huazhong kangRi genjudide zhengzhi zhidu” (A preliminary discussion o f the p o­ litical system in the Central China anti-Japanese bases), in Z hongw ai x u e zh e lun kangRi genjudi: N ankai da x u e d i ’erjie Zhongguo kangRi gen ju d i shi g u oji xueshu taolunhui lunw enji, ed. Nankai daxue lishixi and Zhongguo jinxiandai shi jiaoyanshi (Beijing: Dang’an chubanshe, 1993), pp. 297-306, at p. 297. 16. Mao Zedong, “KangRi youji zhanzhengde zhanliie wenti” (Questions o f strat­ egy in the guerrilla war against Japan), in Mao Zedong, Junshi w enji (Selected mili­ tary writings) (1938; reprint, Beijing: Junshi kexue chubanshe, Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, 1993), 2:230-265, at p. 251. 17. Mao Zedong, “Questions o f Strategy,” p. 245.

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18. Chen Yi, “Maoshan yinian—-Jiangnan youjiqu” (One year in Maoshan: Jiangnan’s guerrilla area), 1939, in Xinsijun z a i Maoshan. KangRi douzheng shiliaoxuan (The New Fourth Army at Maoshan. A selection of historical materials), ed. Zhenjiang diqu Maoshan geming lishi jinianguan choubei xiaozu bangongshi (1939; reprint, Jiangsu renmin chubanshe, 1982), pp. 25-51, at p. 25. 19. Mao Zedong, “Questions o f Strategy,” pp. 247, 250-251. 20. Rong Tianlin, “On the Anti-Japanese Bases,” p. 56. 21. Liu Shaoqi, “Our Present Tasks and the Strategic Deployment o f Our Forces,” in Selected Works o f Liu Shaoqi, 19 September 1945 (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1984), 1:365-367. 22. See Gregor Benton, A t the Brink: X iang Ying a n d Mao Zedong in the Count­ dow n to the W annan Incident, March 1939-January 1941. D ocum ents a n d A naly­ sis, Leeds East Asia Papers, no. 38 (Leeds: Department o f East Asian Studies, Uni­ versity o f Leeds, 1996). 23. Shi Ximin, “Chen Yi jiangjun fangwen ji” (Record of a visit to General Chen Yi), 5 April 1939, in K angzhan fenghuo lu: ‘X inhua ribao "tongxun xu an (A record of the resistance beacons: A selection o f New China D aily resistance bulletins), ed. Zhongguo shehuikexueyuan xinwen yanjiusuo, Zhongguo baokanshi yanjiushi (Beijing: Xinhua chubanshe, 1985). ' 24. Fan Zhengfii, “Sunan kangRi minzhu zhengquande fazhan” (The development o f Sunan’s anti-Japanese democratic political power), Jintan wenshi ziliao 4 (1987): 1-23, at p. 3. 25. Wou, M obilising the Masses, pp. 2-4, 372-374. 26. David M. Paulson, “Nationalist Guerrillas in the Sino-Japanese War: The ‘DieHards’ o f Shandong Province,” in Single Sparks, pp. 128-150. 27. The CC Clique was so called because o f its two principals, the brothers Chen Guofu and Chen Lifu. 28. David S. G. Goodman, “Resistance and Revolution, Religion and Rebellion: The Sixth Trigram Movement in Licheng, Shanxi,” p. 149. 29. Liu Shaoqi, “Overcom e Difficulties, Prepare for a Counter-Offensive and Create Conditions for Building a N ew China After the War,” in Selected Works o f Liu Shaoqi, 20 July 1942, 1:222-231, at p. 230. 30. Chalmers Johnson, P easant Nationalism a n d Com m unist Power (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1962), p. 6 l. 31. Yung-fa Chen, M aking Revolution: The Com m unist M ovem ent in Eastern a n d Central China, 1 9 3 7 -1 9 4 5 (Berkeley: University o f California Press, 1986), pp. 513-514. 32. Johnson, P easant N ationalism , p. 70. 33. In 1941, Chen Yi blamed the failure to take advantage o f the turmoil in Jiangnan on the Shanghai Communists, pointing out that at the time, he and Xiang Ying w ere still in the mountains. See Lai Chuanzhu, “Zai xinsijun chengli sizhounian jinian dahuishangde baogao” (Report at the congress to commemorate the fourth anniversary o f the founding o f the N ew Fourth Army), 12 October 1941, in X in siju n ju n b u z a i Yancheng (The N ew Fourth Army headquarters at Yancheng), ed. Z honggong Yancheng shiw ei dangshi bangongshi (Nanging: Jiangsu renmin chubanshe, 1987), pp. 127-138. 34. Liu Shaoqi, “Report on Experience,” p. 278.

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35. Ye Fei, “Xinsijun douzhengde jiankuxing, fuzaxing he teshuxing” (The harsh­ ness, complexity, and specificity o f the New Fourth Army’s struggle), D qjiangnanbei 2 (1986): 1-9, at p. 3. 36. Yung-fa Chen, M aking Revolution, pp. 129-130,167, 514. 37. Liu Shaoqi, “Report on Experience,” pp. 286-287. 38. Robert Ash, Land Tenure in Pre-Revolutionary China: Kiangsu Province in the 1920s a n d 1930s, Research Notes and Studies, no. 1 (London: Contemporary China Institute, School o f Oriental and African Studies, 1976). 39. Yung-fa Chen, Making Revolution, p. 516. 40. Prasenjit Duara, Culture, Power, a n d the State: R ural North China, 1 9 0 0 1942 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), pp. 251-253; Philip C. C. Huang, The P easan t F am ily a n d R ural D evelopm ent in the Y angzi D elta, 1 3 5 0 -1 9 8 8 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), pp. 42-43. 41. Ash, L and Tenure, pp. 3-10; Lu Feng, Gangtiede du iw u (Steel ranks) (Hongkong: Yangzi chubanshe, 1947), p. 4. 42. Duara, Culture, Power, a n d the State, p. 252. 43. Tetsuya Kataoka, Resistance a n d Revolution in China: The Comm unists a n d the Second United Front (Berkeley: University o f California Press, 1974), p. 289. 44. Yung-fa Chen, Making Revolution, pp. 17, 450. 45. Ibid., p. 263. 46. Liu Shaoqi, “Report on Experience,” p. 289. 47. Ibid. 48. Liu Shaoqi, “On the Mass Movement for Rent and Interest Reduction,” in Selected Works o f Liu Shaoqi, 8 December 1942,1:232-241, at pp. 234-240. 49. On the elite networks o f the Yangtze delta region, see Mary Backus Rankin and Joseph W. Esherick, “Concluding Remarks,” in Chinese Local Elites a n d Patterns o f Dominance, ed. Joseph W. Esherick and Mary Backus Rankin (Berkeley: University o f California Press, 1990), pp. 305-345, at pp. 320-321. 50. Hu Songzhi et al., Chen Yi zh u a n (A biography o f Chen Yi) (Beijing: Dangdai zhongguo chubanshe, 1991), p. 239; Yang Yingqi, “Lun Huazhong kangRi genjudi chuangjianzhong dangde tongzhan celüe” (On the Party’s united front tactic during the creation o f the Central China anti-Japanese bases), in Hongqi shiyue m an tian f e i (In October the red flag fills the sky), ed. Ma Hongwu and Chen Hejin (Nanjing: Jiangsu renmin chubanshe, 1990), pp. 301-308, at pp. 305-306. 51. Yang Yingqi, “On the Party’s United Front Tactic,” pp. 305-306. 52. Lenore Barkan, “Nationalists, Communists, and Rural Leaders: Political Dy­ namics in a Chinese County, 1927-1937” (Ph.D. diss., University o f Washington, 1983), pp. 452, 537-540. 53. Wou, M obilizing the Masses, p. 282. 54. Zhonggong Haian xianwei dangshi bangongshi, eds., Liankang sin ian (Four years o f the allied resistance army) (Shanghai: Xuelin chubanshe, 1989), p. 6; Wang Fuyi and Li Xiudeng, “Huangqiao juezhan shimo” (The w hole story o f the decisive battle at Huangqiao), D ajiangnanbei 2 (1985): 11-16, at p. 14; Zhonggong Jiangsu sheng dangshi ziliao zhengji yanjiu weiyuanhui Suzhongshi bianxiezu, eds., Suzhong kangRi douzheng (The anti-Japanese struggle in Suzhong) (Nanjing: Jiangsu renmin chubanshe, 1987), p. 27; Guan Wenwei, Chen Yi z a i jia n g n a n b ei (Chen Yi north and south o f the Yangtze River) (Nanjing: Jiangsu renmin chubanshe, 1981), p. 89.

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55. A similar point is made in Hu Songzhi et al., A Biography, p. 197. 56. See Benton, M ountain Fires. 57. Emily Honig, C reating Chinese Ethnicity: Subei People in Shanghai, 1 8 5 0 -1 9 8 0 (N ew Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), pp. 24-25. 58. Guan Wenwei, Huiyilu (Memoirs) (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1985), chap. 1. 59. Zhu Bulou et al., “Chen Yi tongzhi yu ‘Huhai yiw ensh e’” (Comrade Chen Yi and the “Huhai Art and Literature Society”), in X insijun chongjian ju n b u yih o u (After the restoration o f the N ew Fourth Army headquarters), ed. Yancheng shi “Xinsijun chongjian junbu yihou” bianxuanzu (Nanjing: Jiangsu renmin chuban­ she, 1983), pp. 565-578. 60. Zhonggong Jiangsu sheng dangshi ziliao zhengji yanjiu weiyuanhui Suzhongshi bianxiezu, eds., Suzhong kangRi douzheng (The anti-Japanese struggle in Suzhong) (Nanjing: Jiangsu renmin chubanshe, 1987), p. 63. 61. Kathleen Hartford, “Fits and Starts: The Communist Party in Rural Hebei, 1921-1936,” in New Perspectives on the Chinese Communist Revolution, ed. Tony Saich and Hans van de Ven (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1995), pp. 144-174, at pp. 168-169. On the revolutionary tradition in Taihang, see David S. G. Goodman, “JinJiLuYu in the Sino-Japanese War: The Border Region and the Border Region Government,” China Quarterly 140 (December 1994): 1007-1024, at pp. 1011-1014. 62. On the Fourteenth Red Army, see Liu Ruilong, Huiyi hong shisi ju n (Memories o f the Fourteenth Red Army) (N.p.: Jiangsu renmin chubanshe, 1981); and Liu Ruilong, “Yi hongshijun” (Recalling the Red Tenth Army), Geming shi ziliao 5 (1981): 70-82, at pp. 80-82. ' 63. Wu Qiang, “Huoyue zai Jiangnan dihoude xinsijun” (The New Fourth Army leaps behind enemy lines in Jiangnan), 1938, in Kangzhan fenghuo lu: "Xinhua ribaoM tongxun xu an (A record o f the resistance beacons: A selection o f New China D aily resistance bulletins), ed. Zhongguo shehuikexueyuan xinwen yanjiusuo, Zhongguo baokanshi yanjiushi (Beijing: Xinhua chubanshe, 1985), pp. 42-48, at p. 43. 64. Pauline Keating has shown that in parts o f Shaanganning like Suide, where the Party w as historically insecure, “central control was asserted forcefully; the localities could not be allow ed the autonomy that was conceded to local communities in places where Party hegem ony w as uncontested” (“Getting Peasants Organized: Village Organizations and the Party State in the Shaan-Gan-Ning Border Region, 1934-1945” (paper prepared for the Conference on Base Areas o f North China in the Sino-Japanese War: Social Change and Political Mobilisation, UTS, Sydney, May 27-30, 1996). However, in Suide, the Party could mobilize the resources of its strongest base to exact compliance. 65. Seiden, China in Revolution, p. 241. 66. Ibid., p. 152. 67. Figures from ibid., p. 153. 68. Zhongguo geming bowuguan dangshi chenlie yanjiubu, eds., Zhonggong dangshi zh u ya o shijian jia n jie (1 9 1 9 -1 9 4 9 ) (Brief introduction to important events in the history o f the Chinese Communist Party [1919-19491) (Chengdu: Sichuan ren­ min chubanshe, 1982), p. 355. 69. Yung-fa Chen, M aking Revolution, pp. 325-328. On the 1939 movement, see Seiden, China in Revolution, p. 155 (for Yan’an) and “Jinchaji kangRi genjudi” shiliao congshu bianshen weiyuanhui, eds., Jinchaji kangRi genjudi. D i’erce (Huiyilu xuan-

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bian) (The Jinchaji anti-Japanese base, vol. 2 [selected memoirs]) (Beijing: Zhonggong dangshi chubanshe, 1991), pp. 26-29, for a description of its impact on Jinchaji. 70. According to Zhonggong Jiangsu sheng dangshi ziliao zhengji yanjiu weiyuanhui Suzhongshi bianxiezu, eds., Suzhong kangRi d o u zb en g (The antiJapanese struggle in Suzhong) (Jiangsu: Jiangsu renmin chubanshe, 1987), pp. 188-189, the first stage o f rectification in Suzhong (central Jiangsu) started in July 1943 but was simply “groping its way forward.” The second, more successful stage did not begin until March 1944. See also Guan Wenwei, H uiyilu x u b ia n (Sequel to my memoirs) (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1988), pp. 256-257. 71. Wou, M obilizing the Masses, pp. 12, 383-384. 72. Liu Shaoqi, “Report on Experience,” p. 255. 73. Ibid., p. 259. 74. Feng Chongyi shows that the concentration o f “intellectual cadres” in the wartime Jin Sui base was also particularly great. “The Making o f the Jin Sui Base Area: Peasants, Intellectuals, Démocratisation” (paper prepared for the Conference on Base Areas of North China in the Sino-Japanese War: Social Change and Political Mobilisa­ tion, UTS, Sydney, 27-30 May 1996). However, this concentration was laigely a result of recruiting by Yan Xishan’s Sacrifice League and its associated bodies, a special cir­ cumstance not unlike the recruiting on a somewhat smaller scale by the Gui Clique’s Wartime Mobilization Committee in Anhui and Henan. 75. Zhonggong Shanghai shiwei dangshi ziliao zhengji weiyuanhui, eds., Shanghai renmin y u xinsijun (The people of Shanghai and the New Fourth Army) (Shanghai: Zhishi chubanshe, 1989), pp. 14-16. 76. Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun lishi ziliao congshu bianshen weiyuanhui, eds., Xinsijun zongshu, dashiji, biaoce (N ew Fourth Army summary, chronology, and tables) (Beijing: Jiefangjun chubanshe, 1993), p. 13. 77. Qi Wu, KangRi zh an zheng shiqi Zhongguo gongren yu n don g shigao (Draft history of the Chinese workers’ movement in the period o f the anti-Japanese War o f Resistance) (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1986), pp. 68-69; Chen Ruiyun, “KangRi zhanzheng shiqide liangzhong zhengquan jianshe: KangRi minzhu zhengquan shi minzhu yu lianzhengde kaimo” (Two kinds o f government construction in the period o f the anti-Japanese war: The anti-Japanese democratic governments were a model o f democracy and cheap government), in Zhongwai xu ezh e lun kangRi genjudi: N ankai daxu e d ïe rjie Zhongguo kangRi genjudi shi guoji xueshu taolunhui lunwenji, pp. 235-245, at p. 237. The two sets of data may not be strictly comparable, since apparently only the data for Central China apply to “county level and above.” It is also possible that the class allocations were according to origin rather than to ac­ quired status. However, that there was a difference of the sort indicated by these data is clear from much other evidence too. 78. Qi Wu, D raft History; pp. 68-69. 79. Li Yimang, “Huaihai qu di’erjie canyihui gongzuode zongjie: Zai Huaihai qu canyihui changwu weiyuanhuishangde baogao” (General summary on the work o f the Second Huaihai Consultative Assembly: Report to the Standing Committee o f the Huaihai Consultative Assembly), 27 June 1942, in Subei kangRi gen ju di (The antiJapanese base in Subei), ed. Zhonggong Jiangsu shengw ei dangshi gongzuo weiyuanhui, Jiangsu sheng dang’anguan (Beijing: Zhonggong dangshi ziliao chuban­ she, 1989), pp. 221-233, at p. 221.

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80. Zhongyang diaocha tongjiju, Xinsijun gaikuang zh aiyao (Digest o f the situa­ tion in the N ew Fourth Army), mimeo, 1939, pp. 13b-l6a. 81. Zhexi shengwei, eds., Zhexi z u z h i tongjibiao (Statistics o f the organization in Zhexi), handwritten, June 1939. 82. Zhonggong Shanghai shiw ei dangshi ziliao zhengji weiyuanhui, eds., The People o f Shanghai, pp. 14-16. The N ew Fourth Army had 88,744 members at the end o f 1940 (Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun lishi ziliao congshu bianshen weiyuan­ hui, eds., N ew Fourth A rm y, p. 477). 83- Ma H ongwu, “Some Characteristics o f the Financial and Economic Work of the Central China Anti-Japanese Base Areas” (paper presented to the International Symposium on thé History o f Chinese Anti-Japanese Bases, Nankai University, Tianjin, August 1984); Zhang Chongwen, “Xinsijun yu zhishifenzi” (The New Fourth Army and intellectuals), in X insijun hu iyi shiliao (N ew Fourth Army mem­ oir materials), ed. Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun lishi ziliao congshu bianshen weiyuanhui, 2 vols. (Beijing: Jiefangjun chubanshe, 1990), 1:94-103, at p. 95. 84. Xue Muqiao, “Kangzhan liehuo rong xin ren” (Smelting new human beings in the fire o f the War o f Resistance), Zhongguo x ia n d a i shi yu ekan 6 (1986): 132-134, at p. 132. 85. Li Xiangfu, “Kangdi gongzuo weiyuanhui” (Committee on work to resist the enemy), 1963, in Eyu hianqu kangRi gen ju di lishi zilia o (Historical materials relating to the anti-Japanese base on the Eyu border), ed. Eyu bianqu geming shi bianjibu, 6 vols. (Nanjing: Jiangsu renmin chubanshe, 1984-1985), 3:39-54, at pp. 46-48. 86. Xue Muqiao, “Smelting New Human Beings,” pp. 132-134, at p. 132. 87. Xinsijun Subei zhihuibu, junfenwei, “Duiyu chuangzao Huangqiao da genjudide zhishi” (Directive on creating the great Huangqiao base), 20 August 1940, in Xinsijun H uangqiao zh a n y i shiliao (Historical materials relating to the New Fourth Army's Huangqiao campaign), ed. Xinsijun Huangqiao zhanyi lishi chenlieguan choubeichu (Yangzhou: Yangzhou dazhuan yuanxiao dangshi jiaoxue yanjiuhui, n.d.), pp. 28-37, at pp. 32-33. 88. Mao Mao, “Dajiangnanbei dihou xin wenhuade chengzhang” (The growth of new culture behind enem y lines north and south o f the Yangtze River), 1940, in Zengjie et al., KangRi zh an zh en g shiqi Yan’a n j i g e kangRi m in zh u g en ju d i w enxue yu n d o n g zilia o (Materials on the literary movement in Yan’an and the anti-Japanese democratic bases during the War o f Resistance), 2 vols. (Taiyuan: Shanxi renmin chubanshe, 1983), 2:213-217, at p. 213. 89. Zhongyang, “Guanyu Shanghai dangde mimi gongzuode zhishi” (Directive on the Shanghai Party’s secret work), 16 December 1940, in The People o f Shanghai, ed. Zhonggong Shanghai shiwei dangshi ziliao zhengji weiyuanhui, pp. 199-200, at p. 199. 90. Seiden, China in Revolution, p. 146. 91. Ma Hongwu, “Huazhong kangRi genjudide caizheng jingji gongzuo” (Financial and econom ic work in the Central China anti-Japanese bases), in KangRi genjudide caizh en g jin g ji (Finance and econom ics in the anti-Japanese bases), ed. Caizhengbu caizheng kexue yanjiusuo (Beijing: Zhongguo caizheng jingji chubanshe, 1987), pp. 247-255, at p. 251. 92. Ma H ongw u, “Financial and econ om ic w ork,” p. 255; Ma H ongwu, “H uazhong kangRi genjudide lishi d iw ei” (The historical position o f the Central China anti-Japanese bases), in H u azh on g kangRi g en ju d i shilun (An analytical

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history o f the anti-Japanese bases in Central China), ed. Ma H ongwu (Nanjing: Nanjing daxue chubanshe, 1991), pp. i-xvi, at p. xi. 93. Chen Jiaji, “Wanjiang kangRi genjudide caijing gongzuo” (Financial and eco­ nomic work in the Wanjiang anti-Japanese base), in Finance a n d Economics, ed. Caizhengbu caizheng kexue yanjiusuo, pp. 295-306, at p. 295. 94. Guo Shiwei, “Wanjiang kangRi genjudide chuangjian yu fazhan” (The cre­ ation and development of the Wanjiang anti-Japanese base), in A n A nalytical History, ed. Ma Hongwu, pp. 340-358, at p. 358. Chen Jiaji, “Financial and Economic work,” p. 295, gives different figures, though their general import is the same. 95. Ma Hongwu, “Huazhong kangRi genjudi caizheng jingji gongzuode jige wenti” (Some issues in financial and econom ic work in the Central China anti-Japa­ nese bases), in Zhongguo kangRi genjudi shi guoji xueshu taolunhui lunw enji, ed. Nankai daxue lishixi (Beijing: Dang’an chubanshe, 1985), pp. 488-498, at p. 491. 96. Ma Hongwu, “Some Issues,” p. 490; Seiden, China in Revolution, p. 148. 97. Ma Hongwu, “Some Issues,” p. 491. In Huainan, however, probably in 1941, agriculture accounted for more than 70 percent o f revenue. See Huang An, “Huainan kangRi genjudide duidi jingji douzheng” (The econom ic struggle against the enem y in the Huainan anti-Japanese base), in Finance a n d Economics, ed. Caizhengbu caizheng kexue yanjiusuo, pp. 285-294, at p. 288. 98. Chen Jiaji, “Financial and Economic Work,” p. 299. The Communists under Guan Wenwei, w ho controlled a bridge across the Yangtze by way o f the river island o f Yangzhong and corridors to its north and south in the late 1930s, also profited by “protecting” trade across the river. 99. Seiden, China in Revolution, p. 146. 100. Goodman, “Jin Ji Lu Yu,” p. 1023. 101. Chen Jiaji, “Financial and Economic Work,” p. 303* 102. See Liu Shaoqi, “Report on Experience,” pp. 286-287. 103. The Shandong base did not establish a government at the provincial level until 1945, but it did (in 1940) set up a Consultative Assembly and a Wartime Work­ ing Committee that functioned as a higher-level government. See Chen Lian, KangRi genjudi fa z h a n shiliie (A concise history o f the developm ent o f the anti-Japanese bases) (Beijing: Jiefangjun chubanshe, 1987), pp. 284-292. These provincial-level structures achieved a rather high degree o f integration and centralization. See Elise A. DeVido, “Political and Economic Aspects o f Communist Wartime Mobilisation in the Shandong Base Area, 1936-1946” (paper prepared for the Conference on Base Areas o f North China in the Sino-Japanese War: Social Change and Political Mobilisation, UTS, Sydney, 27-30 May 1996). 104. Chen Yi, “1938 nian zhi 1943 nian Huazhong gongzuo zongjie baogao” (Summary report on work in Central China from 1938 to 1943), 1943, in X insijun z a i W annan (1 9 3 8 -1 9 4 1 ) (The N ew Fourth Army in Wannan [1938-1941]), ed. Anhui sheng dang’anguan, Anhui sheng bowuguan, Xinsijun junbu jiuzhi jinianguan (Henan: Henan renmim chubanshe, 1985), pp. 3 9 1 ^ 1 8 , at p. 393. 105. Chen Yi, “Complete Text,” p. 7. 106. See “Subei Crisis.” 107. Liu Shaoqi, “Report on Experience,” p. 287. 108. Mao Zedong, “Zhanzheng he zhanlüe wenti” (Problems o f war and strategy), 6 November 1938, in Mao Zedong, Junshi w enji (Collected military writings), 3 vols.

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(Beijing: Junshi kexue chubanshe, Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, 1993), 2:412-429, at p. 425. 109. Ye Ting, qùoted in Israel Epstein, The People’s War (London: Victor Gollancz, 1939), pp. 264-265. 110. Ma Hongwu, “Financial and Economic Work,” pp. 248-249111. Wang Debao, “A Preliminary Discussion,” pp. 297-299. On the postwar Suwan Border Region government, see Liu Hongwei, “Lun Suwan bianqu zhengfude chengli jiqi lishi gongxian” (On the establishment o f the Suwan border area govern­ ment), in In October the Red Flag Fills the Sky, pp. 145-150. 112. Goodman, “Jin Ji Lu Yu,” pp. 1018-1019 and 1024. 113. On Jin Ji Lu Yu, see H uabei KangRi gen ju di shi (A history o f anti-Japanese bases in North China), ed. Wei Hongyun and Zuo Zhiyuan (Beijing: Dang’an chubanshe, 1990), pp. 344-345; on Central China, see Wang Fuyi, ed., Events a n d Personalities, pp. 205-207. 114. Goodman, “Jin Ji Lu Yu,” p. 1020. 115. Ma Hongwu, “Financial and Economic Work,” p. 249. 116. Ibid., p. 253. 117. On “northern backwardness,” see Seiden, China in Revolution, pp. 32, 35; and Benjamin Yang, Frcyn Revolution to Politics: Chinese Communists on the Long M arch (Boulder: Westview, 1990), pp. 253-254. 118. For a recent formulation o f the view that North China was transformed in 1935 from a dark bastion o f reaction into a bright bastion o f revolution, see Rong Tianlin, “On the Anti-Japanese Bases,” pp. 56-57.

Index Alitto, Guy, 29 anarchist vision o f the good society, 28 anti-Communist high tide, 176-77 anticorruption campaign^, 120, 181-82 anti-Japanese movement, 94, 96-97, 99-100, 126-27, 175; as distinct from CCP, 145; organizations, 137, 157, 166; songs, 110; volunteers, 107 antitraitor movement, 71-72, 80 anti-Trotskyite struggles, 18, 179 An Zhiwen, 69

baochudi (land with responsibility of hoeing), 116 baojia system, 26, 64, 99 base areas, 12-13, 31, 193-94; communications between, 15, 173. See also specific base areas base area studies, 7, 20n24, 189-92 Battlefield Mobilization Committee, 95 Beijing (Peking) (formerly Beiping), 14, 94, 205-6 Beijing-Wuhan Railway, 16-17, 117, 127 Beiping. See Beijing (Peking) Beishe, 132 Beiyue Base Area, 15, 94-95, 103-4; military forces, 100 beneficiaries becoming victims of revolution, 78-79 Benton, Gregor, 9, 13, 18, 25 Binhai, 18

blackboard newspapers, 110 black markets, 182 bonds, government, 75 border regions, 12-13, 66-68 Bo Yibo, 16, 119-20, 144, 158 bribery, 181-82

cadres, 66-68, 80-81; register lists, 91 n 120; regulations for behavior, 181 CC Clique, 195 CCP See Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central China: base areas, 193-94, 196-98, 203-4; Communist strength in, 198-203; contrasts with North China, 191-92, 214-15; military forces, 194-96, 201, 211-12; organizational framework, 210-14; rectification, 204-5; sociopolitical reforms, 198; urban character of, 205-9 Central Hebei Administrative Office, 96 Central Hebei Base Area, 98, 102, 104 Central Hebei Military District, 96 Central Party School, 14 Central Plains Bureau, 190 Chahar (Cha) Province, 93 Chang Huating, 143, 146 Chang Jihu, 143 Changzhi, 16

225

226

Index

Changzhi Plain, 131 Chen Duxiu, 169 Cheng Fangwu, 109, Il4n39 Chen Guang, 176 Chen Yi, 194,197,199, 201-3, 217n33 Chen Yun, l60 Ch’en Yung-fa, 71 Chen Yung-fa, 7, 132, 138 Chiang Kai-shek, 157,195, 200; fighting the CCP, 17, 32, 59; kidnapping of, 63 Chi Biqing, 150n6 Chinese Communist Party (CCP), 1-6, 30, 82; cadres, 66-68, 80-81, 91nl20, 181; local roots, 111, 162-63, 205-4; membership, 64-65, 138-41, 160, 175, 207-9; organizational conflicts, 145-47, 173-75, 177-84; organization building, 25-26, 28-31,144-49, 184-85; rectification movement, 54 n 3 2 ,179, 204-5; underground network, 95-96; working with the Sacrifice League, 119, 220n74 Chinese Communist Party (CCP) relationship with the Nationalist Party, 3 ,1 4 0 ,1 9 5 , 202-3; agreement with, 134; civil wars, 17, 32, 59, 63; coalition government, 74-75 Chinese Communist Party (CCP) strategies, 9 -1 0 ,1 3 , 43, 51, 68, 82; leading to reforms, 102, 106, 111, 125-26; limiting cooperation, 49, 50 civil wars between CCP and the Nationalist Party, 17, 32, 59, 63 classes. See social classes coalition governments, 74-75 communications between base areas, 15,173 Communist party-states, collapse of, 8 cooperative movement, 46-49, 163-65 cooperative village ideal, 4 7 -4 8 ,1 0 6 -9 corruption, 120, 181-82, 198 couriers, 187n21 Cultural Revolution, 2-4; victims of, 4-5 culture, 209, 214-15; used to introduce new ideas and challenge old values, 109-10 currencies, 131, 182-84, 210-11

Daqingshan Base Area, 17, 155 Dare-to-Die Corps (later N ew Army), 1 6 -1 7 ,1 1 8 -1 9 ,1 4 4 -4 5 ,1 5 9 -6 0 , l 6 l,

166 Datong-Fenglingdu Railway, 155 December Incident o f 1939, 145 democracy, 162-63,167-69 Deng Baoshan, 66-67 Deng Hua, 96 D engT uo, 109, Il4n 39 D eng Xiaoping, 2 -5 ,1 7 ,1 3 4 ,1 6 3 DeVido, Elise, 13 dictatorship, 163,169 din gdi (substitute land), 116 Dirlik, Arif, 28 Diuniugou, 57n81 Duara, Prasenjit, 27-28, 198

East Hebei Base Area, 9 7 -9 8 ,1 0 2 ,1 0 4 East Hebei Joint Anti-Japanese Army, 96-97 education, 2 9 ,1 0 9 -1 1 ,1 6 3 ,1 6 6 -6 7 , 209, 215 Eighth Route Army, 94-97,115,118,168, 191-93, 205-6; First Column, 176; 115th Division, 14,18,117,144,176, 179; 120th Division, 17, l6 l; 129th Division, 16,18,117-18,134; Third Column, 96; introducing social and economic changes, 106-8,133; as outsiders, 178-80; restoring administrative order, 120-23, 213; Shandong Column, 176; supporters; 99 elections, 1 0 0 ,1 2 2 ,1 4 5 -4 6 ,1 6 7 -6 8 elites, 27, 51, 99, 215; disaffection with CCP, 146-47; working with CCP, 156, 174, 181 epidemics, 143 equitable burden taxation, 139 Esherick, Joseph, 9 -1 0 ,1 3 -1 4 , 32, 132 exchange rates, 183, 210-11 exemplary models, 108-9

family reforms, 107-8, 142-43 family trusts (tang), 62

Index farm loans, 37 feet, binding of, 108 Feng Chongyi, 11,13 Feng Guifen, 27 fengjian, 52n6, 53nl6 Feng Shechen, 73 Feng Yuxiang, 195 feudalism, 27, 115—17, 123; weakening of, 70 First Border Region Conference on Culture and Education, 109 Five Year Plan, seventh, 5 folk art, 109 Friedman, Edward, 69, 138 Fuping, Hebei, 15 Fu Zuoyi, 157

Gangdong, 132 „ Gao Gang, 67-68, 70-72 G aojingting, 211 Gao Xingzhou, 71 General Affairs Office ^or Dealing with the Crisis, 202 General Mobilization Committee, 159-62 gentry, 65, 160, 200-203 geography: limiting guerrilla warfare, 193-94; providing security, 131 gift giving, 181-82 Goldstein, Steven, 7, 189 Goodman, David S. G., 11, 13, 195, 213 the good society, anarchists vision of, 28 government bonds, 75 grain prices, 210 grain taxes, 38-40, 74, 100, 210 Great Leap Forward, 13,109 Guan Wenwei, 222n98 Guanzhong wasteland district, migration to, 37 guerrilla areas, 98, 102-6 guerrilla-ism, 179-80 guerrilla warfare, 18, 94-96, l 6 l, 175-76, 178-79, 193-94; Nationalist, 173

227

Gui Clique, 195, 200, 220n74 gun control, 64 Guomindang, 63-64, 66-68, 71-72, 90nl03 Guo Yingyi, 158 Gu Yanwu, 27 Gu Zhutong, 195, 200-201

Handan, 16 Han Deqin, 200-201 Han Fuqu, 175, 185n4 Han Guojun, 200-203 Haojiaqiao, 48 Happiness o f the Poor, 110 Hartford, Kathleen, 7, 98, 102, 132, 189, 203 Hebei Guerrilla Army, 96 Hebei-Henan-Shanxi (Ji Yu Jin), provincial committee, 117 Hebei 0 0 Province, 93, 119 Hebei-Shandong-Henan Qi Lu Yu) Base Area, 15-17,115 He Long, 70 Henan (Yu) Province, 119 heroes, 40-41, 108-9 He Shaonan, 33, 63-64, 70 Higher Cadre Conferences, 68 historical resources, 1-2, 59-60, 79, 189; interviews, 1 3 3 ,150n6; in PRC archives, 5-8, 25, 132 history: Mao-centric view of, 189-92; revision of, 2, 5-6, 13, 190-92 Huaibei (North Anhui) region, 7 human rights, 167-69 Hundred Regiments Campaign, 121, 139 Huo Fan, 145, 150n6 huozhongdi (land of joint cultivation), 116 Hu Zongnan, 75

Industry and Commerce Administration Bureau, 183 intellectuals, 156-60, 209 interest rates, 117; reduction, 102, 124-29, 163-64 interview techniques, ethnographic, 133

228

Index

Japanese North China Army, 117, 139 Japanese occupation: o f Central China, 195-96, 201; o f Licheng, 131,149; of Shandong Province, 173,176-77, 1 8 4 ,185n4 Japanese spies, 133-34 Jiangbei, 192,194 Jiang Jieshi. See Chiang Kai-shek Jiangnan, 192,193,196, 209 Jiang Qing, 59 Jiangxi Soviet, 35 Jidong Base Area, 94 Ji Lu Yu (Hebei-Shandong-Henan) Base Area, 15-17,115 Jin Cha Ji Border Region. See ShanxiChahar-Hebei (Jin Cha Ji) Border Region Jincheng, 16 Jin Ji Lu Yu Border Region. See ShanxiHebei-Shandong-Henan (Jin Ji Lu Yu) Border Region Jin Ji Yu Border Region. See ShanxiHebei-Henan (Jin Ji Yu) Border Region Jinpu Railway, 213 Jin Sui Border Region. See ShanxiSuiyuan (Jin Sui) Border Region Jiyuan, Chahar, 15 Ji Yu Jin (Hebei-Henan-Shanxi) provincial committee, 117 Jizhong Base Area, 94-95 Johnson, Chalmers, 6-7 Joint Government Administrative Office, 119, 121-22,131 journals published in Jin Cha Ji, 109

Kang Sheng, 71-72 Kang Zhenpu, 146 Kataoka, Tetsuya, 6 ,1 9 8 Keating, Pauline, 10-11, 13-14, 80, 184, 219n64 Kuhn, Philip, 27, 30

labor brigades, 38; corvée, 34-35 labor exchange groups, 106-7, 164-65

labor heroes, 40 Lakes and Seas Art and Literature Society, 202 \ land: competition for, 43-44; ownership, 41-42, 100,102-6, 116, 123, 127-29; reclamation of wasteland, 34-36; redistribution, 32-33, 66, 69-70,164; reforms, 50, 59, 75-80, 124-29 landlords, 65-66, 75, 80; increased taxation of, 68-71, 124; land ownership and sale, 41-42, 102, 104-6; Ma family, 60-63, 75-76; redistribution o f movable property, 76-77; sociopolitical power, 72-74, 111, 120, 198 land o f joint cultivation (huozhongdi),

116 Land Policy, Politburo’s January 1942 Decision on, 42 land with responsibility o f hoeing (baochudi), 116 Leninist organization building, 30 lianbao appointees, 64 Liang Huazhi, 157 Liang Shuming, 29-30 Liberation Daily, 35, 70, 72, 109 Li Changshan Cooperative, 107 Li Changxin, 100 Licheng County, 131,137-38 Licheng Rebellion, 11, 132-36, 148—49 Li Chuli, 96 Li Dingming, 59, 71 lijia system, 26 Li Lianfeng, 143 Li Naiting, 142 Lin Biao, 95 Lishi, 17 literacy classes, 110-11 Literary and Art Circle’s Association for Resisting the Enemy, 109 Liu Shaoqi, 163, 190, 196-97, 199; on CCP organization, l 6 l, 175; CCP strategies, 144, 212-13 Liu Tingjie, 100 Liu Zhidan, 30

Index living conditions, 106-8, 115-17, 163-65; improvement in, 100-103 Li Wilting, 147 Li Xiannian, 203 Li Xuefeng, 122 Li Yonggui, 143 Li Yongxiang, 1 3 2 ,1 3 5 -3 6 ,1 4 1 ^ 3 Li Yu, 175-78, 185n3 Li Yunchang, 96 loans, farm, 37 Long March, 32, 190, 206 Luliang Mountains, 17 Luo Ronghuan, 176 Lu Xun Academy o f the Arts, 14 Lu Zhengcao, 96

Ma Hong, 82n2 M ajiale, 6 l Majiaqu, 57n81 Majitang, 77 Majiu Village, 120 Ma landlords, 60-63, 75-76 Mao Zedong, 2 -4 ,1 3 ,1 7 , 59,146,196; on democracy, 162-63, 169; on guerrilla warfare, 156, 193, 212 marriage: o f daughters to Communists, 66; reforms, 107-8,142-43 Ma Shiqi, 69 mass mobilization, 30-31, 117-19,125 Ma Weixin, 62, 65-66, 69, 75-76 Ma Xingmin, 63 May Fourth period, 28, 53nl6 medicine, practice of, 143 Meng Geshen, 95 Meng Qingshan, 94 merchants, foreign, 116 migration program, 31, 36-39 militias, 165-66; for self-defense, 45, 51 mopping-up operations, 97,126, 132, 177, 196; protection from, 143 Mount Heng, 97 Mount Wutai, 94-95, 97 Muslim rebellion, 53n23 mutual aid teams, 45-49, 106-7, 164 Nanjing, 205

229

National Anti-Japanese Army, 95 Nationalist Party, 1,18 ,194-95; participation of gentry in, 175, 200, 202 Nationalist Party forces, 9 4,134,162, 215; anti-Communist high tide, 176-78; battles with New Fourth Army, 197-98; defections, 95-96, 175; guerrillas, 173; spies, 133-34 Nationalist Party relationship with the CCP, 3, 140, 195, 202-3; agreement with, 134; civil wars, 17, 32, 59, 63; coalition government, 74-75 National Salvation movement, 33, 64, 206 nation building via organization building, 26-31 New Army (formerly Dare-to-Die Corps), 16-17, lia -1 9 , 144-45, 159-60, 161, 166 New Culture Movement, 28, 53nl6, 108-11 New Fourth Army, 190-91, 194, 196-98, 203-7, 210; battles with Nationalists, 197-98; organizational framework, 200, 211-15; social class composition o f troops, 207-9; troops, 192-93,

211-12 newspapers published in Jin Cha Ji, 109-10 Nie Rongzhen, 94, 95-96 Nihai Village, 99 Niu Yinguan, 119 North China Army (Japanese), 117, 139 North China Bureau, 115 Northwest Army, 195 Northwest Bureau, 32 Northwest Shanxi Base Area, 17

opium, addiction to, 62 opium trade, 86n53 organization building, 25-26, 51n2, 144-49, 184-85; bottom-up, 214; leading to nation building, 26-31; Leninist, 30; top-down, 65, 78; topdow n vs. bottom-up, 28, 37, 46, 50 outsiders, 146-47; suspicion of, 178-80

230

Index

Party. See Chinese Communist Party (CCP) patriotism, 109-10 Paulson, David, 183 peasant associations, 32-33, 64,125, 167 peasant classes, 11-12, 23n34, 23-26; econom ic interests, 120, 126; exploitation of, 116; land ownership, 103—6; heroes, 41 in militias, 165-66; misclassification, 78; nationalism, theory of, 6 political participation, 99-100, 121 Peng Dehuai, 75 Peng Tao, 140, 145 Peng Xiefeng, 157 People’s Liberation Army (PLA), 59 People’s Republic o f China (PRC), 1-2 People’s Self-defense Army, 96 Perry, Elizabeth, 7 Pickowicz, Paul, 69,138 Pingbei Base Area, 94-95 Pingxi Base Area, 94, 97 PLA. See People’s Liberation Army poetic stanzas o f the Sixth Trigram Movement, 135-36 political institutions, establishment of,

reasonable burden taxation, 104, 124, 139,163 rectification movement,"" 54n32, 179, 204-5 Red Army, 63,156 reforms: family and marriage, 107-8, 142-43; interest rates, 102, 124-29, 163-64; land ownership, 50, 59, 75-80,124-29; rental rates, 42-46, 6 9 -7 1 ,1 2 4 -2 9 ,1 6 3 -6 4 ,1 9 8 ; sociopolitical, 93, 97-1 1 1 ,1 0 2 -6 , 123- 29, 162-69, 198; strategies for, 102, 106, 111, 125-26; suppression of, 102 Regulations f o r the Protection o f H um an Rights, 168 Regulations on Rent a n d Interest Reduction, 102, 164 religious groups, 136 Renaissance Society, 72 rental rates, 116; reforms, 42-46, 69-71, 124- 2 9 ,1 6 3 -6 4 ,1 9 8 Resolution on Land Policy in the A ntiJapanese Base Areas, 125-26 revolution, silent, 12, 69 revolutionary processes, 79-82, 180-84 Rong Zihe, 16,120, 1 4 4 ,150n6 rural reconstruction, 29-30, 38-39

10 Poor Peasant Corps, 78 populism, 28, 52nl4 PRC. See People’s Republic o f China price o f grain, 210 production campaign, 45-47, 182 Provisional Election Regulations for Village Congresses, 122 Provisional Organic Rules for Village Political Power, 122 Provisional Regulations for Reduction of Rents on Land and Interest on Loans, 125

Qiao Hongtai, 147 Qing dynasty, 27; calendar, 106 Qin Qirong, 175

Sacrifice League for National Salvation, 9 5 ,1 4 5 ,1 5 7 -5 9 , 161-62; establishment, 11,15,144; membership, 160; military forces, 16-17, 99; organizing Anti-Japanese forces, 166; working with the CCP, 119, 220n74 salt transport, 67-68, 86n53 Salvationist Sect o f the Goddess from the Southern Sea, 135 Scalapino, Robert, 27 sectarianism, 146 Seiden, Mark, 6-7, 69, 79, 138,163, 204 self-cultivation, 135-36, 142 Self-defense Corps, 99-100 self-government, local, 26-28, 50-51 Settling Accounts Committee, 76-77

Index Seventh Route Army, 95 Shaan Gan Ning Border Region. See Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia (Shaan Gan Ning) Border Region Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia (Shaan Gan Ning) Base Area, 7 Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia (Shaan Gan Ning) Border Region, 3-4, 13-14, 25-28, 49-51; organizational framework, 28-39; sociopolitical reforms, 39-49 Shandong Base Area, 18, 222nl03; agricultural production, 175; econom y, 182-84; military forces, 175-76, 179-80, 186nl2; organizational conflicts, 173-75, 177-85 Shandong (Lu) Province, 18 shang, 62 ✓ Shanghai, 205-6, 208-9, 215 Shanxi Base Area, 129nl Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei (Jin Cha Ji) Border Region, 14-15; liying conditions, 100-103, 106-8; military forces, 94-97; organizational framework, 93-94, 98-99; sociopolitical reforms, 9 7 -1 1 1 ,1 0 3 -6 Shanxi-Hebei-Henan (Jin Ji Yu) Border Region, 150n5; elections, 122; First Party Congress, 121; Military Area Command, 118 Shanxi-Hebei-Shandong-Henan (Jin Ji Lu Yu) Border Region, 15-17, 115, 119, 129nl, 1 3 0 n ll, 213; Provisional Council, 122-23; security of, 131 Shanxi (Jin) Province, 5, 93,115, 119 Shanxi Sacrifice League for National Salvation. See Sacrifice League for National Salvation Shanxi-Suiyuan (Jin Sui) Border Region: living conditions, 163-65; military forces, 159-60, 165-66; organizational framework, 156-57, 159-62, 167-69; sociopolitical reforms, 162-69 sharecroppers, 62 Shen Changlin, 40

231

Shen Honglie, 185n6 Shexian, 16,131 Shijiazhai Village, 101 Shijiazhuang-Taiyuan Railway, 1 1 7 ,129nl Shushi, Rao, 198 silent revolution, 12, 69 Sino-Japanese War: Social Change and Political Mobilization Conference, 12-13 Sixth Trigram Movement: attempted revolution, 11, 132-36, 148-49; membership, 133, 135, 137-38, 140-41, 143; organization and leadership, 138, 144-47; poetic stanzas, 135-36; relationships with related organizations, 150n6; sexual mores, 142 smuggling, 182-83 Snow, Edgar, 79 social classes: changes in status, 42, 50, 126-28,163-64,192; consciousness of, 78; determination of status, 137; represented in New Fourth Army, 207-9; represented in the CCP, 1 38-41,160, 207-9; represented in the Sixth Trigram Movement, 137-38; strategy for struggles between, 43, 49, 50-51, 68, 82,125-26; struggles between, 65, 70, 72,123-24,136-41, 197-98. See also elites; gentry; intellectuals; landlords; peasant classes social ecology o f revolution, 3, 7-13 social leveling, 42, 50, 126-28, 163-64 sociopolitical reforms, 93, 97-111, 102, 123-29, 162-69, 198; in stable areas vs. guerrilla areas, 103-6 Song Shaowen, 15 Song Shilun, 96-97 Song Yuchuan, 100 South Hebei Base Area, 15, 17, 115,119 Southwest Shanxi Base Area, 17 spies, 133-34, 181 spinning, 48, 109 strategies of the CCP, 9 -1 0 ,1 3 , 43, 51, 68, 82; leading to reforms, 102, 106, 111, 125-26; limiting cooperation, 49, 50

232

Index

Subei Plain, 193 substitute land (dingdi), 116 Suide Normal School campaign, 72 Suide subregion, 31-33, 38, 42-46, 49-51 Sui Qi, 146 Sun Yat-sen, 26-27, 51 Suwan Border Region, 213

Taigu, 16 Taihang Base Area, 5-6, 15-16, 129nl; living conditions, 115-17; military forces, 117-18; organizational framework, 118-23; sociopolitical reforms, 123-29 Taihang Mountains, 16-17, 97, 117, 129nl, 131 Taiping Rebellion, 202 Taishan, 18 Taiyue Base Area, 15-16, 115,119-20, 129nl Taiyue Mountains, 117 tang (family trusts), 62 Tanhuipu, 100 taxation, 36-37, 39-42,124,180; abolition of, 102; equitable burdens, 139; grain taxes, 38-40, 74, 100, 210; policies, 68-71; reasonable burdens, 104,124,139,163; réintroduction of baojia system, 99; uniform taxes, 39, 40,164 teachers, 209 teamwork, traditional custom of, 46, 50 tenancy relationships, 102,116-17, 125-28 tenant associations, 43-46 tenants, 62 Ten Programs o f Anti-Japanese Resistance and National Salvation of 1937, 124 Tenth Route Army, 95 Thaxton, Ralph, 6 three-thirds principle, 65, 80, 121, 123, 167 Three-Year War, 191, 201 Tian Erhong, 48

Tianjin, 94 Tian Youru, 11, 13 Tongzhi Restoration, 53h23 trade, 182-83

uniform taxation, 39, 40,164 united front, 60, 63, 185n7; mass associations, 33-36, 47, 51; policies, 65-67, 201 U.S. Army Dixie Mission, 80 usury, 101-2, 117

values, changes in, 106-10 Van Slyke, Lyman, 7-8, 189 village communities: ideal, 47-51, 106-7,109; infrastructure development, 30-31, 120-23 village covenants, 29 Village Electoral Law, 100 Village Sacrifice League, 109

Wangjiaping, 48 Wang Ming, 71, 81 Wang Ping, 96 Wang Zhen, 64, 65-67, 71,144 Wanjiang Base, 210 Wannan Incident, 213 warlords, 3 0 ,1 1 7 ,1 9 5 Wartime Working Committee, 177 weaving, 4 8,109 Wei Hongyun, 8 ,1 0 , 11,13 Wei lihuang, 134,139 Wei Xiaosan, 125 welfare relief funds, 36 White Terror, 175 W itch’s Own Words, 110 women: in military service, 206; policies on, 148; rights of, 107-8; in Sixth Trigram Movement, 133,141-43 Women’s National Salvation Association, 148 Women’s Sacrifice League, 99 World War II, 74 Wou, Odoroc, 205

Index Wilding River, 60 Wujiazaoyuan, 48 Wu Manyou, 40, 48 Wutai, Shanxi, 15 Wuxiang, 131

Xiang Ying, 192,194, 196,199, 212-13 Xi’an-Shijiazhuang Railway, 16 Xie Haoli, 122 Xintunbao Village, 164-65 Xue Muqiao, 183 Xu Fanting, 160, 167 Xu Xiangqian, 176

Yan’an, 3 -5 ,1 4 ; attacked by Nationalists, 59; as a model, 25, 60, 191 Yan’anology, 25,191 Yangjiagou, Mizhi County, Shaanxi, 59-63; living conditions, 63-65; organizational framework, 65-68, 71-72; as a refuge for Mao Zedong, 60, 61, 77; sociopolitical reforms, 68-82 Yangtze Bureau, 190 Yang Xiantang, 146-47 Yan Rugeng, 96 Yanshu wasteland district: migration to, 31-32, 37; village models, 48-51 Yan Xishan, 9 5 ,1 3 9,165-66; break with the CCP, 134,145, 161-62;

233

cooperation with Chiang Kai-shek, 17; establishment o f the Sacrifice League with CCP assistance, 11, 15, 144; working with the CCP, 119, 155-59,195 Yellow River, 155, 175 The Yenan Way in Revolutionary China (Seiden), 6, 7, 204 Ye Ting, 212 Yi Meng, 18 Youth’s Nation Salvation Association, 99 Yu, George, 27 Yung-fa Chen, 196-98 Yu Xuezhong, 185n6

Zhang Baishi, 150n6, 154n58 Zhang Chuyuan, 164 Zhang Jingwu, 176 Zhang Rui, 109 Zhang Rui Cooperative as a regional model, 109 Zhang Wentian, 59, 62, 82n2 Zhang Zhonghan, 94 Zhao Liancheng, 146 Zhao Yukun, 95 Zhou Enlai, 59, 200 Zhou Wenpin, 96 Zhou Xing, 77, 90nl09 Zhu De, 134 Zhu Rui, 176 Zuoquan, 131

About the Contributors

Gregor B enton is p rofessor o f history at the U niversity o f Cardiff. H is m ost recen t b o o k is The C h in ese in E u ro p e (w ith Frank P ieke).

Feng C hongyi is se n io r lecturer in China Studies at the Institute for Interna­ tional Studies, U niversity o f T e ch n o lo g y , Sydney. H e is author o f N o n g m in Yishi Yu Z h o n g g u o (P easan t c o n sc io u sn e s s and China), L uosu Yu Z h o n g g u o (B ertrand R ussell an d China), G u o h u n Z a i G u o n a n Z h o n g Z h en g zh a : K a n g z h a n S h iq i D e Z h o n g g u o W en h u a (C h in ese culture in the p eriod o f the War o f R esistan ce to Japan), C h in a ’s H a in a n P ro vin ce: E c o n o m ic D evelo p ­ m e n t a n d In v e s tm e n t E n v iro n m e n t, an d Z u o C hu L un h u i: N o n g m in Yishi Yu B a i N ia n Z h o n g g u o (B reak in g ou t o f the cycle: P easant c o n sc io u sn e ss an d China this century).

E lise A. DeVido r ec eiv e d her Ph.D . in history and East A sian lan g u a g es from H arvard U niversity in 1995 w ith a dissertation o n “T he M aking o f th e C om ­ m un ist Party-State in S h an d on g P rovince, 1 9 2 7 -1 9 5 2 .” She currently h o ld s th e p o sitio n s o f a sso cia te p rofessor in history an d resid en t director o f the C ou ncil o n International E ducational E xch an ge Study C enter at N ational C h en gch i U niversity in T aiw an.

Josep h W. E sherick is p ro fesso r o f history an d H siu P rofessor o f C h in ese Stu dies at th e U niversity o f California, San D ie g o . H e is th e author o f R eform a n d R evolu tion : The 1 9 1 1 R evo lu tio n in H u n a n a n d H u b e i and The O rig in s o f th e B o x e r U prising an d the ed itor o f Lost C h a n c e in C hina: The W orld W a r II D e sp a tc h e s o f J o h n S. S ervice an d C h in ese L ocal Elites a n d P a tte rn s

235

236

About the Contributors

o f D o m in a n c e (with Mary Rankin). He is currently working on the revolu­ tionary process in the Shaan Gan Ning Border Region. ^

David S. G. G oodm an is professor of international studies and director of the Institute for International Studies, University of Technology, Sydney. He is the author of D e n g X ia o p in g a n d th e C h in ese R e v o lu tio n and S o c ia l a n d P o litic a l C h a n g e in R e v o lu tio n a ry C h in a: The T a ih a n g R e v o lu tio n a ry B a se A re a in th e W ar o f R esista n ce to J a p a n , 1937-1945.

Wei H ongyun is professor of history at Nankai University, Tianjin, and a member of the China National Committee for Philosophy and Social Science. His most recent publications include H u a b e i K a n g R i g e n ju d i sh i (A history of anti-Japanese bases in North China). Pauline K eating is senior lecturer in Chinese history at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Her current research focuses on rural reform and revolutionary program in China in the 1930s and 1940s. She is author of Two R evolutions: V illage R ec o n stru c tio n a n d th e C o o p e ra tiv e M o v e m e n t in N orth S h a a n x i, 1934-45.

Tian Youru is professor and deputy director of Modern Shanxi Research In­ stitute. He is the editor of the fourtéen-volume T a ih a n g g e m in g g e n ju d i shilia o co n g sh u (History of the Taihang Revolutionary Base Area) and author of Z h o n g g u o K a n g R i g e n ju d i f a z h a n (A history of anti-Japanese base areas in China) and P en g Z h e n n ia n p u (A chronology of Peng Zhen’s life).