Making Revolution: The Communist Movement in Eastern and Central China, 1937-1945 [Reprint 2019 ed.] 9780520335707

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Published under the auspices of The Center for Chinese Studies University of California, Berkeley

Making

Revolution

Revolution The Communist Movement in Eastern and Central China, 1937-1945

Yung-fa Chen

University Berkeley

of California Los Angeles

Press London

University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © 1986 by The Regents of the University of California L i b r a r y o f Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Chen, Yung-fa, 1944Making revolution. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Communism—China—History—20th century. 2. Chung-kuo kung ch'an tang—History—20th century. 3. China—History—1937-1945. I. Title. HX418.C46 1985 95i.04'2 84-16261 I S B N 0-520-05002-9 Printed in the United States of America 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Contents

List o f Tables List o f Maps Foreword Preface Acknowledgments Introduction

vii ix xi xvii xxii i

Part One: Foundation and Preservation of Base Areas 1. Conquest and Containment: T h e Seizure o f Power, 1 9 3 7 - 1 9 4 1

23

2. Challenge and Survival: Japanese Attacks on Base Areas, 1 9 4 1 - 1 9 4 5

78

Part Two: Class Warfare Within the United Front: Basic Masses versus Feudal Forces 3. C C P Mass Mobilization and Rural Policy Contradictions

121

4. Rural Administration and Local Elections

223

5. Village Militia and Rural Militarization

259

6. Rural Party Branches: Penetration Into the Villages

296

7. State Exactions and Mass Mobilization

365

Part Three:

The Dynamics of the United Front

8. Mass Mobilization and the Rural Status Q u o

409

9. Divide and Rule: Dealing With Parochial Mobilization

447

V

vi

Contents

Conclusion: The Revolution and Beyond Appendix A: Location of Selected C C P Subregions, and Regions Appendix B: Location of Selected C C P

499 Hsien,

523 Ts'un

and

Hsiang

527

Abbreviations Notes Glossary Bibliography Index

$31 535 599 607 667

Tables

1. M a j o r Officers o f the A r m e d Forces and Their Operating Areas, circa 1941

70

2. T h e Formation o f Pao and Chia in the Rural Pacification Area o f South Yangtze, S u m m e r 1941

85

3. Geographical Distribution o f Puppet Police and Police Organizations, September 1941 4. Detainees During a T'aihsien C u r f e w in 1944 5. T h e Rural Population in Central China: C C P Classes o f Households by Percentage o f Population,

89

6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

1941-1945 Distribution o f Tenancy in Selected Areas o f Huaipei, 1941-1944 Food B o r r o w e r s and Their Victims A c c o r d i n g to Class Background in A n l o , 1941 —1942 Enemies and Friends: T h e A l i g n m e n t in C C P Mass Campaigns Class Backgrounds and Political Attitudes o f the C h a n g t u n Nominees for Hsiang Representatives, 1944 T h e Results o f Assembly Elections in C h a n g t u n Hsiang, 1943 and 1944

106 133

135 146 184 242 250

11. Class Backgrounds o f the Elected Administrative C o m m i t t e e Members in P ' e i - S u i - T ' u n g , 1944

251

12. Administrative C o m m i t t e e Members o f Liyuan, Huaipei, 1944

252

13. Administrative C o m m i t t e e Members Elected in A n l o ,

254

1943 14. Military Affairs C o m m i t t e e Members Elected in C h ' e n w e i , 1943

vii

262

viii

Tables

15- T a x B u r d e n U n d e r Japanese Rule as R e p o r t e d by the C C P in K'ot'ang, 1943 16. A K'ot'ang Peasant's T a x Burden U n d e r C C P Rule, 1943 17- T h e Huaipei Plan for Militia Construction, 1944 18. Class Backgrounds of the Militia Members in Selected Areas, 1943-1944 19- Peasants' Motivation in Joining the C C P in Yangkang, 1941 —1942 20. Class Composition of the Huaipei Regional Party in 1943 21. Class Background and Ideological State of 281 Huaipei Hsiang-Level Cadres, 1945 22. Class Composition of the Huaipei Regional Party, 1945 23- Landlords' Share of the Public Grain T a x in Jukao, Kiangsu, 1945 24. T a x Burden in Anlo 25- Personnel Changes in the Sixteenth Brigade of the N e w Fourth A r m y

266 267 279 285 302 305 313 318 370 372 402

Maps

1. The Three Years' Guerrilla War and Early Years of the N e w Fourth A r m y 2. Deployment of the K M T Guerrilla Forces in the Third War Zone, 1938 3. Base Area Construction versus K M T Containment, 1939-1940 4. Eastern China 5. The N e w Fourth A r m y Incident as Described by the C C P in 1944 6. The N e w Fourth A r m y Incident as Described by the C C P in 1980 7. Communist Base Areas in Central China, circa November 1942 8. Hsien in which C C P Governments Operated, circa July 1941 9. Guessed Locations of Selected Wartime C C P Hsien 10. Important Sites of C C P Field Investigations 1 1 . Mop-up Campaigns by the Japanese Thirteenth A r m y in 1940 and 1941 12. Japanese Rural Pacification, 1941 to 1943 13. Such'ien, Kiangsu, 1939 14. Ssu-Ling-Sui and Vicinity, 1942 to 1944

ix

25 33 41 4$ 64 66 72 73 74 76 80 87 451 460

Foreword

This book represents, I believe, the most important scholarly work done on the Chinese revolution in more than a decade. It is important not because it presents a new theory of peasant revolution or because it purports to be a comprehensive history of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) during the Sino-Japanese War. It is important precisely because it does not attempt either of these things. Instead, Yung-fa Chen has taken us from the hothouse of theory, paradigm, and high generalization outdoors into a particular landscape, a harsh, peopled landscape where nothing was simple or easy and where actions spoke louder than words. N o attentive reader of the pages that follow can doubt the reality of that landscape or the difficulty—and the ironies—of making revolution there. A central virtue of this book is that it concentrates mainly on a single region—Anhwei and Kiangsu—and on the anti-Japanese territorial bases established there under C C P leadership. These territorial bases, scattered across North and Central China behind Japanese lines, were absolutely crucial to the development of the Communist movement. However significant other policies may have been, the real stuff of power—human and material resources of all kinds—had to be drawn from the regions controlled by the Party. Without these resources, the C C P might not have survived, and no contest for control of the Chinese mainland would have been possible after 1945. In the last ten years or so a few Western scholars have come to appreciate fully the importance of these base areas and have begun to study them; a conference at Harvard University in 1978 sought to establish "base area studies" as an area of inquiry in its own right, but until recently progress in this direction has been slow. In most published studies, material on base areas has been presented not primarily out of interest in the base areas themselves but to illustrate xi

xii

Foreword

some general interpretation or theory. Significant as such studies are, they share certain serious deficiencies that must be repaired if understanding is to advance. In most existing works, the central question takes the f o r m of " w h y and h o w did the C C P succeed during the Sino-Japanese War?" This is unsatisfactory because it assumes what it sets out to d e m o n strate and because it directs attention only to achievements, not to problems, mistakes, or failures. This f o r m of inquiry slights all prior questions about what actually happened. T h e second deficiency comes f r o m the ways in which data are gathered and generalizations are developed. T o use a Chinese expression, the "viewing flowers f r o m horseback" (tsou-ma k'an-hua) approach takes a bit of evidence f r o m this place and that and f r o m this time and that, mixes all the bits together, and draws general conclusions concerning the entire Chinese C o m m u n i s t m o v e m e n t . T h e other approach is " m o u n t a i n t o p - i s m " (shan-t'ou chu-i), which concentrates on a single locale, usually the atypical Shen-Kan-Ning base, then generalizes findings for this base to all bases and to the C C P as a whole. B o t h approaches, despite their differences, distort history by drastic oversimplification and by making it look m u c h m o r e uniform than was actually the case. A major strength of the present w o r k results f r o m its discriminating use of sources. Yung-fa Chen and others have shown conclusively that an accurate understanding of C o m m u n i s t activities, especially at the local level, must rely principally on inner-Party documents never intended for public consumption. O n e might almost say that open sources ought to be used only for broad policy statements or as amplification of what has been learned already f r o m confidential sources. O p e n materials rarely lie outright, b u t they are selective in the topics they cover, normative and prescriptive rather than factual in their treatment, and generalized rather than specific in their description of actual conditions. In the light of confidential sources, open materials often take on new levels of meaning, which remain invisible if one is relying mainly on such materials or if one is treating both types of sources as equivalent. O p e n sources, whatever their intended audience, stress successes far m o r e heavily than difficulties and failures. Quite understandably, these sources proclaim nationalism, united front, moderate social and economic reforms, and wide popular support. Class struggle is rarely mentioned and its implications, particularly at the local level, are unspecified.

Foreword

xiii

Inner-Party sources, as this work shows time and time again, are written from a different perspective. They are detailed and highly specific. They are candid not only about successes but about problems encountered, about difficulties not yet solved, about mistakes. They report, in the vivid, earthy language of the peasants themselves, the response to Party policies at the rice-roots level. They often speak of class struggle, but not in conventional Marxist terms because social structure in rural China was complex and varied greatly from place to place. Instead, the distinction is most frequently made between "feudal forces" (or "elements") and "the people" ("broad masses" or "basic masses"). These terms sound vague and ambiguous, but they were in fact flexible and evaluative. They received concrete meaning in real-life situations, at this place and time, and they depended heavily on actual behavior not formal classification. Three general theories—what might now be called classical theories—have been propounded to explain the Chinese Communist movement during the Sino-Japanese War, and all of them conclude that the CCP's ultimate conquest of power throughout China was ordained prior to the Japanese surrender in 1945. The earliest of these theories saw the C C P harnessing a kind of spontaneous peasant nationalism which it then used to achieve its own quite different ends. In this interpretation, the Communist revolution came to China out of the fortuitousness of war, not out of contradictions inherent in the fabric of the old society. The second general theory, a rejoinder to the first, asserted that rural China did indeed possess a powerful revolutionary potential, one that the Party unleashed by arousing the peasantry so that for the first time it became a conscious political force, and by the effective application of social and economic reforms. The shorthand for all this was "the mass line"—from the masses, to the masses. The third general theory looked neither to nationalism nor to the mass line, but to the organizational effectiveness of the C C P , through which a disciplined and hierarchical structure was imposed on the dispersed, apolitical, and cellular components (family, lineage, village, secret society, and so on) of Chinese society. More recently, a fourth theory derived from the notions of "moral economy" has been propounded. In the erratically argued and inadequately documented statement of this theory as applied to China during the War of Resistance, the peasantry is seen not only as a reservoir of revolutionary potential but as already making revolution—a radical effort to recover the lost communal egalitarianism of an idealized past—even before the arrival of C C P cadres. In

xiv

Foreword

order to capture this revolution, the Party therefore had to reformulate its own more moderate program to meet the demands of a peasantry on the move. It is clear that not all of these theories can be correct. Over the years, sharp and sometimes acrimonious debate has taken place among the proponents of the various theories, but the arguments—often generating more heat than light—have become sterile and predictable. What can be done? What can be done is to move for the time being from general explanation to specific open-ended questions about what happened, when, where, and to whom. Yung-fa Chen and a few other younger scholars have written factually detailed, carefully researched narrative histories of individual base areas. There now exist monographic studies of all the major base areas, with the important exceptions of Chin-Chi-Lu-Yii and Chin-Sui, and the less important exception of the small Tung-chiang and Hainan guerrilla zones in South China. With a few exceptions, these works do not seek to formulate and present general interpretations. Instead they ask specific and researchable questions about the process of political and military consolidation; about relations with local secret societies such as the Red Spears; about struggles with KMT, regional, puppet, and bandit forces; about cadre recruitment, education, and performance; about taxation, rent and interest reduction, production campaigns; about surviving Japanese mopping-up campaigns; about peasant attitudes and participation. In short, they deal seriously with the whole messy business of human affairs, just as C C P cadres in the villages, towns, and base areas had to deal with these affairs. It is therefore impossible to summarize the works; indeed, these works make their greatest contribution in the cumulative effect of their richly textured, lifelike detail. The authors of these histories are more effective in exposing the deficiencies of existing works than they are in proposing alternative explanations, but only when the histories of specific base areas are known will it become possible to ask comparative questions and to measure the relative importance of a number of factors. For example, it will be possible to investigate rent and interest reduction in several base areas. How did the tax system differ in content and timing in various base areas? Was the problem of military control and security different in different bases? What difference did it make whether or not Nationalist forces were also present behind Japanese lines? How

Foreword

xv

were communications handled between Yenan and the dispersed bases, and how did this affect coordination and control? Did various base areas pass through approximately the same stages, or were there marked differences in the quality as well as the pace of their development? What was the nature of Party Rectification (Cheng-feng) in bases other than Shen-Kan-Ning? Cadre education, army recruitment, and many other topics no longer need be studied as flowers viewed from horseback. Once they are placed firmly in context, scholars will be able to distinguish both general patterns and local variations. The goal, of course, is to reach a better understanding of the Chinese revolution during the Sino-Japanese War. The study of history often moves in dialectical fashion. Early hypotheses and generalizations serve for a time, until they exhaust their explanatory value, new evidence is uncovered, and new questions asked. N e w research eventually yields fuller, more comprehensive, and more solidly grounded generalizations. Meanwhile, Yung-fa Chen's signal accomplishment in this book is not simply its contribution to a better understanding of the Chinese revolution; his accomplishment rests equally in its manylayered recreation of a time and place. T o paraphrase Clifford Geertz, it grasps and renders a multiplicity of complex structures, many of them superimposed upon or knotted into one another, which are at once strange, irregular, and inexplicit. It is like reading a manuscript— foreign, faded, full of ellipses, incoherencies, suspicious emendations, and tendentious commentaries, written finally not in conventional scripts but in transient examples of human behavior. Lyman P. Van Slyke M a y 1985 Stanford, California

Preface

This b o o k began some years ago as a dissertation meant to describe h o w in eastern and central China the Chinese C o m m u n i s t Party ( C C P ) built its four component grassroots organizations— mass associations, rural governments, militia, and Party branches—in a multifront war against the Japanese, the Nationalists, the traditional rural elite, and other contending local powers. As the dissertation drew to its conclusion, I was persuaded by m y advisors and friends that the manuscript should be published because it introduced hitherto unavailable data and revealed a hidden dimension o f the C o m m u n i s t Revolution. With K . C . Liu's encouragement, I submitted a copy o f it to Grant Barnes, then editor o f the University o f California Press. The favorable response prompted me to revise it for publication. M y decision to write a dissertation on the wartime C o m m u n i s t movement stemmed from some puzzlement about the ultimate success o f the C C P and the failure o f the Nationalists during the SinoJapanese War. A successful story always prompts a desire to know more in detail; the story o f wartime C o m m u n i s t success also appealed to m y intellectual curiosity, especially in light of my education in Taiwan. M o r e had to be said, however, in substantive terms, as a serious topic. I therefore drew myself into the debate between Chalmers Johnson, who attributed the success o f the Communists to their anti-Japanese leadership, and Johnson's critics, who sought explanations in the Party's appeal to the peasantry with a socioeconomic p r o g r a m . T h e extremity of the two positions made me uncomfortable, and I wondered how far the debate would advance our understanding o f the wartime C o m m u n i s t movement, if we could not even delineate the actual course o f peasant mobilization. Thus, m y dissertation primarily addressed the question o f what had actually XVll

xviii

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happened in the wartime Communist movement and w h y it had succeeded. Three sets of ideas guided me in the initial stage of collecting materials. First of all, the importance of organizational factors prompted me to consider how the C C P went about building up the basis of peasant support. In this regard, I have chosen to emphasize four major constituents: mass associations, militia, village governments, and Party branches at the grassroots level. Second, a priori conflicts of interests between the state and the peasantry on matters of tax requisition, army recruitment, and political participation prompted me to consider how the Party overcame the differences and maintained peasant solidarity. Third, the reality of power politics necessitated that I put aside the polemical aspect of political struggle and directly confront the pragmatic issues of how the Party dealt with its enemies, both real and imagined. I confined my attention to central and eastern China or, more precisely, the areas where the C C P maintained an independent army and government. These areas had been, prior to the war, Nationalist strongholds, and, because of their secondary role in the wartime Communist movement, scholars have tended to ignore them. Attention to more well-established Communist base areas in northern Shensi and North China had produced one completed monograph (Mark Selden on the Shen-Kan-Ning border area) and four research projects (Carl Dorris, Linda Grove, and Kathleen Hartford on ChinCh'a-Chi, Ralph Thaxton on Chin-Chi-Lu-Yii, and, later, my classmate David Paulson on the Shantung base area). I hoped that my reconstruction of Communist activities in the Yangtze region would add to the existing body of data and contribute to a fuller understanding of the Communists' rise to power. With this modest goal in mind, I started my field research in Taiwan in 1974. What sent me home to do research was the sizable, underused, and underappreciated collection of unclassified C C P materials in the Bureau of Investigation. Tokuda Noriyuki's bibiliographies indicate the richness of this collection, and the poorly edited and poorly filmed Yush5do collection ( C h u n g - k u o kung-ch'an-tang shih tzu-liao hui-p'ien) gives material evidence of its existence. What I did not know then was that the Bureau of Intelligence also has a collection of unclassified C C P materials on my subject, smaller but not unimportant. The authenticity of these materials is beyond doubt; I have found references to them in C C P external Party publications, Japanese intelligence

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files, and other materials. Cross-checking the m u l t i t u d e of details also revealed n o inconsistencies. T h e K M T keepers of these d o c u m e n t s have preserved t h e m safely, but they have been little used for p u r poses of propaganda or intelligence. These internal Party materials o n policy i m p l e m e n t a t i o n w e r e authored by C o m m u n i s t cadres. Top-level Party leaders such as Liu Shao-ch'i, C h ' e n Yi, and J a o Shu-shih contributed some pieces, b u t most of the materials w e r e written b y lesser k n o w n or u n k n o w n cadres. Upper-echelon Party cadres m a y have tended to view C o m m u n i s t activities f r o m the perspective of a particular base area or o f central and eastern China in general, b u t their less p r o m i n e n t comrades focused on the grassroots level, o f t e n o n a particular hsiang (township). T h e y w r o t e f o r w o r k conferences, training classes, and the self-education of chosen Party m e m b e r s . W h a t primarily c o n cerned the authors was the pragmatics of policy implementation. T h e y gave little consideration to national-level Party polemics and disputes; neither did they feel constrained by the need to justify every political m o v e for nonbelievers. Sensitive to the divergence between the Party and peasants on the issue of peasant interests, they described and analyzed peasant attitudes in considerable detail and took great pains to reconcile these differences. In some cases, the materials are c r u d e in b o t h writing style and ideological content. T h e Party printed t h e m for what they m i g h t contribute; for us, their very crudeness enhances their historical value. In these Party documents, the authors' belief in class struggle gives the Party's wartime activities a meaning other than that suggested b y the external Party publications, which constitute a high percentage of the materials on m y subject available elsewhere, including those in the famous H o o v e r Library and T 5 y o b u n k o . W h i l e eschewing any suggestion of class warfare, the external Party publications m a n a g e d to project a liberal-patriotic i m a g e t o outsiders by o m i t t i n g certain crucial details of actual policy i m p l e m e n t a t i o n . D u r i n g the w a r and immediately afterward, the success of this effort led m a n y observers to describe the C C P as "agrarian r e f o r m e r s . " In fact, to preserve the C C P ' s independent identity u n d e r C h i a n g Kai-shek's anti-Japanese leadership, Party leaders like M a o T s e - t u n g and W a n g M i n g reaffirmed the Party's c o m m i t m e n t to c o m m u n i s m in their interviews with r e p o r t e r s — b u t w i t h o u t clarifying the practical i m plications of that c o m m i t m e n t . Increasingly frustrated with the K M T ' s anti-Japanese efforts and domestic leadership, m a n y foreign observers,

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however, could not fail to recognize the C C P ' s success, and, as long as there was no compelling evidence of a radical redistribution of rural wealth, Westerners were content to accept the C C P ' s wartime programs at face value. Few took seriously the C C P ' s underlying faith in class struggle. Even Edgar Snow offered little enlightenment, saying only that someday the C C P would try to move China toward socialism but that it would make no such efforts in wartime (1941: 288-301; 1944: 289-97). Internal Party documents now force us to confront the fact that the Party instilled Marxist doctrine into the minds of its followers, that many Party members derived ideological inspiration and moral courage from their belief in the doctrine, and that some at least derived from it a means of justifying their personal behavior. Class analysis enabled the Party's followers to define friends and enemies and to exploit the ambiguity of the Party's publicized policy in order to mobilize poorer peasants against the old rural order at the grassroots. The contrast between the two images of the Party's wartime activities is intended to show that to emphasize the liberal-patriotic image at the expense of class struggle would be a serious distortion. The situation reminds us of the dual character of many Chinese traditional statesmen, who were outwardly Confucians, ruling by virtue, but inwardly Legalists, ruling by power (wai-ju nei-fa). B y dividing the Party's publications into two categories—internal for insiders and external for outsiders—the Party maintained two different images. And, just as there was tension in the traditional statesmen's dual character, there was also tension between the Party's two projected images. T o a certain extent, the wartime peasant movement can be viewed as the unfolding of this tension. Only the internal Party materials enabled me to restore a heretofore largely hidden dimension in wartime Chinese communism. However, my delight in uncovering these internal Party materials did not blind me to their inherent bias. They were designed to provide formulas for success, to prevent undesirable side effects in policy implementation, and to channel peasant energies along certain lines. They, therefore, tended to overestimate the Party's ability to manipulate peasants and to exaggerate the degree of actual manipulation. Because they are based on personal experience and field investigation, however, they provide a picture of the peasant movement that neither outside observers nor peasant participants were able to see or comprehend. They give us an overview of the complicated inter-

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action between the C C P and the peasants, of the Party's mixed motives and opportune strategies, and a rare glimpse of the aspirations, fears, penchants, inhibitions, and political views of peasants in the wartime movement. They were also valuable in identifying the power contexts in which the Party cadres found themselves mobilizing peasants. Added to the Japanese, the K M T , and other materials, this rich collection of internal Party documents enables me to describe and discuss in depth the Communists' military struggle, peasant mobilization, and united fronts in the wartime Yangtze region. M y purpose in this book is to break down our abstract concept of a peasant revolution into many smaller concrete steps taken by many individual participants in it and, from what they actually did, to derive insights into the reasons for the CCP's wartime success. I have made some attempts to place the regional experience in national and historical contexts, but on the whole this study of the peasant revolution in the Sino-Japanese War aims to grasp the complexity of a historical drama that has hitherto remained untold. Only with a firm grasp on the major ingredients of a "successful" peasant revolution can we have an understanding of the chances for it to be reenacted in a different environment.

Acknowledgments

The acknowledgment written in my dissertation summarizes my feelings very well even now. But an unintentional omission must be remedied. M y deep gratitude to Rachel Sing, w h o stood behind the completion of the whole work, should not go unexpressed, and to her I dedicate this book. In the process of revision, many of my old friends and teachers w h o I mentioned in my dissertation continued to give me help and encouragement. My advisers, Lyman Van Slyke and Harold Kahn, took me in as their first Chinese student in the Department of History at Stanford University and, despite my initial difficulties, have continually given generous assistance and support, enabling me to perservere over the years. Lowell Dittmer, Chalmers Johnson, Li Yuning, Donald Sutton, Roger Thomson, Guy Alitto, David Paulson, Elizabeth Perry, John Shepherd, and Allen Chun read the partial or whole manuscript, and their comments have contributed to its improvement. M y indebtedness to the latter five, in particular, goes beyond this simple acknowledgment. I would also like to thank Earnest Chin and Kwan Man-bun for their help with materials. I am grateful to Robert Krompart, w h o edited an earlier version, and to Grant Barnes, w h o sustained m y courage in the protracted battle of revision. For the final editing and preparation of the manuscript, I am equally grateful to Phyllis Killen and Nancy A. Blumenstock. A year's postdoctoral grant f r o m the Center for Chinese Studies, University of California, Berkeley, delayed my return to Taiwan but enabled me to revise my dissertation. I thank Professor Dittmer and other staff members for the attention they rendered me. I am equally grateful to Constance Chin and Beth Cary for allowing me to use, almost as my private study room in the off-hours, the XXII

Acknowledgments

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Center for East Asian Studies, Stanford University, long after my graduation. I thank Lii Shih-ch'iang and Chang Yii-fa, my superiors at the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, for allowing me free time to finish the final revision. A m o n g the many w h o helped in the research and preparation of my dissertation, I would like to list the following: Guy Alitto, Ming K. Chan, Chang Heng-tao, Constance Chin, Joseph Esherick, David Evans, Estelle Freedman, Linda Grove, Kathleen Hartford, Hsu C h o yun, Philip Huang, Susan Jones, Kao Ming-shih, Philip Kuhn, Jonathan Lipman, Li Yu-ning, K. C. Liu, R a m o n Myers, Liza Oyama, Elizabeth Perry, John Shepherd, Lorraine Sinclair, Robert Somers, Vallerie Steenson, David Strand, and Tsou Tang. Several academic encounters in the world outside Stanford were of immense benefit. Twelve months spent at the University of Chicago from October 1977 to October 1978 with the research project "Political Leadership and Social Change at the Local Level in China from 1850 to the Present" (funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, Modern China Project) provided a unique opportunity. Thanks to the efforts of Kathleen Hartford in the summer of 1978 and Robert Somers in the summer of 1979, I also participated in symposia on " C o m m u n i s t Base Areas" and "Rebellion in North China." I wish to thank the staff members of the Hoover Institution East Asia Collection at Stanford, and the staff members w h o assisted me in the archives of the Bureau of Investigation and the Bureau of Intelligence in Taiwan, the T 5 y o Bunko, and the Japanese military archives. I would particularly like to express my appreciation to Ts'ao Po-yi for arranging my visits to the Taiwan Bureau of Investigation and Intelligence. I am also grateful to Professor Ichiko Chuz5 for sponsoring my stay in Japan; along with Professor Ishikawa Tadao, Professor Hiramatsu Shigeo, and Colonel Akasaka Yukiharu, he made my six months' stay in Japan extremely fruitful. I am indebted to the Office of Graduate Awards and the History Department at Stanford for many years of financial assistance. The Center for Research in International Studies at Stanford provided support for the entire dissertation project, including travel to Taiwan andjapan. I am also indebted to Ronald Herring for funding f r o m the Center for Research in International Studies and to Richard Morse of the Stanford History Department for support from the Weter Fund. In the enormous roster of people to w h o m I am indebted,

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Acknowledgments

Robert and Vivian Blomenkamp occupy a special place. Their kindness, patience, and concern provided sustenance I will always cherish. Finally, I wish to express my deep appreciation to my parents who, despite their puzzlement at my prolonged student life, have been unfailing in their trust and confidence. I am fortunate to have four brothers and a sister w h o have remained at h o m e during m y absence, freeing me f r o m my filial responsibilities as the eldest son.

Introduction

HEN THE Chinese Communists completed their famous Long March in late 1935, Mao Tsetung proclaimed the event a major victory (1969, 1: 159—60). But, by any objective measure, the claim was a hollow one. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had suffered losses described by a wartime Communist leader as " 1 0 0 percent in the white areas and 90 percent in the Soviet areas" (Jen Pishih 1943: 41). Three years earlier, Kuomintang ( K M T ) intelligence had already claimed (with justification) to have destroyed the underground C C P network throughout China proper. The Communists had lost all the base areas they had spent years building in central China. Only about 25 thousand of the C C P soldiers who had breached the K M T encirclement in Kiangsi survived to reach northern Shensi, and the C C P army that greeted them in the northwest vas even smaller and weaker than they were. Communist soldiers were no strangers to peasant misery, but the host Soviet area shocked even the Long Marchers. It may have been a stroke of good fortune that the newly arrived soldiers did not have much time to dwell on their plight; they were almost immediately confronted by the threat of renewed encirclement by K M T forces. In mid-193 7 the Japanese invasion turned the civil war into a three-cornered struggle, and it quickly became obvious that the K M T - C C P United Front did not signify an end to rivalry, but a shift to more muted competition—a power game the Communists played with subtlety and finesse. When the Japanese surrendered in 1945,

2

Introduction

the CCP was no longer a negligible force cornered on a remote frontier, but the ruler of almost all of rural North China. In central and eastern China, as well, they had built new base areas. Their territorial gains had enabled the Party to maintain growth in both regions and to compete with better-equipped KMT troops for the only industrialized region of China—the northeast—which was also rich in natural and agricultural resources. The KMT moved quickly to replace the Japanese army's control of major cities and transportation lines, but such blunders as discrimination against the Chinese formerly under the Japanese occupation soon turned K M T gains into liabilities. When Mao Tsetung next proclaimed a major victory for the CCP, it was a real one. He stood overlooking Tienanmen (The Gate of Heavenly Peace) Square rather than the barren loess plateau of northern Shensi, effectively signalling the end of two decades of KMT rule in mainland China. What happened to change the Communists' lot so dramatically? The most usual answer focuses on the CCP's effective mobilization of millions of peasants. But the question of how all this came about has been answered from different perspectives with emphases on different aspects of the problem. To clarify my position vis-a-vis those of other writers on the subject, I will review three major approaches, those of Chalmers Johnson, Mark Selden, and Tetsuya Kataoka. 1 The Japanese Army archives, on which Johnson based his study of wartime Chinese communism, project a picture of "widespread guerrilla warfare" in support of the movement. The strong peasantCommunist alliance that this image implies leads Johnson to explain the Communists' rise to power in terms of mass nationalism. Convinced that the prewar Communist movement had failed despite the Party's use of "every available . . . ideological and military tool" and despite its "purchase" of peasant support with an "anti-landlord economic policy," Johnson further contends that the peasant support the Party won during the war underwent a qualitative change: it became no longer contingent on the Party's military victory and the KMT's failure to make a better offer. He then turns his attention to what he believes to be the important new element in wartime Chinese communism—the resistance war itself. In his view, the Japanese invasion created a political vacuum and anarchy in the vast Chinese countryside, and energized peasants began to search desperately for anti-Japanese leadership. The Party

Introduction

3

provided the leadership b y restoring social order, forming ad hoc governments, and resisting the Japanese invaders. W h e n the Japanese A r m y tried to suppress the resistance, their brutality further alienated the peasants, deepening their national consciousness and giving the Party n e w opportunities to demonstrate its anti-Japanese leadership. B y contrast, the K M T stood helpless and idle, allowing its political legitimacy to dissipate. Thus, w h e n the civil war rekindled in 1946, the C C P could count on its hard-won legitimacy to defeat its Nationalist opponents. 2 A s Johnson later said, this theory is to a large degree a socialscientific reformulation o f the insights o f wartime Western e y e w i t nesses. 3 Because o f the sheer force o f the argument, it has remained influential ever since its appearance in 1962. In highlighting the nationalistic character o f wartime Chinese communism, it provides a counterbalance to the "international conspiracy" v i e w o f the Party, but, b y insisting that the peasants' predominant political concerns were "national salvation" and "resistance to Japan," he romanticizes them (1962: 139). His simplistic interpretation o f peasant motivation and c o m m i t m e n t is easily explained b y the limited scope o f his evidence, w h i c h prevented him f r o m examining the complicated interplay between the Party and the peasants in village settings. His obsession with the search for one decisive, overarching factor in explaining the Party's wartime success also contributes to the problem. He ignores the nature o f the peasants' aspiration and c o m m i t ment other than that o f pure and simple patriotism, sets aside causes that contributed to peasant mobilization but not directly to peasant motivation, and pays no attention to the Party's efforts to free the peasants f r o m p o w e r constraints. T h e exclusion o f any socioeconomic appeal to peasants in Johnson's explanation o f the Party's wartime g r o w t h , h o w e v e r , catches critics' eyes more quickly. 4 H e does not deny the presence o f an agrarian problem in prewar China and actually states that it might eventually have catapulted the Party to p o w e r had no Sino-Japanese w a r broken out. But because, in his j u d g m e n t , " d u r i n g the w a r the Communists did not contemplate the redistribution o f land or any other class-oriented measures that w o u l d have radically altered the pattern o f land ownership" and because "the economic policies implemented b y the C o m m u n i s t Party during the Sino-Japanese W a r were designed to create m a x i m u m u n i t y , " he concludes that the Party's attainment o f political legitimacy during the w a r had little to

4

Introduction

do with their Marxist doctrine, which appears to him no more than a "national m y t h " that acquired the power of legitimacy only because the Party happened to choose it for promulgation. 5 Mark Selden, a committed populist, offers additional reasons to criticize Johnson's belittling of socioeconomic factors in a revolution, and, writing on the Communist movement in northern Shensi, he further develops his concept of the "Yenan W a y " to explain the dynamics of wartime Chinese communism. According to him, peasant misery, which was " a complex amalgam of tenancy, debt, taxation, famine, and the dislocation created by the rapid development of a marketing economy," accounts for the Party's gains among the peasants. In particular, Selden shows the appeal of the land reform program to northern Shensi peasants and the program's contribution to the Party's ability to resist K M T efforts to annihilate it. 6 In dealing with the impact of the Sino-Japanese War on the Communist movement, however, he embraces uncritically the Party's standard explanation for its retreat from land reform: for the sake of national unity in wartime, the Party put aside its class interests. From 1937 to 1941, it allowed the "united-front imperative" and the "proliferation of bureaucracy" to dictate its policy practices. But, strangely enough, the Party experienced phenomenal growth during this period. However, this emphasis on patriotic commitment led unintentionally to the assertion of the Party's elitist impulse at the expense of its populist commitment. The old elite also benefited from the Party reorientation, which brought them to the verge of returning to power. The economic crisis that resulted from the K M T blockade of northern Shensi eventually forced the C C P to face these problems head-on. In the 1942 rectification campaign, the Party reaffirmed its commitment to peasant interests and indeed developed a whole range of new policies to facilitate peasant participation according to the principle of the "mass line," which in turn resulted in a fundamental transformation of the stagnant economy in northern Shensi. For Selden, this complex of policies characterized by C C P faith in activating peasants to overcome poverty and oppression embodies the true spirit of the Yenan Way. Selden had access to many internal Party documents that portray C C P practice in terms of class struggle, but his inability to see wartime communism as a reconciliation of seemingly contradictory goals leads him to emphasize the liberal-patriotic image projected by

Introduction

$

the Party's external publications. As a result, when he discusses the Party's election campaigns, he stresses peasant participation and fails completely to see it either as an attempt to shift administrative power from agrarian elite to peasant activists or as a confirmation of the success of earlier peasant mobilization. His emphasis on the Party's allowing the old elite to play a role in the Communist polity only leads us to wonder whether the Party talked about class struggle only to salvage its revolutionary self-image (1971: 125—36). In fact, Selden's emphasis on democratic and patriotic concerns gives Johnson no reason to rethink his initial thesis of peasant nationalism (1977: 784—85). Selden's discussion of mass line policies further intensifies suspicion. Selden leaves the impression that, although the Party forged a stronger alliance with the peasant majority, its efforts aimed at a combined struggle against the bureaucratic impulse of the Party and the agricultural stagnation of the land rather than against the old elite (1971: 188—200, 2 0 8 - 1 2 ) . His failure to analyze Party practice in terms of contradictory goals also leads him to emphasize the egalitarian and antibureaucratic components in the Yenan Way, ignoring entirely the opposing policies of the Party's willingness to make concessions to peasant "capitalism" and its enforcement of Party supremacy. The concessions to peasant capitalism through the emulation of labor heroes resulted in a brisk kulak peasant economy, which became a target for the postwar class struggle, and the enforcement of Party supremacy in the name of "unified leadership" resulted in the concentration of state power in the hands of cadres who had bureaucratic and elitist tendencies. As for the Party's northern Shensi experience in wartime Chinese communism, Selden notes what makes that experience unique: the area had already undergone land reform; it had never experienced direct Japanese military attack; it had offered headquarters for the wartime Party; and it had suffered more rural disintegration than other areas. But he argues that the harsh environment of-northern Shensi only enables us to appreciate the Yenan Way more because the central issue is the transformation of a backward rural economy (1971: 1 2 1 - 2 2 ) . Selden's failure to explore the implications of northern Shensi's uniqueness, however, proves to be unfortunate. Carl Dorris convincingly shows that the so-called Yenan Way largely appeared as a distillation of the Party's experience in North China. 7 In projecting to North China the experience of an area where land reform had already

6

Introduction

been enforced, Selden underestimates the revolutionary, that is, redistributive, efforts of the Party's land programs there. In northern Shensi the Party was bent on wooing the old elite after the land redistribution had thoroughly alienated them, but in North China the task was to use nationalistic unity with the old elite to mobilize peasants without antagonizing them into uncompromising opposition. Dorris's warning about the geographical differences in the practice of C C P policy is well-grounded. A third view is advanced by Tetsuya Kataoka, who examines the problem from a national perspective. He consults even more C C P internal documents than does Selden. Although he notes the contingent nature of peasant mass support for the C C P (as both Johnson and Selden did) in the prewar Communist movement, he begins by raising a negative question. Instead of asking what mobilized peasants into an alliance with the Party, he asks what enabled the Party to neutralize the opposition to the revolution, particularly the city-based K M T . His answer is the resistance war. The Party, although unable to determine the ultimate relationship between the K M T and Japan, had worked hard to hasten the birth of the Second United Front and prevent the K M T from unilaterally seeking peace with Japan. 8 Seen in this light, Johnson's dismissal of the Second United Front as a contributing factor to the Party's wartime success simply misses the point, because the C C P never expected to gain territory in the K M T rear areas through a united-front strategy (1962: 13-14)Kataoka assumes that there was a split within the Party between Mao Tse-tung, w h o argued for a rural strategy, and Wang Ming, who argued for an urban strategy. From this point of departure, he tries to reconstruct the course of events largely by speculation and inference. He concludes by arguing that C C P policy was an uneasy juxtaposition of the t w o policy lines. Mao could not implement his rural strategy without support from the United Front called for by Wang Ming. B y keeping the K M T in a foreign war, the United Front prevented the previous foe f r o m concentrating its resources on snuffing out communism while the movement was still in its infancy. It also enabled the Party to recruit urban intellectuals and send them to the countryside in North China to mobilize peasants and preempt parochial mobilization when the Japanese army actually launched its invasion in 1937. 9 In Kataoka's view, the peasants were unable to make a revo-

Introduction

7

lucion themselves, but in modern times, they were able to seize some power locally, which accounts for the parochial mobilization or, in his terms, "spontaneous mobilization" prompted by the Japanese onslaught. B y spontaneous mobilization, he means the proliferation of "armed landlords, lineage organizations, secret societies, bandits, and the like." The Party preempted it in North China and imposed an organizational "frame of steel" on the traditional infrastructure of rural militarization. In areas where the Party failed to preempt parochial mobilization, the goal was achieved by military conquest. In either case, the Party commanded authority on the basis of command rather than on "reason." Peasants would do whatever was asked of them. During the war, the Party used the organization to move peasants into guerrilla resistance, and later, in 1958, it used the same organization to mobilize peasants to embrace the policy of the Great Leap Forward in defiance of economic rationality (Kataoka 1974: 1 0 1 - 6 , 295-302, 3 1 1 ) . In concert with the Maoist view that "political power grows out of the barrel of a gun," Kataoka considers peasant "deprivation" only a passive factor in the wartime Communist success. For him, Party leadership and organizational weapons came after military conquest to provide the key to peasant mobilization; the peasants' propensity to seize local power and their unreflective obedience to an imposed authority simply contributed to the effectiveness of these weapons. The chronic poverty played no role in the C C P revolution (Kataoka 1974: 105, 234, 295, 3 1 0 - 1 1 ) . B y supplying such answers, Kataoka sees no need to examine the process by which the Party created peasant support. What interests him is the fact that a revolution through class warfare was in fact put into effect despite the Party's patriotic slogans and moderate programs. (Kataoka seems to assume an incompatibility between class warfare and patriotic liberal image.) B y proving that the land programs amounted to "confiscation by installment" of the property of the landlord class, he actually proves that socioeconomic appeal was paramount in the Party's wartime success. This should obligate him to reexamine his other propositions about peasant character, but, curiously enough, he sees no such need. After showing how the Party behaved in a Machiavellian manner and manipulated its wartime programs, which included rent and interest reduction, campaigns against traitors and bandits, and taxation at stiltedly progressive rates, he considers his task finished. The difficult and complicated course

8

Introduction

undergone by the Party in accomplishing the "confiscation" remains uncharted. N o attempt is made to clarify the installment of a new rural power structure and the alleged contribution of the revolution to the resistance movement. His view that peasants are primarily concerned with their immediate interests simply fails to fit with the authoritarian and power-hungry peasants he describes. Kataoka shares his predecessors' failure to differentiate peasant support by place, time, and kind, and their failure to examine in each case the concrete strategy by which the Party mobilized peasants into compliance. He also shares his predecessors' obsession with the search for a single decisive factor in accounting for wartime Communist success. In focusing his attention on how the Party promoted resistance to facilitate the revolution, his eagerness to undermine Mao's position in wartime Chinese communism leads him to misrepresent, for example, Mao's view on the Second United Front. 10 But a far more serious side effect is his failure to examine the actual revolution at the grassroots. This brief review of our current understanding of wartime Chinese communism suggests the need to study the Party's actual interaction with peasants in village settings and the changing power contexts in which this interaction occurred. I will study peasant motivation from the perspective of both its facilitating and inhibiting factors, giving equal weight to the CCP's positive appeals and its removal of negative constraints. I have chosen to confine my attention to central and eastern China, more precisely, the three provinces of Kiangsu, Anhwei, and Hupei. These areas were prewar KMT strongholds; the CCP's ability to build bases there should give us a better understanding of the wartime CCP-KMT competition within the framework of the Second United Front. The nature of the existing studies on wartime communism in North China also suggests that a study of a littleknown Communist experience may yield unexpected new insight into an old problem. In their studies, both Johnson and Kataoka devote some space to the phenomenon in central and eastern China. In explaining the CCP gain and the KMT loss in the area, they stay close to their own overall explanation of the situation, with Johnson reiterating the Party's competent anti-Japanese leadership and Kataoka emphasizing the neutralization of the K M T by the United Front. For them, the major issue is the development in North China. The importance of the less-

Introduction

9

developed Communist movement in central and eastern China lies only in its supportive role in confirming their basic theses. Johnson finds that the experience of central and eastern China confirms the link between Japanese occupation policy, peasant nationalism, and wartime Communist success. A less violent and exploitative occupation policy there explains the secondary historical significance of the Communist movement in central and eastern China (Johnson 1962: 84). Kataoka argues in similar fashion. He locates the primary cause for the Party's success in North China in its ability to preempt a weakly developed tradition of rural militarization. B y contrast, the Communists' less-developed strength in central and eastern China resulted from the Party's failure to preempt a peculiarly strong tradition of rural militarization in the area (Kataoka 1974: 289-90). Following Selden's line of explanation, Dorris's work suggests a different reason for the less-developed strength of the Communist movement in central and eastern China. Because the Party leadership there "apparently supported the Bolshevik line of class accommodation and they may have subverted efforts to introduce elements of class struggle into the local resistance movement," the practice of Party policy in the area ran counter to that found in North China (1976: 699). Dorris's explanation implies that the experience in central and eastern China was in a way an exception to the general rule, as shown in previous analyses of the movement in North China. I find such an assertion to be grossly inaccurate. M y analysis of the experience in central and eastern China shows that, if anything, the Party's seizure of the region resulted from M a o Tse-tung's determination to transplant the successful experience of base construction from North China to central China. Mao's chief supporter within the Party, Liu Shao-ch'i, having carried out his will in the north, secretly came to the Yangtze region to direct the mission. Under his guidance, Party cadres in central and eastern China learned much from their comrades in both North and northwestern China, and many of them surely acquired their first revolutionary experience there. Dorris's study shows how little is known about the actual course of the wartime Communist movement in central and eastern China, particularly at the village level. Moreover, he places his faith solely on Johnson's description of the Communist expansion into northern Kiangsu, but unfortunately the external Party materials that Johnson used from Japanese intelligence archives are not as revealing as the few

10

Introduction

internal Party documents in Dorris's hands about North China c o m munism. 1 1 (Kataoka's account also fails to clarify the story.) I will use newly available materials to bridge the gap Dorris finds between the Party's experience in North and central China. In this book, part one is an account of the historical setting within which the movement developed at the grassroots level. It illustrates how the Party used the united-front strategy to set up the preconditions for peasant mobilization, and how, with peasant support, it survived the Japanese attempt to root it out. I have used the year 1941 to divide into two periods the construction of the Party's base area in the Yangtze region. Before the Japanese took the Communist threat seriously in that year, the Communists faced a different enemy—the K M T and KMT-affiliated local forces. After 1941, at least until 1944, the Japanese army (which attempted to pacify the countryside behind its fronts) replaced the K M T as the major challenge to the C C P ' s political ambition. O f course, the C C P K M T conflicts continued, but by contrast they occupied a secondary role. When the Sino-Japanese War erupted, the Party had a welldeveloped underground network in North China to take advantage of the political disintegration there; in conjunction with a ready and supportive Communist army, these Party followers mobilized and organized the panicky peasants with nationalistic appeals. 1 2 The Second United Front enabled the Party to send the Eighth Route A r m y across the Yellow R i v e r to the northern fronts. Initially the former R e d A r m y fought the invading army as a part of the K M T forces, but after the fall of the capital of Shansi in late 1937 it started to operate independently and fight guerrilla warfare in areas behind the Japanese lines. Having wooed and won the local people with its united-front strategy, the Party ignored the K M T ' s authority and formed its own governments to implement its wartime programs. In the Yangtze region, did the Party also defy the K M T and organize its own government? After the Japanese offensive stalled in the middle Yangtze region in late 1938, the K M T decided to reassert its power in rural North China. The result was an intensification of military conflict between the two sides, which ended up in the C C P ' s favor. In central and eastern China, the K M T was more determined to keep its prewar strongholds free from Communist control and had more substantial military power to back it up. Under these circum-

Introduction

11

stances, what policy could the Party pursue without sacrificing its goal of rapid growth in the region? With regard to the Communist issue, the K M T had policy options ranging from passive containment to aggressive suppression and from "localizing" the conflicts to escalating them into a full civil war that premised on a separate peace with Japan. What could the Party do to minimize the consequences? In North China, no serious disagreement appeared within the Party's leadership to hamper the search for territorial control. Was this true in the Yangtze region? Starting about July 1941 the Japanese began to make serious attempts to eliminate resistance in the Yangtze region. In North China the same effort started about two years earlier, and, as a result of the C C P ' s large-scale counterattack (the One Hundred Regiment Campaign) the Japanese escalated the level of both military commitment and military terrorism. 1 3 In the Yangtze area, when they tried to catch up with their offensive in North China, what measures did they adopt toward the resistance? Chapter 2 examines the Japanese rural pacification program in the Yangtze delta. What accounts for the Japanese accomplishment in this program, and w h y was the program abandoned after two years of allegedly successful enforcement? In North China the Party survived the Japanese onslaughts despite the severe economic dislocation they caused and the territorial loss the Party suffered. Guerrilla warfare, particularly the tunnel war in the North China plains, emerged as the symbol of the peasant support the Party had won (Johnson 1962: 60-67). In central China how did the Party manage to survive the Japanese military pressure? Instead of recapitulating the C C P struggle against the Japanese invaders, chapter 2 examines the counterstrategy that the C C P adopted to defeat the Japanese in its base areas. Emphasis is on the political aspect of guerrilla warfare, that is, the importance of grassroots organization. Part two deals with the peasant movement in four areas of organizational development: mass associations, rural administration, village militia, and C C P branches. I will establish the link between the grassroots organizations and the growth of the CCP-controlled state. M y underlying concern in part t w o is the techniques of controlled polarization with which the Party sought to create a new rural order. B y "polarization," I refer to the imposition of a Manichean view of the rural community and the efforts to bring the reality closer to the perception, and, by "controlled," I refer to the way in which

12

Introduction

the Party modulated the pace of polarization in order to minimize enemies and maximize friends. In the new rural order, the Party could count on mass peasant support for its grassroots organizations. The traditional rural elite were given a role in the Communist polity, but their power was so curtailed that they could not restore the status quo. While drawing a sharp line between the "peasant" and "landlord" classes, the Party characterized rural struggle as between the "basic masses" (chi-pen ch'titt-chung) and the "feudal forces" (feng-chien shih-li), and allowed full advantage to be taken of the ambiguity of these terms. For people unfamiliar with the Party, the terms could be misleading. In conventional usage the term "basic masses" seems to mean a "natural constituency," rather than a specific class or specific individuals. The term "feudal forces," in contrast, has the derogatory connotation of anachronism, backwardness, and resistance to progress. Few educated Chinese would recognize themselves as "feudal forces." The Party sought to define the two terms around 1 9 4 2 . 1 4 "Basic masses" specifically referred to poor peasants, middle peasants, and hired hands, but, to expand its circle of friends, the Party stretched the term to include the "enlightened elements" (k'ai-mingfen-tzu) among rich peasants and ordinary landlords. Similarly, the Party defined the "feudal forces" as being "headed by large landlords and joined by reactionary rich peasants and middle peasants." T o minimize opposition, it only specified as enemies "large landlords," w h o rarely lived in the villages. The ambiguity of both terms left much room for manipulation. (Such manipulation has always been common in realpolitik.) Ambiguous language enabled the C C P both to maintain its Marxist point of view and to retain flexibility in strategy. Notwithstanding the ambiguity of its terms, the Party mobilized the majority of peasants to struggle against the old rural order by linking its well-publicized wartime programs to rural tensions between the t w o sides. However, the C C P initially had no status that would enable it to boldly put into practice its own f heory of class struggle. The peasants, despite the weakening of K M T central control and the Japanese inability to replace the old order, lived with a rural power structure largely unchanged in their small worlds. Most sought to maximize their economic gains without challenging the village status quo. The small minority that found means to do this outside the system almost invariably followed a parochial mode of

Introduction

13

operation. Military conquest then brought the Party into the peasants' world on a large scale, but peasants seldom registered the change of state power as quickly as the Party would have liked. Even the C C P ' s promulgation of its economic programs failed to produce immediate results. Peasant activism always required the presence of Party cadres in the village to develop it to full force; it was energy released only after the peasants were convinced that it was legitimate, feasible, and in their interests to enforce the program themselves. Party cadres w h o had assumed peasant readiness to embrace a program designed on their behalf always ended up with bitter disappointment. Each Party program produced its own friends and enemies and rarely split the rural community neatly between "peasants" and "landlords." In fact, a program designed to advance peasant interests often pitted the poorer peasants against the richer ones. Although the C C P secretly maintained its ideological suspicions toward middle and rich peasants (particularly the latter), it could not afford a majority of them and therefore selectively downplayed or defused the tension among the peasants. Seeking to minimize active landlord opposition, it nevertheless sharpened the tension between peasants and landlords. The momentum created by the process often moved beyond the Party's control, causing panic among landlords and fear among the upper and middle strata of peasants. This the Party called "the chaos o f c l a s s a l i g n m e n t " ( c h i e k - c h i chen-jung

ti

hun-luan).

"Struggle meetings" occurred at the grassroots, and the Party's insistence on confrontation distinguished it from other political groups, which sought to redistribute wealth but did everything else to defuse class tension. In villages where there were no landlords as targets, the Party even encouraged poorer peasants to struggle against their richer neighbors, be they rich peasants or middle peasants, as long as they belonged to the village status quo. Because of the central position of struggle meetings in the Party-led peasant movement, I will discuss their mechanisms. H o w did the Party use them to release peasant activism while avoiding alarming the rural elite into unified opposition? In my attempt to answer this and other questions, I show the difficulties of isolating peasant motivation from the problem of organization. Moreover, organizational weapons did more than just "structuring mass mobilization" as Johnson claims (1962: 90). The growing organization facilitated mass mobilization, giving peasants

14

Introduction

more reason to join the ranks of rebels, but also spearheaded the Party's penetration into rural societies. With its internal control mechanism, the organization could also define the manner in which the peasants exercised their economic rationality. Thus, I will also describe and discuss the organizational structure of various mass associations, the way they recruited their members, and the activities they engaged in. Mobilizing the peasants to implement the Party's economic programs actually gave them a heavy stake in supporting the C o m munist cause. The peasants' interests, however, did not necessarily coincide with party interests. The much-praised notion of peasant participation only reflects Western liberals' preoccupation with their o w n democratic ideal; in many cases, participation did not accord with the peasants' immediate needs. Mass association meetings and the assumption of local leadership, as well as participatory democracy and militia training, took time and energy. As private property owners and producers, peasants did not always feel their immediate interests to be best served by active participation in community functions. H o w did the Party sustain the peasants' interest in mass association activities? The Party considered mass associations as class organizations whose major goal was to mobilize peasants to struggle against the agrarian elite. T o seize administrative and military power at the grassroots was only one of their functions. In the Party view, village governments and rural militia, though representing all democratic and patriotic Chinese, must come under the control of the "basic masses," because no matter h o w democratic and patriotic the old rural elite were, they would " w a v e r " as both resistance and revolution deepened. But, instead of alarming the old rural elite, both village elections and rural militarization actually helped the Party retain their important services at the same time as it facilitated their displacement f r o m the rural power structure. H o w did the Party achieve these contradictory goals? Scholars like Selden tend to approach both rural elections and militarization f r o m the viewpoint of mass participation, but, in so doing, they obscure not only the class character of both processes, but also the difficulty the Party faced in harmonizing peasant and Party needs in the t w o actions. Preoccupied with their daily struggle for life and hampered by their lack of experience, peasant activists also found their neighbors baffled by the necessity of rural elections and militia.

Introduction

Is

If the administration functioned satisfactorily, w h y did they need to go through all the trouble of the alien election? And after the Party proved its ability to maintain domestic order and counter hostile attacks, w h y did they need to join or support the costly militia? Enemy retaliation might further render self-defense and selfgovernment dubious. Was the price of human life and property worthwhile? Then how did the C C P attract the rural poor to serve, despite all these disincentives, and without offering much in the way of financial compensation? Without peasant activism, both selfdefense and self-government would prove cumbersome and inefficient. What would the Party do to sustain morale and improve performance after it had built its rural governments and militia? In the process of mobilization, the Party organized peasants into a network of mass associations, rural administration, and militia. Meanwhile it recruited peasant activists and through them dominated these organizational hierarchies at the grassroots level. W h o were these peasant activists? H o w did the Party recruit them? Did they join the Party out of selfless motives? What was their understanding of the Party? In answering these questions, I will show the difficulty of envisioning peasant Party members as dedicated to "the elimination of rural oppression and egalitarian order," as Mark Selden claims (1971: 189). Many of them proved to be vulnerable to the temptations of their newly acquired power, the tenacious grip of their old habits, or the pull of their non-Party organizational and social bonds. H o w did the C C P diagnose and prevent such "undesirable tendencies"? The C C P was sensitive to the economic and bureaucratic roots of the discipline problem, but an economy of scarcity limited how much the Party could improve its members' material lives. The Party introduced democratization but always allowed other priorities to disrupt the progress of the democratic process. As a consequence, the Party in effect relied on internal discipline and rectification campaigns to control peasant cadres. So much has been said about the Party's ability to persuade that w e tend to overlook the persuasive force of growing Party power. Despite the goal of creating Communists, the campaigns actually relied on the Party's ability to mete out rewards and punishment to bring conformity and, despite its abstinence from extreme measures, it also used psychological pressure. The rectification campaigns, in fact, had totalitarian implications that w e tend to ignore. I will use case studies to show how the Party managed these rectification campaigns.

16

Introduction

The C C P ' s wartime program improved the livelihood o f many peasants, but in the process the peasants also acquired new responsibilities in the mass associations, militia, administration, and Party branches. Furthermore, peasants were required to provide manpower and revenues for the war, and military service, in spite of its attractiveness for the very poor, required them to leave home and to risk their lives in combat. H o w did the Party make sure that, instead of unmanageable discontent, such extractions generated growth in the C C P army and bureaucracy? Previous discussion has centered either on tax policy changes over time or their devastating effect on the rural upper classes and has almost ignored the problem of military recruitment. 1 5 I will treat new topics, such as tax evasion, army desertion, the Party's countermeasures, corvée service, and soldier enlistment campaigns, to demonstrate that overcoming the peasant tradition of resisting state requirements demanded more than socioeconomic and patriotic appeals. Part three discusses a corollary of peasant mobilization, namely, the dislocation of the traditional elite from its peasant base. Contrary to the common understanding, 1 6 the C C P ' s united-front strategy extended beyond the interparty cooperation between Communists and Nationalists. In the Party's attempt to expand its territorial control without unduly straining the Second United Front, it worked hard to w o o the old rural elite, the local K M T officials, and the leaders of all the parochial interests. The Party also considered the success of local united fronts a prerequisite for peasant mobilization. Once the Party put its wartime programs into practice, tensions inevitably arose within the framework of cooperation; those w h o felt themselves to be targets of conflict could easily have sought support from the Japanese or the K M T , both still viable as contenders for the "Mandate of Heaven." Their defection would have certainly reduced the C C P ' s capability to further mobilize the peasants and to deal with other political opponents. H o w did the Party avoid this kind of backlash without undermining its program of rural polarization? Lyman Van Slyke, in his underrated work Enemies and Friends (1967), has a lucid discussion of the strategic principles and tactical components of the Party's united-front policy, and his examples are illuminating. I will add some new dimensions to his findings and show the finesse and sophistication with which the Party dealt with the rural status quo, members of which were ultimately destined for oblivion, but whose cooperation was considered necessary at the time.

Introduction

17

I will discuss some united fronts at individual, local, and regional levels. Chapter 8 deals with unarmed and unorganized old rural elite and counterelite. Three case studies will be examined in detail to answer the following questions. What constituted the basis of cooperation between the Party and various old rural elite? C C P victories over the K M T gave members of the local united fronts the incentive to cooperate with the CCP-imposed government, but mass mobilization would soon deny them control over a heretofore generally passive peasantry. H o w did the old elite—landlords, rich peasants, village intellectuals, gangsters, and other parochial leaders— experience the peasant mobilization and how did they respond to the changing terms of united fronts? With peasant support, the Party could afford to push the old rural elite harder, but, lest it alienate them totally, it had to find ways to defuse their rising discontent with peasant mobilization. H o w did the Party achieve this goal without sacrificing further peasant mobilization? In chapter 9 the focus will shift to the three major manifestations of parochial mobilization—local strongmen, bandits, and secret societies. Parochial interests asserted themselves whenever the central control was weakened. As an aspiring central power, the C C P had parallel interests with them in opposing other state powers, but, as a state power itself, the Party was fundamentally antagonistic to parochial p o w e r . 1 7 Parochial interests usually adopted patriotic slogans, but they were products of the tradition of rural militarization. In North China the Party preempted parochial mobilization in many places, but not in most places (as both Johnson and Kataoka seem to suggest). In central and eastern China, parochial mobilization was not particularly strong, but it did cause difficulties for the Party's endeavor to build bases. Yet it was by no means a problem faced solely by the Party as a central power. Notwithstanding some success in coopting parochial interests, both the Japanese and the K M T failed to undermine parochial bases and displace parochial leadership thus giving the C C P an edge over their opponents, at least in the long run. Kataoka emphasizes the similarity between the Party and the parochial interests; both drew rank and file from peasants and depended on "intense personal relationship" for organizational cohesion. The intense personal relationship, according to him, was built on the peasants' "traditional and particularistic orientations" (1974: 299-302). Beneath this superficial continuity, however, is a discontinuity that suggests the true dimension of the C C P revolution

18

Introduction

in the villages. The Party undermined and destroyed almost all of the traditional and particularistic relationships, while it harnessed localism by linking it to larger causes. What I find from internal Party materials on communism in central and eastern China will enable us to place each specific contributing factor to each specific kind of peasant support in wartime China rather than to dismiss major prevailing theories as totally inadequate. It will show the complexity of the problem of peasant motivation. Instead of highlighting one particular cause, I stress the congruence of many different motives and factors in prodding peasants into commitment. Some of the material presented here will seem familiar to students of wartime and postwar Chinese communism. 1 8 It is necessary, however, to include such information because they present historical precedents for later development and at the same time give us a better appreciation of how the Party transformed policy into practice, reconciled seemingly irreconcilable goals, and interacted with both peasants and the traditional rural elite. I will not address the question of the origin of the revolution nor the argument about the prewar rural economy, but that does not imply their unimportance. A discussion of how peasants suffered deteriorating living standards in prewar China tells more about whether the revolution was justified than about what actually happened in the course of the revolution. In fact, a long-term study, despite the best intentions of its authors, always ends up in a controversy with regard to the issue of political legitimacy. For example, arguing that peasants suffered as a result of a worldwide expansion of capitalism and the disruption of the landlord-peasant relationship on a national level, as Edward Friedman (1974) and Ralph T h a x t o n 1 9 do, often strikes conservative scholars as justifying the revolution. On the other hand, by denying the detrimental effects of the capitalist expansion and by absolving landlordism as a cause of domestic revolts, R a m o n Myers, for example, incurs wrath from radical scholars for undermining the justification of the revolution. 2 0 B y starting my study from what revolutionary cadres actually faced in making their revolution, I hope to avoid the complications surrounding the problem of political legitimacy. I believe that a better understanding of wartime Chinese communism will enable us to explore prewar rural society with new hindsight and detachment.

Introduction

19

By returning revolutionary cadres to center stage, where they belong, we can easily see power to be the key consideration in their minds. Whatever ideological commitment the cadres made, the challenge was to allocate limited resources effectively in order to acquire territorial bases, muster peasant support, and feed the growth of the state as a means of defeating the enemy. Similarly, in each rural community, the challenge the cadres faced was to make a correct assessment of its power balance vis-a-vis the agrarian elite and to escalate the struggle against the latter according to the accumulation of strength through peasant mobilization. Because the success of the cadres obviously depended on their correct j u d g m e n t of various power contexts, I hope that restoring the realpolitik dimension to the revolution will give us a better understanding of the revolution, which we have tended to see primarily in terms of its ideological goals and its political legitimacy. Moreover, because an accurate judgment hinges on a deep understanding of all the actors in a power game, I hope this book will increase our knowledge not only of the C C P , but also of its contenders for power and, more importantly, its major supporters—the peasants.

Conquest and Containment: The Seizure of Power, 1937-1941

N EARLY March 1940 at the North Yangtze C C P headquarters, Liu Shao-ch'i called for an attack on K M T magistrate Wu Tzuch'ang who occupied the walled stronghold of Tingyuan in northern Anhwei. Worried about the consequences, a regimental commander asked: " I f w e drive away Wu Tzuch'ang, will his K M T replacement prove to be better?" Liu replied: " W e can appoint a magistrate ourselves. We can even appoint a provincial governor." Some of those at the meeting then raised the issue of the legitimacy of a C C P appointment. Liu retorted in exasperation: " W h o s e recognition does he need? Our Party recognizes him; the people recognize him. In this period of revolutionary high tide, w e must act b o l d l y . . . . If we do not seize administrative power, how can we expect to construct base areas?" (T'an Hsi-lin 1961) The C C P ' s moves toward an independent financial and manpower base and a totally free hand in mobilizing the rural population would obviously not win K M T assent. Although it had accepted the CCP-controlled northern border government of Chin-Ch'a-Chi, the K M T had no intention of making similar concessions to the C C P in the future, and so it maintained a military and administrative presence behind Japanese lines, where the Japanese army could only occupy important cities and the transportation lines connecting them. The C C P naturally sought to create base areas where the hostile forces were the weakest. The best sites were where the K M T army had fled and the K M T government had collapsed, but the location of the K M T flight and collapse was governed by Japanese military 23

24

Base

Areas

moves. T h e chaos b r o u g h t opportunity. T o capitalize on it required ready and sufficient m a n p o w e r , w h i c h the Party had difficulties p r o v i d i n g . C C P leaders w e r e thus faced w i t h the p r o b l e m o f guessing at possible military developments in order to allocate resources for base area construction. U n f o r t u n a t e l y , the Party could not reach a consensus on this issue, on h o w far they could push base area construction at the K M T ' s expense. In eastern and central China, the C C P failure t o exploit the political confusion o f the early period o f the w a r further c o m p o u n d e d the p r o b l e m o f base area construction. A s the w a r resolved itself into a stalemate in early spring 1939, the C C P could build its base areas o n l y b y "friction and c o n f l i c t " w i t h K M T authorities and supporters behind the Japanese lines, a situation that had serious political implications for the C C P - K M T U n i t e d Front. M a j o r Party leaders also differed o n w h e n and h o w to build base areas in central and eastern C h i n a : one g r o u p counseled caution, the other speed.

C C P Attempts to D e v e l o p Base Areas, 1 9 3 8 - 1 9 3 9 Central China on the Eve of War

Base area construction required a large p o o l o f w o r k e r s and the ready availability o f armed forces. O n the e v e o f the resistance w a r in central C h i n a , o n l y fragments o f the Party survived in Shanghai, H a n k o w , and H s u c h o u (the Shanghai and H a n k o w

organizations

being recent revivals). A l t h o u g h m a n y urban intellectuals w e r e s y m pathetic t o w a r d C o m m u n i s t advocacy o f an anti-Japanese united front, the Party could claim only negligible urban m e m b e r s h i p . 1 In the countryside the situation was o n l y slightly better; C o m munist remnants held tenuously to at least thirteen pockets in Kiangsi, K w a n g t u n g , H u n a n , Fukien, C h e k i a n g , A n h w e i , H u p e i , and H o n a n (see m a p 1), but the T h r e e Years' Guerrilla W a r ( 1 9 3 5 - 1 9 3 7 ) had reduced them to a f e w lingering sparks a m o n g dead ashes. F e w guerrilla leaders w e r e able to claim more than t w o thousand regular soldiers. T h e highest-ranking guerrilla c o m m a n d e r on the scene, Hsiang Y i n g , described the situation in these w o r d s : " W e struggled in isolated bands in small areas separated f r o m each other and inside several rings o f encirclement."

2

Conquest

and Containment

25

HONAN KIANCSU Chukou (Ch'uehshan)

ANHWEI

luaipei

I Nanking Huainan/ HUPEI

Chenchiang Tanyang

Shuch'eng* : : Fanch'ang

Huangan

Í

T'unglinâT \ 3 D Cninghsien »

Shanghai

Sunchiapu (Hsuanch'eng)

Yenshih: (Shehsien)

CHEKIANC Nanchang

KiANGSI

HUNAN

Chian

I3/4R

Fuchow

Lungyen Capital

KWANCTUNC

100 MILES 100 KILOMETERS

Provincial capital or metropolitan city Hsien seat, town or village

R

Guerrilla area

Regiment

•

Guerrilla base

D Detachment

Routes of assembly and advance

Provincial

, 1 1 i Railroad

boundary

MAP I. The Three Years' Guerrilla War and Early Years of the New Fourth Army (Adaptedfrom H H L Y 1961, 4: 366a; and Doshudan 1941)

In July 1937 the Japanese clashed with a Chinese garrison near the Marco Polo Bridge, about ten miles southwest of Peking. The incident quickly led to a full-scale war. In response to the Japanese aggression, the central government transferred its regular army units

26

Base Areas

from the mop-up campaigns against the C C P in central and south China (T'ien Chia-ying 1946: 256; Ch'en Chun 1939:45, 150; Huang Chih-chen 1959: 1 1 7 - 1 8 ; Wei Chin-shui et al. 1957: 24; Chang T i n g ch'eng et al. 1961:217). T h e redeployment forced local K M T officials and garrison commanders to offer attractive terms to the C C P guerrilla units in an attempt to reorganize them. Hsiang Ying seized on those overtures as an opportunity to restore his contact with the Party Center (Yang Shang-k'uei 1961: 188-89; Huang Chih-chen 1959: 1 1 9 - 2 0 ) . The southwestern Fukien Communists had by then already reached some agreement with local K M T authorities; in exchange for the K M T ' s financial support, the guerrilla bands would accept the K M T ' s legitimacy, but without scattering the C C P soldiers or lessening the Party's internal control. The Party Center soon stepped into the local negotiations and asserted its authority by ordering the southwestern Fukien Communists to retain their independent identity pending negotiations at a higher level (Yeh Ts'ao 1948: 8 1 - 8 2 ; Chang Ting-ch'eng et al. 1961: 2 2 1 - 2 4 ; Wei Chin-shui et al. 1957: 2 5 - 3 5 ) . What happened in central and South China thus became a part of the larger story of the reconciliation between the C C P and the K M T . Earlier in 1924, prodded by the Communist International, the C C P joined the reorganized K M T on an individual basis and thus started what has been called the First United Front between the two parties. The move ended in a disaster three years later when the K M T , acting on their fears of the rapidly growing CCP-controlled mass mobilization and suspicion of a Russian-directed international conspiracy, launched bloody purges against the C C P . In the next eight years, the surviving Communists managed to create rural bases with a drastic program of land confiscation. Their initial success notwithstanding, the Party again suffered a disaster in 1935. Choked by the K M T ' s construction of pillboxes and the road network linking them, the R e d A r m y was forced into a search for breathing space outside the encirclement areas. A " L o n g M a r c h , " in which for at least ten months the pursuing K M T forces had kept up their relentless pressure, took the C C P survivors to the backwater of northern Shensi in northwestern China. While Chiang Kai-shek was preparing for what he considered to be his last encirclement campaign against the C C P , mounting antiJapanese feeling among the Chinese provoked by Japanese arrogance and aggression enabled the C C P to engineer a volte-face in the stubborn Chiang's mind. The breakthrough came when Marshal Chang Hsueh-liang kidnapped Chiang Kai-shek, his superior com-

Conquest and Containment

27

mander, in the famous Sian Incident in late 1936. Although Chiang came out of the traumatic experience as a national hero, the course of events still compelled him to call off hostilities against the Communist troops he had cornered in northwestern China. In central and South China, near the K M T ' s home base, Chiang, however, had 110 intention of tolerating any C C P presence with a full-scale foreign war looming on the horizon. He stepped up his mop-up actions against the surviving Communist guerrillas there. But, before the goal was accomplished, the Marco Polo Bridge Incident and the ensuing Shanghai Battle drove him into a hasty agreement with the C C P . In exchange for the C C P ' s pledge to accept the (nominal) K M T leadership, to cease armed uprisings, and to suspend the land revolution, he promised to appropriate funds for the reorganized C C P administration and army and to assign the Communist units combat duties in designated anti-Japanese front areas. The Second United Front thus came into existence.

The Second United Front On September 22, 1937, the K M T formally announced its acceptance of the Second United Front. The acquisition of "legal or semi-legal status" within the K M T territory soon enabled the C C P to grow and gain more influence among urban intellectuals. In areas under K M T rule, such publications as the New China Daily gave the Party access to readers heretofore unreachable (Liu Shao-ch'i 1942b: 25). It is impossible to say how many were recruited during the honeymoon period, but we know that urban workers and intellectuals later accounted for sizable numbers of C C P cadres in central China. The release of C C P members from K M T jails also provided valuable leadership (Feng Ting 1943b: 58—59). Perhaps a more important achievement, however, was the creation of the N e w Fourth A r m y . In late September 1937 the K M T promised to allow the C C P to organize its forces, and on October 2 the plan was announced. Shortly thereafter the K M T general Ho Ying-ch'in came to Nanchang to negotiate with the chief C C P delegate, Hsiang Y i n g . Negotiations between K M T provincial authorities and C C P guerrilla forces within their jurisdictions also started simultaneously in Wuhan, Nanchang, and Foochow. 3 Around this time—and perhaps without the C C P ' s k n o w -

28

Base Areas

ledge—Chiang Kai-shek appointed Yeh T'ing to be the commander of the planned N e w Fourth A r m y . A national hero who had served Chiang during the Northern Expedition, Yeh was a leading C o m munist military figure in the Nanchang uprising of August 1927 that marked the birth of the Red A r m y . He also participated in the disastrous Canton Commune in December 1927. Following a debate over responsibility for the two failures, he quit the C C P and moved overseas. In 1936 Chiang Kai-shek summoned him to Loyang, and it seems that the two men achieved a certain rapport. In appointing Yeh to the command of the N e w Fourth A r m y , Chiang may have thought that he was obligating the C C P to accept his choice and also that he would have better control over the new force. 4 However, Yeh T'ing realized that without C C P endorsement and cooperation he would be a commander without troops. In November 1937 he visited Yenan and conferred with C C P leaders. He doubtless met Hsiang Ying at this time, Hsiang having come to report about the Three Years' Guerrilla War and to seek the Party's instructions. With the two men present, Party Center worked out a division of labor between them that later proved to be a source of conflict. Yeh was to appoint the section heads for supply, medicine, and his personal headquarters staff, but the party retained personnel control over important positions. The N e w Fourth A r m y was to operate as a typical Communist force; the Party secretly appointed Hsiang political commissar to assure its control over the army, but Yeh was to handle negotiations with K M T military headquarters, which controlled appropriations for the army. 5 The arrangement not only showed respect for Yeh but also used his various connections for the C C P ' s purposes: his ties with K M T commanders for negotiation; his ties with overseas communities for fund raising; and his national reputation among left-wing intellectuals in the search for technical personnel, who were in short supply. In early January 1938, Yeh T'ing and Hsiang Ying formed their army headquarters in Nanchang, and the central government began monthly remittances of 136,000 yuan to the planned army of 12 thousand. 6 Hsiang sent representatives to the hideouts of different guerrilla bands and ordered them to join the N e w Fourth Army. In southwestern Fukien, where the leaders preferred to stay with their troops, only Hsiang's invocation of Party discipline persuaded them to obey (Yeh Ts'ao 1948: 84). Far more difficult to approach were those isolated C C P remnants w h o harbored deep suspicions of any

Conquest and Containment

29

move to cooperate with the Nanking government. Ch'en Y i , Hsiang's major aide in this period, was arrested by guerrilla units in the KiangsiHunan border area as a traitor. T o escape death, he had to persuade them to send him to the regional Communist commander, T'an Yiipao, for confirmation. Even then, it was only after intelligence reports confirmed Ch'en's story that T'an obeyed orders and asked his units to join the N e w Fourth A r m y . 7 But, except for a few units, like one in southern Hunan that simply refused to obey what they considered a sellout of the Party, the guerrilla forces sooner or later followed the party decision (Kuo Hua-lun 1973, 3: 269). The C C P had a difficult time producing the authorized 12 thousand soldiers. Despite pleas to former R e d A r m y soldiers to rejoin them and attempts to recruit new men on their way to southern Anhwei, the army could claim no more than 8 thousand men (Teng Tzu-hui 1962: 376; B i 1940c: 7). The K M T estimated that the C C P remnants only numbered 3 thousand, a figure that corresponds to Japanese estimates of regular R e d A r m y soldiers. The Japanese believed an additional 7 thousand men were in the R e d Self-Defense Corps and 20 thousand in irregular militia, but both these groups had strong local ties and most did not want to leave their home areas.8 The combat forces were divided into four detachments. With only one exception, the four commanders and their deputies all came from the Three Years' Guerrilla War, as did a majority of the commanding officers at the next t w o levels. Only three are identified as coming from Yenan. However, for the staffing of the army headquarters and the political work system, Yenan's help was essential. Hsiang Y i n g and Yeh T'ing drew all their major staff members from Long March veterans, except Teng Tzu-hui and three of Yeh's own appointees. 9 We also know that at least t w o of the four heads of the political departments at the detachment level were sent from northern Shensi. Yuan Kuo-p'ing, a Long Marcher w h o had come to help Hsiang create a political officers' corps, reported that by mid-June 1938 only one detachment had an almost complete staff of political officers. Political work requires face-to-face contact, but at the company level there were often no political officers available. Yuan apparently relied primarily on Yenan-trained cadres for this task, but, because higher priority was given to staffing the Eighth Route A r m y , the shortage of qualified political officers was acute (1939: 484). Hsiang Ying also presided over the Party's Southeast Subbureau, created in December 1937. Though nominally under the supervision

30

Base Areas

of the Yangtze Bureau, this subbureau operated autonomously within Anhwei, Kiangsu (except Shanghai), Kiangsi, and Chekiang. 1 0 On February 10, 1938, Hsiang Y i n g ordered all the scattered guerrilla units to move to designated areas (see map 1) to await the K M T ' s inspection. In two months the Communist soldiers had walked hundreds or even thousands of miles to their destinations, and on April 10, Hsiang also moved his army headquarters from N a n chang to Yenshih, Shehsien, in southern Anhwei, an area that was also in the K M T rear. 1 1 On April 15, 1938, the K M T commander of the Third War Zone, K u Chu-t'ung, designated the south bank of the Yangtze from Sunchiapu, Hsuanch'eng, Anhwei, to Tanyang and Chenchiang, Kiangsu, as the operating zone for the N e w Fourth A r m y , an area comprising approximately one-fourth of the Yangtze delta (Hsiang Y i n g 1939: 33, 38; Ch'en Chun 1939: 47; B I 1940c: 2). Soon the K M T commander of the Fifth War Zone, General Li Tsung-jen, also assigned them the area north of the Yangtze between the Chingp'u and Huainan railroads (an area the C C P referred to in its literature as Luhsi, Huainan) (Ch'iu Kuo-chen 1970: 13). (For CCP-coined geographical terms like this, see appendix A.) For obvious reasons, the K M T tried to confine the C C P ' s guerrilla activities to selected definable areas. In Yenshih, Yeh T'ing and Hsiang Ying made great efforts to mold the medley of former guerrilla bands from south of the Yangtze into a regular army. Resistance to regular army discipline, poor economic conditions, and lack of confidence in the anti-Japanese resistance combined to create a serious desertion problem. The situation soon improved, but it shows the unreadiness of the army for base area construction behind the Japanese front. In late April, Hsiang sent Su Yii to gather information in the Yangtze delta, and Su's findings seem to have cheered the pessimistic C C P soldiers (Yuan Kuo-p'ing 1939: 484-85). Ch'en Yi's First Detachment marched off to the Tanyang-Chenchiang area, which they reached in early June. In July the Second Detachment under Chang Ting-ch'eng infiltrated the Tangt'u-Chiangning-Lishui area on the Anhwei-Kiangsu border (Teng Tzu-hui 1962: 379; Sung Chih 1978: 25-26). North of the Yangtze, Hsiang ordered K a o Ching-t'ing's Fourth Detachment to move from Hupei, but, once they reached the region of lakes and marshes near Ch'aohsien (the rice basket of Anhwei), Kao refused to move them farther east to Luhsi (Teng Tzu-hui 1962: 379).

Conquest and Containment

31

Hsiang Ying devoted himself and his single detachment to waging guerrilla warfare in the Fanch'ang-T'ungling area, to "regularizing" his guerrilla forces, and to maintaining good relations with K M T authorities. Teng Tzu-hui later criticized Hsiang for his failure to support class-based mass mobilization and for his refusal to appoint his own administrators in defiance of the K M T (1962: 382—83, 387-88). But such radical policies would have meant a risk Hsiang could not afford. K M T troops nearby were much stronger than he could handle. The K M T was in a position to cut off financial appropriations to the C C P army, to confiscate military equipment and medical supplies coming through its territory, and even to declare the army illegal and attack it. So Hsiang chose to cooperate closely with K M T commanders in military campaigns and even to undertake positional defense of the Ch'ingyi R i v e r on K M T orders in late 1938, although doing so violated Mao's instruction that C C P forces engage only in guerrilla and mobile warfare (1939: 26—29, 35)-

Guerrilla

War Behind Japanese

Lines

T h e operating zone in the Yangtze delta assigned by the K M T to the N e w Fourth A r m y was a plain, crisscrossed by rivers and lakes, with a well-developed road system. L o w and easily penetrated, the Mao Mountains wind southward in the middle of the water country and then turn west along the Anhwei-Kiangsu border. When they first saw these mountains—actually hills with a few trees—Ch'en Y i and his soldiers were surprised at how much their old military map had misled them; they had expected a forest-covered, ragged terrain resembling their previous hideouts, which they considered essential to a successful guerrilla war against the well-equipped Japanese army (1939b: 503). Neither the high population density of the designated area, its rich resources, nor its high literacy rate gave any particular advantage to the newly arrived N e w Fourth A r m y . The soldiers wore K M T badges, and the local people knew next to nothing of their previous identity (Ch'en Y i 1939b: 503-4; Chou Lin 1979: 2 4 1 - 4 2 ) . When the two C C P detachments (four thousand men, according to C C P materials, but only one thousand in a Japanese intelligence report) arrived in the delta, their appearance was not such as to cheer Chinese

32

Base Areas

patriots eager for the return of the Chinese army. Shabbily clothed, the soldiers often had only long spears, big swords, and muskets. Rifles whose barrels had been sawed off earlier to avoid KMT detection were a common sight (Hung Wu 1977: 12; Japan, Taishikan 1943: I4-I5)The state of the army did not discourage the CCP from taking on the Japanese forces. A unit ambushed some Japanese transport troops and killed two officers in Weikang, Chenchiang, on June 17, 1938. Fourteen days later another unit annihilated two Japanese platoons in a surprise night attack on a three-story stone fort in the train station at Hsinfeng, between Chenchiang and Tanyang. By the time Japanese reinforcements arrived in the early morning, the CCP unit had long since disappeared (Ch'en Yi 1939b: 503; Hsiang Ying 1939: 34; Chang Ting-ch'eng 1939a: 72-7 S)Communist reports of sorties were probably accurate in general, but their focus on the effectiveness of guerrilla tactics tends to distort our perspective. Obsessed with forcing the KMT to capitulate, the Japanese army left only a few troops behind to consolidate territorial gains. (Within CCP-controlled areas, there were only two to three Japanese regiments.) In the western Yangtze delta there were only about five Japanese regiments deployed in major cities and along transportation routes (map 2). On the Chinese side the KMT was so unprepared for military failure that it appeared completely demoralized, and the withdrawal of its major military forces and the flight of many of its local officials had created the phenomenon that Kataoka Tetsuya calls "spontaneous mobilization," the proliferation of local military forces (Hsiang Ying 1939: 43; Ch'en Mao-hui 1959: 104; Kataoka 1974: 101 —16). The fall in December 1937 of Nanking, the KMT capital, had contributed to parochial mobilization in two ways. First, the military and political vacuum that followed emboldened many local people to fill in with their own alternatives. Second, the outrages committed by Japanese soldiers at Nanking and elsewhere electrified many already panicky Chinese into a desperate search for a means of self-defense (though in some cases the experience broke the will to resist). Arming themselves with the huge number of weapons the KMT and Japanese armies had left on the battlefields, many community leaders, landlords, intellectuals, patriotic youths, secret society members, gangsters, and bandits competed to carve out bailiwicks. Groups like the Big Swords and the self-defense groups were concerned mainly

Conquest and Containment

33

Chinghsien

Si Capital e Hsien seat • Market town . . . Railroad AG Bs R O

Army Group Brigade (separate) Regiment D Division

v)

»

Japanese occupied areas J Guerrilla areas, KMT regular army

~~

\ Guerrilla areas. KMT regional and local forces Commanders (Chief: K'uno Ho-ch'unfl) Chang Chiu-ju IV Hsieh Sheng-piao VII Ch'eng Wan-chOn V Liu T s ' a n VIII Chu Yung-hsiang

VI

Hsuanch'eng (local) Kuangte-LanQch'i (local)

Yang Hsiao-hsuan

MAP 2. Deployment of the KMT Guerrilla Forces in the Third War Zone, 1938 (Adapted from Chao Tseng-ch'ou 1961: 90) with community self-protection; they tended to accept any central power but would fight actively only to save their o w n communities. Most strove for power and wealth, taxed local communities heavily, and contributed little to social order; they were so busy fighting each other that they had no time for anti-Japanese guerrilla actions. Genuine anti-Japanese guerrilla forces were a small minority. The guerrilla scciic was further complicated by the presence of three types of K M T forces—stragglers, local K M T forces, and regular army units retained or dispatched for guerrilla operations. Their military discipline was poor. The stragglers, w h o had no moral qualms about attacking local communities, were the worst in the natives' eyes. 1 2 N o t fully grasping the complex situation, General

34

Base Areas

Hsueh Yueh tried to impose some order in December 1937 b y appointing a Communist defector, K ' u n g Ho-ch'ung, to be c o m mander of all guerrilla forces in the western Yangtze delta. But the liberality with which Hsueh bestowed official titles upon local guerrilla leaders made K'ung's j o b impossible (Chao Ts'eng-ch'ou 1947: 40—90). (Also see map 2.) T o make matters worse, other high K M T authorities, for example, the commander of the Third War Zone, General K u Chu-t'ung, tried to absorb local guerrilla leaders into their own groups. 1 3 This indiscriminate scramble for followers discredited the anti-Japanese resistance and hampered later K M T efforts. The widespread abuses of these "anti-Japanese" forces led the local people to call them yu-chieh tui (wandering marauders) instead of yu-chi tui (guerrilla forces) (Wen-hsien, " C h ' u n g - m i n g ti yu-chitui" [The guerrilla forces of Ch'ungming] 1938,1: D 2 5 - D 2 6 ) . In Ch'en Yi's words: " T h e degree to which [local non-Communist] forces arouse disgust and panic among the native people has now reached an extreme point" (1939b: 505). It was abomination of the guerrilla forces rather than the relatively affluent economy (as Hsiang Y i n g claimed) that primarily accounts for the widespread lack of anti-Japanese fervor in the Yangtze delta. The Japanese commanders, understanding the mood of the local people, curbed their troops and even won some public sympathy with small-scale mop-up actions against the guerrillas (Ch'en Y i 1939b: 505—7; Hsiang Y i n g 1939: 7, 36, 44—46). Most of the local citizenry seemed to have become eager to appease the conquerors. Therefore, when the N e w Fourth A r m y first arrived in the Yangtze delta, people sometimes welcomed them for the wrong reasons. Mistaking them for Japanese soldiers, they greeted them waving Japanese rising-sun flags, wearing Japanese-issued "good-citizen" cards, and led by representatives of the recently formed pro-Japanese Peace Maintenance Society. They quickly changed on discovering their blunders, but there were few signs of genuine support. N e w Fourth A r m y troops were shunned, and locals refused to cooperate in providing food, intelligence, and lodging. Militant anti-Japanese exhortations only frightened the local residents. Adding to the atmosphere of mutual incomprehension and distrust was the fact that most of the C C P soldiers spoke dialects that few native people could understand (Ch'en Y i 1939b: 505, 507-8; Japan, Taishikan 1943: 93; Ch'en Chiin 1939: 1 2 1 ) . In addition

to maintaining

excellent

military

discipline,

Conquest and Containment

35

Communist leaders soon took steps to prevent the recurrence of propaganda blunders. They ordered soldiers to use only verbal propaganda unless local people showed a readiness to risk implication in anti-Japanese activities. For the same reason they asked soldiers, whenever possible, to avoid quartering themselves in peasants' houses and, where this was not possible, to move out as soon as they could. Communist leaders also urged their soldiers to use the term "traitor" only for hard-core pro-Japanese elements. But far more important in changing its popular image was the C C P ' s demonstration of the viability of anti-Japanese guerrilla resistance. This took a long time. It was only after six months of unremitting effort that the natives near the Mao Mountains began to show some commitment to the antiJapanese cause, but in the end they began voluntarily to come to C C P soldiers with gifts of food to show their gratitude and admiration (Ch'en Y i 1939b: 505-7). If the task of the N e w Fourth A r m y had been simply to develop mass appeal in a power vacuum, popular support might have come more easily. Unfortunately, the C C P here had to deal with dozens of local guerrilla units that had appeard in the Mao Mountains (Sung Chih 1978: 29). B y contrast, in North China the cooperation of K M T officials (many of whom were actually Communists) enabled the C C P to form a government that included local non-Communist forces, which facilitated assimilation. But, in the Yangtze delta, KMT-affiliated forces were not so susceptible to the idea of a united front, nor did the N e w Fourth A r m y try this approach, because the K M T had explicitly forbidden it. The N e w Fourth A r m y could certainly win public sympathy and obtain extra manpower and equipment by attacking and disarming the most notorious guerrilla bandit groups, but open clashes with the KMT-affiliated guerrilla forces could also endanger relations with the authorities. K M T commanders did give the C C P permission to eliminate some of these guerrilla bands when there was overwhelming evidence of rapacious behavior. 1 4 But they were understandably reluctant to help the C C P win military hegemony in its assigned area. When the C C P acted outside its own zone, K M T authorities had even more reason to react and threaten retaliation. The N e w Fourth A r m y generally avoided formal military campaigns, perhaps as much from weakness as doctrine. Immediately after his arrival in the Mao Mountains, Ch'en Y i managed to persuade the wealthy capitalist Chi Chen-kang to join an anti-Japanese united

36

Base Areas

front. Chi had hired 200 well-equipped Cantonese mercenaries to protect his tea business, which represented capital equivalent to about three months' worth of K M T appropriations for the whole N e w Fourth A r m y . Chi generously donated cash, clothing, and medicil supplies to the C C P and, eventually, handed over the control of his private army to Ch'en Y i . Many other local leaders reportedly followed his example (Sung Chih 1978a: 3 1 - 3 2 ) . Trading on their KMT-conferred legitimacy, the C C P tried to introduce political work into these newly affiliated forces. They purged "bad elements" and summoned leaders to training classes lasting about three months. In general, the C C P policy was to respect localism and autonomy as long as they did not impede the national cause, though of course it was better to make them serve it. The C C P made efforts to advise guerrilla leaders on how to acquire ammunition, stabilize their income, obtain experienced officers, and assigned local forces to supporting roles in its regular military actions. Repeated warnings were issued to regular army commanders against expecting too much of local forces, which could g r o w in self-confidence only with success (Ch'en Y i 1939b: 508-9). But not all the local forces were susceptible to united-front offers, and the C C P turned to tax resistance to undermine the financial base of intransigent groups. Tax resistance tended to be community-based and usually drew support as much from the local elite as from peasants. According to an intelligence report of the Nanking puppet government, by mid-September 1938 most local K M T guerrilla leaders had to request special appropriations to make up their losses in tax revenue. Warning their K M T backers about the possibility of total collapse, they asked the authorities to put pressure on the N e w Fourth A r m y (Chung-hua min-kuo, Wei-hsin cheng-fu, no. 16, Sept. 19, 1938). It is unclear what kind of pressure the K M T authorities put on Hsiang Y i n g and his comrades, nor do w e know how the C C P commanders actually reacted, but it remains certain that the N e w Fourth A r m y swelled its ranks with many local nonCommunist guerrilla soldiers. Dealing with local forces required Ch'en Y i to w o o the local elite, and he adamantly refused to carry out the blatantly antilandlord policies urged by his critics (Ch'en Y i 1939b: 510; Wang Shao-chieh 1943: 35). In J u l y 1938 he formed a mass association in the border region of Chiijung-Chenchiang-Tanyang-Chintan, and it soon assumed administrative functions that had been abandoned by

Conquest and Containment

37

fleeing K M T magistrates. In the same month Chang Ting-ch'eng formed the "Chiangning-Tangt'u-Lishui Self-Defense Committee Against Enemies," which also took over some administrative responsibilities (Sung Chih 1978a: 33; Japan, Taishikan 1943: 93). N o evidence indicates that the N e w Fourth A r m y tried outright seizure of administrative power during this period. In the beginning the C C P confined its mass mobilization efforts to patriotic appeals. About September 1938 the N e w Fourth A r m y began to relate patriotic appeals to the mediation of tenancy disputes, tax resistance, corvée resistance, and winter vigilance against bandits and thieves. 1 5 This selection of tactics emphasized community unity rather than polarization. In fact, Japanese mop-up campaigns in October soon made the local elite's support more necessary than before. The C C P could not afford radical policies that would drive the local elite to the Japanese side. 1 6 The Japanese pressure forced Ch'en Y i to direct his troops to a temporary haven near Soochow, Wuhsi, and Ch'angchou in early 1939, a move that immediately stirred up a strong protest from the K M T ' s Loyal National Salvation A r m y , organized and supervised by General Tai Li, who headed one of Chiang Kai-shek's two major security and intelligence organizations (Ch'en Chiin 1939: 33, 157—58). Made up of straggling K M T soldiers, Green Band members, intelligence workers, and local guerrilla forces, it had been operating east of the Shanghai-Nanking Railroad since early 1938 (China, Kuo-fang-pu, Ch'ing-pao-chii 1962: 7 - 1 7 , 63). In late 1938 General K u Chu-t'ung also infiltrated a regular K M T brigade to K'unshan and T'aits'ang (Chung-hua min-kuo, Wei-hsin-cheng-fu, no. 2 1 , Sept. 24, 1938). In a Maoist criticism of Hsiang Y i n g written in the 1960s, his former chief political aid Teng Tzu-hui argued that 1938 was a good time to expand the N e w Fourth A r m y in the delta. The magistrate and ch'ti (district) heads had enlisted "local bandits," who taxed people but gave them little protection. In August of that year Teng himself came to the Yangtze delta to inspect the troops. Together with local C C P commanders, Teng developed an ambitious plan for organizing local guerrilla forces, reorganizing local bandits, expanding manpower pools for recruitment, and developing independent income. However, Hsiang Y i n g was unwilling to jeopardize his cordial relations with the K M T and vetoed the plan (1962: 382). B y late 1938, according to Yeh T'ing, the N e w Fourth A r m y had

38

Base

Areas

doubled its strength from 8 thousand to 16 thousand, of w h o m 4 thousand were operating north of the Yangtze and the rest south (Ch'en Chun 1939: 1 2 1 ) . B y adopting Teng's plan, the N e w Fourth A r m y might have grown faster and established a stable area, but would the K M T have accepted C C P expansion in its former home base as it had in the ChinCh'a-Chi area? Would the gain pay for the risk of an open C C P K M T split? These questions cannot be answered with certainty, but a perusal of the radical line as espoused by Mao Tse-tung and the actual course of events as they unfolded in central China should enable us to better understand Hsiang Ying's insistence on a moderate line.

T h e Seizure o f P o w e r f r o m the K M T , 1 9 4 0 - 1 9 4 2 Mao's Theory of Base Area Construction Hsiang Ying's approach, although it bore some fruit, nevertheless put serious constraints on C C P power, and he was challenged within the Party by Mao Tse-tung and Liu Shao-ch'i, w h o insisted on the need to construct immediately base areas independent of central government control. M a o developed his theory of base areas in the early 1930s, but here I use only his later writings to discuss the theory. 1 7 In M a y 1938 M a o spoke of "strategic bases on which the guerrilla forces rely in performing their strategic tasks and achieving the object of preserving and expanding themselves and destroying and driving out the e n e m y . " He severely criticized "roving insurgents" for their failure to build such base areas. On where to build base areas, Mao's answer deserves quotation: B y and large, the vastness of China's territory and the enemy's shortage of troops provide guerrilla warfare in China with this [geographical] condition. [This opportunity] is not something which has to be striven for . . . it is there physically, waiting only to be exploited . . . every place the enemy can penetrate already has its Chinese inhabitants and an economic basis of subsistence, so that the question of choice of economic condition in establishing base areas simply does not arise W e should . . . set up permanent or temporary

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39

base areas in all places where Chinese inhabitants and enemy are found. (1969, 2: 99-100) Mao knew economic contradictions were essential to his plan of mass mobilization, but, because he believed them inherent in any Chinese community, he felt it better to leave actual investigation of these contradictions to local cadres. He was convinced that in China economic tensions were so grave as to create the possibility of open class confrontation. He was, however, equally convinced that polarization needed an outside catalyst. The concrete embodiment of economic contradictions on which mass mobilization should be based varied tremendously from one Chinese community to another, so M a o quickly moved away from the abstract problem of economic conditions. In his view guerrilla base areas were not to be chosen by asking about the tenancy rate or the incidence of usury. Similarly, M a o considered the geographical factor a given. The Japanese army generally focused its attention on occupying big cities, transportation routes, and plains suitable for grain production; it eschewed the areas where modern military equipment was of little use. Mao therefore considered peripheral areas like mountains, lakes, marshes, and coasts the best sites for guerrilla bases. Although aware of the military difficulties, he nonetheless insisted that it was possible to build bases in China's vast lowlands where there were limited numbers of Japanese troops. His optimism was based partly on the difficulties the Japanese had encountered in trying to win local support. He reiterated that guerrilla warfare was designed to ensure survival in the face of superior enemy forces; the larger the base area, the more extended the Japanese army, and the easier for C C P guerrilla forces to survive. For Mao the most important considerations were political. For the following reasons he urged Party members to construct base areas only behind the Japanese front lines. First, the collapse or weakening of K M T power in the area gave the C C P a relatively free hand, and the urgency of the anti-Japanese cause gave the Party more reason for acting autonomously. Second, the desire to see the Japanese defeated was so great that it tended to obscure the power implications of such a move for the K M T . (On the other hand, C C P willingness to keep a low profile in K M T strongholds served to highlight Chiang Kaishek's own intolerance of his apparently high-minded allies.) Third, if the K M T had chosen to attack the C C P , it could only have done so

40

Base Areas

by seriously compromising its anti-Japanese stance. That would have meant risking political suicide, but it was not inconceivable for the KMT to take such a chance. And, if such an attack occurred before the CCP consolidated its bases, it would have doomed any CCP hope for final victory in a civil war. So the C C P continued to advocate KMTCCP unity, no matter how hollow and superficial it might sound. Fourth, the C C P troops had the edge over the KMT in their ability to survive the Japanese mop-up campaigns. Behind Japanese lines the KMT's failure to win popular support, its lack of guerrilla knowhow, its inability to coordinate actions, and its difficulties in maintaining a steady flow of supplies all made the CCP a sure winner in any anti-Japanese competition. Although Mao was willing to make nominal concessions to the KMT in return for financial support, he immediately saw the importance of a CCP-controlled army, and for this reason he fought hard to maintain the independence of the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army. In his view the C C P forces should grow rapidly in order to acquire a guerrilla military capability strong enough to repel enemy attacks; and, even while it was militarily securing the base area, the Party should proceed to mobilize and organize the people into mass organizations. The key was to improve the people's economic situation. In secret documents (and occasionally in public ones), Mao emphasized the link between this seemingly liberal policy and the Communist belief in class struggle. He hinted at a limited redistribution of wealth and a more radical distribution of power along class lines in the rural community, but he left the details to his subordinates. Military struggle and mass mobilization required, in Mao's view, the reorganization of the K M T governments still operating in designated base areas or the formation of new ones where the local government had collapsed. Mao made no comment on the implications of such moves for the KMT, only arguing that the new governments would derive their legitimacy from mass support and what the C C P considered essential policies for anti-Japanese resistance.18

The Decision to Challenge KMT

Containment

Mao Tse-tung tried to secure Party members' support for his idea of base area construction in central China, but he found no

Conquest and Containment

MAP 3. Base Area Construction Versus KMT and 1940 (Based on Kataoka 1974, map 10)

41

Containment, 1939

supporters there like Liu Shao-ch'i in North China. In March 1938, in his farewell talk to the Anti-Japanese University graduates assigned to the N e w Fourth A r m y , he suggested that they work for base construction in various border areas (Ts'ao Tan-hui 1962: 406; Chou Lin 1979: 236). (See map 3.) T w o months later he issued directives to Hsiang Ying urging the N e w Fourth A r m y to move eastward and northward immediately after the construction of a base area in the Mao Mountains, a mission Ch'en Y i was barely able to accomplish by early 1939. In late M a y 1938 M a o also ordered Wang Ming's Yangtze Bureau to start base area construction on both sides of the PekingHankow and Tientsin-P'uk'ou railroads to take advantage of the chaos following the Japanese offensive in the area. Neither Wang Ming nor his subordinate Hsiang Y i n g devoted much energy to following Mao's directives. 19 The situation began to change in Mao's favor when Wuhan fell to the Japanese during the Sixth Plenum (September 28, 1 9 3 8 -

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Base Areas

November 6, 1938). Wang Ming evacuated the Yangtze Bureau to Chungking, and Hsiang Ying's Southwestern Subbureau was upgraded. Mao convinced the majority of his comrades that the Japanese A r m y would soon link North and central China through the PekingHankow Railroad and thus create anarchy in Honan. He repeated his earlier warning that, if this enemy move proved to be the last strategic offensive aganist the K M T , the Japanese army would afterward intensify its mop-ups (Kuo Hua-lun 1973, 3: 401; Takeuchi Minoru 1970, 6: 49—145). The plenum thus endorsed the establishment of a Central Plains Bureau at Chukou, Ch'uehshan hsien (county), Honan, and accepted as its secretary Liu Shao-ch'i, w h o had successfully put Mao's ideas into practice in North China. 2 0 His bold approach notwithstanding, Mao Tse-tung shared Hsiang Ying's concern for the United Front with the K M T , as the well-publicized version of his report to the Sixth Plenum testifies. He not only recognized the K M T as the "leading party" but also pledged allegiance to Chiang Kai-shek. O f course, the pro-Chiang and proK M T rhetoric was qualified with an anti-Japanese clause, and Mao also urged the implementation of the Three People's Principles and guerrilla warfare behind the Japanese lines. He did not stress the two parties' differences of interpretation or the C C P ' s determination to put both into practice regardless of K M T opposition. In addition to publicizing Mao's report, the C C P also proposed formalizing the United Front in the hope that negotiations would delay an open split. 21 Chiang and Mao held similar views on the likely development of the war. In anticipation of a strategic stalemate, Chiang called for "turning the enemy's rear into fronts" and officially elevated guerrilla warfare to a level of strategic importance (Chang Ch'i-yun 1952, 3: 1510—12, 1517). In late 1938 he asked General T'ang En-po to start a three-month special training class on guerrilla warfare for middleranking officers of all the war zones. General T'ang invited the Communist general Yeh Chien-ying to be his deputy and through him arranged for several other C C P officers to come to Nanyueh, Hunan, to lecture on guerrilla tactics. 22 Several other measures were taken to guarantee results. The K M T redeployed about 600 thousand regular and 800 thousand guerrilla soldiers (perhaps inflated figures) behind the Japanese lines. 23 It made northern Kiangsu and Shantung an independent war zone (Ho Ying-ch'in 1946: 1 1 5 - 1 6 ; Chang Ch'i-yun 1952, 3: 1516). And

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43

Chiang also ordered officials to stay in their jurisdictions and fight (Chang Ch'i-yun 1952, 3: 1518). Meanwhile, the K M T created a j o i n t Battle Area C o m m i t t e e of Party and Administration to p r o m o t e mass mobilization (Ho Ying-ch'in 1946: 116). The K M T certainly had ulterior motives in adopting these new policies. In late 1938 Chiang summoned P'eng Te-huai, deputy c o m m a n d e r of the Eighth R o u t e A r m y , and warned him against " m e d d l i n g " in the provincial affairs of Hopei and Chahar, where a n e w war zone was being created to cope with C C P expansion (Wei Ju-lin 1966: 87). According to Mao, a document called "Secret Measures to Restrict Alien Party Activities" also began to circulate a m o n g K M T officials in March 1939; it aimed to strengthen mutual guarantee systems and internal surveillance against C C P activities within K M T territory (1952, 2: 717)The K M T ' s decision to compete with the C C P in N o r t h China proved by m i d - 1 9 3 9 to be a miscalculation; their troops were unable to develop a survival strategy against intensified Japanese m o p - u p actions (B5eicho 1968, 1: 131). In central China the K M T ' s position was better. Here the Japanese continued to attach lower priority to the pacification of their rear areas than to the destruction of the K M T regular army on their fronts. T h e K M T was thus able to strengthen its presence behind Japanese lines before the C C P moved in (B5eicho 1967, 1: 6 1 6 - 2 2 ) . After the fall of W u h a n in 1938, the Japanese gave an increasing a m o u n t of attention to the pacification of their rear areas, but this occurred in N o r t h China rather than in central and South China. In January 1939 General Ku C h u - t ' u n g created a South Yangtze administrative office and appointed General Leng Hsin to be its director. General Leng than ordered all KMT-affiliated guerrilla forces to withdraw f r o m the western Yangtze delta to southern A n hwei to undertake reorganization (1967: 58—64). Perhaps it was this withdrawal that enabled C h ' e n Yi to declare that the N e w Fourth A r m y had completed the " e m b r o y o n i c stage" of base area construction in the M a o Mountains in the spring of 1939 (1939b: 510). But the situation soon changed. In April 1939 Leng m o v e d his office to the Chekiang-Kiangsu border and immediately ordered the N e w Fourth A r m y to confine its activities to its assigned zones of operation. His superior military forces allowed him to maintain surveillance over C h ' e n Yi's forces. 2 4 The K M T also embarked on a reorganization in the eastern

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Base Areas

Yangtze delta under General Yang Wei, an intelligence officer who had distinguished himself in the prewar "bandit suppression" campaigns. In spring 1939 Yang convened a meeting of representatives of the Loyal National Salvation A r m y , local guerrilla forces, local Party headquarters, hsien administrators, hsiang (township) heads, and high school principals. Resolutions were passed to tighten the pao-chia (neighborhood and tithings) mutual guarantee system, to organize a system of road checkpoints, and to establish a patrol system. The resolutions talked about "mass w o r k " and cooperatives, but what was put into practice seemed mainly to be conscription, collection of additional taxes for education, and prohibition of the export of silkworms to their only market, which was in the Japanese-occupied area (China, Kuo-fang-pu, Ch'ing-pao-chii 1962: 15, 169—75; Ch'iao Chia-ts'ai 1977: 59). Across the Yangtze in northern Kiangsu, there was parochial mobilization when the Japanese army attacked the Hsuchou area in spring 1938. T o put his house in order, Acting Provincial Governor Han Te-ch'in reorganized local garrison and guerrilla forces into the regular Eighty-Ninth A r m y . B y August he had expanded his troops to include six "peace preservation" brigades and four reserve brigades. Li Ming-yang's Kiangsu-Shantung War Zone guerrilla forces and Ch'en T'ai-yun's regiment of customs police also operated under his command, but he had only nominal control over them. These military forces propped up a governmental structure that faced little threat from the Japanese for the time being (Pao Ming-shu 1977: 48-49)North of the Yangtze in Anhwei, the commander of the Fifth War Zone, General Li Tsung-jen, had dispatched his staff members to study the military geography of the Tapieh Mountains early in November 1937 with the plan of developing this former C C P stronghold into a base area in case the K M T failed to stop the Japanese. After the fall of Wuhan, Chiang Kai-shek appointed a Kwangsi general, Liao Lei, to be the provincial governor of Anhwei and ordered him to take the Seventh A r m y and Forty-Eighth A r m y with him to the Tapieh Mountains (Ch'iu Kuo-chen 1970: 1 1 - 1 2 , 20; Li P'in-hsien 1 9 7 1 : 1 3 6 - 3 7 , 165). (See map 4.) In early 1939 General Liao reached an agreement with the chief of staff of the N e w Fourth A r m y about the operation of Kao Chingt'ing's Fourth (CCP) Detachment. T h e C C P promised to move its army from near Ch'aohsien to Luhsi, Huainan, an economically

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45

backward and culturally underdeveloped area. In exchange for a subsidy of 35,000 yuan a month, it also promised to refrain from administrative interference, to stop executing "traitors" without authorization, to cease confiscating private rifles, and to abolish transit tax collection. General Liao appointed a capable Kwangsi officer to serve as the special administrative commissioner of Luhsi to keep watch on the N e w Fourth A r m y (BI 1939b; B I 1942a: 1; Chin Yiifen et al. 1944: 1 - 2 ) . Relations between the C C P and the Kwangsi clique in Anhwei were generally good. General Liao's tolerance and the sympathy of his two top officials enabled C C P members and their supporters to dominate some mass mobilization committees in the Tapieh Mountains. Outside the Ch'aohsien and Luhsi areas there was scant C C P presence, but, to preempt any C C P expansion, General Liao in April 1939 sent his security chief to investigate Communist activities in fourteen hsien of Huainan (an area south of the Huai, east of the Huainan Railroad, and north of the Yangtze). The chief advised the magistrates to stifle C C P activities by mutual guarantee systems, registration of private rifles, and organization of all male adults into militia (Ch'iu Kuo-chen 1970: 2 1 - 2 6 , 28-29).

MAP 4. Eastern China

46

Base Areas

Hsiang Ying's Reluctance to Conform Hsiang Y i n g left Yenan immediately after Mao gave his report On the New Stage and so may have known little about decisions adopted later in the Sixth Plenum (Kuo Hua-lun 1973, 3: 401). At the least he chose to contradict Mao in t w o major ways. M a o had criticized Wang Ming's slogan, "Everything Through the United Front," but Hsiang persisted in its use. Second, while Mao considered quantitative growth to be the correct policy for the time, Hsiang adhered to qualitative improvement; he emphasized the regularization of his guerrilla forces into an army capable of mobile warfare, though Mao urged him to deregularize his troops for base area construction. 25 T o bring Hsiang Y i n g into line, Mao sent Chou En-lai to southern Anhwei. An influential aide to Wang Ming and also Hsiang's close comrade in the struggle against Mao in the early 1930s, Chou was a superb choice. On February 23, 1939, he secretly arrived at the headquarters of the N e w Fourth A r m y and with little difficulty persuaded Hsiang to accept the new policy. 2 6 Soon a more concrete strategy was worked out with the help of Ch'en Yi: "Consolidate toward the south; fight toward the east; develop toward the north; link up with the southward Eighth Route A r m y ; and open up a battlefield from central China to North C h i n a " (Sung Chih 1978b: 13). Chou also won Hsiang's initial consent to put his North Yangtze forces at some time in the future under the temporary supervision of Liu Shao-ch'i's Central Plains Party Bureau, which had been created by the Sixth Plenum in the wake of the fall of Wuhan. 2 7 As noted above, Hsiang Ying's chief-of-staff, General Chang Yun-yi, had promised K M T general Liao Lei to move the Fourth Detachment to Luhsi, Huainan, but the detachment commander, Kao Ching-t'ing, refused full cooperation. Kao sent his Seventh R e g i ment to Luhsi but kept his headquarters and the Ninth Regiment in the area between Shuch'eng and Wuwei. The Eighth Regiment was originally from Honan. An Anti-Japanese University graduate, Tai Chi-ying, headed the political department of the detachment and held full control of the regiment, which he moved farther eastward to Lutung, Huainan, an area defined by the Chingp'u Railroad, the Grand Canal, the Huai, and the Yangtze. 2 8 The case of K a o Ching-t'ing illustrates the problems the C C P

Conquest and Containment

47

had in maintaining unity and discipline even over its own forces. Kao was a poor peasant butcher from Hsinhsiang, Honan (ancestral home: Huangan, Hupei), who had joined the C C P in the late 1920s. As the commander of the Red Twenty-Eighth Army, he had stayed in the Hupei-Honan-Anhwei soviet area and in 1934 fought a rearguard action for Chang Kuo-t'ao, who was attempting to break through the K M T encirclement. Like Hsiang Ying, Kao survived for three years without outside support, and later his troops were reorganized into the Seventh and Ninth regiments. According to Cheng Wei-san, a long-time associate, Kao was a typical peasant hero bitterly opposed to both the rich and the intellectuals. He hated Party discipline, trying by every means to block the assignment of intellectual cadres to his forces and the transfer of his own officers for ideological training. Very paternalistic, he shared the classic peasant hero's weakness for power and wealth. 29 In April 1939 Yeh T'ing and three ranking C C P officers (Teng Tzu-hui, Lai Ch'uan-chu, and Lo Ping-hui) crossed the Yangtze and came to Such'eng to solve the problem of Kao Ching-t'ing (Teng Tzu-hui 1962: 379-80). For reasons that remain unclear, the commander and the political commissar of the Seventh Regiment defected in mid-May to the K M T and denounced Kao Ching-t'ing as a "tyrannical warlord" (BI 1939b; BI 1940b: 11). In June Yeh T'ing brought Kao before a mass tribunal and executed him. This enabled Chang Yun-yi to move the Ninth Regiment and the detachment headquarters to Luhsi and to form a new Fourteenth Regiment with new soldiers (Teng Tzu-hui 1962: 379—80; Japan, K5ain, Kachu 1941a: 14-15). At this time the Eighth Regiment also expanded rapidly into the Fifth Detachment of three regiments in Lutung. In July 1939 the North Yangtze Command, created two months earlier, began to function effectively as the supervisory organ of both detachments (Teng Tzu-hui 1962: 380; Huang K'ai-yuan et al. 1981: 188; CTJC 1983, no. 7: 344; CTJC, no. 8: 281-82). General Chang Yun-yi had Lo Ping-hui and Hsu Hai-tung as his deputies, Teng Tzu-hui as head of his political department, and Lai Ch'uan-chu as his chief of staff. In the Yangtze delta Ch'en Y i initiated the expansion policy immediately after he returned from southern Anhwei (Sung Chih 1978b: 13). To avoid K M T protests, however, he concentrated on expanding and upgrading CCP-affiliated local units. The leading edge of this expansion comprised Kuan Wen-wei's South Yangtze

48

Base Areas

Anti-Japanese Forward Brigade (column) and Mei Kuang-ti's South Yangtze Anti-Japanese Volunteers. Kuan Wen-wei's forces had g r o w n out of his attempt to defend his h o m e c o m m u n i t y against pillaging Japanese soldiers and Chinese guerrilla bandits. An elementary schoolteacher jailed for his C o m m u nist activities and released shortly after the outbreak of the SinoJapanese War, he had w o n , by the exemplary behavior of his armed men, the local leaders' permission to collect taxes for the support of his swelling ranks. In August 1938 he affiliated his militia-like unit with the N e w Fourth A r m y , but, before he renamed his self-defense corps the South Yangtze Forward Brigade in January 1939, the only sign that he had any intention of expanding his force into a regional one was the acquisition of a foothold, in late 1938, on the northern Yangtze bank w h e n a f o r m e r K M T c o m p a n y commander (head of a guerrilla unit of 3 5 soldiers) joined forces with him. This northern Yangtze branch maintained a separate existence, and its rapid g r o w t h soon threatened Kuan's plan of converting his troops into a disciplined C C P unit. It was the Japanese m o p - u p of March 1939 that finally enabled Kuan and his superior, C h ' e n Yi, to act against this development. T h e y used their forces to disarm the insubordinate unit that the Japanese a r m y had t h r o w n into disarray, and afterward Kuan m o v e d his headquarters north to Yangchung, an island county in the Yangtze, to consolidate his grip over the newly secured north Yangtze bridgehead. See Su Yii (1980: 21); C h e n g Yii-te (1945: 41); Japan, K5ain, Kachu (1941a: 1 i - i 2 ) ; J a p a n , Taishikan (1943: 15—18); BI (1940c: 7 - 8 , 1 5 - 1 6 ) ; Pao Ming-shu (1977: 48-50); and K u o - m i n ko-ming-chiin (1940: 2). Meanwhile C h ' e n Yi turned his attention back to the Yangtze triangle, w h e r e another local guerrilla force, organized b y Mei Kuang-ti, a native of the eastern Yangtze delta, was operating. In M a y 1939 Mei named his unit the South Yangtze Anti-Japanese Volunteers and ordered it to start an "eastern expedition," despite Hsiang Ying's opposition. Like Kuan Wen-wei, Mei had served terms for his C o m m u n i s t activities in a K M T prison but w o n his f r e e d o m three years earlier than Kuan. A regular a r m y regiment, plus some units of Kuan's forces, joined h i m . H e was, however, n o m o r e than a figurehead for the C C P regiment c o m m a n d e r , Yeh Fei (pseudonyms: Yeh Shen, Nieh Yang). T h e Volunteers soon began to clash with the K M T Loyal National Salvation A r m y . In July 1939 a Japanese m o p - u p of Ch'eng-Hsi-Yii, w h e r e the K M T had recently placed its guerrilla

Conquest and Containment

49

headquarters, encouraged Ch'en Y i to escalate the eastward move. The disarray into which the K M T guerrilla forces in Shanghai's vicinity fell in the wake of the Japanese capture of their commander at about the same time gave further impetus to the military thrust toward Shanghai. 30 The eastward move, however, proved untenable. Apparently enraged by the expansion, K M T general Ku Chu-t'ung formally ordered military action against any "unauthorized" units in the eastern delta in September 1939. The Volunteers were unready for the challenge. The soldiers incorporated from the K M T guerrilla forces showed signs of vacillation. Ch'en Y i thus ordered the Volunteers to withdraw to the western delta for reorganization (Ch'iao Chia-ts'ai 1977: 59; China, Kuo-fang-pu, Ch'ing-pao-chii 1962: 150, 157, 180-83; Japan, Koain, Kachu 1941a: 1 2 - 1 3 ) . Frustrated in his eastward move, Ch'en Yi was encouraged by the Party Center to turn his attention again to the area north of the Yangtze. In October 1939 a regular regiment, now called the Kiangsu-Anhwei Brigade, was sent to the Chiangtu-Yicheng-LiuhoT'iench'ang border region via Yangchung Island. Ch'en Yi made the move with eyes to the development in Lutung, Huainan, where C C P general Chang Yun-yi had just acquired some military bases. To free more troops for a further northward move, Ch'en then created the South Yangtze Command to coordinate all the C C P forces in the Yangtze delta. 31 The territorial expansion of the New Fourth Army had Mao Tse-tung's blessing but ran against Hsiang Ying's judgment. Rather than send reinforcements to Huainan as urged by Mao, Hsiang repeatedly ordered Chang Yun-yi to withdraw his troops to southern Anhwei. Ch'en Yi also faced the same opposition from Hsiang, but their cordial relationship seemed to have lessened the friction between them. Ch'en also faced no internal dissidence of the kind that paralyzed Chang Yun-yi's command for a while ( C K T S 1979,4: 136—37; T'an Hsi-lin 1961; Teng Tzu-hui 1962: 389). What Mao Tse-tung terms as the "first anti-Communist surge" in late 1939, however, convinced Hsiang Ying to argue more forcefully for his case in the Party Center. In his view, the future of the New Fourth Army lay in southern Anhwei rather than in the Yangtze delta. A probable Japanese thrust along the Chekiang-Kiangsi Railroad would enable him to construct base areas in southern Anhwei, but the formation of a new puppet government in Nanking by Wang

50

Base Areas

Ching-wei and the possible collapse of the Second United Front would only make it more difficult to operate militarily in the Yangtze delta. In a spirit of compromise, the Party Center, while insisting that Ch'en Y i move his troops into northern Kiangsu and that Hsiang reconsider his plan to withdraw troops from the delta, endorsed Hsiang's plan to expand the C C P troops in southern A n h w e i . 3 2 In southern Anhwei Hsiang Y i n g waited unobtrusively for the predicted development of events. The following discussion of Liu Shao-ch'i's base area construction and Ch'en Yi's expansionist activities—two subjects on which there is little Western literature — will enable us to place Hsiang's caution in better perspective.

Liu Shao-ch'i's Mission in the Yangtze

Region

In October 1938 Liu Shao-ch'i began to prepare for base area construction in Honan. He reached Minch'ih in December and Chukou, Ch'uehshan, t w o months later. In both places he conveyed to underground Party leaders the Party's decision on the planned seizure of territory. 3 3 Before he entered Honan, the Party center had ordered two expeditions from Chukou to pave the way for Liu. P'eng Hsueh-feng was sent to the Honan-Anhwei-Kiangsu border with a guerrilla unit of 300 men composed primarily of recently recruited young students, and Li Hsien-nien was sent with 200 men to the Honan-Hupei-Anhwei border, where he had fought the K M T several years earlier. 3 4 Liu Shao-ch'i, on his arrival, turned Chukou into "Small Yenan," where he assembled more guerrilla forces and, after giving them some training, ordered them off to reinforce the two expeditions, especially the latter. Lack of personnel prompted Liu to send even his own personal guards on Li's southward mission (Lo Ch'uan-fa et al. 1980: 127; Su Pin 1980: 1 3 1 - 3 2 ) . On their way eastward P'eng Hsueh-feng's forces absorbed several local units that the underground Communists had organized after K'aifeng's fall to the Japanese. Operating as part of the N e w Fourth A r m y , the troops sought to acquire a base in the area surrounded by the Lunghai and Chingp'u railroads and the new bed of the Yellow R i v e r . B y incorporating non-Communist local forces, the base grew rapidly, and in June 1939 it became the Sixth Detachment of the N e w Fourth A r m y (Teng Tzu-hui 1962: 380; Japan,

Conquest and Containment

51

Koain, Kachu 1941a: 15; Liu Shao-ch'i 1942b: 44, 95). Li Hsien-nien's forces were less successful. Fewer C C P cadres in his area had formed their own guerrilla forces, a situation for which Wang Ming was later held responsible, and a strong K M T presence compounded the problem. N o t until October 1939 did Li develop a semblance of united command in the region (Li Hsien-nien 1940; B I 1939b; Wang Hsienping 1976: 51). After his foray Liu Shao-ch'i returned to Yenan in M a y 1939 to await the completion of the military phase of base area construction in both areas (Chin Te-hsing 1980: 158). Competition between the C C P and K M T in the Japanese rear began to intensify, particularly in North China, in mid-1939. Unable to curb the C C P , the K M T withheld monthly payments to the Eighth Route A r m y and ordered a blockade in northern Shensi in late 1939. Simultaneously they ordered their commanders to attack any unauthorized forces within their jurisdictions. 3 5 General Liao Lei died of hypertension in late 1939 in Anhwei, and Chiang Kai-shek replaced him with a hard-line anti-Communist general, Li P'in-hsien, a Kwangsi native affiliated with the Kwangsi clique. Upon assuming office in early January, he immediately pushed two major Communist sympathizers out of the provincial government. He dismantled the CCP-infiltrated mass mobilization organizations, withheld monthly payments to the N e w Fourth A r m y , and tightened anti-Communist containment measures. College students, schoolteachers, soldiers, and civilian functionaries were ordered to join the K M T and were organized into a mutual guarantee system. Li also formed special action teams in all branches of his government to watch his staff closely. T o strengthen control over the general population, Li P'inhsien made a new push to enroll everyone in the pao-chia system. Special classes were given to the heads oihsiang, pao (neighborhoods), and chia (tithings), and Li also tried to insure that all male adults from 18 to 45 were organized into militia and reserve forces. Although he talked about rent reduction, prohibition of usury, and abolition of unreasonable taxes, these measures were mainly paper reforms (Ch'iu Kuo-chen 1970: 3 5 - 3 6 , 3 8 - 3 9 , 4 5 - 4 6 ; Li P'in-hsien 1 9 7 1 : 1 8 2 - 9 3 ) . K M T general Han Te-ch'in put into practice similar measures in Kiangsu in April 1940. The oath of mutual guarantee that he required runs as follows: " W e three agree to guarantee that none of us will violate the Three People's Principles [ K M T version] either in speech or in other ways. We guarantee that w e will join only the K M T ; w e

52

Base Areas

will join no reactionary Party or faction. We hereby swear that, if hereafter any one of us should betray this pledge, we will immediately report the violation to the authorities, or else bear equal blame for the violation" (Hsia Yang 1956: 6). A list of about 300 suspected C o m munists hunted by the K M T was compiled and circulated within the K M T adminstration (Hsia Yang 1956: 7—8; Kuo-min ko-ming-chiin 1940: 4 - 6 ) . The intensification of K M T anti-Communist activities, though ineffective, gave the C C P further incentive to push base area construction. B y September 1939 the Party had concluded that the Japanese had no immediate plan to attack southern Honan and decided to give higher priority to the areas farther east toward the sea. Liu Shaoch'i returned to Chukou that month and immediately began to move the Central Plains Bureau eastward. In early October he embarked with about 250 men, including his chief aides, on the long journey to Luhsi, Huainan. 3 6 Destitute of agricultural and industrial resources, the area had no road or river system to link it with the outside world. Its hilly barren land provided a scant subsistence economy for a population, 93 percent of w h o m were illiterate ( " K 5 h o k u shikaku chitai" 1944a: 34, 41—44). The K M T Anhwei governor Li P'in-hsien had appointed two fellow Kwangsi military men to rule the area, but the Japanese occupation of the Huainan Railroad prevented his sending as many troops as he would have liked to contain Communist expansion there. Meanwhile, Liu Shao-ch'i ordered P'eng Hsueh-feng to dispatch a regiment to Lutung, Huaipei, to strengthen the C C P ' s local united front with the K M T special administrative commissioner, Sheng Tzu-chin. Bordering t w o provinces, Kiangsu and Anhwei, the area was a rectangle formed by the Lunghai Railroad, the new bed of the Yellow R i v e r , the Grand Canal, and the Chingp'u R a i l road. Here, poor land, war, and famine had constantly given rise to peasant uprisings and banditry; during the Nanking decade the Lake Hungtse area was still a famous bandit lair. A part of North China, the border region had agricultural resources much poorer than those of Huainan, but since it was more distant from the K M T provincial government in the Tapieh Mountains, Commissioner Sheng could govern semi-independently. Originally the K M T magistrate of Ssuhsien, he had forced out his predecessor as commissioner; the remote provincial government had accepted local reality and appointed him successor. 37

Conquest

and Containment

53

Liu Shao-ch'i and his C e n t r a l Plains Bureau t o o k a detour to the H o n a n - A n h w e i - K i a n g s u border area, inspected P ' e n g Hsueh-feng's headquarters, and instructed P ' e n g to speed u p the formation o f an administrative apparatus ( T e n g T z u - h u i 1962: 376; C T / C 8 : 314—16). In fact, just prior to Liu's arrival, P ' e n g had persuaded the K M T magistrate o f Hsiaohsien, Kiangsu, to create a j o i n t administrative office f o r the border area o f Hsiaohsien, T ' u n g s h a n , Lingpi, and Suhsien ( H s a i o - T ' u n g - L i n g - S u ) and appoint a C o m m u n i s t to be its director. T h r e e months later P ' e n g f o r m e d another g o v e r n m e n t nearby, again in the K M T magistrate's name. C C P appointments o f n e w hsien magistrates soon f o l l o w e d . Finally, in M a y 1940 P ' e n g declared the inauguration o f the g o v e r n m e n t o f the H o n a n - A n h w e i K i a n g s u border region and made his d e p u t y , W u C h i h - p ' u , the chairman ( K u o Hua-lun 1973,4: 1 6 3 - 6 5 ; B I 1940c: 27; Hsu-chou-pa-hsien l

973 - 758—59). Still a w a i t i n g a likely Japanese offensive, h o w e v e r ,

P ' e n g was unwilling to transfer his m a j o r forces eastward and risk battles in unfamiliar K M T territory (Liu Shao-ch'i 1942b: 96—97). B e f o r e his instructions w e r e fully put into effect in the H o n a n A n h w e i - K i a n g s u border area, Liu Shao-ch'i left for the N o r t h Y a n g tze C o m m a n d . In N o v e m b e r 1939 he reached Luhsi, Huainan, w h e r e he soon made k n o w n M a o ' s directive on army expansion and g o v e r n m e n t building. Fully aware o f the implications o f these m o v e s for the C C P - K M T U n i t e d Front, Liu instructed C C P c o m m a n d e r s to p r o ceed in the f o l l o w i n g fashion: " W h e r e v e r w e have military forces w e can c o m m a n d military superiority o v e r [our rivals]. Even if w e have o n l y a regiment, w e can control a village b y stationing it there. W i t h the village as a base, w e can start independent guerrilla warfare. If a n y o n e interferes in our activities, w e can exercise [our right o f ] selfdefense and repel t h e m " (T'an Hsi-lin 1961). Severely criticizing the c o m m a n d e r s ' hesitation to e x p a n d their forces, Liu pounded hard on M a o ' s "seize guns and f o r m t r o o p s " ( " S h a o - c h ' i t ' u n g - c h i h " 1980: 170; Li Shih-nung and H u a n g Y e n 1980: 119; T e n g T z u - h u i 1962: 384). Liu's strategy clearly was to e x p a n d C C P forces and to fill any military v a c u u m he could find. In late D e c e m b e r 1939, h o w e v e r , Liu Shao-ch'i f o u n d that his first challenge was f r o m the Japanese garrison forces. H e had b r o u g h t w i t h h i m an u n k n o w n n u m b e r o f officers f r o m Y e n a n and N o r t h C h i n a , a m o n g w h o m was a legendary C o m m u n i s t general f r o m the former Hupei-Honan-Anhwei

Soviet, Hsu H a i - t u n g .

Assuming

c o m m a n d o f the reorganized Fourth D e t a c h m e n t , Hsu led his soldiers

54

Base Areas

intact throughout the Japanese offensive. Once the campaign was over, both the Fourth and Fifth detachments vigorously expanded their ranks and from January to March 1940 doubled their size to about 10 thousand (Teng Tzu-hui 1962: 385; Tan Hsi-lin 1961; Han Hsien-ch'u et al. 1980). After Liu Shao-ch'i's field report of late 1939, Mao Tse-tung formally placed the North Yangtze Command under Liu's Central Plains Bureau on January 19, 1940. Nine days later Mao also instructed Liu to expand his troops to 100 thousand in North Yangtze within six months and to seize administrative power from the K M T in eastern Honan, northern Kiangsu, and northern Anhwei. Warning that the K M T planned to reinforce its troops in the area, Mao urged his field representatives to move quickly ( C K T S 1979, 4: 137-39). Because the K M T sent no reinforcements throughout 1940, the C C P gained valuable time for territorial expansion in northern Anhwei and northern Kiangsu. The K M T provincial governor of Anhwei, Li P'in-hsien, nonetheless sought to reassert his control over Huaipei, where a local C C P - K M T united front was operating. Li sent a Kwangsi officer and two regiments to take over administrative commissioner Sheng Tzu-chin's office. Sheng refused to move aside, joined up with his Communist ally, and defeated his would-be successor in February. 38 After Sheng's defiance, C C P - K M T conflicts escalated. On March 7, 1940, the Kwangsi clique allegedly launched a two-pronged attack on the C C P forces in Luhsi, Huainan. The K M T administrative director of northern Anhwei led his local forces and some regular troops southward from Fengyang, while other units, mostly regular army, moved north. The C C P claims to have repelled the attack from the south at once. On the northern front, the C C P North Yangtze Command, allegedly taken by surprise, mobilized the local populace to greet the advancing K M T units the next morning waving colorful banners, pounding drums and cymbals, and shouting anti-Japanese slogans. Holding the baffled K M T forces at bay with demands for peace, the command struck at the walled city of Tingyuan with a small military unit, hoping to lure the halted K M T troops away. The strategy worked. When the K M T army turned its front, the Fourth Detachment gave chase and soon sent it into panicked flight. After occupying the K M T headquarters at Fengyang, Liu Shao-ch'i halted his troops in the name of self-restraint, but, joined by the reinforcements from the east, he actually had his eyes on the isolated K M T forces in Ch'uhsien and vicinity.

Conquest

and Containment

55

B e f o r e the v i c t o r y at T i n g y u a n the N o r t h Y a n g t z e C o m m a n d had sent m a n y mass w o r k teams into the c o u n t r y s i d e . S o o n after the fall o f the city Liu a n n o u n c e d the a p p o i n t m e n t o f a C C P magistrate f o r T i n g y u a n . Heads o f teams w e r e m a d e ch'ti (subdistrict) heads and o r d e r e d to m o b i l i z e local residents to w e l c o m e the n e w magistrate. Several days later Liu also a p p o i n t e d magistrates f o r F e n g y a n g and C h ' u h s i e n and f o r m e d a j o i n t administrative office to supervise and c o o r d i n a t e the administrative w o r k o f all three hsiett. T h e hsien administration's first priority w a s to restore local t a x c o l l e c t i n g institutions, because a sound, i n d e p e n d e n t financial base w a s considered essential f o r expansion. In t h e o r y the seizure o f a d ministrative p o w e r should h a v e facilitated the progress o f mass m o b i l i z a t i o n , but, because the C C P failed to w i n a c o m p l e t e v i c t o r y at Luhsi, it m a d e n o serious a t t e m p t at rural polarization. A v o i d i n g a h e a d - o n collision w i t h the K w a n g s i troops, the N o r t h Y a n g t z e C o m m a n d turned its attention to m o r e u r g e n t w o r k at W u w e i in W a n c h u n g and at L u t u n g in H u a i n a n (T'an Hsi-lin 1961; C h i n Y i i - f e n et al. 1944: 4 - 6 ; Li S h i h - n u n g and H u a n g Y e n 1980: 120). Liu S h a o - c h ' i sent a r e g i m e n t to the W u w e i area, w h e r e K M T forces had intensified their military pressure o n local C C P guerrilla forces. Far m o r e urgent calls for help c a m e f r o m L u t u n g , w h e r e o n M a r c h 19 H a n T e - c h ' i n ' s K i a n g s u A r m y and C h ' i n C h ' i n g - l i n ' s (the special administrative c o m m i s s i o n e r ) local forces besieged a b o u t o n e thousand C o m m u n i s t soldiers in Pant'achi. T h e b e l e a g u r e d

CCP

soldiers f o u g h t w e l l , and seven d a y s later the Fifth D e t a c h m e n t returned together w i t h the K i a n g s u - A n h w e i B r i g a d e and lifted the siege. W h e n C h ' e n Y i ' s c o l u m n also arrived f r o m central K i a n g s u , the c o m b i n e d forces launched a w h o l e s a l e attack, w i p i n g out all K M T local forces and their political infrastructure. A t o n e stroke, Liu S h a o - c h ' i appointed eight magistrates in the s u r r o u n d i n g counties ( A n h w e i : Laian, T ' i e n c h ' a n g , C h i a s h a n , H s u y i ; K i a n g s u :

Kaoyu,

Y i c h e n g , C h i a n g t u , L i u h o ) . T h e s e hsien g o v e r n m e n t s w e r e placed u n d e r a j o i n t administrative office at L u t u n g . 3 9 W h a t m a d e L u t u n g significant in the history o f base area c o n struction w a s the issuance o f a rent and interest l a w that laid the g r o u n d - w o r k for mass m o b i l i z a t i o n based o n rural polarization. A m a j o r catalyst w a s the availability o f a b o u t a thousand y o u n g cadres that L i u S h a o - c h ' i had e v a c u a t e d f r o m the p r o v i n c i a l capital in the T a p i e h Mountains. In late 1939 Li P'in-hsien, the designated provincial g o v e r n o r , visited C C P representatives in C h u n g k i n g and w a r n e d t h e m against activities w i t h i n A n h w e i . A t the t i m e the C C P priorities

56

Base Areas

had already shifted away from the Tapieh Mountains, so while Li was taking great pride in his subordinates' reports that CCP-controlled youth groups had disappeared from his capital, Liu Shao-ch'i was in fact busily turning them into mass mobilization workers in Huainan. Their inexperience and excessive zeal reportedly provoked a brief landlord uprising in Lutung in July 1940, but, when the Japanese launched an attack in July 1940, the C C P had no need to worry that the alienated elite would cooperate with the Japanese. 40 Earlier, perhaps in April 1940 when he was not preoccupied with the fighting, Liu Shao-ch'i had pondered Mao's decision to seize power in northern Kiangsu. Convinced that the C C P ' s northern Yangtze forces were not up to the task, he requested that the Party Center divert 20 thousand soldiers from North China. In September 1938, the Eighth Route A r m y had sent men into Fenghsien and Peihsien north of the Lunghai Railroad. Less than a year later these C C P forces had grown from several hundred to more than 8 thousand. Liu wanted to use them, in addition to other transferred Eighth Route A r m y units, as his northern pincer against the K M T North Kiangsu Army; to match the southward deployment, he also asked Mao to order Ch'en Yi's major forces to move into North Yangtze. 4 1 While awaiting the redeployment, Liu Shao-ch'i left for Lutung, Huaipei, in early May 1940. There Chang Ai-p'ing's three undermanned regiments had just inherited partial control of the area from the special administrative commissioner, Sheng Tzu-chin (Chang Ai-p'ing i960: 2, 17, 20; Liujui-lung 1942: 9; 1944a: 7). For unknown reasons, in March 1940 Sheng had suddenly left for northern Kiangsu with all his local forces. About two months later Sheng's unit ran into a C C P trap in Lutung, Huainan; the C C P captured Sheng and incorporated most of his troops into C C P units (Ku Hsichiu 1971a: 38; B I 1940b: 13, 28; Teng Tzu-hui 1962: 396; personal interview with Chou Tao-chan, N o v . 1, 1982). Sheng's departure not only caught the local C C P by surprise but also led to parochial mobilization in Huaipei. Members of the local elite, bandit leaders, secret society leaders, and other self-seekers arose to form their own local forces. The territory actually under Party control at this time was no more than five ch'ii in Ssuhsien, and in military strength the C C P seemed no better than other local forces. But skillful use of its limited military and political resources showed it to be the most able successor to the K M T . (Liujui-lung 1942:9, 1944a: 5—6; B I 1940c: 4).

Conquest and Containment

57

Liu Shao-ch'i originally planned to come to Huaipei for only three days to size up the situation and provide political advice, but an unexpected Japanese attack launched from Ssuhsien and Wuho the day he arrived forced him to change his schedule. He moved along with Chang Ai-p'ing's troops to avoid the Japanese search. Although constantly on the move for two months, Liu managed to instruct the cadres in base area construction. O n the eve of his departure for Huaipei, Liu had again requested reinforcements from the Eighth Route A r m y , and, even while they were dodging the Japanese attack, Chang Ai-p'ing's forces assaulted the K M T Kiangsu A r m y , which had crossed over to establish a foothold in Anhwei. In July 1940 the Southward Brigade of the Eighth Route A r m y finally arrived. Liu then launched an all-out attack and forced the Kiangsu A r m y to flee to the eastern bank of the Grand Canal. 4 2 However, before the C C P forces could consolidate their gains, Liu Shao-ch'i sent almost all of them to help out in northern Kiangsu. It was not until February 1941 that Chang Ai-p'ing could lead his forces, by then enrolled as the Ninth Brigade of the N e w Fourth A r m y , back to their original base. B y this time, Liu Chen's Tenth Brigade, part of the force sent south at Liu Shao-ch'i's request, had arrived. The two forces joined to suppress the B i g Swords, local bandits, and local K M T "diehards." 4 3 The arrival of the Fourth Division from the Honan-Anhwei-Kiangsu border in May 1941 following its defeat by K M T forces further strengthened the C C P ' s hold on Huaipei, B y June 1941 the Huaipei Communists were ready to mount a serious, large-scale mass mobilization campaign. Earlier, in 1940, Liu Shao-ch'i had drafted a rent and interest reduction law, but the regional party lacked the personnel to put it into effect. The withdrawal of about 400 cadres from the Honan-Anhwei-Kiangsu border had solved that problem, so the regional party invited Cheng Weisan, political commissar of the Second Division, to come from Huainan to lecture on his experiences in rent reduction (Liu Jui-lung 1 9 4 4 a : 7, 9)-

The Southward Brigade of the Eighth Route A r m y was only one-third of the 20 thousand soldiers Liu Shao-ch'i had requested from the Eighth Route Army. In October 1940 it left for northern Kiangsu with Chang Ai-p'ing's Huaipei force and joined P'eng Ming-chih's troops from the Kiangsu-Shantung-Honan border. Reorganized

58

Base

Areas

under Huang K'o-ch'eng's command, the combined forces marched southward to "mediate the conflicts" between Han Te-ch'in's Kiangsu A r m y and Ch'en Yi's N e w Fourth A r m y (Kuo-min koming-chun 1940: 23; BI, Ling-i-yu, no. 7, July 20-26, 1940; no. 25, N o v . 2 3 - 2 9 , 1940; and BI, Ling-i-yuan, no. 17, Sept. 2 8 - O c t . 4, 1940). Kuan Wen-wei's forward brigade of the N e w Fourth A r m y had established a solid footing in North Yangtze in March 1939. In November 1939 Ch'en Y i sent Yeh Fei's Sixth Regiment there after the army's failure to expand eastward in the delta, and in March Ch'en sent most of the C C P forces in the area (the Anhwei-Kiangsu Brigade and the Central Kiangsu Brigade) to Luhsi, Huainan, to help base area construction (Su Yii 1980: 22; Hsia Yang 1956: 10—11; Teng Tzu-hui 1962: 380, 385; Kuo-min ko-ming-chun 1940: 2; Japan, Taishikan 1943: 19). In Luhsi, Liu Shao-ch'i instructed Yeh Fei to "expand anti-Japanese forces freely and resist the reactionary factions." But no sooner had Yeh returned to Tach'iao than the Japanese army again moved to corner him, so he took his forces to Kuots'un, a market town that the K M T warlord Li Ming-yang considered to be within his territory (Ch'en Nung-fei 1959: 128—29). Conflicts between Yeh and Li ensued. T o buy time for the return of T'ao Yung's Anhwei-Kiangsu Brigade from Huainan and the arrival of Ch'en Yi's reinforcements from the southern Yangtze, Yeh Fei acted on Ch'en's instructions and started to negotiate on June 20, 1940, aiming to persuade Li to avoid future conflicts between the N e w Fourth A r m y and the Kiangsu A r m y . When, on June 28 Li decided to muster 1 1 regiments to restore his control over Kuots'un, Yeh could at least count on the help of T'ao Yung's force, which had finally arrived in Kuots'un. Li began the attack on June 29, and only one day later his army was in retreat. A regiment commander and a battalion commander, both underground Communists, defected with their troops, and, to match their defection, the Communist forces counterattacked with their whole strength. Li's forces soon fled in disorder and caught their breath only after the Communists halted their offensive near their home base in T'aihsien. 4 4 T h e siege gave Ch'en Y i a better excuse than intensified Japanese mop-up actions and K M T containment to move his troops to northern Kiangsu. 4 5 The reinforcements reached Kuots'un while Li Ming-yang was still smarting from his recent defeat. Ch'en's policy

Conquest and Containment

59

was to "unite with Li Ming-yang against Han Te-ch'in," but only after delivering a more damaging blow to Li's forces and driving them to their home base did he offer himself as a mediator between Li and Yeh Fei. Having further suffered the loss of about two thousand men, Li found Ch'en's offer more attractive. In exchange for the release of prisoners taken by C C P forces and the later return of some territory (including Kuots'un), Li set free all Communists and alleged Communists and promised to remain neutral in conflicts between the C C P and his nominal superior, Han Te-ch'in. 4 6 According to a p r o - K M T private source, Li Ming-yang made this fatal decision because he considered Han Te-ch'in's failure to send him reinforcements an attempt to weaken him (Pao Ming-shu 1977: 183-84). In fact, Han placed his priority in the west, and, on June 27 before Li's Kuots'un offensive, he had ordered forces westward across the Grand Canal. But the effort was foiled by the C C P (Ch'en Y i 1944, Part 2: 7 - 8 ; Hsin-ssu-chiin, Su-pei Cheng-chih-pu 1940: 2 - 7 , 12). On the Kuots'un front, Han Te-ch'in asked three garrison brigade commanders to join Li, but only one obeyed. The other two seemed to be more concerned with their own territory. Immediately after his arrival in Kuots'un, Ch'en Y i changed the name of his South Yangtze Command to North Kiangsu Command and reorganized the seven thousand C C P troops in the area into three brigades. He next set his strategic sights on Huangch'iao, a large town through which the K M T and local merchants maintained a booming grain trade between northern Kiangsu and the Yangtze delta, and where in early 1929 and 1930 local Communists had made a futile bid to construct a rural soviet. The K M T commander in the Huangch'iao region was notorious for his tax exactions and was condemned by both the C C P and the K M T (Hsia Yang 1956: 16; Pao Ming-shu 1977: 5 1 - 5 2 ; B I 1941b: 1). Ch'en Yi's decision to move 011 Huangch'iao had the secret blessing of Li Ming-yang, w h o was eager to see the Communists leave. In addition to possibly supplying Ch'en's forces with ammunition, Li ordered his troops to shoot into the air when the C C P forces moved through his garrison areas. 47 But, to reach Huangch'iao, Ch'en Yi's forces had to defeat Ch'en T'ai-yun's customs police regiment. In late July the C C P won an indecisive victory over Ch'en T'ai-yun's forces, and, when Ch'en offered to return captives and captured weapons, Ch'en T'ai-yun agreed to remain neutral in further K M T - C C P conflicts (Hsia Yang 1956: 1 6 - 1 7 ) . (See Chun-ling-

6o

Base Areas

pu, I-t'ing 1940 for K M T military intelligence reports on the events around this time.) Ch'en Yi's forces then continued their march. Without even a pretense of resistance, the commander yielded Huangch'iao to preserve his military strength (Pao Ming-shu 1977: 52). (Ho K'o-ch'ien was later executed by Han Te-ch'in.) The tax revenue available in Huangch'iao enabled the North Kiangsu Command to form an administrative apparatus. Ch'en Y i called a meeting of representatives from "various circles" and in the name of public opinion formed a provisional administrative committee of T'ung-Ju-Ching-T'ai on July 27, 1940. Kuan Wen-wei headed the committee. Meanwhile, with the help of youths from the southern Yangtze and Shanghai, Ch'en initiated a mild campaign of rent reduction and interest rate reduction. Peasant associations began to appear and then quickly spread (Hsia Yang 1956: 1 7 - 1 8 ; Sung Chih 1978b: 1 1 , 1 4 - 1 5 ) Alarmed, Han Te-ch'in began to give more attention to his southern front. O n August 21 he ordred Li Ming-yang, Ch'en T'aiyun, and the First Garrison Brigade to attack Ch'en Yi's forces; to strengthen their fighting will, he diverted part of his regular 117th Division from the northern front. Simultaneously, he imposed an economic blockade, aiming to cut the grain supply from K M T occupied northern Kiangsu. As one might suspect, neither Li Mingyang nor Ch'en Ta'i-yun made a real effort to comply with the order. Instead, the blockade provoked uproar and protest from local leaders of Huangch'iao and enabled the C C P to muster local support to repel the K M T attacks on September 4. The victory created a momentum that led to Ch'en Yi's forces destroying more garrison brigades and occupying Chiangyen, the major grain trade center north of the Salt Canal on September 13 (Ch'en Y i 1944, part 2: 8 - 9 ; Hsia Yang 1956: 1 9 - 2 0 ; BI, Ling-i-yu, no. 9, Aug. 3 - 9 , 1940; Hsin-ssu-chiin, Su-pei cheng-chih-pu 1940: 30—31; K u Hsi-chiu 1971a: 39). The loss of about 7,500 men forced Han Te-ch'in to divert more troops, and the major components of his Eighty-Ninth A r m y began to march southward. Intense pressure from the local elite, however, forced Han Te-ch'in to accept a truce based on the C C P ' s withdrawing from Chiangyen (Kuo-min ko-ming-chiin 1940: 18; Hsin-ssuchiin, Su-pei cheng-chih-pu 1940: 59). On September 30 the K M T army began to move, and Ch'en Y i announced his acceptance of the precondition but yielded the town to Li Ming-yang's forces rather than to Han Te-ch'in's. 4 8 Confident and perhaps angered by the maneuver, Han Te-ch'in decided to adhere to his plan.

Conquest and Containment

61

Han again ordered both Li Ming-yang and Ch'en Ta'i-yun to join the campaign. Both moved troops, but, after obtaining Chiangyen, Li requested that he mediate the conflict (Hsia Yang 1956: 25—26; Kuo-min ko-ming-chun 1940: 19). Han rejected Li's proposal and continued to move his troops southward, his 15 thousand men meeting little resistance. Stormy weather halted the troops for three days and, on October 4 when the offensive was resumed, the Kiangsu A r m y pushed to the outskirts of Huangch'iao, where the Third Brigade of Ch'en Yi's forces (the weakest of the three brigades) was dug in. However, the First and Second brigades of the C C P forces, which had moved to the sides of the K M T forces, ambushed and within three hours decimated a crack brigade of the Kiangsu A r m y , which had been marching in an extended long line. The K M T commander committed suicide. Ch'en Yi's victory not only assured the continued neutrality of Ch'en T'ai-yun and Li Ming-yang but also frightened the local garrison brigades into inaction. C C P forces rapidly completed their encirclement of Li Shou-wei's remaining forces, and after a day and a night of fighting, on the morning of October 6 Ch'en Y i announced that Li Shou-wei had drowned in his attempt to escape; his chief of staff and the commander of the 1 1 7 th Division were among the C C P captives. In less than three days, the K M T lost 1 1 thousand soldiers; about 5 thousand were killed, and the rest captured (Su Yii 1980: 4 1 - 4 5 ; Sun K'o-chi 1980: 7 5 - 7 6 ; Hsia Yang 1956: 2 8 - 3 0 ; Chun-lingpu, I-t'ing, I-ch'u 1940: 1—5; Pao Ming-shu 1977: 183—89; Kuo-min ko-ming-chun 1940: 21—24; Hsin-ssu-chiin, Su-pei cheng-chih-pu 1940: 63-65). In the north, southward-moving Eighth Route A r m y forces took advantage of the transfer of K M T units to attack. On October 5 they occupied Funing and then Yench'eng. Ch'en Y i ' s forces also continued northward to occupy Haian and Tungt'ai. On October 10 the two forces met (Hsia Yang 1956: 32). The long-sought linking of the N e w Fourth A r m y and the Eighth Route A r m y was achieved. Liu Shao-ch'i immediately moved the Central Plains Party Bureau to Yench'eng. With him came experienced mass workers from Huainan who would soon start a mobilization campaign to alleviate suffering during the spring food shortage. In November 1940 Ch'en Y i converted the Provisional C o m mittee of T'ung-Ju-Ching-T'ai into the broader North Kiangsu Administrative Committee to indicate his determination to stay in northern Kiangsu. Besides calling for a North Kiangsu Assembly, he

62

Base Areas

pushed for the appointment of magistrates and began to reform the lower subbureaucracy. In the newly occupied area the C C P launched a mass mobilization campaign, but evidence is not clear on exactly what happened. We only know that the C C P called for rent and interest rate concessions and declared the campaign voluntary so as not to alienate the landlords (Hsia Yang 1956: 3 2 - 3 3 ; Teng Tzu-hui 1962: 394; B I 1941b: 18). In the same month Liu Shao-ch'i organized the Central China command for all C C P forces north of the Yangtze; Yeh T'ing was commander, and Ch'en Y i deputy commander. While it prepared to clear K M T forces out of northern Kiangsu, the C C P continued to push on the political front. Six days after the Huangch'iao debacle, the K M T commander of the Third War Zone, General K u C h u t'ung, ordered Yeh T ' i n g to stop military action immediately in northern Kiangsu and withdraw Ch'en Yi's forces within one week. Ch'en Y i responded defiantly that he would stop attacking Han T e ch'in only if the K M T army ended its encirclement of the N e w Fourth A r m y in southern Anhwei. Meanwhile, to w o o the local elite, he proposed to convene an anti-Japanese conference in Haian with representatives of Han Te-ch'in, Ch'en T'ai-yun, Li Ming-yang, the N e w Fourth A r m y , and the people. B y "people" Ch'en Y i seemed to mean those among the local elite w h o had jointly sent a telegram to Chungking condemning Han Te-ch'in's imcompetence. Ch'en Y i also formally asked the K M T authorities to recognize the part of northern Kiangsu under C C P occupation as a C C P anti-Japanese guerrilla zone (Teng Tzu-hui 1962: 394—95; B I 1941b: 5—6; Kuo-min ko-ming-chiin 1940: 25—28; Sung Chih 1978b: 1 1 ) . Ch'en Y i defined the CCP-occupied area as including the rich hsiert of Nant'ung, Jukao, and Haimen. O n the very day proposed for the North Kiangsu conference, he wrested control of the area from K M T local officials. General Chi Fang, w h o was nominally K M T , played a key role. Chi was a Nant'ung native with a long record of opposition to Chiang Kai-shek. He had been appointed a member of the K M T Military Affairs Committee after the outbreak of the war of resistance. In this capacity he persuaded the K M T authorities at Nant'ung to negotiate with the C C P , and he persuaded both sides to agree to purge corrupt officials, strengthen Party affairs, centralize local finance, enforce the Three People's Principles, and grant complete freedom of the press and of association to the people. The C C P next created the Guerrilla Command for the Fourth

Conquest and Containment

63

District of Kiangsu and made Chi Fang commander. A C C P commander then led his brigade to the area, where he shortly assumed actual power as Chi's deputy. In late 1940 this deputy commander suddenly rounded up the 15 thousand KMT-affiliated forces, disarmed them, and reorganized them into a local force associated with the C C P . The C C P also replaced the politically unreliable and corrupt K M T officials with its own followers. It created an economic committee to take over financial power from all local governments. And to demonstrate its concern for the Three People's Principles, it also began to push for rent and interest reduction (BI 1941b: 12—13, 1 6 - 2 0 ; BI, Ling-i-yu, no. 27, Dec. 7 - 1 3 , 1940). The C C P forces rested for about two months and then launched what they hoped would be their last major battle in northern Kiangsu. Lo Ping-hui led his Huainan troops across the Grand Canal to join the action, but (as Liu Shao-ch'i later admitted) the C C P was not yet up to the challenge. Reinforcements from Yii Hsueh-chung's Northeast A r m y in Shantung helped Han Te-ch'in's Kiangsu A r m y deal the C C P forces a hard blow that prolonged the triangular struggle among the C C P , the K M T , and the Japanese until 1943. However, Han Te-ch'in failed to press his momentary advantage. 4 9 In late July 1940 Ch'en Y i reestablished the South Yangtze Command to direct the C C P forces in the delta (Sung Chih 1 9 7 8 : 1 1 ) . The Second Detachment managed to survive attacks by both the Japanese army and K M T forces, but it is unclear what it did in the western delta. 50 A description of Liu Shao-ch'i's mission would be incomplete without some mention of Li Hsien-nien's forces in Hupei. Until October 1939 Li spent his time primarily in expanding the regular army and local militia; he gave almost no heed to class-based mass mobilization. In October he began to establish local governments at the hsiett and lower levels. In late 1940 he finally called representatives o f t e n CCP-controlled hsien (not necessarily full hsien) to a meeting at which Hsu Chih-wei was elected head of the joint administrative office of the Honan-Hupei border area (Li Hsien-nien 1940: 2—15; B I 1939b; BI, Ling-i-yu, no. 10, A u g . 1 0 - 1 6 , 1940; no. 22, N o v . 2 - 8 , 1940; and BI, Chih-chiang, no. 36, Oct. 1 0 - 2 0 , 1940). Rent reduction was put into effect in some places in 1940, but, because of the C C P ' s inability to provide security to the peasants, it did not really make headway until 1944 (Cheng Wei-san 1944: 3; Ch'en Shao-min 1944: 28).

64

Base Areas

L

Ch'angtangfi

Kuangte

^

(

)

CHEKIANG f

Hsiaofeng*"5

r\ ^

Shihtai O

) Garrison area of New 4th Army ( C C P ) Route of march designated for New 4 t h Army and route followed by first contingent = = * » - Route of march of main body of New 4th Army Area in which CCP forces were V.' surrounded and wiped out

T'aip'ing O

Routes followed by forces that broke out of encirclement

Ch'imen O

CCP forces in rear of enemy Shehsien

I Assembly routes for KMT forces KMT encirclement of CCP forces Line reached by Japanese Japanese and puppet strongholds Railroad Provincial boundary

MAP 5. The New Fourth Army Incident as Described by the CCP in 1944 (Adaptedfrom Ch'en Yi 1944, appended map 5)

T h e Crisis o f Success: T h e N e w F o u r t h A r m y Incident Chalmers Johnson has deftly summarized the historical importance and actual nature of the N e w Fourth A r m y Incident of January 4, 1941: N o single event in the entire Sino-Japanese War did more to enhance the Communists* prestige vis-a-vis the Nationalists

Conquest and Containment

65

than the destruction of the N e w Fourth A r m y headquarters while it was "loyally following orders." The defeat made the Chinese Communists martyrs to the cause of Chinese nationalism. If we remove the nationalist coloration from the N e w Fourth A r m y Incident and regard it solely as a power struggle between two regional guerrilla forces, then it appears merely as a case of K M T retaliation following upon an extraordinary Communist provocation. (1962: 140) The actual course of such an important event, however, remains cloaked within C C P wartime propaganda (map 5); even Johnson is unable to penetrate it. Johnson also misses completely the implications of the Incident within the Party, which held Hsiang responsible and attributed the debacle to his habitual obstruction of Mao Tsetung's line. With information revealed recently, however, w e are in a position to bridge some of the apparent discrepancies between the K M T and C C P versions of the Incident (see map 6) and offer corrections to the earlier C C P version that aimed at maximum propaganda effect rather than plain truth. In January 1940 the C C P initiated national-level negotiations to soften the impact of its expansion policies. It demanded K M T recognition of its growing military strength, its newly gained administrative control, and its legal status. T o counter C C P demands, the K M T promised to grant limited recognition of the growing strength of the C C P regular army, but only if the Party refrained from organizing irregular guerrilla forces and from appointing administrators. 51 T o put pressure on the K M T , the Party pushed united front work harder than ever. A directive reiterated the tactical principles: "Utilize contradictions; win the support of the majority; attack only a very small minority; and destroy enemies one by one." It urged cadres to study the K M T elite, especially in the military, and to exploit social ties to win their friendship. The goal was " t o keep two million K M T soldiers in the w a r " and to deter the K M T from openly abandoning the United Front ( C C P , Chung-yang wei-yuan-hui, shu-chi-ch'u 1940 and op. cit., t'ung-chan-pu 1940). It was partially to boost their anti-Japanese guerrilla record that the Party launched the famous One Hundred Regiment Offensive in August 1940 along the transportation network of North China. Despite these efforts the C C P was unable to prevent the K M T

66

Base Areas L. Chang KIANCSU

tangj ,

O Liyang Wuwei

Langen

°Kuangte T'ungling

T i ) i

( )

/

Q Ch'ingyang

Yunling o Nrngkuo / V—

CHEKIANC Hsiaofeng

Shihtai O T'aip'ing /

(

^ J

Garrison area of New 4th Army (CCP) Evacuation route initially agreed upon by Ku Chu-t'ung Evacuation route designated by Chiang Kai-shek

w

Evacuation route adopted by Hsiang Ying

Shehsien o

Hsiang Ying's plan during the fighting • •

Japanese and puppet strongholds Provincial boundary

» I » _

—

Railroad Line reached by Japanese

MAP 6. The New Fourth Army Incident as Described by the CCP in ig8o (Based on W S H L , maps /-//; revised per Ho Li 1980) from taking drastic measures to protect its national and local position. The K M T ' s need for countermeasures was dramatically heightened by the linkup of the N e w Fourth Army and the Eighth Route A r m y . The K M T minister of military affairs, General Ho Ying-ch'in, ordered that the Eighth Route Army move across the Yellow R i v e r within one month and that the N e w Fourth Army follow within two months (Kung-tang p'o-huai 1941: 112—15). Undaunted, the C C P requested a retraction of the order, though indicating a willingness to withdraw from South Yangtze (op. cit.: 121—27). Internal party

Conquest and Containment

67

documents s h o w that the Party was determined to hold north o f the Y a n g t z e . It tried to counter the K M T demands b y emphasizing the legitimacy o f organizing anti-Japanese guerrilla forces, the local nature o f the C C P forces, the famine n o r t h o f the Y e l l o w R i v e r , and K M T repression o f the C C P ( K u o H u a - l u n 1973, v o l . 4: 2 1 0 - 1 2 ; H o Li 1980: 101). O n D e c e m b e r 7 C h i a n g Kai-shek lost patience, ordered his troops in the T h i r d W a r Z o n e to prepare f o r possible

CCP

defiance, and t w o days later put his personal prestige on the line b y ordering the Eighth R o u t e A r m y to m o v e north o f the Y e l l o w R i v e r and the N e w Fourth A r m y north o f the Y a n g t z e b y D e c e m b e r 31; the N e w Fourth A r m y was to be north o f the Y e l l o w R i v e r b y January 31, 1941 ( K u o Hua-lun 1973,4: 190). N e g o t i a t i o n s continued at the regional level. In late O c t o b e r the nominal c o m m a n d e r o f the N e w Fourth A r m y , Y e h T ' i n g , visited his f e l l o w alumnus o f the Paoting Military A c a d e m y , General S h a n g kuan Yun-hsiang, and discussed w i t h h i m the evacuation o f the N e w Fourth A r m y f r o m regions south o f the Y a n g t z e . Y e h demanded 2 million yuan in cash, complete reequipment o f the a r m y , and 5 million rounds o f bullets. S h a n g - k u a n referred these demands to K u C h u - t ' u n g . K u refused to negotiate but promised to g i v e Y e h T ' i n g 50 thousand yuan to help in the evacuation. T h e story thereafter differs m a r k e d l y as b e t w e e n the C C P and K M T : C C P materials stress Hsiang Y i n g ' s disobedience to M a o ' s order to p r o m p t l y evacuate the N e w Fourth A r m y , and K M T materials stress the C C P ' s use o f the evacuation as an excuse to obtain a m m u n i t i o n and financial support. Y e h later told his K M T captors that the Party C e n t e r had reversed its earlier decision and ordered h i m to stay in order to extract a K M T concession o f a m m u n i t i o n and funds. C C P materials report that o n D e c e m b e r 26, 1940, the Party C e n t e r severely censured Hsiang for his " d e l u s i o n " o f K M T cooperation. M a o ' s directive o f f o u r days later, it should be noted, does not rule out the possibility that Y e h told the truth. 5 2 Y e h T ' i n g w o n K u C h u - t ' u n g ' s agreement in early D e c e m b e r 1940 that the N e w Fourth A r m y m o v e directly to northern Kiangsu via Hsuanch'eng and L i y a n g . H o w e v e r , in light o f the military developments in northern K i a n g s u , C h i a n g Kai-shek ordered instead that the N e w Fourth A r m y cross in A n h w e i lest they j o i n w i t h C h ' e n Y i ' s forces. 5 3 W h e n Hsiang Y i n g evacuated about t w o thousand civilian affiliates t h r o u g h the Y a n g t z e delta route o n D e c e m b e r 23, 1940, h o w e v e r , K M T troops did not harass t h e m . 5 4 Y e h T ' i n g made no progress, and in northern Y a n g t z e Liu Shao-

68

Base Areas

ch'i's failure to occupy Ts'aotien, northern Kiangsu, boded ill. Since the K M T had begun to send reinforcements along the Lunghai Railroad, the Communist troops in North Yangtze had to prepare for a two-front war. On December 31, 1940, Mao Tse-tung ordered Hsiang Ying to evacuate the New Fourth Army from southern Anhwei immediately. He urged Liu to prepare for a K M T offensive and instructed Hsiang "to utilize various contradictions to weaken Chiang Kai-shek's and the KMT's determination" to use military force ( C K T S 1979, 4: 221-22; BI 1941a: 288). Four days later, on the night of January 4, 1941, Hsiang Ying suddenly started his troops from Yunling. Ku Chu-t'ung had withdrawn four divisions from the Japanese front to reinforce the two K M T garrison divisions around Yunling (Leng Hsin 1967: 81—83; Ch'en Yi 1944, part 1:3). To avoid clashing with the K M T troops in the lowlands, Hsiang Ying decided on his own to move his troops first southward and then to the delta. Before dawn the next day, the troops crossed the chilly Ch'ingyi River in a winter drizzle. Delayed by torrential rains and muddy roads, the dispersed C C P troops rendezvoused with difficulty at Maolin on the evening of January 5, the same day the vanguard force was clashing with K M T forces in P'iling, about 50 miles south of Yunling. The bad news failed to deter Hsiang, who decided to fight through P'iling to reach Chingte if necessary. A day's rest restored the physical strength of the C C P soldiers, and they again marched southward. When he was unable to break out of the K M T blockade, Hsiang suddenly changed his battle plan to attack T'aip'ing to open an escape route to the Huang Mountains, but the resultant confusion forced Hsiang to cancel his order and go back to Maolin for regrouping. 55 A few miles from Maolin, at the mouth of a rugged valley, the C C P forces ran into strong K M T formations and met their final fate (Chang Yii-hui 1962: 109-12; Ch'en Ts'ung-yi 1950: 10-14). On January 9, with imminent defeat stirring discontent among high-ranking officers, Mao telegrammed Yeh T'ing to take over command of the retreating New Fourth Army (Ts'ao Tan-hui 1962: 402). The next day, with fighting still raging, Hsiang Ying left headquarters in an allegedly unauthorized attempt to escape the K M T noose. With him were such high-ranking Communists as Yuan Kuo-p'ing, Chou Tzu-k'un, Li Yi-mang, and Yang Fan. At noon on January 11 Hsiang and his companions returned, perhaps in failure. Yeh put all of them under surveillance and wired Yenan, accusing

Conquest and Containment

69

them of desertion. On the same day the Yenan leaders endorsed Yeh's action and ordered him and J a o Shu-shih, deputy secretary of the Southeastern Party Bureau, to take over full Party power (BI 1941a: 315-16). The circumstances under which Hsiang Y i n g lost his power remain mysterious. When Yeh T'ing was talking to his own K M T captors later on, he accused Hsiang and his " g a n g " of "cowardly desertion," and he included the subsequent commissar of the N e w Fourth A r m y , Jao Shu-shih, in his charge. In fact, he accused Hsiang and his "cowardly cohorts" of a further attempt at desertion on the night ofjanuary 1 2 . 5 6 Whether or not the charges were true, Hsiang and his close followers succeeded in eluding the K M T ' s hunt and refused to join Liu Shao-ch'i in northern Kiangsu. According to Japanese intelligence, Hsiang died around March 10, 1941, six weeks after the incident. A Red Guard document says he was murdered by a bodyguard who wanted the Party gold he was carrying. 5 7 Yeh T'ing could provide no help to the besieged C C P troops. On January 12 K M T forces drove them from the highlands and trapped them in a valley, from which only a few hundred escaped. The next day Yeh decided to make an appeal in person to Shang-kuan Yun-hsiang, the K M T commander. He was immediately arrested, and, although the besieged C C P forces continued to fight, by January 13 most of them, about nine thousand, had been killed or captured. 58 The publicity given the C C P defeat obscures the actual situation. About nine-tenths of the N e w Fourth A r m y was already operating outside southern Anhwei, so the K M T victory did not paralyze C C P forces in central China. 5 9 It hardly even compensated for the heavy K M T losses, although the truncation of C C P leadership did require the Party to provide replacements to prevent pessimism spreading among the ranks. On January 16 Liu Shao-ch'i called a military conference in Yench'eng, appointed Ch'en Y i acting commander, and ordered the speedup of base area construction throughout central China. On January 20 Yenan officially announced the appointment of Liu and Ch'en, respectively, as political commissar and acting commander of the N e w Fourth A r m y . 6 0 Within three months, Liu and Ch'en could claim to have completed the reorganization of C C P forces in central China. (Table 1 shows the major officers of the forces and their operating areas about 1941.) T o facilitate base area construction, the C C P divided northern Kiangsu into three administrative regions, Yen-Fu, Huai-Hai and

S


« I o "7 S .s i . s - ó g 3 3 3 U X ! ! > • >

Z

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oc c M c i " JS -c T U a 60:5 C 1/3 3 O j: 3

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3RD WAR ZONE

Shangjao (Kwanghsin) JAPANESE Forces 1 1 1 CCP Forces 11th Army 8RA 13th Army N4A 15D 11Bs 1D 4D 17D 12Bs 2D SO 22D 13Bs 3D 116D 17Bs * Direction of Japanese troop movements

;

KMT Forces Shantung-Kiangsu War Zone 89A 99B (Independent 6B?) LM (Li Ming-yang Army) 3rd War Zone 10CA 86A N30D 192D WTN ( Wen-T'ai-Ning Garrison Forces) GZ Guerrilla Zone 23CA 50A Line between 11th and 13th armies 21A responsibility zones ¿ f f f f i Front tine

MAP II. Mop-up

Campaigns by the Japanese Thirteenth Army in

1940 and 1941 (Based on Boeicho 1975, 3: 374)

Challenge and Survival

81

army also suffered a loss of about 4 thousand men and was uprooted from Hsinghua and Tungt'ai where the Kiangsu government was located. This blow to the K M T Kiangsu army enabled the N e w Fourth A r m y to expand their control of northern Kiangsu and gave them access to the grain and salt resources of the area. During the campaign in Luhsi, Huainan, from March 1, 1 9 4 1 , the K M T and the C C P suspended conflict with each other and managed to survive well, but the campaign from March 20, 1941, to March 27, 1941, was a big success for the Japanese army. K u C h u t'ung had concentrated about 40 thousand K M T troops to the west of Lake T'ai to reinforce Han Te-ch'in in northern Kiangsu, but the Japanese attack put them to flight, dooming any hope Han Te-ch'in might have had of help from the Third War Zone. 1 These sweep operations, however, should not be viewed as a shift of Japanese war priorities in central China. In November 1940 there were two Japanese armies, the Eleventh and the Thirteenth, in Central China. There were 218 thousand troops in the Eleventh A r m y , the only Japanese forces in China capable of fighting strategic campaigns; it faced the K M T regular army in the middle Yangtze. The Thirteenth A r m y in the lower Yangtze had 78 thousand men; it was primarily concerned with the 300 thousand troops of the K M T Third War Z o n e and secondarily with the 40 to 100 thousand C C P troops in eastern China. 2 Documents of late 1940 provide no hint of any change in Japanese priorities, at least as concerns the perceptions of the Japanese commander of the Thirteenth A r m y (Boeicho 1975, 3: 373-75)On November 15, 1940, the deputy chief of staff of the Imperial Headquarters in T o k y o , Lieutenant General Sawada Shigeru, was transferred to eastern China to command the Thirteenth A r m y . Wang Ching-wei's Chinese puppet government was still unable to exercise meaningful authority even in the vicinity of its capital at Nanking, and Sawada, concerned with the implications of protracted war in China, seemed eager to strengthen Wang's government and free the Japanese A r m y from garrison duty by removing guerrilla resistance. Fully aware of the futility of short-term mop-ups, he ordered a search for alternatives (Boeicho 1975, 3: 291, 415). Lieutenant Colonel Haruke Yoshitane, a staff member of Major General Kagesa Sadaaki's advisory organization to the puppet g o v ernment and a man w h o shared Sawada's concern, came up with an answer that was derived partly from a close study of Tseng Kuo-fan's

82

Base Areas

nineteenth-century suppression of the Taiping Rebellion and partly f r o m C h i a n g Kai-shek's five campaigns against the C C P in the 1930s. It called for active participation of Chinese collaborators in the political aspects of the plan, while leaving the military aspect to the Japanese A r m y . After the military phase was completed, Chinese collaborators w e r e to m o v e immediately to build a political system at the grassroots, w h i c h was to include a comprehensive p r o g r a m of self-government ( j i c h i ) , self-defense (jiei), and e c o n o m i c selfi m p r o v e m e n t ( j i s e i ) . As the Chinese m a d e progress, the Japanese A r m y w o u l d gradually w i t h d r a w . T o be called " M o d e l Peace Z o n e s " ( m o h a n t e k i wahei chiku), the pacified areas w o u l d then serve to w i n the Chinese over to the p u p p e t g o v e r n m e n t ' s a v o w e d cause of peace. As a concrete expression of the policy, a b a m b o o palisade w o u l d be built to insulate a chosen zone f r o m the surrounding area. T h e Japanese A r m y w o u l d then u n d e r t a k e an intensive m o p - u p campaign to destroy resistance; their Chinese collaborators would develop a pao-chia system, a police system, a secret service system, and a selfdefense c o r p s — a n d , w i t h the restoration of peace, w o u l d undertake e c o n o m i c policies to i m p r o v e the residents' lives. Because o f limited m a n p o w e r and financial resources, the first site chosen was in the Yangtze delta, the five rich hsien of Ch'angshu, Chiangyin, K'unshan, Wuhsi, and T'aits'ang. T h e plan divided the designated area into three subareas, each to be subjected to intensive rural pacification for t w o m o n t h s . A f t e r six m o n t h s the Japanese would presumably be able to free themselves to carry out the same plan in areas outside Shanghai, H a n g c h o w , a n d N a n t ' u n g (B5eicho 1975,3:414—16; 1968, 2: 6 0 0 - 6 0 2 ) .

M a j o r General Kagesa endorsed the n e w plan and secured the support o f W a n g C h i n g - w e i and General Hata Shunroku, the c o m m a n d e r o f Japanese forces in China. Internal bickering within the N a n k i n g g o v e r n m e n t , h o w e v e r , m a d e it difficult for W a n g to o r g a nize the Chinese side. O n l y on M a y 22 was he finally able to announce the f o r m a t i o n o f a rural pacification c o m m i t e e , and then he packed it w i t h leaders o f all factions, thus rendering it i m p o t e n t and letting p o w e r slide into the hands of its chief secretary, Police Minister Li Shih-ch'iin. A Russian-trained intelligence expert f o r m e r l y in C C P service, Li had displayed the same lack of political loyalty as W a n g himself. H e had surrendered t o the K M T in the early 1930s and then to the Japanese a r o u n d 1938. N o t o r i o u s for his assassination w a r w i t h

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and Survival

83

K M T intelligence agents in Shanghai in 1940, he w o n W a n g C h i n g wei's support only because he was the only civilian official w h o could supply personnel for the rural pacification plan; the Japanese, for the same reason, reluctantly accepted him (BSeicho 1968, 2: 602; Toa 1941: 6 - 7 ; Nagano Akira 1942: 10). Little is k n o w n about the people Li Shih-ch'ün recruited. H e transferred some of the intelligence agents to Soochow to f o r m an intelligence-gathering n e t w o r k there, an operation considered essential to the success of rural pacification because of the difficulty of distinguishing anti-Japanese elements f r o m ordinary Chinese (Boeicho 1968, 2: 604). He also started training classes. About three thousand young people were recruited into class for police w o r k in Soochow. Another t w o thousand recruits were specially trained in N a n k i n g for administrative w o r k , pao-chia formation, and economic blockade management (ibid.). T h e majority, according to Japanese sources, came f r o m N o r t h China. T h e y were supposed to do political and propaganda w o r k a m o n g the people, but their lack of knowledge of the local dialect diminished their value ( N a g a n o Akira 1942: 20). A former puppet official reported that a ranking m e m b e r , Yuan Shu, was actually an underground C o m m u n i s t w h o later served the P R C as a Japan specialist (Chin Hsiung-pai 1959, 3: 2 7 - 3 1 ) . Li Shihch'ün's difficulty in finding qualified personnel was also reflected in his use of previous /i5ie«-level administrators and puppet K M T party workers, both groups that gave their first loyalty to Li's rivals within the puppet g o v e r n m e n t . 3 Chinese personnel carried out the pacification in the field, but they were closely supervised by the Japanese under Lieutenant Colonel Haruke, w h o had his office installed in Soochow and continued as the brains of the operation (Nagano Akira 1942: 12; "Seig5," 1941b: 22; Boeicho 1968, 2: 602).

Enforcement of Japanese Policy T h e first area chosen—about 1,800 square kilometers covering most of T'aits'ang and K'unshan and a small part of Ch'angshu and Wuhsien—included some of China's richest agricultural land. A b o u t 11 thousand anti-Japanese guerrillas had been operating there. T h e K M T Loyal National Salvation A r m y , at Wuchin, Wuhsi, and W u -

84

Base Areas

hsien, devoted itself to the disruption of transportation; the N e w Fourth A r m y , to the north in Chiangyin and Ch'angshu, concentrated on constructing a base area. The puppet government functioned merely as an ineffective tax-collecting institution (Boeicho 1968, 2: 604, 606; Toa 1941: 3). On July 3, 1941, ten Japanese battalions, about 5 thousand men, occupied all market towns in the area and began to construct a 125-kilometer bamboo palisade along such natural barriers as waterways and hills, some portions strengthened with electrified barbed wire. Viewing towers were installed within sight of each other and in each administrative subarea, and the Japanese declared that they would shoot anyone violating the blockade. People could pass through checkpoints, but only after a thorough search of body and luggage. Soon about 15 thousand puppet forces and 2 thousand model police took over the bamboo palisade and joined the Japanese effort to spread their influence to the surrounding villages. Military density reached a record high of 12 soldiers per square kilometer, or 1 for each 51 residents. 4 Forewarned, most of the N e w Fourth Army and the Loyal National Salvation A r m y left before the construction of the palisade, so the Japanese army and the puppet forces instituted a massive manhunt with the help of Li Shih-ch'iin's intelligence workers. The extensive use of defectors and prisoners in locating underground antiJapanese elements caught both the K M T and the C C P oft" guard. Within two months the Japanese killed 237, captured 2,008, and subverted 776 ( " S e i g o " 1941b: 23). Ch'en Y i confirms the Japanese report of success. About one-fourth of the C C P forces, he says, were lost because they underestimated Japanese determination (1943: 17). At the end of the action, individual Japanese could move about without military protection, and neither the C C P nor the K M T was ever able to revive significant anti-Japanese activities in the area (Boeicho 1968, 2: 606-7).

The Japanese Political Alternative In sharp contrast to the Japanese mop-ups, rural pacification called for a sustained effort to impose administrative control right down to the pao and chia. Special programs were initiated in Nanking to provide 140 pao-chia workers, 200 pao-chia heads, 100 hsiang or chen

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85

heads, and 60 higher administrative officers (Toa 1941: 8; "Seigô kôsaku no seika" 1941: 5 - 6 ) . These were not enough, and Li Shihch'iin found it necessary to retain many former puppet officials, and at the level of special ch'ii (t'e-pieh-ch'u, special district) and higher he was forced to rely almost completely on followers of the puppet Kiangsu governor K a o Kuan-wu. Immediately after the blockade, Li Shih-ch'iin's chief aide, Chang Pei-sheng, assumed responsibility for the whole area. As functional equivalents of the previous hsien, he installed four special district officers, under which were 19 ch'ii administrations, which in turn supervised 292 hsiang or chen offices ( " S e i g ô " 1941a: 1 6 - 1 7 ) . Chang immediately moved to enroll the whole population in the paochia system. His achievement is calculated in table 2.

TABLE 2 The Formation of Pao and Chia in the Rural Pacification Area of South Yangtze, Summer ¡941 Govt, of special ch'ii Wuhsien Ch'angshu K'unshan T'aits'ang Total

No. of

No. of

No. of

No. of

ch'ii

hsiang

pao

chia

3 4 6

41 134 23 94

19

292

6

No. of households

Population

295

2,870

29,710

1,291

12,897

132,866

116,931 537,896

1,321

128 699

6,883

14.355 71,503

63,841 298,805

2.413

23,971

248,434

1,017,473

SOURCES: China, Ch'ing-hsiang wci-yuan-hui 1942, part 1: 3 - 5 , part 3: 4, part 5: 3 - 4 , and part 6: 3 - 9 .

The subbureaucrats w h o staffed the administrative system came overwhelmingly from the Chinese traditional elite, if the case of nearby Wuhsi is typical. O f the hsiang, chen, pao, and chia heads of Wuhsi hsien, 50 percent were part merchant and part landlord and resided in cities and towns. Schoolteachers, medical doctors, and former petty officials supplied 25 percent. Only 25 percent were drawn from agricultural backgrounds and, as the Japanese report explains parenthetically, were mostly landlords. At the pao-chia level, 40 percent were merchants and 15 percent from other nonagricultural backgrounds, so, despite better agrarian representation at this level, only 45 percent of pao and chia heads were from the agrarian sector, and the majority of those were landlords (Nagano Akira 1942: 16).

86

Base Areas

The working morale of the subbureaucrats was extremely low. When Ishihama Tomoyuki flew from T o k y o in summer 1942 to inspect the effectiveness of the plan, he found that he seldom saw anyone working in the offices. Because hsiang and chen heads previously had used their authority to their own advantage, the Japanese effort to centralize tax power in a separate tax agency caused protests. About 90 percent of the grassroots officials stayed on in office only because their resignations were rejected (Ishihama Tomoyuki 1944: 41—42; Nagano Akira 1942: 16). A n d the magistrates of special districts were successful in their protest against their loss of tax power; in the end they were again allowed to control the collection of land tax (Shanhai josei nippo, N o v . 1942: 28—29). Here an interesting parallel can be drawn between puppet and earlier K M T efforts to centralize tax power. The Japanese planner visualized a pao-chia system functioning simultaneously in both directions—downward for directives and upward for public opinion; each pao and chia was required to have monthly meetings with participation by members from lower levels. But the system ended up, as usual, as an arm of the bureaucracy rather than as an organ of the public will (Nagano Akira 1942: 16). The Japanese later tried to solve the problem by fostering mass associations and a puppet K M T party organization. In September 1942 there were 759 mass associations in the rural pacification areas of South Yangtze Phase I to Phase III (see map 12). That only 19 were classified as peasant associations shows how limited Japanese penetration of the countryside was. The Japanese investigator complained that these mass associations were mostly revived prewar guilds and associations that retained all their undesirable qualities. Merchant association leaders would seldom consult with labor association representatives. The peasant associations bitterly opposed and obstructed Japanese-sponsored cooperatives. The so-called mass associations operated only according to narrow group interests. T o the Japanese, this meant unnecessary discord and no flow of public opinion. Strong group consciousness also stiffened resistance to Japanese efforts to extract contributions for the promotion of medical services, refugee relief, and orphanages—efforts made, ironically, in order to w o o broader popular support {Shanhai josei nippo, Dec. 1942: 12). The construction of a puppet party organization also proved a failure. B y the end of 1941 the effort was still largely confined to urban areas. Only by reorganizing the "loving home societies" in

Challenge

87

and Survival

Provincial

boundary

Railroad

Yangtze Norm Yangtze Shanghai Special Municipality

Anhwet

(E)

Chekleng

(F)

MAP 12. Japanese Rural Pacification, 1941 to 1943 (Based on Boeicho 1975, 3: 420) 1942 did the Party gain a foothold in the villages. There were 5,324 party members in the 82 ch'ti of 11 special districts. Japanese intelligence reports estimated that the figure was double the number in existence during the Nanking decade and 1.7 times the number before pacification. But, given a total area population of around 2.5 million, the achievement was woefully inadequate (Shanhai josei nippo, Dec. 1942: 10; Ishihama Tomoyuki 1944: 79—80; "Seig5" 1941b: 34). The "loving home societies" were organized to assist the government. Members were recruited from among those considered to be the best among the common people, ideally about 60 people between 18 and 45 from each hsiang, or about 900 from each ch'ti. In 1942 the membership in the eleven special districts numbered 34,700, approximately 4 percent of the adult male population. Only half of the townships (hsiang and chen) had a branch {Shanhaijosei nippo, Dec. 1942: 11; China, Ch'ing-hsiang wei-yuan-hui 1942, part 3: 1 3 - 1 4 ) .

88

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It seems the Japanese only succeeded in converting a small number of the societies into grassroots party organizations. However, given the problems facing an administration imposed from above, the Japanese still made giant strides. Their ability to enroll the population in the pao-chia system, to require them to form mutual guarantee groups, and to maintain strict surveillance through the use of identity cards seriously handicapped anti-Japanese activists, particularly in combination with the development of a self-defense network.

The Japanese Military

Alternative

A self-defense network was also constructed within the blockaded area. The accurate census and household registration obtained by enforcement of the pao-chia system enabled puppet officials to enroll male adults from 18 to 45. Training classes were given in the ch'ti office with the help of the Japanese military police. The hsiang or chen head was ordered to select four or five men for training in basic military skills and in providing support for the armed forces. The returned trainees were then used as instructors and commanders in the self-defense corps. The self-defense corps members were also required to patrol in winter and keep watch from the lookout towers in each pao. Contrary to Chinese practice, the Japanese prohibited carrying guns on duty. Many pao-chia heads protested loudly—they could see no use in a militia without guns (Nagano Akira 1942: 15, 17; " S e i g o " 1941b: 2 9~3°; Ch'en Y i 1943: 14). Moreover, there was already strong public resistance to wasting time in unpaid militia duty. The Japanese planners conceived of the self-defense corps as the self-defense hierarchy's bottom rung—the detector of serious trouble. The police were to handle criminal cases, and the peace preservation forces to counter mobs and small-scale intrusions from the outside. Implicit in the scheme was control of weapons. Strangely enough, no Japanese information exists on this issue. If Japanese official policy elsewhere is indicative, the absence of such efforts can only mean that the depletion of private stores of guns by anti-Japanese elements had already made it unnecessary (B5eicho 1968, 1: 121). A few words are necessary concerning the state of the overall self-defense network. In early September 1941 about three thousand

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89

police were organized as shown in table 3. Presumably the level crucial to police operations was the ch'ti. Because the office, branch office, and police station were located in separate hsiang and chen, we find police installations in 75.5 percent of the hsiang and chen in the pacification area. With another t w o thousand mobile police and an unknown number of secret service employees, the police network seems to have been quantitatively adequate. What troubled the Japanese authorities was its reliability, and they worried about infiltration (Ishihama T o m o y u k i 1944: 41).

TABLE 3 Geographical Distribution of Puppet Police and Police Organizations, September 1941 Special ch'it

No. of police

Ch'angshu T'aits'ang Wuhsien K'unshan

1,600 750 350 300

6 6

20 10

3 2

4 3

50 35 10 10

Total

3,000

17

37

105

SOURCE:

Police offices

Branch police offices

Police stations

" S c i g o " 1941b: 2 8 - 2 9 .

The peace preservation forces were put under the command of the director of special districts ( " S e i g o " 1941b: 28). When a rumor about regularizing the self-defense corps arose, more than half of its members in Anchen fled outside the blockade (Nagano Akira 1942: 17). Perhaps because of peasant unwillingness to serve as soldiers, the Japanese had to rely on captives and defectors, so both the quality and political loyalty of the peace preservation forces left much to be desired. Japanese investigators were haunted by the specter of collusion between these forces and their former anti-Japanese comrades (Shanhai josei nippo, Dec. 1942: 14; " S e i g o " 1941b: 27-28). The self-defense network was buttressed by the puppet forces. In their reports, the Japanese seldom failed to deplore the puppet troops' poor discipline, which they judged much worse than the C C P forces and no better than the K M T guerrillas. One Japanese investigator simply called them "half-reformed bandits" who illegally confiscated travelers' goods and belongings at checkpoints, extorted and accepted bribes, connived at smuggling, and even looted

90

Base Areas

in disguise. Their political dependability was also questionable (Nagano Akira 1942:19; " S e i g ö " 1941b: 31). O n l y four days after the Japanese began the second phase of rural pacification in the Yangtze delta, the Thirteenth A r m y had to disarm a whole Soochow puppet division whose officers were found to be in conspiracy with the Loyal National Salvation A r m y (B5eicho 1975: 421; "Seigö" 1940c: 9 0 91). This c o m p o u n d e d Japanese paranoia about using puppet forces to relieve Japanese units on garrison duty.

The Japanese Economic Alternative T h e Japanese rural pacification scheme—economic blockade, cooperatives, and taxation p o l i c y — w a s inadequate to develop popular support. T h e b a m b o o palisade halted all business activities in the area. T o travel through checkpoints, a native resident required only a citizen identification card, which the Japanese issued after taking the census and forming the pao and chia. But, to ship goods in and out, he needed documents f r o m the Japanese expeditionary army, the special service organization, and the special district office. T h e difficulty of securing documents, the lack of an effective organization to compete with Japanese merchants, and the caprices of checkpoint personnel all depressed Chinese trade ("Seigo" 1941b: 31; Ishihama T o m o y u k i 1944: 88-90; China, Ch'ing-hsiang wei-yuanhui 1942, part 1: 1 9 - 2 6 , and part 3: 37—39). However, smuggling continued, although on a m u c h smaller scale ([To] Seigo kosaku shireibu 1941: 6 5 - 6 6 , 98). T h e commercial standstill led the peasants to fall back on the practice of economic self-sufficiency. Japanese merchants used special privileges to depress the price of blockaded grains and cotton, and the blockade itself drove up the price of imports necessary to commerce. T h e use of chemical fertilizer, machines, and p u m p irrigation became a rarity. Incense replaced matches in building fires. Peasants began to make their o w n soy sauce, soy paste, rice wine, and cooking oil; to handweave cotton cloth; and to g o back to bartering for essential goods in the villages or outside the walled cities ("Seigo" 1941b: 3 4 - 3 5 ; N a g a n o Akira 1942: 2 2 - 2 4 ; O g u c h i G o r o 1942: 68; Shanhai josei nippo, Dec. 1942: 8). It is difficult to assess the extent of this economic atavism; many

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91

poor peasants may have not been affected at all. But, in the highly commercialized economy of the Yangtze delta, w e can be sure that it did not make thejapanese popular. When the Japanese merchants' use of compulsory purchase at depressed prices intensified local disaffection, the authorities tried to introduce peasant cooperatives to gain popularity by eliminating the "exploitation" of middlemen (China, Ch'ing-hsiang wei-yuan-hui 1942, part 3: 7 1 , and part 5: 28). But the cooperatives soon degenerated into instruments of the controlled economy; they merely distributed rationed goods and purchased agricultural products. Instead of benefiting the poor, they gave the landlords control of local finances (Nagano Akira 1942: 2 3 - 2 4 ; Oguchi Goro 1942: 41—47). Rural pacification seemed to improve tax collection in the long term. In the first half of 1942 the rural pacification authority collected 9,410,000 yuan in land tax and needed about 13,980,000 yuan from the central government. In the second half of the year the land tax was sufficient to cover expenditures, which amounted to 45,460,000 yuan.5 The major victims of this Japanese success seem to have been the landlords. The landlords of Ch'angshu, Wuhsien, T'aits'ang, and K'unshan, because they lived in urban areas, traditionally had relied mostly on professional rent collectors based in bursaries (tsu-chan). Thejapanese developed a system of collecting taxes and rent simultaneously and converted the bursaries to official use. They thus assured themselves of tax resources, but the use of officially deflated prices and the collection of a high administrative fee pressed the landlords hard. In general, thejapanese took 15 percent of the landlord's rent income as tax and another 15 percent as commission. They commuted rents in kind to cash and deliberately set the rice price low. 6 This meant the landlord received much less than in an open market. Ch'en Y i attributed the landlords' second thoughts about collaboration to this policy of tax collection. After experiencing Japanese rule, they considered the Communists' rent concessions or rent reduction a lesser evil. 7 The self-cultivator fared much better in the new tax system. He only needed to pay 2.$ to 5 percent of his produce as tax. But tenants were discontented because the puppet government interposed itself between them and their landlords. Moreover, in the beginning of rural pacification a tax collection commitee was created in the special districts with three tax officials, one representative of the landlords, and one representative of the tenants (who invariably turned out to

92

Base Areas

have previously functioned as a middleman between landlords and other tenants). Nonetheless, the inclusion of such a representative represented a gain for tenants' interests and in July 1942, when the magistrates of special districts were given the power to collect taxes with the help of a committee made up only of officials and landlordgentry, even this gain was lost. The Japanese investigator of peasants' responses considered this reversal insignificant because the tenants still benefited from the abolition of some previous surtaxes (iQ42-nen 1942: 7; Chung-hua min-kuo, Hsin kuo-min cheng-fu 1942: 1 6 1 , 175; Shanhaijosei nippo, N o v . 1942: 26-30). His finding may be valid, but it symbolizes the demise of the initial spirit of economic selfimprovement.

CCP

Countermeasures

The Communists knew about the rural pacification campaign in advance, but, because they mistook it for a short-term mop-up, they were as surprised as the K M T at the intensity and persistence of the new Japanese method of consolidation. The C C P evacuated the bulk of its guerrilla forces to safety outside the blockade, but they were unable to maintain large-scale anti-Japanese resistahce in the area. Guerrilla harassment on the borders helped little in relieving pressure on the trapped Communist underground (Ch'en Y i 1943: 1 5 - 1 8 ) . Japanese pacification in the Chiangyin-Wuhsi-Ch'angshu areas had at first pushed C C P guerrilla forces farther west in the Yangtze delta, but, when the Japanese followed along, the dramatic reductions in the Japanese forces enabled the C C P to maintain a small guerrilla presence within the blockade. The Japanese army now was allegedly using one regiment for a j o b to which they had assigned two divisions before. T o boost morale, the Communists stepped up guerrilla attacks on the periphery and also sent five thousand soldiers from northern Kiangsu to the M a o Mountains and Lake T'ai. 8 But the C C P could make only limited headway in reclaiming their former guerrilla area. When the Japanese continued their pacification westward along the Nanking-Shanghai Railroad, the Communists took a lesson from their own experience in the Wuhsien-Ch'angshu-K'unshanT'aits'ang area by simplifying their administration and localizing

Challenge and Survival

93

their military forces. The hsien staffs of Wuchin, Chiangyin, and Wuhsi were reduced to 15; those for smaller hsien were lower (9 and 6 at Hsipei and Yiihsi, for example); and the ch'ii governments were allotted only 4 staff members beyond an unspecified number of financial affairs cadres. Most administrative cadres were sent to the hsiang level to organize guerrilla resistance, and the rest were put on alert for evacuation with the military forces should the Japanese make an assault. Evacuation was never total; some "gray" cadres whose C C P affiliation was secret were left to continue their work among the masses ("Seigo" 1941c: 69—72). Billeting in civilian houses was prohibited to protect the populace from Japanese reprisal, cadres being advised to spend the night in mulberry orchards and rice fields. Constantly on the move, they were ordered to stay within their own jurisdiction—or if the situation did not allow such an option, near the border—so that they could return quickly. After April 1941 the Sixth Division of the N e w Fourth Army operated in the Yangtze delta. The Communists were ordered to deregularize themselves into local forces, that is, to divide into units smaller than a battalion and integrate with the defense system below the hsien level. Companies and platoons were allowed outside the blockade. Inside, the unit was to be smaller yet. The prescribed tactic was to make surprise attacks during the evening or the night that were to last no more than 20 minutes and were to be aimed at Chinese collaborators, traitors, spies, and individual Japanese. The C o m m u nists expected to inflict only one or two casualties in each engagement. What was important was survival, the continuation of guerrilla resistance, and the accumulation of small victories ("Seig5" 1941c: 66-67). One mission within the blockade area was to mobilize the natives to form their own guerrilla forces. Administrative cadres and guerrilla units were organized into teams or dispatched to hsiang to persuade the residents to join in C C P guerrilla activities. The Communists had made little progress in militia construction in the Yangtze delta, so they now tried to push this work with new vigor. But the Communists urged their cadres to expect the masses to carry out passive resistance only, since they were faced by overwhelming odds. Slogans thus focused on negative, rather than on positive, action: " D o not take posts in the pao-chia system. Do not use citizen cards. Do not welcome the enemy forces. D o not join the enemy

94

Base Areas

organizations. A n d do not report on C C P activities." T o i m p r o v e popular response to the slogans, the C o m m u n i s t s also made use o f calculated terrorism. A distinction was made between willing and unwilling collaborators; only w h e n a collaborator repeatedly ignored the C C P ' s demands and warnings did the C o m m u n i s t s m a k e a show o f violence. T h e n , to minimize indiscriminate terror, the Party ordered that hsiett authority or higher had to authorize an execution ( " S e i g 5 " 1941c: 67-68). T h e moderation o f these policies is reminiscent o f the T h r e e Years' Guerrilla W a r , w h e n a similar policy was adopted t o w a r d the social elite, including landlords and secret society leaders. According to a Japanese report, there seems to have been a short, local radicalization o f C C P policies. In early 1941 about forty landlords w e r e executed. T h e C C P in fact subjected this case to severe criticism within the N e w Fourth A r m y , and, in his effort to summarize the C C P counterpacification experience in the Yangtze delta, C h ' e n Y i also gave the curbing o f leftist excesses top priority. T h e r e was, h o w e v e r , one special g r o u p o f collaborators; t o w a r d those f r o m outside a c o m m u nity, the C C P made its policy o f assassination quite inflexible (Ch'en Y i 1943: 18; Kachugensei 1942: 192).

Effect of the Japanese Pacification

Policy

Despite the C C P countermeasures, the Japanese A r m y succeeded in restoring order in the Yangtze delta rural pacification area. In early September 1 9 4 1 about 1 3 3 thousand Chinese returned to their h o m e communities. In April 1942 600 thousand out o f a total population o f 5 million w e r e returned r e f u g e e s — a population m o v e m e n t that clearly reflected a decline in open anti-Japanese resistance (Boeicho 1968, 2: 606, 609). B y J u n e 1942 the Japanese a r m y and their collaborators claimed 1 , 5 2 1 defectors, 7,399 captives, and 468 killed. According to another estimate, the K M T lost 5 thousand men out o f a force o f about 8 thousand. C C P guerrilla forces n u m b e r i n g 3 thousand lost about 700. 9 T h e system seemed to w o r k despite the shortcomings m e n tioned above. Within the pacification area, smuggling was so reduced that it no longer handicapped the Japanese extraction o f local resources f o r the w a r effort. A n d , as noted earlier, the tax system

Challenge and Survival

95

worked even better than before. 1 0 Moreover, this was accomplished without the kind of brutality the Japanese showed in North China. So w h y did the Japanese discontinue rural pacification after applying it in only a few places? A partial answer lies in the factional struggles. Wang Chingwei's second-in-command, Chou. Fo-hai, was strongly opposed to the extension of the rural pacification program outside the jurisdiction of his Executive Yuan (Cabinet), and Kao Kuan-wu was unwilling to see the shrinkage of his territorial jurisdiction. At lower levels, puppet Shanghai officials preferred free smuggling to the seizure of food and goods by the Japanese A r m y . And there was opposition from puppet officials threatened with reassignment and puppet military officers threatened with redeployment (Boeicho 1968, 2: 610). N o less important was the loss of powerful Japanese support. Both Lieutenant Colonel Haruke and Major General Kagesa were transferred elsewhere (Boeicho 1968, 2: 610). Japanese military history considers these transfers routine, but at a time when other priorities began to press hard, the loss of these officers was a deadly blow, particularly in view of the investment in manpower and resources needed to complete the program. The program continued until the spring of 1943 and was applied to the other parts of the Yangtze delta and to the Nant'ung area, as map 9 indicates. But, as demonstrated in the Chiangyin-Ch'angshuWuhsi area, the drastic reductions in Japanese troops forced a revision of their tactics. The whole area was divided into three zones: peace zone, semi-bandit zone, and bandit zone. In the peace zone the Japanese focused on the enforcement of the pao-chia system and on political propaganda; in the semi-bandit zone, on police surveillance and spies; in the bandit zone, on military campaigns. 1 1 This conserved military resources, but, as noted above, it also left lacunae in which the C C P could operate. The forces available for rural pacification were reduced by a shift in Japanese priorities. Because of the opening of the Pacific and Southeast Asia theaters, by M a y 1942 the potential threat to Japan from American use of Chinese air bases was clear. This led the imperial headquarters to divert about three divisions from North China and the whole Thirteenth A r m y from the rural pacification area to attack K M T regular troops in Chekiang and Kiangsi. T h e campaign ended in a Japanese triumph in August 1942, but it also burdened the army with new garrisons to man (Boeicho 1968,2: 1 1 4 ,

96

Base Areas

1 4 4 - 4 5 , 6 1 0 ) . In spring 1943 the deterioration of thejapanese position in the Pacific and in Southeast Asia forced the transfer of battlehardened divisions out of C h i n a . 1 2 The impact can be seen in an internal C C P description of its enemies in the Nant'ung area from March 1943 to October 1943:60 percent of the enemy soldiers—both Chinese (one-third of the total) and Japanese (two-thirds)—were new recruits. They wore shabby uniforms, and many carried no rifles. For three months they had received no pay, and the decline in military discipline was evidenced by constant looting ("Su-chung ssu-fen-ch'ii" 1943: 29, 35-36). Because the number of troops committed to rural pacification in the Nant'ung area was insufficient, many market towns and walled villages remained ungarrisoned. After occupying all strategic locations, the Japanese would split into small platoons to push their territorial control out from their garrisons, but their low troop strength restricted their forays to attacks on C C P local forces and administrative posts rather than on the C C P regular army, and political workers and spies dared not venture far from their military backers. The bamboo palisades often ended up being dismantled or burned ("Su-chung ssu-fen-ch'ii 1943: 3 2 - 3 3 , 3 7 - 3 9 ; Lung Yii 1943: 104—6; Jen-min ch'u-pan-she 1953: 167). As a result, the C C P could survive in pockets as big as a ch'ii; its tactic of rapidly dispersing and concentrating troops allowed more and more effective harassment of the Japanese garrison posts. Yet the Japanese commander Kobayashi was determined to hold new territorial gains in the Nant'ung area. He even hoped to expand into C C P territory as slowly and patiently as " a silkworm munching big mulberry leaves" by constructing an alternative militia and pao-chia system. In the Nant'ung area, thejapanese had always had the problem of distinguishing ordinary Chinese from C C P supporters, a problem increased by a growing shortage of willing Chinese collaborators. Thejapanese tried terrorism wherever their troops suffered casualties, and they also tried to round up rural youths suddenly and threaten or trick them into informing on C C P personnel within their village. These strategies must have worked, because the C C P urged the development of countermeasures, and the Chinese complained about the futility of guerrilla warfare, which made no impact on the overall war situation but caused local catastrophes. But the indiscriminate use of violence and terrorism also strengthened the resolve of C C P sympathizers and helped Party recruitment, particularly when people

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97

were shown the efficacy of C C P methods of survival ("Su-chung ssufen-ch'u" 1943: 31-32. 37—39; Lung Yu 1943: 107). Underlying Japanese terrorism and violence was their inability to finance the rural pacification campaign as lavishly as before. After the initial investment the financial return, though enough to support local government, was not sufficient to underwrite new rural pacification programs elsewhere. In late 1942 and early 1943 the Japanese began to seek nonmonetary means of encouraging Chinese collaboration. For the first time they took concrete steps to convince the Chinese of Japanese respect for Chinese nationalism. They renounced extraterritoriality and returned the foreign concessions they had seized, and they reduced overt interference in "Chinese internal affairs" (i. e., in the puppet government) (Toa 1943: 13). These gestures, however, came too late. In November 1942 Chou Fo-hai secretly renewed contact with the Chungking government, in which he had served as Chiang Kaishek's chief aide before joining Wang Ching-wei's peace movement, and soon K M T intelligence had installed a secret radio station in the backyard of his private house. 1 3 Certainly Chou knew more about the reversal of Japanese fortunes than the average Chinese, but the decline would soon be apparent to many. The Japanese difficulty in recruiting politically reliable collaborators would soon become almost insurmountable. They could neither provide attractive inducements nor convince the Chinese of their invincibility. As a result, the rural pacification program almost imperceptibly died out. The mop-up described in the beginning of this chapter again became the prevailing mode, and, as usual, it got the Japanese army nowhere. In the rural pacification zone of the Nant'ung area, the C C P had found spaces the size of a ch'u; now they found even larger areas. When the Japanese sortied and then withdrew, the C C P simply withdrew and then returned to resume their former control, a pattern that was to continue until the Japanese surrender.

C C P Resistance to Japanese Attacks

The effective Japanese retaliation in the wake of the One Hundred Regiments Campaign of late 1940 led the Party Center to decide

98

Base Areas

against further active resistance on a large scale. The guiding principles, it was reiterated, were to prolong the anti-Japanese resistance and simultaneously to accumulate strength. In summer 1941 the Party urged a political offensive against the Japanese and their puppets that would relegate military operations to a secondary position. It was to be highly secret and largely invisible. The following sketch is taken from C C P directives. The offensive was based on the premise that the Japanese army could be defeated through political erosion of its base. B y generous treatment of Japanese prisoners and restraint in attacking ordinary Japanese, the Communists sought to deepen the Japanese soldiers' antiwar sentiment. They detained captured officers but released soldiers. An effective program was organized to disseminate antiwar propaganda among captured Japanese. Truces were sought with the Japanese commanders of garrison posts that were located in C C P territory but that C C P forces were unable to occupy. Letter writing, gift giving, exchanging prisoners, supplying scarce goods, and burying the dead were among the concrete measures the Party promoted. T o increase the individual Japanese commander's susceptibility to the idea of a truce, the Party carried out military harassment, whose real goal, of course, was not a truce but the advancement of the political offensive and the slackening of Japanese military pressure against the C C P . The political offensive against collaborators was based on the assumption that the majority would waver. The Communists could appeal to their anti-Japanese sentiment, but the most effective strategy was to strike hard at the truly notorious collaborators, avoid driving the majority to the point of becoming uncompromising enemies, and give heed to those willing to render secret help. Along the transportation lines and near major cities and towns, areas that the C C P could not seize or hold, the Party urged cadres to "make friends." The aim was to establish a "sympathetic zone" to provide sanctuary in emergencies. There the Party and the N e w Fourth A r m y acted stealthily, at most working to form " g r a y " military forces and organizations. In the sympathetic zone, where the C C P had won over the puppet forces, the Party cautioned against encouraging defection unless such a move was essential, unless the C C P had the capability of holding the area, or unless the Japanese detected the secret tie. Even where the puppet forces showed no sympathy, the C C P should not attack because collapse of the puppet forces would only bring in

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tougher Japanese units and make the situation worse ( C C P , Chungyang .1941: 1 - 5 ; Liu Shao-ch'i 1942b: 65—67).

Involving the Masses The C C P justified its limited redistribution of wealth, status, and prestige—and its more radical transformation of rural p o w e r — by unfurling the banner of anti-Japanese resistance. But it was primarily redistribution that enabled the C C P to involve peasants in the anti-Japanese resistance. After the peasants were mobilized and the four-component local system emplaced at the grassroots, the Communists could exploit anti-Japanese feeling, which they had sought to deepen during the mobilization process. But C C P cadres still might be unprepared emotionally to lead resistance against a direct Japanese onslaught: " W e are given no rifles. H o w can we fight the devils? With only bare fists?" " T h e [ C C P ] troops will be evacuated. What should we do?" " I can join the revolution. But I don't dare lead armed forces. N o r am I willing to do so." A few were so intimidated that they deserted their posts ( C C P , T'ai-hsien 1944c: 2). A much more serious problem was the cadres' lack of alertness tojapanese sweeps and rural pacification. " Y o u talk about the coming of rural pacification, but from April 1 to now I have seen no enemies," complained a cadre of T'aihsien, Kiangsu, in 1944 ( C C P , T'ai-hsien 1944c: 3). During the Japanese mop-up of Huaipei in 1942, a cadre of the Regional Youth Association devoted his time to publishing Songs of Youth and made no effort to win recruits for the resistance. 14 In Ssutung, some cadres thought military training unnecessary at the center of the base area because the Japanese army would never come (Teng Tzu-hui 1943 b: 12). This lack of urgency was a serious problem among cadres above the hsiang level and especially at the center of the base areas. (See, e.g. C C P , T'ai-hsien 1944c: 2.) Japanese retrenchment probably contributed to the malaise as well. The attitude of the peasants showed the same range and variety. Some were confident: " T h e N e w Fourth A r m y has many tricks. The Japanese pacification army will never locate and destroy it." " I f we common people get together and piss, w e can drown the Japanese."

ioo

Base Areas

Somejoined reluctantly because there was no alternative: " I f I do not join the militia, I will be recruited by the devils. W h y should I choose the worse route?" Some doubted the wisdom of resistance: " T h e N e w Fourth A r m y leaves. The Party depends on us for resistance. But can w e resist the Japanese?" There was also widespread skepticism concerning the need to prepare for the coming of Japanese troops. "There are no roads, no rivers; how can the devils come?" " E v e r y year at this time, w e begin to dream. All the talk about countering [Japanese] rural pacification is nonsense. It's a swindle" ( C C P , T'ai-hsien 1944c: 3). It is difficult to know how many peasants were psychologically prepared for the Japanese offensive and how many were not, but there was uncertainty enough to require the Party to produce propaganda to counter it. W h y should one fight the Japanese? H o w should one fight? H o w could the C C P beat the Japanese mop-ups and rural pacification? Materials addressing such questions were distributed to each local community, and countermeasures were adopted to equip the people with practical know-how. Preparing for a Japanese offensive meant involving the people in action. One method—the resistance oath ceremony—shows the importance of the psychological dimension in C C P policy, an aspect usually completely ignored. Sung Jih-ch'ang observed a high correlation between the oath ceremony and strong anti-Japanese resistance in the August 1941 countersweep in northern Kiangsu. People w h o took the oath seldom collaborated even when this caused tremendous personal difficulties. In contrast, wherever the Party failed to hold oath ceremonies, surrender became epidemic. This shows how it was possible to induce peasant commitment to nationalism and to C C P rule, however powerful such commitment may have been originally. 1 5 The inclusion of the oath ceremony in preparations for resisting the Japanese mop-up in Huaipei in 1942 gives further credence to its psychological importance (Liujui-lung 1943: 1 1 ) . The ceremony took different forms. In a hsiang of T'aihsien (Kiangsu) in 1944, cadres called a mass meeting that 500 people attended. After a general exhortation they went in procession to a temporary altar of the Goddess of Mercy, Kuanyin, and swore the oath in a group. Incense and candles were lit. They knelt and k o w towed. After peasant activists followed suit, cadres also invited local landlords to join the occasion. A big landlord made this oath in a loud

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voice: " I will fight the devils to the death. Let us, both poor and rich, join hands. Anyone betraying us will be condemned eternally to hell!" ( C C P , T'ai-hsien 1944c: 1). In the oath ceremony in a ch'ii of the same hsien, about 100 tai44

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in the hsiattg administrative committee, since hsiang representatives elected the administrative committee, unless higher authorities preferred appointment. B y class background the nine members of the Changtun assembly of 1944 were one landlord, one rich peasant, two middle peasants, two poor peasants, t w o tenant middle peasants, and one hired agricultural laborer. In this particular case, the higher the administrative level, the greater the percentage of landlords and rich peasants. A m o n g the nine administrative cadres, there were seven Party members, one progressive, and one neutral (Ma Su 1945: 3). In T'aihsien, of the officials elected in 1944 above the level of administrative ts'un, 72 percent were poor peasants, 24 percent were middle peasants (including many rural intellectuals so classified), 2 percent were rich peasants, and another 2 percent were landlord merchants. In the same elections 86 percent of the elected administrative committee were C C P members; there were no progressives, the rest being classified as neutral elements ( C C P , T'ai-hsien 1944b: 1). Results in 102 hsiang of P'ei-Sui-T'ung show that the overwhelming majority of the elected administrative committee members were of poor and middle peasant class background (table 1 1 ) .

Rural Administration

TABLE 11 Class Backgrounds of the Elected Committee Members in P'ei-Sui-T'ung,

P o o r peasants M i d d l e peasants R i c h peasants Hired agricultural laborers Landlords Merchants

and Local Elections

251

Administrative

1944 Number elected

Percentage of total

371 390

43.90

63

7.46

46.15

16

1.89

3

0.36

2

O.24

SOURCE: " I - c h i u - s s u - s s u - n i e n " 1944: 9.

Profiles o f those elected w e r e p r o v i d e d b y the C C P ' s investig a t i o n o f L i y u a n hsiang, H u a i p e i , in 1944 (table 12). T h e description o f the c o m m i t t e e m e m b e r s is s o m e w h a t unclear, but it indicates h o w cadres w e r e actually evaluated. F o u r o f t h e m sat o n the hsiang Party b r a n c h c o m m i t t e e . Shen C h ' i n g - p a o had participated in a training class; he w a s gentle in m a n n e r and capable o f h a n d l i n g administrative affairs. Hsia S h u - h o w a s illiterate, s i m p l e - m i n d e d , and politically s l o w , despite his three years' e x p e r i e n c e in C C P grassroots politics. W a n g Y u - j e n had t w o years' e x p e r i e n c e w o r k i n g f o r the C C P . Hsieh H u - s h a n , the o n l y high school graduate on the c o m m i t t e e , served perhaps because o f his education. H e w a s considered t i m i d f o r a f o r m e r pao head. C h a n g H s i n g - k ' a i w a s regarded as irresponsible, and his political progress w a s rated s l o w . Hsu H s i u - y i n g , t o o , s h o w e d little enthusiasm and initiative f o r her political duties. T h e P a r t y r e g a r d e d C h a n g Shih-fan as honest and m a t u r e . It regarded C h u S h i h - c h a n g less f a v o r a b l y , d e e m i n g h i m honest and reliable, but i n c o m p e t e n t . C h u lived b y h i m s e l f f o l l o w i n g the division o f his f a m i l y , and because o f his p r e o c c u p a t i o n w i t h f a r m i n g , he o f t e n failed to attend meetings ( W a n g C h i e n - c h u n g 1944: 3 0 - 3 2 ) . W e h a v e better i n f o r m a t i o n o n the administrative c o m m i t t e e o f A n l o elected in 1943 (table 13). T h e f o l l o w i n g accounts are f r o m Fang Y i (1944: passim). Hsiang head C h ' e n g T a o - c h ' a n g c a m e f r o m a m i d d l e peasant b a c k g r o u n d . A l t h o u g h m a r r i e d , he lived w i t h his b r o t h e r ' s f a m i l y , a c o u p l e and a b a b y . In his e x t e n d e d f a m i l y there w a s a m o t h e r o f 75, a w i d o w e d i n - l a w , and the latter's slightly retarded d a u g h t e r o f 20. T h e f a m i l y cultivated six tan o f rented land w i t h the help o f t w o hired laborers. C h ' e n g T a o - c h ' a n g had t w o

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Village Militia and Rural Militarization

263

the C C P sometimes conceded real power to the local elite. O f five committee members, only two came from the basic masses, one being a middle peasant and the other a poor peasant. There were two enlightened gentry and one rich peasant. Only two of the committee members joined the Party. Less than 30 percent of the population in this hsiang were tenants, so the local Party cadre had to make concessions to the landlords and rich peasants to win support, which they did first in the anti-Japanese tax struggle and then by conceding a majority to local elites on the military affairs committee (Li Kung-jan et al. 1945: 1—2, 5). T o conclude, in addition to legitimizing the C C P ' s claim to leadership of a broad nationalist movement, the presence of members of the traditional elites on military affairs committees was also of practical value in facilitating fund raising and clerical work. The Party allowed the traditional elite to share power, but it carefully managed its concessions so as not to damage its long-term commitment to the basic masses.

T h e C C P A p p e a l f o r R u r a l Militarization

Because it was the people's cry for help that had enabled the Communist party to take root in North China immediately after the eruption of the resistance war, Cheng Wei-san believed that timely action to meet the rural need for self-defense in central China would have enabled the Party to form a significant number of militia groups in the countryside by early 1939. But the Party in central China was neither strategically nor psychologically ready. The right time would have been the first two years of the Japanese invasion. Once the occupation proved less catastrophic than first feared—local markets continued to function and salt continued to be available—rural communities no longer saw a pressing need for self-defense (Cheng Wei-san 1944: 3). The inadequacy of traditional weapons must also have dampened rural enthusiasm. When Party cadres arrived on the scene, they found not opportunity, but apathy and military fragmentation. The chance was lost. The C C P was thus forced to foster a more complex militarization than simple resistance. The war had generated massive unem-

264

Class Warfare Within the United Front

ployment and forced many urban poor back to the countryside. Before the summer harvest and during the winter slack season, villagers had always witnessed an upsurge in criminal activity. The added problem of unemployment made this more serious. C C P cadres of the seventh ch'ii, Liuho, Huainan, thus struck a responsive chord when they ordered the formation of crop-watching corps in summer 1942; six of eight hsiattg in the area promptly sent a total of 62 "volunteers" to the ch'ii office for basic military training (Lei Hsun 1942: 26—27). In late 1941 in nearby Chiashan hsien, the Party leader had also issued a directive urging the organization of winter vigilance societies to patrol the community with armed volunteers ( C C P , Chia-shan 1941). Although these t w o appeals served as a camouflage for anti-Japanese activities in areas adjacent to Japanese strongholds, local militia did serve to combat crime, which at times overshadowed nationalism in prompting peasant action. The growth of bandit forces also increased rural demands for self-defense. Under the slogan of defending the community against Ch'en Chih-chin's bandit gang, the hsiang government of Ch'enwei, Hungtse, Huaipei, drafted local adults into a freshly formed militia. 7 During the militarization of K'ot'ang hsiang, Yen-Fu, in 1941, the damage done by local bandits, perhaps disguised as puppet forces, was important in motivating the local people to take up arms (Hung Hsueh-chih 1943: 60). The contradictions between Japanese conquerers and native Chinese or between the K M T and the local population often speeded the formation of rural militia. After the infamous Nanking Massacre, the Japanese did their best to curb their troops, but individual soldiers continued to loot, kill, and rape. Puppet troops, no better than bandits in many cases, lacked military discipline and also often provided the C C P with justification for forming local militia. 8 The experience of residents of K'ot'ang in 1941 provides an example. On April 2 a few puppet soldiers pillaged the community. On the fourteenth they kidnapped some villagers. On the seventeenth, twentieth, and twenty-fifth they set fire to several houses. This series of outrages prompted about ten residents to put up a spontaneous resistance. In the skirmish armed locals wounded an intruder and released many "gods of fortune" (ts'ai-shen), a euphemism bandits used to refer to their redeemable captives. This small victory prepared the ground for a C C P campaign of militia construction.

Village Militia and Rural Militarization

265

In nearby Shunchi hsiang, for another example, puppet soldiers harassed the local community by kidnapping residents and draft animals. More frequent, however, was their practice of bayoneting two chin of pork and offering it to local residents, who dared not take the meat and were instead compelled to offer the soldiers money as a gift. A puppet pao head made the situation more volatile by demanding four times the market price for rationed matches. Events like these prepared the whole community to respond favorably to C C P cadres' pleas for militia formation (Hung Hsueh-chih 1943: 59, 62). The depredations of puppet troops in K'ungt'ien hsiang, Huainan, in 1943 led to the spontaneous reactivation of an old system of self-defense. The locals gathered together and patrolled the community by turn with spears and gongs, but the lynching of three puppet soldiers and a puppet pao head forced them to seek closer ties with C C P cadres, who urged them to set up a joint village society with other hsiang in the neighborhood. However, realizing the peasants' fear of reprisal, the cadres also advised them how to convince the puppet government of the value of local self-defense and thus helped avoid open confrontation between the local community and the puppet government. 9 This case makes it clear that the Party had to make concrete appeals and minimize the undesirable consequences of militia building. Abstract nationalism did not work. Contradictions also appeared over manpower and financial exactions. During the Kiangsi period the Communists had promoted resistance to taxation, corvee, and military recruitment, and they had no intention of neglecting such appeals under Japanese rule. In 1943 the local populace of Wangchuang pao, the fourth ch'ii of P'eihsien, became so annoyed by Japanese demands for grain that they used a portion of the tax grain to purchase weapons and began active resistance. Needing outside support, they volunteered to accept C C P leadership (Liu Yii-chu 1943: 33). In this case the C C P was the passive beneficiary. In many other cases the C C P took the initiative. Under the slogan, " R e d u c e your burdens vis-a-vis your enemies" (chien-ch'ing tui-ti fu-tan) the Communists tried to exploit the local resistance to Japanese exactions in order to promote mass mobilization in the border areas of C C P territory (Liu Shao-ch'i 1943: 1). Taxation was universal under Japanese rule. In K'ot'ang hsiang the Party cadres used this issue to prod the people into armed resistance. The following account is based on Hung Hsueh-chih (1943: 7 3 - 7 5 ) . A local peasant, presumably typical in his suffering,

266

Class Warfare Within the United Front

reported to a C C P investigator the exactions demanded by the Japanese in 1943 from his 50 mu ofland (table 15). His annual payment into C C P coffers was only 2,167 yuan, which he made in the form of 185 chin of wheat (812 yuan), 185 chin of corn (555 yuan), and 800 yuan in cash. These figures, however, should be considered in the light of two factors. First, the peasant paid to the resistance government, at most, only one-half of his normal tax assessment under an arrangement known as "white skin and red heart," whereby the burden of payments to the Japanese was taken into account. Second, he did not include corvée and other contributions to the C C P . Perhaps in this case there was no such levy. If that was so, however, his immunity should be viewed as a C C P effort to w o o him rather than as the usual practice. The annual income he reported was 4,580 yuan: 600 yuan for 6 tan of wheat, 3,000 yuan for 6 tan of corn, 160 yuan for 3 to 4 tou of soybeans, 400 yuan for 1 tan of lentils, 100 yuan for 30 pa-tou (a local unit of measurement whose precise size is unclear) of potatoes, and 320 yuan for 40 pa-tou of peanuts. This was far too low to convince even the C C P investigator. B y comparison, another peasant, who cultivated only 45 mu of land and was classified as a rich peasant, reported 20,500 yuan from 40 pa-tou of wheat (10,800 yuan), 15 pa-tou of corn (2,700 yuan), 60 pa-tou of potatoes (3,000 yuan), and 50 pa-tou of peanuts (4,000 yuan). O f this, only "9 percent" (I calculate 18 percent) went to the C C P tax collector (table 16). This peasant enjoyed no tax exemption.

TABLE 15 Tax Burden Under Japanese Rule as Reported by the CCP in K'ot'ang, 1943 Exactions Public grain tax, 3 tan Land tax, 2.5 tan Administrative tax C o r v é e fee Militia fee b Extortion b y puppet soldiers

Cash value (yuan) 3,000 2,500 1,200 4,000" -03,400

Arrangement W h e a t and corn W h e a t and corn 100 yuan/mo. 35 yMdn/mw/quarter

SOURCE: H u n g Hsueh-chih 1 9 4 3 : 7 3 - 7 4 . " H u n g gives n o explanation f o r this particular peasant's underpayment o f 3,000 yuan. b T h i s peasant is considered exceptional in avoiding the payment o f the militia fee.

Village Militia

TABLE 1 6

and Rural Militarization

267

A K'ot'ang Peasant's Tax Burden Under CCP Rule, 1943

Taxes

Cash value (yuan)

Public grain tax, 390 chin Wheat Corn L a n d tax

1,795 1,170 718

Total

3,683

SOURCE: H u n g Hsueh-chih 1 9 4 3 : 7 4 - 7 5 .

These relevant but confusing figures call attention to the C C P ' s strategy of "calculating accounts" (suan-chang), which was widely employed to convince peasants of the merits of struggle meetings and to move peasants to militarize themselves. If all the relevant materials were available, the sharp contrast between the tax burdens imposed by the C C P and the Japanese (as drawn by the C C P investigator in K'ot'ang) might be less striking. There is doubt about the meaning of the figures, and the failure of the C C P investigator to standardize measurements compounds the problem. The C C P did reduce the tax burden, chiefly of poor peasants, but the extent of the reduction may have been exaggerated. In 1944 in Huta hsiang, Huainan, cadres persuaded t w o landlords, one rich peasant, and two middle peasants to reveal their income and tax burden in great detail at a public meeting in order to initiate tax struggle against the puppet government. One of the middle peasants concluded his display with a rhetorical question: " I have ignored the Japanese devils' tax collector for t w o months. We used to pay taxes submissively, but the tax collector continued to rob us anyway. Last winter he even took away my quilt for taxes. W h y should we 'stand in the dark after w e have spent money for lamps'?" Even so, without the threat of a spring famine and skillful leadership on the part of C C P cadres, the agitation might still have failed. The hsiang dwellers apparently were inclined to buy peace at any cost (Li Kung-jan et al. 1945: 1 1 —12; "Hu-ta min-ping" 1944: 7—8). Confronted with this deeply rooted popular concern for safety, the C C P had to be flexible in its exploitation of tensions. It was often the case that the easiest path to militarization was to reorganize an existing KMT-affiliated force, and the actions of these groups,

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moreover, often dictated such expedient measures (e.g., Fang Y i [1944: 105]). But the C C P cadres of Ch'enwei hsiang, Huaipei, lacking any K M T military legacy to exploit, simply ordered conscription for local militia (Yang Yuan-chang 1944: 37). Late in 1942, facing the threat ofjapanese mop-up campaigns, the regional Party of HuaiHai officially endorsed the use of "semi-compulsory" methods. It is unclear what the regional Party meant by "semi-compulsory," but the term suggests the use of at least some coercion. 1 0 The Party recognized the undesirability of forced militarization and always preferred mass mobilization. It also realized that the oldstyle militia that had grown solely out of struggle against outside enemies tended to consist of traditional leadership and marginal elements (gangsters, loafers, or military hooligans) and urged lower cadres to test them with mass mobilization and replace them with new peasant activists ( C C P , Huai-pei 1944a: 2). It was hoped that leavening the militia with activists would make it sooner or later lose its "undesirable" nature. This was how C C P cadres reorganized the militia in Anlo. After mass mobilization had won gains for the peasants from the landlord minority and their allies, the Party could then use the peasants to join the militia: " A r m yourselves to protect your hardwon interests!" (Liu Shao-ch'i 1943: 3; "Ti-san-tz'u" 194$: 5; Tseng Mou 1945: 20). Real and imagined landlord ties with the K M T or the puppet government were harped on to deepen peasant determination. With this in mind, in 1945 Party cadres of the Ssuyang border in Huaipei deliberately focused their "old-score settlement" campaign on landlords with such ties, using the "struggle fruit" not only to bring peasant activists into the militia, but also to acquire weapons. After the struggle meetings, cadres led the newly formed or expanded militia to "inspect" (harass) these landlords' households, to put humiliating white placards on their front doors, and to continue to settle scores with family members and their dog's legs (Ti K'o-tung 1945: 20—22; Tseng M o u 1945: 20). In so doing, the desire to provide a defense against landlords and the desire for protection against outside military powers, such as the K M T and the Japanese, merged into a single, complex goal. A successful mass mobilization that resulted in total subjugation of the landlords sometimes undermined the C C P ' s appeal for rural self-defense; peasants saw no need to burden themselves with militia duty once their local enemies were subdued. Then cadres had to draw

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on the fund of authority and trust accumulated during mass mobilization to persuade reluctant peasants to accept militia duty. In areas where the Party launched mass mobilization campaigns, the N e w Fourth A r m y usually already provided military security, which in turn tended to dull local vigilance, particularly against the Japanese, who tried to move into such C C P bastions only sporadically from 1941 on. For this reason, the Party Center's call for militia building often fell on deaf ears inside the central areas (Liu Tso-fu 1943: 80-82). Patriotic slogans like "Prepare a counteroffensive against the Japanese" moved few. In 1942 the use of such slogans in Yen-Fu even caused peasants to say: " T h e Party only talks big." Local cadres either acquiesced or resorted to coercion and deception to form a militia. Party leaders censured both attitudes and urged cadres to relate militia building to winter vigilance, rent reduction, and other genuine concerns of the peasants. Ch'iaolo lisiatig, Yen-Fu, is a case in point. When the hsiang workers' association called a general meeting to recruit the first village militiamen, the local cadre led the discussion from workers' grievances in the old society to the benefits that the Party had brought to them through wage increases. Suddenly he pointed to the long, grim face of the workers' employer and hinted at the bloody revenge that might yet come: " W h a t shall w e d o ? " "Is there any way of preventing such a reversal?" As the workers, mostly hired hands, began to murmur in fear, the cadre answered his own question: "Seize arms! The militia is your protector!" The audience responded enthusiastically, and many volunteered to join up ("Fa-chan minping" 1944: 22-25). Where mass mobilization had yet to be developed or completed, anti-Japanese feelings could be sharpened to prompt peasants to form a militia, even though thejapanese posed no direct threat. B y advocating an anti-Japanese embargo, particularly on grain and oxen, and by highlighting the landlord identity of the violators, the Party tempted peasants to form a militia for its economic benefits. The embargo itself meant more grain and oxen for the peasant, and awarding part of the confiscated goods to him added incentive (Fang Y i 1944: 106). In T'iehp'ai, Kanch'iian, one slogan was "Prevent evil landlords from smuggling grain," which could have meant all (evil as a class) or some. Such ambiguity enabled the cadres to give different impressions of C C P policies to the landlords and to the peasants (Yii Ch'i-yi and Ch'eng Chen-chih 1945: i 8 ; T e n g T z u - h u i 1943a: 3). The

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embargo order also must have had a strong appeal in areas where food shortages were serious. In any event, the successful formation of a militia gave the C C P a most effective tool for draining useful goods from Japanese-controlled territory and preventing the outflow of materials helpful to the enemy. Anti-Japanese appeals notwithstanding, the Party, especially in its central areas, used class conflict to mobilize peasants and form militia. If mobilization went too far, nationalism was often seized on to curb leftist excesses: "Misunderstanding of the nationalistic character of the militia and its function in a national struggle will inevitably lead us, workers and peasants, to overreaching ourselves. B y alienating other social strata, w e will isolate and doom ourselves" ( C C P , Hua-chung-chii 1943b: 2). In the case of T'iehp'ai, where class polarization became a chasm across which landlord and peasant eyed each other with distrust, the hsiang also faced looting of grain by Japanese forces. The timely use of patriotic slogans helped the Party divert the landlords' attention from domestic dissension and mobilize their support for a militia. While class education continued among the Party's peasant followers, the cadres mollified the local elite. In this sense, both militia formation and production campaigns required a dampening of peasant enthusiasm for class conflict in order to achieve goals based on community consensus (Yii Ch'i-yi and Ch'eng Chen-chih 1945: 18; Teng Tzu-hui 1943a: 3). Examination of the appeals through which the Party mobilized rural communities to arm themselves suggests various ways of combining or relating patriotism and class struggle. Chalmers Johnson's assumption that the t w o factors were mutually exclusive does not square with the evidence (1962: 1 4 - 1 7 ) . Militia arms were directed against domestic enemies, foreign enemies, or both, depending on concrete cases. For example, w e see them mixed in slogans coined in the early 1940s in Ch'iaolo hsiang, Yen-Fu: "Defeat the routed enemy and close the door to catch the devils," "Launch a counter mop-up action!" "Join the militia and wages will be increased," "Increase wages! Reduce rent! We have to protect ourselves with arms," and to alleviate peasant fears: " T h e K M T dares not return." There were also slogans that simply defy any attempts to classify them. They were vague and could be directed against both enemy forces: "Protect our home community!" " B e vigilant this winter!" "Protect production!" ("Fa-chan min-ping" 1944: 22, 25). In a word, the militia was itself neutral. It was a costly and risky enterprise for peasants to undertake;

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thus the Party had to convince the majority of the need for selfmilitarization, and in so doing it could stress either opposition to enemies within or defense against outsiders. O r it could agitate against both, simultaneously or in sequence. The problem of individual motivation and aspirations is far more complicated. A C C P study of the militiamen of Huangying hsiang, Lientung, classified them into ten types: exemplary cadres, peasants with a correct understanding of the militia, young adults who were aggressive by nature, peasants looking for fun, people susceptible to suggestion, residents anxious to avoid corvée, rich peasants attempting to retain control of their own rifles, gangsters discerning advantage in a militia post, faction members searching for military support for their group, and peasants yielding to peer pressure ("Fa-chan minping" 1944: 30). This classification suggests that peasant motives often had little to do with either class struggle or patriotism. If w e view recruitment as simply a matter of community consensus, w e will lose sight of the militia as a tool for individual advancement and factional struggle. We will overlook its appeal as an exciting alternative to monotonous agricultural routines or as a means to escape more bothersome taxation and corvée. We will fail to understand, for example, why the Party emphasized the cultural and recreational activities of the militia in its membership drives: "Join the militia to learn skills and acquire knowledge!" (Huai-pei Su-Wan pien-ch'ii 1944a: 5). Finally, we will exaggerate the importance of collective consciousness and overlook the presence of manipulation by the Party or by individuals themselves.

Obstacles to Militarization and Countcrmeasurcs

Whatever a militia might promise, it was peasants themselves who calculated the pros and cons, the advantages and risks of the militia in the light of their understanding. In Huangying hsiang in the early 1940s, a C C P cadre recorded the following peasant opinions: "[Peasants] do not believe a counteroffensive will ever be made. Today they [ C C P ] talk about a counteroffensive. T o m o r r o w they again talk about a counteroffensive. They

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have talked about a counteroffensive for several years! N o n sense! Are they talking again about a counteroffensive? The Japanese devil is coming again!" " T h e old central government had stopped fighting the Japanese because of preparation for a later counteroffensive." " W a n g Ching-wei was sent to surrender by old Chiang [Kai-shek]." " T h e Peace Army [puppet troops] is the Central Army [KMT]. W h e n the K M T launches a counteroffensive, they will immediately change their banner into [the K M T ] blue sky and white sun." "Hsu Chi-t'ai [a K M T Kiangsu commander] was forced by the Eighth Route Army into surrendering to the Japanese. He had fought the Japanese before [the Communist army came], hadn't he?" [A few old men said] "China's turmoil will continue. The young emperor is not born yet!" [Some others said] "history alternates between unity and disunity." " N o w we are in a time resembling the period of Three Kingdoms. Old Chiang [Kai-shek], the Communists and Wang Ching-wei have divided into three the land under heaven." " T h e Peace A r m y also seeks to salvage China. O n his deathbed, Sun Chung-shan [Sun Yat-sen] said, 'Peace and save C h i n a ! " ' 1 1 We may dispute the accuracy of the peasants' understanding, but we must jettison the image of a peasantry indifferent to national events. Peasant readings of national politics generated varied responses to C C P militia recruitment. Fear of enemy reprisal, disbelief in C C P propaganda, misapprehensions about the puppet forces, lingering belief in K M T legitimacy and power, and folk wisdom distilled from popular history—all constituted barriers to C C P militarization. Even if the Party won a favorable appraisal in peasant calculations, cadres still faced two other handicaps: localism and the conflict between the roles of farmer and soldier. As the lower rung of the CCP's three-tier system of militarization, the militia was unable to develop an identity independent of the regular army and regional forces. In fact, it also served as a reserve force, so many peasants perceived militia recruitment as the first step toward full-time military service: " D o n ' t call it a militia! Before long

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a militiaman becomes a soldier!" ("Fa-chan min-ping" 1944: 2 1 , 25, 30) This common remark amounted to a charge of Party deception, and fear of being tricked lingered in peasant minds even after they had joined. In Ch'enwei the drafted militiamen refused to show up at any official gathering (Yang Yuan-chang 1944: 37). For the same reason the militia of K'ot'ang, Yen-Fu, refused to compromise its autonomy by accepting a government meal: " I f w e do not eat your grain, you will have no excuse to impress us into the regular a r m y . " They insisted on calling themselves "self-defense guns" (tzu-wei-ch'iang) rather than accept an official name. Mistaking C C P inspection teams for conscription agents, many panicked and went into hiding. 1 2 The prospect of life in the regular army was more detrimental than helpful to C C P militarization at all levels. Interwoven with this was the peasants' natural concern for their productivity on the land. Although they criticized this "viewpoint of economism" {ching-chi chu-i kuan-tien), Party cadres could not deny that militia duties took time and energy. The diversion of labor was particularly hard on the family with no surplus hands. T o complicate the problem, some militia degenerated into wastrels and lazybones, which discouraged diligent peasants from volunteering: "It will corrupt one's character to join a militia." Parents discouraged their youngsters from joining (Huai-pei Su-Wan pien-ch'ii 1944a: 3; " F a chan min-ping" 1944: 25; Fan Yii-k'ang 1944: 20). Family pressure took different forms. A widowed father withdrew when he found his children had not received adequate care during his absence on a nighttime "resistance by escape." Another could not stand the thought of his son patrolling in the cold at night and risking his life fighting, so he locked his son in the house and attended the militia recruitment meeting himself. Some parents persuaded their sons to delay one or two years until the situation clarified itself. Still other parents threatened disinheritance and family division. In quite a few instances militia enlistment caused family discord, mothers grumbling about their daughter-in-law's inability to keep her husband home, wives complaining about their mother-in-law's failure to discipline her son. Inability to cope with family quarrels led some militia members to quit. 1 3 These examples are drawn from Huangying, but they appear to be representative. Quite a number of young peasants found ways to deflect Party pressure to join the militia. A Communist author, Wang Hsinch'eng, described some of their strategies in his study of T'ien-Kao,

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Huainan, in 1944: "Peasants have falsified their age. T h e y have also bribed the cadre and coaxed his sympathy. They have hired hacks to serve as substitutes f o r them. They have avoided volunteering. In some cases, parents have threatened their beloved sons with suicide. O n a f e w occasions, the [press-ganged] militiamen have defected in squads to the enemy side" (1944: 4). In attacking resistance to militia enlistment, the Party aimed first at the young militiaman and his family. T h r o u g h them it then proceeded throughout the community as a whole. A m o n g its stratagems were mass meetings, individual persuasion, campaigns to identify model militiamen and model militia families, campaigns, militia parades, intercommunity competition, and meetings between lower cadres and gentry landlords to seek their support or neutrality (Huaipei, Su-Wan pien-ch'ii 1944a: 4 - 5 ; "Fa-chan m i n - p i n g " 1944: 28). As regards the peasant fear of enemy reprisal, overzealous militia often found themselves confronting an overwhelming enemy and became totally demoralized. The Japanese also made the militia their chief objective in mop-ups and rural pacification campaigns because o f the fragility of peasant resistance. T o avoid playing into Japanese hands, the Party conceived a strategem o f gradual confidence building. A t the outset a militia group was only used to cope with local bandits and petty thieves. Only after sufficient experience was acquired and prebattle analysis guaranteed a victory w o u l d the local Party commit the militia to fighting against the Japanese and puppet soldiers ("Huai-Hai ch'ii" 1943: 72). Although the militia was to gradually enlarge its scope, the lower cadres were made to understand that its role in the war was subsidiary, its importance defined by its being an integral part o f the three-tier system of militarization and by its being capable o f dealing with domestic enemies. T o avoid pushing peasants too fast, the Party also recommended forming traditional night-watch teams and unarmed secret patrols as steps toward the formal organization o f a militia. T h e cadre was supposed to use chance opportunities in order to raise the level o f militarization. In Huta, Huainan, in 1944 an unarmed secret patrol failed to detect a surprise penetration of enemy soldiers into the village, and the residents clamored for strengthened self-defense. T h e local cadre advised forming a group of armed inspectors to supervise and provide cover f o r unarmed patrols, but it soon became apparent that a ts'un was too small. Because the militia were unable to collect

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intelligence quickly enough, the cadre proposed a joint village defense, and several hsiang responded with enthusiasm. 1 4 The Party recommended several solutions to the contradiction between militarization and production. Teams of substitute cultivators (tai-keng-tui) were mobilized from the peasant associations to help militia members in the fields ("Huai-Hai ch'ii" 1943: 72). (This measure originated in southeastern Shansi.) In Anlo, Huainan, the service was rendered only when the militiaman was on duty away from home (Fang Y i 1944: 106), and w e have little evidence that the stratagem was used elsewhere. The military affairs committee also imposed contributory levies on the community. The people of Ch'iaolo, Yen-Fu, were asked to prepare and serve taro for the militia's evening meal, and some peasants did so only reluctantly ("Fa-chan min-ping" 1944: 24). In Ch'enwei the military affairs committee allotted quotas to each ts'uti. Then the ts'un called mass meetings to discuss each household's share, which worked to the advantage of the poor and middle peasants. House-to-house soliciting, by contrast, tended to put pressure on every household equally (Yang Yuan-chang 1944: 41—42). A third tactic was the organization of a production cooperative or labor team within the militia, the income of which could cover some of the expenses of the militia. The measure helped counter the militia's image as a gang of shirkers and contributed to its esprit de corps. The militia of Ch'enwei organized many cooperative teams with such specialities as land reclamation, wheat planting, vegetable growing, grass cutting, and shrimp catching. It is interesting that the cooperation did not go higher than the ts'un. Unlike some militia units that appropriated all the income from the cooperative projects, the militia here distributed most of it to its members to make militia membership more attractive (Yang Yuan-chang 1944: 42, 44). Similar stories can be found in Yen-Fu and Huainan (Hung Hsuehchih 1943: 61, 70; Wang Hsin-ch'eng 1944: 5; Fan Yii-k'ang 1944: 20—23; F a n g Y i 1944: 106). It seems that, as the production campaign gained momentum in 1943, this strategy became increasingly popular. Steps were also taken to reduce the militia's tax burdens. In Ch'enwei during peacetime, militia members were exempted from requisition of their draft animals and from corvée labor, though during wartime they were obligated like everyone else (Yang Yuan-

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chang 1944: 44—45; "Fa-chan min-ping" 1944: 2 3 - 2 4 , 28; "Ti-santz'u" 1945: 6). It should be noted that the generous tax exemptions sometimes offered to attract volunteers were criticized as being ideologically unsound ("Fa-chan min-ping" 1944: 22; Yang Yuanchang 1944: 40). The Party also tried to limit the amount of duty time demanded. In addition to constantly reiterating its opposition to the use of militiamen for tax collection, the Party established a ceiling of three days of militia service a month for full-time producers, but it was not applied to semi-professional and professional militia members. The Party also urged a further retrenchment of militia activities during the busy farming seasons. Aware of local variations in the agricultural rhythm, the regional Party committee of Huaipei delegated power to individual communities to set patrol and sentry duty (Teng Tzu-hui 1943a: 3; Yang Yuan-chang 1944: 44). One related problem was militia casualties, which might discourage peasants from joining. Despite its lack of resources, the Party made efforts to show its concern. In Huaipei in 1944 the Party announced that it would give the same medical treatment to seriously wounded militiamen as to regular soldiers, including hospital care. In the case of light injuries, the government paid medical expenses. It honored a militiaman w h o died in action as a dead soldier, and his family received a coffin, burial fee, and other payments ( C C P , Huaipei 1944a: 3).

Creating a Sense of Military Urgency Although the C C P began to organize rural militia immediately after the N e w Fourth A r m y went into action in the western Yangtze area in mid-193 8, the effort remained halfhearted until after February 1942, when the Central China Party Bureau held its second enlarged conference. There militia building was again stressed (Liu Shao-ch'i 1942b: 71—72). In early 1943 the regional Party of Huai-Hai called for a militia construction campaign, and Party committees at both the subregional and hsien levels called a meeting to promulgate the order; 300 to 400 members f r o m the hsiang level attended the meeting. Party branches were given authority to launch the campaign in close coordination with the mass associations and local governments. In

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Huai-Hai the government administration in many hsiang remained under the control of former K M T pao-chia heads, so Party authorities urged that a special effort be made to win their sympathy or neutrality. T w o mass mobilization campaigns undertaken in the summer and autumn of 1942 had delineated a new interest group—the basic masses—so the regional Party emphasized such slogans as "Protect your own interests!" It stipulated as the chief goal of the campaign "strengthening rural unity and establishing the hegemony of the basic masses." While striking the theme of class struggle, the Party also warned peasants about the danger of Japanese mop-ups and the restoration of the old social order: "Seize the gun and fight for your anti-Japanese freedom" ("Huai-Hai ch'ii" 1943: 70). During the campaign the Party of Huai-Hai exhorted its members to set an example, and it asked the Party branches to persuade activists from mass associations and the militia to do the same. In mass meetings the activists would volunteer to join the militia and help generate mass fervor. The local cadre was allowed to recruit through registration, but he was reminded of the need to stir enthusiasm through agitation. N o details are available about implementation, but by the end of the campaign in the spring of 1943 the Party could claim a militia of 30 thousand and a self-defense corps of 100 thousand. Given the 500 thousand total in mass associations, the achievement is quite impressive ("Huai-Hai ch'ii" 1943: 70). Long before the Huai-Hai move in 1943, the regional Party in Huaipei had already agitated for rural militarization, requiring each pao to organize a militia of 30 to 50, and each hsiang 50 to 100, in addition to the community wide self-defense corps. In October 1942 Liu Jui-lung told an assembly session that the majority of hsiang had accomplished the goal (1942: 1 6 - 1 7 ) . His claim had little substance because few peasants and cadres saw the need in a period of relative peace. It took a Japanese mop-up to convince lower cadres and peasants, and then a wave of parochial mobilization merged with the militia-building campaign during the 33 day anti-Japanese struggle in December 1942 and January 1943. The slogans were: "Resist the Japanese!" "Protect against the bandits!" "Defend the home!" Within the month most lower cadres reported initial successes, and the Party told its members that a total of 29,836 militiamen operated in seven hsien of Huaipei. Numerical strength amounted to 1.5 percent of the CCP-controlled population. 1 5

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The Central China Party Bureau, in a directive dated September 1943, noted the close relationship between the intensity of the Japanese mop-up and the success of organizing militia. In areas like parts of Huainan and central Kiangsu, the local cadre was forced by the constant threat of enemy mop-ups to devote great energy to militia affairs. In areas like Huaipei, Yen-Fu, and most parts of Huainan, the cadres tended to be lax because of the infrequency of Japanese assaults. The bureau also noted an undesirable attitude among lower cadres w h o preferred to form a professional militia or no militia at all. The bureau ordered full-time militia to be organized only in strategically located hsiang; in others the effort was to be made to create a producer militia. In contested areas the Party noted the continual incorporation of the militia into the regular army. It declared that thereafter the practice would be tolerated only if the militia showed its readiness and only if the reorganization did not cripple community self-defense. Moreover, to facilitate recruitment and to provide some camouflage, the Party promoted the community wide organization of self-defense units under such traditional names as "Self-Defense C o r p s " (tzu-weit'uan), "Joint Defense Society" ( l i e n - f a n g - h u i ) , and "Winter Vigilance Society" (tung-jang hui). On the basis of this broader militarization, the Party tried to build a more selective "elitist" militia ( C C P , Huachung-chii 1943b: 1—2). Again we do not know the full effect of the directive. We do know that by the end of 1943 Liu Jui-lung reported in an open publication that there were 50 thousand militiamen and 170 thousand self-defense corpsmen in Huaipei. The total CCP-controlled population of the border region at this time numbered about 2,450 thousand so the percentage of militiamen (about 2 percent) represents a healthy gain (Liu Jui-lung 1944b: 20; Teng Tzu-hui 1944a: 5). In fact, as indicated in a Huaipei Party directive of November 1943, the authorities began to worry much more about the militia's quality than its quantity. They urged speeding up the training of militia officers, strengthening Party control, establishing a hierarchy of command and military affairs committees, and removing landlords, rich peasants, and gangsters from leadership through popular elections ( C C P , Huai-pei 1944a: 1—2). The major task in the winter in late 1943 and early 1944 was consolidation, but we have no materials to evaluate its effectiveness. The regional Party of Huaipei planned to push rural militari-

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zation further in the winter of 1944 and the spring of 1945. Although the plan was eventually sidetracked by the Party's devotion to expanding local forces and the regular army, one of the documents is still useful to show the uneven development of militia in the area (table 17). For unknown reasons, in summer 1945 the Party leader of Luhsi subregion, Wu Chih-p'u, revised militia goals in his area from 40 thousand to 80 thousand men (5 to 10 percent of the population). 1 6 Decades later, during the Great Leap Forward, Wu masterminded the famous Honan Commune, another famous example of enthusiasm for exceeding norms.

The Problem of Weapons Compared with Japanese and K M T troops, the N e w Fourth A r m y had primitive equipment, and the militia fared far worse. The kinds and amount of weapons available at the hsiang level varied

TABLE 1 7 Hsiett and Subregion Ssu-Ling-Sui Ssunan Ssu-Wu-Ling-Feng Hsu-Feng-Chia Huai-Pao Ssuyang Huai-Ssu Ssu-Su Hungtse T h i r d subregion Fourth subregion Luhsi subregion Total

The Huaipei Plan for Militia Construction, 1944 Militia strength in late 1944 5.049 5,399 5,059 1,823 14,369° 3,261 6,549 4,250 936

46,929"

Desired strength of militia

Assigned quota for recruitment

10,000 13,000 14,000 3,600 15,500 7,200 10,000 12,000 1,600 25,000 10,000 30,000

5,000 8,000 9,000 1,800 4,000 4,000 8,000 700 25,000 IO.OOO 30,000

151,900

90,500®

SOURCE: Huai-pei, S u - W a n pien-ch'ii 1944a: 1 - 2 . " A c c o r d i n g to the source, this f i g u r e is inaccurate. b I f f i g u r e s for H u a i - P a o w e r e accurate, this total w o u l d b e 46,695. If this total is right, militia in H u a i - P a o n u m b e r e d 14,603. c I f figures in this c o l u m n are correct, t h e total should b e 105,500.

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tremendously. In K'ot'ang, Yen-Fu, all 131 militiamen had rifles. In nearby Shunchi 100 militia members had only 60 rifles (Hung Hsuehchih 1943: 68, 72). Having only 35 rifles, the 180-man militia of T'iehp'ai, Huainan, had to make do with spears, swords, 50 grenades, and 60 guns of local make (Yu Ch'i-yi and Ch'eng Chen-chih 1945: 19). In Anlo, Huainan, the 32 militiamen were equipped with 24 rifles, 5 bombs, and 54 rounds of bullets (Fang Yi 1944: 105). In Ch'iaolo, Yen-Fu, 140 militiamen had 14 rifles, 11 guns of local make, 4 w o o d artillery pieces, 10 big swords, 2 grenades, and 106 bullets ("Fa-chan m i n - p i n g " 1944: 24). T h e only regional statistics are f r o m Huai-Hai, where 30 thousand militiamen had 18 thousand rifles ("Huai-Hai ch'ii" 1943: 69). T h e long tradition of rural militarization meant many rifles in private hands, so the Party preferred that militiamen bring their o w n rifles. In K'ot'ang it achieved some success in recruiting rifle owners and in Shunchi even succeeded in persuading young peasants to buy rifles and then join. In both hsiang some resisted recruitment and hid themselves and their rifles in the central area, where no effort was made to form militia. Some promised to join with their rifles but refused daytime duty. T o reduce the cost involved, the cadre of Shunchi encouraged several peasants to get together to buy a rifle and take turns serving (Hung Hsueh-chih 1943: S9> 62). As the militiaman was usually a poor man w h o could not afford a rifle, the C C P had to seek help, particularly from landlords and rich peasants. It conducted "donate guns" (hsien-ch'iang) campaigns, appealing to patriotism and to community self-defense needs. Representatives of mass associations went to the houses of rifle owners to ask for contributions. T h e Huta militia of Huainan gathered more than 20 rifles in a month. Even some landlords who resided in Japanesecontrolled areas managed to supply 4 or 5 rifles. 17 But enthusiasm for the "donate guns" campaigns was by no means universal. In K'ot'ang some rifle owners flatly refused. Others offered to donate only half of their rifles or suggested that the authorities either pay half the price or allow rifle owners the right to redeem the rifles at half price after the war. Still other rifle owners simply sold the rifles beforehand (Hung Hsueh-chih 1943: 61). T o intensify the campaigns, Party cadres recommended pressure by the mass associations with government intervention at the critical m o m e n t . 1 8 Pressure was intense. In Shunchi, if the rifle owners refused, the mass association would ask them to volunteer

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themselves. If the rifle owners again refused, the association would press them to hire proxies. Meanwhile, backstage maneuvers prevented their hiring substitutes: the mass association either engineered a boycott or required association members to demand prohibitive prices. Few rifle owners could endure the pressure. At the proper point the administrative or Party cadre would offer himself as mediator. Assuring the rifle owners of free volunteers to carry their rifles for them, he would ask them to supply ammunition in return. When some rifle owners tried to avoid such pressure by enlisting their family members to take turns serving in the militia, the mass association required rifle users to be familiar with their weapons and asked that rifles be used by no more than two persons at a time. 1 9 The application of pressure presupposed political sophistication on the part of local cadres, an expectation that was unwarranted in many cases. In some hsiang in Yen-Fu a much cruder strategy was developed, "squeezing rifles" (chi-ch'iang)\ it resembled the "eat-in" (described in chapter 3). The militia made careful investigations and then selected landlords for confrontation. Mass association members surrounded the chosen landlords' houses and applied collective persuasion. If the landlords refused, the militia would stage an instant sitin and eat the landlords' stored food until he gave in (Hung Hsuehchih 1943: 59). We have no idea of the full dimensions of the "leftist deviations" that occurred during the "donate guns" campaigns, but the issuance of a special directive in Huainan in 1945 attests to the problems that deviations created for the united front ( C C P , Huai-nan 1945: 53). In both Huai-Hai and Huaipei the situation seems to have been less serious because Party authorities emphasized "borrowing rifles" (chieh-ch'iang) rather than "donating rifles." Whether or not the Party later adhered to its pledge only to borrow the rifles, the promise to return the rifles after the war must have facilitated the "transfer of rifles" (chuan-i ch'iang-chih) ("Huai-Hai ch'ii" 1943: 7 1 ; C C P , Huaipei 1944a: 2; Yang Yuan-chang 1944: 45;Japan, Koain, Kachu 1941a: 23). O f course, the Communist victory in 1949 made the pledge meaningless. The C C P also conducted a drive to register all privately owned rifles. This move had many historical precedents, but the thoroughness with which it was carried out may have been unprecedented. Few were able to hide rifles without being found out by peasant activists. In early 1941 Japanese intelligence found a decree of the

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Feng-Huai administrative office of Huainan saying that rifle owners w h o failed to register their weapons and to join the militia would be punished as "bandits." A similar decree was announced in March 1943 by the central Anhwei government. It required all rifle owners, including communities as public owners, to register their weapons with the hsiang government within two months. Permits would be issued if the central Anhwei administrative office (i.e., the regional authorities) considered a rifle owner's request justifiable on grounds of self-defense. It also promised to "buy the rifles if the owners are willing to sell." The same decree required the people to sell all their ammunition to the government by a certain deadline. We do not k n o w if it was enforced. We only k n o w that in November 1944 a drive for rifle registration was being vigorously pursued throughout Huaipei (Japan, K5ain, Kachu 1941b: 21; Teng Tzu-hui 1941: 19; Liu Jui-lung 1942:64; "Wan-chung ti-ch'u" 1944: 35-36; C C P , Huai-pei 1944a: 2). When private sources of rifles in a community were insufficient, the Party sometimes resorted to levies. In the name of the military affairs committee, each house contributed according to its wealth. In quite a few cases, the Party sought to solve the problem through fines and confiscations. Seized contraband was often used to finance the purchase of rifles, as were fines f r o m the "old-score settlement" and "anticorruption" campaigns. 2 0 Although unclassified Party publications say that the militia captured weapons f r o m the enemy, internal Party documents indicate that the number of captured rifles was insignificant. Some militia, such as the one in T'iehp'ai, started off" with rifles and grenades lent by a division headquarters nearby, but this practice was not widespread (Yu Ch'i-yi and Ch'eng Chen-chih 1945: 18). In Huta the ch'ii government supplied only some grenades (Li Kung-jan et al. 1945:4). And in Anlo the government took away its militia's rifles and handed them over to the regular army, thus utterly disrupting the militia. 21 Cases like this raise questions about community control of the weapons and also underscore the shortage of weapons. Few cadres were willing to take the risk of organizing a militia without weapons, and unarmed militia service certainly held little attraction for young peasants. But rifles were so hard to come by that the Party encouraged the rural community to set up workshops to produce bombs, guns, wooden artillery, spears, and swords. The peasant was bound to harbor doubts about the effectiveness of these

Village Militia and Rural Militarization

283

primitive weapons, so the Party used exhibitions and demonstrations o f their use—and public exaltation of militia heroes—to promote confidence in locally made weapons (Huai-pei, Su-Wan pien-ch'u 1944a: 4 - 5 ; Teng Tzu-hui 1943b: 18; "Ti-san-tz'u" 1945: 5).

T h e Basic Masses and Militia C o n t r o l

Party directives seldom explicitly denied the right to serve in the militia to any social elements, not even the traditional elite and rich peasants. It always stressed determination to defend one's community as the main requirement. A g e limits were set at 18 to 30, but flexibility was urged, especially in the case of marksmen ( C C P , Hua-chung-chii 1943b: 2; Huai-pei 1944a: 2—3). Only in an article summarizing the Huai-Hai experience of 1942 did the Party add a willingness to "struggle for the interests of the masses" to its qualifications ("HuaiHai ch'ii" 1943:79). This implied a clear rejection of the elite and rich peasants. In late 1944, in promoting a production campaign, a Party solution added participation in production as a prerequisite (Huai-pei, Su-Wan pien-ch'u 1944a: 2). At the grassroots local cadres were unencumbered by a need for semantic accuracy and had wide latitude in interpreting directives or resolutions. In Ch'enwei the Party adopted three criteria in screening militia volunteers: good class background, active engagement in C C P activities, and political loyalty and courage (Yang Yuan-chang 1944: 40). In Huta it adopted three different criteria: no ties with the enemy, a known past and loyalty to the government, and being 17 to 35 with no physical defects (Li Kung-jan et al. 1945: 5). In Huta good class background was not a formal prerequisite, but one case suggests that landlords' sons were politely turned down. T h e responsible cadre hinted that a son of a rich landlord would be unable to endure the hardships and, when the landlord's son went to work on his family land, the cadre still refused, although to placate him, he sought to place him in a short-term training class in nearby T'ungch'eng, a market town. T h e author of the document cites security as the major consideration. The militia in guerrilla areas should not risk itself by admitting the son of a landlord w h o still remained in contact with people in the Japanese-occupied zone (Li

284

Class Warfare Within the United Front

Kung-jan et al. 194$: 5). This distrustful attitude, carried to an extreme, often led the local cadres to suppress any effort to organize a militia with landlord participation, whether aimed at fighting the Japanese or not. Party authorities sometimes openly criticized this local interpretation of policy, but mass mobilization pushed polarized communities in this direction (Teng Tzu-hui 1943b: 13). Table 18 shows the class composition of some militia units. The overall ratio between the basic masses and others was 95.5 to 4.5 percent. This may reflect either the actual distribution of classes in the population or the reluctance of the rich to carry rifles, but we cannot rule out the factor of class discrimination. When the rich did manage to join the militia, the Party tried to maneuver them out. A deputy division commander of the N e w Fourth A r m y , Hung Hsueh-chih, suggested in an internal Party journal certain strategies for removing politically unreliable elements without raising doubts about the Party's commitment to nationalism. Upper-class militiamen, he said, should be posted at the busiest spot during the periodic market. The volunteers from rich families would seldom be able to withstand the curious stares and remarks of their former social inferiors. If this did not work, he advocated staging tough maneuvers and putting them through every imaginable hardship. Sooner or later, he said, they would quit. Hung's recommendations were not a paper exercise; they actually grew out of his study of militia practice in four hsiang of Yen-Fu in 1943 (1943: 64). T w o other means of removing politically unreliable elements were aimed at more than just the sons of the rich. In the four hsiang where Hung Hsueh-chih conducted his study, cadres called a mass meeting and pushed through resolutions concerning mutual guarantee. According to the resolution, a militia member had to have the guarantee of four comrades, the recommendation of the mass meeting, and the endorsement of a review board of militia officers. In Shunchi, where the Party disarmed the militia on charges of looting, mutual guarantees were introduced to remove four undesirables (Hung Hsueh-chih 1943: 64). We do not know how many landlords and rich peasants were affected, but the description of the purge gives us an idea of how the C C P applied public pressure. Tolerating landlords and rich peasants did not mean permitting them to occupy key militia posts, as Party directives stressed again and again ( C C P , Huai-pei 1944a: 1 - 2 ; Teng Tzu-hui 1943b: 1 7 - 1 8 ) . Although the Party might sometimes be lax in enforcing this, its

e

c IS

.2 «

»

1 §

bû O '5 M t> > u C rt X> 4J d it

w a s

p r i n t e d as a t r a i n i n g m a n u a l b y t h e H u a i p e i P a r t y . 11. Liu Yii-chu 1943: 8 - 1 0 ; C C P , P ' e i - S u i - T ' u n g [1943]: 5, 3 1 - 3 2 ; C C P , S a n - t i - w e i 1945: 1 1 0 - 1 1 . T h e t h r e e c o u n t i e s w e r e P ' e i - S u i , S u i - S u , and T ' u n g - S u i . 12. C h a n g Y u n - y i , " W u - c h u a n g w e n - t ' i " [ T h e a r m a m e n t p r o b l e m ] , in Liu S h u n - y u a n 1940s. T o p r o v i d e c o v e r f o r C C P p e a s a n t m o b i l i zation in guerrilla areas, C h e n g W e i - s a n n o t o n l y stresses t h e a n t i J a p a n e s e u n i t e d f r o n t b u t also advises cadres t o o r g a n i z e peasants in t h e n a m e o f p r o d u c t i o n a n d e d u c a t i o n (1944: 14). 1 3 . Liu S h a o - c h ' i 1945c: 2 0 - 2 1 . It is t r u e t h a t mass w o r k e r s m a d e g r e a t p r o g r e s s in m o b i l i z i n g peasants in g u e r r i l l a areas like t h a t o f L a k e C h ' a o , b u t success t h e r e w a s e x c e p t i o n a l . T h e P a r t y singled o u t this successful e x p e r i e n c e o n l y t o dispel t h e mass w o r k e r s ' fear o f m o b i l i z i n g peasants in c o n t e s t e d areas, w h e r e t h e P a r t y h a d o n l y a c h i e v e d m i l i t a r y s u p e r i o r i t y in small p o c k e t s . In g u e r r i l l a areas t h e P a r t y called its peasant associations b y such n e u t r a l t e r m s as " J o i n t Village S o c i e t y " (lien-chuang-hui) o r " P e a s a n t S o c i e t y " (nung-minhui). T h e associations w e r e t o k e e p secret a b o u t t h e i r m e m b e r s b u t

558

Notes to Pages

131-135

not their officers, to keep themselves secret from their enemies but not from the C C P , to keep their organizations secret but not their politics, and to keep themselves secret at the grassroots level but no higher ( C C P , P'ei-Sui-T'ung [1943]: 4 - 5 ; C C P , San-ti-wei 1945: 1 1 2 ; C C P , Su-tung 1943: 67-68, 79). 14. Liu Jui-lung 1944a: 9 4 - 9 5 ; Chang Wen 1946: 52-60. Chang's article was originally published in Chen-li, no. 10 (probably early 1943). 15. Liu Jui-lung 1944a: 50; Hsin-ssu-chiin, Su-chung chun-ch'ii 1945: 59; C C P , Chung-yang 1942: 2 6 - 2 7 . Liu offers some information about the number o f landlords in Huaipei: Place Hsinssu hsiang Paishui hsiang Haoch'iao hsiang

Managerial landlords

Rent landlords

24 21 1

19 o 11

16. "Wan-nan tsu-tien" 1940: 238. Some tenant-rich peasants, selfcultivating rich peasants, and middle peasants leased land to poor peasants. Referred to as erh-lao-patt (secondary landlord), they reportedly exploited the poor in three ways: they offered a free room in exchange for ten days o f "busy-season w o r k " (mang-kung); they allowed a tenant free use o f some land in return for free service from the tenant's family; and they asked their tenants to pay part of their rent. In dealing with the secondary landlord, the Party urged its cadres to use mediation and persuasion rather than confrontation and struggle (Fang Y i 1944: 1 3 - 1 4 , 22). 17. Chin-ling ta-hsueh 1940: 6 5 - 6 7 ; K u o Han-ming and Hung J u i chien 1937: 85. Most materials on this subject fail to specify whether the landlord provided productive means other than land or whether the calculation o f share rent included more than the major crop. Here I assume that the landlord only provides land and divides only the major crop. 18. Ch'ii Ming-chou 1935, 2: 5 0 4 - 1 0 ; K u o Han-ming and Hung J u i chien 1937: 89; "Wan-nan tsu-tien" 1940: 2 3 9 - 4 1 ; Chin-ling ta-hsueh 1940: 3 4 - 4 2 . K u o Han-ming reports that it was common for tenants in southern Anhwei to pay about 50 percent of the land price as rental deposit in return for permanent tenancy. In northern Anhwei both permanent tenancy and rental deposits were rarely found. I suspect that this contrast was a reflection o f different degrees of commercialization. See K u o Han-ming (1938: 136); K u o Han-ming and Hung Jui-chien (1937: 64, 90).

Notes to Pages 137-139

5J9

19. Y a o Hsueh-yin 1939: 6 3 - 6 4 ; K u o H a n - m i n g and H u n g Jui-chien ' 9 3 7 : 13; C h a n g C h u n g - w u 1974: 1 2 - 1 3 . Landlords' consciousness o f their status and their conspicuous consumption w e r e themselves sufficient to generate class tension. 20. C h i n - l i n g ta-hsuch 1940: 108-9; A m a n o M o t o n o s u k e 1939: 3 - 4 , 5; K u o H a n - m i n g and H u n g Jui-chien 1937: 46; Fang Y i 1944: 1 6 - 1 7 . In Hupei 14 perccnt o f the tenants b o r r o w e d f r o m their landlords, and in A n h w e i , 21 percent. A m a n o estimates the percentage o f debtors in the population in 1939 as f o l l o w s : Province

Dehors

Cash borrowers

Grain borrowers 52

Kiangsu

50.82

62

Anhwei

66.05

63

56

Hupei

37-50

46

51

21. C h a n g C h i e h - h o u 1935: 490-91; L i u j u i - l u n g 1944a: 72; Mantetsu 1940: 134. A c c o r d i n g to Liu, a 1942 Huaipei investigation f o u n d that more than 80 percent b o r r o w e d for f o o d consumption. O n l y a f e w b o r r o w e d for weddings, funerals, business, o r tool purchases. C h i a n g Feng found close correlation b e t w e e n the lack o f commercial opportunities and the rampancy o f usury in Huaipei. In such economically b a c k w a r d areas as Suiching hsiang, Huai-Pao, the g o v e r n m e n t collected almost n o taxes because the cost o u t w e i g h e d the revenue, and the bureaucratic absence led to the appearance o f a w o r l d o f all against all. In collusion with uncontrollable, underpaid subbureaucrats, the most cunning and daring elements, usually gangsters, found enormous opportunities in usury. T h e i r greed was unrestrained, and their methods o f collecting debts, repulsive. T h e y enticed villagers to g a m b l e , and used the g a m b l i n g debts to squeeze them to sell land and other property. In this particular hsiang, about one-fifth o f the debtors o w e d m o n e y because o f g a m b l i n g (1946: 56-58,61,71). 22. A m a n o M o t o n o s u k e 1939: 1 5 - 1 6 , 19; C h i n - l i n g ta-hsueh 1940: 108-9; W u Ch'eng-hsi 1935: 8 1 0 - 1 1 . T h e m o n t h l y interest rates for loans in kind were estimated at 6.9, 7.5, and 10 percent, respectively, for Hupei, Kiangsu, and A n h w e i . 23. In the Y a n g t z e delta, for example, the g o v e r n m e n t organized a rentcollection bureau in the early 1930s. In a single m o n t h in 1934 the bureau received ten thousand applications f o r official assistance with rent collection. T h e g o v e r n m e n t imprisoned 100 tenants for refusal or inability to pay rent. N o similar rent-collection bureaus were

560

Notes to Pages

139-144

organized outside the delta, but it was not u n c o m m o n n for officials to intervene on behalf o f landlords and creditors in case o f disputes. See CKCT

(1957: 307-8).

24. Nung-clt'ing pao-kao 1939, 7.4: 48-50; CKCT

1957: 248. T h i s esti-

mate is made on the assumption that both cash rent and fixed rent amounted to about 40 percent o f the crop. Land taxes differed according to place. In southern A n h w e i , 0.1 to 0.2 yuan w e r e levied on each mu o f land, and surtaxes w e r e extremely light. In northern A n h w e i m a n y landowners never paid land taxes, and usually o n l y 0.01 to 0.02 yuan were levied o n each mu, if taxation was unavoidable. K u o H a n - m i n g attributes the light taxes in northern A n h w e i to t w o r e a s o n s — o n e historical and the other e c o n o m i c . Historically the founder o f the M i n g dynasty, w h o came f r o m northern A n h w e i , reduced or abolished taxes in his h o m e region, and economically the productivity o f land was higher in southern A n h w e i than in northern A n h w e i ( K u o H a n - m i n g 1938: 136-37)25. S o m e rent resistance, tax resistance, and "eat-ins" resulted f r o m C C P agitation, but it is impossible to determine the actual n u m b e r . See, e.g., L i u j u i - l u n g (1944a: 2). 26. CKCT

(1957: 1012—33) contains the.information for this section,

including " e a t - i n s " and grain robbery. 27. Bianco 1975: 314. Bianco's essay is the best for an understanding o f collective peasant action in the N a n k i n g decade. 28. In C C P d o c u m e n t s the g o v e r n m e n t ' s b o r r o w i n g o f grain f r o m the civilian population is referred to as yu-chieh kung-liang. T h e lender could use the receipt to p a y taxes. Because this practice is sometimes called chieh-liang (the t w o characters d e n o t i n g the f o o d - b o r r o w i n g struggle), one should be careful w h e n interpreting the same Chinese characters in different contexts. See, e.g., Liu Jui-lung (1942: 54). 29. Liu Shao-ch'i 1943: 2; Liu Jui-lung 1942: 5 4 - 5 5 , 61; Liu Jui-lung 1944a: 1 2 - 1 3 ; Jao Shu-shih [1943]: 8. T h e convocation o f an elitepacked regional assembly put some constraints on the C C P ' s ability to fan the f o o d - b o r r o w i n g struggle. T h e elite representatives in the assembly criticized the leftist excesses o f the struggle. T h e Party invariably promised to curb the excesses, but, b y the time the e x cesses w e r e curbed, the Party had already achieved its dual goal o f famine relief and mass mobilization. Liu Shao-ch'i once discussed this strategy, declaring that "bureaucratism, being a f o r m o f

Notes to Pages ¡44-148

561

struggle under certain circumstances, is both necessary and justifiable." He also made an interesting observation about the elite: "You will benefit by assuming a mandarin's pretense (kuan-chia-tzu: haughtiness, pomposity, and contemptuousness) in your dealings with landlords; otherwise you will be looked d o w n upon by t h e m " (1945c: 19)30. Liu Shao-ch'i 1945b: 40-42. O n Liu's personal role in a f o o d borrowing struggle in summer 1941, see C C P , Yen-ch'eng (1980: 177-78). 31. Liu Jui-lung 1944a: n - i 3 ; a n d 1942: 54-55, 61; Liu Yu-chu 1941: 7; and 1943: 31. O n excesses in food-borrowing campaigns elsewhere in central China, see Wang Yi (1942: 40—42); W a n g Ju-hui (1941); Jao Shu-shih ([1943]: 35~3 fn) Bfj ^ « * £ HH £ X fF ft i t * [Directive by the Central China Party Bureau concerning how to broaden the work of making friends]. Chiin-chutig tang-jen, no. 2.

1942

"Chushi konkyochi minshu soshiki ni kansuru kettei" [Decision concerning mass organizations in the central China base areas] (May 30, 1941). Japanese trans., Joho, no. 68 (June).

1943a

"Hua-chung-chii kuan-yii chien-ch'ih ti-hou chien-k'u toucheng ti chih-shih" $ + [Directive concerning how to continue the difficult struggle behind enemy lines]. Chen-li, no. 1 1 (March).

1943b

"Hua-chung-chii tui cheng-li tzu-wei-chiin ho t'i-kao minping kung-tso ti chih-shih" $ +

fr: T fF ft }u 7JX [Directive of the Central China Party Bureau concerning the consolidation of the self-defense corps and the promotion of militia work]. Chun-shih chien-she, no. 4. C C P . Huai-nan ch'ii-tang-wei tft iftl™ J S H 1943 "Kuan-yii yung-cheng ai-min ho yung-chiin kung-tso ti chih-shih" [Directive concerning support-the-government, love-the-people, and support-the-army work] (Nov.). 1945

"Ch'ii-tang-wei kuan-yii kuan-ch'e jen-ch'uan pao-chang ti chueh-ting" K f t ^ H i m i t j t t A f l & R & K ^ [Decision concerning thorough protection of human rights] (April 17). Huai-nan

tang-k'an, no. 18 ( J u l y ) .

C C P . Huai-pei ch'ii-tang-wei HiUblUjNtS 1943 a "Chia-ch'iang t'ung-i chan-hsien yii k'uo-ta chiao-p'eng-yu kung-tso ti chih-shih" [Directive concerning how to strengthen the united front and how to expand the work of making friends] (Feb. 26). 1943b

"Ch'ii-tang-wei kuan-yii chia-ch'iang t'ung-i chan-hsien yii k'uo-ta chiao-p'eng-yu kung-tso ti chih-shih" IS 5SU ftm-mmmmXicWXTftftftni [Directive of the regional Party committee concerning how to strengthen the united front and how to expand the work of making friends].

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I944e

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