Fanshen

by Hinton, William ; Magdoff, Fred;

  Shang Shih-t’ou never went to the suggested rendezvous. He had no intention of risking his lucrative career as village head by contact with hairbrained patriots who were probably atheistic Communists. To be on the safe side, however, he never slept at home at night, nor did he ever sleep in the same place twice in a row. Should guerrilla fighters raid the village looking for him, they would have a hard time finding him. This plan worked well enough until his wife became suspicious. She refused to believe that he never came home at night because he was afraid of assassination. An aunt of hers had told her that Shang spent his nights gambling, drinking, and carousing. The aunt mentioned at least three mistresses that Shih-t’ou had been known to sleep with and hinted that there were several more in other villages. This information so infuriated Shih-t’ou’s wife that she went to the village office and denounced him in public. She also denounced him to her pastor, Father Sun. She told everyone she met on the street that her husband never came home because he spent his nights with “broken shoes” (prostitutes).

  There was, of course, some truth to these rumors. In order to silence his wife, Shang Shih-t’ou was forced to stay at home several nights in a row. On his own k’ang he slept hardly at all. He started at each sound. He rose and looked around several times each night. Each time he found nothing. The village lay absolutely still under the stars. Everyone, including the Japanese soldiers and their sentries, was asleep. On the third night, worn out with fear and taut nerves, he finally fell asleep in spite of himself.

  He woke as he was dragged from his wife’s side by several strong hands. When he tried to scream, a piece of cotton was jammed into his mouth. He fell to the floor, felt a gun barrel in his back, and dared not move while his assailants bound him tight. He heard a stifled scream as they also bound and gagged his wife. Then he was half dragged, half carried through the courtyard to the street. Someone ordered him to kneel down. He knelt. A single shot rang out in the stillness, followed by the muffled sound of cloth-shod feet running up the street. The footsteps gradually receded. But Shang Shih-t’ou did not hear them fade out. He was already dead.

  The execution of Shang Shih-t’ou paralyzed the puppet regime for several weeks. All the leading officials knew that such a bold raid could never have been carried out without an underground organization in the village itself. Even in broad daylight they hardly dared step outside Japanese headquarters for many days thereafter. The arrogant Japanese feigned unshaken confidence, but belied it by doubling the men on guard duty and carrying out extra security checks at night.

  The peasants, on the other hand, could hardly conceal their delight. Had it not been for the fact that the least sign of jubilation could bring arrests, beatings, perhaps even executions, they would have demonstrated in the streets. The landlords and their running dogs had shamed the whole village by taking the road of collaboration for whatever security, comfort, or profit this despicable path had to offer. Here now was dramatic proof that there were patriots in Long Bow who chose instead the path of resistance in spite of all the dangers and hardships that guerrilla war and underground activity made inevitable. The execution of Shang Shih-t’ou redeemed the village not only in the eyes of its own inhabitants, but before the whole county, and with this act the process of revolutionary transformation in Long Bow began.

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  It is one of the great ironies of history that the warlords of Japan, who insisted ad nauseam that they were “intervening” in China only to build prosperity in “Greater East Asia” and save the Chinese people from a fate worse than death—Communism—greatly hastened by that very intervention the triumph of the Communist-led Revolution.

  The Japanese conquerors cleared the ground for revolution in many ways—by the extreme brutality of their tactics, which left not only the peasants but many gentry as well no choice but to fight; by driving the higher levels of the Kuomintang bureaucracy and army out of North China; by enticing the lower levels of this same bureaucracy and army into collaboration in the occupied zones, thereby compromising them permanently in the eyes of the people; and by leaving in the wake of their conquering armies extensive areas of countryside which they were unable to garrison. Into the political and military vacuum thus created, the Communist Party and the armed forces under its direction were able to move.* Within a very short period of time, they mobilized tens of millions of hard-pressed peasants for resistance, and that resistance, by reaching out to all strata of society, laid the groundwork for the social revolution to come.

  Within a few days after the Japanese began their attack at Lukuochiao in 1937, detachments of seasoned troops from the Communist-led Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army (known as the Eighth Route Army from the time of the United Front Agreement with Chiang Kai-shek in 1937) left Yenan in North Shansi, crossed the Yellow River, and took up positions in both the Taihang and the Wutai ranges of Eastern Shansi. These detachments, small as they were, did not cluster in one place but split into numerous armed working groups that filtered through the advancing enemy lines and spread out into the valleys, the plains, and the villages of every region to organize, train, and direct the great influx of peasant recruits that soon came seeking weapons and instructions. Each working group thus surrounded itself with detachments of peasant militia who lived at home, tilled their fields during the daytime and the summer season, and fought during the night and the off season. From among the best fighters and leaders of the militia, recruits were drawn to replace those killed and wounded and to expand the growing regular forces.

  The mushroom-like growth of the Eighth Route Army and its supporting militia was paralleled by the growth of the Chinese Communist Party which counted among its members most of the Army commanders and recruited steadily among the most active of the rank-and-file soldiers. But the Communist Party did not confine itself to military mobilization alone. When the veterans of the ten-year Civil War crossed the Yellow River, hundreds of civilian organizers came with them to do political work. Under the protection of the Eighth Route Army they too fanned out into the rural villages and organized the Peasants’ Associations, the Women’s Associations, the consumer co-operatives and the village councils that became the mass civilian base for a miltary effort that could not succeed without the support of the overwhelming majority of the population. The best, the most active leaders of these groups were recruited into the Communist Party to form local branches made up, in the main, of working peasants. Into the Party also were drawn many students, intellectuals, and professionals from the cities who crossed the battle lines by the thousands to join the resistance.

  Wherever the Eighth Route Army and the Communist Party found a foothold the disintegration resulting from defeat, panic, and the flight of the old officialdom was stopped. Out of chaos order was gradually restored. Wherever possible the remnant armed forces of the Kuomintang were regrouped and brought under unified leadership. Most important of all, as a result of these measures the Japanese were driven from or denied access to the area unless they came in great strength, in which case the resistance forces temporarily retreated, only to flow back again when the Japanese wave receded.

  From the first small pockets these resistance bases reached out to encompass whole counties. These counties in turn were linked into chains and systems to form extensive Liberated Areas, or Border Regions.

  In the Liberated Areas new anti-Japanese resistance governments were set up by a coalition of parties and social forces that included patriotic Kuomintang elements and many outstanding individuals who belonged to no party. These governments were staffed by people from all walks of life, including landlords. Democratic elections were held to choose representative assemblies at the district, the county, and the regional level; and these assemblies, in turn, chose executive officers to carry out their will. Even though the Communist Party was the main organizer and leader of this movement, it limited its own members to one third of all elective and appointive posts.*

  The leaders of the Liberated Areas gove
rnments, Communist and non-Communist alike, set as their task the full mobilization of the Chinese people’s potential for resistance against Japan. This potential could only be realized if the peasants were given an alternative to the exploitation and oppression of the past. Without real improvement in the conditions of tenure, rates of interest, distribution of taxes, and the right to bear arms, and without a voice in the making of policy, the peasants could not be mobilized to fight effectively. Nevertheless, to advocate at that time a thorough revolution in social relations, the expropriation of the landlords, and a new system of land tenure would have led to disaster. For such a revolution could only mean civil war, could only drive the landlords wholesale into the arms of the Japanese and split the nation at a time when unity alone could save it. The Communist Party therefore abandoned the “Land to the Tiller” program which had prevailed in its old South China bases and joined with other parties and groups in a program of reforms designed to win the support of all factions and classes. The heart of this program was the “Double Reduction”—reduction of rents and reduction of interest rates.

  The landlords were asked to reduce rents by at least 25 percent and to scale down interest rates on loans from 30 percent or even up to 100 percent a year to not more than 10 percent. These requests were based on a law passed by the Kuomintang government in 1933. The peasants, who by virtue of the arms in their possession, could have stopped payment of rent altogether and repudiated their debts, were asked to pay these reduced rents and interest charges and to produce as much as possible in support of the war. According to the principle, “He who can give labor should give labor and he who can give money should give money,” a system of differential taxes was introduced exempting those with the lowest income from any taxes at all and scaling the rates upward for each income level to reach a maximum of 30 percent for the large landowners. These policies were effective in arousing the enthusiasm of the peasants and were accepted by the majority of the gentry in the interest of national salvation.

  On the basis of such policies the Communist Party, the Eighth Route Army, and the Liberated Areas expanded year by year. By 1942, they became such a threat to Japanese control that the enemy concentrated most of its expeditionary force in an attempt to wipe out the North China bases. The annihilation drives of that year and the following year reduced the Liberated Areas and destroyed part of the Eighth Route Army, but not all of it. Japan was unable to keep up the pressure, and as soon as it was relaxed the process of growth began again. By 1945 the Taihang Region, which surrounded Long Bow Village, was but half of a larger entity known as the Shansi-Hopei-Honan Liberated Area, and this in turn was but one of eight Liberated Areas in North China. To these must be added the 11 smaller areas in Central and South China created by the New Fourth Army and the South China Anti-Japanese Brigade, making a grand total of 19 Liberated Areas containing approximately 100 million people, defended by a regular army of one million troops, a militia of more than two million, and a self-defense corps of ten million.*

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  The morale, the fighting experience, and the organizing ability which the Eighth Route Army and the Communist Party brought to Lucheng County in 1937 met an immediate response. Within a few days after the first detachments reached the area dozens of recruits showed up. At least two of them were from Long Bow Village—19-year-old Shih Ts’ai-yuan, son of a prosperous middle peasant, and 18-year-old Chao Yin-kuei, a landless hired laborer.** In the short period that remained before the Japanese Army arrived, Communist political organizers joined local leaders of the “Dare to Die Corps” (a progressive resistance movement sponsored, during United Front days, by Yen Hsi-shan) in setting up an Anti-Japanese county government.

  By the time the Japanese troops marched into the county seat, the walled town of Lucheng, units of the Eighth Route Army were already well established in the highlands and the new government had already mobilized a large number of villages for resistance. When the enemy moved in, the leading personnel of the administration simply moved out into the countryside, set up offices in whatever village proved safest at the moment, and kept on working.

  A district leader was appointed for each of the five districts of the county. Like the county government, the district offices were mobile and were popularly said to reside in the district leaders’ dispatch cases as they walked from village to village.

  Long Bow Village lay in the fifth and southernmost district, the most heavily garrisoned part of the county. There the enemy garrisons were a serious obstacle to organization, but while their rule was supreme during the daylight hours, the foreign soldiers and their puppets withdrew to their headquarters after dark, afraid of snipers and sudden ambush. It was then possible for other forces to come and go. By organizing at night the people of the Fifth District, like those of the other four, were able to build up a resistance government, and maintain a district leader, a secret Communist Party Committee, and a militia.

  In certain occupied villages such as Little Gully, only three miles from Long Bow, the puppet village chairman was in touch with the resistance movement, worked under the direction of the Fifth District leader, and did what he could to support the war against Japan. He served the puppet government in name only. Through such men contacts were made with courageous peasants in other occupied villages, thus establishing and maintaining an underground network under the very noses of the Japanese.

  Long Bow Village, with its seven-sided blockhouse, its garrison of 100 men and its Catholic-staffed puppet administration was the most dangerous spot of all in which to work; yet Long Bow too developed an active core of underground workers. The first of these was Chang T’ien-ming, the poor nephew of the village head of Little Gully. Though 20 years old and eligible, he was still a bachelor and lived alone.* His father, a Peking blacksmith, was dead. His mother had left home in a famine year and settled with her other son, a carpenter, in Hungtung, 40 miles to the west. Left behind in Long Bow, T’ien-ming cultivated the lone family acre, hired out to his landlord neighbors for seasonal work and did a little carpentry on the side. With nothing to keep him at home after sunset he often visited his uncle in Little Gully and there met the district leader, learned about the anti-Japanese work that was being done, and volunteered to do some himself.

  At about the same time, another Long Bow peasant, the hired laborer Shen So-tzu, got in touch with the district leader through a relative who headed the resistance government of Ku-yi, an unoccupied village five miles to the north. Shen So-tzu, in turn, enlisted the help of his close friend Kung Lai-pao, a youth as destitute and as eager to strike a blow for liberation as he was.

  A fourth man was contacted by still another means. This was Shih Fu-yuan, younger brother of Ts’ai-yuan who had enlisted in the Eighth Route Army when its first brigade appeared. As a regular soldier Ts’ai-yuan roamed far afield with his unit but he always returned to his Lucheng base, and when he had a chance, came home to visit his father, his mother, his two brothers, and their wives and children—altogether a family of ten. They shared a courtyard that boasted 25 sections of housing, farmed eight acres of land, and were considered to be one of the most prosperous laboring families in the village. Since they had no connection with the dominant clique, their prosperity made them the victim of every looting soldier and every hungry official. The taxes they paid were endless in number and suffocating in amount. The whole family hated the old regime and doubly hated the puppet apparatus that succeeded it. Before he returned to his unit Ts’ai-yuan told Fu-yuan how to reach him in the mountains in case of need. Several times Fu-yuan made the trip, and it was while visiting his brother at Eighth Route divisional headquarters that Fu-yuan met the district leader. A few talks with the latter were enough to convince him that he should work actively against the Japanese. Put in touch with Shen So-tzu, he soon joined the other three who were already at work.

  At first the underground group performed modest tasks, running errands for the District Office, delivering messages and
helping transport supplies; but in 1942, the year of the great famine and the most terrible mopping-up campaigns, the Fifth District leader decided to strengthen the work in Long Bow by organizing a regular underground administration. The group met and chose Shen So-tzu as village head, Kung Lai-pao as vice-leader, Fu-yuan as public affairs director, and T’ien-ming as director of public security, i.e., police and counter-intelligence. This group of young men, all of them under 25, worked in the strictest secrecy. They told no one that a resistance government had actually been organized. Only their most trusted friends and relatives were mobilized to carry out the various tasks which they set themselves or which the district set for them. Nevertheless they did too much not to attract attention, were eventually betrayed, and did not all survive the war. What inspired them to take such risks? Why did they remain in the village where they could be seized and killed at any moment when they might with equal honor have joined the regulars in the mountains and fought with guns in hand? There at least a man had a chance to fight and run and live to fight another day.

  I never discovered the answer to this question. The survivors of the Long Bow underground who afterwards told me of its exploits seemed to regard it as the most normal thing in the world for them to have done. People were needed for the work in the occupied villages. They lived there and did the work. If things got too hot they could always leave for the hills—if they could get away. If they needed help they could always call on the Eighth Route Army—if there was time.

  There is no doubt that the enthusiasm of a resistance movement nation-wide in scope inspired them to acts which they would not otherwise have undertaken. That they passionately believed in the liberation of China and in the new society which they saw coming was proven by their deeds. But they were reticent about such things and much preferred action to talking of it afterward.