When completed, the pyramid would cover the nation with Congresses at four different levels. Since the delegates to each higher level would be chosen by the one below, this system would in form completely reverse China’s traditional hierarchical rule. Under the traditional system all power centered formally in the Emperor (later in the dictator Chiang Kai-shek). This exalted personage appointed provincial governors who in turn appointed county magistrates, who in turn appointed village leaders, who in turn exercised powers of life and death over the independent proprietors, tenants, and landless laborers under their jurisdiction. The new system that was coming into being on the heels of land reform was just the opposite. In the new system all power formally resided in the people. They had the right to elect the governing bodies of their villages, the village People’s Congresses, which in turn had the right to elect delegates to the Regional (later provincial) Congresses. Once the entire nation attained Liberation, these latter Congresses would join with the Congresses of the larger cities in electing delegates to a National Congress representing the people of all democratic classes, all regions, and all municipalities.*
Viewed from this perspective, the establishment of a People’s Congress in Long Bow had double significance. On the one hand it would provide the village with a permanent structure capable of dealing with most problems, and on the other it would fill a gap in the political system of the Liberated Areas as a whole and constitute one more building block in the national political system of the future.
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In Long Bow the birth of the village People’s Congress was eagerly awaited. Under the regulations of the Draft Agrarian Law and the directives issued by the Border Region Government, only the Long Long Bow People’s Congress could:
(1) Carry out the third and final classification of the village population.
(2) Take over whatever property the landlords and rich peasants still possessed, receive whatever property was to be returned by cadres who had taken an unfair share, and administer whatever property already belonged to the village as a whole.
(3) Make a final distribution of all such property, give out surplus lands, houses, equipment, furnishings, and livestock, and issue deeds for lands and houses.
(4) Set up a third and final gate for the approval or disapproval of all old cadres and Party members.
(5) Determine the allocation of taxes on the summer crop.
(6) Appoint permanent village officers and supervise their work.
(7) Elect delegates to the congress of the county.
Since all these problems were ripe for solution, the people were impatient to get on with the elections. But in this, as in so many other matters, the work team decided on a policy of patient education. Comrade Ts’ai wanted to prepare the ground well. He wanted to be sure that everyone understood the reasons for setting up a Congress, the basic principles of such a democratic government, the powers and responsibilities of its delegates and the officers appointed by them, and the powers and responsibilities of the electorate. He therefore delayed the elections for several days while the majority of the population discussed these questions. All those who were members of the Peasants’ Association discussed them in their sectional groups. Those who were not members formed a special group of their own.
I attended the discussions in the southwest corner of the village. There Ch’i Yun guided the deliberations. She explained the powers and functions of the People’s Congress by comparing it to the board of a consumer co-operative society. The consumer co-operative societies that existed in so many villages were organized with a board of directors elected by the shareholders and a manager chosen by the board of directors. Every once in a while the directors met to examine how the manager was doing. This board looked into the balance sheet, examined the volume of business, totalled up the profits and the losses, and then gave instructions to the manager about taking better care of the business. Under the over-all supervision of this board, the manager and his staff did the day-to-day work of the co-operative, kept the accounts, ordered new goods, and cleaned up the building.
When the Congress idea was explained in this way, most of the peasants understood it quite well. Even though they had had little experience with democratic forms of government, they had all either participated in the organization of co-operatives or observed how they worked.
The first question which the peasants asked, once they grasped the essence of the idea, was, “What about the Communist Party in the village? Isn’t the Communist Party the leader of the whole Revolution? If all village affairs are to be handled by a Congress, what is there for the Party to do?”
At a mass meeting of the full membership of the Peasants’ Association Team Leader Ts’ai explained the role of the Communist Party in the reorganized village as follows:
The Long Bow People’s Congress will be the highest authority in our community. The Communist Party members must obey the decisions of the Congress and carry them out. But at the same time the Communist Party branch must discuss and make up its own mind on all important issues before the Congress, bring its conclusions before the Congress and put them before the other delegates for approval. If the other delegates support these opinions, they will be carried out. If they oppose them, then the branch must reconsider and discuss the whole thing once more. If the branch still considers its judgments correct and the Congress delegates still disagree, then the branch can take the question to higher Party bodies. But even if the latter agree with the branch, they cannot recommend that the Congress be overridden. They can only advise the local Party branch to persist, make further explanations, carry on education on the issue, and wait for agreement in the future. As for the Congress, it has its own higher body, the People’s Congress of Lucheng County. This is made up of delegates from similar village congresses all over the county. In case there are serious disagreements, which, in spite of the procedures outlined, cannot be settled in the village, they can be carried to higher bodies for final disposition by both sides.
Thus, as Comrade Ts’ai explained it, the Communist Party in contrast to the People’s Congress, was not in a position to exercise state power in any form. It could only persuade and set an example. There was nothing to prevent people from electing Communists as delegates to the Long Bow Congress, but no Communist could have more power there than any other delegate. Communists could exert leadership only through their own unity and their ability to come up with solutions to difficult problems that won majority support.
The leading role of the Communists, in other words, depended not on coercion, not on special powers, but on education, persuasion, and the active participation of all its members in the daily affairs of the village. In the long run, the ability of local Communists to lead depended first on demonstrably correct policies and second on the prestige based on merit and performance of its individual members, on the extent to which they took an active part in all mass organizations and led by example, educated others day by day and hour by hour, and proved themselves to be more selfless, more devoted, and more principled than ordinary people.
This question of prestige was a complicated one because, although the Party tried to recruit into its ranks only the most active, the most resourceful, and the most devoted peasants, there was always the possibility that the over-all prestige of the Party might rub off on members who did not in fact deserve it and give to their words and their opinions a weight that their personal qualities did not justify.
In fact, of course, this did occur. Whether a local Party branch was good or bad, the national prestige of the Party made its opinions important to all non-Party cadres, the elected delegates of the people, and the people as a whole. Whenever a new problem arose, the first thing the peasants wanted to know was, “What does the Party have to say?” For many, the fact that the Party spoke was enough to win their support. And because this was so, all Party members bore a heavy responsibility. They did in fact carry more weight than they would have as unconnected individ
uals, and the necessity for thinking things through and being right was therefore all the more urgent.
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As the peasants in their neighborhood groups of the Association discussed the role of the Party in the village as a whole and its relationship to the coming Congress, they also discussed the question of democracy. What did the word mean? Was democracy the same thing as license?
Some said, “I have democracy now so I don’t have to go to any meetings; I can do just as I please.” But others criticized them sharply. Such an attitude was wrong, they said. In order to carry out democracy one must have meetings, consult together, and make good plans to protect and promote the interests of the people. It was not democracy to refuse to do what the majority had decided. It was just using the word as an excuse for wrongdoing. Democracy meant to carry out what was of benefit to the majority, not to act in the interest of any single person. Perhaps the good results of democratic decisions could not be seen in a few days, but after several months or several years the benefits would certainly become clear.
In order to guarantee the effectiveness of majority decisions, some peasants wanted to set up a “system”—that is, a set of rules. They wanted to criticize and, if need be, punish those who did not come to meetings in the future. Others said no. They held that this was a matter of conscience and maintained that it was no use punishing people for political apathy. Everyone must be convinced from within. Unless discipline was self-imposed, there could be no democracy at all.
Neither of these views was accepted as the final answer to the question of freedom versus control. While agreeing that on the whole people must act from conscious positive motives, the majority insisted that those few who did not co-operate and refused to carry their share of such common burdens as taxes, rear service, and attendance at meetings, should be criticized. “We should ask them to speak out their thoughts in public and help them to think it through. If they don’t want any of the responsibilities, then they shouldn’t get any of the benefits. Ask them to go and live by themselves. Let them plant their own corn alone, and if they have problems let them solve them themselves. Don’t let them come to us for help, for in their own minds they are not members of this village.” So spoke Old Tui-chin, the bachelor who was the recognized spokesman for the northern group.
“After all,” added Ch’ung-lai’s wife, in behalf of the eastern group, “no one can live in isolation. Everyone lives by co-operation and mutual aid. Husband and wife have to consult together and no one can till the land completely alone.”
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On July 21st, elections to the Village People’s Congress finally took place. Thirty-five people were elected—16 women and 19 men. Among them were nine old middle peasants, 25 newly fanshened poor peasants (now called new-middle-peasants), and one poor peasant. Of the 35 delegates, eight, or less than 25 percent, were Communist Party members. These included four men: former Peasants’ Association chairman Cheng-k’uan; branch secretary Hsin-fa; militiaman Ta-hung; and the 39-year-old middle peasant, Meng Fu-lu. The other four Communists were women: chairman of the Women’s Association, Hu Hsueh-chen; vice chairman Wang An-feng; and two housewives, Shih Hsiu-mei and Jen Ho-chueh, the latter the wife of the Communist Hsiao Wen-hsu. Another four delegates were wives, mothers, or brothers of Party members. These were Ta-hung’s wife, Chou Cheng-lo’s mother, Kuei Ts’ai’s mother, and Ts’ai-yuan’s youngest brother, Pu-yuan.
The other 23 delegates to the People’s Congress were rank-and-file peasants with no direct or indirect ties to the Communist Party. They were chosen by their neighbors because of the role they had played in village affairs since the work team arrived in March. Outstanding among them were Old Tui-chin, a bachelor and a worker in the wine plant who was still classed as a poor peasant, the ex-hired laborer Shen Fa-liang, and the ex-beggar, Ch’ung-lai’s wife, both new-middle-peasants whose life stories have been related in Chapter 3. Wu-k’uei’s wife, a woman sold three times under the old regime; Old Lady Wang, the peppery weaver; Li Lao-szu, the doleful wasteland pioneer; Kuo Yuan-lung, a young activist and former Catholic from the southwest section; and the widow, T’ai-shan’s mother, the hardest working woman in the whole village, also won places on the list of outstanding people elected to the Congress.
Old Shen’s Catholic clique won no recognition at all. That garrulous old schemer’s following collapsed completely soon after the ex-bandit Yu-lai and his son Wen-te bowed their heads before the gate.
Viewed from any perspective, this was a very strong Congress. It was not exactly a cross-section of the village, but rather a selection of the best the village had produced. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that the most active, the most trusted, the most brilliant and hard-working individuals in the community had been chosen as its leaders.
When the results of the election were announced and the list of names posted, the population greeted the news with smiles and enthusiastic comment. A fresh breath of optimism seemed to sweep through the muddy lanes and back alleys of Long Bow. The delegates were congratulated at every turn as they went about their business. The cadres of the work group were as pleased as the villagers. They made a special point of visiting all the delegates in their homes in order to welcome them to the Congress.
When the 35 delegates met for the first time, they elected a standing committee of five that was outstanding in character and ability. It was composed of four Party members, Cheng-k’uan and Hsin-fa (male) and Hu Hsueh-chen and An-feng (female), and one non-Party delegate, Old Tui-chin. Cheng-k’uan was elected chairman and Tui-chin vice chairman.
The next order of business was the selection of the village administration. Ch’un-hsi, the incumbent, who had held the post temporarily ever since passing the gate in April, was unanimously chosen to continue as village head. A second Party member, Shih Szu-har, was appointed captain of the militia to succeed the discredited Hung-er. The other five positions—assistant village head, education director, treasurer, production officer, and rear service officer—were filled by the appointment of non-Party people, two of whom were Congress delegates. The bull-headed middle peasant, Chang Chin-hung, treasurer of the village since its liberation in 1945, was again chosen for this task. Everyone admired his facility with figures and his hard business sense.
Once the delegates agreed on who should fill these posts, they called in those new appointees not already present, informed each about his or her new job and then asked each to make a statement of attitude. All vowed to work hard and do their best to represent the interests of the village as a whole.
The atmosphere of this Congress meeting was relaxed and friendly. Everyone seemed relieved to have a democratically chosen village administration at last, and they talked over the problems that confronted them as old friends. Tension and antagonism seemed to have vanished, at least for the time being.
On the following day, July 23rd, a mass meeting of the whole village was held in the wine plant. There, safe from summer showers, the new administration was formally inaugurated with appropriate banners, slogans, and speeches. This time the celebration, because it was no empty formality but a genuine turning point in the people’s lives, engendered real enthusiasm. Long Bow village had entered a new era in its turbulent life.
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Perhaps the most notable action taken by the village as it created the People’s Congress was the vote that plucked Old Tui-chin from the obscurity which had enveloped him for more than 50 years and placed him in the post of vice chairman, second most important position in the whole village. Submerged, oppressed, and disregarded throughout most of his life, Tui-chin never had a chance to demonstrate anything but a capacity for hard labor until the land division laid the foundation for equality of opportunity. Once this took place, he moved to the fore in village life. In this respect, he was typical of the kind of indigenous leaders that the Chinese peasantry constantly thrust onto the stage in those years. As one mass movement followed another, wider and wider circl
es of formerly voiceless and passive victims of the system were drawn into active political life and demonstrated talents the existence of which they had never suspected.
Old Tui-chin had an open round face, well tanned by the sun and ever ready to break into a cheerful smile. Wrinkles spread from the corners of his eyes and furrowed his broad forehead. A scraggly beard, never more than a finger’s width in length adorned his jaw and chin. It constituted the only disorderly thing about the man. Everything else, from the towel on his shaven head to the cloth straps that bound his trouser cuffs to his ankles, was meticulously arranged. His clothing, even though faded, patched and patched again, was always clean.
When the work team arrived in March, few people knew much more about the old man than his name. Within a few weeks he had been elected vice-leader of the northern group of the Poor Peasants’ League. With each mass meeting and each crisis, his prestige grew in his own section of the village, but it was not until the policy change initiated by the County Conference that he became well known to the community as a whole. The policy change made Tui-chin a village figure because he, and he alone among the poor peasants, had all along maintained that most of the village cadres were good leaders, that there was very little property still to be distributed, and that political fanshen, elections, meetings, and the establishment of the People’s Congress were just as important as millet. He took it for granted that Long Bow’s people should solve their problems themselves and that they should do it democratically through mass participation in village affairs.
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