The Tragedy of Liberation: A History of the Chinese Revolution 1945-1957

by Dikötter, Frank

  58 On Tibet see Tsering Shakya, The Dragon in the Land of Snows, New York: Columbia University Press, 1999; see also Chen Jian, ‘The Chinese Communist “Liberation” of Tibet, 1949–51’, in Brown and Pickowicz, Dilemmas of Victory, pp. 130–59.

  59 The formulation is taken from Christian Tyler, Wild West China: The Taming of Xinjiang, London: John Murray, 2003, p. 131.

  3: Liberation

  1 Kang Zhengguo, Confessions: An Innocent Life in Communist China, New York: Norton, 2007, p. 5. On the rice-sprout song, see Hung Chang-tai, ‘The Dance of Revolution: Yangge in Beijing in the Early 1950s’, China Quarterly, no. 181 (2005), pp. 82–99; David Holm, ‘Folk Art as Propaganda: The Yangge Movement in Yan’an’, in Bonnie S. McDougall (ed.), Popular Chinese Literature and Performing Arts in the People’s Republic of China, 1949–1979, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984,pp. 3–35.

  2 ‘Reds in Shanghai Show off Might’, New York Times, 8 July 1949; Ezpeleta, Red Shadows over Shanghai, p. 191; Robert Guillain, ‘China under the Red Flag’, in Otto B. Van der Sprenkel, Robert Guillain and Michael Lindsay (eds), New China: Three Views, London: Turnstile Press, 1950, p. 101.

  3 Wu Hung, Remaking Beijing: Tiananmen Square and the Creation of a Political Space, London: Reaktion Books, 2005.

  4 Sun and Dan, Engineering Communist China, p. 12.

  5 Li Zhisui, The Private Life of Chairman Mao: The Memoirs of Mao’s Personal Physician, New York: Random House, 1994, pp. 51–2.

  6 Bodde, Peking Diary, pp. 13–14; Sun and Dan, Engineering Communist China, pp. 11–12; a video clip of the 1949 parade in Beijing appears in the digital version of Sang Ye and Geremie R. Barmé, ‘Thirteen National Days, a Retrospective’, China Heritage Quarterly, no. 17, March 2009.

  7 Sun and Dan, Engineering Communist China, pp. 7–13.

  8 Li, The Private Life of Chairman Mao, pp. 37–41.

  9 Frances Wong, China Bound and Unbound. History in the Making: An Early Returnee’s Account, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009, pp. 47–50.

  10 Edvard Hambro, ‘Chinese Refugees in Hong Kong’, Phylon Quarterly, 18, no. 1 (1957), p. 79; see also Glen D. Peterson, ‘To Be or Not to Be a Refugee: The International Politics of the Hong Kong Refugee Crisis, 1949–55’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 36, no. 2 (June 2008),pp. 171–95.

  11 The story, with many others, is told by Ying Meijun’s daughter, Long Yingtai, in Da jiang da hai; see also Glen D. Peterson, ‘House Divided: Transnational Families in the Early Years of the People’s Republic of China’, Asian Studies Review, no. 31 (March 2007), pp. 25–40; Mahlon Meyer, Remembering China from Taiwan: Divided Families and Bittersweet Reunions after the Chinese Civil War, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2012.

  12 Kang, Confessions, pp. 6–7.

  13 Frederic Wakeman, ‘‘‘Cleanup”: The New Order in Shanghai’, in Brown and Pickowicz, Dilemmas of Victory, pp. 37–8.

  14 Guillain, ‘China under the Red Flag’, pp. 85–6.

  15 Wakeman, ‘‘‘Cleanup”’, pp. 42–4.

  16 Ji Fengyuan, Linguistic Engineering: Language and Politics in Mao’s China, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2004, p. 68; James L. Watson, Class and Social Stratification in Post-Revolution China, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984, p. 143.

  17 Ezpeleta, Red Shadows over Shanghai, p. 198; p. 41; Paolo A. Rossi, The Communist Conquest of Shanghai: A Warning to the West, Arlington, VA: Twin Circle, 1970, p. 41.

  18 Otto B. Van der Sprenkel, ‘Part I’, in Van der Sprenkel, Guillain and Lindsay (eds), New China: Three Views, p. 9.

  19 Ezpeleta, Red Shadows over Shanghai, p. 191.

  20 Shanghai, 1951, B1-2-1339, pp. 9-14; Statistics on counter-revolutionaries, 1962, Hebei, 884-1-223, p. 149.

  21 Guillain, ‘China under the Red Flag’, pp. 91–2.

  22 Report on attitudes towards the goverment among ordinary people, 5 July 1950, Nanjing, 4003-1-20, p. 143.

  23 Bodde, Peking Diary, p. 67; Beijing, July 1949, 2-1-55, p. 2; Beijing, Dec. 1949, 2-1-125, p. 3; Beijing, 30 Dec. 1949, 2-1-55, pp. 43–55.

  24 Report from the social services quoted, with slight stylistic changes, in Aminda M. Smith, ‘Reeducating the People: The Chinese Communists and the “Thought Reform” of Beggars, Prostitutes, and other “Parasites” ’, doctoral dissertation, Princeton University, 2006, pp. 150 and 158.

  25 Report on the Branch Reformatory of the Western Suburbs, 24 Oct. 1952, Beijing, 1-6-611, pp. 13–16.

  26 Wakeman, ‘‘‘Cleanup”’, p. 47; Frank Dikötter, Crime, Punishment and the Prison in Modern China, New York: Columbia University Press, 2002, pp. 365–6.

  27 Frank Dikötter, Exotic Commodities: Modern Objects and Everyday Life in China, New York: Columbia University Press, 2006, pp. 51–2.

  28 Van der Sprenkel, ‘Part I’, pp. 17–18.

  29 Beijing, 30 Dec. 1949, 2-1-55, p. 45; Smith, ‘Reeducating the People’, pp. 99 and 108.

  30 The list is in Shanghai, 1950, Q131-4-3925, entire file; the details about the brothels are in Christian Henriot, ‘‘‘La Fermeture”: The Abolition of Prostitution in Shanghai, 1949–1958’, China Quarterly, no. 142 (June 1995), pp. 471–80.

  31 Smith, ‘Reeducating the People’, pp. 122–3 and 165, quoting reports from the Bureau for Civil Affairs in Beijing; Henriot, ‘‘‘La Fermeture”’,p. 476.

  32 Report on the refugee problem, 27 April 1949, Shanghai, B1-2-280, pp. 43–4.

  33 Report on attitudes towards the goverment among ordinary people, 5 July 1950, Nanjing, 4003-1-20, p. 143; Nanjing, 30 Aug. 1951, 5012-1-7, pp. 1–3, 26–8, 39–40, 52–5; Nanjing, Nov. 1952, 5012-1-12, pp. 21 and 42.

  34 Beijing, Dec. 1949, 2-1-125, p. 3; Smith, ‘Reeducating the People’,pp. 151 and 156–7.

  35 Zhang Lü and Zhu Qiude, Xibu nüren shiqing: Fu Xinjiang nübing rensheng mingyun gushi koushu shilu (Oral histories of women soldiers sent to Xinjiang), Beijing: Jiefangjun wenyi chubanshe, 2001, p. 110.

  36 Newspaper quoted in Richard Gaulton, ‘Political Mobilization in Shanghai, 1949–1951’, in Howe, Shanghai, p. 46.

  37 Shanghai, 12 Sept., 12 Oct. and 18 Nov. 1950, B1-2-280, pp. 98, 117 and 178.

  38 On workers in Shanghai see Elizabeth J. Perry, ‘Masters of the Country? Shanghai Workers in the Early People’s Republic’, in Brown and Pickowicz, Dilemmas of Victory, pp. 59–79.

  39 An excellent description of the salvage in Tianjin appears in Van der Sprenkel, ‘Part I’, pp. 36–7.

  40 Guillain, ‘China under the Red Flag’, p. 103.

  41 Barnett, letter no. 37, ‘Communist Economic Policies and Practices’, 14 Sept. 1949.

  42 Ezpeleta, Red Shadows over Shanghai, p. 204.

  43 Guillain, ‘China under the Red Flag’, pp. 118–19.

  44 Ibid., p. 110; Perry, ‘Masters of the Country?’

  45 Report on tax, 1950, Beijing, 1-9-95, pp. 10, 40 and 63; Neibu cankao, 11 May 1950, p. 10; speech by Bo Yibo at the third plenum of the Seventh Central Committee of the CPC, 9 June 1950, Hubei, SZ1-2-15,pp. 13–18.

  46 Ezpeleta, Red Shadows over Shanghai, p. 205.

  47 Shandong, 18 May 1949, A1-2-7, p. 49; Neibu cankao, 11 Sept. 1950, pp. 58–9; on Hangzhou and liberation more generally, one should read James Zheng Gao, The Communist Takeover of Hangzhou: The Transformation of City and Cadre, 1949–1954, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2004.

  48 Robert Doyle, ‘The Ideal City’, Time, 29 Aug. 1949; Financial Bulletin, 20 April 1950, PRO, FO371-83346, pp. 31–3.

  49 ‘Shanghai Express’, Time, 19 June 1950; Neibu cankao, 19 May 1950, pp. 48–50; Neibu cankao, 1 June 1950, pp. 4–5; Neibu cankao, 24 May 1950,p. 73.

  50 Beijing, Dec. 1949, 1-9-47, p. 3; 10 Dec. 1953, 1-9-265, p. 7; Report on unemployment in Shanghai circulated by the central government, 30 Aug. 1950, Gansu, 91-1-97, p. 3.

  51 Neibu cankao, 24 Aug. 1950, pp. 67–9; Neibu cankao, 6 June 1950, p. 23; Neibu cankao, 10 Aug. 1950, p. 13; Nanjing, Report on Industry, 1951, 5034-1-3, pp
. 31–2; Telegram from Chen Yi to Mao Zedong, 10 May 1950, Sichuan, JX1-807, pp. 29–31.

  52 ‘Shanghai Express’, Time, 19 June 1950.

  53 Ezpeleta, Red Shadows over Shanghai, p. 209; Randall Gould, ‘Shanghai during the Takeover, 1949’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, no. 277 (Sept. 1951), p. 184; Barnett, letter no. 26, ‘Communist “Administrative Take Over” of Peiping’, 28 Feb. 1949, and letter no. 36, ‘Communist Propaganda Techniques’, 12 Sept. 1949.

  54 Guillain, ‘China under the Red Flag’, p. 105; Gould, ‘Shanghai during the Takeover, 1949’, p. 184; Barnett, letter no. 26, ‘Communist “Administrative Take Over” of Peiping’, 28 Feb. 1949, and letter no. 36, ‘Communist Propaganda Techniques’, 12 Sept. 1949.

  55 Esther Y. Cheo, Black Country Girl in Red China, London: Hutchinson, 1980, p. 77; Li, The Private Life of Chairman Mao, pp. 41 and 44.

  4: The Hurricane

  1 ‘Coolies Rule by Terror’, New York Times, 11 May 1927; Chang and Halliday, Mao, pp. 40–1.

  2 New York Times, 15 May 1927; Mao Zedong, ‘Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan’, March 1927, Selected Works of Mao Zedong, Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1965, vol. 1, pp. 23–4.

  3 Mao, ‘Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan’, March 1927, Selected Works of Mao Zedong, vol. 1, pp. 23-4.

  4 On Zhou Libo and his novel, see Brian J. DeMare, ‘Turning Bodies and Turning Minds: Land Reform and Chinese Political Culture, 1946–1952’, doctoral dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 2007,pp. 64–7; David Der-wei Wang, The Monster that is History: History, Violence, and Fictional Writing in Twentieth-Century China, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004, pp. 166–7.

  5 In Russian the vocabulary was kulak for rich peasants, serednyak for middle-income peasants, bedniak for the poor and batrak for labourers. The term for landlord was Mao’s invention, as we see below.

  6 Some remarkable insights into these conversions come from missionaries, who rarely failed to point out the parallels between Christian and communist doctrines; see for instance Robert W. Greene, Calvary in China, New York: Putnam, 1953, pp. 77–9.

  7 All the quotations are from interviews in the documentary directed by Chen Xiaoqing, Baofeng zhouyu (The hurricane), China Memo Films, 2006; on the lack of revolutionary fervour in Manchuria, see Levine, Anvil of Victory, p. 199.

  8 See, among others, Anne Osborne, ‘Property, Taxes, and State Protection of Rights’, in Madeleine Zelin, Jonathan Ocko and Robert Gardella (eds), Contract and Property in Early Modern China, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004, pp. 120–58; Li Huaiyin, Village Governance in North China, 1875–1936, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995, pp. 234–49.

  9 Doak Barnett, letter no. 37, ‘Communist economic policies and practices’, 14 Sept. 1949; Zhang, Xuebai xuehong, pp. 433–6.

  10 DeMare, ‘Turning Bodies and Turning Minds’, pp. 152–3; Philip C. Huang, The Peasant Economy and Social Change in North China, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985, p. 71; S. T. Tung, ‘Land Reform, Red Style’, Freeman, 25 Aug. 1952, quoted in Richard J. Walker, China under Communism: The First Five Years, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1955, p. 131.

  11 John L. Buck, Land Utilization in China, Nanjing: University of Nanking, 1937; Jack Gray, Rebellions and Revolutions: China from the 1800s to the 1980s, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990, p. 160.

  12 Sun Nainai, Xushui, interviewed in 2006; the practice of burying people alive in the region was also noted by Raymond J. de Jaegher, The Enemy Within: An Eyewitness Account of the Communist Conquest of China, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1952, pp. 112–14; Liu Shaoqi reprimanded his colleagues for the practice in 1947, as we see below on p. 73.

  13 Jack Belden, China Shakes the World, New York: Harper, 1949, p. 33.

  14 John Byron and Robert Pack, The Claws of the Dragon: Kang Sheng, the Evil Genius behind Mao and his Legacy of Terror in People’s China, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992, pp. 125–6; Roger Faligot and Rémi Kauffer, The Chinese Secret Service, New York: Morrow, 1989, pp. 103–4 and 115–18.

  15 Zhang Yongdong, Yijiusijiu nianhou Zhongguo nongcun zhidu biange shi (A history of changes in the Chinese countryside after 1949), Taipei: Ziyou wenhua chubanshe, 2008, pp. 23–4; Luo Pinghan, Tudi gaige yundong shi (A history of the campaign for land reform), Fuzhou: Fujian renmin chubanshe, 2005, pp. 182–4 and 205; on land reform as a political device to overthrow traditional elites one should also read the many essays of Qin Hui, for instance Bian Wu (Qin Hui), ‘Gongshe zhi mi: Nongye jituanhua de zai renshi’ (The myth of the commune: Revisiting the collectivisation of agriculture), Ershiyi shiji, no. 48 (Aug. 1998),pp. 22–36, and Qin Hui, Nongmin Zhongguo: Lishi fansi yu xianshi xuanze (Peasant China: Historical reflections and realistic choices), Zhengzhou: Henan renmin chubanshe, 2003.

  16 Report by Liu Shaoqi at the National Conference on Land Reform, Aug. 1947, Hebei, 572-1-35, two versions of the same speech in documents 1 and 3, pp. 33–4; this report is also quoted in a much more detailed context in a chapter on land reform by Yang Kuisong, Zhonghua renmin gongheguo jianguo shi yanjiu (Studies on the history of the founding of the People’s Republic of China), Nanchang: Jiangxi renmin chubanshe, 2009, vol. 1, p. 55.

  17 Zhang Mingyuan, ‘Wo de huiyi’ (My recollections), p. 259, quoted in Zhang Ming, ‘Huabei diqu tudi gaige yundong de zhengzhi yunzuo (1946–1949)’ (Land reform in North China, 1946–1949), Ershiyi shiji, no. 82 (April 2003), pp. 32–41; on Shandong, see Zhang Xueqiang, Xiangcun bianqian yu nongmin jiyi: Shandong laoqu Junan xian tudi gaige yanjiu (Village change and peasant memory: Studies on land reform in Junan county, Shandong), Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe, 2006.

  18 Liu Tong, Zhongyuan jiefang zhanzheng jishi (A historical record of the civil war in the central plains), Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 2003,pp. 317–18, quoted in Luo, Tudi gaige yundong shi, p. 273.

  19 Renmin ribao, 30 March 1951, p. 2, quoted in DeMare, ‘Turning Bodies and Turning Minds’, p. 5.

  20 Brian Crozier, The Man who Lost China: The First Full Biography of Chiang Kai-shek, New York: Scribner, 1976, p. 352.

  21 Bo, Ruogan zhongda shijian yu juece de huigu, vol. 1, pp. 115–28.

  22 Mao Zedong quoted in a speech by Deng Zihui on the spirit of the Third Plenum of the Seventh Central Committee of the CPC, 10 July 1950, Hubei, SZ1-2-15, p. 29.

  23 On Guangdong see Shaanxi, 9 Sept. 1950, 123-1-83, p. 164; on the south-west see Neibu cankao, 27 July 1950, pp. 93–4; the numbers for tax collection are in Neibu cankao, 14 Sept. 1950, p. 67.

  24 Reports on grain requisitions, 3 and 8 Feb., 13 and 19 March and3 May 1950, Hubei, SZ1-2-32, pp. 33, 36, 66–7, 69–70, 72–4 and 83–4; Report on land reform by the South China Bureau, 13 Dec. 1951, Gansu, 91-18-532, pp. 22–5; on Guizhou, see the pioneering article by Wang Haiguang, ‘Zhengliang, minbian yu “feiluan” ’ (Grain procurements, popular revolts and ‘bandit disorder’), Zhongguo dangdaishi yanjiu, no. 1 (Aug. 2011), pp. 229–66.

  25 Neibu cankao, 2 Sept. 1950, pp. 7–8.

  26 Shaanxi, 1 Feb. 1951, 123-1-151, pp. 33–8.

  27 Report from the East China Bureau, 5 May 1950, Shaanxi, 123-1-83, pp. 1–7.

  28 In the case of Hubei, the provincial party committee expressed the need to carry out land reform as a specific strategy to cope with popular rebellion in a series of documents in Hubei, 3 and 8 Feb., 13 and 19 March and 3 May 1950, SZ1-2-32, pp. 33, 36, 66–7, 69–70, 72–4 and 83–4.

  29 Sichuan, 12 Sept. 1951, JX1-177, p. 18; Report on land reform from the Teng County Party Committee, 27 Jan. and 2 Feb. 1951, Shandong, A1-2-68, pp. 61 and 64–5.

  30 Report from Guizhou, 12 April 1951, Sichuan, JX1-839, pp. 127–8.

  31 Neibu cankao, 2 June 1950, p. 10.

  32 Cheo, Black Country Girl in Red China, pp. 161–2; Old Sun, born 1918, Xushui, Henan, interviewed in 2006.

  33 Reports on Yunyang, 12 and 30 May and 10 June 1951, Hubei, SZ1-5-75, pp. 37–
8, 41–4, 58–60; Neibu cankao, 24 Aug. 1950, pp. 65–6; Neibu cankao, 9 Sept. 1950, pp. 46–7; Report on land reform by the South China Bureau, 13 Dec. 1951, Gansu, 91-18-532, pp. 22–5.

  34 Sichuan, 9 Dec. 1951, JX1-168, p. 72; 4 Nov. 1951, JX1-168, pp. 16–17; 5 March 1951, JX1-837, pp. 124–5.

  35 Instructions from Li Jingquan, 21 April 1951, Sichuan, JX1-842, p. 3.

  36 Report from Luotian, 1 Aug. 1951, Hubei, SZ1-2-60, pp. 79–85.

  37 Yang Li, Dai ci de hong meigui: Gudacun chenyuan lu (Thorny rose: The tragedy of Gudacun), Guangzhou: Zhonggong Guangdong shengwei dangshi yanjiushi, 1997, pp. 100–16; Zheng Xiaofeng and Shu Ling, Tao Zhu zhuan (A biography of Tao Zhu), Beijing: Zhonggong dangshi chubanshe, 2008, pp. 230–1; Yang, Zhonghua renmin gongheguo jianguo shi yanjiu, vol. 1, p. 150; Yue Sai, ‘Wo qinxian qinjian de Zhonggong tugai zhenfan sharen shishi’ (I personally witnessed killings by the communist party during land reform and the campaign to suppress counter-revolutionaries), Kaifang, March 1999; on overseas Chinese in Guangdong see Glen D. Peterson, ‘Socialist China and the Huaqiao: The Transition to Socialism in the Overseas Chinese Areas of Rural Guangdong, 1949–1956’, Modern China, 14, no. 3 (July 1988), pp. 309–35.

  38 Shandong, October 1948, G26-1-37, doc. 2, pp. 49–50; Financial report on Shandong by Kang Sheng, 1 Jan. and 4 Sept. 1949, Shandong, A1-2-19, pp. 68–9 and 119; Report on the Jiluyu region, 1 Feb. 1949, Shandong, G52-1-194, doc. 5, p. 7; on the impoverishment following land distribution, see also Gao Wangling and Liu Yang, ‘Tugai de jiduanhua’ (The radicalization of the land reform movement), Ershiyi shiji, no. 111 (Feb. 2009), pp. 36–47.

  39 Report from the South-west Bureau, 27 June 1951, Sichuan, JX1-809, pp. 42–4.

  40 Correspondence between the Ministry of Culture and the Provincial Bureau for Cultural Affairs, Shandong, 19 Sept. 1951, A27-1-230,pp. 69–72.

  41 Frederick C. Teiwes, ‘The Establishment and Consolidation of the New Regime, 1949–57’, in Roderick MacFarquhar (ed.), The Politics of China: The Eras of Mao and Deng, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997, p. 36; see also David Shambaugh, ‘The Foundations of Communist Rule in China: The Coercive Dimension’, in William C. Kirby (ed.), The People’s Republic of China at 60: An International Assessment, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2011,pp. 21–3.