Fanshen

by Hinton, William ; Magdoff, Fred;

  But no matter what happened, some villagers were always ready to misinterpret the decisions of the Party and the government. As soon as word of this school got out, a rumor began that the two Party members had been promoted. Repeated explanations by the work team cadres failed to lay this “small broadcast” low. Apparently only time and the return of the re-educated men could clear the matter up once and for all.

  Ironically, Wen-te did not believe what he was told about the school either. He thought he was being sent to some sort of a prison and said that he would not fill out the application to go there until a satisfactory explanation was given for the fact that Hsien-e had identified the towel used in gagging Little Ch’uer as one belonging to his household. Thus he mounted the offensive again and only much patient explanation finally persuaded him to yield.

  53

  Upgrading

  There is just one criterion for determining class standing. It is based on the different relationships of the people to the means of production, for this determines every kind of class difference. The possession or lack of the means of production, the quantity of the means of production owned, how these are utilized, and, moreover, all the various kinds of different productive relationships between the exploiter and the exploited—these, then, constitute the only criteria for determining class standing.

  Jen Pi-shih

  ON JUNE 12TH, the sectional groups of the Peasants’ Association met to classify the village once more. This time there was no need to review the status of every family. Only those families about whom some question had been raised were placed on the list for consideration. By the evening of June 14, all such cases had been considered by the small groups. A mass meeting was therefore called for the purpose of making a final review. It was held outdoors on the grounds of the mission compound.

  All the peasants were tired after long hours spent hoeing corn and weeding millet. As a result, only a minority of the Association members showed up. Under the brilliant light of a waning moon, those who did come were very active, however. They finished off all remaining problems with gusto—a little too much gusto, it seemed, for they dispatched some very difficult cases rather quickly and left those concerned with an impression that inadequate attention had been paid to their complaints.

  Old Lady Wang, who had for days resisted all attempts made by the southwest group to call her a new-middle-peasant, was immediately classed in just that category by the northern and eastern groups. To be thus classed meant the collapse of all her plans—plans for some good land close to the village, and for a few additional sections of housing for her son and his bride.

  She strode to the center of the meeting and protested vigorously. Her argument was that she had inherited all the land she had received since Liberation from her brother-in-law and that she had bought the donkey she now owned with borrowed money. None of her wealth was due to the land reform. Could this be called a fanshen?

  To prove that she had not fanshened, she talked louder, faster, and more sarcastically than she had ever talked before, but the people listened unmoved. When she finally realized that no word of hers could turn the tide she lapsed into silence, moved back to the center of her own group, and finally, with an oath, picked up her stool and stomped off homeward in a very surly mood indeed.

  If Old Lady Wang had only stayed long enough to witness what happened to others like herself, she might well have taken a more philosophical view of her defeat. As it turned out, the upgrading of this old woman was only the beginning of a run on the poor peasant status of dozens of her neighbors in the southwest section. Because the other sectional groups of the Association had used strict standards of poverty in their preliminary work, they were quite perturbed when they saw who had been classed as poor in the southwest. They made Yuan-lung read the list through twice and then slashed it without mercy. Shen Ch’uan-te, Yuan-lung himself, Kuo Wang-yueh, and many others were forthwith promoted to the rank of new-middle-peasant.

  The leaders of the upgrading movement were Hsin-fa, Party branch secretary, and Yang Yu-so, the man who had served as spokesman for the delegates at the first gate. These two squatted beside a kerosene lantern set at one edge of the crowd and by its light perused the lists. Having been classed as new-middle-peasants themselves they didn’t want to see any other family get by with a poor peasant designation if its material condition in any way matched their own. Since draft animals, carts, and farm implements were obviously in short supply, they ignored these things as fanshen requirements and based their arguments on the possession of land and housing alone.

  Two single men with an acre and a half apiece were summarily upgraded. A peasant named Chang-Ian was not only plucked from the poor peasant group, but was pushed all the way up into the old-middle-peasant level on the grounds that he had for years possessed enough land for self-support.

  A ripple of humor enlivened the meeting when the southwest group turned the tables on the upgraders by finding a man in the northern section who should have been called a new-middle-peasant. They based their argument on the half-donkey which he owned but which his neighbors had ignored. Caught in an oversight, Hsin-fa and Yang Yu-so apologized for having forgotten the donkey and promptly reclassified the family in a higher bracket. Someone remarked that the man now owned two half donkeys (the original donkey, a female, had foaled a few days earlier, and half the foal belonged to each owner). Whether two half-donkeys equalled a whole donkey became the subject of some comic debate.

  Not all the changes made that night were upward ones. Li Ho-jen, the carpenter, and Huan-ch’ao, the blacksmith, won a determined fight to be called new rather than old-middle-peasants. T’ien-hsi, the militiaman, who had also been called an old-middle-peasant, disagreed so violently and won such support in his section of the village that the meeting finally voted to accept his view.

  As the evening wore on, the proceedings grew more and more boisterous. Although the peasants from each of the three sectional groups had started their discussions sitting separately, as the moon sailed higher into the sky they somehow intermingled until it was hard to tell exactly what was being discussed by which group. Many people on the fringes of the crowd, unable to follow the trend at all, gradually lapsed into inactivity or fell to gossiping about personal problems. Toward midnight everyone became so eager to go home to bed that a number of decisions on very complicated cases carried almost without debate. Little wonder that some of those whose class was fixed that night felt bruised. But, as Little Li pointed out, it didn’t matter very much. There was still a third classification coming up and all those who disagreed could still ask for a review.

  PART VI

  Drastic Reappraisal

  Because of the distinctive peculiarities in China’s social and historical development and her backwardness in science, it is a unique and difficult task to apply Marxism systematically to China and to transform it from its European form into Chinese form; in other words, to solve the various problems of the contemporary Chinese Revolution from the standpoint of Marxism and with the Marxist method. Many of these problems have never been solved or raised by the world’s Marxists, for here in China the main section of the masses are not workers but peasants, and the fight is directed against foreign imperialist oppression and medieval survivals, and not against domestic capitalism.

  Liu Shao-ch’i, 1945

  54

  On the Eve of Victory

  All comrades in the Party should understand that the enemy is now completely isolated. But his isolation is not tantamount to our victory. If we make mistakes in policy, we shall still be unable to win victory. To put it concretely, we shall fail if we make, or do not correct, mistakes of principle with regard to any of the five policies—on the war, Party consolidation, land reform, industry and commerce, and the suppression of counter-revolution.

  Mao Tse-tung

  SEVERAL TIMES in the late spring of 1948 the peasants of Long Bow awoke to find the main thoroughfare of their village clogged with sold
iers. The soldiers filed in so quietly that few people even heard them arrive. They rested awhile, refreshed themselves with boiled water and then moved on, walking, not marching, toward their destination.

  These troops bore no outward sign of formidable fighting prowess. Their uniforms, made of homespun cotton and colored with a yellow-brown dye that bleached quickly under the sun, seemed more like the costumes hastily issued to a company of stage warriors than the garb of a victorious army. The same makeshift quality characterized the hand grenade slings that hung at the men’s hips, the long sleeves stuffed with millet that crossed their shoulders, the ammunition belts that circled their waists, the packs on their backs, and the puttees that bound their trousers to their legs. All these accouterments were of faded, handwoven cloth. The People’s Liberation Army, it appeared, was a “cotton cloth” army. Even the soldiers’ feet shuffled across the mountains in cloth shoes.

  The only non-cotton items of equipment which these troops possessed were the rifles in their hands, the millet bowls that dangled from their belts, and the straw hats oh their heads. The latter, with their wide, floppy brims, lent a touch of holiday gaiety to outfits that, even without them, seemed incompatible with serious fighting. When the soldiers moved off, the hats hanging over their packs made them look from behind like a bevy of poker chips bobbing across the landscape.

  If, at first sight, this equipment seemed simple, even shoddy, a moment’s reflection indicated that it was nevertheless practical. By such means a soldier could carry on his back everything he needed for daily living or prolonged fighting whether he stayed with his comrades or found himself cut off and alone. With the exception of his rifle, which often came from the other side of the world and weighed almost as much as everything else he carried put together, he could be re-equipped in every detail in any county town in China’s vast hinterland. The same could never be said for the American-supplied legions of Chiang Kai-shek. Even the fatigue caps issued to certain Nationalist units came from the mills of New England and the lofts of New York.

  But equipment alone never created a fighter. One had to look more closely in order to discover the qualities that made these men so much more than a match for the well-armed Nationalist forces whom they were advancing to engage. These soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army came from the same stock as the conscripts herded to the front by Chiang. Many of them actually were former Nationalist troops captured in battle and recruited at subsequent “speak bitterness meetings.” But instead of the morose stares and scowls so common in the ranks of the counter-revolution, these men—many of them hardly more than boys—were cheerful and full of spirit. At the same time they were quiet and well disciplined. This discipline did not show itself in the form of obeisance to rank or position, but rather in the mature way the soldiers behaved. They treated the village people with respect. They did not block traffic; they refused to accept anything but water. Those few who played games to while the time away enjoyed themselves without disturbing the serenity of the life around them. The soldiers were carefree yet dignified, fun-loving but not raucous, friendly but not condescending. These attitudes reflected something inside them, an inner integrity, a sense of collective pride, a confident and purposeful spirit. All this could never be imposed by command but was the result of revolutionary commitment strengthened by education.

  That spring the Army had gone through an intensified educational campaign that paralleled in many ways the movement for Party consolidation and democracy in the villages. The campaign included mass meetings for airing grievances against the old society and the san ch’a or “three checks.” In the course of the latter, all soldiers and all officers had mutually examined themselves in regard to class origin, performance of duty, and will to fight. They had also studied land reform policies, policies in regard to commerce and industry, and the over-all goals of the New Democratic Revolution. Officers had taught soldiers, soldiers had taught officers, and soldiers had taught one another. The campaign had resulted in unprecedented unity throughout the Army, a high level of political consciousness, and surging morale. We were witnessing the results.

  What struck me about the troops that I saw in Long Bow was their confidence. They were, after all, moving up to the front. Another two days on the road would bring them to the Taiyuan plain where a long and bitter battle to liberate the provincial capital was already under way. In less than a week they would be under fire, perhaps even engaged in a frontal assault on fixed positions. Soon some of them would surely be dead. But they showed no trace of anxiety, hesitation, or doubt. They seemed to take for granted the justice of their cause and its ultimate triumph. They were approaching the front with eagerness!

  These boys in uniform, resting by the village pond and polishing their rifles until the barrels reflected the full brilliance of the morning sun, revealed in their eager faces something of the excitement of impending victory, an excitement which served as an antidote to those other faces of the war which Long Bow knew so well—the pain in the eyes of a wounded man as he waited in front of Ts’ai-yuan’s store for stretcher bearers to carry him further along the road toward home; the tears coursing down the cheeks of Lai-hao’s widowed mother as Ch’i Yun read her the letter that announced the death of her only son at the front; the eerie all-night keening of two women prostrate beside a coffin that had been brought home by mule cart from a battle fought more than 12 months before …

  ***********

  June 1948 marked the end of two full years of all-out civil conflict. No military analyst in the Liberated Areas doubted that Chiang Kai-shek was already doomed. Throughout the region, in articles and speeches, cadre after cadre emphasized the same basic idea: “Our 20-year war for the future of China has reached its final stage. The last few months have seen a qualitative change. Not only can Chiang Kai-shek no longer expand the territory under his control, but he cannot even defend what he now holds. Any place that we really want to take we can now take.”

  The basis for this optimism was to be found in the figures for men killed and captured and arms taken in the 24 months that had elapsed since July 1946 when Chiang tore up the truce agreement negotiated under the direction of General Marshall and launched his all-out attack on the revolutionary bases in the northern half of China. In these months Chiang had lost a total of 2,640,000 men who were killed, wounded, or captured. In the same period the People’s Liberation Army had added 1,600,000 regular and irregular troops to its forces. By means of frantic conscription Chiang had maintained his total strength at more than 3,500,000 men, but the enormous and growing casualty list coupled with massive defections cut the very heart out of his effective armies at a time when the Communist-led forces, by mustering volunteers at home and absorbing huge blocks of prisoners at the front, were approaching numerical parity.

  Many a minor battle in many an obscure place made this fact clear. There was, for instance, the siege of Linfeng. This ancient fortified town lying due west of Long Bow was less than three days’ foot journey away. It was one of the key outposts in the defense of Taiyuan. Units of the People’s Liberation Army laid siege to Linfeng in April. The tough old warrior Yen Hsi-shan, still in control of a formidable Nationalist army in the heart of Shansi, made a decision to defend the town to the end. Over and over again he called on Chiang Kai-shek for reinforcements. “If Linfeng falls,” General Yen wailed, “Taiyuan cannot but be next.” But Chiang could not spare any reinforcements. No armies came to Yen’s rescue. The siege of Linfeng continued. In desperation the Nationalist radio called on the Linfeng garrison to come out fighting even if it meant death for all. The officers in charge of the defense ordered their troops to use poison gas. But try as they would, they could not break out. Linfeng fell early in May, and every man in the garrison was captured.

  In distant Manchuria, the Kuomintang forces holding the key rail junction of Szepingkai surrendered early in March. The city of Changchun was thus cut off. The Nationalist radio, despairing of the future, suddenly announce
d that Changchun had no strategic importance and that its loss would make no difference to the government in Nanking. Thus they laid the groundwork for retreating from a city that had once been the capital of puppet Manchukuo, and was still the Kuomintang administrative center for the whole Northeast.

  In Shantung the revolutionary armies under General Ch’en Yi kept the Tientsin-Pukow railway closed and prepared to surround the capital, Tsinan. Wang Yao-wu, leading Chiang commander in the province and governor of one of China’s most populous and wealthy areas, complained, “I have only 50,000 men. How can I hope to stand against a Liberation Army 250,000 strong?”

  “It is typical of the Nationalists, in the defense of an area or a city, to dig in or retire within the city walls, and there fight to the end, hoping for relief which never comes because it cannot be spared from elsewhere,” wrote General David Barr of the United States advisory group. But all his efforts to impose other tactics failed miserably. In the face of a universally hostile population, the Nationalist forces had no choice but to dig in and await their fate.

  Generalissimo Chiang talked publicly of one thing and one thing only, and that was American aid. The only argument he could think of to encourage his hard pressed forces was, “More arms are coming.” Each time one of his generals lost a battle, Chiang turned on his American advisors and complained that their succor had been too little and too late. The American officers, he remonstrated, trained his men too slowly.