Fanshen

by Hinton, William ; Magdoff, Fred;

  A further important criticism of the aid groups as they existed was that they were over-organized. In the first flush of enthusiasm the elected leaders tried to plan everything from planting and harvesting, where collective work was most advantageous, to transport and manure collecting, where the benefits were minor or non-existent. Many peasants resisted such super-organization by not showing up for the assigned tasks.

  Also pertinent were the grievances concerning the over-all purpose of mutual-aid and labor-exchange organizations. In the course of two years of operation, the aid groups had gradually assumed functions far beyond those for which they were originally designed. The village administration had fallen into the habit of using the aid groups as adjuncts of the government. Aid-group leaders were asked to administer rear service, take care of soldiers’ dependents, give relief to widows and needy persons, and perform other welfare functions as well. When the county government called for men to carry stretchers or transport grain, the village head called in the mutual-aid-group leaders and parcelled out the tasks. What began as a voluntary association of peasants to swap labor in production thus grew into semi-official organs for carrying out government tasks, dispensing aid, and supervising aspects of life only vaguely connected with production. This was asking too much.

  In spite of all these criticisms most people wanted to continue mutual-aid production. They envied the results achieved by those few groups that still functioned. Hsin-fa, the branch secretary, belonged to such a group. It consisted of eight able-bodied men who worked together constantly and led the village in crop production. These eight never had to settle wages among themselves because they did an equal amount of work for each other day after day. They exchanged labor, not millet, and boasted that they were the first to finish every seasonal job that came up. Model worker Yang Chung-sheng’s group also functioned well. When the work team suggested that the best way to reorganize mutual-aid production in the village as a whole was to break up the larger groups and let every family choose new partners, this collective of 20 families refused to dissolve itself. It was examples such as this that kept the idea of labor exchange alive.

  The Communist T’ien-hsi was enthusiastic about mutual aid even though his own group had not functioned well. “When we work together we get more done,” he said. “Whenever I stay up late at a meeting I sleep through half the morning if the aid-group leader doesn’t come to call me. And I get very discouraged whenever I have to go out all alone and face a big stretch of land. With others there to tackle the job, the work goes fast. We talk and laugh and keep each others spirits up.”

  T’ai-shan’s mother, one of the leaders of the southwest section of the Peasants’ Association and a very fast worker herself, agreed emphatically. “When I am alone in the field, I often look up and wonder if it is noon. But when we work together, noon comes and goes, and we don’t even notice it. Soon the work is done.”

  Since the majority definitely wanted to continue mutual aid, the work team called on all the villagers to meet with the aid groups to which they had originally belonged and to reorganize in any way they thought best. During this reorganization they were urged to keep in mind the three basic principles for co-operation among peasant families laid down by Mao Tse-tung: 1) self-willingness; 2) equal exchange of labor and value; 3) democratic functioning. They were also warned against three common weaknesses pointed out by Mao: 1) mutual aid in everything; 2) large scale groups; 3) complicated organization.

  Out of the reorganization, ten mutual-aid production groups embracing 65 families (approximately a quarter of the village population) came into being or were consolidated. Some of these groups united the most diverse elements, both politically and socially. The Communist Cheng-k’uan, the activist Yuan-lung, the dissident Hou Ken-ming, and the returned refugee Hou Chin-ming got together to set up a group. About the only thing they had in common, it seemed to me, was the fact that they had all once been Catholics.

  Yu-lai, suspended vice-chairman of the old Peasants’ Association, Li T’ung-jen, former puppet vice-leader of the village, Tseng Chung-hsi, former puppet village leader, Feng-le, an apolitical middle peasant, and Lai-so, a 15-year-old boy, formed another group. Here indeed was variety—a deposed tyrant, two ex-traitors, an honest independent peasant, and a teen-aged boy. Were they birds of a feather? What drew them together? It was hard to tell. Whatever it was, they seemed pleased to have found one another and met eagerly to draw up production plans for the coming weeks.

  The new mutual-aid groups were officially established on July 12th, but when the Party branch met again on the 16th to review progress, it turned out that only seven of the ten were actually tilling land jointly. The others had met, gone to the fields together once or twice, and then ceased to function.

  Militiaman Ta-hung said, “My people don’t want to work together and help each other out. I can’t do anything about it. I called a meeting, but very few came. So really there are only two families in my group.”

  “How can two be called a group?” asked Team Leader Ts’ai.

  “That’s the way it is. Chang Han-hsing and I work together, but of course in the last few days he has been hoeing and I have been gathering manure.”

  “So you really haven’t helped each other at all?”

  “That’s right.”

  A poll of the Party members brought out the fact that only 11 of the 28 had joined any aid group at all. Obviously the Communists were not yet giving effective leadership, and Ts’ai Chin criticized them for this.

  “We Communists must find solutions for every difficulty and lead the way to higher production; otherwise there will only be confusion,” he warned.

  Ts’ai’s criticism only depressed the spirits of the branch members still further. Leading by suggestion and example was proving to be much more difficult than anyone had anticipated.

  “Today our work is much more complicated than it used to be,” commented the handsome Ch’un-hsi plaintively. “We have to do everything in such detail. Whenever we carry out a directive, we have to ask the people what they think about it. I keep thinking to myself, ‘I don’t want to work in this village any more.’ “

  “What do you want to do then?” asked Team Leader Ts’ai.

  “I want to join the army and work with a big knife and a sharp axe.”

  Hsin-fa finally walked out of the meeting in disgust. “I have never taken part in such a tiresome, discouraging get-together,” he said. “I don’t know why it is. I guess it’s because no one wants to be responsible for any kind of work. No one wants to shoulder the carrying pole. Whoever can avoid responsibility just stands to one side. As for me, when I’m tired I don’t want to come to meetings. When I do come, I hope they will be over as soon as possible. Therefore, when we meet I always gripe and these gripes increase all the wrong tendencies in others.”

  At least Hsin-fa was learning to speak his mind. He no longer acted the part of the “hail fellow well met” for which he had been so severely criticized before the gate. In view of his past, this had to be interpreted as political progress.

  With this meeting the work of the team reached an impasse. No amount of exhortation, discussion, self-and-mutual criticism, or evaluation of past mistakes seemed capable of changing the mood of the Communists. Their mood was, after all, only a concentrated reflection of the mood of the village as a whole. It was, more than anything else, a mood of frustration arising out of the lack of forward motion in village affairs. This in turn could be traced to the postponement of all final decisions concerning distribution, resettlement, and Party consolidation until after the establishment of the new village government.

  In July 1948, the future hung strangely suspended. All the elements that must come together to mold it floated like detached ions in amorphous solution. They awaited the coming of that catalyst which alone could cause everything to crystallize—the elections which would determine the composition of the People’s Congress.

  60

  The
Village People’s Congress

  In the rural areas in the present period, we can and should, in accordance with the demands of the peasants, convene village peasant meetings to elect the village governments, and convene district peasant congresses to elect the district governments. Since the governments at or above the county or municipal level represent not only the peasants in the countryside but also people of all strata and occupations in the towns, county seats, provincial capitals, and big industrial and commercial cities, we should convene people’s congresses at county, municipal, or border region levels to elect the governments at corresponding levels. In the future after the Revolution triumphs throughout the whole country, the central government and the local governments at all levels should be elected by the people’s congresses at corresponding levels.

  Mao Tse-tung, 1948

  WHAT WAS a village People’s Congress? What was the difference between the People’s Congress that the work team proposed for Long Bow and the other mass organizations that already existed in the village? These were questions which the people had been asking ever since the idea of a Congress had been suggested. There was no need to speculate about the answers. Village People’s Congresses already existed in many communities that had been liberated before 1945. Many full-time district cadres knew about such Congresses either from first-hand experience or from study and discussion. When they told the Long Bow peasants what such a Congress would be like in their village they described a political institution that already flourished in many parts of North China and had flourished in one form or another in various Liberated Areas in China since 1927.

  The Chinese word for these Congresses was jen min tai piao ta hui. This may be literally translated as “people’s representative large meeting” or “people’s representative assembly.” I use the word “congress” because that is the word that Ch’i Yun and Hsieh Hung used, because it is concise, and because it does, in fact, fit the case. A congress is a “people’s representative large meeting.”

  The village People’s Congress, as it developed in China in the 1940’s, was a council of delegates periodically elected by all the enfranchised citizens of a given village. Once established, this Council or Congress assumed full responsibility for local affairs. It was recognized as the supreme organ of government at the village level both by the electorate below and regional administrators above. The Congress had the power to draft all village rules and regulations, to arbitrate all the village disputes, and to appoint all village officers from the village head to captain of the village militia and the village constable.* Once appointed, these officers administered the village in the name of the Congress, carried out all Congress decisions, and periodically reported to that body concerning their respective spheres of responsibility. Should they fail to perform their duties satisfactorily, they could be removed at any time by the Congress.

  In theory the village People’s Congress was distinguished from all other mass organizations or elected bodies in the village by its all-inclusive character. Membership in the Poor Peasants’ League was limited to the landless and land poor, in the Peasants’ Association to poor and middle peasants, in the Women’s Association to women, in the Communist Party to those approved and accepted into the Party on the basis of very strict standards in regard to character, ability, and dedication to the cause of Communism. The People’s Congress, on the other hand, was a body established to represent all the people included in the united front nationally.

  In Chinese rural society of the 1940’s there were many classes and groups in addition to the various strata of the peasantry. There were teachers, doctors, midwives, veterinarians, and apothecaries. There were such full-time workers as carpenters, masons, blacksmiths, and wheelwrights. There were fine craftsmen such as woodcarvers, straw weavers, tinsmiths, mat makers, and furniture builders. There were businessmen such as peddlers, storekeepers, innkeepers, cotton gin operators, wine makers, and millers. In order to establish stable, representative local governments, it was considered necessary to create a political form in which all these groups could be represented and have a voice.

  The village People’s Congress was that form. It was the political expression, at the grass-roots level, of the new democratic coalition in the nation as a whole, a coalition of all the allied classes, not just the peasants alone, a coalition that excluded only the enemies of the Revolution as defined by the Communist Party—the rich peasants, the landlords, and the bureaucratic capitalists of the Chiang-Kung-Soong-Ch’en clique.*

  Because the congress form of delegated assembly was designed to reflect the new democratic class coalition, its organic structure was necessarily different from that of the various mass organizations, each of which represented only one class or group or at most an alliance between two related classes—i.e., the Peasants’ Association which represented both poor and middle peasants. Members of these specialized mass organizations elected their representatives on a geographical basis. Peasants living in each sector of the village chose Peasants’ Association committeemen from among their neighbors. A Peasants’ Association committee was thus composed of representatives from all the neighborhoods that made up a given community. But geography was not the basis of the People’s Congresses. They drew their delegates not primarily from neighborhoods but from interest groups, social strata, or classes. The merchants, regardless of residence, sent merchant delegates, the handicraft workers sent handicraft delegates, and the peasants sent peasant delegates. Wherever any large number of people in any one of these categories lived together in a homogeneous community, they did indeed choose individual delegates on a geographical basis as well, but the primary function of the Congress was to reflect interest groups, not sectional interests.

  In such larger centers of population as Changchih and Lucheng and in the big commercial villages like East Portal where significant numbers of merchants and craftsmen congregated, the need for such all-inclusive delegated assemblies or congresses was clear. Only such an institution could draw into active political life the non-farming families who had been more or less passive observers of the land reform struggle or even victims of its excesses. Only such an institution could give them a voice and a vote.

  But in villages such as Long Bow where the class structure had never been complex, the need for the congress form of representative assembly was not so clear. Not one family in Long Bow made a living primarily from professional work, trade, or handicraft production. Every carpenter, weaver, innkeeper, and peddler in the community owned land, raised crops, and considered himself to belong to one or another class of agricultural producer or peasant. The electoral basis for any People’s Congress in Long Bow could not but coincide almost exactly with the membership of the Peasants’ Association. Then why set up another organization? Why not just call the elected officers of the Peasants’ Association the Long Bow People’s Congress and turn the responsibility for local government over to the Peasants’ Association Committee?

  This was almost the solution proposed by the work team for Long Bow—almost, but not quite. The officers of the Peasants’ Association could not call themselves a People’s Congress because membership in the Peasants’ Association was not universal. The Peasants’ Association was a partisan class organization with certain self-determined membership standards. New members had to be approved by old members, and there were still more than a score of families in Long Bow who had not won such approval. These included those suspended cadres who had not yet passed the gate and all those individuals who, because of “rascal affairs” or past crimes had not yet been accepted as “honest and hardworking.” All of these excluded persons were, nevertheless, citizens of the Border Region in good standing. They were neither landlords nor rich peasants, they had not been expropriated, and they had the right to vote. A government, as distinct from a mass organization, had to represent everybody legally entitled to citizenship rights. Hence even in Long Bow, where the peasants made up the whole population, the Peasants’ Associati
on could not, chameleon-like, convert itself into a People’s Congress.

  To many Long Bow residents this seemed a rather fine point. But the all-inclusive character of the village People’s Congress was not, in the last analysis, determined by the needs of any given community but by the fact that these Congresses were part of a much wider scheme of government proposed by the Communist Party and accepted by the regional administrations as the goal of the future.

  The village People’s Congresses were conceived as part of a comprehensive system, as the base of a pyramid of representative Congresses which would eventually find its apex in a National Congress. County and Regional Congresses would make up the in-between layers. In 1948, this pyramid was only an edifice under construction. It had no apex because the Civil War still raged, the Revolution had not yet unified the country, and no national revolutionary government existed. Many sections of the pyramid’s base were also blank because many villages had not completed land reform and had not had time to establish Village Congresses. As late as July 1948, Long Bow was still one of these blanks. County and Regional Congresses, the second and third levels of the pyramid, existed in most counties and in most regions of the Liberated Areas, but since these areas were expanding all the time, there were counties from which the Nationalist armed forces had only been expelled a few months or a few weeks. In such counties only temporary military governments or provisional councils appointed by the military or Communist Party leaders held power.

  In order to imagine this situation the reader must imagine a countryside in flux with a vast variety of political situations existing side by side. In 1948, the subcontinent of China was divided roughly into two main parts, the Communist-led Liberated Areas of the North and the Kuomintang-administered areas of the South. But these major parts were not solid blocks of unbroken rule for either side. In South and Central China there were areas of liberated territory. In North, Northeast, and Northwest China there were connecting corridors under Nationalist control and also isolated islands where the Nationalist forces, though beseiged, still held out. For the most part the Liberated Areas were expanding, while the Nationalist-held corridors and islands were contracting or even disappearing. But within this general trend the opposite was also taking place. Areas once liberated by the People’s Liberation Army were sometimes recaptured by the Nationalist Army. When this happened, the social revolution taking place there was crushed and all forms of popular rule were destroyed or driven underground. In this maelstrom of war and revolution there was, perhaps, no typical political situation but only a variety of disconnected political processes developing in time toward the same goal—a universal new political system centering around People’s Congresses.