– How the Chinese Communists (possibly) Rose to Power
You wouldn’t usually think of the Republic of China between 1925 and 1937 as a country which was developing rapidly, would you? And if aware of Chiang Kai-shek‘s achievements in unifying China, one would also be aware of the toll the KMT’s wars against warlords, and later communists, took on economic development.
Thomas Weyrauch, in China’s Unbeachtete Republik1) doesn’t ignore the costs of war, or how the KMT, under Chiang’s rule, broadly violated human rights. But in his view, the Republic of China was still a success, which could have led to a free and democratic Chinese nation, had it lasted.
The main reasons for the Republic’s constant troubles and its collapse in 1949 were, in Weyrauch’s view,
With a few lines, Weyrauch also touches on the problem of land reform, but apparently sees no crucial Republican negligence or failure in improving life in the countryside:
Contrary to communist propaganda which tried to justify the murder of alleged “great landowners”, China’s peasants were no wage slaves of extre4mely rich, exploiting great landowners at all, but by eighty per cent owners of their land. According to surveys, 98.66 per cent of the rural populaton were peasants with arable land of less then seven hectares. The others owned larger areas. Of about twenty per cent of peasants who worked fields they didn’t own, most were tenants. Only the rest of the rural population were wageworkers.2)
Weyrauch also refers to some efforts of the Republican government to modernize agriculture – and to support reconstruction of farming where affected by fightings with the communists or their mismanagement -, but the material he provides says little about the substance of such efforts, nor does it tell much about how, if at all, these numbers would put peasants into the position to make a living of their properties – or if, as ever so often in history, they would have to incurr debts and depend on their creditors or landlords again.
And for the numbers themselves, as for most statistics provided in his book, Weyrauch rarely provides specific sources.
There are several interesting takes on the Japanese war, too. Weyrauch is quite critical of all foreign attacks on China from the opium wars to the Japanese war, but his book mirrors Chinese memory in that the Japanese war features most prominently. Four photo pages in a row show Japanese atrocities. Still, (or so I understand Weyrauch’s book), the Japanese aggression, both in Chiang Kai-shek’s, and in Mao Zedong’s views, posed no lasting threat against China’s existence. Chiang sought compromise with the Japanese government for a number of years, before the Lugou Bridge incident near Beijing’s (then Beiping) led to all-out war, and Mao Zedong – according to Weyrauch – even considered concessions to the Japanese during all-out war. Weyrauch quotes from a secret directive, allegedly issued by Mao, in October 1937. The following is a translation of it used on a Freedom Foundation‘s paper online, mostly the same as Weyrauch’s German translation:
“The Sino-Japanese war affords our party an excellent opportunity for expansion. Our fixed policy should be seventy percent expansion, twenty percent dealing with the Kuomintang, and ten percent resisting Japan. There are three stages in carrying out this fixed policy: the first is a compromising stage, in which sell-sacrifice should be made to show our outward obedience to the Central Government and adherence to the Three Principles of the People [nationality, democracy, and livelihood, as outlined by Dr. Sun Yat-sen], but in reality this will serve as camouflage for the existence and development of our party.
The second is a contending stage, in which two or three years should be spent in laying the foundation of our party’s political and military powers, and developing these until we can match and break the Kuomintang, and eliminate the influence of the litter north of the Yellow River. While waiting for an unusual turn of events, we should give the Japanese invader certain concessions.
The third is an offensive stage, in which our forces should penetrate deeply into Central China, sever the communications of the Central Government troops in various sectors, isolate and disperse them until we are ready for the counteroffensive and wrest the leadership from the hands of the Kuomintang.“
Quoted Source: Documents on the Problem of the Chinese Communist Party. Presented to the People’s Political Council, March 1941. Published in Chungking 1944 by the Supreme National Defense Council.
This quote can be found on the internet, even if not too frequently – on Conservapedia, the trustworthy encyclopedia, for example. They date the secret directive to 1944, and the footnote link to it simply redirects the reader onto the entire page of “Causes of World War II”.
Weyrauch’s book provides no specific source, either, and doesn’t even explain how the “secret” communist directive became public in the end. Such an approach comes across as rather murky, given the potentially controversial character of such a piece of information. For now, I’m thinking of it as a hoax.
To sum my impressions down, the book is easy to read, and too many footnotes might have been impedimentary – but a mere “selected literature” list at the end of it is too little. At certain points, detailed sources and explanations would have been essential to make the information credible for a reader with rather little historical knowledge of his or her own.
Which makes me wonder: who is the target readership? To me, it seems that it must be people who have some big issues with the CCP anyway, and who are glad to listen to any bit of “evidence” against them.
That said, the book might offer insights into what makes Chinese Republicans abroad ticking. Besides, the book is at times thought-provoking, and a recommendable follow-up reading for anyone who has read Edgar Snow‘s Red Star over China before – just as a frequent reader of the People’s Daily should reach for an edition of the Epoch Times, every now and then.
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1) Thomas Weyrauch, China’s unbeachtete Republik, 100 Jahre im Schatten der Weltgeschichte, Giessen, 2009. This book is apparently only available in German.
2) My translation. China’s unbeachtete Republik, p. 217
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Related
Reform without Zijiren, October 5, 2009
Walking the Boundaries, Oct 3, 2009
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