The campaign in the northeastern provinces

The first campaign was waged from the 12th of September to the 2nd of November, in 1948, in the northeastern provinces. There the situation was favorable to the Communist “Liberation” army, because during the Anti-Japanese War, they had guerrillas in the northeastern China controlling wide swathes of the countryside. When the National Army was transported there to take over what was in the hands of the Japanese army, they only occupied cities such as Shenyang, Changchun and Jinzhou. The Communist Party wanted to take over all the provinces in the northeastern China first, because there were factories that could make weapons for them, and also this area provided grain supplies for their army. Then they would go down south to the coastline.
For this campaign, the 4th field army, under the command of Lin Biao, gathered 700,000 men while the National Army had only 550,000. As a result, the casualties of the Liberation Army, including those wounded, were 609,000 and those of the National Army 470,000.
At the beginning of the campaign, the Communist Liberation Army had already surrounded Changchun. They originally planned that if they could take Changchun, they would get supplies from it. However, the city was built so strong that it was not easy to take. Therefore, they had to surround it lest the National Army in the city came out to interfere with their other schemes. On the 7th of September, Mao telegrammed Lin Biao to attack Jinzhou. If they occupied Jinzhou area, they would block the National Army from escaping south.
On the 24th of September, 1948, the National Army telegrammed Chiang Kai-shek for reinforcements. Chiang commanded Wei Lihuang in Shenyang to send a detachment to rescue the army in Jinzhou, but Wei refused to carry out the order on the excuse that it might jeopardize the safety of Shenyang. Chiang had to transport the 49th army by air to Jinzhou. But only two regiments landed successfully. Then the airport was blocked by Communist anti-aircraft guns on the 28th and the airplanes could not land any more. On October 1, the Communist Liberation Army surrounded Jinzhou after taking over all other towns in its vicinity.

On October 2, Chiang Kai-shek flew to Shenyang to summon a military meeting and decided to send seven divisions from Shandong province by sea to the Hulu Islands, and from there to Jinzhou. Next day he left Shenyang by plane. When Lin Biao learned of Chiang’s plan, he accelerated his attack on Jinzhou. If the Tashan line was broken through by the national reinforcements, the whole campaign would end in failure.
On October 10, the national reinforcements reached Tashan and the fight started. On October 13, Tashan was still under the control of the Liberation Army. On the 14th, Tashan changed hands nine times, but the National Army still could not break through the line. While the fighting was severe at Tashan, an attack on Jinzhou began at 10 o’clock that morning. Some 500 cannons fired at targets in the city. At 11:30AM, the communist foot soldiers rushed forth. When the soldiers in the front fell, the soldiers behind took up their positions. The attack lasted till 6:00PM on October 15 when the Liberation Army entered the city. Over 100,000 National Army fighters were eliminated. The vice commander-in-chief, Fan Hanji, and the commander of the 6th bloc, Lu Junquan, were captured. When the national reinforcements heard of the fall of Jinzhou, they retreated to the Hulu islands.
There were only two cities left to be conquered: Shenyang and Changchun. The eastern half of Changchun was guarded by the 60th army, under the command of Zeng Zesheng, who was a friend of Lu Junquan. Therefore, Lin Biao ordered Lu Junquan to contact Zeng Zesheng to talk him into betraying Chiang Kai-shek and turning over to the Communist Party. A telegram was sent to Zeng in Lu’s name. Seeing the National Army was in a bad situation, Zeng declared an uprising on October 17, with his three divisions, 26,000 in number. That night, the Liberation Army stealthily took up position in the eastern half of Changchun. On October 19 day, the new 7th army surrendered to the Liberation Army. The commander-in-chief in the city, Zheng Tongguo, contacted the Liberation Army and asked for permission to put up two more days’ fake resistance before he surrendered. After he surrendered, a false news bulletin should then be issued that he was captured. Thus Changchun City fell into the possession of the Liberation Army. On October 31st, the Liberation Army surrounded the last city, Shenyang, and at dawn November 1, the attack on the city commenced. After one day’s fight, the Communist Liberation Army occupied the city. All the northeastern provinces were under the control of the Communist Party.

The campaign in Huaihai River area

The Huaihai River campaign took place between the 6th of November in 1948 and the 10th of January in 1949. The Liberation Army threw in 600,000 men and the National Army had 800,000. The casualties, including wounded, of the Liberation Army were over 100,000 while those of the National Army, including those captured, were as high as 550,000.
The defense minister of the National Party was convinced that if they wanted to control the Yangtze River defensive line, they must control the Huaihai River defensive line. Obviously, the war in the Huaihai River area was very important to the national government. While the campaign in the northeastern provinces were still going on, a battle in JiNan City was engaged. The Liberation Army used 140,000 soldiers to attack the city and 180,000 to block the reinforcements from Xuzhou City. At that time, the National Army in Xuzhou area should have gone to the rescue of the army in JiNan. But the Liberation Army blocked their way. They hesitated to advance.
After the Liberation Army took JiNan on the 24th of September, 1948, they marched towards Xuzhou. The National Army gathered in Xuzhou area for the defense. On the night of the 6th of November, the Liberation Army officially began its campaign in the Huaihai River area. When they found that the national 7th military bloc was receding, they pursued and caught the 7th bloc on the 7th day while the bloc was crossing the Great Canal.
The 63rd army and the 83rd division, bringing up the rear, were quickly wiped out. When the commander of the 7th bloc called the commander of the 13th bloc, the latter refused to come to his assistance, saying that he had to adhere to the original plan to retreat. (That was one of the reasons why the National Army was eaten up bit by bit. No cooperation between commanders. They could not form a fist to strike at the foe, only using fingers separately to tear at it.) On the 8th of November, three-fourths of the national Army defending the river line held an uprising under the instructions of the Communist Party members who were lurking within the army. Therefore, the Liberation Army cut through the line easily.

Having crossed the Great Canal, the national 7th bloc decided to stay at Zhanzhuang and to fight the pursuing Liberation Army. Anyway, more liberation forces came and surrounded the 7th bloc on November 11. Chiang Kai-shek ordered the 13th bloc and the 2nd bloc to rescue the 7th bloc, and moreover, sent the 6th bloc and the 8th bloc to the Xuzhou area. The forces of the National Army increased to 800,000. On November 13, the reinforcements of the 2nd and 13th blocs came to the Daxujia line, and were stopped there by the liberation 3rd field army. Since the reinforcements of the National Army got through the blockading line, the Liberation Army quickened its attack and annihilated the 7th bloc on November 22.
On the 30th of November, 300,000 defensive National Army under the command of Du Yuming left Xuzhou and went south. A detachment of Liberation Army of 300,000 chased them. At the time, Chiang Kai-shek ordered Du to go southeast to rescue the 12th bloc, the 2nd bloc, the 13th bloc and the 16th bloc, separately surrounded in the region northeast to Yong Town. But on the 4th of December, the 16th bloc acted on its own, trying to break through the encirclement, and was eliminated. On December 12, the Liberation Army pounced on the 12th bloc and wiped it out on the December 15.
Then the Liberation Army aimed at Du Yuming and asked him to surrender, but Du refused, even though he was already surrounded. Two more blocs were annihilated on the 9th of January in 1949, and Du was taken captive on the 10th. The 6th and 8th blocs deserted their defensive posts between the Huaihai River and the Yangtze River and retreated to the south of the Yangtze River. The vast expanse of land to the north of the Yangtze River fell into the hands of the Liberation Army. Thus ended the campaign in the Huaihai River area.

The campaign in Peking and Tianjin area

This campaign lasted for 64 days, from the 29th of November, 1948 to the 31st of January, 1949. The Liberation Army threw 1,000,000 troops into that campaign and the National Army gathered over 500,000. The Liberation Army had 39,000 casualties (including the wounded) while the National Army lost 52,000 (including captured).
When the liberation 4th field army occupied the northeastern provinces, they marched south to attack Peking and Tianjin. General Fu Zuoyi (1895–1974) was the commander of the defense of Peking. Before the campaign started, Chiang Kai-shek wanted Fu to bring his army south to strengthen the defensive line by the Yangtze River. But Fu did not follow Chiang’s orders. Fu planned to keep only Peking and Tianjin area in his control and give up the other towns. If the situation became critical, he could escape by sea and get to south of the Yangtze River.
The Liberation Army’s strategy was to surround each of the cities and towns separately to prevent anyone from escaping. They saw Peking as the center of this area and attacked towns along the outermost circle, and closing in their encirclement towards the center. In late December, they took over two towns in the west. On the 14th of January, 1949, they besieged Tianjin City when the defensive army refused to surrender. After fighting for 29 hours, they entered the city, eliminating 10 divisions, 160,000 soldiers (including captured).
At last they came to Peking. They did not want any damage done to the old capital city, and they therefore sent someone to talk to Fu Zuoyi. Seeing that escape was out of the question, he declared an uprising and went over to the Liberation Army. Later, in the second republic of China, he was appointed the Minister of Water Resources.

The end of the second civil war

As the situation became more dire for the national government, Chiang Kai-shek resigned, leaving everything in the hands of the vice president Li Zongren (1891–1969), who proposed starting peace talks with the Communist Party. Meanwhile, Chiang transferred 4.5 million taels of gold and $384 million to Taiwan (the island of Formosa). At the beginning of 1949, the national government had already moved its capital from Nanking to Canton. On April 1, 1949, the representatives of both the Communist Party and the National Party had peace talks in Peking. The Communist Party wanted the National Party to accept conditions that amounted to a complete surrender. of course, the national government spurned such a suggestion.
On the night of the 21st of April, the combined Liberation Army of the 2nd and 3rd field armies crossed the Yangtze River in wooden sailboats in the face of artillery fire from the National Army along the river. They broke through the weak spots of the defensive line and set foot on the south bank of the River. The 35th army, belonging to the 8th bloc of the 3rd field army, were tasked with attacking Nanking. On the night of the 23rd, they crossed the river and reached Nanking. All the important members of the national government had already left the city by air. So on April 24, the Liberation Army entered the city as if it was entirely undefended. Afterwards, the Communist government decided that the 23rd of April should be the anniversary of the liberation of Nanking, though formally they took over the city on the 24th.
The Liberation Army took over Hangzhou on May 3, and Hankou on May 18, and Wuchang and Hanyang on May 17. They took Nanchang on May 22. At the same time, on May 12, the Liberation Army began to attack Shanghai. They first laid siege to the satellite towns around Shanghai and met strong resistance. Anyway, they took them one by one, and on May 26, they entered the urban area of Shanghai. The next day, all of Shanghai was controlled by the Liberation Army. People in Shanghai welcomed the Liberation Army just as they had welcomed Chiang Kai-shek’s army after the long occupation by Japan, as they had been disappointed by the corruption in Chiang Kai-shek’s government. So now they pinned their hopes on the Communist Party, not knowing at that time whether the Communist Party would disappoint them just the same.

On April 24, the Liberation Army took Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi province, and took XiAn, the capital of Shaanxi province on May 20. They stormed into Qingdao, a harbor city in Shandong province, on June 2. On August 4, Cheng Quan, chairman of Hunan province and Chen Mingren, commander of the 1st bloc there, declared he was betraying the national government and went over to the Liberation Army, and so the capital Changsha changed hands peacefully. The Liberation Army occupied Lanzhou, the capital of Gansu province, on August 26, and then Fuzhou, the capital of Fujian province, and then Canton on October 14. The national government had already packed up and moved to Zhongqing again. On October 17, they took Amoy but failed in the attempt to take Quemoy on the 25th and the Zhoushan islands on the 3rd of November.
In November, Chiang Kai-shek flew to Chongqing and on November 20, Li Zongren went to Hong Kong. On November 15, the Liberation Army took Guiyang, the capital of Guizhou province, and Chongqing on November 30 when the national government had already moved to Chengdu. On the 7th of December, the national government declared it was moving its capital offshore to Taipei in Taiwan. So from December 8 to 10, all the VIPs of the government were flying to Taipei. On December 9, the chairmen of Yunnan province and of Xikang province declared they were siding with the Liberation Army, which entered these provinces without any hitch. On December 27, they took Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province. The next spring, on March 27, 1950, they took Xichang. By then, almost the whole country was under the control of the Communist Party.

Part Two The Second Republic—The People’s Republic of China

Chapter 5. The Establishment of the People’s Republic of China

The Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference

When the Communist Liberation Army was still fighting the National Army, the Communist Party summoned the Chinese people’s political consultative conference from the 21st to 30th of September, 1949. A few so-called democratic parties attended the conference, such as the Revolutionary Committee of the National Party (part of the National Party that favored the Communist Party), Chinese Democratic League, China Democratic National Construction Association, China Association for Promoting Democracy, Chinese Peasants and Workers Democratic Party, China Zhigong Party, and Jiusan Society, eight in all. These so-called democratic parties have been give the ironic label of “vases” as they were nothing but empty vessels to decorate the political Communist Party conferences as symbols of democracy, because they have no say in whatever national affairs. They can only say yes to whatever the Communist Party says, and if there is a vote, every one of them will put up their hands to make up a 100% positive vote so that the Communist Party can boast of having full support. A standing committee was formed to handle routine matters. The chairman, vice chairmen, and the chief secretary controlled everything. But the chairman had to be a top-ranking Communist Party member.

In this conference a so-called Common Program was passed as the temporary constitution, which was composed of 7 chapters and 60 articles. The Common Program outlined the state system and the system of the government as the “democracy and dictatorship of the Chinese people” (meaning democracy to the people and dictatorship to the enemy), who consisted of the proletariat (workers), peasantry, petty bourgeoisie, national bourgeoisie, and other democratic patriots. (The Communist Party divides the bourgeoisie in China into two types: national capitalists and bureaucratic capitalists.) It was a united front with the proletariat in the leadership (through the Communist Party) on the basis of the alliance of workers and peasants. The government would confiscate all the private properties of the bureaucratic capitalists, which denoted only Chiang Kai-shek, Tse-ven Soong (Chiang’s brother-in-law, who was the head of the executive office, equivalent to the Cabinet), Kung Hsiang-His (simplified as H. H. Kung, and jokingly called Ha-Ha- Kung, who married the sister of Chiang Kai-shek’s wife and was the financial minister most of the time), and the Chen brothers, Chen Guofu (the minister of the central organization ministry of the National Party) and Chen Lifu (education minister). Their father was the sworn brother of Chiang Kai-shek. All other private business owners were defined as national capitalists.
The major articles of the Common Program—the temporary constitution—stated that citizens of the Peoples’ Republic of China had the rights of voting and nomination, but actually none but the leaders of the Communist Party had the rights to nominate candidates. They could nominate whomever they liked and even themselves. As for voting rights, common voters could not vote for whomever they preferred, but were forced to vote for those on the list made by the party leaders. If there were ten candidates, a voter could not vote for fewer than ten. He or she had to make a mark next to every name on the list, or he or she would get in trouble. Once a young worker crossed out a name on the list and added the name of his boss. Although he was also a party member, he was severely criticized for not following the rules.
Another major article asserted that the people of the republic were to enjoy freedom of thought, speech, gathering, organizing societies, communication, personal liberty, living anywhere, moving anywhere, religions and beliefs, and to demonstrate. But all these rights existed only on paper. In reality, no one could exercise such rights. Everything going on under the sun, or even at night, was monitored by the Communist Party.

The Ceremony of the Establishment of the People’s Republic of China

At 2:00PM on the 1st of October, 1949, the committee of the central people’s government had its first session and selected Mao Zedong as chairman. Zhu De, Liu Shaoqi, Soong Ching-ling, Li Jishen, Zhang Lan, and Gao Gang became the vice chairmen. Zhou Enlai was the Premier of the state council and the foreign minister as well, and Zhu De was the commander-in-chief of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. At 3:00, a ceremony marking the establishment of the People’s Republic of China was held at TianAnMen (literally Gate of Heavenly Peace). Chairman Mao announced the formation of the People’s Republic of China. On December 2, the central people’s government approved the decision to make October 1 the national day every year.
Accordingly, on the 1st of October, 1950, the leaders of the Communist Party were expected to stand at TianAnMen to watch the parade going through TianAnMen Square. A plot was revealed to murder the leaders. Two tenants had moved into a house at No. 17 in the Ganyu Alley northeast of TianAnMen, two mercenary spies, one Italian and the other Japanese. One night in February 1950, two strangers came to see the Japanese man, who had an 82 mortar. In mid-September, the Chinese police department intercepted a letter mailed to Tokyo, Japan, in which there was a sketch of the clear outline of TianAnMen with two black arrows, one pointing to the top of the gate and the other pointing to tiny figures drawn on the square. The letter described the layout of TianAnMan Square. Through analysis, Beijing police declared that it was evidence of a serious scheme to murder the government leaders. After further investigations, at dawn on September 27, the police rushed to the No. 17 house and broke in. They took the Japanese and Italian spies into custody. In the Japanese man’s room they found letters, documents, diagrams, the 82 mortar, and a pistol with 235 bullets, and found in the Italian’s room a packet of poisonous powder, a diagram with the outline of TianAnMen and a parabola pointing to it. On October 10, the Central Committee of the Communist Party (not the central government) issued an instruction to round up and arrest reactionaries, including spies. Who would be considered a reactionary? Those executing the instruction would define it at will.

The Ruling System of the People’s Republic of China

There are two vertical hierarchies in the ruling system under the Communist Party. One is the formal government line and the other is the party line. On the same level, there are party organizations as well as government departments. Let’s take Shanghai for an example. On the municipal level, the mayor is the head of the Shanghai government, but there is also the party secretary of the Shanghai municipal committee. The mayor must obey the party secretary, which means that the party secretary is the real head of the city, the over-lord. For every department or bureau in the municipal government, there is also a party organization on the same level.
Urban Shanghai is divided into 10 precincts with the same two-dimensional ruling system at every level. Under the precinct level are street committees, under which are resident committees which are the basic ruling cells. Every resident committee comprises the residents in one block. All cadres of these committees at different levels are paid by the government. Then every block is divided into several groups. The group leaders, though appointed, get no pay from the government. They are either housewives or retired people. The group leaders must report to the resident committee what happens in the block and if they suspect any resident of anything unusual, they must report on that. The head of the resident committee is called director and there is also a party secretary.
The municipal police station also has a party secretary. On the precinct level, there is a precinct station under which there are several police branches at the same level with the street committees. Every police branch will assign a policeman to work with the resident committee and the resident committee cadres obey the policeman.
In the suburbs of Shanghai there are 10 counties. Every county ruled over several villages, which more are called communes in the period from the Great Leap Forward to the end of the Great Cultural Revolution. Under the commune level there are productive teams. All peasants belong to different teams. Peasants and city residents are all tied to where they live and are not generally free to relocate. All their behavior and actions will be reported to the party at different levels. People may work in companies of all sorts, or in stores and schools, belonging to the government. They are told to watch over each other’s behavior and actions and report to the party if anything is suspicious. Everyone takes it seriously, because if one reports some colleague’s misbehavior, he is deemed loyal to the party and will receive some compensation such as a promotion, a small raise, or even be allowed to join the party—the fastest way to become an official. Even relatives and family members will report on their near ones for their own benefits. Under this sort of system one feels that there are spies all around. That is how the Chinese people lived until Deng Xiaoping’s 1978 economic reform and “opening up” policy. (Of course not everyone liked that either: Under this sort of system, it seems that everything is suddenly open, like prostitution, embezzlement and corruption.)

Chapter 6. The Massacre of Reactionaries and the Suppression of Bandits

The Movement to Arrest and Kill Reactionaries

The action against “reactionaries” began in December 1950 and went on until October 1951. It involved 3 million people. So lots of innocent people were arrested and many of them were executed. At that time, people were easily executed without proper legal procedures. A person could be killed just on the word of a work team leader. Fan Yuanmao, a communist activist, told of his experience at that time. He had been a district government leader and presided over many public judgments, that is, meetings to decide how many people and which ones should be executed. At one of such meeting, twelve people would be shot to death. A few more people were also named, who were called “to accompany those going to die,” but in fact they were sent there to watch the twelve people being shot, which served as a lesson to others not to do anything against the Party. At Fan Yuanmao’s order, those persons were dragged out into an open field to be executed just as pigs are dragged into a slaughter house. One of the few watchers was mistakenly killed. When asked what to do about the error, Fan answered that he would just hand in another form with the name of that person to bring the number of those executed up to thirteen. Easily settled. No other procedures needed. The lives of common Chinese people weigh no more than a feather, as a Chinese saying goes.
In some places, father and son, brothers, cousins, were killed together, maybe the whole family executed, just like in the feudal age under the rule of the emperors. One “funny” story says that the names of those who were to be executed were written in a booklet, which would be given to a cadre of higher rank for final approval. That guy would stamp a seal on each page that meant that the death decision was final. After the guy stamped a few pages, he stood up to get a glass of water. Then a gust of wind blew in and turned two pages over. When the guy came back to sit at his desk, he continued to stamp the pages till the last page. So the couple of people whose names were on the pages without a stamp were not executed. The gust of wind saved them. All in all, years later, the Party admitted that many innocent people were mistakenly executed. They died for nothing. Victims of the Party and Mao’s overly drastic actions.

It has been argued that in so many dynasties in the history of China, and elsewhere, many innocent people have been mistakenly killed. It’s difficult to make comparisons. But it is totally wrong to kill innocent people and it does not matter how many or how few are killed. According to the Communist Party, all the dynasties in history were a form of feudalism, a bad political system. That innocent people were killed in a bad system may be no surprise. But the Communist Party of China boasted that socialism is the best political system in the world and claimed from the beginning that the Party was serving the people. So they have no right to kill innocent people as they said they are for the people. Apparently, a hypothetical system is one thing and the individuals who seek to establish and implement it may be a different story altogether.
Some ridiculous things happened during this movement. In February of 1951, Mao summoned a meeting to decide the rate at which people should be executed. They decided that the rate should be one in a thousand, and at first, half of this number should be killed, and then the policy should be reviewed. Mao gave clear instructions to the mayors of Shanghai and Nanking, saying, “Shanghai is a large city of 6 million, and in Shanghai hardly more than 200 are executed out of over 20,000 arrested. It is not enough. In my opinion, at least 3,000 or so should be executed. Nanking was the capital of the National Party; the reactionaries there should be executed and I don’t mean a few more than 200. Far more must be executed in Nanking.” Mao’s decision to kill people was not based on crimes those people committed but based on his own whim.
On the 21st of February, 1950, the state council issued the “Rules for punishing reactionaries in the People’s Republic of China.” Here reactionaries were defined as: people contacting imperialists; contacting, instigating and bribing officials, armed forces and militia to commit treason; gathering armed crowds for rebellion; joining spy organizations; organizing or utilizing any religious groups for reactionary purposes; robbing or damaging public or private property or public equipment; using poison to kill people; making fake documents or IDs; instigating crowds against the government; sowing discord among government officials; spreading rumors; stealing across territory borders; breaking into or escaping from jails; hiding or protecting reactionaries, etc. It didn’t matter if the action had been completed or not.

Even those Party members who had worked as communist spies in the former government were deemed traitors and killed; let alone those generals who had changed sides from Chiang Kai-shek’s government to the Communist Party. They were also killed. In some people’s opinion, those generals, if they saw no hope of winning the day, should have gone abroad to live a free, safe life, not change sides to the Communist Party to be killed later. They should have known that the Communist Party had killed their own comrades even while they were still at YanAn. Those comrades believed in communism and went there to help wage the revolution. They could never dream that they would die in the hands of their own comrades in the name of revolution. Talk about betrayal.
Then there was the “Revolt of Restitution Party.” It involved over 1,300 persons, including 80 Communist Party members, in PuEr Town in Yunnan Province. PuEr is famous for its PuEr tea. Even the town’s party secretary and the deputy director-general of the police station were included. The first party secretary of the province said that he did not believe it. The party organization itself could not get so many members in such a short time—how could a reactionary organization achieve it? Then it was found that the case was made up. No evidence at all, except for one sign calling for revolt, which was drawn by a primary school teacher under threat. So the ridiculous case was dismissed.
In January of 1954, Xu Zirong, the vice minister of the police department, reported the statistics. In this movement, over 2,620,000 people were apprehended, “over 712,000 were executed, over 1,290,000 were imprisoned, and over 1,200,000 were placed under police control. Over 380,000 were released because their crimes were not serious.” If 712,000 were executed, the ratio was 0.124% as the population at that time was 500 million.

The Suppression of Bandits

There were two types of bandits operating at this time. One was the kind who had already been bandits during the civil war owing to the chaotic situation. Many of them were common people who had had no other way to survive. The other were former soldiers of the National Army who had escaped from the People’s Liberation Army to dwell in the mountains. They acted as guerrilla warriors for the National Party, but were deemed bandits by the Liberation Army. Most of those bandits hid in the mountainous southwestern regions, but some lived in towns.

Bandits in Western Hunan

When most of Hunan province fell to the Communists, some of those men still loyal to the National Army settled in Western Hunan and formed three groups called the Anti-Communist Army, over 100,000 in all. From October 14 to 16, 1949, the 47th Liberation army besieged Dayong and annihilated their 122nd army (4,333 men) and incorporated 12,000 into the Liberation army. This battle frightened other bandits. Some of them decided they’d better go ahead and join the Liberation Army. But when the Liberation Army marched towards the southwest, they no longer wanted to surrender. On the contrary, in mid-December, they went to take back Dayong. Some of these bandits attacked a squad of the Liberation Army and killed some local armed personnel and pillaged 20 trucks belonging to the army.
To deal with the deteriorating situation, the 47th Liberation Army returned to the Western Hunan province and occupied 8 towns. The bandits escaped to some caves in the mountain. The Liberation Army found the family members of the bandits and made them go into the mountains to ask their husbands to come down and surrender. Finally the Liberation Army attacked the caves and eliminated the rest of the bandits in October.

Bandits in the southwestern provinces

There were 148 groups of bandits in Yunnan province, 541 groups in Guizhou province, and 300 groups in Sichuan province. The big groups had a few thousand men. In February 1950, the bandits in all those areas grew from 400,000 to 500,000.
To annihilate them, the Communist Party sent the 3rd corps, the 4th corps, the 5th corps, and the 18th corps, plus the 7th army to separately attack the bandits in different districts. The attacks began in March 1950. During one month, the Liberation Army wiped out several groups of bandits numbering 23,000 in southern Sichuan province. By the end of July, 950,000 were eliminated in the eastern Sichuan province. After September, the Liberation Army in the eastern Sichuan province maneuvered to the region in the northeastern Guizhou province and annihilated another 320,000 bandits there. By the end of 1950, over 193,000 bandits were eliminated in the eastern Sichuan province, over 293,000 in the southern Sichuan province, over 83,000 in the western Sichuan province, and over 80,000 in the northern Sichuan province. It was reported that by 1953, more than 1,160,000 bandits in the northwestern provinces were wiped out, and over 700 cannons and over 600,000 firearms of all kinds were captured. During the whole process, the bandits assassinated 157 Liberation Army men and local cadres, spread poison 223 times, and set 316 fires. In 1952, the bandits received 10 airdrops including 13 radio sets, and 14 trained spies were sent from Taiwan and landed in those areas.

Bandits in the western Guangxi province

The bandits gathered more than 90,000 men, spreading over 97 towns out of 102 towns in western Guangxi. They killed more than 500 cadres, took away more than 28,000,000 catties of grain (17 tons) and more than 260,000 livestock. They hid in Dayao Mountain. The Liberation Army gathered 14 regiments plus militiamen from 18 towns, and blockaded all the waterways and roads to outside. The bandits tried to break through and escaped more than 40 times, but in the end it all failed. On the 8th of January, 1951, the Liberation Army started into the Dayao Mountain and wiped out more than 400 men in mountain villages. But the bandits were spread throughout the mountains, and so on the 2nd of February, the Communist Party gathered 13 battalions to go village by village and cave by cave searching for them. This campaign went on for 50 days and no more bandits were left in that area. The ringleaders were all executed.

A special case

A weird thing happened one evening in 1950. Near Wulong Town in the southeastern Sichuan province, there was a restaurant called Danxin Restaurant which was famous for steamed buns stuffed with ground meat. But what kind of meat it was, no one knew. Someone suspected that it was the human flesh. In the olden days, there were always stories about steamed buns stuffed with human flesh sold in “black inns.” This small restaurant was a meeting place for bandits in this area. The owner of the restaurant was an old man with a fake hunchback: the real owner had a hunchback, but he had murdered him. He took over the restaurant and brought in two of his men, disguised as waiters.
On the 21st of October, ten Liberation Army soldiers passed the restaurant. They were on their way back from the mountain fighting bandits. As they were tired and hungry, they went into the restaurant. They were served steamed buns. A young soldier observed that the meat stuffing didn’t taste like pork, or mutton or beef. So he asked the owner what meat it was. The owner turned to leave without answering the question. Soon the soldiers were drugged, lying on the floor, and were dragged to the basement.
At daybreak on October 23, another five liberation soldiers came into the restaurant and were also served the steamed buns. Soon they all lay on the floor and were put into the basement. Next, more than 100 soldiers came, but this time they entered the restaurant without asking for any food. They had learned that this restaurant was a hideout and meeting place for bandits and had come to arrest those working here. The basement was found and 5 newcomers were still lying on the ground; two of the former ten soldiers were still alive. The other eight soldiers had been killed. One of the two was the squad leader and he told the story. He went on to live his life; but the other, a younger soldier, went mad and was put into an asylum. He died in March of 1959.

How CPC (communist Party of China) treats Tibet
 
I. Previous relationship between Tibet and China
The relationship between Tibet and China began the earliest in Tang Dynasty (618—907 AD). In the year of 640 AD, when the famous emperor Tang Taizong (01/28/598—07/10/649) was on the throne (626—649), Srongtsen Gampo, the sovereign of Tibet at the time, dispatched his premier to the capital of Tang Dynasty, bringing 5,000 taels of gold and many kinds of other treasures as gift and asked for the hand of a princess. The Tang emperor was pleased and granted the request of marriage. A legend had it that chieftains of other minorities close to the territory of Tang Dynasty also desired to marry the princess. The emperor wanted to test the wisdom of all the emissaries to decide whom he should choose as his foreign son-in-law, and so gave them a riddle to see who could solve it. He gave them a thin silk thread and a piece of jade with a zigzag hole in the middle, not straight through. Whoever could get the thread through the hole, his sovereign could marry the princess. No one could do it except the premier from Tibet. He got an ant and tied the thread on the ant. He blew his breath at the ant and it went through the winding hole carrying the thread through. Therefore, Princess Wencheng (625—680) was sent to Tibet and married the Tibetan sovereign. The princess brought with her the Chinese culture, the silkworm, seeds of grains, herb medicine and medical equipments, etc. The Tibetan sovereign built the Potala Palace in Lhasa for her, in imitation of the style of Tang palace. In the year of 740 AD, another princess of Tang Dynasty married the great grandson of Srongtsen Gampo. At that time, Tibet was an independent nation and did not belong to China. It was at most deemed a subordinative state to Tang Dynasty, but only in name, as they had marital relationship. Certainly not part of China.
At the beginning of the Qing Dynasty (1636—1912), Qing army had once conquered Tibet. However, Tibetans were still free to keep their culture and religion. But with the fall of the Qing Dynasty, Tibet declared its independence in 1913, which was recognized internationally at the time. So Tibet should be deemed an independent state. When the national government was established, Chiang Kai-shek had sent twice the envoy, but he did not take any military means to put Tibet under his rule.

II. CPC (Communist Party of China) wants to change Tibet to their liking

On the 6th of October, 1950, the communist army defeated the Tibetan army, which had to surrender. So under the order of communist government, Tibet had to send a delegation to Beijing. On the 23rd of May, 1951, the communist government forced Tibet to sign the “Seventeen Point Agreement for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet.” (The Communist Party of China always uses ridiculous words to cover up the facts. Their so-called “Liberation” is the equivalent to vanquishing and rule by force. How can it be peaceful? Mao's famous quotation is “Political power comes out of gun.”) In the agreement, the Communist Party of China promised autonomy in Tibet, and freedom of religion, but when the communist army entered Tibet, they went back on their promise and never gave Tibet autonomy, and interfered with their belief, just like they had promised Chinese people a united government, democracy and freedom of speech, which are still written in their constitution, but when they seized power, they broke the promise and exercised one-party tyranny. That is the basic problem why the Tibetan people are opposing the communist party, for their breaking their promise. Their promise is not worth even a farthing. The believer in their promise is always found to be disappointed. In 1959 when Mao was pushing his reform all over the country, he wanted to have reform of some kind in Tibet, too. The communist party never wants to know what people really think and really need. They just force their ideas on people. If people refuse to take their ideas, they just exercise oppression or even slaughter. That was why from the 10th day to the 20th day of March, 1959, 100,000 Tibetans followed Dalai Lama over Mt. Himalaya and escaped to the north of India. Then the communist party began to persecute the Tibetans.

Why did Dalai Lama want to escape from Tibet to India? The event of Lhasa happened like this. In the morning of the 10th of March, 1959, people of Lhasa thronged outside Norbulingka summer palace, where Dalai Lama lived. Their purpose was to prevent Dalai Lama from going to the camp auditorium of the communist army to watch some performance. Why did they want to do this? The situation at that time in Tibet told the reason. The Tibetans were really angry with the communist army who came to occupy their land and didn't give them autonomy. CPC set up their puppet government called the “Preparatory Committee for the Tibet Autonomous Region” to rule over Tibet. So Tibetans vented their dissatisfaction by preventing their leader from going to mix with the communist army. People who surrounded Norbulingka shouted, “Chinese, get out of Tibet.” Though Dalai Lama declared that he wouldn't go in hopes that people would disperse. But they still gathered there without intention to leave whatsoever.
When the army leaders reported to the Central Party committee, CPC concluded that the reactionaries in Tibet wanted to kidnap Dalai Lama. Therefore, on the night of the 11th of March, CPC instructed the army leaders in Tibet to prepare for the military action. On the 12th of March, Mao instructed his army leaders “to induce the enemy to attack.” Why? Because the army could “counterattack” on the pretense that the enemy attacked first. It meant that CPC and Mao had already made the decision for killing, not having a peace talk with Tibetans to iron the differences. This is the rule of CPC to deal with people under their control, just like in the event of TianAnMen Square on the 4th of June, 1989, Deng Xiaoping had already decided for the killing of the students. No matter how Zhao Ziyang made efforts to have talks with students.

Actually in 1950, Dalai Lama decided to cooperate with the communist government, regardless of the advice of his brother in India then to leave Tibet as soon as possible. However, after his cooperation with CPC for five years, he was so disappointed in CPC as Tibetans grew angrier and angrier at the communist government since the government forced land reform in the region Tibetans lived. The resistance of the Tibetan people was already on the swing. So Dalai Lama was now between the devil and the deep sea. He didn't want to support his people for armed riot, not could he send his troops to kill his own people. So his last decision was to escape to India. At first he had still hesitated, but the explosion of two Mortar shells from the communist army very close to his residence expedited his escape. The event ended with the communist army killing the Tibetans in protestation.
How to maintain a peaceful relationship with minorities, there was much experience and examples in the history of China. Even the feudal rulers, that is, emperors, knew that if they wanted a peaceful relationship with minorities, they must win their hearts, not just conquer them physically. If they conquered them by force, they would not obey peacefully. The leaders of the communist party, especially Mao, who had read a lot of history books, should know the principle. But in reality, those leaders, including Mao himself, are the believers of force and violence. Whenever anything happens, they like to use strong angry words for threatening. They never know lenience. That's why people all over the world often criticize them just in hopes that they can change their attitudes to listen reasonably to others and act to the common standards of the world.

Chapter 8. The Land Reform Movement and Prostitution Reform

The Land Reform in the Countryside

As early as 1946, the Communist Party had carried out some reform policies in the districts under their control. On October 10, 1947, they issued new land laws to distribute the arable land to those who actually tilled it. They expropriated the landowners and gave the land to the peasants, thus winning much gratitude and support from the rural populace. This support took two forms: grain and army recruits. Since most of the population in China was in the countryside, when the forces of the National Party diminished, the Communist Party gained reinforcements by recruiting young peasants.
From winter of 1950 to spring of 1953, the land reform movement began in full swing in all the newly controlled provinces. They divided the arable land belonging to landowners among peasants. On June 30, 1950, the central people’s government issued the “Land Reform Law of the People’s Republic of China.”
Many Party cadres formed work teams and went to the countryside to instruct peasants on how to proceed. The landowners were pulled out of their residences and taken to an open space. They were forced to kneel for long periods on the hard ground. Those peasants who hated their landowners went forward to slap their faces, and they slapped hard. But the humiliation and sense of injustice were worse than the physical pain. Many of the landowners were shot to death. Their families were deprived of their property, leaving them only with the bare necessities of life. Peasants moved into the landowners’ houses.

Prostitution Reform in Cities

Prostitution was an old business in almost every nation in the world. Prostitution in China had a history of 3,000 years in written records, and it was generally practiced in cities. Most prostitutes were forced to be in this business; some had even been kidnapped and sold to the whorehouse. Occasionally little girls were sold to the whorehouse by poor parents on the verge of starvation. The parents reasoned that at least their daughter would not starve to death that way. Therefore, girls who were prostitutes were not considered blameworthy for their own sake. (In the present China, the importance of money has increased and it is true that most who become prostitutes do it of their own accord. There are cafes and clubs where a man can pay a young and pretty girl to keep him company while sipping tea, coffee or other drinks, or to dance, and he can invite the girl for more. These girls were called ‘Miss.’ So nowadays, if anyone calls a girl ‘Miss,’ she will find it insulting.)
At the beginning of the People’s Republic of China, the Communist Party wanted to end the prostitution business once for all. So every local government closed all the whorehouses in their cities, starting with Beijing. The mayor simply declared, at 5 o’clock in the afternoon on the 21st of November in 1949, a ban on the prostitution business and closed all the whorehouses. The chief of the main police station in Beijing gave orders to gather 2,400 cadres and policemen to form 27 groups. At 8:00PM, every group went to the designated district, and 224 whorehouses were closed and 1,316 prostitutes were penned up in penitentiaries for half a year. After “re-education” and healing and a skills-training process, about 400 of them married workers and shop assistants to start their new life. Around 200 of them married peasants in the suburbs of Beijing. Another 200 became workers themselves in textile factories. It is said that 379 returned to their respective homes, while 62 were assigned jobs in theaters or hospitals.

On November 23, Shanghai followed suit and began to close all the whorehouses. In Shanghai 7,400 prostitutes were sent to penitentiaries and turned over a new leaf. During 1951 and 1952, all other cities did the same and prostitution was cleared up in China. As there were so many women who had to build a new life, some of them were sent to join the so-called construction army in the very remote northwest, the Xinjiang Autonomous Region. In April of 1955, 920 girls started from Shanghai, in new green uniforms, and rode a train to barracks there.
Besides the prostitution problem, another problem in the cities was the great number of beggars, homeless and thieves. They were also rounded up by the local police and put in penitentiaries. Then after skills-training, they got jobs, too. During these years, passengers in trams and buses had no fear of pickpockets. Even housewives, if any needed to work to earn money, could be assigned jobs in some kind of factory or low-paying “productive group.” Jobs in the productive groups including sealing envelopes, making match boxes, or knitting work, etc. Jobs were not searched out and applied for, but allotted by the local government.

Chapter 9. The Korean War

North Korea Invaded South Korea

A legend about Korea and China goes back to the end of the Shang Dynasty (1765–1122 BC). The last king of that dynasty was a tyrant and often killed innocent people, even his courtiers. When he was overthrown by the Zhou Dynasty (1121—476 BC), he burned himself to death. His brother Jizi escaped to Korea with his followers, bringing Chinese culture, etiquette and government systems there. The natives supported him to be the first king of Korea. It was called Jizi Korea, which lasted from 1122 BC to 194 BC.
The Korean War, or Korean Conflict, began on June 25, 1950, when the North Korean army marched across the line of demarcation, the 38th parallel, and suddenly attacked the 17th Regiment of the South Korean army without any warning. The war ended on July 27, 1953, when the cease-fire agreement was signed.
The Soviet Union was behind North Korea in waging the war, helped by China. Before the war, the leader of North Korea asked China to send over three divisions composed entirely of Koreans. These became the 4th field army under Lin Biao. The three divisions doubled the military forces of North Korea. Then North Korea concentrated great numbers of tanks and troops to press the South Korean army southward. Meanwhile North Korean troops made an amphibious landing at Kangnung on the east coast right on the south side of the 38th parallel. Then North Korean fighter aircrafts attacked Seoul and Kimpo Airfield, destroying a US Air Force C-54 on the ground on Kimpo Airfield. Therefore, John Muccio, the US Ambassador to South Korea, conveyed to US President Truman the request of South Korean government for air assistance and ammunition.

The United Nations Security Council held an emergency meeting, which the representative of the Soviet Union did not attend. The United Nations Security Council called in unison for an immediate cease-fire and withdrawal of the North Korean army to the north of the 38th parallel and authorized the United Nations members to aid South Korea. The United Nations Security Council requested that the US government establish a United Nations Command under an American officer. General MacArthur was appointed as commander of the United Nations army, and he ordered the US Air Force to attack the North Korean units in the south of the 38th parallel.
The US government began the air evacuation of its citizens from South Korea. The next day, the North Korean army occupied Chunchon, Pochon, and Tongduchon in South Korea. So the US 7th fleet sailed north from the Philippines. The US Air Force started to attack the North Korean army, but failed to prevent it from advancing. Soon the North Korean army captured Seoul, the capital of South Korea, overran the port of Inchon, seized the airfield at Kimpo, and threatened the city of Suwon. Then President Truman ordered some units of US navy to approach the Korean peninsula for the purpose of blockading the North Korea army.
At the end of July, as the North Korean troops kept advancing, the United Nations forces had to retreat to a new defensive line along the Naktong River. Then the United States troops launched their first ground offensive, marching from Masan westward toward Chinju to stabilize the southwestern end of the Pusan line. A few days later, US troops, with the aid of air strikes, drove the North Korean army at the Yongsan bridgehead back across the Naktong River.

In mid-March, the Chinese forces abandoned Seoul without resistance when the US troops seized the high ground on both sides of the city north of the Han River. Then US air transports, flying from Taegu to Munsan-ni, a region behind Chinese lines some 20 miles northwest of Seoul, dropped the 187th Airborne Regimental Combat Team and two Ranger companies—more than 3,400 men. The Fifth Air Force fighters and light bombers conquered the opposition of the Chinese army, and so the United Nations forces marched rapidly to the Imjin River, capturing 127 Chinese prisoners of war. The Eighth Army moved northward across the 38th parallel.
With the coming of spring, the Chinese launched an all-out offensive with over 330,000 troops, using their “human wave” tactics. By the end of this month, they advanced to the vicinity of Seoul again. But under the United Nations assaults on the ground and in the air, both men and supplies on the Chinese side reached their limits. So the Eighth Army successfully stopped their further progress.
In spite of the resistance of the Chinese and North Korean army, the United Nations forces broke into the Pyonggang-Chorwon-Kumhwa “Iron Triangle” fortified sanctuaries just north of the 38th parallel. Therefore, on the 23rd of June, Jacob Malik, the Soviet Ambassador to the United Nations, called for negotiations between the representatives of the United Nations forces and those of the Chinese and North Korean forces for an armistice in Korea based on the separation of the armies along the 38th parallel.
On the 10th of July, Vice Admiral Turner Joy, leading the United Nations delegation met the Chinese and North Korean delegation at Kaesong, some 30 miles northwest of Seoul on the south side of the 38th parallel, for the first conference of the armistice negotiations. Therefore, less actions on the ground and in the air was maintained. But on the 4th of August, the Chinese ground forces violated the Kaesong neutral zone, resulting in suspension of the truce talks. Then on the 10th of August the armistice negotiations resumed at Kaesong with the North Korea promise to respect the neutral zone. However, on the 22nd of August, the Chinese and North Korean delegation trumped up evidence that a United Nations aircraft bombed Kaesong (not considering the safety of their own delegation?), which resulted in the suspension of the armistice negotiations once again.

Then actions on the ground and in the air resumed. United Nations ground forces withstood the battalion-sized attacks of the Chinese army in the “Punchbowl”, the circular valley in the eastern Korea, west of the Soyang River and rimmed by sharply rising hills. On the 25th of October, at the request of the Chinese and North Korean delegation, the peace negotiations resumed at Kaesong after a two-month suspension. By that time the United Nations ground forces in the western and central sections had gained up to six miles in some places along the frontline.
On the 12th of November, the peace negotiations moved to Panmunjom, a village less than 5 miles east of Kaesong, in a newly established demilitarized zone on the 38th parallel. The United Nations forces ceased offensive ground operations. Toward the end of 1951, the negotiators at Panmunjom argued over the arrangements for an armistice and provisions about the prisoners of war. Ground actions of both sides reduced to minimum. However, at Panmunjom, the negotiations made no progress. To prevent the further attack of the Chinese and North Korean army in the frontline, the main strategy of the United Nations was to hinder the transportation of equipment and supplies to their front positions. So the targets of the air raid concentrated on bridges on rivers, railroads, moving trains and trucks.
In April of 1952, there were two major ground engagements. The Chinese and North Korean forces attacked at night the positions held by the First Marine Division south of Panmunjom and later assaulted the First Commonwealth Division north of Korangpo-ri. The friendly units withstood these attacks. No other ground actions happened this month.
In June, US 45th Infantry Division in the central sector near Chorwon launched two attacks successfully to gain a high ground and repulsed the counterattack of the Chinese troops. But in July, in the eastern sector of Korea, near the coast and near Hill 266 in the US Second Infantry Division area, a battalion of the Chinese army attempted to seize the high ground. It changed hands several times, but remained under the friendly control at the end of the month.
In mid-August, some reinforced-battalions of the Chinese army attacked the United Nations positions in several sectors. Hills in the First Marine Division sector and in the South Korean Second Corps sector changed hands several times, but United Nations forces retained control of those sectors.

On the 29th of August, at the request of the US Department of State, US Far East Air Force launched the largest air attack against Pyongyang to serve as a dramatic military action during the visit of China’s premier, Zhou Enlai, to the Soviet Union. The State Department hoped that the attack might lead the Soviets to urge the Chinese to accept an armistice in the peace negotiations at Panmunjom.
In September, the heaviest ground activity centered in the sector of the Second Corps of South Korean army with intense seesaw fighting, but effected little change in the frontlines.
Between the 6th day and the 15th of October, the Chinese ground forces assaulted chiefly in the western IX Corps area northwest of Chorwon in a vain attempt to improve their position before the onslaught of winter. In mid-October, the Eighth Army launched an offensive to seize critical high ground in eastern IX Corps area northeast of Kumhwa. But it became a seesaw contest to retain domination terrain.
On the 8th of October, truce talks at Panmunjom recessed over the issue of forced repatriation of the prisoners of war. The United Nations delegates proposed allowing the prisoners of war from opposite sides to choose repatriation or not, but the Chinese and North Korean delegates insisted that all prisoners of war be repatriated.

On the 16th of October, 1952, North Korea sent a strongly worded protest to the Far East Command concerning the recess in armistice negotiations, but they continued to insist on total repatriation of both Chinese and North Korean prisoners of war. At the end of this month they presented a new prisoners-of-war camp list. In Geneva, the League of Red Cross  Societies recommended that the combatants exchange sick and wounded prisoners of war before the cease-fire.
On the 22nd of January in 1953, Beijing radio announced the capture of Colonel Arnold, pilot of a B-29 who was shot down on January 13. But the Chinese government refused to release him even during the repatriation of war prisoners. He was released in 1956.
On the 22nd of February, in a letter to Kim Il Sung, Premier of North Korea government and Marshal Peng Dehuai, Chinese commander in North Korea, the United Nations command stated its readiness to immediately repatriate those seriously ill and wounded prisoners of war who were fit to travel, and asked whether the North Korea and Chinese leaders were prepared to do the same.
During the first half of March, the Chinese army attacked in company-sized waves in several areas, particularly along the central front in the Kumhwa and Kumsong regions. Later, sometimes, they attacked by the regiment in the central and western sectors. Then US Intelligence found the military strength of the Chinese army growing, with from one to three Chinese divisions en route to or entering the Korean peninsula. The buildup indicated a possible offensive to seize as much territory as possible before the armistice.

On March 21, North Korean truce negotiators expressed their willingness to observe the provisions of the Geneva Convention and exchange sick and wounded prisoners. At the same time they hinted that the exchange might lead to a resolution of other issues that had hindered the armistice so far.
On March 30, Zhou Enlai, the foreign minister of China, suggested that prisoners of war not desiring repatriation might be placed in the temporary custody of a neutral nation until negotiations determined their final status. Before his proposal, they had insisted on repatriating all the prisoners of war. Their new flexibility on this issue provided an opportunity to resume truce negotiations.
On the 26th of April, after suspension for six months, armistice negotiations between the Chinese and North Korean delegation and the United Nations delegation reconvened in Panmunjom. Representatives of both sides negotiated details of the repatriation of prisoners of war. Then there followed the exchange of the seriously wounded and sick prisoners—6670 Chinese and North Koreans for 471 South Koreans, 149 Americans, and 64 other United Nations personnel, the count at that time.
US aircraft spread leaflets in North Korea, announcing that anyone who delivered a MiG or other jet aircraft to the United Nations forces in South Korea would receive political asylum, resettlement in a noncommunist country, anonymity, and $50,000. An additional $50,000 bounty would go to the first person to take advantage of this offer. In September 1953, after the cease-fire, a North Korean MiG-15 pilot flew his aircraft safely to Kimpo air base in South Korea.

In the last week of May, the Chinese and North Korean troops made a major ground offensive against the United Nations positions on ridges dominating the US I Corps sector, about 10 miles northeast of Panmunjom. Meanwhile, the armistice negotiations faltered over disagreements regarding the repatriation of the prisoners of war. The Chinese and North Korean delegates wanted North Korean prisoners unwilling to return to their homelands to be detained indefinitely, in effect punishing them for their decision. The United Nations delegates wanted to release all prisoners to civilian status on the day the armistice became effective. To let the Chinese and North Koreans know that the continuance of the war would incur additional political and economic costs, the US Air Force attacked targets in North Korea that had been untouched previously. They bombed irrigation dams, whose destruction would, besides interrupting food production, disrupt further preparations for a ground offensive on the part of the Chinese and North Korean army by flooding the rails and road networks.
By mid-June, both sides had agreed to establish a Neutral Nations Repatriation committee. The final session of armistice negotiations at Panmunjom convened. After meeting for one day, the top negotiators agreed to adjourn while technical experts worked out the cease-fire details.
At 10:00AM on July 27, 1953, the armistice agreement was signed to produce the cease-fire in the Korean War between the United Nations forces, South Korea, and the Chinese People’s Volunteers, North Korea. In accordance with the armistice agreement, in August, the prisoners of war were exchanged in Operation Big Switch—77,000 Chinese and North Korean army prisoners of war, for 12,700 prisoners from the United Nations and South Korean army, including 3,597 Americans, the final count. (The above data was taken from the US government booklet entitled “The USAF in Korea”.)

Chapter 10. The 3 Anti-’s and 5 Anti-’s Movements

The 3 Anti-’s Movement

In November 1951, two party secretaries in Tianjin were caught embezzling funds. Therefore, on December 1, 1951, the Central Committee of the Communist Party launched the cost-saving movement which was literally called “Three Anti-’s”: anti-embezzlement, anti-waste, and anti-bureaucratism. This movement was targeted at cadres of the government and government-run enterprises; the ones who had power. Mao wanted to clip their wings. At that time, there were 3,830,000 government cadres. They would be examined through this movement.
The cadres could be divided into three categories. The first were those who had gone through the Sino–Japanese War and the second civil war, who should be dependable. The second category included those newly employed after the establishment of the new republic. The third group were those having worked in the former government, who were undependable, of course. Those who were guilty of the crime of embezzlement were called “tigers.” Through this movement, the Communist Party wanted to “catch big tigers” so that there would not be any embezzlement in the government any more. Anyone who embezzled 10,000 yuan was defined as a big tiger and would be executed. In China, political movements were often carried out with violence. So many targeted persons committed suicide, even though they were cadres.

The 5 Anti-’s Movement

Right in the wake of the three Anti-’s movement, another program was launched, which was literally called “Five Anti-’s”: anti-bribery, anti-tax-evasion, anti-jerry-rigging, anti-stealing-government-property, and anti-theft-of-government-economic-information. The target of this movement was all the national capitalists; the ones who had money. In feudal societies like Imperial China, the emperor considered that everything on the land he ruled over was his own, and everyone on this land essentially worked for him. Verbally, Mao declared himself as a Marxist-Leninist, but his actions often made him look like the “communist emperor of the Red Dynasty.” His actions showed people what he thought; he didn’t put it in plain words. And given the low level of development and widespread poverty in China, the Communists under Mao sought to cover the basic necessities of life for everyone; and that didn’t leave much extra. All excesses would be confiscated.
On the 26th of January, 1952, the Central Committee of the Communist Party issued instructions for the Five-Anti-’s movement. In early February, it started in all the big cities, aiming at businessmen. The Party defined them as capitalists. The Party divided Chinese capitalists into two types: bureaucratic capitalists like Chiang Kai-shek, Soong Tse-ven, K’ung Hsiang-hsi, and the Chen brothers, who were very wealthy and were called the four big capitalist families. All the property they left on the mainland was confiscated. All others were defined as national capitalists, and their properties remained with them for the time being. Now they were the target of the five anti-’s movement.
The local governments organized so-called work teams consisting of cadres, workers and shop assistants. Violence was part of every movement. Some capitalists were beaten or slapped in their faces. Capitalists were forced to confess what they had failed to do so far in these five categories. This was called ‘face to face fight.’ Quite a few capitalists committed suicide. Then the government changed from face-to-face fight to a back-to-back tactic. Workers or shop assistants just revealed the crimes of their bosses, behind their backs, so that no retaliation could be inflicted.

Statistics showed that during these two movements, in the whole country, 184,270 persons were arrested, 119,355 party members expelled, and 133,760 people were killed or disabled, including those committing suicide or beaten to death, or tortured to death in jails and labor reform camps. Those who committed suicide were mostly capitalists. The means of suicide were various. In some secluded corners of public parks, people were found hanging from big trees. Then, patrols increased to prevent hangings in such places. The most popular method of suicide was to jump from high buildings. It was the easiest way, and hard to prevent. But it was dangerous for pedestrians. A person who jumped from a height could possibly fall on the head of a pedestrian and the pedestrian could be killed, while the one jumping survived. Someone actually did some research to see why people in Shanghai did not jump into the Wangpu River. The answer was that if anyone jumped into the river, he could possibly be saved; besides, if he was not saved his body would be washed out to sea. When his body was not found, the government would suspect him of escaping outside the country and his family would get into trouble. So he had to leave his body to be found. Generally a suicide would leave a note, in which he first criticized himself for whatever crime he had been accused of, then he praised the government so that his family would be treated a little better than otherwise. Poor Chinese people! Even suicide was fraught with difficulties.
Both of the “Anti” movements ended in October 1952.
At the end of the 5 Anti-’s movement, the government determined that every national capitalist had at least committed the crime of tax-evasion and would have to pay a big fine to the government. So all the capitalists had to sell personal belongings like cars, jewelry, or even houses, if they did not have enough cash in the bank. That was the first financial blow to the national capitalists. Another financial blow would soon follow.

Mao’s Own Lifestyle

Mao wanted government officials to save money and he took money out of the pockets of the well-to-do. Thus his own spending raised a lot of questions in some people’s minds. He could spend as much as he saw fit. He ordered many villas to be built for his own use only. They were needed, apparently, to provide the best protection and comfort for him. He had over 50 villas in the country, 5 in Beijing alone. The villas were all similarly built: looking like a big cement warehouse from outside, but one that could protect him even from an atom bomb. Every villa, or bunker, was only one storey tall, but they were located in beautiful settings, some with lakes. The whole surroundings were enclosed. In the vicinity of every villa, a transportation network was built, such as a military airport, a train line, and a tunnel for cars. Wherever Mao went, the three means of transportation followed him. When he rode in his personal airplane, the airspace would be cleared while his plane flew past. When he rode in his personal train, other trains had to stop while his train went past.

Chapter 11. The So-Called Gao Gang & Rao Shushi Anti-Party Event

Mao was familiar with Chinese political history. When certain new dynasties began, the first emperors of those dynasties would find fault with some of their faithful supporters who were deemed by those emperors to be potential threats to their future as rulers. Therefore, those supporters were killed or imprisoned for whatever possible crimes could be attributed to them. So was the case with Gao Gang and Rao Shushi.
Gao (1905–1954) came from a poor peasant family in Shaanxi province. In January, 1927, he entered the Yat-sen Military Academy in XiAn and joined the Communist Party in February. In 1933, he was the political commissar of the 42nd division of the Red 26th army. In the Communist Army system, a political commissar was the representative of the Communist Party in the army, a little higher in rank than the division commander. Then he was appointed director of the political department in the Red 15th corps. But in 1935, he was imprisoned as a reactionary and was about to be executed. Just at that time, Mao and Zhou Enlai reached the northern Shaanxi province, with the central Red Army. Mao ordered Gao to be released and Gao was so grateful to Mao he became Mao’s faithful supporter ever after. So in the 7th conference of the Communist Party, he became a member of the Central Political Bureau (equivalent to the executive department of the Central Committee) and the secretary of the northwest bureau. (All over the country, the Communist Party set up six bureaus. Every bureau rules over several provinces.)
After Japan surrendered, the Communist Party intended to occupy the northeastern provinces and set up a northeast bureau. Gao was appointed the secretary to take charge of everything in that region. In 1946, Lin Biao was sent up to the northeastern provinces as the commander of the 4th field army and he worked with Gao in a cooperative relationship. Often they both had the same view. After the new republic was established, Gao was the vice chairman of the central people’s government, the vice chairman of the people’s revolutionary military committee, and also the chairman of the people’s government in the northeastern area. After the Korean War broke out, though Gao disagreed on sending the Chinese army into Korea, he still gave full support in supplying whatever the army needed there. So Marshal Peng Dehuai praised him for that. Gao was also the chairman of the national planning committee—clearly, a very capable man.

Rao Shushi (1903–1975) was born in Jiangxi province. He joined the Communist Party in 1925. Then he was made the secretary of the party caucus of the Federation of Labor Unions of Shanghai and the secretary of the party caucus of the Chinese National General Labor Union. During the Anti-Japanese War, he was the political commissar of the new 4th army. During the second civil war, he was the political commissar of the 3rd field army and the secretary of the east China bureau of the Communist Party. When the new republic was founded, he was the chairman of the east China military and political committee, the first secretary of the east China bureau, and then the minister of the organization department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. Also an intelligent, qualified leader.
Gao’s and Rao’s paths in life had never crossed each other; they were in different regions entirely. But they were both accused of the crime of being anti-Party together. Anyway, why were they not accused of being anti-Party separately? It was understood that no man could act against the Communist Party of China, only a clique could try that. And you need at least two powerful persons to form a clique (the same held true during the Cultural Revolution, when Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping were put together as the powerful men accused of following the capitalist road).
In accordance with the official statement of the Communist Party, the main accusations against Gao were: criticizing mistakes and errors in the national economic field, namely decisions concerning Liu Shaoqi and Zhou Enlai, members of the Secretariat of the CPC (Communist Party of China) Central Committee in charge of that field. From the same source, Gao was understood to have further slandered them by saying that Liu and Zhou Enlai had cliques in the Central Committee. Gao and Rao were alleged to have spread a rumor that An Ziwen, the vice minister of the organization department of the CPC Central Committee, had put up a list of the members of the CPC political bureau, at the instruction of Liu. (That meant that Liu privately let An make such a list behind the back of Mao.) Then Gao left Beijing on a vacation to see Deng Xiaoping, Chen Yun and Lin Biao separately and tried to persuade them to support him. What would his purpose have been? The official statement alleged that Gao wanted to replace Liu in his higher political position. But why would Rao work with Gao? What could Rao get from it? The official statement said that Rao wanted to acquire the power to appoint and promote the cadres. But at that time Rao was already the minister of the organization department of the CPC Central Committee and already had that power.
In 1951, Gao thought of publishing an article he had written as an editorial in the Northeast Daily, but rather than take it upon himself to do so of his own accord, he handed in the article for Mao to read and give his approval first. Think of that. Historians surmise that Mao did want to get rid of Liu, which he did in the Cultural Revolution, but at that time, the conditions were not yet ripe. Conceivably Gao got the wind of it and acted earlier than Mao planned. Mao had to get rid of him lest his cat got out of the bag.

Another surmise, which came from Khrushchev’s memoirs, was that Gao had sent information to the Soviet Union about things that were going on in the Communist Party of China and what the leaders said. The Soviet Union had provided China with old, rebuilt tanks, and some such things, and the Chinese leaders were dissatisfied. Those leaders included Liu and Zhou. Gao did not mention Mao. To secure Mao’s trust and friendship, Stalin gave Mao the information he had received from Gao. Therefore, Mao wanted to get rid of Gao (but why was Rao included?) and made arrangements with Liu and Zhou. Mao gave Gao the false impression that he wanted to rid Liu, or even hinted that Gao should do something about it. Gao, thinking that he had Mao’s support, fell into the snare Mao set up for him. Gao was then taken into custody. He attempted a suicide in April 1954, but in vain. He made another suicide attempt in August and died this time. Rao was apprehended on April 1, 1955, and sentenced to 14 years. After 10 years he was out of the jail, but was put back in again during the Cultural Revolution and died on March 2, 1975.
It was said that Rao was arrested due to his involvement in another case. During the movement to arrest and kill the reactionaries, Yang Fan, the chief of the police station of Shanghai, thought of a method to use reactionaries to reveal hidden reactionaries. In the process, he did not punish those he utilized and so he was accused of protecting reactionaries—more than 3,300 in number. This involved Rao. Moreover, Pan Hannian, a vice mayor of Shanghai in charge of police affairs, feared that since he had worked with Rao and Yang Fan, he would have to confess his side of the story to the Party so that he might ride out the crisis. He confessed that in the summer of 1943, he went to Shanghai from where the new 4th army was encamped to meet Li Shiqun, a traitor to Japan, and he was kidnapped and taken to Nanking to see Wang Jingwei. Although he did not betray the Communist Party, when he was back at the camp he did not report to the Party what had happened. Now he confessed it and was arrested. Then Rao Shushi, Pan Hannian and Yang Fan were defined as an anti-Party clique. This clique was separate from the Gao Gang clique.
After the Cultural Revolution, some cases were re-opened and examined. Pan was sent by the Party to contact the traitor Li to get information. So his case was redressed, and also the case of Yang Fan. Now what about Gao’s and Rao’s “anti-Party” activities? When Gao had sought Deng Xiaoping’s support against Liu Shaoqi, Deng reported to Mao, and Gao was imprisoned. If Gao’s case was wrong, it shows that Mao’s decision to confine Gao was wrong and Deng’s report to Mao was also wrong. After the Cultural Revolution, Deng Xiaoping was in power and he would never own that he had done anything wrong, to save face. So the case was not redressed.

Chapter 12. China’s First Five-Year Plan (1953–57)

Agricultural Collectivization and Peasant Cooperatives

As the basis for their ambitious economic planning, the CPC held China’s first modern census in 1952. The mainland population was estimated at over half a billion—that’s a lot of mouths to feed. The first step toward improving efficiency and productivity involved land reforms.
During the land reform movement, first the arable land was taken from wealthy individuals and distributed to individual peasants and their families. But then the Communist Party called upon peasants to join productive cooperatives, on a “voluntary” basis but with invisible political pressure behind it. Once they joined the cooperative, peasants lost control of their land, which automatically belonged to the cooperative. The cooperative would decide what crops to grow and when harvests were sold, peasants got a certain percentage of income according to the quantity of the land a peasant put in. When a peasant had his land under his own control, he could decide what to grow and what part of the harvest he would keep for his own use, and the rest he would sell in the market.
By the end of 1952, the first 3,600 cooperatives were operating on a trial basis. On the 16th of December, 1953, the Central Committee of the CPC passed a bill to speed up the development of agricultural productive cooperatives. From 1954 to the first half of 1955, cooperatives sprang up all over the country. In spring of 1954, there were already 95,000 cooperatives, which meant that 1,700,000 families had joined them. In autumn of the same year, the cooperatives had increased to more than 225,000. On May 17, 1955, at Mao’s proposal, the Central Committee of the CPC decided to expand the cooperatives to one million in 1956. By July of 1955, the cooperatives reached the number of 650,000 and by the end of 1956, 96.3% of peasant families had joined the cooperatives.
That was the essential change of the agricultural productive style from individual to collective. This process roughly coincided with the consolidation of America’s private farms into a large-scale industrial agro business which was carried out by capitalist means involving loans and debt, price manipulation and other methods. Different means to pursue the same end, although not with the same results.

Private Businesses Become State Property

The economical ideal of the Communist Party was that there should be no private businesses in a so-called socialist country. Private businesses were the typical symbol of the capitalist system. So at the end of 1955, Chen Yun, in charge of the national economy, declared a reform of private businesses over the next two years. Then Peng Zhen, the mayor of Beijing, proposed to finish the reform in 1956 in Beijing. In January of 1956, in just a few days, Beijing completed the reform. Mao pushed it by visiting a textile factory owned by Rong Yiren, the biggest national capitalist in China at the time, on the 10th of January. Rong offered to turn over his factories to government ownership on the 20th. Others followed suit, in all cities where there were private businesses.
The carefully-formulated process was that the private business owner must send in an application begging the communist government to take over his business. Accordingly the government would approve his application. This was like a traveler offering his belongings to an outlaw and begging him to take them. The outlaw was only willing to accept the offer for mercy’s sake, as if the belongings were so heavy they would break the traveler’s back if he carried them any longer. The outlaw was only relieving him of a burden.
Anyway, in Beijing, on the 15th of January, 1956, there was a celebration on TianAnMen Square where 200,000 people gathered to celebrate the completion of the takeover of private businesses by the government. The takeover was called a “purchasing policy,” which meant that the government bought these private businesses from the private owners and paid them a certain amount of money called “fixed interests,” which would be paid off at the annual rate of 5% of the value of these private businesses. The government decided what was the value of a factory or a store, and the owner had no right to bargain. As a rule, the government should have paid the owner for 20 years at the rate of 5%, but no, the government promised to pay only for 7 years. And at the end of the 7 years it would make a further decision to see whether it would continue to pay or not. Anyway, this sounded better than outright expropriation.
This was the second financial blow to the national capitalists, leaving them only their personal belongings like jewelry and antiques, if they had any left after paying fines. But the final financial blow was coming soon.
The payment of fixed interests might last for 3 years more, which meant the government only paid for 10 years out of the 20 years, only half of the value.
After these takeovers, the former owner would be given a position in the business (as a salesman or other worker). If he was accorded a position like manager, he was only holding the position in name, and had no say whatsoever in the decisions. The party secretary was the one to decide everything, even if he understood nothing about the business. Older owners just retired and lived on the fixed interests while the younger ones accepted their salary as well as the fixed interests.

Chapter 13. So-Called Three Red Banners

The purpose of the slogan “Three Red Banners” was to help make China a strong and prosperous country in the shortest possible period by building “socialism with Chinese characteristics,” that is, by avoiding certain limitations built into other nations’ experiments with communist/socialist models.
Every dynasty in Chinese history favored a particular color. For the Qing Dynasty, yellow (or gold) symbolized the imperial authority. The Communist Party has always favored red. Initially that red was meant to symbolize the blood of martyred revolutionaries, but over time this image has been broadened in some people’s view to include the blood of those bystanders who became victims to the various campaigns through which regime change was accomplished.
Anyway, the “three red banners” meant the General Line (for socialist construction), the Great Leap Forward, and the People’s Commune.

The General Line

The General Line was “to keep up full energy, to fight your way upstream, and to build socialism quickly and thriftily, abundantly and well.” On October 11, 1955, Mao said at a meeting that the cooperatives must be developed abundantly, quickly and well. Then Li Fuchun (1900–1975), vice director of the plan committee and vice Premier of the state council, suggested adding “thriftily”, which was accepted. So on January 1, 1956, the People’s Daily ran an editorial urging the people to keep this theme in mind while carrying out the first five-year plan. In 1958, the People’s Daily New Year’s day editorial exhorted the populace to continue working with their full energy, to strive to get upstream. So the General Line was formed. In theory, it was a good mission statement (to use today’s terminology). But, in carrying it out, the Communist Party went astray and moved contrary to the reality of how processes unfold, and this was true as well in the so-called Great Leap forward and the People’s Commune movements.

The Great Leap Forward

On the 29th of June, 1957, an article was published with the signature of one Yu Jianhui, in which the slogan of “the Great Leap Forward” was first heard. In September, during the Third Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee of the CPC, the decision was made to carry out the Great Leap Forward movement in agriculture. On the 13th of November, the editorial of the People’s Daily said, “Some people are infected with Right-deviationist conservatism and have crawled like snails. Since the agricultural collectivization has taken place, we have all the conditions and the necessities to make the Great Leap Forward on the productivity front.” On the 2nd of February, 1958, the slogan of an overall Great Leap Forward was emphasized more broadly.
In spring of 1958, major moves were made for the building of agricultural irrigation systems and for the collection of natural fertilizer on a large scale in the countryside. For irrigation construction, the labor force used reached 20 or 30 million workers in October, and 80 million in December. In January of 1958, it reached 100 million. Some provinces that produced mostly industrial goods guaranteed they would produce enough grain, meat and vegetables for the people in those provinces in that year. Formerly, these had been brought in from other provinces. This was considered the prelude to the Great Leap Forward. In the countryside the Great Leap Forward was linked with the people’s commune movement.

The People’s Commune

Mao wanted to enlarge the cooperative commune into the so-called People’s Commune. On July 1, 1958, the first People’s Commune was established, merging 27 cooperatives, with 9,360 families involved, in Henan Province. Its official name was Chayashan Satellite People’s Commune. The commune was really a basic local government. It controlled almost everything in the district of the commune, from agricultural production to people’s daily life. It had public canteens—no more eating at home, as a family—kindergartens, clinics, shops, and its own armed forces (called militia) instead of police.
As peasants no longer had their own land and worked for the commune, for very low pay, their enthusiasm for work was essentially quenched. The Party admitted later that it was a mistake, a wrong policy. In order to increase productivity, in 1958, the professor and rocket scientist Qian Xuesen created a theory of “High Productivity,” on the basis of calculation only, without any practical investigation. He was not an agronomist nor a plant physiologist, but he wanted to fulfill Mao’s desire and invented a suitable theory. It was called “high productivity satellite.” When Mao learned of the theory, he gave instructions that all the communes should implement the theory. But the land could not yield as much as had been calculated theoretically. Therefore, false statistics were reported to the Party. From June to November, high production was reported thirty-nine times. The highest yield of wheat was 7,320 catties (about 24 tons) per acre, that of corn 117 tons per acre, and similarly exaggerated statistics for rice, sweet potato, etc. Possibly, Mao believed some of this; but people generally got the impression that everything said in the news was misleading. Simply lies.
As it was reported that the peasants had produced so much grain, Mao and other Party leaders worried about what to do with it all. Mao said the peasants could eat all they wanted, for free, and if the people could not consume so much, they would be able to give the surplus to foreign people.

They also wanted people in cities to organize people’s communes. In every block, the resident committee had to have a canteen so that the residents could go there for meals, like in the countryside. But most of the city residents did not eat in the canteens. They still cooked at home. So the city people’s commune was a quick failure. Then Mao criticized himself, saying that he had listened to Qian as if he had no brains of his own. Even Tian Jiaying, his secretary, asked him how, coming from a peasant family himself, he could have believed that it was possible to produce such vast quantities of food per acre. It seems that Mao had no grasp of science or mathematics. Qian Xuesen actually did have plenty of brains. He was a US-educated rocket scientist who helped establish the Jet Propulsion Laboratory before being deported in 1955 as a Communist. He went on to build China’s own space program, from intercontinental ballistic missiles and satellites to putting a man in space in 2003.
Mao was in a hurry to bring to life “communist society” before his death. Mao forced the nation to implement his ideas even when they were ill-founded, and as a result, the whole nation sank into economical disaster. Things became scarce, especially food. People in cities were quickly put on rations and had to use their limited coupons to buy all the necessities such as rice, flour, meat, eggs, cloth, cooking oil, sugar, cigarettes, matches, yarn or thread, products based on bean curd, and even bathroom tissue. There were also ration coupons to buy cakes, biscuits, or anything made from rice or flour. If anyone went to a restaurant and ate rice or noodles, he had to give rice coupons besides paying money. The cashiers’ work was made a little more complicated, as they had to calculate the money as well as the coupons.
Ration coupons were distributed according to the number of persons in a family, and were given to the family every three months. At the beginning of every quarter, housewives waited in expectation of the distribution of coupons to buy everything they needed. Every family had two small booklets, one to buy rice or flour in grain stores (with a certain limit) if they wanted to cook rice or use flour in any kind of recipe at home, and the other used to buy coal to fuel the cooking ovens. The “Three Red Banners” ended in failure.

Chapter 14. Soviet Experts Give Technical Assistance

Soviet Counselors and Experts Help China

The Communist Party was aware that China was very backward and had few technicians and scientists who could take the lead in economical development when they took over the country. Therefore, they asked the Soviet Union for help. In 1949, the Soviet Union sent Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan, member of the Bolshevik politburo, on a secret visit to Xibopo where the headquarters of the Liberation Army had moved in May 1948. Stalin wanted to know, first, what attitude the Communist Party of China would hold towards the Soviet Union. At the same time he talked about possible technical aid to China after the Communist Party of China expressed their willingness to accept Soviet leadership. At a meeting on February 1, Zhou Enlai requested the Soviet Union to send experts and equipment for weapons manufacture, and advisors to train troops and help to set up military academies.” Mikoyan could not give any answer but reported to Stalin, and asked the Communist Party of China send a delegation to the Soviet Union for further discussion. In June 1949, Liu Shaoqi headed a secret delegation to Moscow. In August, 220 Soviet financial advisors and engineers came to China with him. At that time in northern China, 1,300,000 out of 1,500,000 cadres were illiterate. So it was very important to have Soviet experts come in.
Besides sending Chinese cadres to the Soviet Union for training and practical experience, the Communist Party of China invited many Soviet experts to manage almost every department of the central government, from security, military, and intelligence, to gymnastics and hygiene. There were over 400 Soviet advisors in the central government, one third of all the advisors and experts in China. According to Soviet statistics, during 1951–1953, there were 1210 Soviet experts working in China. A report from the Communist Party of China revealed that Soviet experts helped to build 51 factories by April of 1953, and from 1953 to 1959, 91 factories were built. The Soviet experts assumed the duties of selecting sites for the factories, the design, and the supply of equipment. They instructed Chinese workers how to install the equipment and how to operate it and manufacture new products. In one report, Li Fuchun said, “Without the assistance of the Soviet Union, we would not have achieved such speed and scale in our construction in the first five-year plan. We would certainly have faced unimaginable difficulties.”

The Soviets With Their Advisors and Experts

But in the Korean War, the Soviet Union sold China out-of-date and unusable weaponry. During 1950–1951, one fourth of the airplanes that were delivered to China were not flight-ready but needed repairs. So towards the end of the first five-year plan, the Communist Party adjusted its policy on the use of Soviet advisors and experts. At a meeting in Chengdu City, in March of 1958, Mao criticized the blind worship of Soviet experts and demanded that his people push back against dogmatism and slave-like thinking. This change in Mao’s attitude towards the Soviet Union was after the death of Stalin in 1953. Stalin was openly acknowledged as the leader of the Communist International movements. Although Mao thought highly of himself, he did not dare to challenge Stalin for the international leadership position. Since Stalin was gone, Mao had no great esteem for the new Soviet leader. He thought that he himself should replace Stalin as the leader of world Communism.
In August 1958, Khrushchev, the new head of the Soviet Union, visited Beijing and held talks with Mao. One might conclude from this visit that Mao thought he held a more important position in the communist world so that Khrushchev should come to Beijing to see him. If Stalin were still alive, it certainly would have been Mao who went to Moscow for any talks. Stalin would never have come to Beijing. Anyway, Mao and Khrushchev had different opinions about the need for Soviet advisors and experts. Mao could not tolerate having Soviet advisors intervene so deeply in China’s affairs and wanted to reduce their number, but he still needed the technical experts. So the number of the advisors and experts decreased year by year: 952 in 1957, 915 in 1958, 699 in 1959, and 410 in 1960.
The tension between the Communist Party of China and the Soviet Communist Party became open during the Bucharest conference in June 1960. Khrushchev and Peng Zhen, head of the Chinese delegation, had a quarrel. The Soviet Union accused China of violating their agreement to present a unified front, not displaying the difference in views between the two parties and the Chinese opposition to the common route supported by the communist world. Only Albania stood with China. After the conference, the Soviet Union withdrew all its advisors and experts from China, leaving many tasks unfinished. The notion of an unbreakable friendship between the Soviet Union and China was over.

Chapter 15. The Anti-Rightist Movement

Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom

In April 1956, Mao gave a speech introducing the “Double-Hundred Policy,” the meaning of which was “To let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred (different) opinions be expressed.” Then the Minister for Propaganda, Lu Dingyi, made a speech explaining to all the intellectuals that they should go ahead and think independently. They would have freedom to debate and criticize, creative freedom, freedom of expression, and the right to their own opinions. It was so sweet to hear that many believed it; but only fools gave out their opinions boldly.
On May 1, 1957, the People’s Daily published “Instructions about the Rectification Movement,” which had been passed at the Central Committee of the Communist Party on April 27. The Party had decided to start a rectification movement within the Party to foster anti-bureaucratism, anti-sectarianism, and anti-subjectivism. The Party called upon people outside the Party, upon people the country over, to express their opinions, to criticize the Party and government, and to help the Party to rectify any shortcomings. The request sounded earnest. This was the sole movement that was aimed at improving the Party itself.
Many people in the country, especially the intellectuals, educated people (which included many of the capitalists, or propertied class), all those and other fools, did criticize the Party for their so many obvious wrongdoings. Even the newspapers followed suit. At that time, people thought that the Party was really being open-minded. It was a snare that many naive people fell for.

The Reaction

Then the Anti-Rightist movement began. “Rightist” opinions generally included the common complaint of peasants that their life was worse than it was before and that the life of workers in the cities was better than that of peasants; and that the policy requiring peasants to sell a high quota of their harvest to the government forced peasants to starve. Other people demanded to cancel the political lessons in schools and universities; to have the freedom to move to other cities or from the countryside to the city; to have the freedom of speech and publication; to criticize wrong-doings in the previous movements; to criticize Chinese interference in the Korean War (meaning the money used in the war should be used instead to improve the life of their own people or for the construction of China); to criticize the Soviet Union for their soldiers who raped Chinese women in 1946 when they occupied the northeast after driving out the Japanese; to criticize one-party rule; to demand equal opportunity in the elections of government leaders (there were some so-called democratic parties in China); and many others.

Mao’s Anti-Rightist Movement

However, on June 8, the People’s Daily ran an editorial, “Why Is this?” on the first page. It mentioned the term “Rightists.” On June 12, Mao wrote an article, “Things Are Changing,” and circulated it within the Party. On the 14th , the People’s Daily published another editorial, “The Bourgeois Direction Taken by Wenhui Daily.” This editorial was rumored to have been written by Mao. It blamed the Wenhui Daily and the Brightness Daily, two newspapers managed by Party members, for their criticisms of the Party. Thus began the anti-rightist movement.
Mao was said to have commented that the rectification movement was just a trick to “lure snakes out of the hole.” Who were the snakes? Mao seemed to mean the rightists. Mao estimated that about five percent of the population in China were “rightists.” This was really the kind of subjectivism that was decried (taking one’s own view, and using it as the standard of measure), as Mao invented a fixed number of rightists without counting, even when the movement just began. The number should have been calculated only when the results came in. On the 15th of October, the Party issued another document, “Standards by which to Decide on Rightists.” There were six rules for determining who were rightists:
1. Anti-socialist system: people who opposed the basic economic policies of the Party and government; negating the achievements of the socialist revolution and construction; insisting on a capitalist viewpoint.
2. Opposing the proletarian dictatorship and democratic centralism, such as resisting the fight against imperialism; disagreeing with the foreign policy of the government; disagreeing with the five movements; opposing the execution of reactionaries; opposing the reform of capitalists and capitalist intellectuals; demanding to replace the laws and cultural education of socialism with those of capitalism.

3. Opposing the leadership of the Communist Party in political life, and in the economy and culture; attacking the leading organizations and leaders of the Communist Party and the government for the purpose of opposing socialism and the Party, slandering the revolutionary activities of the Party.
4. Disrupting the social harmony for the purpose of opposing socialism and the Party, such as instigating people against the Party and the government; instigating friction between industrial workers and peasants; instigating discord among minorities; slandering the socialist camp; fomenting discord among peoples of different socialist countries.
5, Actively organizing and joining cliques against socialism and the Party, such as plotting to overthrow the leadership of the Party anywhere; instigating riots against the Party and government.
6. Aiding, advising, passing information to those who committed the above crimes.
There were 552,877 rightists found in China, out of the entire population of 642,380,000 in 1957. Important rightists included Zhang Bojun, head of the Brightness Daily newspaper, Chu Anping, chief editor of that newspaper, Luo Longji, head of the Wenhui Daily newspaper, and Pu Xixiu, chief editor of that newspaper. One of the rightists among the capitalists was Wang Kangnian, who insisted that if the government bought people’s land and property, they should pay fixed interests for twenty years, not seven years, as the rate was five percent. And this calculation was in line with earlier public declarations.
Actually, all the points raised by the “rightists” were proven correct as history played out. As for the fixed interests, at the end of the seven years, the Party decided to continue paying for another three years. Ten years altogether. Then the Cultural Revolution began and no one mentioned it any more. End of story.
What became of the rightists? Some lost their jobs and were forced to clean bathrooms. Their salaries were duly reduced to the level of a cleaner’s. Some were sent to labor reform camps. Hard labor, plus a great famine that took place later, killed many of them by hunger or disease.

All the rightists were given a “rightist cap,” as it was called in the newspaper. It was actually an invisible cap, only recorded in their personal files. But the files followed them everywhere they went, so it was like having a cap always on one’s head.  After 1985, some rightists were restored to full citizenship, but they were still called “uncapped rightists,” which meant that though their caps were removed, they were still deemed different from other people.
During the Cultural Revolution those people, capped or uncapped, were criticized and even beaten. In 1977, many false convictions were overturned, including rightist cases, almost twenty years after the Anti-Rightist Movement. By May of 1980, most of the rightist cases were rehabilitated, and they were no longer called “uncapped rightists.” About 97% of the rightist cases were judged to have been wrong. But 1978, after twenty years, only a little more than 100,000 of the 552,877 so-called rightists survived. Many victims had died.
On in November 2005, Shi Ruping, a retired professor from Shandong University, together with some other professors and their families, signed an open letter to the National People’s Congress and the State Council demanding that the Party make self-criticism and apologies to the intellectuals who had fallen victim to this political persecution, and give them reasonable and satisfactory compensations. In three months, they garnered 1,500 supporters.
In 2007, on the 50th anniversary of the Anti-Rightist Movement, 61 survivors in Beijing signed an open letter demanding that the Party should openly declare the rehabilitation of the whole Anti-Rightist Movement, not just the individuals. But the Party declined to take any such steps.
Through this movement, Mao and the Party intended to quench all opposing voices and even to stifle dissent in people’s minds. Anyone who dared to say anything different from what the Party wanted them to say would get punishment. Mao was said to enjoy reading history books and learning strategies used by ancient military leaders and government officials: stratagems for seizing power, how to defeat political enemies, how to feint and lay military traps, how to appeal to people’s beliefs, or ego, diplomatic ploys and salesman’s techniques. If he couldn’t calculate a harvest, he certainly knew how to calculate to win.