CHAPTER I

HAMMER AND SICKLE

THE CHAPTERS THAT follow are an account of a long journey undertaken with the object of investigating the Communist situation in South China. Unless the reader understands more or less what that situation is, the narrative will lose such interest as it may have for him. Accordingly I will summarize at the beginning of the journey the conclusions which I reached at the end of it. Much of the information comprised in this survey was known, at any rate in its general outline, in British official quarters in Peking and Shanghai: outside official quarters few foreigners in China, and almost none elsewhere, were familiar with the realities of a movement which now completely dominates half one large province and about a third of the next, and intermittently ravages others. So far as I know, no previous journey had been made to the anti-Communist front by a foreigner. I cannot claim that the new information which I was able to obtain, or the old information which I was able to confirm or modify, was of a nature to revolutionize the best theories already current about the situation; but perhaps it gave them a sounder basis, and I think it was worth collecting.

Neither the theory nor the practice of Communism is indigenous to China. The Chinese are individualists, and their unit of community is the family. It is their strength as a people that they think in terms of this unit, their weakness as a nation that they cannot think in terms of a larger – cannot effectively subordinate the interests of the clan to the interests of the province or the Republic. What hold Communism has on China to-day is therefore traceable to outside influence, and some survey of its brief history must necessarily precede an analysis of the present situation.

In 1926, when the Northern Expedition set out for the Yangtse Valley from Canton, the influence of Borodin and the Russian advisers was strong, and threatened to become paramount. The armies were preceded on their northward march by small, effective, Russian-trained parties of propagandists, whose roseate promises sowed the seeds of the present Red menace. Then came the break with the Russians. Borodin fled, and the elixir of Communism was officially labelled ‘Poison’. Chiang Kai-shek had the Yangtse Valley; but behind him on his line of march the ideas of Moscow, specially prepared for Far Eastern consumption, had taken root in a soil made fertile by agrarian discontent, and many of Moscow’s apostles, proscribed elsewhere, filtered back to an area which Chiang’s preoccupations further north made safe for their activities.

A Communist state was set up, with its headquarters in Kiangsi,1 and the desertion of two Nationalist divisions provided it with the nucleus of what has now become perhaps the most formidable fighting force in China. Russia continued to play the Fairy Godmother, though of necessity from a distance. The Chinese Communists received moral and financial support through the Far Eastern Bureau of the Comintern, an organization with a small European staff which worked secretly in the International Concession at Shanghai. With the arrest of its head, Hilaire Noulens,2 in 1931, this organization was broken up, and subsidies from Moscow – which were at that time coming into Shanghai at the rate of more than £ 140,000 a year – were cut off. If they have been resumed since, it is on a negligible scale.

By 1931 Communism had assumed the status of a national problem in China; attempts by the Nanking Government to solve it were becoming annually more serious, though not more successful. A Chinese Soviet Republic had proclaimed itself and controlled – as it controls to-day – an area of which central and southern Kiangsi and western Fukien are the permanent nucleus, but which has at one time or another been expanded to include parts of Hunan, Kwang-tung, and Hupeh.

I found that most foreigners in China maintain that Communism in this instance is merely a courtesy title for the familiar phenomena of banditry, discontent, and unemployment. The following observations, based on the journey which I am going to describe, may provide the material for a truer and less reassuring interpretation.

The curse of China is ineffectiveness; the Chinese Communists are not ineffective. The Red Areas are controlled, and rigidly controlled, by a central government with headquarters at the ‘capital’, Shuikin. Theoretically, the policy of this government is directed by the Chinese Communist Party from Shanghai; in practice, it would appear to be independent while remaining open to suggestions. The form of government is modelled on the Russian; the ‘Party’, guided by a small Central Executive Committee, is paramount. The territory under its control is subdivided into areas, each of which is ruled by a local Soviet with a ‘Party’ man at its head.

All land is common. When they came into the villages the first thing the Communists did was to kill all the landlords, burn all the title-deeds, and tear up all the landmarks. The land (even including temple lands and burial grounds) was then redistributed. All marketing of produce is done through a central government agency, and to-day the peasant inside the Red Areas is buying his rice and pork cheaper than the peasant outside them. One central and at least two local banks have been established, and notes and silver coins have been issued, the former bearing the head of Lenin and the latter the hammer and sickle. A ‘progressive’ tax is levied in proportion to income. Marriage, religion, and the hereditary system have been abolished. All capital above a certain very small amount is confiscated, and the prosperous are relentlessly proscribed.

In the autumn of 1933 the fighting strength of the Red Armies was about 70,000 rifles; it fluctuates widely, but rarely falls below 50,000. The nucleus of this force is the First, Third and Fifth Army Corps. These are hard, well-disciplined, and very mobile troops with a formidable reputation. Nominally every citizen, male or female, of this ruthlessly improvised republic is conscripted for service in or with the Red Armies between the ages of fifteen or forty, while boys below fifteen must join the ‘Youth Vanguard’. A number of semi-independent units, mostly bandits, act in co-operation with the organized main body, and during a campaign the first wave of the Communist attack usually comprises a screen of these guerrillas, supplemented by boys – occasionally women – armed with spears, on whom the enemy expends much of his never very plentiful ammunition. An arsenal has been established in which rifles can be repaired, bullets cast, and old cartridge cases reloaded; but hitherto the main supply of arms and ammunition has come, voluntarily or involuntarily, from the Nationalist armies.

When, as not infrequently happens, a detachment of Government troops surrenders, the officers are shot, the rifles and bandoliers collected, and the men sent home with a dollar or two in their pockets, for as allies in the ranks they are less valuable to the Reds than as parasites living on the surrounding country, where their unwelcome presence breeds an atmosphere favourable to Communism.

The Red Armies are commanded by Chu Teh, a general of experience and resource, said to have had some German training. His political adviser is Mao Dsu Tung, a gifted and fanatical young man of thirty-five suffering from an incurable disease. This pair have made themselves into something of a legend, and the Communist High Command is invariably referred to as Chumao. In addition to the Red Armies in Kiangsi, there is a Communist force of some 5000 rifles in southern Hupeh, and a large roving army which has found its way up to the borders of Szechwan after being dislodged from Hupeh in the autumn of 1932. The former of these is in reasonably close touch with headquarters in Kiangsi; the latter is presumably not. All the Red Armies are equipped with wireless.

The novelty of the Chinese Communist movement lies in the fact that – in a country where the man with the big stick has always hitherto had the last word – the army does not, and cannot, rule the roost, as it would if the movement represented no more than that chance agglomeration of malcontents and freebooters which optimists see in it. The control of the Central Government (in other words, of the ‘Party’) is absolute, because the ‘Party’ percolates, in the Russian manner, into every branch of military and civil life. There is, as it were, a ‘Party’ man at the hub of every wheel. The mutiny of a division, the rebellion of a district, is impossible as long as there are officers and officials to see it coming, report it to the ‘Party’, and have it nipped in the bud.

Moreover – again in the Russian manner – everyone belongs to various overlapping organizations, all under ‘Party’ control and supervision. As a member of (say) the League of Youth, the Farmers’ Union, the Peasants’ Revolutionary Society, and the nth Red Army Group, you are caught in a cat’s cradle of obligations and threatened with a cloud of penalties. Even the ‘Party’ members themselves are supervised by ‘Control Commissions’, working incognito and reporting to the Central Executive Committee. The peasants may find this harness of terrorism galling, but they cannot kick over the traces.

It will be seen that a great deal depends on the quality of the leaders. These would seem to be for the most part young Chinese students (throughout the movement there is a tremendous emphasis on youth), many of them trained in the Lenin University in Moscow or in a similar institution at Habarovsk. It is freely alleged by the most reliable authorities that the Reds have several foreign advisers with them in Kiangsi; my conclusions on this point are indicated in a later chapter. There can be no doubt that the standard of ability among the leaders is high, and unquestionably most of them are sincere. There is probably less corruption in the Red districts than in any other area of equal size in China.

Communism is like platonic love. It is all right as a theory, it is all right as an experiment, but after that it too often fails to maintain its original nature. Communism in Kiangsi is probably not much further removed from orthodox Communism than the adulterated brand now practised in Russia. It is, of course, very much simplified. The principal tenets to which the peasant is called on to subscribe (or perish) are broadly indicated by the two slogans, ‘The Land For The People’, and ‘Down With Imperialism’. The first is simple and makes pleasant hearing. The second can hardly be so easy to expound to people who have never seen an Imperialist in their life and would not know one if they did (a foreign face has always been a rarity in southern Kiangsi). For Communist purposes, however, the Kuomintang are Imperialists, and of course the Japanese, and all other foreigners as well, and they are all combating the Chinese Revolution by the meanest of tricks, and thus delaying the attainment of an earthly Paradise, tinted red.

So the Communist recruit, when in the heat of battle he looks down his sights and sees at the other end of them only the sheepish face of young Liu who used to live in the next village, nerves himself with the memory of all that has been told him about the foreign capitalists who are supplying Liu’s masters at Nanking with poisonous gas and aeroplanes: and duly pulls the trigger.

It is all very well to say, as most people do, that Communism in China is fundamentally an economic and agrarian problem, and that the way to solve it is to raise the standard of living outside the Red Areas, thereby convincing the peasantry within them that they have backed the wrong horse. Unfortunately, this is impossible. The mere existence of a large district controlled by rebels with a powerful army at their disposal and every motive for aggression postulates the complementary existence of a zone of military occupation surrounding that district. This is the situation to-day.

For the last three years there have been permanently garrisoned in Kiangsi between 100,000 and 200,000 Government troops, and the lot of the inhabitants (as they freely admit) could hardly have been worse if the whole province, instead of only half of it, had been in the hands of the Reds. Press gangs, conscript labour, extra taxes, and many forms of indignity and extortion have made their lives a burden to them, and in return they have received only the most inadequate protection. If anything is calculated to make the Chinese peasant turn spontaneously to Communism (or to anything else that presents itself), it is having troops permanently billeted on him.

‘Permanently’, unfortunately, would seem to be the word. The Nationalist generals in Kiangsi are facing a problem of great difficulty. Topographically it is much the same problem which confronts the Japanese bandit-suppression forces in most parts of Manchukuo. It is analysed in some detail in Chapter XII.

The thing that struck me most on the front was that every officer to whom I spoke was thinking in terms of defence, not of attack. There is no real ‘front’ in Kiangsi. Fortifications have been erected round the villages and towns, and an unco-ordinated system of isolated garrisons has thus been established. Outside these fortifications there are no outposts and few patrols; news of a Communist advance is the signal for the soldiers to withdraw into the villages. When I was in Kiangsi preparations were on foot for Chiang Kai-shek’s autumn offensive, and it struck me as significant that – as part of these preparations for a general attack – an order had been issued to all villages of more than 200 families to build three forts if they had not got them already. Similarly, while work was going forward night and day on a huge military aerodrome at Nanchang, the capital of the province, the defences of that city, more than one hundred miles from the frontiers of the Communist territory, were being strengthened with scarcely less expedition.

In the summer of 1933 the Red Armies launched into Fukien three separate but simultaneous raids, threatened Foochow (a treaty port), and were with difficulty driven off by the 19th Route Army, the heroes of the Shanghai fighting against the Japanese; they took with them much booty and at least a million and a half dollars (Mex) in cash. Judging by this and similar recent ventures, the present policy of the Communists would seem to be to consolidate their almost impregnable position, supplementing their capital and their food supply by occasional marauding.

The Russian influence, though no longer felt directly, is still strong (the armies march under a red banner bearing the hammer and sickle), and time seems to have adapted both their doctrines and their methods to those modifications of the original models which are best suited to the nature of the people and the circumstances. At any rate, a split between the ‘Trotskyists’ and the ‘Stalinists’ which has gravely weakened the Communist Party elsewhere in China has produced no apparent repercussion in the Red Areas. There are signs that their leaders are becoming more, rather than less, sophisticated in their technique. Captured villages are no longer indiscriminately pillaged or destroyed; the wealthy and the powerful suffer, but the poor are encouraged to carry on business as usual. The rôle of Robin Hood is a universally popular one, and the Communists are doing their best to sustain something very like it. There can, however, be little doubt that the peasants are leading miserable lives under the Red regime; for its strength is that it is a reign of terror.

The chief weakness of the Communist policy, regarded simply in the light of a method of governing the Chinese, is that it comprises a strong element of what may be called internal iconoclasm. The oldest, the most powerful traditions in China are centred on the family, and Communism is out to break the family. By abolishing inheritance, and marriage, and ancestor-worship, and by trying to superimpose the conception of a State as the unit to live in and work for, they are defying customs so long established that they have become instincts. It is, I think, this aspect of Communism which is the limiting factor on its spontaneous generation outside the present Red Areas. Only a reproduction of the special circumstances in which the movement had its birth could result in the occurrence of a parallel outbreak elsewhere in China.

How is the situation going to develop? Is Communism a menace to the well-being of China as a whole? I doubt it. There are, it is true, two possible developments of the present state of affairs which would be, for a time, dangerous and inconvenient not only to China herself, but to foreign interests in China. One would be a northward drive by the Red Armies which would result in the cutting of the Yangtse. But this could hardly be achieved unless the bulk of the Nationalist armies were occupied elsewhere; and even if it could be achieved the Communists could not make good the position thus boldly seized, where they would find themselves for the first time facing really desperate opposition in open country.

The other alternative would be an eastward drive, culminating in the capture of either Foochow or Amoy. Here, also for the first time, their armies would confront those Imperialists in whose iniquities they have been so sedulously instructed; and it can hardly be supposed that they would confront them for very long.

These two contingencies, remote but unpleasant, represent in my opinion the limits of the aggressive harm which can be done by Communism in its present stage of development. Probably they will not arise. Hunan, to the west of the Red Areas, is an exceedingly well-run province with a decent army; she remembers with bitterness the Communist occupation of 1929 and is taking what look like effective measures to make its recurrence impossible. If the Communists try to penetrate farther into China they have a respectable barrier in their path. To the south, the well-equipped troops of Kwangtung are not likely to let the Reds into their province again. To the north, a heavy concentration of Nationalist forces blocks the road to the Yangtse.

I do not think that Communism will ever be stamped out by Chinese armies, for the country is too difficult and the Reds too strong. The infection has been localized, and the probability is that for many years the same disproportionate efforts will have to be made to prevent it spreading. Gradually, perhaps, the system of investing the Red territory will become more efficient, and the burden of the peasantry in the zone of military occupation will be a little lightened. But the general situation appears capable of little change. As long as the Nanking Government remains in office China as a whole is safe from the Reds; and as long as the Reds stay in their mountains they can defy the whole of China. It is only in some unpredictable crisis – only, say, if the Nanking Government falls and no effective successor can be quickly found – that the Reds will have their chance. Then, indeed, chaos is come again.

That is the whole story, as far as I know it. When I reached Shanghai I had only the chapter-headings to work on. But they were intriguing, and confirmed a belief which I had formed in London that a visit even to the outskirts of the Red Areas would be, in Baedeker’s immortal phrase, ‘repaying’, particularly as no foreigner seemed to have been there before. So I decided to get as near as I could to the anti-Communist front held by the Nationalist forces in Kiangsi and see what the Chinese Soviet Republic looked like to its immediate neighbours.

Then I met somebody who had travelled overland from Hankow to Canton, a thing which I had not previously imagined possible. It seemed a pity to go all the way to Kiangsi and then come tamely back to Shanghai. I decided to try and go on across country to Canton.

1 The cluster of red dots on the map (see here) indicates roughly the nucleus of the area controlled by the Chinese Soviets.

2 Noulens and his wife are now in gaol at either Nanking or Soochow.